Surf and Turfed Out

Freshers Week in the Second Year came and went almost without incident which, given the flatulent events line-up, you could have been forgiven for thinking was the plan. There was one oddly shining star in the week – an unofficial black-tie ball called the Surf and Turf, which was being openly condemned by the Student’s Association. That was the first point in its favour. The second was the venue: in amongst the fronds and fishes at the Sea Life Centre.

The price for admission was pretty steep, but included unlimited cocktails. Craig was up for it, but I couldn’t persuade anyone else. I spent all day looking for a pair of formal shoes that would fit my monstrously large feet, and I came up with squat.

‘What the hell are you wearing?’ Craig asked, when we went to get our taxi.

‘Golf shoes,’ I said.

‘Oh, great. Fucking great. Maybe we’ll get a game in on the way home. Way to go, asshole.’

The atmosphere in the Sea Life Centre was perfect. We had pretty much the full run of the place, wandering down dark corridors windowed with fish tanks full of tropical (and sometimes utterly hideous) fish. There were a few rooms large enough for people to mix in, and they had been converted into cramped dance floors. The drinks were free as promised and as freely flowing, at first. The place was on three levels, indoors and outdoors, and was, to put it mildly, sexy as hell. Everybody there was loaded.

There was music pumping throughout, and a live band in one of the bigger areas. We bumped into a couple of the Randoms there and exchanged drunken greetings, even though we couldn’t remember each other’s names, or hear anything we said over the sound of the music. One of the guitarists broke a string, and carried on playing the song. Occasionally it would get in the way, making a scratchy, amplified rasping sound. It was exactly that sort of an off-the-cuff night.

‘This place is alright,’ Craig said. This was more praise than I had ever heard Craig use in a single sentence before.

‘It really is. The other half are in tonight, eh? I hardly recognise anyone.’

[In St. Andrews there are only two explanations for not immediately recognising everyone within a hundred yards, and one of them is amnesia. The other is that you’ve stumbled head first into the old boy’s network.]

‘They don’t stay at the Park, Quinn, that’s for sure.’

‘Where do the fuck do they stay?’

‘Sallies. And big fuck-off penthouse flats hidden in the middle of town.’

‘No regrets on that front?’ It seemed like the right time to ask.

‘I spent a lot of time in Fife Park last year, too,’ he said.

‘Yeah, but mostly, she came out to yours at night.’

‘Mostly,’ he said.

‘Cause Fife Park is shite.’

‘Yeah. God, it’s fucking awful.’

‘You think all this music is bad for the fish?’

A bright yellow and blue fish in a nearby tank seemed to be swimming in time with the band. It was upside down.

‘Doubt it. They’d never have hired the place out, if it was.’

[Later we found out that what was really bad for the fish was the sheer number of assholes emptying their cocktail glasses into the tanks.]

‘I’m amazed they did. This place is unreal.’

‘Cocktails are pretty low rent, though,’ Craig said, swirling his plastic beaker.

[Colour by Dettol, flavour by blue Ice Pop. Or possibly the other way around.]

‘Listen, Craig,’ I said. ‘This year’s going to be different.’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Potentially.’

‘We’re off to a good start,’ I said.

‘Best start ever.’

‘But I meant me,’ I said. ‘It’s going to be different this year.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’m going to sort it all out, mate,’ I said.  ‘All of it.’

He shrugged, honestly.

‘Quinn, you think some things are important that aren’t. You don’t get what’s important to everyone else. You’re a total fuckup.’

‘I’ve got my issues,’ I relented, cheerfully.

‘Mate, everyone has issues, but yours don’t make any sense.’

‘Look, I’ve got a plan,’ I told him. ‘I know what I need to do.’

I expected him to be interested. He wasn’t.

‘You know, you’re a lot more fun when you’re not getting obsessed over some shit that doesn’t mean anything.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ I said.

