how to fake a british accent for over a month for no reason

(I wrote this in 2008. My slang, grammar and manner of blog voice proves it).

So this story is legendary amongst all of whom were involved, albeit somewhat unbelievable, howevs if hard-pressed I can deliver some first-hand account proofs, I’ve already been tracking some of these people down on facebook, anyway, allow me to begin.

One evening at the age of 16 (and a half) I went to a Fatboy Slim concert at the Warehouse (before it was Koolhaus) with some friends, and I decided to fake a british accent for the nite. I separated from my friends cos i was on the prowl for dudes to buy me drinks, this was before I had a fake ID, and the show was all ages.

I find one guy and we dance around and he totally did not buy my accent at all, in fact, it inspired him to fake an irish accent, he bought me a beer. We inevitably tire of each other so off I went a dancing. I was wearing tight black velvet pants from le chateau and this indian print camisole that was wicked tight, also from le chateau, my h&m back in the day. I had long blond hair down to my ass then and was beginning to put on a bit of boozeweight cos i had ditched dance classes but still fancied myself the most incredible dancer when out on the scene, i wasn’t a heffer or anything, still pretty lithe.

Then like out of a movie the crowd parts and i see this dude salsa dancing and immediately size him up as a ‘mo. I do my shitty seduction routine in the circle surrounding him, half spazzy jazz bullshit with a sprinkle of electronica thrown in for embarrassing measure (which at the time was so in, i just had to ask my friend what genre fatboy slim is considered and he said uh, oldies? hahaha) and BAM it worked, dude was dancing with me. We take turns salsa-sashaying around each other, he was doing this stupid cha-cha fist air-punching garbage and I was twirling and kicking like a ballet dancer on speed.

So the moment comes when I finally have to say something in his ear, and I do, complete with fake (shitty) british accent, which he doesn’t flinch over at all, and what did I say? I asked him if he was bi-sexual of course, it’s nearing the end of the concert and I want some fucking action, and to my chagrin he says oh my god yes but it is totally a secret. I’m not going to embarrass the dude by outing the details I later found out plus he is also married now, the point is, he wasn’t technically bi and that’s all I’m going to say on the matter, so I gave myself the green light and followed that up with do you know how old I am? (One of my favourite lines was throwing how young I was at older guys cos i thought I was so fantastically mature and smart and ugh you get the point) Then I say I’m 16 He says it doesn’t even matter cos you are so beautiful and then I find out he’s 29, I can’t remember if he told me before or after he found out my age. Anyway we keep dancing and chatting until the lights come on and then we get a better look at one another, ok ok still interested I guess, my friends come over to collect me, he gives me his card, says he is from Montreal and I’m so pumped that i say ME TOO (I am not from Montreal) which is now lie number 2 on top of the fake accent crap.

Two weeks pass, I email him, we make plans to attend a performance of Irving Welsh’s Ecstasy at System Soundbar, we drop E during the intermission and then there is also another 45 minutes of the show to go and before long we turn into cuddly e-tards.

And I am stuck faking this british accent cos I didn’t have the balls to come clean and of course E makes you just absolutely LOVE whoever you take it with (I didn’t want to jeopardize this relationship ha yeah cos a lot was running on it) on top of being 16, still in high school and in the big dreamy city of Toronto when you live in Mississauga, Streetsville no less.

My back story was pretty stupid, something like lived in England for awhile, born in Montreal (that annoying idiot detail kept coming back to haunt me) then eventually moved to Mississauga. This dude from Devon, England had recently entered our fold at school so I copied his story and accent, when asked where in England I came from I cooed, “The Northwest part.” or whatever direction from London Devon was, I did not even bother to look at a fucking map either. And of course as it turns out, dude’s roommate WAS BORN IN FUCKING DEVON. He only lived there for a few years as a kid but still, went back to visit and all that. FUUUUUUUUCK. Luckily he was a total perv space cadet stoner and I just changed the subject when we were talking about what a coincidence it was both being from Devon and all, and it worked. Years later when we were all making fun of me he said, “Yeah yeah, I remember it being a little odd how we just changed subjects like that come to think of it.” HAHA.

Oh right, to everyone I was also 18 years old. After school everyday I took the Go Bus into Toronto (or my friend would drive me and later pick me up and drive me home), I had my own key to his apartment and he’d get home from work right after me. The first time I turned up I had a problem with the key and the other roommate thought I was a burglar. It was extremely important to me that I be accepted by all these adults so I really shined up my personality and game and I was careful to dress urban and have a lot of funny things to say.

oh and I got away with it from my parents cos i made up friends that didn’t exist who lived in other suburbs or said I was at a late movie then at Sega Playdium, and they were stressed out from my brother’s hi-jinx at the time so my comings and goings went pretty much unnoticed. I was still going to school and working my part-time job, typical adolescent stuff.

