by Eliza Clark
‘Aye. Um, aye I can sort three extra lines out. Can’t we, Will?’
‘Three?’ He makes a face, then remembers himself. ‘Oh, shit yeah. There’s like… I mean we’re practically like Scarface up in here. Have you seen Scarface?’
‘Yeah, Will. I’ve seen Scarface.’ And I join Henson in a side-eye. Our eyes meet, and he winks again. Will scowls.
‘I was just asking.’
We take the living room for lines. There are two girls in there, pretty girls, girls younger than me, so deep in conversation they seem a little taken aback when Will pulls a record from his neatly organised shelf and drops it on the coffee table in front of them. He takes a baggie from his pocket, and tips most of the powder inside it onto the sleeve. Finch says he should use a black vinyl not a white one. Will says it’s too late for that now. The girls get up to leave. Will looks to me, to the girls, back to me, and seems to mentally put all his eggs in one basket. He lets them go, without a line offered, or even so much as a nod of his head.
Flo leaves for the toilet, comes back and says there are quite a lot of people in the rooms upstairs, and Henson explains that their other housemate, Sam, is up there. Sam wanted to ‘get ketty’ around the time we arrived, so him and a handful of other guests retired to his bedroom, where they’d pulled a load of quilts and mattresses onto the floor earlier in the day, with the idea it’d be a comfy, ‘chill’ room, for people to go and get a bit weird later on. They must have all thought there’d be more girls here. Including myself, the one I came with, and the two who just left the room, that’s four women and probably fifteen or sixteen men, unless there are more women up in the ketamine room, hiding. No women is such a red flag for a shit party, but then no men is a red flag too – you want a fifty-fifty ratio, ideally.
I think Flo might have had her second bomb. If she’s sick later, I’m not fucking dealing with her.
Will runs to the kitchen and returns, carefully snipping up a couple of plastic straws with a pair of scissors, distributing them among the group. He assures us we will be kept ‘safe at the sesh’.
‘The girl to boy ratio here is really off,’ I say. I look at Flo.
‘I want to dance,’ she says. Will sticks some disco bullshit on, and Flo grabs Finch by the wrists, forcing him to dance.
‘Ah, do you not have a boyfriend, then?’ asks Henson, as if it were a natural segue.
‘Nah,’ I say. ‘I don’t do relationships. Never have.’ Henson smiles at me, and tells me he’s a serial monogamist, but single at the moment. Flo snorts, from her dance.
‘What about Frank?’ she asks.
‘Shut the fuck up.’ My face turns red – Frank is a fucking no-go. Honestly, I’d rather she brought up Lesley. Finch wants to know who Frank is.
‘Frank Steel,’ says Flo. ‘The photographer?’
‘Oh!’ says Finch. ‘Really?’ A demented little smile spreads over his face, like it’s such a shock.
‘Shut the fuck up, Flo,’ I say. And when she laughs, I throw an empty cup at her. That shuts her up. That shuts everyone up.
‘Ladies,’ says Will. ‘Please.’
‘You’re so aggro on coke, Rini, oh my God,’ whines Flo. I don’t dignify her with a response.
‘Should I roll a joint after this, then?’ asks Will. ‘Bit aggro this vibe, like. Plus, I’m nearly out of coke after this, mostly.’
‘So much for Scarface,’ I say. I dump my cocaine on the table.
It’s four a.m., and the sky is getting lighter, like a threat. I complain about it; Henson has a solution, proudly drawing the blackout curtains he bought specifically for the sesh. He’s also covered all the mirrors, so we don’t have to worry about the way we look. It’s like a Jewish funeral in here, but with more class As. We’re now out of coke, properly out of it. Flo is wittering on to Finch about gender. Finch has withdrawn; he is sweating and gurning. Will is texting his dealer, but I sincerely doubt he’ll get a response.
Will discards his phone. He is in a beanbag, pouting and dutifully rolling joints while I’ve been talking to Henson. He tried to craic on with Flo earlier, but she just said, ‘Boyfriend, sorry,’ and he didn’t even keep up the fucking pretence of wanting to talk to her. He sagged back into his beanbag with a grunt.
