I’m writing this entry on the plane and I’m flying over Greenland and it’s beautiful but I cannot get past the fact that I do not live in London anymore. My brain keeps coming back to this and it makes my chest hurt. Anyway. Yesterday was my last full day living on Gower Street, and I am emotionally exhausted in a good way. In the “I am so lucky to have been a part of something so special but ow oof ouch my fucking feelings why did these guys have to be so cool” kind of way.
Alongside Olivia and Georgia, I awoke early to get a $60 Q-tip shoved down my throat to ensure that I was indeed not a plague rat. Something about U.S. entry requirements. We got tea afterwards (matcha for Georgia and I, and of course a chai for Olivia) and picked through a small pop-up market outside of King’s Cross selling mostly baked goods, contemplating big sticks (baguettes, for the less hip) and truffle-infused cheeses that we all knew we had no use for since our imminent departure hung darkly in our bleak and Gowerless futures. We returned to the house just in time for our last Teal Guide to London class, a particularly victorious one since we finally finished workshopping the last couple of features and ensured that we would, in fact, actually have a guide, suck it haters (Chopan). Headshots were taken in the garden, quirky bios were written. And then, as per custom for post-Teal Guide pre-British Seminar lunchage, we went to the Bloomsbury Market. I got my last beautiful, gorgeous, showstopping, spectacular, beloved falafel wrap from Hoxton Beach, sat in the usual spot with the homies, and devoured it with haste. And then, it was time. Time for what? Shut up. Be patient. I’ll tell you. It was time for the Great Race. The Great Race is equal parts scavenger hunt, foot race, and battle of wills, spread out all across London, orchestrated by Olivia, Boogie, and Chopan. Six landmarks, six clues, six riddles, and all the miles upon square miles of central London lie in wait to determine the winners. We were divided into teams of three and turned loose onto the streets. There were no rules except for not dying. I got bodychecked three times by two different Gower Gang members, and apparently Susan bodychecked a small child, although she pleads hearsay: the kid didn’t fall or cry anything, so no harm done. Who was on my team, you might ask? If you must know: Madison and Sage. Only the two most cutthroat-badass social rejects you’ll ever meet. Together our initials read KMS, so we were like, hell yeah, perfect team name, but then Sage thought of a brilliant tagline: Two Gingas and the Ninja, attributed to Sage and I’s red locks and Madison’s freak flexibility and general athleticism. We were golden. We did not win. Why didn’t we win? Mind your business. We spent the rest of the early evening saying goodbye to Maria (John 11:35), wishing death upon the ancient oven that refused to get hot enough to reheat the lasagna (I got it eventually), and taking several extremely cute group pictures (@eckerdlife on Instagram) and, as for myself, feverishly finishing the worst literature paper I’ve ever written in my life. All this was accomplished in time for the commencement of the final planned event of the day: Gower Street Superlatives, an Academy Awards-style ceremony put together exclusively by Georgia. Truly, she went above and beyond for us. She had sent out a 30-something-question survey a week or so beforehand that we all voted on, with hard-hitting headscratchers such as “Most Likely to Lay Down Eggs” and “Most Likely to Fail.” She spent several hours editing together a visual accompaniment to the ceremony with dumb pictures and videos of all of us. It was so sweet and thoughtful and hilarious, and I love her for all the ways she pretends not to care and even more for the ways that she does. Before you ask, yes, I did win a few superlatives, namely Most Likely to Go Postal, to Be Against Superlatives, Best Hair, and Best British Seminar Outfits. A fine array. I wear many hats. Paper destroyed and awards ceremony finished, I no longer had any excuse not to start packing. God, that sucked. The amount of times I cried this day cannot be cognitively extrapolated by any being on this earth, human or supercomputer or lizard. The rest of the night devolved into the consumption of substances, the singing of karaoke, the dribbling of tears, and squeezing of hugs. “Wish You Were Here” has henceforth morphed from that one kind of sad Pink Floyd tune into if one of my brain cells even begins to conceptualize the particular intonation of the song’s opening static my eyeballs produce at least ten healthy, corn-fed tears each. Hopefully that’ll change soon, because I don’t want to cry and think about college every time I hear that song. What a loser that’d make me.
