A Night Out

OK. Hands up. You got me. I’ll admit it. I hate going out. Really. Hate it. Makes-me-want-to-die hate it. Depending on the occasion I usually enjoy myself when I’m there, but the act of getting ready and getting there is a ball ache of biblical proportions.

If it’s a dinner party(1) with friends then I bitch about it all the way there, have a ruddy good time and then promise the missus I’ll not bitch so much next time because actually it was lovely to see our friends again(3).

If it’s a night out at the cinema or theatre then I’m a little better due to the simple fact I get to sit in the dark and not speak to people – come to think of it, this could be the closest thing to a perfect social event for me.

But if the gods of rampant cuntdom gurn down on me, then there is a good chance I’ve been backed into a corner and had no choice to agree to a night out in town with work mates. I can’t tell you the yawning horror this arrangement opens up in my gut. The rushing about to get ready, the bus and taxi journeys to and from town, the forced fun with people I only ever pass in the corridor with a polite, fixed smile. And then there is the rest of the world… the waddling, vomiting, fighting dickfaced tossers that come out with the sole intention of getting pissed and/or laid with the odd bout of casual violence for mild relief.

I have one of these nights coming up. I’m going to have to take a bus crammed full of barely literate breeders chewing away on their mother tongue like a herd of cows chewing the cud. Cud made of witless prattle and navvy-strength language all at top volume and if not into the ears of their dullard friends (and the rest of the bus) then they are bellowing into the squawking stone they have welded to their face (and the rest of the bus).

Following the shitty bus trip comes the awkward part of the evening – the meet up. This is the part of the evening I hate more than splitting my scalp open on a cupboard door. The problem is I like to be early. This means I have the longest time to spend with the other guests as they turn up before everyone has arrived and the ‘fun’ begins. This means I have the pleasure of making small talk with people who would happily spit on my corpse if I collapsed in the lift. And because I don’t have the brass balls to ruin the evening by telling them to lick said balls, I have to suffer the naked sniding they offer back. Take one bloke – let’s call him Richard, after all that’s his name – who point blank refuses to engage with me on any other level than school yard whispering and pointing. The man is a total turd. Yet because it would ruin the evening for my friend who thinks he is lovely-but-unhappy I have to put up with him rather than: (a) following him to the toilets and ramming his stupid grinning mush into the urinal; (b) grabbing the back of his head and slamming his horizontal bum crack smirk into his food; or (c) taking him to one side and slowly explaining that I don’t like him and if he so much as looks in my direction again, let alone fucking speaks to me, I would be very, very unhappy with him(4).

The meal is a small reprise in this war of mutual hatred. Food means you get to sit with you’d rather talk to. But now starts the next horror of the evening for me. My stomach. My shitty, stupid, stomach that is unable to handle the most basic of foods without wanting the vomit it all back. Through my arse. The doc says it is IBS, whish is a bullshit term. What it comes down to is a combinations of stress, age, level of (un)fitness and genetics(5). What it means is that for me, eating out is a game of Russian roulette in my pants. So by this point of the evening I’m usually corked up the poop shoot with extra-strength shit-stoppers. They don’t always work so I can never entirely relax, and on top of that they bloat me to buggery. Joy.

But to be honest, the feeling of unwell that I get in the meal is but a minor sneeze compared to the full on flu that is the pub crawl. Oh god. Why? What possible pleasure is there to be gained from endlessly walking through piss and blood soaked streets, avoiding being stabbed or puked on only to visit one wall-to-wall cretin den after another. Expensive piss poor beer. Crowds of howler monkeys boozed up to the nines sweating the ever-present threat of random, mindless violence. The pushing competition to get to bars five deep in Paul Smith wearing thugs. The dismal humiliation of trying to catch the eye of the sullen bar staff who are taking this chance to wield the small atom of power that standing on the opposite side of the bar to you has bestowed upon them. The sitting (if lucky enough to get a table – otherwise it become a Survivor-esque endurance event in standing whilst being buffeted by a relentless sea of shitehawks) with colleagues as the conversation flows like dried vomit crawling uphill. The occasional glances at your phone to see that it still way off closing time and therefore hours before you can escape (6). That is as long as the drunkest members of the group don’t decide that what this evening needs is even more booze, some loud music and five hours of sweaty dancing in a local fire hazard.

Oh yes, now comes the truly awful trip to the nightclub. Queuing up with precisely the kind of underdressed, mooing morons I dream of machine gunning to quivering lumps of shattered gristle every day. And for what? So some shaved ape with all the personality of a case of domestic abuse can decide if my footwear presents a threat to the security of the pissed up fighting and fucking machines he’s already let pass so they can part with a tenner for the privilege of gyrating around like imbeciles in a Romanian orphanage.

It is at this point I always bow out. From here I have to negotiate the groups of stalking bare knuckle bastards to get to a taxi firm where I’m forced to wait in a room that would shame the Stazi by some reject sideshow freak in box until some rapist-in-waiting turns up in a Trabant to whisk me off home as spew-inducing speeds and with scant regard for the laws of the Queen’s highways. And charge me a frigging fortune for the honour. Christ I hate taxis.

About now I suddenly realise that I must have eaten one of my trigger foods. My stomach does a panicky dance and my guts turn to liquid fire. If the idiot man driving this death trap doesn’t get me home soon, £25 won’t cover what I’m about to unleash on to his back seat.

Yup. I really hate nights out.

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(1) Not like offathe telly, I’m just not middle class enough yet. I may accidentally get there one day, but my ability to always say the wrong thing at the wrong time(2) has so far ensured I’m merely a lower middle class oik. Obviously I’m not working class. Fucking scum.

(2) On being told by a friend’s friend that they had just narrowly escaped a plane crash: “No, but you must have laughed. All those yanks praying and crying. You must have been all British Reserve and using a cup of tea to put your clothes out.” To some shocked parents on accidentally choking their tiny toddler with a juice drink: “Don’t worry – you can have another.” I have never been invited back to either. I really am a daft twat.

(3) Even though the cooking is usually piss poor. I don’t get that. Why? We always manage to cook nice food – it’s not hard. How come all my friends cook like the rejects from 15?

(4) A surprisingly effective approach I find – so far it has worked every time.

(5) There is a run of poor tums in my family. Ho Ho Ho.

(6) It’s at this point I always remember Douglas Adams writing about an ambassador who chewed his own leg off to escape and I wonder if I could do the same, only with the throat of that smug little twat that’s been annoying me all night.