During the Easter break this year around April, I decided to stay behind for a week in order to catch up with work I had missed and also because I wanted to get a headstart on work that was coming. Yes, I am a very optimistic person. I figured that with nobody else on campus, I would be free to immerse myself in the emptiness of campus and get down to some reading and writing, ready to start the new term as a sexy genius. This didn’t really work out, which would make me just plain sexy.

A day after the end of term, a few of the people not going back home yet went out bowling. I was amongst this group and I put on my oldest, most fucked up kicks. They were purple and blue Nike Shox which were bought for a ridiculous £120 back in the ice age when wearing Nike shoes was still cool. I had gone through a good portion of secondary school with the things and they were the source of the only compliments girls would give me. They’d look at me, frown, look down and say,
“Nice shoes, though.”
When I did free running, these shoes helped me run on walls, jump across rooftops and land safely from large heights. I got a stupid amount of street cred with the shoes as I was so OCD about keeping them nice and clean. For years they served me well, all shiny, all sparkly. These were the shoes that would get you laid by the best looking woman in the world, and get you as far away as possible when her pimp comes after you when you refuse to pay for it.

But that was the day they were going out of retirement. Sad to say, but something else had caught my mind for a while now.

Bowling shoes.

I had gone bowling a few times now and I was infinitely impressed with how awesome the velcro ones were. Stupid words to define something cool like “swish” or “money” come to mind when I was wearing them. The retro look was amazing to me and I was counting on the velcro strap to have women think I’m cute as I didn’t know how to tie my shoe laces yet. Or they would think I was retarded for wearing bowling shoes, I don’t know and I didn’t care. Today, they would be mine.

And so, after paying for my game I was asked what size shoe I wear. I told him 10 and he placed my new prize before me on the counter, waiting for something that I guess should have been of higher or at least equal value. My Shox were, in sentimental terms. Apart from that, I would now describe them as battered, worn out SHIT.
I reluctantly took them off and put them on the counter, next to the shiny, white bowling shoes. The guy looked from me, to the shoes and then back again. I saw his eyebrow twitch, and if I had the ability to read people’s minds, I’m sure he would have been asking “Really? REALLY?”

But he took the bait and I reeled in the fish, throwing them on my feet and sliding my way down to the lanes. I felt invincible in the shoes, which is quite superficial as they’re incredibly dangerous to wear due to being so slippery. If anything, these shoes are a complete deathtrap, you’re more likely to fall over and crack open your head than get anywhere. But it didn’t matter, they were awesome and after a great game of bowling (where I came second, dammit), it was go time. As everyone either went to collect their own shoes, I went to steal mine and did a runner out of the bowling alley. As I awaited the others, I also expected some pissed off worker to come running out of the place, demanding I give their shoes back. Luckily, that didn’t happen and I went home with a new pair of shoes. We stopped off at an empty salsa club on the way back home and my shoes had me slipping and sliding my way all over the dance floor. Suddenly, the place quickly filled up. No doubt because of my new shoes.

I’d be lying if I said I’m not sad to lose my old ones. Contained within the soles of those trainers were many memories, or maybe it was the bacteria that made them smell that way. But I was sure I would have a few more stories to tell under my feet with the new ones, and I was not wrong.

I had the whole house to myself now. All four of my housemates had returned home and it was great. I was free to play my music as loud as I wanted, I could cook bacon and not worry about the whiny little vegetarian girl complaining about the smell and I could even walk around naked without the whiny little vegetarian girl complaining about the smell. I took full advantage of having an empty house, making extremely, stupid loud noises for no reason whenever I felt like it. Most of the time I was just shouting gibberish in an Arnold Shwarzneggar voice for my own amusement.
Some people would say I was going ‘crazy’.
In the midst of adjusting to the greatness that was having a house to myself, I didn’t really have time to become lonely. Luckily, it never came to that anyway as a group of people who lived opposite my window were throwing a house party that night. I had met them when I stuck around during the Christmas holidays and had not really seen them since. I had nothing better to do other than use my Arnie voice to shout at my burgers to “COOK FASTAH YOO GUHRLEE BURGHA”, so I grabbed my massive bottle of vodka and ran down to see them.

I was greeted by Fiona (Kenyan), Serena (Jamaican), Asif (Bangladeshi), Nele (German) and Jess (average white girl). They were having dinner and it didn’t look like much of a party yet, so I ran down to Suria’s place to see him and Johannes. I made frequent phone calls to the others as I stupidly left my vodka there, and whenever Jess was given the phone, it sounded like she had found it. I rushed back to find that the lights were now dimmed, music was playing and my fucking vodka had been inhaled by a drunken Jessica. There weren’t many more people at this point than there were before, which wasn’t surprising due to the lack of people on campus. But then, someone who wasn’t there before caught my eye: her short, staight, shoulder length and neon blue hair caught my eye first. She was standing at the other end of the room, with a black t-shirt and black and grey striped arm warmers to match.

Johannes and Suria soon turned up for a while, Suria leaving quickly to be with his girlfriend so Johannes and I salvaged what alcohol we could in order to get drunk. Nele wandered over with her blue-haired friend and so, I introduced myself. Her name was Christina (or Chrissy), was from Germany and was an au pair for some lucky little brat. Other than that, there wasn’t much to her apart from her… interesting dress sense. She didn’t seem impressed by stories I told about the au pairs my brother and I had (we made some cry and managed to get some to leave before they left the airport). There were no awkward silences with her, because the dips inbetween conversations became expected after 7 minutes of meeting her. It was probably better that way, as she was better to look at than talk to. I shamelessly tried the shameful plan B: getting her drunk. I had my cheapest bottle of wine with me in addition to a beer, which I refused to share until she had a glass of my wine. She refused to drink wine as she hated it and loved beer, and damn she must really fucking love beer because she downed the wine like there was no tomorrow. Still, she didn’t get drunk as she’s ‘one of those’. By that, I mean a girl who has some respect for the job she moved country to do and herself. Although looking at that hair, I’m not sure how much dignity you could keep (though I appreciated the effort).

