A Brief Study
by Mónica Ferreira
Here’s the most shocking thing you’re going to hear this week: it is possible to go out just to have fun. Crazy, I know, but in some places, people don’t nurse this strange death which I see so much in Aberdeen. There, dying on a night out is simply a side effect, a risk people are willing to take. This is a metaphoric death, I should add.
This is why I was so surprised with what I saw here: the utter recklessness of my fellow privileged millennials. So untouchable, they knock on heaven’s door like a sick kids game. How did I come to this conclusion? Well, I watched the tables turn.
In Aberdeen, with clubs closing at 3 a.m, sometimes 2, the need to maximize time is critical. This means by 10 p.m, bathtubs worth of spirits have been downed. By 11, ATMs are spitting out tenner after tenner for those whose tolerance shows the strength of a professional weightlifter and featherweights alike. By 12, the clubs are filling up like rush hour. It is an atmosphere primed for epileptic attacks, and if you’re claustrophobic, please do not venture to such places. There be Dragons, or just smoke machines.
The streets fill with students who finally take the chance to wear their summer clothes, because if not then, when? Silly me, I used to find it insulting to see crop tops and skirts on window shops. Were they mocking me? With this weather? I know now they were not. No, not at all.
And how twisted, my friends’ priorities. How very sadistic. A hundred mothers cry. The deliberate choices they make, even before their common sense is knocked out by the alcohol: to leave their jackets at home so as not to pay those £2 in the cloakroom, but to be willing to blow up their money on VKs like a pyromaniac.
Oh, and the hormones. Human speech? Gone. No words needed. Nothing. It is a scene straight out of the Discovery Channel, if the whole animal kingdom was loaded with cut-price Viagra. In fact, let me tell you, after a year and half of nights out in Aberdeen, I feel very much entitled to brag about trips to the African Savanna I never actually took. Don’t you?
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