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The whiteboard schedule of doom decreed that, on this day, we would play basketball. So, despite the spitting chilly spring-rain, a ragtag group of six – myself, Madison, Boogie, Anna, Georgia, and Chopan – ventured into the great beyond of “that park just behind Russell Square where there’s hoops.”
I used to hoop, once upon a time. I loved basketball in middle school, but haven’t really played since my abysmal freshman year of high school ruined it for me. So, it’d been a while. I was nervous, and basketball in the rain sounded like a recipe for skinned knees and shitty ball handling and probably frustrated tears from yours truly because I’m just that type of person. I was wrong. Basketball in the rain is sick. Especially when there’s very low stakes and you’re playing with people you fucking adore. It ended up being some of the most fun I’ve had on this trip. I don’t want to sound like a corndog when I say this, but I will either way, so I’ll just say it: that afternoon with those people healed some small part of me, an 8-year-old bruise that I didn’t realize I still had. I remembered that playing basketball competitively could be fun, was fun, once, and not terrifying and anxiety- and self-hatred-inducing. We walked back to shower the cold and sweat off of our skin and start our dreaded, dastardly literature papers, and Madison was kind and lovely and miraculous enough to braid my wet hair. How great is she? I’ll tell you: pretty darn. Listen. You already know what’s up, because you read the damn title. Yes, it is true. We won trivia.
Now. If you did not live in or around 35 Gower Street between the dates of 29 January and 13 May, 2022, there is no way for you to comprehend the gravity of this win, of this utterly delicious and well-earned victory. Let me try to relate this to you. On Tuesday nights, The College Arms holds a pub quiz night hosted by a jolly man of ambiguous age named Mark. The College Arms is a pub just around the corner from the house. Many things have happened here. Never mind that for now. The important thing to know is that nearly every single Tuesday, without fail, a group of us has attended trivia here and given it our best shot. What usually ends up happening is that we get last place and everyone gets sloshed and comes back to the house to engage in tomfoolery. Tuesdays have become mythologized in the house for this very reason; many of the silliest things to befall the Gower Gang have occurred on Tuesday nights post-trivia. Let me walk you through a typical trivia night for us at College Arms. The first section – the easier, common knowledge stuff – always and without fail incites confidence in the group. “Guys,” Susan might say, eyebrows raised and lips pursed. “I know we always say this, buuuut,” Boogie might shrug. He doesn’t have to finish the sentence. We’re all thinking it. What if? What if this is the week that we finally shake the shackles of perpetual last place? Then, the current events section happens. And then music identification, which I am very good at when the music in question came out pre-1992, but that is almost never the case. And the section that is inevitably about some British TV show from the 80s that none of us have ever heard of, or about the Norwegian royal family, or something equally as far-removed from a group of weird American college students’ range of knowledge. And then, we lose. But we always get the bonus point for being the most enthusiastic team. But this Tuesday was different. The randomized section was American history-themed and the newest song in the music section was “Love Shack.” We amassed 44 points total – the highest we have ever scored. We all shared a wide-eyed look when we received our sheet back post-grading. As Mark began to announce the rankings, we joined hands around the table and bowed our heads, if not to say a Hail Mary than to sip our drinks. None of us could stop giggling. When he got to second place, we held our breaths and squeezed each other’s hands – and then he announced the team in the back corner. It was official. At long last, the Gower Gang had won trivia. The £50 bar tab was ours. Jagerbombs were had, and we of course got a picture with Mark before we parted. I exited College Arms for the last time singing “We Are the Champions” on our way to drunkenly climb the jungle gym across the street. As far as Tuesdays go, not so bad. "I'M PISSING EXCELLENCE." -Bobo
"Why are shoelaces farther than ugh?" -Pigeon "This joint looks a little demented." -Audrey Audrey: “Why isn’t the bus coming?” Boogie: “I don’t know, I’m not the fucking bus.” Random little kid in Notting Hill: “Why are you in charge of my life!!!!” Babysitter: “Well, you’re five.” Random little kid: “AAAAAAH” *punches a bush, twice* "When there is milk, there is dark." -Bobo "Shorty, are you hurt?" -Boogie Me: “How are you feeling chunder-wise?” Bobo: “I feel like a woman!!!” Sage: “My great-grandfather was a horse-drawn milkman.” Boogie: “Did he bang stay-at-home moms?” Madison: “No, he didn’t, he was fake, he was drawn by a horse.” "I have a greater phobia of toilet paper than I do cheetahs." -Sage "Brazilians don’t understand gnome humor." -Chopan Imagine this: there’s one week left.
