A Night Out in Shoreditch

One of the main reasons why I came to London to study journalism is the fact that there’s always something going on. The hectic and frantic pace of the city has melded perfectly with the Londoners’ hurried disposition. The City’s heart beats in tune with its inhabitants’. Overground and underground, locked inside their offices, running up and down and over, dodging people and dodging glances, the Londoners belong in London like that - always in a rush.

However, all the haste and all the hurries suffer a beautifully monstrous transformation when the sun goes down. As if this was a fairy tale and not the dark, cold pit that London is, the world turns upside down.

Lights that were on are now off, and they’re replaced by new lights, lights with a very different purpose. The skin we cautiously covered during the day for Propriety’s sake becomes exposed, and Propriety is nowhere to be seen. The quiet turns into loud, the sober turns into drunk, and the dark turns into darker.

It’s night-time in Central London.

Yesterday, when the sun had just hidden behind the Shard, and the night was slowly falling over London, my flatmates and I decided we were going out.

You could say we heard the night calling for us, and it wouldn’t be entirely untrue; after a whole summer of clear and soft moons, the intoxicating haze that had just started taking over Shoreditch wasn’t something we were able to resist. So we didn’t.

The plan was to meet this other friend that we had not seen in ages to do some catch up and get a few drinks. Maybe lots of catching up, and maybe more than a few drinks, but it didn’t matter, we were in the mood for a night out, in the mood for enjoying ourselves and in general, enjoy the fact that we were all together again. Who doesn’t love a reunion?

Now, if you’re expecting this to be that part of the movie where the four girls walk down the street looking like goddesses, with the city lights enhancing their movements and turning all the faces as they pass by… get out of here. If there were any girls acting in such fashion last night, it surely wasn’t us.

We were the girls sitting in a terrace, sipping our beers, talking like we hadn’t talked in forever. We were being loud, we were laughing, we probably looked happy.

Which is why, I still can’t wrap my mind around what happened next.

We were having a nice conversation, God knows if we were ranting about how renting our new flat had been a real HELL (I'll tell you more of this on another post soon), or if we were just commenting on our different electives for this term. The topic was not as relevant as the fact that we were in the middle of a goddamn conversation. And then this random guy comes out of nowhere and sits next to us.

Man, why? ¿Por qué?

Maybe he didn’t notice our shocked expressions, or maybe he just decided to actively ignore them, because just like that he introduced himself with a loud “Hi :)!” - I swear I could hear the creepy smiley face.

We looked at each other, still in disbelief that this guy had not only found it was okay to randomly sit with us, but apparently he also thought we were supposed to stop whatever we were doing in order to pay attention to him. Because, of course, he was only being nice, right? No, it wasn’t right.

Now, I did not appreciate the fact that he had decided to interrupt us and yet he seemed to think it was fine, but my mum made sure I acted like a polite, decent person in these situations. I said hi back, smiled (totally didn’t mean it and I wish he damn noticed) and told him we were having a girls night, we had lots of catching up to do and we would really like to be left alone.

Perhaps it was a bit obvious that I was pissed, but come on, why am I expected to be nice? I did not want to sound friendly, because I wanted him gone. However, our guy seemed really unfamiliar with this sort of speech, because he smiled like he hadn’t heard anything and insisted, “Oh, it looked like you were having a conversation so I thought I could join!”

I genuinely had to bite my tongue here because I wanted so badly to just tell him to goddamn leave. What was so hard to understand? You asked, we say no, you fuck off. Easy peasy.

But it didn’t seem that simple, so I silently apologised to my mum, for I was about to ignore some of the rules she’d taught me: I explicitly told him we were obviously not interested in talking to him, that the conversation we were having was personal - so no, he couldn’t join - and that it had been really rude to interrupt us. Let’s also say I finished by asking him to please continue on his way.

Did he, though? Nope. Instead, he looked at me from head to toe and asked, looking very pleased with himself “Where are you from?”

People, please help me understand why this question was relevant, because I still don’t get it. I did ask him, and he looked surprised again that I had just answered his question with another question. He ended up leaving, but we had to switch from polite to plain rude to make him understand he wasn’t welcome. When he was finally gone, we laughed it off, still a bit shocked because honestly what the hell.

The funniest part? Not even ten minutes after this episode two new guys decide to sit with us. And it was the same story over again.

“You looked like you need some company”, “My friend is drunk and he just had to sit with you”, “Come on, don’t be like that, maybe we can be of some help”

Can I please just emphasise that we had already told him to leave before these comments started to rain on us?

Trying to look for the bright side in the situation, one of my friends asked one of the guys that, if he really wanted to help, he could buy her a drink.

You would not believe how fast his face changed from amused to annoyed. “That’s not how things work” he complained. And finally - after asking them to leave one more time - they were gone.

Thank God the terrace had to be closed and we ended up sitting inside the pub, all cosy and warm and left alone to talk in peace, Jesus.

It ended being a really fun night, we had all missed each other and had so many things to share, by the time we were walking home we didn’t even remember those guys. It wasn’t until the morning after that I found myself thinking about it. Why had they thought it was okay to keep demanding our attention when we had already rejected them? Why did they seem so shocked when we didn’t change our minds? And what on earth does “that’s not how things work” mean? Hell if I want to know.

The sun came out after that night, and people went back to ignoring each other. Strangers would not interact unless necessary, conversations would be kept to a minimum, glances would remain attached to their respective papers, books and cellphones.