Candice

Candice.

When people ask you awkward questions, like, ‘what’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?’, I always know the exact answer I want to give. But I can’t tell it. For one, I’m extremely introverted unless I’ve had at least a couple of red wines. Secondly, I get very embarrassed very easily. And thirdly, it would alter the way that a lot of people see me, who think they know me, very much.

I’ve always been shy and quiet, more so when I was younger. Every parents evening was the same - I just never said anything, ever. Yet I knew all the answers. I just never wanted to be noticed. In kindergarten I remember sitting on the carpet listening to some sort of story time, and absolutely desperately, and I mean desperately needing to go for a wee. But I was too shy to put my hand up, to interrupt story time for everyone else, and more so, my god, to be noticed by everyone all at once?! God no. So the tears started to sting in my eyes, and in my head I’m screaming ‘god damn it lady finish this story so I can ask you in private to go to the toilet’. The tears began to stream down my eyes, and I swear I can still remember squirming left and right on that uncomfortable carpet, afraid at any moment that I was going to have to go. Finally she finished the story and I casually got up, trying my hardest not to uncross my legs too much, and asked to go to the toilet. Like it was no big deal. I still walked very casually to that toilet, head high and eyes watering, and I will never forget the tears streaming down my little freckled cheeks as I peed when at my final destination. I had made it. I’d done it.

All that being said, I do love telling a good story. Clearly. But I have to be comfortable in the situation, and probably as necessarily, a little bit pissed. But yet here I go. Now, I have been involuntarily and anxiously part of many an awkward introduction ‘round table’. Very common in the corporate environment. Especially with agencies. I am not good at this. Speaking in front of this many people and having this ultimate need to be secretly funny, but having no time to prepare it beforehand, it kills me. But if I say something really dull and normal, that will kill me even more?! What’s an extroverted introvert to do?

Anyway, I remember my first encounter in this awful social interaction people call ‘ice breaking’. I had just started at a posh, all girls grammar school for sixth form. It was my first English lit session - my favourite subject. Within ten minutes two girls had already announced they had both completed writing two novels over the holidays. I had however concentrated on losing my virginity. It was then my turn to announce something I had achieved over the holidays. Well, this should be easy.. Other than the other thing, I’d just gotten back from two weeks in Jamaica with my family. I can tell one of those stories. So it was my turn. And what did I say? I said, ‘I jumped off a 35 foot cliff in Jamaica’. Everyone looked at me a bit baffled. I’d forgotten the context. So I then tried to stumble through an awkward explanation as to that it was in a bar in Jamaica, and that everyone jumps off the cliffs into the water. I just didn’t land it very well. And still, I’m not convinced it’s landed in the way I’d hoped so now, either.But back then I was an amateur at these things, clearly.

Years later, now after working for one of the/the world’s largest corporations for almost 6 years, these things just come second nature to me. But after a while I got bored of saying the same old boring answer. I was comfortable with these people now, surely, they would get me. Surely, I could be funny now.

It was a couple of months into the pandemic in 2020 when I really felt it was my moment to shine. At this point we were all fairly used to the whole ‘new normal’ of large conference calls, and ultimately, the bliss of being able to have your camera off. I loved this. I felt like a podcaster, a radio host, with the ability to finally say whatever I wanted (I mean well within reason, it’s still me). But I could finally put that hand up and go for it, completely unseen.

So I think it was an agency communication briefing. I was not actually involved, I was there as a bystander to get a feel for the brands objectives for the following year which I would then implement in store. They were all creative people, chilled people. Anyway, I had nothing to loose here. I was pretty relaxed. And then the inevitable comes - the suggestion that we all say our names, and a new one this time; we all had to identify what super power you would have if you could. So around they go, of course the obvious come up. Invisibility, time travel, immortality, blah blah blah.

And then it’s my turn. And my camera is off, and I know I can do it. So I simply say (with a little giggle to begin with so they know I’m not a complete creep), I say, ‘well I don’t know if this is inappropriate but honestly I’d love the ability to turn off needing to go to the toilet. Or at least passing on the feeling to someone else.’ And honestly, still, I stand by my choice. You’ve seen how this clearly impacts my life. I haven’t even told you about the time I got caught by the police, in which my defence was - that it would simply be more disgusting if I had in fact wet myself. The female cop was really not very empathetic about this. But I knew she’d felt this way before.

And I also didn’t speak of the time at a festival when it rained so much I was drenched right through and couldn’t make it to the toilet with the long queue, so I looked my boyfriend right in the eyes, as one of our favourite bands played, romantic as anything with the lightsand the pouring rain, and he looked at me right back in the eyes and said; ‘it’s happening isn’t it’. And it was. I did it. Right there. It was still raining in my defence…

I have learned to not feel bad about that though as the same thing happened to my best friend when she came to visit Sydney for new years eve. The heavens opened and so did our throats as we drank and drank in order to not care about the heavy rain interrupting our new years eve. So there we were, waiting for the fireworks, absolutely drenched. And she looked at me. And I knew that look. But I was used to being on the other end, the desperate one, whose eye’s are weeping in bladder pain - not the receiving end. And I tried to stop her, but I knew. I had felt it before. I held her hand and told her we had all been there, as we wet ourselves literally into the new year.