The house organizes a reading for the creative writing seniors, since they’re not on campus and can’t participate in the traditional Epigraph. Madison, Georgia, and Olivia spend all week preparing. Olivia handmakes collaged invitations and drink menus; old duplicate books from the library are ripped and cut apart to make origami flower garlands and a book-hedgehog. They move all the couches around, make a podium out of stacked books, and turn the library into an open bar. Georgia is the bartender, and all of the readers have drinks named after them. Yours is an old fashioned (called the Karma Karly), your favorite, but bourbon ended up being way too expensive so it’s not available. There’s mojitos, though – or, sorry, Boogie on the Beats – so you’re not mad. You look around and everyone is all dressed up. Sage is wearing a fucking bowtie. These people, these decorations, all the effort and love and care and imperfection in everything – it’s all probably the cutest thing you have seen, ever, in real life, and you’re touched that they care, that everyone showed up, that they even want to be here at all. Hell, even Maria’s here, and she hasn’t stopped smiling the whole time. Chopan says that he wrote some introductory and concluding words. The look he gives you after he says this is distinctly shit-eating. You know what that means. You ask if you will cry, and he winks and says that he did in fact target you, that you had better start mentally preparing yourself. This is not a difficult feat, making you cry, but still. His claim is confirmed during the introduction, when you shed a single respectful tear out of your left eyeball because he makes eye contact with you when he says “I believe in you.” You know he does this because two weeks ago, he gave an impromptu inspirational-future-senior-graduation-imminent talk in the common room and you accidentally cried your actual eyes out in front of everyone, and he went through all the seniors and named specific characteristics that made them special and good, and when he got to you he said “Karly’s………weird,” and it made you feel insecure. You talked to him alone through more than a couple of tears afterwards because you hate yourself and don’t know what you’re doing with your life, and he told you that he doesn’t know what he’s doing either and that you’re weird in the best way possible, and that you don’t have to be tough. You read your piece, and others read theirs. It's incredible. Why is everyone in this goddamned house so talented. This is ridiculous. So many people come up to you afterwards to say that they loved your words, that your reading was wonderful, even though Dreadlocks screamed and dry heaved just outside the window for the majority of it and your hands wouldn’t quit shaking despite the generous glass of red you chugged right before stepping up. After, Chopan reads his conclusion. He says shit such as: I have enjoyed laughing and arguing with and learning from and getting to know you all. I am going to miss you. You have all made me a better man. You cry a lot, as the motherfucker supreme predicted. You approach him after, mascara shot, to say “fuck you, Jonathan.” He laughs, victorious, and says he will miss you so much, kid, that his office and inbox is always open, don’t be a stranger, and hugs you. It's a good hug. Everyone is so happy. A little later, you sit alone in the stairwell and say thank you to nobody in particular and cry some more. The bar is open. You tell everyone that you love them, and you find that even though you are rather drunk, you mean it. You and Maria sit in the garden for a little while and she says some really nice things about you. You are wearing your grandmother’s blouse. There’s one week left. It’s spring break and I just saw the Arnolfini Portrait, which I saw an entire 300-page book on in Foyle’s once and thought, “hm.” I didn’t even know it was up in this bitch. What a fun little surprise. I kind of want that book now. But I’ve already bought, like, fifteen books that I want to bring home with me. I bought two books this morning alone. At least I’ll have plenty of distractions this summer.
