After another crazy night in London, I think it’s finally time that I pay homage to the many insane people of London that I have met or seen over the past two months. My time in London was as normal as it could be for quite some time. I was quite concerned because unlike in Rochester, nobody crazy or creepy was talking to me anymore, and what was I supposed to write about for the Campus Times if I didn’t have crazy people stories to tell?
Well, that all changed one night when we were on the bus, going out to a bar. My friends and I were sitting quietly next to each other, engaging one another in quiet, stimulating, intellectual conversations when a chubby thirtysomething woman came flying onto the back of the bus in her miniskirt and sat down emphatically next to one of my friends. She gaped at us openly, listening to our American accents, before diving into the conversation.
“You’re American?”
“Yes.”
“You didn’t vote for Bush did you?”
“No!”
“Good, because if you did then I would have had to start trouble because Bush is the most evil human being … ”
And thus began a five minute nonstop rant from a random drunken British lady in a miniskirt. The rant continued until she realized she missed her stop and broke off mid-sentence – “He put us into Iraq and was that Sloane Square?” BAM!
She had flown off the back of the bus and into the streets, landing solidly on her stilettos and disappearing under the cover of the London night.
The next random weird person that we were to see was at an indie club. Now, indie clubs are full of very weird and pretentious people, so to stick out as a weirdo in an indie club takes a lot of effort. Not only do you have to compete against Stereotypical Indie Kid Type I, who inevitably gets way too into the music and over-excited about making guitar strumming movements, but you also have to compete with Puking High School Girl Who Snuck into the Club and Has Never Had Alcohol Before.
Alas, one kid beat them all. One Saturday, as we were in this club dancing away, I swear to God, Napoleon Dynamite walked by. Granted, he was a taller, older and slightly more attractive version of Napoleon, but still, he had the glasses, the hair, the shirt, the far too tight jeans and everything. Napoleon spent the night checking out the ladies of the dance floor, ultimately too cool to commit to any girl at all. However, I do feel I slightly cracked his asexuality when we happened to ride the elevator downstairs with him. The doors opened on the ground floor and he flashed us a smile, stood aside and let the ladies disembark. Oh, Indie Napoleon Dynamite, you maverick, you.
Lately, our late night encounters with strange people have been increasing. On St. Patrick’s Day, we went to a terrible touristy club, bought some drinks and watched as the people milled in. A man in suit pants and a collared shirt, who must have been at least 65 and who looked distinctly like Dick Cheney, came through the door. We thought to ourselves, “Oh, that’s strange, but maybe he’s just a hard-core alcoholic and still likes to drink with the young people,” which would be odd but not unheard of.
Then, the lights dimmed and the bar converted into a dance club. My friends and I started rocking out to bad pop music, when we noticed that the old guy was no longer at the bar. Instead, he had rolled up his sleeves and wandered onto the dance floor, where he was now dancing with more zest than any of us, bouncing from foot to foot, waving his arms all about and
bopping his head to those hip urban tunes. I decided at that moment that he was the love of my life.
The next guy was this interesting character I met on the Tube. After a series of crazy events, we found out that this guy with the black ash on his head was really the most awesome person to ever walk this earth.
First of all, his name was Grenville Morganham. Yes, Grenville Morganham of Wales. As a writer, I know that names like this are hard to come by. I couldn’t have come up with a name so perfect.
Well, Grenville started to chat up my friend Laura, and he asked her what she studied at school. She responded with English and art. When Grenville heard this, he started laughing, and when asked what tickled his funny bone, he laughed again and said, “Oh, it’s just that in my head, I play this game where I combine the syllables of two words together, so with ‘English’ and ‘art,’ I made ‘fart.'”
Confused, Laura said, “But there’s no ‘F’ in English.”
To this, Grenville cracked up even harder and went, “I know!”
So this one is for crazy, drunk irate British ladies, Indie Napoleon Dynamites, 65-year-old swingers and good old Grenville of Wales. You make my life in England worth living and I will miss it when my semester is over.
Kaminsky can be reached at lkaminsky@campustimes.org.
