Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

It was the mid eighties. I was bored. I’d been dumped by an extremely good looking bloke for a relatively plain looking stick insect. The fact that she was icy, upper middle-class, soulless and condescending somehow made matters worse.

I didn’t actually want to be with the bloke in question. He was a bit of a twat, if I am honest. He was a public school moron with the politics to accompany the silver spoon that had been left in his mouth.

This new girlfriend of his was far more in tune with him, although she had no sense of humour whatsoever, and she wore pearls! I’ve not got anything particularly against pearls but on a 22year old, they just seem rather misplaced, or certainly did at the time.

We all went out one evening, a whole load of us hitting the town in the monstrous way that students do. I’d spent most of my evening with a group of male friends and had been hopelessly hit on by this one lad with the most enormous mouth. I mean, literally. It was the size of Julia Roberts’s with an additional pump of Botox, probably before Botox had even been invented.

He had wavy hair, decent looking eyes and that was about it.

He was deeply unintelligent.

But I was bored and I was pissed off at seeing Little Miss Perfect and the moronic one. I didn’t like the way that she was looking at me. What precisely had she got that I hadn’t apart from a cold and calculating manner?

What she had in abundance was “class” and money and therefore I was redundant, though I am obviously not so full of myself that I did not recognise there was much more to it than that. Some people are just suited to one another, and these two fitted together perfectly.

They got married in the end.

And probably got divorced too.

Anyway, Botox features wouldn’t leave me alone.

I was bored. So when he sat down next to me on the bus home, I let him slide his fingers all over my legs. I let him brush his hands over my breasts as he kissed me, and I decided that I was going to fuck him that night, not because I was particularly attracted to him but because I just fancied doing something outlandish. And of course, there was something to prove to the beautiful ex.

I had my fair amount of fucks whilst at university but had never had a one-night stand before.

As the bus approached my stop, he followed me off the bus, miles away from his own house.

I let him.

I let myself into the house, walked straight up to the bedroom and got fucked.

We fucked quickly and immediately, and then we clambered into bed where he fucked me again. It was raw, unsensual but quite thrilling. He had a decent cock and I remember getting rather aroused, not by the bloke but by the whole raunchy situation. I knew that I had no intention of seeing him again, and prayed that the dimwit wouldn’t fall for me.

In the morning, he left.

I met him at lunch time where he explained to me that he had a girlfriend and was going to be engaged to be married within the year. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was not exactly heartbroken at this news. She was welcome to his rubbery lips and his tailored manner.

I was out of there!

For my own confidence though, I just wish I had been assertive enough to tell him this rather than allow him to think he was giving me the brush-off.

But bizarrely, the whole experience was wonderfully empowering. I hadn’t deliberately dressed myself up that evening in order to get laid, but as soon as this guy started on me, I just thought to myself, “Why not?”

I was a relatively decent looking girl. I hadn’t had sex for nearly a month and in those days, before I rediscovered celibacy or a certainly a lack of interest in sex, I was rather desperate for a decent bit of cock.

It wasn’t a big deal.

On Friday night, I was out in town once more; a different town and different circumstances. I was with a load of girlfriends, the majority of whom were in a stable relationship, or certainly ones of longevity. Nobody had dressed to flirt – after all, apparently middle aged or older women of a certain standing don’t do that sort of thing. Certainly nobody was out to get hold of a man and have their brains fucked out for the sake of it, not even me!

But I was surrounded by others with a different story to tell, not part of my group, but certainly dressed to devour.

Ask teenager girls what they aspire to in life and some respond with the most horrific of statements; they want to be a WAG.

All they want is to go out into the city, meet up with a wannabee or established footballer, stick their fannies in their faces and end up, a few months down the line, as the next Cheryl Cole. I shudder to myself at their lack of self-worth; not merely for their weird aspiration but because they feel a need to define themselves by a man. No woman should do that and it is tragic that we are still in a situation when this happens.

However, on this Friday night, there may not have been the would-be WAGs wandering around the mild autumn streets, only groups of women with various reasons as to why they were dressed or semi-dressed up to the three times threes.

Alert: gross stereotyping coming on.

You’ve all seen them, pottering around on their stiletto heels, carrying the smallest little clutch bag containing keys and condoms, with their Facebook pouts at the ready.

They collect or mutate together into congealed conformity; all long hair, short skirts, skimpy tops, fake tans and a sense of purpose, clothed in a manner that pays no heed to the seasonal variation of our climate.

But I must stop this stereotyping at once. There are also the women who group together and do not tart themselves up to the eyeballs. They are out in the late autumn breeziness with a far more casual appearance; free to choose what they want to wear, perhaps holding a can or two of lager in hand, dying on the spot to be compared with the prospective WAGs.

The night is full of these groups of women. They are merry and alive and enjoying life, I think.

But we don’t know anything about them, about their lives, their dreams, their hopes and yet we start to make assumptions according to what they are wearing and indeed the fact that they are gathered together as a group.