Speaking of going home. I graduate from actual Eckerd fucking College in a month. Ew. I don’t like this. In one month I will be a college graduate, will have a BFA and officially be a fine artist according to nobody important. Eckerd has given me some pretty swell years. No more, after this. This is all I get. Soon I’ll see my beautiful friends and have one last romp, darken my freckles in St. Pete for the last time in a while. This is going to be so difficult. I’ll miss it. God. Ow. Outside the window, in Trafalgar Square, the fountains are on. There’s the ice cream sculpture with the drone-fly, the big ass pillar with some guy on it, the London Eye peeking. Time to walk around some more, download some more culture. I’ll see you later. I’ve been in a weird rut recently. I realized I don’t have much time left here, and there’s a lot I haven’t done for my capstone project and to prepare for What The Fuckity Hell Comes After May Twenty-Second Two Thousand and Twenty Two. I know it’ll be nice to live at home for a while. I’m excited to have my big bed back, my room with all my beloved things, to maybe work in the city and give playing pretend my best shot. A lot of people really seem to believe in me. Not to sound like a total college senior, but there’s a whole lot of empty unknown ahead and I’m really quite scared. I’m not doing everything wrong, but there are a good number of things I am actively ignoring and therefore messing up and there’s just a lot there.
Anywho, I’m in St. Paul’s Cathedral with the traveling circus and it’s too windy today to go up into the dome, but it’s beautiful in here. It was nice, anyway, until someone started to use a power saw somewhere above me and be a nuisance. Why is there so much construction here? Are all cities like this? I was really enjoying the quiet mumbling and milling about of people and the organ playing faintly and the passing in and out of light and now it sounds like someone’s slaying eight dragons with two chainsaws and stuffing their remains in a woodchipper. It smells of Home Depot now, though, so that’s at least nice. I ate some really delicious Ethiopian-Eritrean fusion food for lunch at Leather Lane and I shall think about it forever. After everyone ate, all the girls huddled for warmth in a little alcove of buildings while the wind tore bitterly down the lane, and Audrey took pictures of us, and I said that I looked like I had just gotten out of the dryer, and there were laughs. I went and saw La traviata at the Royal Opera House last night and wore Meme’s blouse from the family portrait, and tonight I’m seeing the Book of Mormon. I’m going to the Seven Sisters Cliffs on Saturday and Amsterdam in a couple of weeks. Since I realized I’m running out of time, I decided to do literally everything. Oh okay we’re praying now. Maybe everything will be okay. The “Our Father” is still the same. Priests get sick threads here. And there’s God’s woodchipper again. I hope the crying little boy I saw in the crypt found his mother. I just decided that today has been good. This morning I woke up feeling particularly sorry for myself, a dash or 86 of misery, if you will, but after I fixed myself a breakfast of peanut butter banana toast and a milky coffee and sat my sorry ass down in the common room to have class, I forgot about myself for a while. We were workshopping pieces for the guide that might not happen, and Chopan said something dumb, and as I looked around the room there was the familiar sight of everyone sitting on the dumb blue couches and dumber blue carpet smiling and laughing with each other, and it was all right. This is a really nice place to think. Many people have left, so it’s quieter. The organ is beautiful and soft. I kind of just want them to blast that shit. I want the floor to shake because of that organ. I want to be transported to the nth dimension via organ. I wonder if it’s just some guy playing it in there. I wonder if it’s the same guy all the time. Goodness gracious me the ceiling is so pretty. I want to live here. I’ll sleep in the darn pulpit if I have to. Alack, I have been shamed! The light was pretty on the mural and I simply wanted to take that light home with me, and then a voice boomed from about twenty feet to my right, “THERE’S NO PHOTOS,” accompanied by a very pointed eyebrow raise. I feel like a kid. I’m smiling and trying not to giggle as I write in my journal here after being scolded by a man feeling very important with his suit and his eyebrows. Very unchristian indeed. I wonder why the no photos after 4:15 rule is a rule. I, in fact, have seen 2 (two) people past the 4:15 mark TAKE PHOTOS. Gawd almighty, the way his voice carried. Someone hurt him. Perhaps he… has photos. I wonder if I’d get thrown out if I took another. Politely yet forcibly removed from St. Paul’s Cathedral via eyebrow. THERE’S NO PHOTOS. What a little rebel I am. I bet he hates women. So, I’m back in London with the folks. Despite my best efforts, I really missed them. Today we had Literature and good old Rob gave us the Mrs. Dalloway tour: Oxford Street, Bond Street, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben & Parliament, Trafalgar Square. All places I’ve been before, but always just as special and surreal. It was lovely to fall back into the familiarity of the group, tromping up the boulevard past the World War I cenotaph and the armed guards on horses next to Downing Street, listening to Madison and Boogie shooting dad jokes back and forth behind me while Georgia got fearlessly close to the horses’ bitted mouths. It’s really great to be back. The majority of these people don’t smell weird, and you can hide in the common room behind a book and still be part of things, whereas in the Budapest hostel’s common room people try to talk to you. The horror.
