10 LARGO ROAD
Inspired by the postcard, ‘I’m drunk in Boston and this is the only address I know’
an ode to university housing OR the place i call home OR i’m drunk and this is the only address i know OR dedicated to my ladies leidies OR 10 largo road
The New Leidies
10 Largo Road
St. Andrews
Hello.
Salutations. Dear new tenant. To the stranger that crawled into the bones of my old home and made it their own.
I don’t know if there’s a proper way to commence a letter of this form. Who cares anyway, right? Fuck it.
I used to live here. It’s the address that’s still saved on my phone every time I try to buy some cheap party decorations off of Amazon.
hawaiian lei / one gallon of fake blood / green face paint / birthday candles / angel wings / vintage goblets / more hawaiian leis
It’s the address that I wrote attached to party invites more times than I can count.
anna’s surprise party where henry came dressed as a horse / pres with the girls where we laughed over spilled aperol and attempted to stick lashes on with shaking nicotine fueled hands / robert burns night where we annoyed all our neighbours by getting a piper to play inside so we could have a ceilidh in our living room
The address where we stumbled blearily and hungover from beneath the warm safety of our beds, and onto the lumpy couch to share the stories of the night before.
me / sitting on the floor with a bag of frozen vegetable gyoza on the top of my head / i whacked it on the ceiling / i was trying to dance / it was in the crawl space of a friend's new flat / rachael / lying on the sofa wearing her polka-dot dressing gown / nothing else / no, wait / she’s also wearing a pair of ridiculous sunglasses that she pulled off the head of a boy whilst he was kissing a girl / anna / half-upright as she spoons salt water onto her new belly piercing / she’s scared it’s infected / she thinks tequila might have spilled onto it / our friend caitlin / she couldn’t face getting the bus home that night / she’s lamenting over the £60 she accidentally spent at the kebab shop / all of us / together / teeth glinting as we laugh in the afternoon sun
Where I laughed.
discovering that rachael and i had been sharing the same toothbrush for a month / so gross & that’s hilarious & you didn’t eat any nuts did you chloë & i’m really quite allergic & a month is a long time to remember if i ate any & oh well i’m still alive anyway / anna running into my room so we could laugh over photos of boys we were trying to get over / all of us cramming our three bodies into the tiny kitchen to make yet another iteration of pasta / the phase we had of trying yoga before bed / my boob popped out of my pyjama top & anna nearly peed herself & rachael started moaning that she wasn’t flexible enough for beginners yoga & isn’t that just tragic
Where I cried.
three girls crammed onto the couch that can only really fit two so that one person could be consoled / whispering our greatest fears as we lie like sardines on the dusty and grubby carpet of the living room / sitting on the floor of anna’s room until the sun started to rise / we decided to recite shakespeare with traffic cones on our heads / i’m not sure how we got here / it made the tears on her cheeks transform into those born of laughter
It’s where I found myself. It’s where we all did.
You came here and met empty walls, stripped beds and a silent flat.
No fairy lights strung up in the living room because we all hated the big light. No signposts that we found when we were drunk and stumbling home that we thought would look good on the mantelpiece.
Have you figured out that the only way to keep out the cold is to keep all the doors closed at all times? Probably not.
It took us three years to realise that our bedrooms were always cold because we needed to shut the doors.
don’t close the doors / not ever / how else are we supposed to talk & share space & be with each other & exist in the same place & know that we aren’t alone / three years of cold / what cold can compare to the warmth a friend brings / we would peer around the edges of opened doors to see if we were home alone / we rarely were
It took us three years to figure out that the reason why the living room was always the warmest in the flat was because we were always there. Together.
turns out that the only thing that can chase away the frigid Scottish winter is three girls
It took us a few weeks to start calling it home.
It took us a few months before we realised that despite the offers from other friends with nicer flats, that no, we’d rather stay here with the creaky doors & leaky windows & crap carpets & old people furniture & the rotten apple tree in the back garden that never let Anna bake that apple crumble that she always dreamed of.
We’d rather stay here. With each other. Together.
Until we weren’t.
Until you pack up years of your life into brown boxes. Until you see landlord white appear from behind that poster you put up because we could play ‘Pin the cock on The Rock’ at parties. Until it’s just you, alone, waiting for your parents to pick you up & you hate it & you shut the door behind you & you sit on the damp doorstep in the cold because you can’t look at the place when it’s silent & filled with cobwebs & there’s a spot on the rug that’s a different colour from the rest & you never managed to get the stain out.
It’s wine, by the way, not blood.
It shot out of my nose once. I can’t remember why. I was laughing about something.
About anything.
About nothing.
Treat her well. The walls of number 10 Largo Road will look after you.
it’s the only place i was ever loved
Regards,
The Leidies of Largo Road
Chloë Ghiro, 21, St. Andrews - Scotland ✯ IG: @chloeghiro
“Chloë is a final year student at St. Andrews University where, by day, she studies English Literature and Film Studies. By night, she is a depraved romantic who stumbles through the ruins of the Cathedral with grass stains on her knees, wine on her lips and a book in her hands. She seeks out the dark and the beautiful and the sick in everything that she does. Oh, she’s also a sucker for the beauty of friendship.”