Thursday, September 16, 2004
When I first came over here I had no intention of meeting a guy. Well at least not to have it turn into anything. I just wanted to come over here and have fun. Meet some hot Aussie boys and get the most out of my time here. But isn’t that always the mindset you’re in when lightning strikes? Don’t they always say that you’ll find love when you least expect it?
Well after my first week or two here, my friends and I kept saying that we were going to try to calm things down a bit and take it easy a bit…yea right. So the third week we were here SGA decided to rent out this club in downtown London called Pancha and sell tickets to all the Richmond students. Originally we all said that we weren’t going to bother going. Instead we got some alcohol to drink in the room. Then Shira and Meghan surprised Maureen and I and said that they had changed their minds and bought tickets to the club and that we should also. Well by the time they told us this, the ticket booth had already closed and we would have had to pay the 15 pound price at the door. We were just like, “nah we don’t really feel like paying that much.” But as we watched them getting ready and getting excited to go, we changed our minds and rushed to the shower and told them that we would meet them there.
I got out of the shower and decided to start pre-gaming in the room. So I mixed myself a water bottle of vodka and pineapple juice. Now I think that now is a good time to mention that I am a “two beer queer.” I have extremely low tolerance. And not only that, but there are two types of alcohol that over time I have learned are the worst types of alcohol for me to drink because I lose control with them quite easily. Not only do I lose control, but I black out parts of the evening and have no recollection of what happened when I get drunk off of these two alcohols. These two types of alcohol are wine and vodka. Yea, now maybe you could see where this story is going…lol.
So I mix myself my drink of vodka and pineapple and proceed to start doing my hair and makeup. Suddenly, my cell phone rings and its Meghan telling me that they didn’t get into Pancha because Shira didn’t have her id with her and they wouldn’t let her in. The two of them are completely pissed because that’s just ridiculous and now Maureen and I should meet them at the High Street Kensington tube station. So I mix myself a 2nd water bottle full of potent vodka and pineapple and go down to collect Maureen and walk up to High Street. Then Meghan calls me back and tells me that they changed their minds again and now to meet them at Gloucester Road tube station because they wanted to try to go to Opal (an exclusive club down in Kensington where rich, hot, sophisticated London men like to go). So Maureen and I start to walk back over to Gloucester Road. So we end up sitting on the front steps of some random flat over by Opal. Maureen decides she doesn’t like her drink and I had already finished my 2nd so I decide to take it and finish it for her.
At this point these two really hot guys walk over and start to talk to us. It turns out that one of them is an American and he’s from my hometown and lives around the block from my grandma and happened to be living here working as the manager of Goldman Sach’s Bank. After we had been talking to them awhile Meghan rings me back again and tells me that they had missed the last tube and now they were just going to take the bus back and go home and chalk it up to a disastrous night. I had finished Maureen’s drink at this point and was feeling a pretty nice buzz and now REALLY had to go to the bathroom. So I mentioned that I had to and the hot American was like “well my flat is right over there across the street if you want to come in and use mine.” So I looked over at Maureen and she shrugged her shoulders. So I was like, “well I do really have to go.” So we went with them.
Well this guy’s flat was UNBELIEVABLE. The bathroom was completely marble, with a built in Jacuzzi tub. The entire flat had these amazing marble floors complete with this fish tank that took up the entire wall. It was incredible. I came back out of the bathroom and Maureen is on the leather couch flirting with the one guy while my hot American was sitting and waiting for me by the built in bar. I started flirting with him and asking what Pimms tasted like. I knew that it was an English drink but had never tasted it. So he made me a drink with it. Well that is the last thing I remember in great detail about the evening.
I kind of remember kissing him and getting his phone number. Apparently Maureen said I was talking with him for a long time and we had smoked like three cigarettes. Don’t really remember that. I kind of remember leaving their flat with Maureen to walk home. This was the third week of school and I had always been the navigator whenever we went out because Maureen has NO sense of direction whatsoever. So in my inebriated state, this was not a good combo for getting home. We got WAY lost. Apparently according to Maureen some guy in a Ferrari pulled over and was hitting on us telling us that he’d take us home when all of a sudden I saw him walking. Chad was walking back from Mansion House (where the interns in our program lived) and I remember seeing him coming around the bend and pointing at him and shouting “He goes to our school!!”
Thankfully Chad took pity on us and started to walk with us guiding us back to Atlantic House (our dorm). According to Chad and Maureen I was walking along the curb and managed to walk into the tree that kind of blocks the path there and land on my ass in the middle of the street. I also had been carrying this little clutch purse that I apparently kept dropping like twenty times before Chad finally picked it up and carried it home for me.