I want to document everything that went down in Budapest, but so much took place that it blurs together. One of these days I will parse it all out, but my brain is dead and today is not that day. What today is is Boogie’s birthday, which really could mean anything. I suppose we will see. Update: Boogie’s birthday means property damage. Do you lay down eggs? We sit in the common room on a sleepy Friday morning. It's quiet for once, the only sound the intermittent clicking and tapping of laptop keyboards. Chopan enters. Stops, makes eye contact with everyone in the room to make certain he is the center of attention. He speaks.
“I just fucking destroyed that thing.” He means the basement shower shitter. A chorus of nices and good jobs are heard about the room. “Second poop of the day, or the first?” I ask. “Second poop,” he confirms. He leaves. “Should I lie and say it’s canceled?” Boogie is showing me his phone screen, which has a text from Sage on it. Sage is asking what time class is tomorrow. I say that yes, he should absolutely lie because Sage, bless his heart, is an easy target. Boogie lies. Then, he lies again. It got canceled, he texts, Five day weekend, Chopan’s getting a divorce. He’s beside himself. He gets up to show the whole room his phone screen as the situation develops. Fr?!? You’re fucking with me I mean if you want to ask him yourself go ahead I’ll take your word for it. Fuck dude, that’s heavy Is he relatively okay? How’s he doing? Dude he’s hammered he just left without saying anything Left where? The play? I’m not tryna ask too much but idk how to act around him now Idk he walked by me and smelled like liquor Didn’t say shit just walked out the front door Fuck dude. When did he tell you? During a cig Has he known all day or did you find out when he did? He’s seemed kind of in a bad mood but I didn’t think that bad The inhabitants of the common room are in hysterics. I shush them, lest Sage hear us from his room and catch on. Chopan has joined us at this point, and he’s being a good sport about it, thinks it’s funny, funny enough to take off his wedding band for the full effect. Giggles ensue. Chopan departs to go have a smoke and to play into the guise Boogie has set. Still laughing, I leave the common room to use the bathroom, and who do I run into on the stairs but Sage himself, looking vaguely distraught. I’ve never before pissed with such fervor.
I reenter the common room. Boogie addresses me with a sort of urgency, tells me to sit down. I know what I have to do. Two years’ worth of Drama classes in high school prepared me for a moment such as this. I school my face into nervous shock and will myself not to laugh, because a prank is afoot and every moment motherfucking counts. “What?” Something big happened that I don’t know about. I’m concerned. Everyone is hip but me. I get filled in, as far as Sage knows, for the first time. “Holy shit,” I say, “Are you serious?” “I’m so serious,” Boogie says, his smile almost betraying him. Almost. The situation is discussed. Others fill in with evidence. “We passed by a woman on the street earlier and he kept saying she was so hot,” says Olivia, hand slightly covering her mouth in a way that could be construed as stunned concern, but since I’m sat next to her on the couch, I could see that it was to hide the telltale quirk to her mouth. We all gasp in shock. Where are our Oscars? Seriously. I hide my face behind Madison’s shoulder, and we’re both shaking with silent laughter. I hear the back door creak open. The jig is almost up. This ought to be good. We are talking very loudly about Chopan’s impending fictional divorce, and he is about to walk in on us doing so. Sage is in for the startle of his life. The man of the moment materializes in the doorway. I wish I’d taken a video. Sage’s face drops with a full-body flinch, and despite his comfortable seat on the couch, he somehow still manages to scramble as if he’d missed a step going down the stairs, or if a shart fell out unexpectedly. “SIKE, MOTHERFUCKER!” Chopan bellows. With a belly full of incredibly delicious spicy pork ramen, I decided to run an errand. My literature professor had mentioned a couple of good independent bookstores in Bloomsbury, and I was in need of a copy of Mrs. Dalloway. The romance of purchasing a Woolf in Bloomsbury from a store that wasn’t Waterstones was too tantalizing to deny myself the simple pleasure of.
