So you are in Mosaic and the guy you are with pulls out the classic “Let’s get out of here” line. It works and you end up back at his… A habitual Monday night scenario for a number of Exeter ladies you may say, but if there is anything I should have learnt by now, it is to always go home. Always. Take them back to yours if that’s how you want to play it, just do not go back to their house!
Sometimes it’s the Walk of Shame. Sometimes it’s the Stride of Pride. And sometimes it’s the “Oh.God.Get.Me.Out.Of.Here” full pelt run down the street – yes I have witnessed this, that girl knew how to sprint in heels. However you leave in the morning, I think it’s safe to say that we probably don’t resemble ‘early morning chic’ – I certainly don’t anyway. It’s the smudged eyeliner and smoky makeup which has left us looking like beaten up Pandas, it’s the bed hair which has lost volume and has now taken on a life of its own, the crumpled pillow lines on your cheek and it’s the hangover which has left that vacant stare in our eyes and the pounding in our heads. But perhaps most importantly it’s the having to traipse through town or across campus in last night’s clothes. Because as much as we can say, “Yep this look is totally in, everyone is wearing it these days” everyone knows that wearing five inch heels and a playsuit at eleven in the morning can only mean one thing… You didn’t go home last night. And that can only mean one thing – comments from locals or fellow students, as I unfortunately found out the other day…
I hadn’t even gone back to a guy’s house; no I had had one too many double vodkas and had ended up staying at a friend’s house on the sofa. Thinking I was going to escape what would look like to others as a walk of shame, I decided to get a taxi back, but the road works all the way down the road meant the taxi had to drop me off about 200 metres from my front door. So out I get, it’s a freezing cold day, and there I am standing with no tights on and those shoes. It was like the builders had a field day: “What do we have here, get any sleep?” shouted one, “Good night then?” cried another and then perhaps the worst, “What would your mother say?” – the most vocal builders I have ever come across. All I could do was hang my head and totter by trying not to trip over. Boys, however, can get away with walking through town the next morning in what they wore the night before: shirts and chinos. Plus they don’t have the worry of crippling heels, or blurred makeup, unless of course they decided to go out in fancy dress; but then because of the prevailing double standards, passer bys are likely to just think – ‘Lad’.
But it’s not just the next morning that can be the nightmare, sometimes the whole evening can just be a disaster, as talking to friends the morning after has taught me. One told me of how she was with a guy, everything was going great, until that is he told her they weren’t actually in his bedroom. He in fact lived on the other side of Exeter and the bedroom they were in, belonged to his friend. I kid you not. Another went back with a guy and found that his whole room, including his bed had been covered in newspaper and he hadn’t taken it off, “Oh yeah, it’s been here a couple of weeks now but I just like reading it,” he said. Another went back to a boy’s house only to realise that his housemates were on her course and stared at her all through their next seminar as if she had committed some sort of horrific sin. Boys in general also just do not seem to care about the state of their room, maybe that is a bit of a sweeping statement but I have definitely been in some where I have wondered if the sheets have ever been changed or the curtains ever drawn, let alone the bin emptied. Finding last week’s boxers at the bottom of the bed and suspicious looking items under the pillow does nothing to enhance the mood, it down and out kills it.
At least if you bring them back to yours you know that your bed will be comfy, there will be nothing lurking amongst the duvet, no smell of sweaty rugby socks mixed with too much cologne, you won’t have the embarrassment of creeping around an unknown house looking for the bathroom in the dark trying not to disturb his housemates, and most of all, when you do leave the house in the morning it won’t be in last night’s clothes; it will be the Stride of Pride to campus with hopefully a great night behind you.