Please note the “You Can’t Sit With Us” shirt. Americans are exclusive that way.
Oxford is a peculiar little place. For those of you who have been tuning in to my entries (hi, Mom), you may recall tales of Oxford study abroad-ers peeing in the middle of club dance floors, trekking home miles alone barefoot, waking up in bathtubs drenched in baby oil, and overall, losing a whoooole lot of dignity. Me visiting was no exception.
I quickly realized that the thing about this storybook-seeming town, with its weaving cobblestone pathways and Gothic cathedrals perched on hillsides, is how intellectual its inhabitants are. There’s talk of politics and philosophy, art and astronomy – and people that brainy? There’s a tendency to cope. With hard drugs and alcohol, naturally.
That’s the only plausible explanation I have for my weekend excursion. During the day, we browsed farmer’s markets and boutiques, spending lunchtime reading by campus with books we rented from the library.
There was an odd mixture of undergrads cramming for class and men plastered in broad daylight. As I later learned, even more people blew off steam at night when the locals partied hard at dicey pubs just like it was New Years in Ibiza – or Ibitha, as I say now that I’m extremely cultured. After splitting a bottle of the best wine 3 pounds could buy, Kayla and I reunited with our other USD friends at one of the most popular (and only) clubs in the area, Camera. For reasons I can’t explain, it was Bellydancing Night.
And because it was Bellydancing Night, there were dancers shimmying all over the stage to what would be best described as the electronic remix of one of my mom’s Greek dancing CDs.
Me: “Is this normal?”
Kayla: “In Oxford it is.”
Enough said. Now, there are rules when it comes to going out with me: tequila is an unspoken constant (please don’t make me even look at Smirnoff), chasers are for freshmen, kleptomania has been known to happen, and if there’s a stage, by god, I’ll be on it. Kayla is also a firm follower of these partying commandments, so she and the others joined me as we (keyword: attempted to) bellydance alongside the snazzy ladies decked out in satin and gold. My mom, Marti, had bellydanced when she was younger so that was enough to convince me I possessed the innate ability; I assumed I would more or less be a professional as long as the environment was right.
Turns out it wasn’t. Instead of mastering the complex and fluid hip movements of the dancers, the alcohol worked against me and I just awkwardly wobbled around the stage like I had been electrocuted. Surprisingly enough, this resulted in the security guards yanking us down within five minutes. Giving England another reason to hate Americans? Check! The bouncers threw off my groove and, like Kuzco, I could no longer be content with this setting so we relocated to another club, Lava & Ignite.
This time, there were multiple bars inside and old school Usher (bless them) was blaring from the speakers, so I felt right at home. My Queen Mary friends later asked how Oxford boys compared to London ones, and my answer is that in Oxford they are much less diverse (living in East London, there’s every color under the sun, and here the vast majority just have that classic pale-and-slightly-inbred white boy look… think Eminem circa 2005), yet I did spot some borderline cute fellows, compared to London’s grand total of zero. That being said, they were also little shits.
The night could best be summed up by a conversation I had with a few blokes (see guys, I am cultured) who said they were Oxford students our age. It started ordinarily enough: I was being verbally abusive per usual, and per usual the guys laughed along because for some reason they assumed I was joking. Then, one offered to take me over to the bar for a drink, and I explained that, first of all, I already had a glass of straight tequila I was not about to part ways with, and second, I wasn’t single and didn’t want to give him the wrong impression.
“That’s what I figured,” the guy casually replied. “But, I mean, all that matters is if you have a whore pass?”
“A what?” I said, crossing my arms. I didn’t like where this was going.
“You know, a pass from your boyfriend to be a whore when he’s not around. Like now.” … I know, I know. Who says that?
“Yes, actually, I get a pass for girls and attractive men. So I guess that doesn’t apply to you, sorry!” It was a typical sarcastic Arianna rebuttal.
By this point, Kayla had overheard our exchange (as she was a couple feet away chatting with one of their friends) and stepped in, by declaring, “Children, I think it’s time for you to go.” Typical Kayla assertion of dominance.
The Brits started sputtering some excuses about blah blah they didn’t mean it like that but their accents weren’t posh enough to keep me listening. Kayla interrupted Whore Pass Dude by saying, “And your friend over here let it slip that you’re actually 18, not 20. Isn’t it past your bedtime?”
On cue, the guys glared daggers at their friend and he responded with a look so guilty you knew it was true; I immediately felt unclean for even breathing the same air as the barely legal bros. That was probably our 5th conversation that night with the opposite sex that went downhill fast, so after that debacle, we stuck to hanging out with our USD friends.
Overall, it was a day of highs and lows; ending, at the very least, on a high note as we devoured kebabs from the UK version of a food truck before sunrise. Kayla chased a gray cat down the street, apparently named Brutus, who obviously had a long history of being harassed by drunken USD students. Oxford was a success.
The Art of Being Basic 