Eighteenth Birthday
This is an excerpt from The Thing Is.
Turning eighteen was a mixed milestone. Shortly before my birthday, I got beaten up outside a working men’s club. A girl at my school had hired it out for a party and there was a good blend of my pals from Lawnswood, Ralph Thoresby and Notre Dame in attendance. It was a decent evening comprising of cold sandwiches, soft crisps and a casual policy on underage drinking.
After the party had finished — with an arms-round-shoulders circle to Hero by Enrique Iglesias — six or seven of us were loitering on a grass verge outside. We were considering whether to go into town when we were swarmed by a gang of ten-or-so hooded hoodlums. I saw David get smacked in the face and, being the pacifist that I am, went to grab him and pull him out of the melee. In doing this, I left myself exposed as a fat guy wearing a Nike TN cap ruthlessly landed a right hook. I felt my cheek immediately pop. Holding back tears, the brawl continued around me and, while some of my pals gave it a good go, we were ultimately outnumbered and less robust than our angry counterparts. It later transpired that the reason behind the attack stemmed from the romantic success of some of my friends with “their girls.” I’d barely spoken to a girl all night so, out of all the times I’ve deserved a punch, this was not one of them.
As sirens wailed, our enemies scattered and ran into the night, leaving us bloodied, bruised and broken. We would be going to town tonight, only in the back of an ambulance. David, who’d broken his nose and I, with a shattered cheekbone, had sustained the worst injuries despite Patrick claiming his bust lip was life-threatening.
A&E on a Saturday night is horrifying. Drunks, druggies and fighters — and that was just my pals — sat under the stark lights wounded and impatient. David, whose night had gone drastically downhill since a dance floor smooch at the working men’s club, was started on by a man who had cut off his thumb.
“What the fuck are you looking at? I’ve lost my thumb but I can still smack you.”
Rodney was sat next to man who had broken his knuckles. Punching a dog. A nurse gave us some strong painkillers which worked well so rather than waiting to see a specialist, I went home in the early hours with my apple-sized cheek forcing my eye shut. When I awoke the next morning, apple-cheek was bigger still, the painkillers had worn off, and I was in a living hell. My worried parents took me back to the hospital where I would spend the next five days having — and recovering from — surgery to reconstruct my face. I wasn’t left disfigured but even now, fifteen years later, in the words of The Weeknd, I can’t feel (a section of) my face.
I spent my eighteenth birthday itself working the late shift at Subway, alone. My manager, a troll-sized jobsworth who, if I were to believe workplace gossip, blew his wages in brothels, refused to let me have my birthday off even though I’d told him weeks in advance that I’d appreciate it.
“Rotas are rotas, Andy.”
Making meatball sandwiches for drunk students while still sporting a swollen face was a grim introduction to adulthood. There was, at least, an acquaintance’s party going on that evening which promised to go on late. I was hopeful I could steal some of her birthday attention and muster a night out of sorts. I shut up shop early, did a superficial clean of the surfaces, and hopped in a taxi with drops of barbeque sauce smudged into my trousers.
I arrived at the working men’s club she’d hired at 11.30 pm to discover that rumours of a late licence were false. The lights were on, the bar had a metal shutter pulled down and empty glasses and leftover food on paper plates were lining the room. Apart from a few people of parental age who were tidying up, everyone had left.
“Do you know where they went?” I asked a man in a Leeds Rhinos top who was simultaneously eating a sausage roll and dragging a tower of chairs across the dance floor.
“You’ve just missed them. They got taxis into town.”
“Whereabouts in town?”
“I don’t know.”
No problem, I thought, I’ll just ring Eddie. I got my phone out of my pocket to see that the screen was smeared in Southwest sauce and the battery had died. Why was I always having a bad time in and around working men’s clubs? I walked home and went to bed.
The following morning, I told my mum about my non-event of an eighteenth and she took pity on me.
