Scraping the bottom of "The Barrel"

i) The beginning

It should all have been so different as this story had the best of all possible beginnings. It happened at a foam party at “5th Avenue” nightclub in Oxford. The mood was definitely right for love. I mean, how could it not be in a tacky dry ice infested fleapit situated above one of the ugliest branches of Sainsburys in Christendom? And while we’re on the subject, why the enthusiasm for naming grotty provincial UK nightclubs after parts of the United States they could never even begin to match for glamour and sophistication? Oxford also sported a nightclub called “Downtown Manhattan”, Reading had the sticky delights of “Washington Heights” and Basingstoke had “Compton Crack Den”.

All right, I might possibly have made that last one up.

I had been forcibly evicted from a relationship several months previously and was still struggling to come to terms with it. Or, to put it another way, I was so desperate that even Princess Anne might have been in with a chance after a couple of bottles of Diamond White. My friends decided I needed cheering up and moping in my scuzzy rented room listening to Portishead just wasn’t going to do the trick. So my best friend Dave decided that it was time for me to embrace clubbing, something I had never done (impressive at the age of 22 I think you’ll agree). Being no fool, Dave handily concealed from me the fact that the nightclub was hosting a foam party on the night in question, mainly because he shrewdly reached the conclusion that if I’d known I would have pulled out. By the time I found out Dave had already bought my ticket, forcibly removed my denim jacket (it was the mid 90s, get off my case people) and checked it in to the cloakroom. There was to be no escape.

Once inside, I concluded that clubbing wasn’t quite as terrifying as I had feared. It was just a bar that stayed open til 2pm with music so loud you couldn’t hear anyone say anything and everyone reeked of Lynx. What could be so bad about that? There was a dancefloor but I couldn’t see many people on there. And no foam. What was this foam party thing all about? I wondered. It was 10.30pm.

I then proceeded to get very drunk.

If we wind forward to about 1am, there’s a very different scene. The dancefloor is thrashing with foam encrusted figures bearing a passing resemblance to randy polar bears on Ecstasy. It was like the last days of ancient Rome, or would have been if the Romans had invented the foam cannon and spent all their time listening to “These Sounds Fall Into My Mind” by the Bucketheads.

I, by this time really exceptionally trolleyed, have realised that a foam party is wicked fun and basically a great excuse to daub ladies in said foam. I have lost track of my friends and end up copping off with a short blonde right up against the fire escape. It is such a spectacle that they keep firing the foam cannon right at the two of us to the amusement of onlookers. Since I am getting some tonsil hockey for the first time in about six months I am supremely unfazed by this. By the end of the festivities the blonde and I look like Moby Dick has ejaculated forcibly over both of us after a lengthy spell of enforced abstinence.

My friends Dave and Phil looked on during the early stages of my courtship with the blonde in question.

“Oh my god Dave,” said Phil, “isn’t that…?”

“I know,” Dave grimly interjected, “it’s the fucking Barrel.”

ii) The prelude

Two years earlier. Dave spent most of his weekends at university clubbing in Oxford and his success with the ladies was hailed as the ultimate triumph of quantity over quality. Some of his spectacular misfires were the stuff of legend, but none quite so much as the Barrel. He picked her up in a nightclub to the unending derision of all his friends. She was short, stubby and no oil painting, and worse still at the time Dave had been aiming for her extremely attractive friend and missed.

He ended up in a taxi with the Barrel and her friend heading back to their halls of residence. In the cab the Barrel said “I can’t believe you’re coming back with me, you could have had your pick of any woman in the club.” Dave fought back the considerable urge to say Now you fucking tell me. In that case is there any chance of swapping to your friend? They got back to the halls and the stunning friend said “Well, I’m going off to bed, you two have fun.” and the silent voice in Dave’s head howled Please don’t leave me here. But being a decent and honourable creature he went to the Barrel’s room and had wild monkey sex with her even though he didn’t really want to. I mean, it was virtually date rape. The poor man.