I made the short walk from Russell Square to Gay’s the Word, a couple doors down from my beloved Valencia Cafe, where I found an entire shelf dedicated to Virginia Woolf’s many novels. Clutching a copy of Dalloway and poised in a low crouch I browsed the other titles, admiring their beautiful covers and reading each blurb, and at once I found myself wanting to buy three, four even. They all sounded so good, but I’d never read Woolf before, and I figured it might be wiser of me to read the one I’m supposed to for class and decide if I like it first before buying half her life’s work. I left feeling accomplished and with my journal sitting extra heavy at the bottom of my tote bag. I wandered into Tavistock Square and settled onto a bench. Across from me and a couple of benches down sat a man with a couple of slices of bread in hand, thus swarmed by dozens of pigeons and crows; on the other end of the square, a large biracial family taking wedding photos, resplendently dressed in traditional Indian garb; behind me, a young girl, her grandfather, and a dog, playing together; the sun, heating the back of my neck; my fingers, freezing still, trying their very best to write legibly in my journal. A plump pigeon, freshly bathed in a nearby puddle, fluttered to perch next to me on my bench, and I paused in my recording of all this to stare at it, and I found myself unable to stop grinning, the beauty of it all, of this day, boundless. As I finally turned back to my words, I glanced up at a man walking by and we shared a smile. He stopped short and gestured at me, curled up on a bench with my journal in my lap. “You know, I sit on this exact bench and write every morning. This is my writing bench. I sit just like you.” “Really?” I asked. “I sure do, and people always pass by and smile at me, but they never ask what I’m writing. So. What are you writing?” “Just my thoughts. Though I should be writing other things.” “Isn’t that the truth. Well. You’ve got to get those thoughts out first so that you can get to the other things, don’t you.” “That’s right.” For a couple of beats, we shared a smile of kindred understanding – of the writing process, or maybe of something else entirely. “Well, happy writing!” He called as he began walking away. “Thank you! You too!” I called back. A good meal, a book, a wedding, a bird, a conversation. Beautiful, ordinary things. Woke up early this morning to go see the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace with Georgia. And oh, did they change. Not efficiently, mind, but I liked their style.
First of all: marching bands. Not one, but two. One of the troops had a fun little blue feather thing in their silly black fuzzy hats, and the other had a fun little red thing. How fun for them. The circle in front of the palace was full of policemen on horseback, and they kept rearing their sweet little heads – the horses, not the policemen. People were even petting them, which was cool. No fingers were lost this day as far as I know. Georgia and I got as close to the gates as we could, what with the crowds of people with children on their shoulders and rolling suitcases. At one point I, referring to the guards in formation holding their various instruments, remarked, “I wonder how many of these guys are named Eugene.” Georgia, camcorder ever-present in her hand, snorted rather loudly, and a Hasidic man in front of us gave us quite a look. I wonder if his name was Eugene. I hope his name was Eugene. I wanted to try and get to the middle of the circle in front of the palace, where the Queen Victoria memorial stood, so that we could get a better vantage point for the general goings-on. This mission proved to be quite the ordeal. Bordering the sidewalk surrounding the circle were several barricades preventing pedestrian activity across the circle and into the middle. We got yelled at twice by the same policewoman for trying to sneak across and it was humiliating, but very funny. After much aimless walking and nervous giggling, we finally figured out the intended method for crossing into the middle, just in time for the second marching band procession. While they marched into the distance, Georgia and I suddenly noticed two people about our age approaching us rather quickly: a man with a microphone and a piece of paper in hand and a woman with a video camera. They greeted us and asked if we would answer a couple of questions, and I looked pleadingly to Georgia, and, of course, she shrugged, “Sure.” Goddammit. It soon became clear that we were not these people’s intended audience. They started by asking us how we felt about the Prince Andrew and Virginia Giuffre controversy, and Georgia and I shared an identical searching look. I turned back to the pair and regretfully related our mutual ignorance. The man was visibly very shocked at this; I was in turn horrifically embarrassed. I tried an apologetic approach to hopefully smooth over his reaction: “I’m so sorry, we really don’t