Chapter 4

Everyone was everyone else's best friend on that first journey; the buses were full of wrecked or nearly wrecked freshers being as juvenile as a bunch of year 7s on a school bus. Most people were also in their hyper modes, the comedians were cracking jokes quicker than most of us could breathe, the girls all seemed like they'd been friends for ten years not ten minutes and of course, everyone was flirting.

          Hannah was now seemingly soul mates with a group of girls who I was looking forward to being introduced to, the leggy blonde one in particular. I met a wannabe comedian called Jez from Liverpool, and an American exchange student; Hunter. He was surprised by some of the menu choices he’d seen at a takeaway last night.

          “So let me get this straight,” he said, “you put the cheese on the chips and in the bread?” The concept of a cheese’n’chip butty was alien to him.

           “Just the northerners really.” I said. Jez agreed:

          “Seriously mate, it’s the bollocks.”

          “The Ball-Ucks?” Hunter asked in his heavy Texan accent.

          “Yeah!”

Hunter looked at Jez like he’d lost it.

          “What the hell are you talking about?”

          “The dog’s Bollocks,” I explained.

It didn’t help. Hunter stared blankly at me, wondering if we were having him on. I tried to clarify:

          “It means, something’s well good.”

“So…the dog’s bollocks are really good?”

We nodded.

“Why?” Hunter asked. It was mine and Jez’s turn to stare at each other confused. Why indeed?

          “Ummm…” Hunter saved us from our silence. “Ok, so if something’s bollocks it’s good, I’ll remember that. Thanks guys.”

          Jez winced.

          “Not exactly…” I said. “…See if something is ‘the bollocks’ that’s good, but something is just ‘bollocks’ that’s bad.”

          Hunter hardly spoke to us for the rest of the journey.

          When we got to the Student Union I was truly shocked. I’d never seen so many people my age in the same place at the same time. Pubs and clubs back home were always full of people older and, thanks to fake IDs, substantially younger, but this was off the scale. We took our places at the back of the queue as Jez continued to entertain us. 

In the middle of a joke he was telling about a parachute and school bag, Hannah grabbed my arm. As I was pulled away towards the group of girls she’d befriended, someone behind me mumbled “Lucky fucker”. I was inclined to agree.

Fifteen minutes later the queue wasn’t getting any shorter, only wider, as throngs of people joined in with people they knew or pretended they knew. I’d never queued at 9.15 to get in somewhere before.

A rep I recognised from the bus was heading up the steps outside theUnion to have a word with one of the meatheads on security. He said something and pointed over at the thousand-odd of us standing there. Without even looking over, the bouncer shook his head. The rep, whose name was ‘Snoopy’ according to the back of his t-shirt, continued to plead but was ignored. It looked like we weren’t going to get in.

          A private bus arrived, that had the words ‘Clifton-City’ as its destination and another hundred freshers jumped off. They were in full song, shouting something incoherent but they soon quietened down when they saw the size of the queue.

          Last off the double decker bus was a rep who looked slightly older than the others. He stepped off swinging his black leather camera bag behind him. He looked over at the crowd and headed up the steps where Snoopy came down to meet him. I figured the new rep on the scene was superior in some way. From Snoopy’s hand gestures I figured he was stressing an issue with him, or confessing an undying love. Either way Snoopy looked wasted and desperate. The other rep glanced back over his crowd, before sliding himself past security after casually flashing a pass tied to a cord round his neck.

“We wanna get over there.” I motioned to the group that had just got off the bus.       

“Why?” Hannah asked. I liked her voice more and more every time I heard it.

“Because our reps are useless; they couldn’t get a toilet to flush. Trust me, that guy is gonna get them lot in.”

          “How do you know?”

          “Just do.” I felt I’d just set myself up for a fall but Hannah had faith.

“Come on then,” she said to me, gathering the other girls. She snuck her arm under mine. We walked up to a group of boys in the party I felt would get in. They stopped chatting as we walked up to them.

          For a moment I thought they would be hostile but I was forgetting my company. Not for the first time in history, the females of the species had enraptured their male counterparts.         

“You lot are from Clifton aren’t you?” I said remembering the bus destination. “Think I recognise you from the bar.” I nodded at some guy who I’d never seen before in my life.

“We’re from Clifton too, but dummy here forgot her student card, so we had to get a cab down.” I nudged Hannah with the elbow she’d taken hold of. She reacted, yelling “Oi”. Not very lady-like but it got the job done. The boys were chuckling and I finished with “Women!”