I’ve demoted him. Demoted from better looking, thinner friend to man-in-corner-rolling-joints. The mere act of my speaking to his cute, fat friend has him in a massive huff. It’s incredible. Who said masculinity was fragile, eh?
Henson and I have been deep in party chat for ages. He doesn’t seem to be the type of bloke who needs to interrupt you with his own hot takes, which is refreshing – maybe he’s too wrecked to respond. He’s still wearing the top hat. I described Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom to him in full, and explained Pasolini’s vision: the way he criticised the voyeuristic nature of film, but the inherent hypocrisy of the cinematography. The way he can’t stop his camera from lingering on boys. How he frames the female victims in the film with a cold, detached eye, but his male subjects are filmed with significant heat, with the lens lingering, not just on buttocks, but on eyelashes, and soft, floppy hair, and pretty lips. I told him that, as an artist, that was so influential for me. I could do that, if I wanted, you know? I could train a camera on a man and look at him like a man looks at a woman; boys, too, could be objects of desire.
I pull up some photos of Will on my phone, as an example. I pick out one where he’s nude, apart from an open button-down shirt. You can’t really see his dick. Mostly pubes – there’s a strategic bit of lighting.
‘Do you see, though? He looks soft, doesn’t he? He’s looking at you like he wants you, isn’t he? Like a… girl in a perfume advert, or something.’ I zoom in on his face. Heavy eyelids, parted lips, glimpse of a tongue glittering beneath his teeth. ‘Take my phone, have a scroll.’
‘Aye. Um… Was his… He never told me you shot nudes,’ Henson says.
‘Oh. Not as often as my mam thinks I do, but yeah. Will’s done loads of nasty shit for me.’
‘Irina,’ Will hisses. He’s crawled over to us, scattering a small nugget of weed into his carpet. ‘Don’t, please.’
‘Ah, come on, don’t act shy. You’re obviously not,’ says Henson. He’s stopped on a photo of Will in what I call lazy drag. He’s wearing lip gloss and delicately applied false eyelashes with a touch of eyeliner, and is dressed in one of my nighties (silk, pink) and a short dressing gown (see-through, pink, marabou feather trim at the hem and the sleeves). His hair is down, and he just… he just looks so pretty.
‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ I say. ‘You look lush here.’
‘Aye, dead bonny, lad.’ Henson has a smirk on his face. ‘A wonder you’re not using these on your Tinder. It’d be a statement of intent.’ Will tries to grab my phone from his friend’s big, meaty hands. ‘I’m still looking.’
‘I thought you liked my photos,’ I huff.
‘I do. I just, like, I don’t want him to see them.’
‘Well don’t model if you don’t want people to see your work,’ I say.
‘Most of them are fine! I don’t care about him seeing most of them, Irina. Do you get me? Most of them are fine, but maybe not one or two?’ Will is pleading, and Henson is now scrolling furiously. I give him a look like I have no idea what the fuck he’s on about. I do assume, however, he’s on about the photos I took about a year ago of him wanking.
Again, the lighting is very tasteful. You can only just see the tip of his penis poking out from the top of his fist. He’s on his knees, with his forehead touching the floor. I don’t think I set out to take photos of him out-and-out wanking, but things escalate, don’t they?
‘Woah,’ says Henson. And my phone is locked, and placed face-down on the coffee table.
‘What?’ I feign ignorance, unlock my phone. ‘Oh. Ah, shit. Sorry. I forgot we took those.’
Will is bright red. His mouth is twisted.
‘Forgot,’ he says. ‘You’re a fucking bitch sometimes, do yo
u know that?’ He doesn’t spit it at me. He’s not angry. It’s stated like an unpleasant fact, one he’s already dealt with. Global temperatures are rising, Brexit means Brexit, and Irina is a fucking bitch. I crawl over to him and sling an arm around his neck.
‘Diddums,’ I say, my bottom lip jutting. ‘I can’t remember every single photograph I take, you know?’ He shrugs my arm away and lights a joint. ‘Gimme one.’ He hands me the one he’s lit, and lights another for himself, slinking back to his beanbag, still red. Henson grabs one from the small pile on the coffee table.
‘Well,’ Henson claps his hands. ‘On that note, shall we get a bit ketty? After these?’
