Girls' Res’s

Common Rooms

Intended as lounges for chaste discourse and the 30 centimetre rule, girls’ Res common rooms were generally austere as a Methodist church. They lacked the empty beer bottles, overflowing ashtrays, and continuous “westerns” (pornos) on TV that made guys’ common rooms so endearing and so reassuringly like our res rooms.

From Sweetie to Bull Dyke

Just being on door duty could make the most pleasant girl seem intimidating as an anorak clad, women’s’ rugby team bull-dyke, jealousy guarding access to the threshold. Buzzed on the squawking intercom, your paramour would run down the stairs and at the landing, breathless and winsomely flushed. She’d nod at the imposing lesbian, who’d frowningly scribble something in an A4 book. Your host would take you by the hand into the world of pyjamas, droning hair dryers, and muffled, tinny music behind closed door after closed door.

Fluffy Ziggurat

Anneline’s Pringle room was a perfume-scented menagerie of fluffy toys, piled on the bed like a Cardie’s shop avalanche. A “Hard Man is Good to Find” beefcake poster hung on the wall (I have not the words).  I tip-toed in and tripped over a hairdryer diffuser the size of a loudhailer. Foolishly I flopped back into the ziggurat of stuffed toys and nearly drowned. Eventually, all the toys were relocated, and the bed was cleared and romp-ready; except for “Mr Snuggles” – a fave childhood teddy bear of renown, apparently – who sat on the nightstand and gazed at us with dead, cold eyes while we snogged. At some point of the grope I swatted him onto the floor. I never returned to that room. Anneline and I relocated our late night trysts to Mountain Drive and Settler’s monument.