know anything about the royal family.” “Are you lot American?” This damned question, I swear. “Yes,” I responded, laughing nervously, hoping that our nationality would free us from this situation. It did not. “You two really– Prince Andrew, he gave money to Virginia Giuffre?” He tried again. “Oh, that’s nice of him,” Georgia mused. The man looked at her flatly. Yikes. Despite the cold, I began to sweat. The woman with the camera began to laugh. She nudged her partner with her elbow and said, “I don’t think we can use this.” Blessed, blessed lady, ending my misery. A couple of quick goodbyes were said, and Georgia and I walked away laughing at the absurdity of the situation, at our terrible luck. “Those poor people,” I said. “Watch Prince Andrew be a rapist or something,” said Georgia. Welp. Let's all hope they deleted that footage. Today, in the spirit of the world's most wretched holiday, I took myself out to my favorite little place. It’s called the Valencia Cafe, only a 10 minute walk away from our humble little hovel on Gower Street, and there are not one, but two squares on the way home. The existence of these squares is pertinent information for such a mission, as the Valencia Cafe is home to incredibly cheap and even more incredibly rich and filling food, so remember that for later. It is here that I acquire a table next to the window, order an English breakfast and a flat white, and shovel the aforementioned foods in my mouth while making eye contact with everyone who passes by because I haven’t figured out how to be stealthy about that yet.
The men who work there are stoic yet kind. They look you right in the eye with an unreadable expression when you order, and when you’re done, they go “Okay. Sit down,” and turn to the griddle. It’s a command, to be sure, but it's grandfatherly in its curtness. Today a couple of men with broadly wizened and chapped hands and hi-vis vests sat down and ate next to me, so that’s how you know the food is legit. The English breakfast they serve is without the traditional roasted tomatoes and mushrooms as well as the blood pudding I’ve heard so much about and am yet to try, but it is complete with toasted and buttered white bread, baked beans, hash browns, bacon, a fried over-easy egg, and sausage. It’s all carbs, protein, and fiber. After such a meal I’m full for the entire day, and the trips to the bathroom afterwards are glorious, all without a hitch. Beans for breakfast. The Brits are onto something. After such a meal it is imperative to meander to achieve digestive excellence and stave off the dreaded bloat. I first wandered through Tavistock Square, where a statue of a meditative and tight-skinned Mahatma Gandhi crouched in the middle, his surroundings replete with tall, broad trees and refreshing greenness. There are little information boards posted around the space with facts about Virginia Woolf and the rest of the Bloomsbury Group, all artists who lived in this area 100-odd years ago. Pretty neat. After circling the small space a couple of times, I heel-toed half a block down to Gordon Square. As I paced the perimeter I noticed a filming crew on one of the streets parallel. It was a small crew of about 20 people, and there was one huge camera pointed at a man on a bike with a cooler bag on the back, so my first thought was that this was a commercial for Deliveroo or something. Curious, I stopped to watch. They had a little clapperboard thing and everything, which I thought was dear. When they called action, the biker bounced in his seat a couple of times, as if revving up, and mouthed “three, two, one” to himself before pushing off. It was here that I noticed a van advancing rather quickly down the perpendicular street, and I thought, “oh shit, oh dear,” and before I could finish the last “oh dear” the man launched himself off his bike, careened gracefully over the handlebars, and slammed himself full force into the van’s windshield, making quite the ruckus. He slid off and hit the pavement hard, rolling into a bespoke crumple on the ground. The van veered left and sped maybe ten feet away before coming to a stop, “cut” was yelled, and the biker/stuntman/badass sprung back up and dusted himself off with a cocksure grin. I applauded very quietly like a dork and walked away. As I turned I felt very happy to exist, not because I’ve been lucky enough to not be forcibly removed from life by way of a speeding motor vehicle, but because I decided to set out on my own today and got to see something completely bizarre for all my effort to do so. The men here have some nerve. Walking back from Five Guys with Madison and Georgia just now got me roped into a fun situation. This man came out the cut from behind a double-decker bus and intercepted our path, so already I was a little like, woah dude. He asked us if we knew any places open around here, and we were like, “no,” because it is a Wednesday and everything closes at 11 here despite it being a major city.
