Anyway, I'm sexy as hell. here I am just casually rocking my suit and graduation robe combination and also wearing a hat that whilst looking slightly ridiculous also looks awesome. Check it.
I have awesome eyebrows don't I?!
Anyway, I don't really have many more photos of today yet, they haven't been uploaded but here is one someone tagged of me as I make my way across the stage.
Look how happy I am. Thing is I was actually quite pissed off at this point. You walk into graduation and get all your robes and stuff, anyway, despite being 21 and despite the fact they know I have a degree, the woman decided I couldn't dress myself and proceeded to dress me. I was fine with this till she slammed the mortar board on my head, ruining my hair! Look at my hat hair above. I wouldn't mind but we were all wearing our mortar boards until we got out there and the dene, who happened to be pretty awesome and had a moustache, told us we had to take them off because you can't actually wear them until you have graduated. This meant I had to go on stage with hat hair.
Not like I care, the guy told us that we had worked for three years to get here so to feel free to milk it. Like I need to be told to milk anything.
I don't know if you can see this, but have a look anyway.
Click here for video
I come on right at the end just as it cuts off because it is my friend's video, I'll have my own up soon enough. Two things. Check the awesome cheer I get and check my swagger.
Yeah so I graduated and it was awesome. Well, kind of awesome. We (me and Mark.... who is married) were chatting up the girls behind us as we waited to go up. It was going quite well until one of them realised she recognised me as apparently I had stumbled over to her English class in a pub whilst drunk once. We didn't talk to them after that.
Anyway, with graduation done it was time. Time for the night three years had built up to. Time for Grad Night baby.
Now, to understand the mentality of this night you need a bit of background.
I have a friend who gives me recommendations to watch stuff now and again. She told me to watch Jersey Shore, and I was thought 'fuck that' - but then I watched it and it was brilliant. Then she told me to watch Grey's Anatomy, and I thought 'if I want a hospital show I'll watch Scrubs because interacial homo-erotic guy relationships are my thing', but then I watched it and it was brilliant, so anyway she told me to watch How I Met Your Mother. I kept putting it off but then started watching it and.... you guessed it, it was awesome. I watched to season 6 ep13 in like 4 days. That is both pathetic and awesome.
Anyway there's a character in this show called Barney Stinson who always wears a suit and is one hell of a guy. He's also in Starship Troopers. Here's Barney.
Also, just for fun, here's Barney doing something random, skip to 50 seconds in.
..... Starship Troopers is such a bad film.
Anyway, I kind of get a bit too into things now and again if I really like them, after Jersey Shore I'd spent my nights fist pumping and shouting about my T-shirt, but tonight I was suited up, with my friends all suited up and I decided, drunkenly, that I was going to Barney it up.
Now, barney is a smooth, charming and successful man. And I have one thing in common with him. We are both male. Aside from that, nothing. Anyway, I wasn't going to let that stop me from having a damn good time deluding myself.
We started out, as usual, in Fitzgeralds because it is our post-Uni pub. I love that place, partly for the great selection of beers and partly because me and the old lady who runs the place flirt outrageously with each other and it's only half in jest. Not even lying, I fancy her a bit.
Here we are in Fitzies.
The only people who made it out from this photo are me, Chris Mcananey (far left) Greg (to my right in the glorious red waistcoat) and Copland (To my left in the slightly less awesome but still smart black wasitcoat)
After leaving Fitzgeralds Copland and Chris for some reason wanted to go to the Black Bull, the place was full of kids, emos and emo kids. We rocked in, turned heads and took over the place. I can't stress enough how easy it is to get served and to basically just do what you want if you are with a group of people and you're all in a suit. I managed to talk them into leaving the Bull by constantly complaining about how terrible it was. Luckily they started to play Swagger Jagger and this kind of helped things along nicely.
As we left, I looked forward to a brilliant night. This misguided belief was shattered moments later as Copland decided we would be going to Varsity. The place was as dead as Mcauly Culkin's acting career, there was literally only us and one barmaid in there. Thus began the first game of the night, the imaginatively titled 'let's see which of us can chat the barmaid up the best' game. It was a delightful time had by all, with the possible exception of the barmaid, as we all began our elaborate attempts to charm her. My attempt, which was hastily thought out and based around the fact I was in a suit, was to look and sound important. For some reason I thought ordering a bottle of wine would do this. It didn't. What actually happened is I bought the cheapest wine they have, she laughed at me and I struggled to throw that vile pink liquid down my throat. Although my plan backfired, I did manage to stand at the bar chatting to her for a quite a while and we were having a laugh until Copland came over and blatantly cheated.