I however, was drunk. Very drunk, and I didn’t know it. In fact, everyone except her seemed to be quite out of it, including Serina and Fiona who decided to join me in ringing people’s doorbells and running back to the party. One guy decided it was a good idea to come out of his house and up to the one we were in. So I got the biggest knife I could find and stuck it through his face.

Well, no that didn’t really happen. But Fiona did throw a fit of fear and decided it was a good idea to break the fire alarm, sending out a high pitched squeal echoing out the courtyard at around 2 or 3am. We awaited the alarms to be turned off as it began to snow and eventually, in the distance we saw two firetrucks turn up. With Fiona trying to explain herself, Johannes invited us back to his house to “continue the party”. I tried to bribe Chrissy with more beer as long as she came back to mine to get it, but she declined and so I became bored and followed Johannes to his house. Chrissy followed and sat down next to me at his table, going through a book as Johannes suggested we run down to storage unit behind one of the campus cafes and steal some milk. Feeling thoroughly intoxicated now, this sounded like the best idea ever and we ran off, searching for the large bottles of white stuff but there was none to be found.

“Wait, check this out!”

Johannes cried out, peering into a dark room that had been boarded up. I looked in to find a crate of Smirnoff Ice beyond the wooden barricades. We began reaching in to pick them out on by one, which wasn’t good enough for me. I kicked down one of the boards and then another one. With a much bigger opening, we were now able to climb into the damn thing where we found glass bottles of Coke and lemonade. FUCKING GLASS. Glass bottles make everything taste better! We had hit the jackpot, loading all of it into a crate and carrying it all back to Johannes’ place. Once inside, we shared the spoils out and realised we had no bottle opener handy to crack the caps off the bottles. Chrissy seized it from my hands, put the stem of the bottle in her mouth, bit down and yanked it down, handing it back to me and spitting the bottlecap into her hand.

“Holy shit.”

Johannes and I stood still for a moment before turning and shooting each other knowing looks. A blur clouds my memory for the next part, but I remember going back down to find more stuff, for some reason. Possibly to find more glass bottles for Chrissy to take care of? Sounds about right. Struggling to find anything else, we climbed into the storage unit and looked around with the light from my phone. Johannes managed to find plastic plates and cutlery which he exited with whilst I decided it would be a good idea to take back a crate of mineral water bigger and heavier than I am.

What we failed to realise as we were so fucked off our faces was that whilst we were in there, an alarm had been triggered.

Still oblivious to this, we climbed out and I was struggling to keep a decent grip on the crate. Johannes by now, was quite far off and up the car park with his prizes. After stumbling down some stairs, I hoisted up the crate of water and made my way out into the main road and towards the car park and Johannes’ flat.

“OI!” a voice called. I froze, then turned. I saw a man in the familiar security uniform down the road taking a steady pace towards me. I’m not sure what kind of stupid shit was going through my head; maybe I thought it was better to do the right thing, or maybe I was too surprised to run. I walked straight up to him, put the water down and said, “what?”

“Do you want to go for a ride?” he asked me.

“Yeah, sure.” was my reply and we silently walked to his car and I got into the back and he drove me to the security office. As this happened, at the back of my mind was a voice telling me “you’re fucked, you idiot” but it was drowned out by the sounds of indifference brought about by my absurd level of drunkness.
Once inside the security office, I was sat down as the room cleared out, after being offered something to drink. After a few minutes of sitting around, bored I remembered that Chrissy was still at Johannes’ place. It appears that nothing turns me on more than stealing soft drinks and being caught doing so. “I need to get out of here and back to that party” I thought. It didn’t cross my mind that I might be fined or even thrown out of the university. All that was on my mind was girls and drinking more booze, including the stuff we stole.

“You can do this… you’ve played enough Metal Gear Solid games… you’ve seen enough Prison Break.” I told myself. Suddenly, the James Bond theme tune started booming out of my ears and blocking any rational thought in my head. I got on my knees and crawled towards the door. My exit was opposite, but another room was to the left of that and I peeked around the corner to find several security guards. I crawled back to my chair and waited for a few minutes before looking again. The coast seemed pretty clear, so I stood up and walked to the door, placing my hand on the handle and then…

“OI!” a voice shouted. I turned to my left to see a huge woman sat at a desk, glaring at me from behind her glasses. I froze for a minute, but opened the door and stepped out only to be faced by two women dressed in police uniforms. I figured this was all either a really amazing surprise Johannes had set me up for with two strippers, or I was in big, big, big trouble.

“Fuck’s sake.” I said and turned around, slouching off back to my seat and falling back in it.

“What do you think you’re doing?” the fat security woman asked me.

“I dunno, I got bored.” was my reply. The policewoman seemed quite amused, yet stern at the same time. She hadn’t taken her clothes off yet, so I assumed she was actually a real police officer. I stood still, looking up at her and she asked me if I had taken any drugs, probably down to my bloodshot red eyes, something that happens when I get drunk and when I pray to Satan on the Friday the 13th. She looked down at me and said,

“Nice shoes… did you steal them too?”

My head dropped down. I was wearing those fucking bowling shoes.