Amnesiamorousness

“Fuck.”

I opened my eyes. Black, with a tint of green.

“Fuck.”

I rolled over and threw up for what was probably the third time. I rolled back. Black, again, with a tint of green. And flecks of yellow. God, there’d been drinking; that I could remember. That was all I could remember. There might’ve been a bop. What was the theme?

“British victims of terrorist atrocities abroad”? No, that was last term. I’d have remembered that, it takes hours to look convincingly beheaded. I felt about gingerly. Was I wearing a nappy? No; lacrosse social was last weekend. I sighed with relief. “Sluts of the Special Olympics”? No.

“Nuns ‘n’ Nazis”? That was it. I staggered to my feet and made my way off the lawn, pushing over a couple of tourists who were stupid enough to obstruct me.

“You know, it’s a fifty quid fine for going on there”, said a fresher.

“Go fuck yourself.”

I flicked the last flecks of vom off my Waffen SS uniform. A photographer from the Mail on Sunday tried to get a picture of me, but I punched him in the face. Why were they always here after bop night? No doubt this one just appreciated my dedication to historical accuracy*.

(*I don’t think wearing a full SS uniform and jackboots to a bop was insensitive; after all, my great-uncle died at Auschwitz. He fell off a guard tower! That’s not to imply that he was a Nazi, though. He just happened to think that climbing the guard tower was the quickest way to escape, fell off, and was killed. Often when I tell this story people think I’m telling some kind of joke implying that my great-uncle was somehow a Nazi, which is a tragic insult to his memory. Anyway, it can't be offensive, it’s freedom of speech. Being able to wear an SS uniform in public is a right my great-uncle fought and died for.)

I stumbled into the lodge unable to remember my name or anything else about the night. I begged the porter to tell me what little he knew.

“You were with some guy, he said he was your agent. He said he couldn’t work with anyone who wanted full editorial control over anything she appeared in. Especially when that thing she was going to appear in was Babestation, so it was pretty much just a camera pointing at you anyway.”

I did remember this bit. I’d asked him if there was any way to make it avant-garde – maybe invert the colours, turn the screen upside down, or smash a rabbit’s head into the camera for a few seconds in a tortured metaphor for the commercialisation of sexuality.

“The shows on that channel are so mundane. Why won’t Babestation fund original programming?”

“They don’t want original programming.”, he’d said. “They just want you with your tits out.”

In short, control-freakery of the highest order. When a channel won’t take a risk and let you write Carol-Ann Duffy quotes across your bare boobs, you know TV has stagnated as a medium. I remember mouthing the words, “Jonathan Ross was right”.

I turned back to the porter.

“Then you said he couldn’t leave you, because you were in love with him, and anyway you’d already slashed all of the tyres on his car so he couldn’t go anywhere but to bed with you.”

The joke was on me; he’d slashed all my condoms so we couldn’t do that, either. Also, I’d forgotten that he was meant to be giving me a lift home. So this was sort of what’s called a “pyrrhic victory”. I walked away from the lodge, glad of the porter’s incredible observation skills. I walked out into an OUSU march against tuition fees, very few of whom understood the reasoning behind my costume, except for a few who thought I was making an incisive satirical point about George Osborne.

* * *

“Don’t you still want to be my boyfriend?”, I’d asked him.

“I never was your boyfriend!”

“Oh my god! I can’t believe you’d say that! We were together for two months, and now you’re acting like it meant nothing-“

“We were never together! You just kissed me once when you said you were rehearsing for a play! A play that you’d written!”

This much was true. A good method of pulling, I find, is to write a play in which two people kiss, then tell the other person you were rehearsing it. Just take inspiration from anywhere! Mine’s about a 1920s sex-diarist who falls in love with her boss. I wrote it for Marilyn Monroe – I know she’s dead, but a Marilyn Monroe impersonator would do the role just as well. On the downside, it wasn’t a very plausible excuse. On the upside, my play is beginning a two-week run at the Burton Taylor Studio.

Back in the story, I burst into tears. I ran into the bar as quickly as I could, desperate to show I was emotionless and over him. I made a beeline for Joseph Goebbels by the dartboard, but he ended up necking Mother Teresa. I collapsed into sobs. As I saw Rudolf Hess slide his hand up the Vicar of Dibley’s skirt, I cried out to no-one in particular: “Why are all the good men taken?”

I took out a gin bottle and a couple of shot glasses. I poured out two shots, and then I downed the rest of the bottle. Then I downed the shots. Downing the shots sorta wrecked the whole “physical comedy” vibe that I was originally going for, but it did make everything go blurry and the air taste vaguely of blood.

It was then that my natural popularity started to kick in: “You need to come with us”, went one group of girls, offering to carry me (that’s fame!). “You should really come this way”, said a man in a security guard costume - they always seem to find me attractive.

I turned them all down - I’d just been dumped! The last thing I needed was more celebration. Everyone kept talking about going to “The Hospital”, which for a minute made me think I was drunker than I’d thought, but it turns out that that’s actually a night at Kukui with £1 drinks if you only wear a lab coat.

With all this in mind, and having learned from another blog that “how-to” guides really help fill up space once you’ve run out of content in three posts, here’s:

The Belle des la'Oxford Guide To Surviving A Breakup

DON’T cry. Ever. Take the tears and force them back inside you. Men can smell emotion, and they see it as weakness. A soldering iron will take care of those pesky tearducts!

DON’T immediately get pregnant, give birth, name the child after your ex, and bring them up to dress and act exactly like the man who rejected you so he’s the partner you never had! (There’s always the chance you might give birth to a girl…)

DON’T threaten to kill yourself! You don’t want to get involved in “suicide chicken” where he ignores you and you end up on Magdalen Bridge at midnight begging him to take you back or you’ll just jump off and end it all. Even if you win, you look insane!

DON’T try to be friends. All you’re likely to do is end up with a long-term relationship of mutual trust and support, which won’t get you more than 10 blog views.

Stay sexually active,

Belle xo