Went out to Fuel last night!

[Written at three in the morning, after a night out at fuel - a semi-drunk rant, so much different from my usual rants!


"Just got back home, three in the morning, and I’m dreading waking up. Cold pizza in my hand, warm beer at my side, and my flat now smells of cold chips and old beer. Throw in the scent of smelly socks and used condoms and I would have the typical swinging bachelor pad. We had a good night, which has led me to some strange revelations. On people, on relationships, and what we all want from each other.
Anyway, I met up with the friends from work at fuel, hull’s “most notorious” gay bar and danced the night away to venga boys and lady gaga. As soon as I got there I recognised a young woman called “Amy” who used to work at leonardo’s as a waitress. She was okay, pretty in a quiet way, but I noticed that I recoiled very quickly from any sort of conversation that might lead on to anything. I messed around, danced and shook my ass on the stage in front of the DJ. I was one of “the boys” as the DJ called us, the annoying, loud, straight guys who were “camping it up with the best of them”. Even though we were up there I refrained from stepping to the centre of the limelight, except for one occasion.
“I am the one and only” karaoke, and I sang at the top of my lungs, and stared straight into the eyes of a redhead right in front of us. It was an experience I didn’t much like because I didn’t quite know how to follow it up, and besides I am staying away from any sort of relationship. Even one night stands of any kind lead to too many complications.
Anyway, it was a work night out and nothing more. The stoners got too stoned to come out. The drinkers got too drunk to come out, and the apathetic heroes were far too lazy to walk all that way. I think that friends are not the do-or-die, be there forever figures that I had once thought they were, but perhaps it was merely me. I myself a shadow befriended like shadows and so our friendship and connection meant very little. I considered leaving for good, but one person, one person changed my mind on that.
I have enough money to buy a ticket to South Africa myself, even a return, and I considered taking it, just catching the first coach to an airport and flying back over to SA, but Dom called me up and told me he was sad to hear I was leaving. He got the impression that I was leaving for good, and he was sorry to see me go. His simple, earnest expression convinced me that I would be leaving something good behind if I did leave the country for good.
But that is what this journey is about, finding out where I belong, and if I should just restart from the beginning. Go back to South Africa, tell my landlord to sell everything in my flat to pay for the rent I owe him, and never come back.

…
We had a good night, but it was drenched in the feel of a typical “lad’s night out”. Grinding against dodgy girls, grabbing a kebab from the only takeaway open that night, leaving Wayne chatting up a forty-something pregnant woman…
Ending up the night at a horrible little club called “Shine”. We were the only people in there apart from the old couple in the corner and the guy doing coke in the bathroom upstairs. I watched Phil gamble away twenty pounds before getting bored and we finally all went home.

We all had a good night, I think, but I couldn’t help but notice that I would always be wondering just what the point was. Always looking in from outside, or keeping an eye on my very drunk friends for the night, making sure that they didn’t fall off the stage again, or get into another fight with the short haired dyke with spiky black hair. Having to drag a polish man who I had always suspected was gay away from grinding against a very pro-feminist lesbian was not an experience I thought I would have to go through. I simply thought that Martin was gay, not an awkward anti-socialite.

I’m going to relax a bit longer, listen to some music and then go to bed, for the last time. I hope that after this journey I will have a new bed, a new home, and a new outlook. We are reforged day by day, and our impressions of the world are changed every minute that we are alive, and for that I am … for want of a better word … grateful.

Oh, in an offside, I am going to put up a vote count of my hair: should it be cut or not?
Jeanette said I should, as did Ellie.
Gathan and Ben told me to keep it long, and so did Becky and Adam.
Jody the boy told me to grow it long, wear a shirt, some cheap sneakers, and a hat and be a gangsta.
Phil and Luke called me Steven Segal, so I don’t know if it’s good thing.
Heh. Such memories and comments still make me smile.
Goodnight world."

Half ten in the morning now: Off to Lincoln - trying to find a good hotel or BnB!