Girl and City

It’s amazing how crazy things can get when you’re with some of your closest friends and you know it’s going to be your last time out together and you just don’t want the night to end. What was supposed to be a night-in with some Thai food and a board game turned into a fancy dinner, clubbing, strip club, and a very late night (or early morning) shisha session.
My night in numbers:

• Number of cigarettes: 5
• Number of lesbian kisses: 2
• Number of lap dances: 1
• Number of unattractive strippers: 6
• Number of attractive strippers: 1
• Number of slices of pizza: 3
• Number of units of alcohol: what do you think?

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Friday night. DG and I are sitting across from each other in a booth at a hot new strip-club-turned-dance-club, the It spot of the moment. I’m swirling a glass of wine and she’s nursing a vodka tonic. Everything is awash in a crimson red. The place is nearly empty, the crowd has yet to arrive. The stripper pole looks both enticing and intimidating next to the empty dance floor.

…

“I got a feeling that tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good night
That tonight’s gonna be a good, good night”
DG and I are now in the middle of the dance floor, shaking and moving to the rhythm. We both have huge grins on our faces, drunk and happy. We sing along to this familiar song, knowing they’ll ring true tonight.

…

She grabs my hand and pulls me up to the platform. We dance around each other, as if we’re the only two people in the club. I’m oblivious to the two guys coming up behind us. Before I know it, she’s pulling me off the platform and pushing through the crowd. I look behind me just before we disappear into the crowd, the guys are looking embarrassed and their friends are laughing.

…

We laugh as we run away, returning to our spot in the middle of the dance floor. After a few minutes, I see a guy trying to dance with her from behind, so I put my hand around her shoulders and spin her to a different position. She sees a guy coming up behind me, and spins me away as well. Both guys leave feeling confused and rejected. We laugh. Tonight was going to be about just us girls.

…

On the way out of the bathroom, we run into a friend of mine, who had just arrived with some other people I partied with in first-year. We start dancing with them, our dancing duo now turning into a trio. The third girl, MG, spots a recently vacated stripper pole and points to it. I shrug my shoulders and we get up there, knowing that the rest of our friends are watching us. But when Lady Gaga comes on, all is forgotten and we just dance.

“I want your love and I want your revenge, you and me could write a bad romance.”

…

The three of us are dancing in the middle of a circle that our friends have formed around us. I feel a hand on my waist and a solid chest against my back, the faint smell of aftershave hovering above me. I throw my arm up in the middle of the song and accidentally hit the side of his head. “Sorry!” I gasp, as I turn around. I look up to see a tall Asian boy, one of MG‘s friends that I’d met once. I remember him to be good-looking, but tonight he is smoldering hot. DG winks at me and moves away with MG. TDH places his hand firmly on the small of my back and I melt into him, our bodies moving in sync to the music.

…

DG and I are waiting in-line at coat check, our faces gleaming with perspiration.
“Tonight was awesome,” DG says emphatically, her eyes shining. “This was the best clubbing night I’ve ever had!”
My expression mirrors hers as I nod. “Yeah, this was amazing. Girls night out at its best. I danced so much!”
“And did you see who you were dancing with? For an Asian guy, he was hot!”
I giggle, “I know, I couldn’t believe it when I turned around and it was him. Especially because we were dancing with all our friends, I didn’t think he would single me out.”
“That’s what makes it even hotter,” DG says with a twinkle in her eye.
As we exit the club, I say to no one in particular, “Tonight was a good, good night.” And I mean it.

Classes have started, although that is not as ominous as it sounds. Last semester, I had to take a couple mandatory courses that were dreadfully boring, but this semester is all electives. So in order to pick ones that I will actually enjoy (it is my last opportunity to get a bang for my buck tuition-wise), I registered myself in eight courses even though I am only allowed five. So after I went to the first class of each, I had to cut three. The result? I have an excellent schedule and some very interesting classes.

