Of Vinegar And Glitter

The Terrible, Unnecessary, Sloppy Night Out of September 3rd

It is not an easy task to justify to yourself doing something that you hate. But Ruth was authoritative, and serious, and not gonna lie, kind of scary too; so the group surrendered relatively easy.

"It is our last Saturday until classes start", Daria conceded, cautiously, "if we are going to go out, this is the night".

In reality, none of the five girls were particularly fond of the night scene in the city. It was their second year studying in that foreign space. They had tried to find their place, their bar, their pub. It was virtually impossible to find something that suited them all as a group. See, the issue was not so much that they did not enjoy partying, but that they despised very different aspects of it individually. 

Ruth was, surprisingly for such an elegant and graceful human, the one with the lowest standards in the group. She only wanted to dance in a room of other people dancing. She did not care all that much about the quality of the music or the quality of the people, she just wanted to dance. But she needed a lot of people around her to cover her careless moves. Ruth was a ballet dancer since she was very little, so if she felt the pressure of other eyes watching her, she would start making a more controlled, professional dance and her night would be ruined.

But Helena hated people. Not like hate, hate. She did not hate people individually (she was no misanthropist), but she hated people as a concept. They made her feel deeply uncomfortable. She would prefer doing some swimming in a cold winter night in the muddy canals rather than standing in a crowded club full of drunk humans with no regard for personal space whatsoever. She preferred the quieter, emptier pub kind of going out experience.

However, those pubs had quite the downfall: Rubi would completely lose her (little) self control when under the influence. And that meant loud, never-ending arguments about topics that were a bit of a downer in a night out: rape culture, the role of porn in the patriarchal society, the gender gap. She was the raging feminist that every group of female friends needs. Usually her feminism made her interesting to hang out with, but it did become a hell of a burden when she was drunk in a space where the music was not loud enough to shut her up.

And then, well. Grace. She could be quite the snob with music sometimes. She was a law student, but her main interest in life was unequivocally music. She prided herself on being a good singer and a decent producer, and a fantastic music critic. This characteristic was, very much alike Rubi's feminism, something that her friends did appreciate in the right circumstances. But every time the music was not good enough for her in the club that they were in, she would stop dancing, frown and shake her head. That could be quite disruptive of the group's mood. Then they would decide to switch pubs, and that was an issue because a) moving around all the time is extremely boring, and b) Daria.

Daria would engage with conversations with everyone. It was really hard not to like Daria. She was a good listener and had the capability of giving very boring stories a very amusing twist, so virtually every single student of her faculty knew her and loved her. So every night they went out together they would either have to wait for Daria every time she run into someone in the street or simply lose her. And that would be an issue, because Daria and Helena would have their bikes locked together, because they lived together and they always assumed they would leave at the same time, and so now is 2 in the morning and Helena is suddenly in an even worse mood and Ruth just wants to dance but Grace needs some good music because what is the point of dancing to bad music; and there is Rubi, arguing with a random guy in the middle of the street after he drunkenly catcalled her or said something racist thinking she would not understand. 

So, yeah. They did not go out together that much. But that is what Ruth wanted. And Ruth can be kind of scary.

It was approximately 3am when the group got separated. Two important remarks: a) nothing good can ever happen after 1 in the morning, and b) when a group of female friends gets completely destructured after agreeing to a Girls Night Out™, then chances are that at least half of the integrants of said group are going to do something that they are going to regret. Deeply.

And that is what happened in September 3rd. It was terrible for some. It was unnecessary for others. And it was sloppy for eveyone.