I must have looked like a real idiot that night, and I don’t even want to know how I must have sounded. Yet somehow, Chad must have found me attractive. We ended up sitting in his hallway talking until 6 in the morning that night. Towards the end of the night I ended up sobering up and I remember the later part of the conversation. He took my number and gave me his and asked to see me the next night.
I remember waking up the next day and being incredibly embarrassed and nervous about seeing him that day. I saw him in the cafeteria that night at dinner and he walked right by my table without acknowledging me. I got extremely nervous thinking that he was trying to blow me off and he had just been being nice the night before. Then I got back up to my room and there was a text message waiting for me from him asking to see me. So I invited him up to my room and we sat there talking for 3 hours. It was a little awkward considering I didn’t remember half of things that we had spoken about the night before and it was almost spooky since he was telling me all these things he knew about me and I had no recollection of telling him.
That was it though. Although we had a very unorthodox beginning we’ve been together ever since. And I’ve never been happier. It will be very interesting to see what happens once we leave here being that he’s from Minnesota and I’m from New York and the long distance is going to suck. Yet for some reason I really have faith in this and think that it could definitely work. All I know is that meeting Chad is one of the best things that happened to me over here. It’s been my greatest gift here in London, it definitely was a large part of my experience over here and I will treasure it forever.
Well after my first week or two here, my friends and I kept saying that we were going to try to calm things down a bit and take it easy a bit…yea right. So the third week we were here SGA decided to rent out this club in downtown London called Pancha and sell tickets to all the Richmond students. Originally we all said that we weren’t going to bother going. Instead we got some alcohol to drink in the room. Then Shira and Meghan surprised Maureen and I and said that they had changed their minds and bought tickets to the club and that we should also. Well by the time they told us this, the ticket booth had already closed and we would have had to pay the 15 pound price at the door. We were just like, “nah we don’t really feel like paying that much.” But as we watched them getting ready and getting excited to go, we changed our minds and rushed to the shower and told them that we would meet them there.
I got out of the shower and decided to start pre-gaming in the room. So I mixed myself a water bottle of vodka and pineapple juice. Now I think that now is a good time to mention that I am a “two beer queer.” I have extremely low tolerance. And not only that, but there are two types of alcohol that over time I have learned are the worst types of alcohol for me to drink because I lose control with them quite easily. Not only do I lose control, but I black out parts of the evening and have no recollection of what happened when I get drunk off of these two alcohols. These two types of alcohol are wine and vodka. Yea, now maybe you could see where this story is going…lol.
So I mix myself my drink of vodka and pineapple and proceed to start doing my hair and makeup. Suddenly, my cell phone rings and its Meghan telling me that they didn’t get into Pancha because Shira didn’t have her id with her and they wouldn’t let her in. The two of them are completely pissed because that’s just ridiculous and now Maureen and I should meet them at the High Street Kensington tube station. So I mix myself a 2nd water bottle full of potent vodka and pineapple and go down to collect Maureen and walk up to High Street. Then Meghan calls me back and tells me that they changed their minds again and now to meet them at Gloucester Road tube station because they wanted to try to go to Opal (an exclusive club down in Kensington where rich, hot, sophisticated London men like to go). So Maureen and I start to walk back over to Gloucester Road. So we end up sitting on the front steps of some random flat over by Opal. Maureen decides she doesn’t like her drink and I had already finished my 2nd so I decide to take it and finish it for her.
At this point these two really hot guys walk over and start to talk to us. It turns out that one of them is an American and he’s from my hometown and lives around the block from my grandma and happened to be living here working as the manager of Goldman Sach’s Bank. After we had been talking to them awhile Meghan rings me back again and tells me that they had missed the last tube and now they were just going to take the bus back and go home and chalk it up to a disastrous night. I had finished Maureen’s drink at this point and was feeling a pretty nice buzz and now REALLY had to go to the bathroom. So I mentioned that I had to and the hot American was like “well my flat is right over there across the street if you want to come in and use mine.” So I looked over at Maureen and she shrugged her shoulders. So I was like, “well I do really have to go.” So we went with them.
Well this guy’s flat was UNBELIEVABLE. The bathroom was completely marble, with a built in Jacuzzi tub. The entire flat had these amazing marble floors complete with this fish tank that took up the entire wall. It was incredible. I came back out of the bathroom and Maureen is on the leather couch flirting with the one guy while my hot American was sitting and waiting for me by the built in bar. I started flirting with him and asking what Pimms tasted like. I knew that it was an English drink but had never tasted it. So he made me a drink with it. Well that is the last thing I remember in great detail about the evening.