Then, the next inevitable question, to which the answer is always an embarrassed sort of yes, “are you lot American?” He then does a sort of double take at me, and I’m like, oh no. He asks me my age, I tell it to him, and I’m making sure to appear as visibly uncomfortable as possible and homie’s still like, “I’m 23,” and I say “congrats,” because I can feel the unsolicited flirting careening around the bend, and I’m starting to get antsy. Then, he turns to Madison and Georgia and says to them, “Can’t you see my children’s eyes in her eyes?” They immediately start laughing, and he’s all like “It’s not funneh!” except it very much is, because what kind of whack ass human being says that to someone they’ve just met? As far as pick-up lines go, threatening imminent pregnancy to a 21-year-old woman with mayonnaise on her sweater and utter contempt in her eyes is a weird way to go. Anywho, feeling homicidal, I placed my hands firmly on my hips and said, “Are you accusing me of childbirth?!” With a scoff I hope crushed every single one of this young man’s dreams, I walked away very quickly flanked by Madison and Georgia, who were pissing their pants laughing while looking over their shoulders to check that he wasn’t following us home. And to think that I almost went out for a burger on my own. A couple of days earlier, Georgia and I were approached by a very drunk and rumpled-looking man white-knuckling a bulging bag of McD’s outside of Rising Sun, one of the many bars a block away from our little house on Gower Street. He stood between us, Georgia standing and myself sitting and, looking between us, remarked, “You two twins? You’re right identical.” Georgia and I, at this point, shared a look of profound amusement on account of the fact that we share no features aside from a nose piercing. Neither of us responded, which the man took as an invitation to touch and comment on Georgia’s necklace, an extremely obvious front for checking out her boobs, at which point the bartender materialized out of nowhere to tell the man to fuck off. He did, which was decent of him. Recently I had the utmost pleasure of being extensively stared at on the Tube. To my luck, I wasn’t alone; I had all seventeen other members of the Gower Gang surrounding me (long live British Seminar). We had a long ride ahead of us: seven-odd stops to Hammersmith. For the first three stops, I kept feeling eyes on me, and every time I glanced up from my book there he was. Every time we made eye contact he would smirk, and it made me want to remove my skin. Deeply uncomfortable, I turned to Abby to complain, and without any hesitation she made to stand between me and him, therefore blocking his view. This did not stop him; when she stared him down, hatred in her eyes, he winked. “Okay, that’s enough,” she said, waving a dismissive hand. He pointed at his ear and shrugged, as if he couldn’t hear her, but I didn’t catch him staring once after that. He didn’t even look up from his phone. Thanks, Abby. You’re a gem. I am very passionate about extremely narrow alleyways. In London, there are many of them, like arteries. They are secret passageways and nobody can tell me different. They feel secret because they’re easy to miss, but when you cut through them everything gets very quiet and relieving, and I feel small and young in a good way. It’s the same sort of feeling I get when I walk through a forest. The dark brick mimics bark, and the only light you get is up.
Here the streets are not laid perfectly. It’s not like Los Angeles where they so obviously made the city up as they sprawled, and its absolutely nothing like DC where L’Enfant locked everything in lines and diagonals and roundabouts around the Capitol. It’s a little bit of both. More than any city I’ve ever been to, the difference between the old and the very old and the new-ish and the chunder-inducing modern in London is prominent and screaming. It all comes together in a patchwork, some parts stitched better than others. It doesn’t feel like an interruption or a fracture until you get towards the stupid skyscrapers, and then when that feels all wrong, all you have to do is keep your head down and look around. Notice the dates on the buildings, the red brick turned brown by grime and grit. Admire the huge oaken doors and charming window shutters and sneering gargoyles. It goes without saying I love the old. I love walking down Brick Lane – aptly named, if not for the brick-laid streets and townhouses then for how bricked up I get looking at all of the vintage clothing and bins of records – and seeing placards on the houses reading dates from the 18th century and earlier. It feels very grand, sort of poignant that those bricks haven’t crumbled and won’t for a long time yet. |