Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Drunken texting
A little rant about the less glamourous side of going out.
First, maybe I should give some background to the little tirade on which I'm about to embark. I am an 18-year-old guy living in the South East, and it has come to the point where the "only" way teens seem to be able to enjoy themselves is by going out.
At 2.15am this morning, while the sun was on the other side of the planet, I was startled awake by the abrupt noise of a text message being received by my phone, which was sitting on my bedside table. At this stage, I had been asleep for three hours, blissfully dreaming and resting my poor auld brain. "BREEEP-BREEEP!! BREEEP-BREEEP!!"
In my sleepy state, I thought it was a bomb. Once I had gathered myself and suppressed the adrenaline flooding through my system, I opened the message to find it was from my friend. "Are you out" it asked, lacking interrogative punctuation. I looked at the time it was sent: 2.16am. Now, maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I've been raised to believe that it's rather rude to contact people after 10 o'clock at night - it's considered "personal time" after that, regardless of whether you're out on the town or not.
Surely, had my friend even a modicum of sense, he would have considered the possibility of me being asleep. Not everyone is always out on a Saturday night. This brings me to my main poin; what exactly is the attraction of "going out"? Don't get me wrong, I love dancing and laughing and having a good time as much as anyone, but is going out to a pub or nightclub really the best way to enjoy yourself? Of the few times that I have been "out", I've found it to be a horrible experience.
If people in the Third World were subjected to such conditions in a sweatshop, it'd be considered inhumane. Consider it: you dress yourself up, spending hours in front of the mirror perfecting your hair (or make-up for the girls). You make your way into town, picking your way through the bits of rubbish and broken glass on the pavements. When you eventually reach the cool place to be seen, you produce your "ID" (often not yours at all). You gain entry, pay the entrance fee and push your way through the throngs of people, only to find that it's three deep to the bar.
You stand around, trying to catch the eye of the barman, smiling at people who are already drunk and throwing themselves at you (To be honest, I don't want to have a photo taken with you, person I've never seen before). Eventually, you are served, only to be asked for ID (if it's fake, there's 50:50 chance it'll be accepted). You spend nearly a fiver on a pint, the first of several, and depending on the place, you might get a free shot too (how responsible of the establishment - encouraging the mixing of alcohols).
So, you've gotten into THE place to be, you've gotten your drink, you look super cool, now what? You look around. Your friends have disappeared. Charming. You push your way back through the crowds, strobe lighting dazzling you, then bump into someone carrying a vodka and coke. They spill it down your lovely shirt. No matter - it's so dark no-one can see you; and besides, it's so hot in there it'll dry in 15 minutes.
You eventually find your friends and start to talk, only to realise you can't actually hear them because the music is so loud - have DJs heard of the Pain Threshold? Probably not. So you're left to resort to your lip-reading skills, smiling and nodding in, what you hope to be, the right places. Then your friends' girlfriends and boyfriends arrive, which is fine if you have one too. But like myself, if you're gay in rural Ireland, it's unlikely that you'll have one, which can prove frustrating.
There's also the risk of being randomly attacked in the street, often because the thugs know that you know someone that they know whom they don't like (I doubt that they could actually verbalise it like that). The next day, depending on how much you had to drink, you wake up with a splitting headache and a hatred of all things noisy and bright.
What is the attraction of all of this? Why not subscribe to a less torturous evening?
Consider this instead: a select group of friends, perhaps eight or so, go to someone's house, each bringing some form of food - salads, mains, desserts. They can be either shop-bought or homemade. Alcohol can feature too, of course, if you so wish. Isn't this a much more relaxed, enjoyable evening? You can sing, dance and snog, all within the comfort of your house; no heat, noise, drunken strangers or risk of getting beaten up.
Why don't people do this more often?
By: zenith