There was a wooden veranda outside which looked out over the half lit bay, and a barbecue setup with hotdogs and snacks. Craig disappeared at some point, and I was left standing alone with a hotdog in my hand. I stared out over the bay, taking it all in. The sights, the sounds, the dirty smell of the sea and the smoky taste of my junk food.

It was a good night, but it came in on a good tide. The sweet mood was merely an extension, an expression, of what was already true to me; that I was in the right place, that things were going to be fine.

Warm and homely, it also carried an electric note of excitement. It was anticipation, and joy. It washed over me like the lapping sea; it kept on lapping, kept on giving, in waves. It seemed to be almost never ending. I put the whole night on pause, as if to remind myself for a lifetime that such a thing could be true.

I don’t know if you’ve ever felt completely at one with a time and a place, as if you could roll with anything it threw, and be prepared to throw yourself back knowing that nothing would hurt you harder than you could stand? I think it is a better feeling than even believing you will never be hurt at all. It would make such a state seem like sleep.

I concentrated on the feeling, on the horizon, on the glow of the lamps, gold and black, shimmering and distorted in the crests of countless gentle breakers; a satin blanket of a night; warm and glossy, charged and potent.

I don’t know how long I stood there. I remember it now as a single experience, suspended like a jewel in the evening, set apart from the minor events, the conversations, the passing of time.

And it occurred to me that I never once felt out of place in St. Andrews. I felt like an idiot plenty of times, like I didn’t know what was going on all of the time, and like I was missing out on something most of the time. But, if anything, that only made me hungry to see, do, and live a little more. I never felt like I should be anywhere else, not for a moment, not even when I wanted the earth to swallow me.

There were tough times, and melodrama, and I was stupid with my time and with love, and wrong about it, too. But that sponge-like faith in the rightness of it all cushioned every blow. I could shrug off the worst of it, and still feel nothing but harmony and that strange, hopeful, coy expectation.

It was a slight pressure on my shoulder that finally brought me back to the night.

‘Are you wearing trainers?’ a girl in a long green evening dress was asking, with the peculiar nasal shock of the gaspingly rich. She put her hand to her chest, as if to calm herself after a nasty experience.

‘Not exactly,’ I sighed, wishing the earth would swallow me.

When I found Craig he was chatting to a tall, blonde first-year. I left him to it.

I went to the bar again, where they were now only serving one drink per person. Sandy Bertrando was there, getting outrageously drunk, and pulling out all the stops on his way to oblivion.

‘What do you want to drink?’ Sandy asked me,  a little too showily for a place with a free bar.

‘Gin and Tonic,’ I said. Sandy frowned, and ordered something else. Something pink.

‘Thanks,’ I said, as we left the bar.

‘Aha! They’re both for me,’ he said in his typical, mocking whine.

‘Of course they are,’ I said, with a sigh. I had forgotten what a prick Sandy could be when he was... well. All of the time.

‘Yaah! Fuck your system!’ Sandy shouted at the barman, downing one drink and running off with the second. His triumphant laughter echoed down the corridor.

[Bertrando should be hermetically sealed in a vault somewhere in Paris, just to give the world a standard definition for the word ‘cackle’.]

I couldn’t be bothered to join the queue again, so I went off to get another hotdog. I met Craig outside, and we went in together for a last look at things.

‘How’s your blonde?’ I asked.

‘She’s stuffy and rich,’ he said. ‘Even her name. Elizabethe. Elizabethe with an extra ‘E’. You know why? Because her parents can afford one.’

‘You talked for a long time,’ I said, reproachfully.

‘She’s getting a fucking pilot’s license. Jesus.’

‘I think it’s time I tried talking to a girl,’ I said, frowning.

‘Yeah,  well I think it’s time to leave,’ Craig replied.

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I think this could go on all night’.

‘Not really,’ he said, pointing. ‘The police are here.’

They stood in the doorway, tearing the drinks out of people’s hands, and throwing them to the floor. I wondered how I hadn’t noticed them come in.

‘The party is over,’ one of them shouted into the room. ‘Everybody needs to leave, right now.’

We watched them for a couple of minutes, and then snuck out to go home.