Texas vs. Oklahoma State

This is a chronicle of my weekend in Tunnbridge Wells (and an American Collegiate Fottball game), some profane language

I am sitting at the Royal Wells Hotel, streaming the Texas game at 00:25. I am staying at a hotel down the street, but i have convinced the pasty faced girl at the front desk of the RW, to let me sit in their bar and listen to my passion. Dude, Texas is unlikely down 0-7, and I get pretty intense. But we're driving. Shit, 3rd and long. I have been relocated for the weekend. Yeah, VY runs for the first down and more...

So, I have kind of found my niche in this horrible pub they call a hotel, and although I am wearing my father's button down shirt from like 1976 and green cargo pants, while the only clean laundry I own are an assortment of colorful ties and Delta Gamma Crush shirts, I am happy. Wednesday night, I visited Raj, my new best friend for dinner, eh, to serve me dinner. I can already portend tomorrow's toilet adventures as the spiciest tandouri chicken has already sent my digestive system into pre-shock. Deborah's dad, David, the owner of this crude reflection of a hotel, enlightens me to the fact that Saturday he is over-booked and needs my room for some Germans. I call him Dave, but he always corrects me; he wears these button down shirts that have the dynamic only reached from being dried outside on a line. "Okay, but i need my room," i tell him. He goes on to tell me that he has made accommodations for a woman down the street to take care of me. I am not a puppy; i think and am really looking forward to staying with some random woman down the alley. I picture the Sun-Maid Raisins girl opening up the raw silk curtains to let the sunlight in on my all ivory room as I slowly awake from the sweetest dream to find smoke salmon, capers and cream cheese on toasted bagels sitting on a tray next to some freshly squeezed Valencia orange juice. When in reality it's going to be more like some horse face crabby woman with whiskers, kicking me in the rib cage to wake me so that she can feed the sheep in the barn before daybreak, while i feel the early onset of Tuberculosis. I consider smashing my full glass of Snakebite (2/3 Strongbow, orange cider + 1/3 Stella = Sloppy) on the bar counter and turning over a table, but, instead I just smile at this old dildo.

...Shit, 3rd and goal from the 20...Yeah David Thomas, touchdown! i spill my coffee. Oh, come on, our kicking game blows, 6-7...

I ask Barbara to contact another hotel for Saturday night, preferably, not an old woman's goat cheese farm. She makes arrangements for me to stay in what she calls, "quite a posh place," down the road in Tunbridge Wells. Cindy just looks up from her computer screen, with one single tear leaving her slant-eye; her focus is on the dance number at the end of her one woman performance of Mama Mia. She has been practicing all week, Barb's children will be in town this weekend and she won't tolerate any imperfection, especially when it comes to dramatic interpretations. Cindy will be definitely sleeping in the tub of Barbara's, master bathroom this weekend, I imagine this all.

I arrive at the New Wellington Hotel, Saturday morning,, right away, there is a stretch Rolls Royce limo out front, tattered with the white silk from my dreams and obviously apart of some ritzy wedding. I feel like Annie, entering Daddy Warbucks's house for the first time. No more hard knocked life for me. This is a legitimate hotel, and from the stories i heard their restaurant has a pretty righteous fillet for dinner, i start to get psyched up. The petite Indian guy behind the reservation desk is a complete cock, because i am checking in early. I want to ask him if he knows Raj, but i don't. I head to the elevator to go to my 3rd story penthouse. The doors close on this phone booth of a "lift" and it takes roughly 5 minutes for my dumbwaiter to inch up the face of the edifice, all of two flights. I make a mental note to avoid this apparatus at all costs.

My room has consistent warm water, a bed constructed in the eighties and hard flooring in the lavatory. I feel like a stripper that spends the night in a wealthy business man's room, a night to remember no doubt. Noonish rolls around and I set off down the hill towards the town's interior. It is a marvelous little town. I am not into shopping, but if i was, this place would be really nice. I have finished a book called Choke, recommended by more than a few people, and i needed to find another to replace it. This was like the first book I had actually finished since Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, freshman year of High School. I'd tell people, before I had left the States, that moving to England would allow me the time to read more, only insinuating, with the "more" that I actually read on occasion (outside of SI, which I really don't read either). I find a book store and buy Survivor, by the same guy who wrote the book I previously read. What do you want, it is not like I am keen to the hip new books out there, like "Oh you have to read: Me and Scott by Buddy from Charles in Charge or Eating Salad in the Dark by some dyke " I can never remember the books people recommend.

...Nothing gets me drunker or sobers me up like Texas football. It is 9-21 and we are losing to the worst team in the Big 12...

