Brad goes back home tomorrow, so we wanted to have one last wild night of roaming around drunkenly in the maze that is London. An All-Nighter seemed well-suited. We started the night out on the last underground train of the night, which was empty except for two teenage girls on the other side of the car. I took this as my cue to pole dance while singing 'Dazed and Confused'. This was good. The mood was set. The night was warm.
We got off in Camden and chugged a few Becks at a bus stop, wondering where our night would take us. Rosie, who has a job at a hospital that requires early rising, didn't come out with us but did manage to kick-start our night without actually being there. She sent me a text around midnight that read: "Yale rowers are going to contact you". Sure enough, I got a phone call five minutes later from some unidentified male's voice asking if he or they or it could join us. I was game because of the fountain of Becks I had just poured down my throat, but Meesh and Brad heard "Yale Rower" and "Stranger" and weren't very keen on the idea. That combination, I must admit, does not sound very appealing, but the voice on the other end of the phone was pleasant enough so I gave him our location - I'm all about some Ivy Leaguer Intimidation. Other unappealing combinations presented themselves as well, like when a plump man in a pink sweater vest offered us cocaine, very generously, I might add.
We met up with our friend, James, an Oxford scholar, who suggested the Camden Lock as a suitable place to drink and be merry since all of the bars were closing and it was a Monday night. The Lock is located on a canal, the same canal that I dropped my Mum's J.Crew leather glove in six months earlier. The Lock is where memories are made, apparently. As soon as we sat down, a balding man clad in a striped sweater and un-tied Nike's, sat down at our table and begged to buy a beer from us. We politely refused. The Yale rowers called and asked me to meet them at the tube station, so I left the Lock and walked back into Camden, fully confident in my ability to conjure up a possible image of what these Ivy League beasts would look like. The Yale rowers lived up to my expectations quite well. Both were wearing brightly coloured jeans. Both were massive, with the biceps of Zeus and broad chests that looked as if they had a gladiator's metal breast plate underneath their v-necks. They were fucking terrifying, and surprisingly humble and nice. Ivy League Homeboy Number One was from the O.C, and we spent the whole night talking about good literature and that feeling you get when you drive down PCH in Newport Beach with all the windows down and you can feel the salt on your face and the wind on the back of your neck and how there's nothing like it in the world. Homeboy Number Two was from Berlin, and he disappeared with his girlfriend later on in the night. His German face is very insignificant to me. When we met back up with everyone in the Lock, the balding man was still there discussing something with everyone's attention fully locked onto his dirtied face. He said his name was Marco, and he was from Naples but had grown up in South Africa, worked for MTV, and had base-jumped off of the Eiffel Tower and the Shard many times. He told us to youtube him. So there we were, sitting around a table with a middle aged base-jumper, a Yale Rower, and an Oxford Scholar, all of us drinking canned beer. It was the oddest situation I have ever been in, and the base-jumper held my hand for ten minutes too long.
Brad kept peeing on a white van, and I was becoming very frustrated because of my inability to urinate as stealthily and as easily as a dude, which I voiced very loudly. A girl from a few tables down who was drinking beer as well heard me and was all like, "I need to piss too, do you wanna be my Piss Partner? I've been pissing in Camden my whole life," and she grabbed my hand and off we went. She kept saying things like, "Watch out, you don't want 'em to see your bum," and other nice British things like that. I am eternally grateful for her advice.
We ditched the base-jumper, who stumbled off into the unknown, and we all walked back to James', smoked African bush weed until the sun came up, drank more beer, and then walked to Primrose Hill, which is a lookout point where you can see all of London. It was six in the morning when we reached the top. There was a clan of wasted Irish peoples and a very friendly man named Marcel, who would not fuck off no matter how many times the Yale Rower told him to. "Hey my friends, I am from Strausburg. Enjoy London! Cheers. London is beautiful." Brad kept provoking him, which led the Yale Rower to get very protective and puffy, so we left and walked down the hill. Brad referred to them as the 'Primrose Crew', as if they were some kind of Irvine hoodlum skate crew or something. Crews exist all over the world, apparently. I appreciate a good crew. At seven, Rosie let us in to her house and we had breakfast and recapped the night. It was interesting, to say the least, and I think Brad will leave London with a massive hangover.
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