One of my classes is called “Global Strategy,” taught by a Taiwanese professor with a very thick Chinese accent. Half the time, I can’t understand what he’s saying, and I’m Chinese! It doesn’t help that listening to him speak makes me want to laugh. I can’t even hold it in, it’s that bad. His accent is so classically Asian, he can’t pronounce ses for the life of him, and he kind of makes up his own sounds when he doesn’t know exactly how something is pronounced. Like “strategy” comes out sounding like “training” – I mean, how do you even do that?
But even without the accent, he is a very amusing professor. In our first class, he was trying to convince us of the necessity of this class by showing us the extent of globalization (foreigners invading our home environment even if we don’t have any intention to go abroad).
“You wake up in the morning, you put on your underwear, made in China. You put on your jeans, made in Bangladesh. You put on your t-shirt, made in Pakistan. You drive to school in your car made in Japan. You buy a coffee, imported from Columbia. And then you get to class and you realize, your professor is imported from Taiwan!” (Imagine this whole monologue with a thick Chinese accent, the kind that Russel Peters imitates.)

Anyway, other than school, I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get things back on track with PLB. I knew a month-long break at the start of a (potential) relationship would be hazardous, and I was completely right.
Actually, it’s more my fault that his. Ever since we came back from the holidays, I have been really awkward around him. It’s not like I want to be, but I just get really nervous around him, because now we are both fairly aware that we like each other¹. He was in my first class when I came back, and I didn’t prepare myself at all for that, so I barely acknowledged him there and left right after class. The second morning (we had the same class again), he did come over to talk to me, but I wasn’t really helping the conversation and avoided his eyes the whole time. The same sort of thing happened over and over again as we ran into each other over the next few days; I would be too nervous to flirt or say something remotely interesting, even if I told myself not to freeze up.
I was hopeless, and my awkwardness was going to ruin this!

Last night, I decided to try to redeem myself. I was going to Zee’s going-away party², and afterward, DG and I were going to The Club (the club that The Business School students go to every Thursday night). He was going to be there, that much I knew. So I drank, a little bit more and a little bit faster than normal, at the going-away party, so I was sufficiently drunk (but not sloppy) by the time we got to The Club. He was one of the first people we ran into, but it was in passing so I didn’t get to talk to him. The rest of the night I spent switching between the dance floor and the table where he was sitting. But every time I went to their table, some guy I knew would spot me and come over to talk to me. Many of them were my classmates from last year, so we’d always be very excited to see each other (one guy even picked me up and twirled me around – he’s really strong). I don’t know how it looked to PLB, that every time I sat down, a new guy would come to the table. Somehow, I wasn’t sure the jealousy card was a viable strategy for me at that point. In between guys, I tried to have a conversation with him, but it was hard with the loud music. I did find it more easy to talk to him, and flirt, now that I had lost my nervousness. But still, he did not make a move.

DG got frustrated and decided that I needed to redeem my self-respect, so she dragged me away from him for nearly an hour. When we went to the washroom, we ran into him at coat-check. He was leaving?!
I waited outside the washroom for DG so that he would have an opportunity to talk to me. He did come over, explaining how he had an interview the next day so he didn’t want to party too hard tonight. Understandable, but I was still disappointed. We hugged a couple times, but he seemed no more interested in me than any other guy I’d seen that night.

DG was more upset that PLB left than I was. “What the hell is wrong with him?” She shouted, a little too loudly. A guy nearby overheard us and said, “Forget him. I would never ditch a girl like you.” I rolled my eyes as a signal for him to move on³. Why was it that, today of all days, when the last thing I felt like was hooking up with a random guy, guys would hit on me so aggressively? Even the cab driver had offered to go out with me to “make that guy jealous.” (Yeah, I was pretty creeped out. I mean, obviously cab drivers eavesdrop, but isn’t it a cardinal rule to pretend not to be able to hear the passengers? Much less getting yourself involved and hitting on a girl at least ten years your junior?)
“Come on, let’s go get you a guy,” DG said as she dragged me to the dance floor.
“But I don’t want a guy,” I whined, although I didn’t think she heard me.

