The university rec club was starting to swing by the time Jimmy, Sarah, Sinead and I had consumed a number of rounds of Fourex, VB and Bundaberg rum and found our way into a couple of couches in the corner of the pool table area. The typical pub cover band had just gotten into their stride and was hacking out the hits of Cold Chisel, Crowded House and Midnight Oil.
I could do nought but shake my head in wonder and murmur vague obscenities as Sarah and Sinead filled me in on the arranging of the nights’ activities in the library, with Jimmy drunkenly adding his perverse adjectives to the dialogue.
It seemed that Sinead had been watching me from afar for most of the semester from her eagles’ nest up in the back of the lecture theatre. While she was spending most of her lecture time wondering how she could suitably introduce herself to me, I was blissfully unaware in my “straight arrow” front seat joyfully sucking up the theory of international financial markets.
“She’s been stalking you dickhead.” Jimmy mumbled, before Sarah elbowed him hard in the stomach.
Happily Sinead’s conundrum was solved when she spotted me chatting to Sarah and Jimmy over lunch a few days before. It seemed Sarah and Sinead had both been boarders at a certain posh private girls’ school overlooking the city, though a year or two apart. Though I left the lunch table before the happy reunion, this did not prevent Jimmy and Sarah from coughing up all they knew of me at Sinead’s careful prodding, including my much bemoaned virginity. Arrangements were made for Sinead to seduce me during tonight’s ‘Friday Nighters’ session, before I had altered the program with my unforseen adjournment to the library. Hurried mobile phone calls were made and
voila
. The rest, as they say, is history. Except for one piece.
“How did you know about the journal article I was looking for?” I asked Sinead as I poked her gently in the ribs. She giggled and pulled away (mental note to self: she is ticklish).
“I heard you asking the librarian for it one day and I just beat you to the shelf and took it. At the time I thought it would be a great way to meet you; then I realised there was no good way to get it back to you without raising suspicion - until tonight lover.” She blushed and giggled again.
“Good one double oh seven” I replied in my best Miss Money Penny voice.
I glanced across to Jimmy waiting for his lewd additions to the conversation but his head had lolled forward onto his chest, fast asleep with his pot of beer still dutifully upright in his hand like any good homo-erectus male. I laughed more heartily than the situation deserved, but then, I was in a particularly good mood that night. I started to suggest to Sarah that she think about getting her man home, when I noticed she didn’t look too good either. I guess their rapid imbibing of various alcoholic concoctions before Sinead and I arrived was taking its toll. Sinead was leaning in close to me and whispering in my ear.
“What you say we leave this rock show before the grog has its way with you?” she purred in my ear, her hand suggestively caressing my thigh. I kissed her deeply then, our tongues meeting in silent conversation. Just at that sweet moment I heard the nauseas sound of vomiting and looked up to see Sarah making a deposit all over Jimmy’s lap. Jimmy was blissfully in Bundy Rum heaven and thankfully unaware. Sinead and I jumped up and grabbed Sarah’s arms, lifting her up. “Into the ladies’ quick!” Sinead said, obviously torn between laughing and scowling.
Twenty minutes later we were still in a cubicle in the ladies toilets with Sarah passed out over the toilet bowl and Sinead and I holding her head up by the mop of black curly hair. “Shit. I better check on Jimmy.” I said. “Will you be okay for a bit?” Sinead nodded and I stalked out of the toilets, getting raised eyebrows from a couple of vague looking blondes who were on their way in (I never did have a way with blondes!). “Just discovering my feminine side.” I winked at one of them.
By the time I got back to the couch, Jimmy was gone, leaving only a wet patch on the couch where he had been sitting. I rushed to the front of the rec club where the two no-neck bouncers maintained their post.
“Have you seen my mate?” I said to the slightly longer necked of the two, thinking he was probably the more intelligent, and describing Jimmy and where we had been sitting.
“Filthy bugger spewed all over himself. We threw him out.”
He turned back to his post and the shorter necked one added “Yeah. Filthy bugger.” Apparently, the interview was at an end.
“Fuck.” I said to myself, walking back towards the toilets. Forty minutes later Sinead and I were still standing at the entrance to the university trying to hail down a cab. Quite a few taxis had slowed down, seen the state of the unconscious Sarah slunk between us and quickly sped off.
“This is never going to work” I said, starting to lose my cool. This was quickly going from the best night of my life, to one of the worst.
“I know. We’ll try an ambush!” Sinead said, smiling widely.
In the end, the poor bastard cabbie never saw it coming. I had hid behind a bus-stop shelter holding Sarah, while Sinead undid a couple of her shirt buttons and stood out on the curb again. No more than ten seconds passed before a cab screeched to a halt in front of her. Sinead quickly opened the back door of the cab and I sprung from hiding, launching the prone Sarah headfirst into the backseat and climbing in after her. Sinead jumped in after me and we both sat breathing heavily and grinning at a pair of well endowed and well lowered middle-eastern eyebrows in the driver’s seat.
Sinead handed a twenty over as a peace offering and gave her address. The eyebrows lifted above cataclysmic levels and the taxi accelerated out into the traffic and headed north on the freeway towards the leafy suburb of St Lucia. So there I was, going home with two beautiful young women, one leaning into my shoulder with her top two buttons undone and the other passed out in my lap and leaving smears of what suspiciously looked and smelt like rum-flavoured carrot on my favourite jeans.
Sinead lived in a modern two bedroom apartment that she explained had been bought by her parents as an investment. Unfortunately it was on the fourth floor of a no elevator building and the second bedroom was a ‘waiting-to-be-renovated’ wreck. By the time we had tipped the clearly relieved cabbie and hauled the unconscious Sarah into Sinead’s ensuite bathroom, it was all we could manage to drag her into the shower cubicle and turn the water on. As Sinead and I sat on the floor leaning against each other we started to giggle and then fell about in fits of laughter, hugging each other and trying to control ourselves.