The Thrill of a Saturday Night

In the beating heart of a Saturday night, when it’s neither dusk nor dawn, a fuzzy haze of alcohol swirls around your system and instantly you feel like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole. The taxi cab stops and you step out ready to paint the town, not just red but the entire rainbow. In that instant you feel like you’ve awoken in a strange and wonderful new land, you now watch in glee filled anticipation as neon signs and street lights unfurl before you like a golden path. Surrounded by close friends you now march like an unstoppable army towards the promised paradise. You couldn’t care less that your bank balance is depleted; youthful vigour wills you to believe that the greatest adventure is a mere fingertip away.  Everyone knows that in those magical moments between the setting moon and rising sun, anything can happen.

Stepping into the club queue, you roll your eyes at its length and fantasise of one day being famous and important enough to skip the line and walk straight into VIP. Back to reality, you swivel around and use the first piece of proper math since leaving school, working out the guy to female ratio and the probability of getting laid tonight – not great, but anything is possible. Stepping into the club, the full weight of the thumping music immediately whacks you in the ear. As it then reverberates around your body, a feeling of invincibility is inevitable as you start to feel like a superhero. After a couple of vodka shots, like spinach to Popeye you are ready to find your Olive.

Surrounded by short skirts, lips coloured red and the clatter of heels, you finally know what it’s like to be Hugh Heffner in the Playboy Mansion; like magnets your eyes are drawn to every pair of breasts or buttocks that jiggle into view. With Dutch courage flowing further down your veins, finally you take a chance on a gorgeous mix-race girl with green eyes as bright as the laser lights illuminating the room. However, even before you can get within an inch she senses your approach and draws her friends near to block you off – maybe it isn’t your night after all. But it’s okay because a second later your friends emerge from the crowd and instantly you forget what happened. Drinking and dancing with abandon, you don’t notice as time disappears. As the club draws to an end, the night is only beginning.

As a flood of people tsunami from the exit, you find yourself cast away from your friends. Now lost in this ocean of chaos, your only choice is to seek refuge in a greasy saving grace. Mere inches from the takeaway shop, a total stranger offers you one of his cheesy chips. Without the need for a second word, this man has now become the love of your life, the soul mate you’ve been waiting an eternity to find. In the seconds it takes both of you to demolish every single chip, it seems a divulgence of life stories is needed; eventually he knows more about you than your Facebook profile. Unfortunately, the box is soon emptied and the Hollywood romance come to an end, but before the stranger departs he tells you his name and to add him on Instagram, typically like a drunk goldfish you forget this three seconds later.

“Excuse me, do you have a cigarette?”

Spinning around desperate to find the source of that velvety voice, you take an inconspicuous sharp breath as you finally see her; she is like a Victoria Secret Model that has just stepped off the runway – the spitting image of Jourdan Dunn. Once again you call upon that Dutch courage still circulating inside of you. With her head tilted back in laughter, you have never seen yourself be as witty and confident as you are now. Call it all nine planets aligning or the luck of the Irish, but whatever you’re doing its working. As soon as your phone is out, she is typing her number into it. Begrudgingly you both turn and go your separate ways.

Still caught up in a smitten mist, suddenly like a phoenix bursting from the ashes of a forgotten past, an acquaintance that was never quite a friend appears in the most unexpected place – pissing in a bush. In a blaze of excited nostalgia, naturally a trip down memory lane is required. Funny moments and anecdote of weird classmates are brought up, leaving you both in stitches. The surprise encounter eventually runs its course and you each promise to reconnect, however deep down you both know that this chance meeting was predestined to be fleeting; barely a sentence in the story of each other’s lives.

With weary feet you continue to plod on through the quietening streets, now ghosts of the chorus of booze amplified energy and chatter in them hours ago. The night has come to a glorious end and the thought of sleep now tastes as sweet as a teaspoon of honey. The thought of spending hours looking for a taxi fills you with frustration, then the realisation that its 2016 dawns and inside your phone is the solution to every problem – an app and it’s called Uber.

Finally, the driver arrives. Like a knight on a white horse, he comes galloping from the horizon with a hand reached out and the promise he will whisk you away to that beautiful bed you have been yearning for. The thrill of Saturday night is finally over. Tonight was one good arse night.