‘Go on then,’ says Flo. She’s gone a bit green. She gets up, suddenly, rushing out the living room and through the front door. The living room windows are open, so we can hear her throwing up in the garden.
‘Christ,’ says Finch. ‘That’s home time.’ Once Flo starts vomiting, she’s done. No endurance, no dedication to the sesh. She comes back in a moment later, shaking her head.
‘Ah, babes. You really shouldn’t have started on the coke, should you? Like, morally.’ I say. Flo nods. Finch has already picked up her handbag, and sighs heavily.
‘Let’s go,’ he says. ‘You coming, Irina?’
‘Nah, I’m good,’ I say.
‘Are you sure?’ Flo asks, around a burp.
‘Um… Yeah?’
‘Just… Leaving you by yourself and stuff…’ she says.
‘Aye, I’m sure I’ll get gang-raped the second you leave the house.’ I roll my eyes. She flinches when I say gang-rape. So does Henson.
They leave, and so do a steady trickle of people from the upstairs bedroom. We smoke a couple of joints between us. I don’t normally smoke weed, as it does very little for me; I’m feeling relaxed, but nauseous, less aware of my heart pounding in my chest. The mix of substances has my nervous system confused. Am I relaxed, or wired, or knackered? No idea. Fuzzy, though. Possibly hungry? Haven’t spoken in a while. Just managed to drop the K on the coffee table.
‘We’ve got enough, I reckon, for six small lines, or three rather large lines,’ I say. I flip a coin – heads for little, tails for big.
Tails.
I realise it’s been about four hours since I went to the loo, and I leave Will to rack the lines up, while I spend five minutes in the boxy downstairs toilet staring into the crotch of my underwear and pissing like a racehorse. I feel woozy, nauseous. My entire body is blanketed in a thin film of sweat. I give myself a quick once over with some loo roll, my neck, my tits and my forehead; I take with me a great swipe of makeup I’d forgotten I was wearing. I remove the scarf tacked over the mirror. There she is, the undulating reflection, her eyes bloodshot, her pupils a great black sinkhole in the concrete grey of her irises. Her makeup is crusty around her nostrils and her mouth, lipstick is smeared beyond the outline of her lips, and mascara running down her cheeks. Her red curls are now a mass of knots, at some point stuffed into a raggedy bun.
‘You’re a fucking mess,’ I tell her. ‘Jesus Christ, bitch.’ I tack the scarf back up, and wipe off what remains of my lipstick before stumbling out of the bathroom, back to the living room.
‘We thought you fell in.’
Three fat slugs of ketamine are lying on the vinyl on the coffee table. I ignore the men, pick up my designated drug straw, take my K, and flop onto the sofa.
The slug is where it all went tits-up for me. The last thing I properly remember is Will suggesting we break out the laughing gas, and after that, my vision unfastening like a reel of film slipping off a projector. I recall lying down on the floor, and suddenly being aware that years were passing. Henson’s and Will’s voices were there, and they did not slow or speed up, but years were passing. Decades. And they had no idea, the two of them. I sank down into the carpet, consumed, swaddled, and ascended.
Ascended, in that my vision had not just unfastened from my brain, but this reality itself. I was above time, inside of time, beyond time, the survivor of the passage of millennia.
My memory returns in flashes and echoes. I heard a bell – an incessant, jingling bell. I eventually found myself with my head in the toilet, now a portal into every reality. The bowl of that toilet, the water softly glinting inside; I was Galadriel with her mirror, each and every timeline set before me, inscribed around the bowl. And it was me, in every timeline. Me with my head in the toilet. Thousands upon thousands of me from above, each with my head in the toilet.
I recall Will trying to speak to me, and wrenching my head up, and thus, selecting a timeline. And while I was lifting my head to speak, I was actually diving into one of those timelines, where I would lift my head, and see Will, crouched in the doorway of his downstairs bathroom, trying to check on me.
Of course, the force of shifting away from the high, voyeuristic position above my body and above time itself, made me feel a little queasy, and I would then need to throw up again. Slamming my head back into the toilet bowl would then take me out of time, and back to the place above it.
