Agnes in St Andrews: Column 3

My last night in Oslo, I borrowed my mum's apartment and invited over my (mostly single) friends whom I knew I would miss dearly. We gorged on red wine, snus, and gossip till morning, repeating the same stories for the thousandth time — psychoanalysing old flings and weird sexual experiences. 

The friend group has expanded over the years, but is still pretty consistent; most grew up in the same city, went to the same schools, and know the same people. Semi-insistent on never lowering our standards or eating each other's leftovers, our sea of eligibility has thinned, turning plenty of fish into a few, giving the gossip less romantic fuel than it used to have. After repeating my same sad eating-mouldy-cereal-with-my-one-night-stand story, my friend sighed in boredom and exclaimed, “Fortunately, you’re heading to a new city to give us some new material.”

On my first proper going-out day in St Andrews, I was yearning to make my friends proud. I looked through my suitcase, filled with small, slutty tops I had thrifted and cropped throughout the years, and landed on a transparent purple one, barely covering my nipples and belly button. I paired it with a denim skirt and went to the pub with my new friends, but ended up feeling self-conscious, realising that the top I got away with in the dark clubs and living rooms of Oslo suddenly looked aggressive, as if my exposed cleavage went from cheeky-classy to screaming for attention. I felt like a millennial missing the mark of trendiness, surrounded by hotties wearing stripey long scarves and sweaters. The men I did manage to talk to in my nakedness were usually 60-year-old golfers, gays or freshers — bad contenders for overseas gossip, no matter how juicy it would be. 

The following pub nights, my flirting missions continued to fail, and my outfits seamlessly turned more modest. I learnt that fellow students were changing their Hinge locations or going away on the weekends for hook-ups and situationships. Too lazy for such efforts, I became anxious about returning home with nothing new to tell.

Then, last Friday, I met a man. He had the classic look of a man who would f*** me and then f*** me over in Oslo, quite beautiful and extremely arrogant. As I stood talking to him, I looked over at my friends’ table in the corner, cheekily peeking over at us, giving a rather lame thumbs-up. Their stupid reactions made me laugh way more than anything this man had to say, and it hit me; the validation I’d been chasing left me talking about the politics of computer science while my friends were simply having fun.

Now I am in no way reformed, but it has been refreshing to be loveless and celibate, with all the time and capacity in the world for new friends. At least that’s what I’m telling myself, since self-improvement is easier without temptation. 

Illustration by Ramona Kirkham