I kind of remember kissing him and getting his phone number. Apparently Maureen said I was talking with him for a long time and we had smoked like three cigarettes. Don’t really remember that. I kind of remember leaving their flat with Maureen to walk home. This was the third week of school and I had always been the navigator whenever we went out because Maureen has NO sense of direction whatsoever. So in my inebriated state, this was not a good combo for getting home. We got WAY lost. Apparently according to Maureen some guy in a Ferrari pulled over and was hitting on us telling us that he’d take us home when all of a sudden I saw him walking. Chad was walking back from Mansion House (where the interns in our program lived) and I remember seeing him coming around the bend and pointing at him and shouting “He goes to our school!!”
Thankfully Chad took pity on us and started to walk with us guiding us back to Atlantic House (our dorm). According to Chad and Maureen I was walking along the curb and managed to walk into the tree that kind of blocks the path there and land on my ass in the middle of the street. I also had been carrying this little clutch purse that I apparently kept dropping like twenty times before Chad finally picked it up and carried it home for me.
I must have looked like a real idiot that night, and I don’t even want to know how I must have sounded. Yet somehow, Chad must have found me attractive. We ended up sitting in his hallway talking until 6 in the morning that night. Towards the end of the night I ended up sobering up and I remember the later part of the conversation. He took my number and gave me his and asked to see me the next night.
I remember waking up the next day and being incredibly embarrassed and nervous about seeing him that day. I saw him in the cafeteria that night at dinner and he walked right by my table without acknowledging me. I got extremely nervous thinking that he was trying to blow me off and he had just been being nice the night before. Then I got back up to my room and there was a text message waiting for me from him asking to see me. So I invited him up to my room and we sat there talking for 3 hours. It was a little awkward considering I didn’t remember half of things that we had spoken about the night before and it was almost spooky since he was telling me all these things he knew about me and I had no recollection of telling him.
That was it though. Although we had a very unorthodox beginning we’ve been together ever since. And I’ve never been happier. It will be very interesting to see what happens once we leave here being that he’s from Minnesota and I’m from New York and the long distance is going to suck. Yet for some reason I really have faith in this and think that it could definitely work. All I know is that meeting Chad is one of the best things that happened to me over here. It’s been my greatest gift here in London, it definitely was a large part of my experience over here and I will treasure it forever.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
My second night in London was probably the craziest night of my time there. A group of my new friends and I decided to go out to this Australian club and meet some hot Australian boys. So we all dressed up in our best clubbing clothes and hopped on the Tube to Piccadilly Circus. We got to Walkabouts and found out that Wednesday night just happened to be college night and we got in for free. Even better all the drinks were only 1 pound fifty. It was awesome. So we started loading up on Snakebites and having ourselves a blast on the dance floor.
I was on the dance floor for awhile feeling nicely buzzed, when all of sudden this drunk hot guy came up behind me and started to flirt with me. He told me that his name was Simon and he thought I was beautiful and he wanted to buy me a drink. I told him that I wanted to finish dancing to this song first with my friend but I’d meet him right up at the bar.
So I wandered up to the bar and walked up to this guy and said, “Hey where’s my drink?” And he looked me up and down and was like, “Buy it yourself it’s only a pound fifty.” I was like, “What the hell? You just said that you would buy me a drink.” And he’s like, “No I didn’t, when the hell did I say that?” And I was like, “Just before on the dance floor.” He started to laugh and was like, “My dear, I think you might have mistaken me for someone else.” I looked him over and said, “Aren’t you Simon?” And he shook his head and said “No I’m Jesse, but I’m pleased to meet you. And I like your style, very forthright. So just for that maybe I will buy your drink to ease your humiliation.”
Jesse and I ended up talking at the bar for awhile and then we wandered over to the dance floor and started dancing together. We ended up dancing together the whole rest of the night. And whenever he’d leave me for the bathroom or anything, he’d come back up behind me and put his arms around me. I was in heaven. He was gorgeous, extremely tall with blond spiky hair and brown eyes. Slim, but still broad shouldered with very laidback style, he wore jeans with a hole in the ass so you could see his boxers and a scruffy t-shirt, he had that “I’m hot even though I don’t try” type appeal. He also had this amazing, fresh attitude. He was totally not my type at all, every other word out of his mouth was fuck, but he said it in this way that it wasn’t offensive. His accent just made it too cute.
All the rest of my friends ended up meeting guys that night also. In fact, my friend Maureen ended up hooking up with Jesse’s friend Luke. By the time the club closed all of us were drunk, and completely engrossed with the guys we had met. Don’t ask me how, but we somehow decided that it’d be a good idea to take a cab back with these guys and go back to this random guy’s flat. My friends Ellie and Meghan had met these three guys that were friends and we went back to their place and Luke and Jesse decided to join us because they didn’t want to leave Maureen and me.
