The most vivid memory I have of leaving home is swearing and shouting at my mother repeatedly as she tried to take an emotional photo of me exiting the house for the last time ‘as a child’. That special memory is now framed in our front room. Stepping out into that big wide world as an independent you are filled with a mixture of terror and pure unbridled joy, a bit like being attacked by a hot little naked psychopath.
In those first crucial months you will be made or broken, so here’s a cheat sheet so you don’t end up crying into cider outside your parent’s house after they’ve disowned you for killing the dog. (Trust me, it happens, and very easily, pls see my twitter).
1. Don’t have sex with your housemate. I know you will be tempted, even the word ‘housemate’ suggests possibilities of intercourse. And, yes, being told not to is like meeting a girl called Phuck Mai and finding out she is devoid of sexual organs.
The problem with housemates is that at first they’re fucking great; your loyal partners in new-found freedom they will sit with you in the pub sharing a single WKD and you’ll tell your friends how sexually available and liberated they are. However, sleeping with them and -god forbid- dating them, only ends in tears and STD’s and you have to wake up really early every morning to try and avoid them as you steal their cornflakes.
You’ll sit at the breakfast table listening to them upstairs with a man called Gavin who wears his shirt unbuttoned to the navel and describes himself as ‘multi-sexual’.
2. Re-invent yourself, but not too much. A teacher at my School used to sell University to the drop-outs as the perfect place to become a completely different person. While I only daydreamed about telling everyone to call me Baby (yes like in Dirty Dancing, what fucking of it) and claiming to be a world champion in Russian acrobatics with a mum who bought me weed, my friend Alex actually did it.
Well the details of his re-invention were different to mine, but sadly only slightly. He toddled off to Bristol and we didn’t hear from him for the whole first term. Some friends finally paid him a surprise visit and claim they found him in a ‘French-love-squat’ (don’t ask), reciting a poem about a cyberpunk world called ‘Glassparadise in Digitial Funktion’.
The embarrassment he felt at being found out was little compared to the relentless torment the girlfriend he’d left behind put him through when she found out he was in a tryst with a girl from Mexico who only spoke in vowels.
3. Join a band. If you have a brain and any ounce of desire to be socially accepted you have to do this. And you have to take it really, really seriously. You have to pose for black and white photographs in an alleyway where none of the band members are looking at the camera and the photographer is a girl called Sandy who is studying Fine Art but really wants to drop out and start her own ‘˜mixed media collective’. Vomit.
There must be one gig where someone cuts a part of their face and carries on playing their ukulele regardless. Mental!! (If Sandy is there to take pictures all the better). You have to spend at least 6 months going to parties wearing a luminous cape and talking to someone hot in the kitchen about ‘your sound’ and the A&R guy from a crappy independent who wants to sign you. (Where’s Sandy? Get Sandy for a photo).
Finally, you have to make a video directed by a man with a moustache and addiction issues who used to do ‘hilarious’ stop animation with road kill but now wants to do something more commercial for his show reel. Namely superimposing a band into stop-motion with road kill. (Sandy can be an extra. But don’t fucking sleep with her, she’s your housemate you dick).
4. Get a job somewhere awful. The real world sucks and the sooner you realise it the better so make sure you start off in hell and work your way up. Pick something soul destroying like working in a call centre where you have to sit in a grey cubicle and ring 5 million numbers a day and tell them about a new product to reduce breast size/increase erection size (actually the same product! seriously sir, you should check it out!!).
While you’re there why not have an affair with your boss who at first will seem utterly repellent with his slimy face and ankle swinging suit, but after a few months when your senses have been dulled completely and you’re desperate for any kind of excitement in your life you’ll find him thoroughly attractive. Especially on Wednesdays when he cycles in and smells of rotting cabbage all day long. Mmm.
5. Try not to join a cult. Homesickness may well get to you, especially on those lonely Sunday nights when you walk back alone from the cinema and pass all living rooms where happy families are serving up roasts and watching strictly come on my face while dancing. It’ll be like that scene in Home Alone except without the mittens on a string (I fucking hope).
In these times of loneliness a friendly man in the street offering you a hug and a dinky little book on life-long happiness and eternal bliss might seem like the best thing ever. But I urge you to resist. Stop and look at him.
Is he wearing an orange gown that is probably nothing to do with NU-RAVE? (RIP Klaxons). Is there a dead life-less look in his eyes behind that gurning face? Is he asking you to give him all your money like it ain’t no thang? Then he’s probably a cult member. Or a hippy.
Either way, walk swiftly in the other direction, forget about your crushing isolation and have a hob nob. Then sleep with your housemate/Sandy. (I’ll let you off this once).
ELIZABETH SANKEY
