Friday Night Fiasco! 18 Things That Were Meant to Improve the Night But Didn't
Strippers, hen nights, lucky boxers, champagne, iPhones, decade-themed club nights and doing up your top button: 18 things that were meant to improve the most important night of the week, but didn't.
Strippers
Your homing instinct to a funky bachelor party was forged by too much childhood viewing of The Sopranos, third-rate gangster films and Californication, all of which gave you the idea that a high-quality evening out involves sitting legs akimbo on banquette seating with your arms slung over the back of the chair like you’re being crucified while you try to focus on a pair of swaying breasts in the near distance. For some reason, Miami Vice never included a tracking shot of a crowd which included blokes too embarassed to look up, trying very hard to not appear bored. Or the other strippers talking to each other in Serbo-Croat about how much they despise all men.
Trying to muscle in on a hen night
A readymade sex-party for you and ‘the lads’ to pair off with. Just jump in front of this riot of pink cowboy hats yelling, “Is This The Way To Amarillo!” and you’re totally in. Then spend the rest of the evening being harangued by the racist one who’s just got out of prison, watching them urinate between two parked cars while eating Monster Munch and being groped by the bride’s mum like she’s unloading a washing machine.
A live band turning up in the pub
Never, in the history of civilisation, has an evening been improved by four blokes the wrong side of 30 murdering Mustang Sally at Motörhead-style volumes. It’s now impossible to speak to anyone without screaming, while all the girls are gravitating towards the IT bloke with a fretless bass waggling his tongue like he’s auditioning for Kiss.
Lucky boxers
Laid out ceremonially on the bed before you shower, and treated with the same reverence as a sacred relic. But it’s actually so long since you got laid in them (and that girl commented on how nice they were) that if ever a ‘stunt double’ is needed for the Turin Shroud, they could probably use your greying, bacteria-rich kecks as a stand-in. That mark on the back does look a bit like Christ’s tormented face, after all.
Getting on it ‘early doors’
Don’t bother going home and dicking about until 9pm. Just hit the ‘club’ straight from work. Fine in theory; in reality you’re exhausted by 8pm, dressed like a dad collecting his daughter from a disco, and suddenly aware of how much you smell like an office (sweat, printer toner, coffee) compared to all these clean people who went home and got changed.
Getting the old team together
Before swiftly remembering why the ‘old team’ drifted apart in the first place.
Having a workout and a sauna first
The inverse of getting on it ‘early doors’. Hit the muscle factory straight after work for some heavyweight iron-pumping, then chill out in the steam room, ensuring that you hit the pub glowing, healthy and looking your best. Or, alternatively, hit the pub chronically dehydrated and so weak you can barely lift a pint.
Ordering champagne
A semi-ironic celebratory gesture, intended to show just how high you’re rolling. And while you’re certainly drawing attention – along with raised middle fingers and wedges of lime being lobbed in your direction – by the time the bottle arrives, you’re so mortified by the experience that you’re having flashbacks to that school concert where you froze as you tried to sing the solo in Little Drummer Boy. (Note: real millionaires don’t stick sparklers in their drinks.)
iPhones
A technological leap forward that has managed to kill off conversation, eye-contact, and the noble, timeless art of pub bullshitting. “Nah, Steve, you’re wrong. I’ve just checked online and your dad wasn’t at the Iranian embassy siege. Which presumably means that he wasn’t ‘allowed to have sex with Sam Fox’ afterwards, either.”
Going somewhere different for a change
A leap into the cultural abyss as you all pile off to a different part of town without a modicum of forward planning, on the assumption that ‘something mental’s bound to happen’. Or, you end up walking around an industrial estate for an hour, have a pint at Press Club just so you can use the toilets, then get started on by hacks for not being one of them.Suddenly, drinking in exactly the same pub every Friday night for the rest of your life doesn’t seem so bad.
Any decade-themed ‘party’ night in a club
You’d have thought the modern era provided quite enough terrorism, religious nutters, rampant capitalism, mass unemployment, rioting and oil crises without specifically revisiting the decades when all this stuff was last on the loose.
Circling the dancefloor
You know that wallflowers don’t get anywhere, so it’s time to pull yourself away from the corner and casually do a lap of the dancefloor in an attempt to spark up a conversation – or at least some eye contact – with a potential conquest. Cue being back where you started 20 seconds later, having been accidentally bashed in the mouth with your own bottle, winked at by an overweight homosexual, asked if you’re looking for a mislaid jacket by one of the staff and ignored by two women. There are typhoons currently circling the Bay of Bengal with more subtlety.
A new outfit
Admittedly, it all looked brilliant on Abhay Deol in that magazine shoot. But right now, you’re being met with horrified stares, dropped pint glasses, barely suppressed guffaws and the horrifying realisation that you’ve come out dressed as the bastard love child of Willy Wonka and Wolverine. The walk back home’s going to be fun then…
Going for dinner before the pub
A bit civilised, a bit Sopranos, a bit continental… a bit like you’re gestating a baby made of reconstituted Nando’s and guffing like an oil rig. Thank God nobody’s allowed to smoke in pubs anymore, otherwise it’d be like Guy Fawkes’ night in the middle of July.
Texting women you once slept with
“Hi, I’m just out with some friends, you out and about?” The advent of texting was meant to facilitate this kind of no-strings-attached inquiry, enabling you to convey an air of casual insouciance, and suggest that you’re the sort of free-styling roustabout who’s always so admirably relaxed with your social plans. Somehow though, women don’t always appreciate getting woken up at 1am by a bloke who completely blanked them after they tugged him off six months earlier.
Any nightclub named after a colour
Supposedly a semantic cue that the night is now stepping up a gear and you’ll be at Indigo/Blue Bar/ Red Monkey. Should be called Anger/Rage/ Depression/Loneliness and/or Steroid-Fuelled Red Mist.
Celebrity personal appearances
Somebody with more money and status than you – yet no discernible ability – mimes a bit or pretends to DJ. In return you pay to cheer them, before they tap off with the fittest women and refuse to talk to you. It’s like the court of Louis XIV, relocated to a place with a metal detector on and 2-for-1 on Smirnoff.
Doing up your top button
The current trend for dressing like a cross between a gay bear and a Fleet Foxes roadie demands you keep your collar fastened. However, you look like you’ve just clocked off from Foxtons, you’re having trouble breathing and a roll of fat’s bulging over the fabric. So that’s ‘tubby, asthmatic, estate agent’. Don’t expect a call from Vogue any time soon.
From the July 2011 issue of FHM India.
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