My Night At O’Hans

20 Feb 2011 2 Comments

by Nikkiin life Tags: , , , , , , ,

My night started in a fairly standard way – I was lazing about in my room, watching British TV and tweeting about it. On Friday, I had agreed to going out to O’Hans with Gerda, Miranda and Laura on Saturday, and I had talked to Gerda in the afternoon, so I was mostly just killing time before Gerda got off work. Shortly after 9:30, I got a call, talked to Gerda for about two minutes, put on my fedora, my leather jacket and left for the city.

I wasn’t in the mood for alcohol, so I abstained at the predrinking party at Ray’s and, by 11:15, we were off to O’Hans.

O’Hans is the bar of choice for my friends and I. While I do not know why they prefer it, I’m fond of the place due to the relaxed atmosphere, the decent, and varied, music and the fact that it’s the bar most twenty something non-STI ridden Reginans end up at.  Plus, there’s no cover charge and they have only asked for my ID twice in the past three years.  I’m legal (even in America), but it’s just an annoying hassle to get IDed – I always get double takes as my hair is… inconsistent.

I should have known from the start that that the night was going to be weird.  Within five minutes of getting into the door, some random guy came up to me and asked about my hat – for some reason, he thought that there was a cool story behind it.  There’s not.  Unless, of course, you consider shopping in the men’s department at Winners cool and exciting.  And the place was absolutely packed – I had never seen that many people crammed onto the dance floor.  Again, I should have seen this coming – the first Saturday of Reading Week in a university bar?

It took awhile – a lot longer than usual, in fact – but we eventually settled in on the dance floor and marked out a spot for our circle.  It’s smaller than usual and people keep crashing into us but, hey, still fun, right?

And then came a strange guy.

He was, as it would turn out, to be only the first, and probably the most successful, of our admirers.  It wasn’t long before he had his arms around Laura and we were all killing ourselves laughing.  For one, Laura has a boyfriend.  For two… well, we all had alcohol in our hands (even me, and I was the DD) and it was just plain funny.  It was the first time I had seen anyone cut into our group of friends like that – guys would always come and try to dance with us, but they had never managed to get their hands on any of us, y’know?

Eventually, the guy left and we moved to a different spot on the dance floor.  Some girl gives Ray a really obvious once over and ‘accidentally’ runs right into him.  And then came the two guys from BC, their sights firmly fixed on Laura and Gerda.  One of them offers to buy us shots and we’re all, sure, okay! and totally not expecting to actually get anything out of it.  Well, they delivered (Gerda and Laura talked them into banana Jäg instead of tequila – disgusting either way) and I, the DD, was up to two drinks.  Whoops.  Oh well, I figured, I still have two hours to dance and I have a high metabolism.  I wasn’t anywhere near tipsy, but I ordered a water to make sure that I was perfectly sober by the end of the night.

By this point, Gerda had gained yet another admirer.  Hilariously, the second one was also a short guy (and both me and Gerda have a rule – guys shorter than us are so in the not column) and quite plastered.  He flat out told Gerda that he thought she was sexy.  Gerda immediately crossed the circle and used me to ignore the guy – which is hilarious, since I usually do that to her.  Anyway, the kid left (seriously, he looked young – not sure if it was the height, hair and the clothes, but he looked twenty, though the creases at the corners of his eyes suggested otherwise), the other two guys went off to fetch Laura another drink and we all sighed in relief.  Finally!  We can dance in peace!

And then came this huge (but short) guy who pushed his way up to Ray, whom I was standing right beside, and was all ‘you fuckin’ with me?’  Ray was all ‘what?  No dude, sorry!’ and the guy was all ‘you don’t fuck with me!’

The next thing I saw was a fist flying at Ray and another guy leaping to hold the big, drunken idiot back.  It was too late – Ray got punched in the face (for the second time – long story) and his glasses went flying into the crowded dance floor.

Ray staggered back and I automatically reached out to steady him.  The idiot was still trying to come at Ray and, after realising that he couldn’t see his glasses in the immediate vicinity, Ray used the crowd to his advantage and slipped off as Gerda, Laura and I distracted the nutter.  The idiot even started to take a swing at Gerda, but I grabbed and yanked her back to me as a bouncer started to pull the drunk away.  Neither Gerda or Laura remember the guy starting to take a swing at us, but both of them were plenty more liquored up than I was.  Needless to say, I was stone cold sober by this point and had whipped out my iPod to use as a flashlight to hunt for Ray’s glasses.  Turns out that someone had actually managed to rescue his glasses and they were only a little bent and not even scuffed.  We were all surprised – the last time Ray got randomly punched in the face (on the opposite side from this time), his glasses were completely destroyed.

Things calm down again and our boy admirers all sneaked back into our group.  BC Guy #1 and Skinny Kid both vied for Gerda’s attention and Gerda responded in the usual fashion – run straight towards me as soon as possible.  By this point, it’s impossible for us to block out the guys – Miranda’s clearly off limits as she’s with her boyfriend, and they must have realised that Ray was just our friend as they flat out ignored him, which makes three guys with an agenda and three girls without boyfriends in sight.