The next morning, Dave woke up at about half seven with a hangover. He looked over at the Barrel. Things weren’t any better in the cold light of day, quite the opposite in fact. He knew he had to leave, and he had to leave soon. So without waking the sleeping Barrel he crept out of bed, picked his clothes up from the floor and put them on. She didn’t budge. He got to the door and was about to make good his escape when she woke up.

“You were about to leave, weren’t you?” she said, “You would have just gone out of the door without saying goodbye or leaving me your number or anything.”

Dave thought for a split second and his response has passed into legend.

“I know you’re trying to hate me at the moment, but you just can’t.”

Then he left.

iii) The date

Unlike Dave, I did take the Barrel’s number. I had no dating experience, so I rang her the next day – which of course you never ever do – and we arranged to go for a date. This, I now realise, screams keen to an unhealthy extent. I might as well have arranged for the Red Arrows to stage a flypast skywriting MY LIFE IS EMPTY AND I AM DESPERATE in giant letters. Or got a bunch of Morris dancing midgets to congregate outside her room and jig about spelling MY LIFE IS EMPTY AND I AM DESPERATE in semaphore with their handkerchiefs while singing “Hopelessly Devoted To You” in close harmony.

You get the idea.

The night before my return to the dating scene Dave came round to see me. I assumed it was for a morale building pep talk, but Dave cut straight to the chase.

“You remember the Barrel?”

“How could I forget, we all took the piss out of you for nine months. ‘You’re trying to hate me, but you can’t’, that one?”

“That’s the one. Mate, you’re going on a date with her tomorrow night.”

“Oh. Well, at least she puts out.”

The date was dreadful. The conversation was stilted and I was soon struck by the fact that we had virtually nothing in common. Actually that's not entirely true, we had one point of connection but I thought it would probably be a colossal failure as an icebreaker. And if I ever managed to relax into the conversation at all the image of my best friend Dave frantically rutting with this woman soon put a dampener on it. Plus Dave was right - she kind of didn’t look any better in the cold light of day.

There was nothing for it but to consume large quantities of cider in the hope that things would get better. Maybe I’d get drunk enough to want to locate a fire escape. Sadly it turned out they didn’t actually stock that much alcohol and this was in the days before they legalised absinthe. They called last orders and we stood awkwardly outside the pub.

God, I hope she doesn’t ask me to go back to hers. I thought.

“Do you want to come back to mine?”

“Yeah, all right then.”

Even then she didn’t put out. At the time I flattered myself by thinking that this was because she reckoned this might have some potential so was taking it slowly. More likely it was because I was a clumsy and amateurish uber-nerd she was dating out of sheer desperation rather than my friend Dave the practised club-hopping lothario.

I was quite relieved actually as I was fairly traumatised by seeing her naked. Her body was absolutely covered in moles. So much so that I have a nasty feeling that if I’d played join the dots with them I would have ended up looking at an extremely intricate line drawing of me experiencing the worst date of my life.

I called her a couple of days later and said that I didn’t want to see her again, it wasn’t her, it was me, it was a bad time for me and so on and so forth. That’s the speech proper people in the dating game give all the time, so why did I feel so dreadful?

iv) The postscript

About six months later. Dave and I are in “Downtown Manhattan” and Dave is at the bar trying to get a drink. He realises that the woman at the bar next to him is the Barrel. She notices him.

“Hi, how are you?” she says.

“Yeah not bad, long time no see.” replies Dave. Then a mischievous thought strikes him. “You might remember my friend?”

He points over at me. The Barrel looks across the room and spots me. A shocked and embarrassed expression crosses her face momentarily, but she replies without skipping a beat.

“Nothing happened. Do you want to come home with me tonight?”

v) The second postscript

A month after that. My brother is visiting me and he, Dave and I go to “Downtown Manhattan”. The Barrel is there and by this time Dave and I can laugh about it.

“What’s so funny?” says my brother.

“Oh, it’s the Barrel” says Dave, “I shagged her and he went on a date with her a couple of years later. It’s a long story but the upshot is that she’s really easy.”

My brother goes over and offers to buy the Barrel a drink.

She turns him down.