Posts Tagged → Steph
Platonic Defenestration
On April 26th 2009 there was an incident in the (new) On Dit office, of potentially dire consequences. As Ms. Stephanie Walker was finishing her cigarette she turned and began to climb back through the window, which we smoke through. I, having just finished a cigarette myself, gave Ms. Walker a playful shove as if to push her through the window. She then said, quite firmly “don’t push me”, to which I pushed her, not especially hard, but ‘boy’ hard. It was to my horror that I saw her crash into the office, hitting her head on a pot plant and dislocating her knee. As I watched my co-editor’s body crumple into the ground I realized I had crossed the platonic female friend line.
Steph can definitely be seen as one of the boys, happy to drink, smoke and talk loud nonsense, at least until it gets a bit too ‘bitches and ho’s’ as she so succinctly put it. But while a girl can inhabit the ‘boys world’ for a little, eventually it will come crashing down, like an editor through a windowsill.
Guys grow up with roughhousing and it never truly goes away. Add to this the injection of alcohol to social situations and the testosterone fuelled moxie of post-pubescence and you have what can be a rough part of town so to speak. One party, after completing a game of centurion (100 shots of beer in 100 minutes, fucks you up real good, real fast) I was play fighting with my housemate Mr Metaphor/ when he pushed me, my alcohol-addled body limply falling, my head crashing into the car park ground. I was unconscious for a full 15 seconds, during which Mr Metaphor/ thought I was dead and promptly freaked out and ran away. The point of this story is that I groggily picked myself up, had a cider and a smoke, and went about my night, no hard feelings.
It’s not the first time I have been injured by and/or injured my mates in the course of having a good time and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Drunken boxing matches, beer bottles waved in the air with reckless abandon, people being thrown into the boulder-rimmed pool. It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye. Then it’s hilarious.
Girls are great to have as ‘one of the guys’ type friends, but beware, they’re not quite as hardy as the rest of your beer-swilling mates. If you were to knock a girl out in a car park by accident, it would be a disaster of potentially party-ending consequence. Much like playing pushing a girl through a window. No one laughs, everyone feels bad, even the victim somehow.
Steph was okay, her knee popped back in (unlike the last time when her friend Jake was the perpetrator, and she had to pop it back in herself then went into shock) and I spent the night feeling like a dick, apologizing and offering to get her stuff. Our first aid kit contains only some gauze eye-pads, sunscreen and aromatic shower gel, but I did read the St. John’s Guide chapter on what to do if someone goes into shock, just in case.
We have however established some new boundaries. She’s still one of the boys. Just not one of the boys you push through an open window.
How to not, not embarass ones’self.
When I began editing On Dit with Steph and Clare, they began to hear some of my drinking tales and tragic romantic misadventures upon our time bonding together in the office at On Dit. It was quickly decided that I should write a regular column entitled ‘Social Fumblings’, to publish not so just the terrible things I end up doing, but the comically self-deprecating way I manage to spin these tales.
The tale of my shaming of On Dit at the 2009 Express Media Conference begins thus…
The first day of the Student Media Conference was drawing to a close and we were descending on the scrappy remains of the catered ham & cheese sandwiches when Zoe Barrow (the amazing young woman who organized the conference) announced that there was a friend-of-a-friend’s house party that night which we were all invited to. Being somewhat partial to the odd house party I quickly scribbled our contact details down and scarpered off to the nearest Liquor Land Express and purchased the cheapest bottle of nondescript Gin my $100 per diem would fund.
A few G & Ts and Black Russians on the hostel roof and it began to dawn on Clare and Steph, who had never seen me drunk in the flesh, just how rowdy I tend to get on the sauce. Nevertheless they shrugged my slightly increased verbosity off and we sauntered back to our dorm for a nap. Not being very tired, while the girls napped I drank Gin on my top bunk and tried halfheartedly to flirt with the German girl in our room in my very broken German – this has since been dubbed my “C game” (versus “A game”).
Cue several hours later to house party – a small single story cottage just on Brunswick Street. Student types milling about with punch in the kitchen, the few smokers milling outside in the fairy-lit backyard strewn with retro couches and picnic rugs. I sat down with the editors of Vertigo, a Sydney based paper, and soon began to put away G & Ts and Black Russians at a prodigious pace. Slowly, my mind fades to black.
What follows was pieced together from various accounts from my po’ faced co-editors and other Conference panellists, with somewhat good reason for said reactions.
Two-thirds of a bottle of Gin and who knows how many Black Russians down in just under 2 hours and I emerged from house announcing loudly to Steph how ‘some nice people in the kitchen gave me shots!’ Soon I began to swap scarves with Steph. This is a bad sign, scarf-swapping drunk. The last time I was this drunk I woke up with the make-up of a single-mother smeared on my face, narrowly avoiding a fight with a man in a taxi rank on Frome Rd.
Back to Melbourne, two and a bit hours into the party and I am shit-faced drunk, belligerently voicing my opinions on matters that aren’t even being discussed to pretty much anyone in earshot, as I try to pair up my co-editors with any male in sight. ‘This is all you need’ I slur, motioning with my hands to the space between Steph’s head and waist. The decision is made to leave and I am walked out to the street t get a cab. We stop by a MacDonald’s and I demand a cheeseburger and try to walk into traffic to hail a cab. Tully, panellist and former editor of Farrago saves me from being hit by traffic and we taxi is back to our hostel.
My next clear memory is sitting in the communal meal room. Clare, Steph and Tully are engaged in an in depth conversation about something important. I have no idea what they are talking about, being very busy using all of my willpower to not pass out on the table. Everyone is aware of this. I announce that I am going to the toilet, politely refusing any assistance getting there. I get halfway there and fall into the wall and proceed to grind my shoulder along the wall the rest of the way to the toilet. I am very impressed. Steph and Clare are not. I return to the table and announce that I am going to bed, Steph making the executive decision to abandon the conversation and escort me lest I get myself into any more trouble.
Still legless, I swipe my access card through the magnetic reader a dozen or so times before realizing Steph has opened it for me. How I got up on my bunk I have no idea, beyond my ability to pull out some semblance of motor function when necessity dictates.
I wake up in my bed feeling a little foggy-headed but relatively not hung-over. I am naked and all of my earthly possessions are in a mountain in the middle of the room. Steph and Clare look at me with scornful eyes. All I can think is how surprisingly handsomely I’ve managed to pull up. This is because I am still drunk.
Student Media Conference, bless you.