Bit of background info on Copland. he is from Glasgow but now lives in Darlo. He speaks a weird kind of mixture of the two accents but still has the ability to put on a broad Scottish accent.
This is one of those times he did it. I don't know what it is about the Scottish accent but it has been scientifically proven that after hearing it a woman's pants are 70% moister than before. It was ridiculous how quickly somebody would show interest in him when he turned out to be Scottish. Anyway, he won the chatting the barmaid up game right there and then so I took my vile pink 'wine' and went to sit outside in the smoking area where I could have a cigarette. There happened to be two girls sitting out there, so I decided considering Chris and Greg were doing God knows what and Copland was with the barmaid I'd go talk to them. This was doomed from the start as five minutes later we had to leave Varsity as a strangely much drunker than he was five minutes ago Copland shambled out of Varsity claiming we had to leave. It transpires the bandit machine or quiz machine or whatever it was he was wasting his money on this time had 'cheated' him and he had smashed his drink on the floor. So, we had to leave.
We had no idea where we wanted to go next, and I jokingly suggested Little Black Book, Sunderland's newest lapdancing bar. I genuinelly was joking, but I learned a few pieces of information in the next few seconds that sealed the deal and led to us going in. Copland and Greg stated that they had never been in a strip bar before, Greg said he wasn't comfortable going in because he has a girlfriend and the doorman said it was free in for us if we fancied it.
In we went.
The lads were all looking a bit nervous and afraid, this is understandable because everybody knows an empowered woman is every mans worst nightmare. I was alright though because, and this makes me sound like a much worse person than I actually am, I know a few of the people who work there from various things like running errands for the manageress and from some of the dancers trying to lez off with my housemate who took me in once. I had warned the lads that the girls would pretend to be interested in them, and that they probably shouldn't waste all their money at 11pm on lapdances when this night still had easily another five to six hours to go. Unfortunately, due to actually knowing me more than five minutes the lads know not to really pay attention to anything I say, so they did not listen.
I walked in, ordered my drink, by this point I was drunk, in a suit and in a lapdancing bar so I ordered a scotch. Here is some CCTV footage of me ordering my drink.
I sat down and started to drink my drink wondering why everyone was taking so long at the bar. Tearing my eyes from the swinging, hypnotic breasts of the 23 year old mother of four flaunting her body for my entertainment I turned to look at the bar to see what was happening.
Nobody was there.
I stood and scanned the dimly lit room trying to stare past the numerous G-string clad women tottering about almost bent to the double under the weight of their shame, until I spotted them, yep, there were my friends, in a booth at the back with four strippers. These girls move fast when they smell fresh blood.
I strolled over to make sure that none of them were buying the girls drinks or whatever and basically just sat there drinking whilst I watched my friends, completely misjudging the workings of the lapdancer/customer relationship, offering all sorts of platitutes and compliments to the dancers.
I finished my drink and ordered another, and as I returned to the table I heard one of the girls, a six foot tall four foot wide monster of a woman who's very appearance made me wonder, despite my pleasant nature, how she got the job of 'someone people will pay to see naked' announced that we should 'cut the shit and tell her if we wanted a dance.'
I informed her that I did not, in fact, want a dance and that I was fine with my scotch. Greg also said he did not want a dance because he had a girlfriend. He later told me he also didn't want a dance because that woman scared him. Upon hearing this I went and bought Greg a dance from the scary stripper. He cursed me as he walked solemnly to the back room to watch the most unerotic naked dancing he is ever likely to see.