So, in the midst of the admittal of one embarrassing story, I’ve ended up telling many more. And inadvertently turning this whole bit into my inability to hold my bladder, and further my escapades in not doing so.

Well, this story doesn’t solely involve my inability in trying to hold in a piss, but it does come up here or there. So it was a Wednesday night, uni days. It wasn’t too crazy at first. We’d drank our usual obscene amount and just danced and took pictures of each other with our tongues out in the girls toilets. We left wherever our last stop was, and after leaving and being unable to get back in, of course I needed to find somewhere to pee. Well, as I was hovering around my surroundings, I saw a blonde lady in cheap silver glistering clothing and thick black eye liner. She seemed to be very upset and told me that her partner was looking for her and was going to kill her.

Well. I was convinced that this was my calling. I was, you know, studying sociology and criminology - I am from Coventry - these are my people. This is my time to contribute back to society. Embed this knowledge I have been acquiring, 8 months or so into my degree. I mean, looking back; what a lovely thought. From this so called good samaritan, so dedicated to her degree that she’s absolutely shit faced at 2am on Wednesday night/Thursday morning, having already dismissed the idea of going to a 9am lecture in the morning.

Anyway, I sat with her, her gold ringed fingers wrapped around mine skinny and bare, cold, as I told her it would be okay. That she could stay with me as long as she needs, in order to get away from this deranged man I knew absolutely nothing about. So my friends came to find me, and I introduced my new friend Candice and explained that she would be staying with me tonight. I’m honestly not exactly sure of their response, I giggle thinking about what it would have been, but either way we all bundled into the taxi and off we went back, 2 quid each (not including Candice), to the campus of one of the UKs top universities.

So inside we went. Sat in my bedroom, Candice told me many stories; only half of which I remember. One though being that she had burned her baby in the bath and so the baby had been taken away. Well at this news I was beside myself. And attempted to give her my best speech about getting her children back.

I’d love to give a step by step detail by what happened next but only a few things stand out to me. The first is when I was told that she was peeing in the bath. Our only bath, in our shared accomodation, of 12 others. So I got her out of the bath, I gave her my favourite jumper, we had a cigarette and then all of a sudden she was gone. This is very blurry to me but I think amongst some persuasion someone convinced me I had to tell the campus security guard what was going on - this woman is now missing, we thought. She’s been gone a good ten minutes.. The next thing you know, an ambulance pulled up (after maybe a police car..). And when I say the ambulance pulled up, they pulled up in the middle of the courtyard of 3 different campus accomodation buildings. And clearly visible to a lot more surrounding us. AKA, Big. News.

Anyway, the next thing you know they’re carrying Candice across the courtyard, from the woods behind, on a stretcher. They took her inside the ambulance and shut the doors. I sat with my two best friends, I the only one smoking as usual, us all looking at the ambulance on our doorstep in absolute disbelief.

Finally after maybe 20 minutes, they open the ambulance doors. They tell us that they lost her for a moment.. (?!), that she wasn’t breathing for a while..(?!), but after a few resuscitations they got her back. Myself, the security guard and my two friends looked in more disbelief. I honestly don’t know how else to describe it. She had obviously taken something, unbeknownst to us at the time - and I mean it, we were not drug smart. Alcohol smart, yes, drug smart, no. My first thought was, selfishly, of course, I’m a middle class white woman - imagine if she would have died - this little girl afraid to ask to go to the toilet, involved in some mysterious death of a woman apparently named Candice, wearing my favourite jumper!

Anyway, the ambulance left, the security guard went back to his office and my friends, to bed. I stood still in front of my door with Candice. She hugged me tightly and thanked me, thanked me for caring and for trying to help. I told her to go and get her kids back. She handed me back my favourite jumper (thank god), and then off she went into the night, into the foggy, brightly lit campus lights.

And so that’s one of my most interesting stories. Somehow my life is full of these encounters. And I’m yet to work out if I attract them, or if they attract me. I haven’t told the story of Candice in a corporate board room yet, and I don’t think I ever will. I hope she did go and fight for her children. I hope she actually got home that night.. The next day I did go and see the security guard to thank him. He said he had been up all night trying to find the infamous Candice online. He had found a profile and had determined that she was in fact, a ‘rough diamond’. He gently looked at me then and said, what I had tried to do was a lovely idea, but to please not bring any non-students back to campus - it was in fact against the rules. It made a great story to everyone over breakfast, though.