“Do you want to have a few friends over here next Friday? Your dad and I are going to see a Rod Stewart tribute act so you’ll have the house to yourself until midnight.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. This was perfect. I spread the word far and wide, informing almost everyone I knew (with the exception of my manager at Subway.) When it’s known you are having a party, your popularity skyrockets for the days preceding it.
“What are you up to this weekend, Andy?”
“I’m sorry, have we met before?”
A couple of hours before the party began, my mum drove me to the Co-op and bought some crates of lager and snacks before I showered and put on a trendy New York Yankees top I’d recently bought from TK-Maxx. I opened a can of Carling, put on a Cypress Hill CD and waited for the masses to descend. Only they didn’t. At 7.30 pm, three guests had arrived; Matt, Lucy, and Seamus. My parents came into my room, seemed satisfied that it wasn’t going to get too wild, and left to go to the Village Hotel.
“So, Kettle Chip anyone?”
By 8 pm, I was becoming concerned that a washout beckoned. Upper sixth form had only just begun — hosting a successful party would work wonders for my ailing street cred. How would I live it down if it bombed? There was a knock at the door, I sprung up and ran downstairs to welcome Will, Eddie, Cameron, Lee, and Jim in. They were carrying bags full of lager and in high spirits. A group of girls from college were walking up my drive behind them, smoking cigarettes and giggling. I looked down the street to see droves of teenagers, some familiar, many not, flooding towards my house. Hurray.
Within an hour, the house was full to bursting with eclectic music ranging from Dr. Dre to my own band, Falling with Superman playing in each of the different rooms. The back garden was misty with clouds of smoke and the smell of cannabis swirled through the autumn air. People were overflowing down the drive and onto the street. It’s a funny thing having a house party — the relief that people have shown up is almost instantly replaced with a fear of how these people are going to treat your house. In my living room, a bottle of red wine lay open on its side and a kind soul had stubbed a cigarette out on the carpet. I walked into the kitchen to find that Patrick had taken a bite out of every apple in the fruit bowl.
I gulped down a bottle of El Velero wine and staggered around, talking to my pals and trying, in vain, to relax. In my bedroom, an extremely pissed man was thrashing chords on my classical guitar using a 2p as his plectrum and a sinister-looking group wearing jogging bottoms were doing cocaine on my bedside table.
“Hi, guys, glad to see you’re having fun but do you mind, perhaps, not doing that in here?”
“Who are you? Fuck off.”
“Right you are then.”
The girls from Lawnswood had arrived, including my ex-girlfriend, Carly. Following the end of a relationship with a tree surgeon, she was newly single and we shared a nostalgic hour-or-so and another bottle of wine together. It crossed my mind to try to rekindle the old flame but I was distracted by the sound of a commotion outside. I walked out and was informed that the guy who’d broken my cheek had shown up. Now it’s one thing assaulting me but turning up to my party too? That’s pushing it, pal. Eddie took it upon himself to pass on the message that he wasn’t welcome and shoved him down my drive and off the premises.
“That’ll teach him,” I thought. “He may have beat me up but who’s winning now?” I stumbled upstairs to find that a bedroom window had been smashed by an amiable guy from college. He was deeply apologetic but the window remained smashed. Everything was spinning by now and in unclear circumstances, I too managed to smash a window. This was greeted with a cheer.
My parents returned from the Village Hotel much sooner than I’d anticipated — it felt like they’d just left. I tried to sober up, expecting a serious rollicking but, to my surprise, they each grabbed a can of lager, chatted animatedly to the guests and took photos, including one of my mum with her arm around a guy who is now in prison. The police arrived shortly after midnight and shut the party down. This was a cool way to finish and, as I made a half-hearted attempt at cleaning up the detritus that my house had become, I felt proud that the night had been a success. I can’t imagine the cost to fix the mess was cheap but, to my parents’ credit, they never mentioned it. It was, however, made clear that a party would not be happening again.