In the end, DG found a guy, and I went home alone. Am I really that pathetic? I guess I am.

1. God, I hope so. Because if I’m just making things up in my head again, I am going to feel like a huge fool. [↩]
2. She’s going to Australia for medical school at the end of the week. [↩]
3. Later, that guy found me on the dance floor and I literally had to push him away and tell him, “I don’t want to dance with you!” before he got the message. [↩]

A few nights ago, I went to see the Wizard of Oz, the musical. It was surprisingly good, particularly the munchkins who were all (very talented) elementary school kids. The scarecrow, the tin man, and the lion were amazing singers and dancers, and surprisingly, the lady who played Dorothy was the least impressive of the troup.
During intermission, two other girls and I ran across the street to a jazz and supper club where we quickly drank a glass of wine and shared a chocolate crepe before running back into the theatre for the second half. A musical, jazz, wine, and chocolate in the same night? How often does that happen?
I have never gone to a musical before, so I can check that off my life list¹! Now that I’ve seen one, I want to see more, many more!

After the show, I rushed over to an Italian restaurant nearby where SRF was celebrating a belated birthday. I was obviously late for dinner, but they poured me some wine and we had a jolly good time. I arrived just in time to explain to the dinner party why the wines they had ordered didn’t taste good (I had become the resident wine connoisseur to my friends ever since I went on those wine tastings last year). My alcohol tolerance is an embarrassment now², but that hasn’t stopped me from drinking.

We went to The Club³ after dinner⁴, except there was also a fashion show launch party there that night, so it was packed. I ran into a lot of people I hadn’t seen since second-year. Every time I ran into someone that night, they offered to buy me a drink, so two hours in, I had already had five drinks, none of which I paid for. It didn’t help that one of my friends from TheBusinessSchool had bought a private booth and bottle service and was handing me vodka tonics whenever my hand was empty. Free drinks are the worst way to stay sober (if that makes any sense).

Then I ran into YAR. Remember YAR? He is now in TheBusinessSchool, a year below me, and we had had lunch together a few weeks ago. I remembered that I still owed him lunch since I let him pay last time, but in order for it not to be a date, I’d insisted that he let me pay if we went out again. So I offered to buy him a drink when I ran into him, thinking this would absolve me of my obligation to take him out to lunch. Since our date two years ago, I had realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea for us to get involved. Besides, we didn’t leave things off very well last time, since he kissed my friend after taking me out to dinner. I was also under the impression that he currently had a girlfriend. Unfortunately, by the time I bought him a drink, I was far too inebriated for my own good.

Ironically, as a result of my buying him a drink in order to get out of buying him lunch, I ended up sleeping with him.
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1. You have no idea how great it feels to actually be making progress with my life list. I encourage everyone to make one! [↩]
2. Case in point, chugging that glass of wine during intermission made me tipsy for the second half of the play. [↩]
3. It is the official club of TheBusinessSchool because we go every week. [↩]
4. I wasn’t dressed for clubbing, and hadn’t planned to go out originally, but in my tipsy state of mind, I was easy to persuade. [↩]

I don’t know what’s gotten into me. It seems like I keep going clubbing these days, even though (I thought) I was over that scene.

More importantly, I get unimaginably bad hangovers now, and each time, I swear I’m never going to drink again – it’s that bad – and then, a week later, I find myself at another pre-drink. What is up?

I think somewhere between October and now, I realized that I have more sex appeal than I used to. I mean, I used to be more desperate and naive¹, and while that might be appealing to some (har har), now, I am an older, more confident version of myself. I’m also ten pounds heavier, but surprisingly, that hasn’t stopped guys from hitting on me.
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1. Sad, but true. It was especially bad in first year because I was so curious to explore this “party world” and I was getting over MFL. [↩]