In the end, BC Guy #1 wins out in monopolising Gerda’s time, so Skinny Kid decides that, hey, maybe he has a chance with the girl in the fedora.  Here’s a hint, boys.  Don’t try chatting up a girl by telling her that her friend is really, really attractive.  I just laugh it off – one, not interested and, two, um, yeah, Gerda is much more attractive than I am.  Not gunna lie – I’m the ugly chick in the group photos.  Especially since my hair is currently a disaster – on a good hair day, I can pick up guys in a bar just as easily as the rest of my friends, but today was not a good hair day.  There was a reason for the fedora (other than fedoras being cool, of course) and the (fall) leather jacket.

By this point, last call has come and gone and the lights had flipped onto full brightness.  We stay on the dance floor – everyone has a coat in the coat check but me and nobody particularly wants to brave the congestion near the door.  Skinny Kid is nearby, still watching Gerda, but the BC Guys are gone after realising that they have no chance with either Laura or Gerda.  The three of us, and Miranda, compare notes for the evening and it turns out that the BC Guys decided that obsessing over eyes was the way into a girl’s heart/pants.  Unfortunately, they did it entirely wrong as neither Gerda or Laura consider themselves to have blue eyes and, well, dark room + strangely coloured lights = how the fuck do you know what colour my eyes are?

And that is when some guy attempted to steal my fedora.

No, really, I’m not shitting you.  A guy came up behind me, grabbed my fedora, shoved it on his head and walked off.  I was all :o and Gerda was like ‘wtf get it back you idiot!’ so I ran after him and yanked my fedora back.  So strange – apparently the guy was going around and stealing everyone’s hats.

By now it was well past 2AM and one of the bartenders was wandering about and trying to herd people out of the bar.  So we shuffled off to the coat check, determined that I was driving Gerda, Laura and Ray home, and my fedora was complimented again.  (I’m not actually sure how many times people asked about the hat – I wasn’t paying close enough attention.)

We finally make it out of the bar and through the throng of smokers and, lo and behold, Skinny Kid was with his friends and waiting for us (Gerda) to come out.

“Hi!” He says.  Gerda, who is walking two steps ahead of me, breezes past and doesn’t even notice him.  ”Shit!” Skinny Kid says.  I laugh, run forward and wrap my arms around Gerda, just to be an ass.  Look at me, kid!  I’m touching Gerda!

Turns out that Gerda didn’t hear the guy say shit at all and I cheerfully explained the entire thing to her as the four of us walked back to my car.

We spent the entire (five minute) drive back to Ray’s discussing how fucking weird the night was.  And that guys hitting on us suck cuz we don’t give a fuck about them and just want to dance.  Ray and Laura bailed out at Ray’s apartment and I continued onwards with Gerda, and promptly held up traffic in front of her apartment (on a side street – drunk people don’t know to drive around semi-parked cars, I guess) as we talked about the night and how much men suck and how they never had a chance with us.  Various schemes were come up with to prevent being hit on again (Gerda was the one who brought up the classic pretend-to-be-lesbians scheme, but we dismissed it almost immediately as it would likely only attract very unwanted attention from men) and concluded that we have two options: make Ray pretend to be our boyfriend or make more of the guys come out with us.

All in all, it was the strangest night at O’Hans ever and, hopefully, next time (St Patrick’s Day?) won’t be as eventful and that I’ll have more booze in my system.  At least I’ll have more patience with boys if I’m in a state of alcohol induced bliss.

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  • http://www.monoclelad.com monoclelad

    Clearly Gerda is gay for you back, she was suggesting it as a joke to see if you were into it. You blew your chance Nikki :P

    This all is why I don’t go to places like bars. though I’m practically a regular at the local liquor store, the guy remembers my name even, though I don’t buy much I just go to keep people company while they shop, also because the store has this really cool dog thats super friendly but still super mellow about it. I just don’t like large groups of strangers, or loud music, I don’t really care for music that much really.

    Though as a dude I don’t really have to worry as much about creepers hitting on me. Did I ever tell had guys hit on me before? Its happened a couple times and it wasn’t great, they didn’t want to accept that I was in fact not into them. But it doesn’t happen so much with girls, I mean unless I wear my ghost boo shirt, girls seem to be weirdly drawn to that shirt. I suspect growing my hair out has also had some interesting effects re: girls unexpectedly flirting with me.

  • http://anovelconcept.net Nikki

    The thing is, though, O’Hans has never been like that before. It’s probably all due to the reading week thing making everyone stupid (and Ray and I are the only ones who haven’t graduated yet, so reading week didn’t factor in for the others) – normally you can just drink and dance in peace and nobody bothers you except people you know.

    I do, however, like large groups of strangers and loud music, so… yeah.