We got to the flat, which ended up being all the way in Bethnal Green (the end of the tube line on the outskirts of the city), and drank more and hung out on the roof of this building. We played music and danced some more and basically made random small talk in between kissing sessions until the tubes opened back up at 7 in the morning. Finally at 7 am Jesse and Luke left with the four of us to find the nearest tube station to go home. My feet were killing me from my high heeled, tiny sandals so I decided to take them off and start walking barefoot through the streets of London. Jesse looked down at my feet and started to yell at me, “What the fuck are you doing? Put your damn shoes on you silly girl.”
So we finally got to the tube station, the guys bought all our tube tickets and waited with us until our tube came. Jesse leaned over and kissed me goodbye, suddenly I forgot all about the pounding headache that was beginning to creep up behind my temples from the bad hangover I knew was to come. “Bye thanks for a great night,” I said. “I’ll call you,” he said.
As my friends and I all sprawled out on the tube seats we all looked at each other and sighed. We were all spent and hung over. “We cannot keep this up every night,” Ellie said. “Yea, this is a one night event,” I said. However, it was such an awesome night and once again I remembered as the tube pounded over the rails underneath me, I was in London.
I was on the dance floor for awhile feeling nicely buzzed, when all of sudden this drunk hot guy came up behind me and started to flirt with me. He told me that his name was Simon and he thought I was beautiful and he wanted to buy me a drink. I told him that I wanted to finish dancing to this song first with my friend but I’d meet him right up at the bar.
So I wandered up to the bar and walked up to this guy and said, “Hey where’s my drink?” And he looked me up and down and was like, “Buy it yourself it’s only a pound fifty.” I was like, “What the hell? You just said that you would buy me a drink.” And he’s like, “No I didn’t, when the hell did I say that?” And I was like, “Just before on the dance floor.” He started to laugh and was like, “My dear, I think you might have mistaken me for someone else.” I looked him over and said, “Aren’t you Simon?” And he shook his head and said “No I’m Jesse, but I’m pleased to meet you. And I like your style, very forthright. So just for that maybe I will buy your drink to ease your humiliation.”
Jesse and I ended up talking at the bar for awhile and then we wandered over to the dance floor and started dancing together. We ended up dancing together the whole rest of the night. And whenever he’d leave me for the bathroom or anything, he’d come back up behind me and put his arms around me. I was in heaven. He was gorgeous, extremely tall with blond spiky hair and brown eyes. Slim, but still broad shouldered with very laidback style, he wore jeans with a hole in the ass so you could see his boxers and a scruffy t-shirt, he had that “I’m hot even though I don’t try” type appeal. He also had this amazing, fresh attitude. He was totally not my type at all, every other word out of his mouth was fuck, but he said it in this way that it wasn’t offensive. His accent just made it too cute.
All the rest of my friends ended up meeting guys that night also. In fact, my friend Maureen ended up hooking up with Jesse’s friend Luke. By the time the club closed all of us were drunk, and completely engrossed with the guys we had met. Don’t ask me how, but we somehow decided that it’d be a good idea to take a cab back with these guys and go back to this random guy’s flat. My friends Ellie and Meghan had met these three guys that were friends and we went back to their place and Luke and Jesse decided to join us because they didn’t want to leave Maureen and me.
We got to the flat, which ended up being all the way in Bethnal Green (the end of the tube line on the outskirts of the city), and drank more and hung out on the roof of this building. We played music and danced some more and basically made random small talk in between kissing sessions until the tubes opened back up at 7 in the morning. Finally at 7 am Jesse and Luke left with the four of us to find the nearest tube station to go home. My feet were killing me from my high heeled, tiny sandals so I decided to take them off and start walking barefoot through the streets of London. Jesse looked down at my feet and started to yell at me, “What the fuck are you doing? Put your damn shoes on you silly girl.”
So we finally got to the tube station, the guys bought all our tube tickets and waited with us until our tube came. Jesse leaned over and kissed me goodbye, suddenly I forgot all about the pounding headache that was beginning to creep up behind my temples from the bad hangover I knew was to come. “Bye thanks for a great night,” I said. “I’ll call you,” he said.
As my friends and I all sprawled out on the tube seats we all looked at each other and sighed. We were all spent and hung over. “We cannot keep this up every night,” Ellie said. “Yea, this is a one night event,” I said. However, it was such an awesome night and once again I remembered as the tube pounded over the rails underneath me, I was in London.
