Non fiction

Let's go out

I’m sitting in my room and I can hear them in the kitchen. They are loud and excited and my stomach already hurts. We’re going out tonight! Tonight’s the night, get ready. It’s Monday, Vodka Revolution day – Yea ‘I’m soooo excited!!!’ They’re starting to get drunk and it’s only eight. I was hoping they’d at least wait until nine but there are people snowing into the apartment, clinging glasses, shouting welcomes and mottos for tonight. Very soon, they’ll start their favourite game: power hour. The rules are simple: every two minutes, everybody has to drink a shot. For one hour. Genius, isn’t it? I don’t want to come, I really don’t want to. I know how it’s gonna be: we’re getting drunk in the kitchen, girls are playing with their hair and flirting, boys are getting louder and louder, the room is damp with sweat and cider-stink. At some point, they start shouting ‘let’s goooo, come oooon everybody!!’ Different people will attempt to get the crowd out of the house and across the street to revolution. I’ll follow, I’ll try to talk to some of them, they’ll be too loud and too drunk to even notice. Someone will tell me to ‘yeeeaaa, let’s have a driiiink, to friendship, I loooove you, you’re the best roommate ever!!!’ and then walk off to the dance floor, already forgetting what they just told me. I’ll stand at the bar, safe place, drink something strong and bitter and start to feel warm inside. The others are already totally into it, they’re in a world of their own together, dancing along. One will start puking, one will make out with some random guy they just met (‘suuuuper cute!!’), one will get lost and two oters will steal a couple of bottles from the bar. That’s what they’ll be talking about all next morning in the kitchen, ‘heiii, do you remember, you kissed that ugly guy!’ (full of pride at how crazy the night was and what they lived through together). I hate it.

Helena Spengler