So I meet a lot of this guy’s friends over the span of a month and a half and I fake this accent for all of them. I only let it slip once when my friend called me cos she was in Toronto herself at the edge in line for Oasis tickets. I hang up the brick-sized motorola cell phone I had purchased to make being sneakier easier and say in my normal voice, “Oh my God, Sandra’s in Toronto right now.” Then he gets this smirky look on his face, we’re waiting for the streetcar at union and all the blood drains from my head I almost shat myself and fainted on the spot, so quickly to damage control I come up with all these piss-ant britishism cliche words like ‘blimey’ ‘fack’ ‘right’ ‘shit’ just as he says, “You totally just lost your accent there!” It was fucked cos on the phone I was faking the accent and Sandra goes, “Oh, you’re with *****” and laughs at me and I laugh too.

I mutter that once in awhile it drops from hanging around canadians so much, phew, buys it.

When the phone would ring at work I would be expecting him so I’d put on this half sing-songy british lilt.

You’re probably thinking there is no fucking way you could fake an accent for that long and get away with it and I know there isn’t a chance in hell I could pull it off now, but at the time I was desperate to keep this ball rolling so I buckled down, and it got easier, became second-nature. I even faked an accent in a school play as Scrooge and everyone thought it was pretty good, I was also obsessed with brit pop.

However, I was tired of faking it and I had deluded myself into thinking this was true love and all my friends were like you have to tell him the truth dude. I bet they wanted it to be over, selfish jealous bitches.

On the nite I decided to come clean we went out to dinner on College street, I didn’t want to tell him in the restaurant in case he made a scene and stormed out on me. I wanted to be able to manipulate the situation into my favour, but, I did want to prepare him for the news so I kept telling him during dinner that I had something to tell him and it was important and right after eating could I tell him at his place? He didn’t seem worried in the slightest, fuckin’ smug dick, here I am sweating like crazy, clammy palms about to barf and he’s just casually chewing on his food, i was aghast by how non-chalant he was.

Alright so we’re at his place hanging out on the bed, he’s leaning against the wall and i’m facing him totally wringing my fucking wrists, I start with this little spiel I had been going over in my head for weeks, I say, “*****, now I weeally loike yuh-ew and this thing I’m ’bout to tell yuh-ew has lead to all these styew-pid l’il whoite lyes n’all ‘n..’n..” I start to stammer and he spits out, “WHAT IS IT ARE YOU PREGNANT!? DO YOU HAVE AIDS!?” so I blurt, “I DON’T HAVE AN ACCENT!!!” in my normal voice and his eyes bulge out of his head and he goes, “OH MY GOD….your normal voice…IT’S SO HOT.”

I know right!? After all that build-up. It was such a relief. We sat there going over every lie I had told because of my stupid fake accent and he was entertained by all of it, all of a sudden I had this new interesting appeal, like some shit kid from the ghetto streets of ‘sauga. I know it sounds laughable but it worked like a charm. I asked him if he had bought it all along and he said he thought it was just something I liked to do, talk british? But then calling me at work when I would answer the phone with the accent that sealed the deal for him in his head. HAHA.

He called me at work the next day the second I got there just to hear me talk in my real voice.

We dated in total for six months, I had to meet all the friends again I had faked the accent in front of and no one ever made mention of it, like a black-out was placed on that topic.

Inevitably my parents found out on the weekend of my seventeenth birthday cos my stupid friend blabbed to her mother about where she’d been and where I was then everything went to shit and my heart was broken, I was grounded for two weeks and my life was hell. I had the audacity to say to my dad don’t take it personally when he kept saying over and over, “I can’t believe for six months you have been living a double life.” He at least understood the appeal of hanging around older people. My mother of course hit the roof and threatened to get this guy thrown in jail to which I smart-alecky informed her about the legal age of consent in Canada, she even called up his dad and he told her the same thing.

I wrote to one of my old friends from this group and asked him what he thought about the story he said i was intimidating i asked how he said because i was sexy cocky and loud.

THE END

ps. comments are back.

pps. this was supposed to go up on s-carnage but cos of the bullshit over there and an impending article they want the attention on and not the crap that follows me around the webz, on my blog this went.