Furnished like a a ‘70s airport lounge, with faux leather chairs that swallowed you as you slouched back, and a stained, burnt-clay coloured carpet, the Students’ Union was familiar and non-descript as a small-town sports club bar. I approached the counter and did some quick sums: R1.20 for a box of cigarettes, R1.30 a beer: on that and my virgin post-high-school provincial alcohol tolerance, I could get giddy, numb-face drunk for ten bucks, with change over if I a braved a R2.50 bottle of Taverna Rouge.
Taverna Rouge, a red wine that could peel the linoleum off a kitchen floor. One sip tasted wrong as incest; a whole bottle was a one-way ticket to lurching, slurring oblivion and a hangover that left you bargaining with God or praying for a swift death.
Amid the hum of conversation and the chink of coinage games I sensed for the first time the boundless, intoxicating freedom that lay before us. Coming from so many far-flung dorps, towns and cities, here we were free to re-invent ourselves to be whoever, and whatever we wanted. Drunk, mostly.
