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There is a bus shelter on Aro Street that nobody will sit in. I walked past it almost every day last year. During the winter, bus goers would huddle outside, staring wistfully at it as hail ricocheted off its tin roof.

I knew there must be a rational explanation for their fear. I liked thinking about it as I walked to school. Did they think it was haunted? This didn’t seem unreasonable; Aro inhabitants are superstitious people. I was told with absolute conviction recently that a cat murderer lives on Aro Street. The evidence? “Haven’t you seen all the missing cat posters down that road?”

I became obsessed with this bus shelter. I would arrive at my lectures unable to tear my thoughts away from its mysterious powers of repulsion. I had to do something about it before it resulted in a failed year at university. I had to go inside.

I planned it carefully—I didn’t want to mess it up. It was a bright autumn day; children were playing at the nearby park and cars were passing frequently. I took a deep breath and stepped inside.

I dry retched as I was overpowered by the stench of urine and vomit.

Drunks do the darndest things.

There must have been something especially funny in the air this weekend. I woke up on Sunday in Myrtle Manor, my new flat, and the air was thick with unusually intense hung-over self-loathing. We sat outside in our overgrown courtyard, affectionately named ‘Smokers Paradise,’ and swapped stories. We were a sheepish bunch.

Grace was the first to speak. Her head was in her hands, and etched in her voice was a kind of muffled mortification.

“Cupcakes…” she said, almost choking on the word. “…Cupcakes. I was at my mothers 50th birthday and I threw cupcakes at her friends. Oh God.”

I would have never picked Grace as the cupcake-throwing type. I’ve known her for years, and she has never before been inclined to bowl baked goods.

“It was the vodka,” she groaned. Drunks do the darndest things.

Lily and Harry exchanged glances with raised eyebrows.

“You were almost as obnoxious as us then,” said Harry as he launched into a story about the previous night. The two had stumbled into Midnight Café on their way home. The line was long, and the room was spinning. When the barista asked them how they were, Harry had replied with what he thought was acidic wit—

“Fine, but starving.”

“Cunt,” replied the barista. At this point Lily and Harry launched into a chant that went something along the lines of, “Serv-ice, serv-ice, serve us, serve us!” They then proceeded to call the poor, tired barista “a disgrace to the profession,” and stormed out haughtily holding hands.

“It was the Country Red,” they groaned. Drunks do the darndest things.

They looked at me, recognising on my face the same guilty, embarrassed look that they themselves were feeling. This was becoming more a counseling session than one of the normal Sunday morning catch-ups.

“I just didn’t want to dance,” I croaked. They pressed me for more. I told them about my shouting at a poor girl who was trying to be nice. I had never met her before, but she was insistent that I dance with her on the balcony of San Fran. In a moment of madness I had started mimicking everything she said. I think I went on too long. By the time I stopped she was in tears. Oh God. If you’re reading this, I’m sorry. It was the gin. Drunks do the darndest things.

My cellphone started ringing as I finished the story. It was my mother. We exchanged pleasantries, but it wasn’t long before she was asking my advice.

“I had too much brandy last night,” she began. She then questioned whether it was okay to ask the awkward, mumbling student if he’s gay because of his patent leather shoes. I held my tongue and told her about Grace and the cupcakes. She seemed reassured.

I hung up and looked around at my grinning friends. Life, we had realised, is just the stuff in between moments of intense humiliation. Embarrassment haunts us from the first time we wee ourselves at school, to the last time we fall off our shower stool in our old age.

There was a choice to be made. Were we to sit, wallowing in shamefaced guilt for the rest of our Sunday, or were we to forget the previous night and go to the Adelaide for a drink?

We went to the Adelaide. I think I had one drink too many. There was a bus shelter on the way home. Enough said.

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