21.00: I arrive at my friend’s room, trying to nudge various worries (highlights include: why haven’t I eaten a proper portion of vegetables for four days and why haven’t I actually applied for any of those ghastly corporate internship things?) out of my head. I wear an oversized, muted grey plaid shirt: enough to conform but not acting above my station. After all, I know this night out is not really ‘my scene’ (as per several of my friends).  

Once the pres' staple ‘argh-I-really-should-be-working-shame-on-me’ confessions have been exchanged, a fun time is had by all. I discover that everyone around me has that low-level hue of midweek dread and jumpiness about them, and I smile. I see a girl I know of wearing a flowery headband. Until I meet her, she becomes known to me internally as flowery headband girl.

23.30: It’s been two and a half hours since I arrived, and I’m suddenly low-level/very drunk. Good, I think. Some of the more outlandish moves I had scheduled in were only acceptable with alcoholic lubrication.

"At what point does one person’s miscellaneous industrial noise become another’s ‘deep acid house’?"

00.30: We’re here. I’m trying out said moves. They’re going down a treat in my head. Fellow Turf jivers around me range from the positively gyrating to the barely-move-from-their-spot-ers, but their dance moves are somehow just as feverish and thrilling on the eye. 

c.00.53: Thinking. Thinking interspersed with lights and music. Did the gentleman chewing gum on the dance floor genuinely think I was the best person he’d ever met? I can’t say we’d had particularly great conversation, but perhaps when you know, you just know…

c.00.54: Why was no one else actually talking?!

GodknowsAM: Someone suggests we go get ‘some air’ and I jump at the chance, as I’m worried I’ve kind of forgotten how to interact with humans. I and a few others head to the alley referred to as the smoking area, and for the next hour or so I grow accustomed to the ‘air’, i.e. continuous fog of freshly lit cigarettes. I spot an ex (read, the only person I could ever refer to as ‘ex’ and even then it was just a two-week fling but that’s years in Cambridge terms, amirite ladies). I decide to get a photo of us both (not really sure what I’m achieving here) and we talk; I overshare, which could only partially be blamed on the Co-op wine from three hours earlier. 

01.00?? 02.00??: I’m that kind of half-woozy, half-vacant drunk where most of the sensation comes from alcohol and the rest is sweat and glitter and the trance-like state of wafting around a dimly lit, foggy room. I get a usually inoffensive vodka and diet coke, opting for a single rather than a double (the reminder of a barely-read-for essay lingers stubbornly in my mind). It has a mild fizz but ultimately tastes like stale water. Am I at the royal stage of pissed that all alcohol just tastes like water now? Gosh, how exciting. I recite my mobile number to be sure: I barely slur the numbers. Dammit, maybe pres were not thorough enough, after all.  

01.30: I dance vacuously for a good 42 minutes, which is a bloody long time when you think about it, considering none of the music has words. Throughout, I can’t tell whether I’m having the time of my life or if I’m just mimicking everyone, and that maybe happiness is essentially performative… STOP Joe, just be normal… 

01.47: At what point does one person’s miscellaneous industrial noise become another’s ‘deep acid house’? That said, everyone else seems to be living for it, so I decide to come back to that one when I’m alone in my room, preferably accompanied by some trusty musical theatre. 

02.30: The club gradually empties. No doubt the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed who traipse home in their twos, threes and fours will be faced with essays or labs of their own in a matter of hours. 

FUCK — essay. I make a mental note to cram some reading when I get back to college. Because isn’t drunk essaying a rite of passage for the academic hedonist? As I snore softly through both my alarms later that morning, having abandoned the glamorous concept of the ‘drunk essay’, that question goes unanswered.

02.32:  The logistics of travel suddenly become my top priority. After a few rounds of unreciprocated stares at potential suitors, chances of getting with someone from a central college to avoid the morning cycle are getting less and less. SELFISH.

02.35: After a while of essentially pretending to be on drugs, even I can’t kid myself any longer, and I break off. I evaluate the night out in my head as I fumble for a phone to hail a cab. 

Next stop: ARCSOC