Finals of a Diarist...
It's over. Coming out of exam schools there are crowds packing the street, balloons, camera flashes. I had been planning a celebratory dance as I passed out of the gates. I think of the opening scenes of The Naked Gun, where Frank steps off the plane and walks over to the assembled crowd and says "and you, all coming here for your story, probably think I'm a big hero, well, don't you know how much a man can hurt inside?" The police are pushing us to the side. There is St-Annes-New-Man, and my ex-girl-friend, and my long lost mate from home Dazed and Confused. Diamond Geezer hands me a spliff. "Rolled between the smooth legs of a virgin" he says. "Oh so you rolled it yourself then?" What happened next? In the last weeks my alcohol tolerance has been lower than any time since my uncle Alan gave me a sip of his sherry on my tenth birthday and then found me dressing up in my mother's clothes. Suddenly I am outside the Bodleian library, attempting to pour talcum powder on my friend Cappuccino Kid. A sudden gust of wind carries the powder over his head and covers most of the people on the steps. "It's gone in my drink you twat," shouts a random irate man, but it is OK because I am hiding behind a pillar. People are staring at me because I am covered in gell and glitter and powder and maybe because I keep trying to hug them. Somehow I don't throw up.
In an unfortunate twist of the space time continuum, the end of my finals has coincided with a fund raising parent's dinner in college. By this time I am feeling pretty distinguished. I believe my entire table are stooping to catch my conversation, although I hear myself saying "It's a lot like finishing any other exam except you get covered in shit." My friend's father comes out with a real conversation stopper though. His son is explaining my adornment with champagne and glitter. "That's nothing" he beams. "When we finished we used to piss on each other."
Finalists put their lives on hold. I don't just mean the drinking. You stop worrying about where you are going in your personal life too, and let it all fester like washing up. "When I was your age, I was already qualified," says my father, Right Wing Capitalist With No Teeth. You didn't have a degree I say. "Damn right, I was doing something useful with my life. And I do have teeth." I was hoping to get in to exploitation, I say when he pushes me. I hear there's a market for that. Five years in the city, then I shall have some sort of revelation that this just isn't what I'm about, take up yoga, and go travelling in the East, become a healer.
Maybe I've no right to prevaricate any more. Sorted Graduate has just lost his job, Working Class Hero is going to become a lawyer, while here in Oxford, I, Middle Class Hero, as Working Class Hero has started calling me, sit and say what? The outside world? Today I look through the triangular window. But there's something Nelson Mandela once said, that people are scared, not of having dull grey lives, but of all the things they might become. And I hope that I can stay naïve for as long as possible.
8th Jun 2001