Tall tales from another century

I came across an old flatmate on the web a few months ago (did a quick search, after another flatmate wondered what had became of him). I made contact with this august gentleman, now living & working in the Middle East & there followed a flurry of nostalgic emails as we reminded each other how reprehensibly we behaved a century ago...

And today, out & about, I saw a woman who featured in one of those nostalgic reminscences...

Warning: I will be taking off at tangents as I tell this story. Try to keep up.

I don't know what year it was... 1982 or 83 perhaps? I flatted with 4 others on the 9th & 10th floors of a city council flat. It was an awesome place. 4 bedrooms & a bathroom upstairs, a master bedroom, lounge, kitchen & 2nd bathroom downstairs. And a sizeable balcony running along the front of the place.

We spent a lot of time at the Southern Cross Tavern. In fact, one flatmate got himself a job there & is now happily married with 4 kids, to our regular barmaid...

And so we decided to hold a tequila party. I think tequila was decided upon because... well who knows why actually, probably because we saw it as the quickest way to obliterate ourselves.

Invitations made it clear that ONLY tequila would be consumed on the premises. Although the first guests to arrive brought copious bottles of THE red wine of its day Fairhall River Claret, and made an impressive start on this. Which in retrospect - red wine followed by tequila - was a mistake.

I'm starting to feel queasy already...

Anyway, the red wine drinkers were a bunch of women of my acquaintance. One I went to school with & always harboured a crush on. Her best friend, was also at the time, my on & off girlfriend. I was never really sure if we were on or off until the end of any given evening we were together actually. Accompanying them were a tall, attractive librarian (who may or may not have settled down eventually & spawned a daughter called Natalie), and another woman called Josie, who was pretty, and skinny, except that she sported what I shall obliquely refer to as one of the great briskets of her time.

More guests arrived, mostly from the ranks of a very bad rugby team I played for. We were possibly the most motley & worst rugby players to ever take the field.

At some stage early in the evening, Josie asked if she could have a guided tour of the flat. Josie usually came equipped with an overly cool & haughty looking boyfriend. But this night, he wasn't in evidence.

I showed her the downstairs bedroom first, which was not my room. She exclaimed "What a fantastic bed" and launched herself onto it, bouncing up & down.

And to this day I regret that I didn't think "So what if it's not my bedroom & my off & on girlfriend is in the next room, and where's her boyfriend anyway?" and get on the bed with her.

But there you go. I didn't. The rest of the tour was a non event, as was my acquaintance with the attractive Josie, my bed was not bounced upon by anyone & shortly thereafter we were back downstairs.

Whereupon, the librarian asked if she could have a guided tour. And of course gentleman that I am...

This time we got right past my bedroom & into that of another flatmate. At which stage the librarian began casting off her clothes & womanhandling me across the room.

Naive & innocent that I was, I fled downstairs to see if I still had a girlfriend. And she wasn't fazed at all, joking even "my tour of the flat didn't take that long".

But in fact, her initial tour of my flat took much longer. On about our third meeting, she & I had gone home from the Cross... and well... actually, the visit might have been shorter except that in one of those magnificent Wellington coincidences, she had gone downstairs in the middle of the night to get some water, then came bounding back up in a panic to whisper "My ex-husband is asleep on your couch!". And it turned out that my flatmate's boyfriend (NZ Chunder mile Champion at the time) had been best man at her wedding several years before & his mate had come to our place with them to crash.... So in fact we were stuck in my room then (bummer) until this guy & my flatmate's bf had left, sometime late the next day...

Back at the Tequila Party... my Middle Eastern flatmate, who was there with his girlfriend, was halfway up the stairs chatting with other friends, when a naked librarian descended, grabbed him by the arm & dragged him upstairs.

All we knew in the lounge was that someone upstairs was making a hell of a lot of noise. Later, when we pieced the whole story together we realised that first of all a bedroom was trashed, and then they moved to the bathroom, attempted to have a shower together & flooded the 2nd floor. Then they regained the bedroom & passed out.

Meanwhile, in the downstairs bathroom, his unsuspecting, and very intoxicated girlfriend was leaning over the toilet bowl feeling very unwell & introducing herself to one of our rugby comrades who was doing pretty much the same thing.

These two later married, but I wasn't invited to the wedding, possibly because I would have told their parents how they met.

At the end of the evening (not long before dawn), the girls turned their attention to what we were going to do about the librarian & how we would get her home. On inspecting the 2nd floor, we realised pretty much what had transpired & the one sober person present (the Southern Cross barmaid who had been working that night, not drinking) offered to take her home.

But we couldn't find her clothes. So we ended up dressing this woman in a mix of my & my flatmate's clothes, then he & I bundled her into his girlfriend's mini & off we drove to Miramar. And there, we sneaked her into her parents house & left her comatose on the couch dressed in men's clothes.

The next day, we did find her gear, spread all around the flat & in different rooms... & I put them all into a shopping bag & decided that I'd drop them to her at the library on my way somewhere else. When I got there, I asked another librarian if she was in today "No, she phoned in sick" was the unsurprising response. So handing a bag full of clothes, including underwear, jewellery & watch over the counter I said "Can you give these to her when she comes in next? She left them at my place last night."

Always kind of proud of that moment :) The librarian did cross my path again on a couple of recreational occasions, but she never, ever mentioned this episode.

Never saw Josie again as far as I can remember, with or without her haughty boyfriend. My off & on girlfriend was mostly off after that. My school friend, on whom I harboured a crush, and I never managed to both be single at the same time, although I do run into her & her family now & then.

And things in the flat were quiet for a while after.

Until we decided to hold a Home-made Sake party...