Whilst my friends all got dances I went to the smoking area for another cigarette where I was joined by yet another dancer. She sat down and lit a cigarette and we talked for a bit. I told her I wasn't intereted in having a dance etc, and instead she gave me her real name and we talked about music. She plays piano and wants to do more with it. This conversation led to a strange moment as my friends all emerged onto the smoking terrace to talk about the boobs they had just seen to see me telling an upset looking lapdancer that 'she should play paino if she wants to play piano' that 'she could make something of herself rather than live the life of a stripper'
At this point I was drunk and had drunkenly decided that the life of being a lapdancer is exactly the same as the life of being a down and out actress struggling to make it in Hollywood, turning to protitution as a way of making ends meet and drugs as a way to escape the shame.
Anyway, the mood lightened up when she showed me her moustache tattoo on her finger which I immediately took a photo with. She then put her finger up my nose which was strange. It was STD-lightful.
Greg and I left the strip bar after this, Chris and Copland, however, stayed to talk to a dancer and later claimed she had agreed to meet them in Glass Spider after work. This is a lie.
Greg and I were not quite drunk and wanting to get drunker. I stormed into Little Cuba for my traditional four trebles in there and it was here, dear readers, that two star crossed lovers met. Our paths meeting for the first time. It must have been a beautiful moment for all those who saw it. I, a suited gentleman with a drunken swagger happilly dancing his way towards the bar, her, a small ball of vibrant energy running around with a smile on her face, clearly drunk too. We started to dance. Not the slow, sensual dancing that you would associate with such a meeting, but a wild, slightly scary, erratic dance. She got me a drink, I got her a drink, we fell over chairs and couches and ran about outside. It was lovely. She asked me for my number and I typed it into her phone, well I typed what I thought was my number into her phone and she handed me her phone to put hers in mine, before Chris and Copland turned up and we were dragged off to Passion, which I hate but it would be full and it's quite cheap so I went along.
None of us really remember anything from Passion. I remember there were beachballs and I remember there was a lot of alcohol but aside from that not much else. It was here, at around half 3ish (maybe?) I did my usual trick of wandering off on my own. I wandered out of Passion and went to Subway which has strangely become a bit of a tradition for me, which is unfortunate because Subway sandwiches taste awful when they are coming back up and the only time I buy them is when I'm that drunk it is safe to say they'll be coming back up. I went to go back to Passion but my phone began to ring. It was Greg. He started to tell me thet they had left passion and that they were in... BOOM. My phone died.
This sucked because I had no way of getting home, taxi money was spent on beer, I didn't have a house key and the Egg (my old student house) was empty. I was fucked. I needed to find Copland as I was crashing at his mates.
Thus began the great wander. I wandered everywhere until I accepted that I was indeed shafted, and decided to start walking home. I walked about half an hour of the way home before I realised there was no way I'd make it as my feet were killing me and turned back to walk back into town with the hope of somehow not seeming drunk to the Library security guard and spending my night on the computers in there, sending stupid messages to people on facebook I'd only regret in the morning. Unfortunately the library was closed and it was now around half four. I did the only sensible thing I could. I went to the University Metro Station, which is essentially outside, sat down in a corner and went to sleep for an hour.
I woke up at what I would guess was around half five considering after my walk to park lane bus station it was around twenty to six. My bus came at six so I had time to spare, I went to sit on the benches outside the station while I waited and it was here that fate brought me back together with the girl from Cuba. She was there, on the bench, sitting looking as bad as I felt. I went over and said hi and she produced a footlong subway sandwich from her bag. We sat and ate it and talked about our nights, her's was as eventful as mine. She said she had sent me a text message but I never replied. I told her my phone was off. My phone is now on and no message has arrived. I definitely gave her the wrong number.
My bus came and I boarded it and left for home. Without a key I wasn't sure how I would get into the house, but luckily I was a child during the nineties and had, as such, seen Saved By The Bell, I knew that throwing rocks off my little brother's bedroom window would be enough to get me back in the house.
It did.
I went for a cigarette out the back, made some toast and sat having a glass of orange juice just as my parents got up to begin getting ready for work. They had just had a nice ten hour sleep. They looked at me, stood in a stained suit, with eyes like pissholes in the snow, swaying slighty and giggling to myself.
They asked if I had had a good night, I said yes, they asked where I stopped, I tapped my nose. They must never know. They must never know.
And that is it, the tale of last night. I don't know why I've typed it out but it has certainly helped me start to feel a bit more human again.
So thanks for reading and lets have one last salute for this handsome suited bastard who rocked Sunderland in his last night as a student.
