The Ones That Got Away: University Edition

Up until my first year of University, a popped collared suburban dude in Puma Mostro’s and Brylcreem powered spikes was all it took. Throw in a Peugeot 206 and a passion for obscure strains of weed and the dream was complete. Going to art school however presented to me the kind of boys I had thought existed exclusively in the pages of a sad girls Tumblr, San Francisco, or the Lower East Side of NYC (LOL). But now they were here, they were real, and I was on heat.

1. Sad Prince:

Sad Prince was dark and mysterious like a coffee bean. He was French, wore an all black uniform of a long overcoat and distressed leather brogues, and never revealed his age when asked. He constantly looked so exhausted and unhealthy in a way I had never seen anyone look before, I was deeply mesmerized and enticed. He had the sexiest, hollowed eye bags, and when he slumbered into class, you were kind of nervously expecting him to collapse and die at any moment because his wild and cultured ways had finally caught up with him. He probably never sleeps and survives on exclusively on neat brandy and almonds. That is so troubling and romantic, my cute little brain thought. 18 year olds are so dumb.

When I finally got to hang out with Charles outside of class, I ruined what could have been by verbally attacking him for not giving money to a homeless man. The whole situation is troubling because I am not a particularly righteous, extra charitable or gold hearted human myself. At all. Nor did I give any change to the man when he asked. This is just the place my brain went to in an attempt to I guess appear cool and political. I think Charles is a DJ now who plays the most revolutionary and emotive shit in the whole City of London.

2. Teen Dream

The next poor soul was the boy who lived in that flat opposite mine. I say poor soul because the awkwardness he felt around me due to my inability to hide my fondness for him was palpable. I had problems controlling my lustful gazes and, shit, was this one good at catching me mid creep eye. Oops. It was tales of him as a teen wrapping iPod earphones around his wrists to represent how dragged down and trapped he felt by Capitalism and modern society that did it for me. Hearing that charming tidbit over £3 wine in mugs was all I needed. I was damn hooked.

This guy was a bit more colour adventurous than Sad Prince. He wore pastel short shorts with tall Dr. Martens, Hawaiian shirts, and wore his hair like a 50s rockabilly. He looked like a punk Beach Boy who couldn’t move forward into stardom with Brian and the boys cause he always took that one bump too many at the party, you know? The inevitable rejection from this was painfully hard to notice through my an incredibly thick haze of self-delusion I had created. It was seven months of living five feet from one another before it came to pass that he did not know my name, and evidently didn’t even really know if I was site security, a student, or someone’s rando sibling who just loved that faux college lifestyle. Did those perverted glances mean nothing, dude?! As the year went on, the weather got warmer and his short shorts brighter, I continued earnestly on my quiet quest of seduction. I even cut all my hair off (this was actually accidental, but I figured perhaps my new vanilla androgyny would give me the edge I need to make Beach Boy mine). Suddenly though, whenever I found a legal and legitimate reason to be in his flat, he was nowhere to be found.

Alas, he had found someone equally as modern day punk as him to watch Sid and Nancy with while giving each other stick ‘n’ pokes or some shit.

3. Male Model

Beautiful bastard. Best believe seeing the cheekbones of a moderately successful male model IRL for the first time will produce unprecedented feelings for a young girls south of the border little triangle. Typically, by the time you’re finishing up your first year at University you should have hopefully read enough feminist literature to know better than to fall for someone so clearly a bottle service Fuccboi. Nope, this guy’s vibe was working all types of ways for me.

This crush was purely physical though. There was no mystery here, I wanted him for his body. He was my friend’s roommate and the first night I met him he had a coke fuelled threesome as my friend and played Jenga deathly sober and pretty uncomfortably next door. He once said I had nice eyes, and I replied by thanking him, but not without informing him of their tendency to leak on cold days or when I apply too much mascara, “ergh” was his response. Natural born killer with my seduction, what can I say.

Having your friend live with a male model has all kind of cliché perks, like the constant rotation of beautiful, 6 ft 3 Eddie Furlong circa American History X dudes hanging around. It was a great time for me. Though the same cannot be said for my friend, who had me on look out duty every time male model and his pals went the shops because this was the only small window of time she had to shit in peace. Sharing a two bed one bath with a male model will make it hard to shit for some folks.

The conclusion of this crush arrived when he abruptly moved out of the flat because I quote, “this area is too ghetto for me.” Classic Fuccboi.