Community: Real Life

Put on your drag rags


Lily

Lily is 19 and from Kingston-upon-Thames. She's studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at York University. Will she survive studentdom on the road to graduation?
Entry: 2

After having a rollicking good time at the Slag and Drag party, Lily wakes with an unwelcome bump to the head and ponders why girls like to pull a man in a dress.

A knock to the system

It's seven o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake because I just rolled over and smacked my head into the wall. There's nothing quite like waking up and not knowing where you are. Mind you, confusion seems to come pint-in-hand with freshers' week. But it's awesome.

It seems an age since Mum and Dad dropped me off last Sunday. I was convinced Mum was going to cry, to be honest I was pretty sure Dad was going to cry too. Even my tough little sister resisted celebrating the fact that I was going to make a her an only child, and instead lamented that fact that I was making her a lonely child.

As a happy second-year student showed me to my room, I could see my parents' eyes widening. Our block isn't exactly the most glamorous of buildings, unless neutral colour palettes and 1960s furniture does it for you. The rooms perfect the art of being old without being even slightly kitsch and retro. So, while we've all been thrown together in our peculiar little compound, with its crusty microwaves, yellowing showers and massive spiders, in all honesty I don't think most of us could care less. It's hard to complain when you know for a fact a lot of the dirt and funny smells are down to our own merry freshers' week shenanigans. No doubt there'll soon be bitching and bickering when one person keeps having to do all the washing up, but at the moment it's nothing more serious than a lot of empty bottles and full ashtrays. Saying that, I haven't been into the kitchen to see what happened after last night yet...

"I've never seen a hairy-chested man in a dress pull a Playboy bunny before."

Who's snogging who?

Last night was the most sophisticated event in our freshers' calendar: 'Slag and Drag'. I think you get the idea. Theme nights at home always used to make me cringe, but when you find yourself in such close living quarters with effective strangers, it suddenly seems like an excellent idea. Us middle floor girls did the naughty schoolgirl thing. Me and my new university pal, Lesley, went into town and bought BHS school shirts, pleated minis and oversized lollipops. I've still got remnants on my shoulder of the words 'DCUK (Derwent College UK) me' - witty, eh? It had been written on my shirt with a black permanent marker, but had seeped through. Yummy.

I don't really know where to begin describing being a fresher. I've already given you a fair idea, but I haven't really started at the beginning. Describing boys in drag perhaps isn't really the best way to start - it's certainly not the most aesthetically pleasing, anyway. But aside from drag, I've already become what feels like close friends with a couple of people on my corridor. It's like you share more together in five days than you did with many people you knew for five years; it's weird, exciting and unsettling all at the same time. The flip side to the sudden openness is that everyone is also being painfully nice. I'm trying not to sound like a cynic, but surely nobody can be as nice in reality as we're all being to one another right now. We're all so desperate to make friends that nobody wants to put a foot wrong. It's like starting a new school but you have to be even more careful because we're not just learning together; we're living together, too.

It's also anyone's guess who fancies who at the moment. There's only been the odd drunken snog on my corridor so far, though rumour has it there are three couples already shagging downstairs on a regular basis. Overall, everyone is very wary of coming across as a slag, or kissing anyone too soon and making things awkward. Except, of course, at 'Slag and Drag' when - scarily enough - as soon as the boys got into dresses and wigs everyone was pulling left right and centre. I've never seen a hairy-chested man in a dress pull a Playboy bunny before.

Next week, real work starts - it'll be interesting to see how it changes the social scene. At the moment we spend astonishing amounts of time doing nothing but drinking tea (or wine) out of our free student union mugs in the kitchen. Give it a week or two and I'm sure we'll all be bitching like mad and snogging left right and centre.

Updated: 06/11/2006


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