And the first assumption is that they are out to find a man!

That is how conditioned we all are.

There must be a reason why they are dressed in a certain way or giggling profusely. Surely there is only one reason why these girls stay together; safety in numbers until they can shed their unity to subdivide.

Our fiendish automatic assumption, even the enlightened amongst us, is that they are officially on the pull.

But it is not that simple and who are we to imagine as such. And isn’t it tragic that we cannot instantly consider another reason why these women are out and about in the early hours of the morning; that they are just out to have fun.

As I am wandering through the night and journeying with them, I play a little game, I imagine where they have come from, what they are doing, what they hope to achieve in their evening and indeed their lives.

And I look at them and see a little of the adventures that I had when I was their age, or certainly the adventures that I would have liked, for my life was relatively sheltered.

Let’s take a quick look at a group of women then.

There’s the one who really does want to be a WAG: the exhibitionist who is the first on the dance floor, or the one who surreptitiously winds herself on the bar in the hope that a wealthy passer-by will grab her attention, or vice versa.

Then there is another who loves her evenings out with her girls but would like an alternative too. She is a little more demure than the previous girl but what she wants more than anything is a man; a boyfriend, someone to share some time with, almost irrespective of whether there is any true compatibility. The coupling is more important to them than the connection.

Although there is generalisation here, there is an element of truth.

Who else is there within this group of young women? Do they all have the same purpose in life?

Perhaps, amongst them, there are those who just want to be out with their friends, having fun, dancing, drinking, revelling in the joy of female company, not in a sexual way.

There is much to be said for groups!

There is much to be said for having a close-knit group of friends with whom to share a meal or a couple of drinks, and once more, just because they are a group of young women, rather than the group of women of my age, we should not assume that they are all desperate for a man to satisfy their every need. Sadly, as I said, that is precisely what we do.

“Girls just wanna have fun” cried Cyndi Lauper, and that is absolutely right. So shouldn’t we let them do precisely that?

Or perhaps there is the young woman who is brave enough to admit, like I did decades before, that they just fancy a fuck.

Have times really changed?

When I see these women, I actually dance in delight at their liberation and their opportunity. It may not be what the feminists strove for but I love the fact that there are more women out there taking power for themselves.

I did it one night, once. I never kissed a bloke without a serious amount of flirtatious foreplay that would take place, sometimes over a period of months. Frequently the flirtatious foreplay was so subtle I didn’t even know I was engaging in such a process.

Nowadays it does feel as though young women do not have such reticence. If they want something they go for it.

I watch a group in a bar; giggling and chatting, moving their eyes around the room. I pass them as I go to get the next bottle of wine for the muttons shying away in the corner.

All too soon, the force of the group of collective women disperses. They are gradually dissipating from the whole to the fractions, and the mathematical breakdown soon becomes multiples of two, with a few odd ones left out of the equation.

There’s safety in numbers, they said. But now there are only two. And that causes problems. The “one’s” left out feel periphery. The ones who thought they might find the love of their lives are disappointed but the ones who have caught the eye of a prospective snogger or fucker are oblivious in an instant to the needs of their friends.

And all because..........

Why do we have to play this game, and why do I have to sit on and watch, losing all sense of excitement at their liberty, knowing that ultimately everyone is just going to play the conformity game, just like I did.

I look again at the group of young women and hope to see my younger self within.

I find her and I want to grab her by the hand and tear her away. I want to tell her to be herself. I want to tell her that if she wants a fuck, then she should be more forthright and admit to herself and others that this is what she needs. I want to tell her that it is okay to love someone, to care for them, to feel an ultimate connection with another but she mustn’t lose herself, her dignity and everything that she is for the sake of any other human being, however wonderful they may be. I want to tell her that she has plenty of time. She’s not a bird – she is not designed to be monogamous and if she manages to catch the eye of a sexual partner now, it doesn’t have to be forever. I want to tell her that she will be happy and she can have fun and that enjoyment of life comes from diversity and inclusivity.

That’s what I want to tell her, only I know that she has a list of counter-arguments about babies and biological clocks and security and the safety not of numbers but of the number two.

And I cannot argue against that intuitive feeling that I know she has.

The women sit on the train at the end of the evening. They are no longer a large group of young women. Their numbers have been swelled or diminished by the additional men or the loss of some of their party to the delights of a “result” where the keys in the handbag are unused for the night but the other article might come in handy.

Nothing is straight forward but I still live in hope that the groups of girls that I see, be they clad in stilettos or be they simply enjoying an evening of sipping wine at a table in a heated shelter, learn to be unconventional, realise their own worth and feel confident to be themselves, and simply have fun with no expense to others.

Some boys take a beautiful girl

And hide her away from the rest of the world

I wanna be the one who walks in the sun.

Simple, even simplistic lyrics but I want that sunshine back on my back.