Sometimes it would be Will in the doorway, sometimes a red cat with the fucking bell. Sometimes, a different boy, younger, with dark hair and scars, choking. I knew him. He coughed, and he spluttered, and he looked so pathetic and lovely that I wanted to fold him into my arms, and squeeze him. I wanted to keep him. But when I reached for him, he flinched, coughed, wriggled away from me. He dissolved around the corner of the small doorway. I couldn’t follow him. I went back into the toilet, where I saw his face in the water, swirling away with the flush.
When Will came back, he seemed angry, and the boy did not return. I believe I recall Will pulling my head back, yanking me by my hair and tipping water down my throat, me almost choking on the water and, a moment later, my own vomit. I remember him scrubbing my face with a baby wipe and, when vomiting had dissolved into dry-heaving, dragging me upstairs (possibly with help from Henson?) and brushing my teeth for me. Brushing them hard, hard enough to make my gums bleed, so hard, in fact, that I remember being in pain when I could feel nothing else. My mouth still feels raw.
I returned from Above when he dropped me on his bed. Unable to even flail by way of protest, completely prone, paralysed. I think I remember him lying on top of me, enraged, grabbing my face and squeezing it. I think he didn’t take his slug. He called me a cunt, I do remember that, because I remember his spit landing on my face. I remember him taking my skirt off, my lace bodysuit. He couldn’t work out my bra, he couldn’t quite get me rolled onto my stomach to get to the clasp, so he gave up, and just sort of scooped my tits out of the cups and fiddled with them for a bit, before proceeding to pull off my knickers and try to jam his completely flaccid cock into me.
He gave up, seemed to survey his work, then panicked, and redressed me. He popped my breasts back into my bra, stuck one of his T-shirts on me, and put a pair of his own boxers on me, too.
I’m working all of this out after waking up in his bed, in his clothes, with him asleep on the floor. I suspect this is a Xanax-induced sleep, because there is half a tablet on the nightstand and when I kick him, he doesn’t stir. I kick him again.
I wonder how I’m going to address this with him. He’s not the type of person who accepts being ghosted; it’s been made very clear to me he doesn’t like to be ignored. Like, do I send him a text? Just checking, Will, did you and your useless dick half-heartedly try to rape me last night?
I put my skirt on and gather my dirty underwear. My shoes are at the bottom of the stairs, and so is my vomit. I assume it’s mine, anyway. I sneak through the house, and find my handbag on the sofa, where I stuff my underwear. To my sheer delight, my phone still has thirty per cent charge, and I have a series of increasingly panicked texts from Flo. It is nine-thirty a.m., and she is concerned about the complete radio silence. She also assures me that she’s okay – like I’d fucking care?
Got in a k hole but worse
All went wrong
Went to hell like a ti
me travelling hell like
I went to time hell
Still at will’s.
Please come get me.
I get an immediate reply
Stand outside, gettin uber r/n will pick you up!!!
She arrives fairly quickly. The morning is balmy enough that even half-dressed, with bare feet on the pavement, I’m warm.
In the cab, on the way back to hers, I can tell Flo is freaking out. She keeps asking me if I’m okay. I don’t reply.
When we get home, I hole up in her upstairs bathroom. I vomit, and shiver, and Flo wraps me in towels. She brings me water and asks questions. I spend the rest of the morning alternating between vomiting and explaining to Flo why I’m not going to call the police. In short: drugs, and the fact I can sort him out myself.
‘Do you remember when we watched I Spit on Your Grave?’ I ask. She makes a face. ‘What happened to all cops are bastards, Flo? I can deal with it. He didn’t actually stick it in me, so as far as I’m concerned…’ I shrug. ‘I mean, I won’t work with him again, if you’re worried about that.’
She sits down on the bathroom floor beside me. Her bathroom. Michael is at work.
‘I just feel awful. I shouldn’t have left you,’ she says. She hasn’t slept a wink; her eyes stream while she speaks to me. She still has eyeliner smeared around her brow-bone, her temples, and mascara ringing her eyelids. She takes advantage of me coughing and spluttering to speak, uninterrupted for a while. ‘You know, you want to think you’re… You want to think you’re not like other women, but you are, you know. You’re still… that’s still how the rest of the world, how men are going to see you. Like, I know you hate labels, but like… You live in a woman’s body. You’re vulnerable. No matter what you think, you’re vulnerable, and sometimes, you’ll need other people. Friends. Me.’