Hannah swung her little brown bag into me. I laughed it off, but the clasp at the top caught my bottom rib and hurt. She’d swung it quite hard and I don’t know whether she was offended or playing along. Either way I knew there was a girl here I liked, and it was taking my mind off my ex. That bint.

I used to call her that. She would get mad, but then I found out that bint meant girl in Arabic, so I actually started to get away with saying it. Though, I must admit, never to her face. She was on my mind more than I cared to mention.

“We’re in S Block, what block you guys in?” They all couldn’t wait to reply to my question, and that was it; for the time being we were honoraryClifton students. The girls relaxed and started chatting with the lads, and a few moments later we saw the important looking rep step back out with a middle-aged man in a white shirt. They stopped at the top of the steps. The man folded his arms as he looked over the mass of people that stretched about 200 metres down the road, at least four people thick the whole way down. The rep pointed at our new group and the guy in the white shirt took out his walkie talkie. One of the bouncers in front of us pressed his ear piece against his head. He turned to look up at the man, who nodded, before shaking hands with the rep he’d been speaking to and disappearing back into the building. The skin-headed bouncer unclipped the red rope that had blocked the entrance as the rep came down the steps. He eyed the crowd suspiciously as the first half filtered through, looking for faces he didn’t recognise from Clifton. Faces like mine.

Hannah and two of the other girls moved past him without any problem but then his eyes caught mine and something set off a little alarm in his head. He watched me for a moment; I knew if I looked away or down I would be busted in an instant.

I smiled as he tried to place me but as I got to the door he put his hand across my chest.

“You’re not a fresher.”

Chapter 4

“Yes I am,” I instantly replied, glad he’d accused me of the wrong thing. At the time I felt like saying ‘oh yes I am’ but didn’t think it was the right time to break into panto.

“What campus?”

“Clifton,” I said with all the confidence I could muster knowing that everyone’s eyes in the queue were trained on me.

“Which halls?”

It had all gone wrong. He knew I didn’t know.

          “G Block” I said, playing dumb.

“That’s your block. Which halls?”

          “He’s in Turney with us.” One of the lads we’d jumped in with came to my rescue. His shirt was a vile mustard colour and he was wearing a cowboy hat, but I was ready to proclaim him my new best friend.

          The rep was annoyed at the interruption, but you could tell he was a nice guy just doing his job.  I continued to play dumb.

          “Turney? Cool. Thanks man.” I said to the guy behind me. I looked at the rep, who now looked like he couldn’t be arsed with the hassle. I tried my luck.

          “Mate, all I know is it’s a brown building…” all educational establishments have some shade of brown in them, “…I’m on the third floor…” that part was true, “…and this is the key to room 5.” I held up the key.

With a sigh and a brief glance, taking no notice of the object I was holding, he motioned me forward. 

         

I made a note to say a prayer to something or someone, and resolved to get the weird guy in the hat a drink. I headed in to look for Hannah and the other girls, but they were nowhere to be found.

I got talking to a group who lived at my halls while queuing at the bar. Ten minutes later I realised I was in no danger of getting served as the union was heaving. I headed back out into the sea of happy faces and said “Hi” to random people, everyone was friendly. One guy in particular stood out of the crowd, mainly because of his massive afro. He saw me and nodded, I nodded back and he slinked off. Something told me I’d be seeing him again.

I looked around for Hannah (while mentally remixing the Chesney Hawkes song that was playing to ‘this iiis the one and onlyyyyy… hit, I’ll ev-er have!’) but no luck, I couldn’t find her. I didn't feel lonely because I was sure everyone else was in the same boat but she was my flatmate and I was looking forward to getting to know her.

A couple of hours passed as I made a fool of myself on the dance floor and I swapped numbers with several people, all of whom I’d never seen before and then I spotted a couple of faces that I had. The first was one of the fresher reps. He felt he had an obligation to make small talk with me, but kept staring at everything in a skirt as he did so, even the cross-dressing boys. The second face was Jez’s and he was looking less than impressed so I headed over.

It took him a second to register who I was but when he did, he looked really pleased to have seen me and was about to confide something in me.