Another lonely dinner, I start to bring my book with me, to help pass the time between sit down and meal. I order a bottle of wine, because I deserve it. I get a mista salad with slices of fresh mozzarella cheese on board. The steak is amazing, Ruth Cris on LSD, i cherish each bite like precious gemstones. I have polished the bottle off and find myself with like a £60 tab. Carelessly I charge it to the room. Satiated, I get in the airplane bathroom and get off on the third floor. The phone is ringing as I open the door to my room, its Marge, a woman with whom I work. She told me about a town party, which included a bonfire (like that was supposed to sell me), at work earlier that week, but i assumed not call her since it sounded about as gay as two guys frenching. For the past two weeks, I have been forced to hang out with people that I don't particularly care for. You know, people assume that I need someone to take me out. It's nice really and i am ungrateful, surely, but it is getting kinda old. Why call someone you don't want to hang out with, it is like sending a "no thank you" card. But I am wine dunk and a town party sounds fucking awesome!

Marge and her husband pick me up. I can tell they know i am intoxicated, because I am smiling like a pervert. Both of them are tragically plain, and no one speaks during the 5 minute car ride to the local recreational area. The car smelled like arguing, when I first got in, but that faded into repressed hatred. The bonfire was totally weak, but on the bright side, I got to meet an unsightly girl name Fran, who just adored my accent. I spend the entire time, trying to shake this homely local. They have cheap pints, so I begin to drown myself. I am smashed, and I have managed to escape the conversational hell that is Fran. It's got to be 10 or so, and i leave the assembly without saying good bye to anyone.

Surprisingly, i find my way back to my palatial inn, and grab my computer. There is a wedding party on the second floor and I can hear Neil Diamond's "America," muffled through the windows as I set out down the road to the Royal Wells and their unsecured wireless internet connection. There is a wedding jamboree at the Royal Wells also, but it is in the bar and probably a bit less elegant. I enter and ask pasty face if i could sit in the corner of the bar to work on my laptop. She recognizes me from my previous stays and with a wink rushes me into the private party. It is only 10:45 and I start to catch up on the sports I missed the previous week. Almost everyone is on the dance floor, sauced and grinding to Kanye West's "Gold Digger." I cut through the crowd to order a beer. The bartender asks if I am with the wedding. I, my untucked polo, khaki slacks and rainbows, reply "Yes." This guy starts pouring my beer, not picking up my sarcasm and hands me a full pint of Stella Artois and moves on to the next patron. With a smile, I retreat to my computer to continue reading the Orange Blood's War room for that week's end.

...12 to 28, what the fuck. I feel all alone with my despair. Half-time...

It is like 2 am and I slyly creep up to the bar and grab the first bottle my grubby mitts can snatch between their index and little finger. Half a 750 of Jack Daniels, that'll do. I hide the bottle on the floor behind a set of thick green curtains, after a swig, about two jiggers worth. The pain isn't dulled by the dark medicine. if Texas losses to OSU, I am going to jump off a building.

The wedding party is winding down and most people are catching cabs or stumbling into the street. Obviously way more wasted than I, a pretty sexy girl sits down next to me and asks me if i am doing homework. She is in a low cut cobalt dress, and smells like top shelf vodka, leaning on me to look at my computer, she asks where I'm from. I give the trite answer and she flashes an engaging smile. For the moment, I forget about the Texas score, and I, with the ultimately classy gesture, flash the bottle of Jack and ask if she wants a pull. Before I can reach down, she is all over it. In hindsight, probably not the best idea to rain on a flood.

3rd quarter starts, Vince scores on an 80 yard TD run and i stand up, yell and throw my horns up. She claps, still clutching the bottle and with one eye closed. Footsteps, and i yank the bottle down to the marble flooring, after a quick sip. A sharply clad man, wearing a tuxedo like he just put it on, enters the bar, and spies myself and my new companion.

"Beverly, are you ready to go?" he doesn't ask, about as rudely as someone can. I contemplate telling him not to worry, and that I will get her home safely, just to spice it up.

She slaps his hand away from her arm and stands up to depart, she starts after him and doubles back, grabs my red pen and scribbles what looks like a phone number on the day planner sticking out of my laptop bag. Mouthing "phone me," her breath now smoking with whiskey fumes, she leans back towards the exit and bumps the wall out the door. I examine the planner to find pretty much the most illegible Sanskrit, i have ever seen.

Fast forward almost two hours and 5 or six more spikes of my warm brown elixir. Texas has won, and i can take the steak knife away from my throat. The maintenance guy has started up the vacuum to run across the bar floor, the volume of my computer is maxed and I throw the horns up one last time. Packing up, i thank my hosts for letting me pal around their bar and the private party earlier. 4 in the morning, if you don't count daylight savings, and like the night, the streetlights are all black. I meander slowly down the road towards my hotel with my laptop bag hanging over my shoulder, whistling Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations" and holding a capless bottle of Jack Daniels next to my warm whiskey chest.
Good night, I think.