Dionysus, god of wine

As it is Saturday morning (only just...), I'd assume that many of my readers were out maring last night. In fact, I KNOW many of you were - I saw you :P but for once, I was doing the (almost) sober cobra, which is unusual - and not recommended - in a place like Friars. Despite the fact that my almost-soberness put a rather obvious damper on my evening, I did find myself noticing things that I would never have noticed while drunk.

As we all know, Friars is known as the home of the drunken-lunge. If you are lusting after someone in particular and you spot them at Friars, it has become almost acceptable to randomly grab and kiss them on the dancefloor, dirty-dance with them or hook up in the corner of the middle bar (you know, the one under the TV. Personally, I have never hooked up in that corner. Just saying). I sat watching these drunken lunges last night - and there were many of them - and wondered what exactly it was that set off this display of debauchery. OK I know alcohol causes you to lose your inhibitions, which is why startling the object of your affections with an alcohol-flavoured kiss suddenly seems like a good idea. But why is it that all of our uninhibited actions seem to include some form of sexual activity? According to some brief google research that I did, the age during which people experience the strongest forms of sexual arousal are between 19 and 30, which could serve as an explanation. (Note: do NOT google words like "age" and "strongest sexual arousal" unless you have ensured that safe-search is switched on. I have now seen pictures that scarred me for life :-/ why does Google assume that "age" means old??). Combine that with dark rooms, music with a heavy beat and lots of bodies wriggling around together and suddenly I can understand why clubs have become so...sexually-oriented.

But this is the most important part of my question: why Friars? Why do you not see as many drunken lunges in Pirates, or SSS, or the Rat? And why do you never see them in places like Durban and Pretoria? The dancefloors are equally dark, the music is the same and there are, if anything, even more bodies wriggling around (I'm sorry, I just can't refer to what white people do on a dancefloor as "dancing". Not after hearing Lulu's opinions on it :P ). I've been told by male friends that Friars is a brilliant place to find a one-night stand and that hooking up is almost mandatory. Last year I believed these rumours, and hence became known as a bit of a wild child when it came to dancefloor kissing (I blame my sister's influence). Now that I am older - by a few months, but still - and hopefully wiser, and also despise hangovers, I've realised that perhaps people only hook up in Friars because it's what they think they are expected to do. We all know that Friars is very much a first-year hangout, even if some older students still frequent it. Perhaps these first years hear the rumours about Friars hookups, think "That sounds fun" and thus pounce on each other as soon as they're through the door.

This is clearly something I need to give more thought to. I shall add it to my list of "questions that plague me". (Which includes: why does cake batter taste better than the cake itself? How do first years get fat if dining hall food is so gross (see below)? Why do people feel the need to update their Facebook statuses while drunk, myself especially? Stay tuned for more from this fascinating series! :P ).