“Ay la,” He began in his thick scouse accent, “that lad's been staring at me all night, giving me evils like.” He nodded over to his left. I looked over to see the cause of his distress; it could have been one of about twenty people, none of whom were looking over at us. Jez was wrecked and from the stain on his trousers, it looked like he’d wet himself.

He stared right through me, downed his bottle and wiped his mouth. As he faced back over to the group, he menacingly flipped the bottle round so he was holding it by its neck and said “come on.”

As Jez took his first step, one of the group he was heading to turned around to face him and tried to stare him down. Jez was making his way through the crowd, and the guy he was heading towards was ready and waiting. As I watched I figured I should just pull Jez back and try to talk some sense into him, but a strange vision took my attention.

Behind Jez's enemy a mound of hair belonging to the afro owner from before staggered into view.  He leant up against the wall with a look of mischief and turned his back to me as something on the wall caught his eye. He slid over to whatever it was, and briefly turned back to look up at the ceiling. A crazy grin descended upon him and as he turned to look at the crowd he caught me staring and nodded again.

I suddenly remembered I had to stop Jez and tried to bundle my way through the revellers to get to him. He was only a few feet from the guy he wanted to bottle and to make matters worse the guy was now taking steps towards him. The guy was huge, his neck had disappeared into some giant muscle indistinguishable from his shoulders. Some of his friends had also turned to face Jez. Before I’d seen them my main concern had been stopping Jez from getting hurt, now I was praying that he wouldn’t get killed.

          As if in slow motion, I watched until they were no more than a step apart and was expecting to see Jez raise the bottle at any second, and then… total darkness.

          I couldn't see a thing. After a few seconds the music died, there were a few stunned moments of silence, which was awkwardly broken by some poor girl’s cry of “Get your hands off my tits” and then a free-for-all of grabby hands ensued.

Drunken boys all over the club were suddenly acutely aware of the fact that groping season had officially started. More shouts of “Get off'” and a few shrieks of disgust from girls followed by some loud slaps and cries of agony from some of the boys as the girls got their own back lashing out at the perverts' faces with hands or at their groins with three inch heels. 

I stood frozen and was jostled about as the screaming, groping and slapping became more frequent. Finally the lights came on greeted by a roaring shout of approval from most of us (the poor guys clutching their balls on the floor were making a different kind of shout). The music started back up.

One of the first things I saw was afro man, getting dragged off by security, shouting

“IT WAS MEEEEE!”

          I looked round but saw no sign of Jez or the guy he was after. The atmosphere was suddenly sedate.

          There was another half hour to go until the venue officially shut, but people were heading for the exits. I hung around trying to find Hannah but she remained elusive. One of the last to leave, I came out to find a girl passed out on the steps. Everyone was walking around her and taking the piss, she was shivering. I asked her if she was ok, but she was dead to the world. I asked a couple of passers by if they knew her and they shuffled off, ignoring me.

Two other guys ran past, the shorter one had his trousers round his ankles, they were laughing at something and then the half dressed one turned to face me.

“Ever met a prick?” I didn’t answer. He pulled down his boxers and shook his tiny cock at me.

“You have now!” His mate doubled up in hysterics and leaned on his friend. The smaller boy brushed the hand off laughing and turned to run up the street, followed by his goon-like sidekick. A few steps up the road he tried a heel kick and ended up falling on to his exposed regions. He sat upright and let out a slow whimper looking down at his pride and joy.

“Argh, I’ve got a stone in my cock.”

“Let me see…” his friend fretted. The taller lad took a knee and stared.

“…Fuck me, Del… that’s gotta hurt.” There was a brief pause. “I’ll get it out for ya!” He reached down, but his hand was slapped away.

“Ugh! You fuckin’ queer!”

“I was trying to help. I…”

There was no use, his friend had decided the issue.

“You’re fuckin' gay!… haha… you wanna touch my cock… ughrrr.” He started to run away laughing to himself taunting his mate, who seemed to be enjoying it. They ran up the street out of earshot, where the taller one managed to grab hold of his friend and wrestled him to the ground. They became a black mound rolling around on the floor. 

I turned my attention back to the girl who lay in front of me and crouched down beside her. She was lying there half frozen and in a bad way, I couldn't just leave her there. What if something happened to her, or what if something had already happened to her and she needed help as soon as possible? As thoughts raced through my mind a text message went off; it was from the girl's phone. I prised it from her hand and for some reason, hoping it would be a friend texting to remind her of her address. I read the message; it was from 'Shit face'.