Friday 25 September 2009

Not quite Romeo & Juliet

How much is right to share with someone you don't know all that well? It's a tricky one because I like to think I'm a very open person, willing to share anything with anyone (don't get excited, bank details and pin numbers I prefer to keep to myself). The reason for my query is because after getting rather drunk on my second night in my new home of the Winchester University campus, I have had flashbacks of very personal conversations with people I'd met earlier that day.
The sweethearted girl who politely invited me over to her halls for a few drinks before the obligatory attendance to the clubnight "BOP" I'm sure did not anticipate that our attempts of getting to know one another would get so graphic. Whilst getting ready for my first night on the tiles in Winchester, I had a couple of drinks to steady my nerves, so was warmed up by my arrival at her place at nine. The first problem was getting into her building. Locked out and swaying slightly, I saw no alternative but to shout from below in the hope that she'd hear and rescue me. After a few calls in a, in my view, polite but assertive manner, I was swiftly told to "Fuck off" by a neighbour who looked as if they might be trying to conduct romantic intimacies in the room directly next to the front door. A little flushed from such a direct and unforgiving encounter, I regained enough sense to think to use my mobile telephone device to contact my new friend to notify her of my arrival. Oh isn't technology a marvellous thing?
I would love to be able to say that things improved, but I would then be lying. I was greeted with a scene of carnage in the communal kitchen. Two guys and three girls screaming "CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" at a fourth girl who was pinching her nose and gulping a curdled concoction of what I later discovered was red wine, vodka and a cheap, knock-off of Baileys liqueur. Well, if you can't beat them...!
Many more drinks later and I find myself on a small balcony with my new friend. The topic of music comes up, is discussed and is then replaced by the topic of film. This is safe ground.
The discussion then takes a slightly dark turn as we pass comment on the prescence of a nurse at our enrolment earlier that day. I said that I was intimidated by the fact she was armed with thousands of pee-pots and from that point in the conversation, it all becomes one big blur of personal, distasteful conversation, the only area of which I remember is discussing the fine details of sexual health screenings and the instruments, condiments and sensations it's affiliated with.
I'm no expert, but I think the "keep-some-stuff-to-yourself" etiquette was blown well and truly out of the water.

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