In the hallway Alanna pulled me into a corner. She popped the locket open, crushed a pink pill into it, against the black-and-white portrait.
‘One night,’ she whispered. She let the chain fall back between my breasts. Her breath smelt of berries. I held the necklace with the picture of Miss Phyllis between my fingers. We were together. Age is just a number and these were the things that were happening to me, on a night out, at thirty years of age.
Here I am, handing out cigarettes from a pack I have bought myself. Tonight we’ve all agreed to take up smoking. No one wants to be a spoilsport. Men do the real smoking, of course: they have special rooms laid out for this purpose, rooms we are never allowed in, gentlemen’s clubs, with all the newspapers with all the important news and the leather furniture and the lack of noise, the noise of women shut outside finally, with those tall ashtrays you see in retro television series in which the overworked office clerk finally gets to fuck the office secretary. If she behaves, eventually, she’ll have a career. There is hope for everyone in the free world!
A small cloud follows us as we light up, out of the door and into the street, where our eaux de cologne and celebrity fragrances begin to lose their battle with the atmosphere. We link our arms, taking over the width of the pavement. We’re still smoking, so when one raises a hand to take a toke the whole chain shakes, like a vine heavy with fruit and flowers, the pendants jangling on our bracelets. We take big puffs, hold the smoke in our cheeks, mimic blowbacks without touching lips, so as not to spoil our lipstick. It’s our girl Alanna’s big night so we’ve fitted her cigarette on a black-and-white mouthpiece. She’s cutting circles before her, like an orchestra conductor, sashaying, left leg, right leg, heel first, click click, swan tonight, duckling tomorrow. But don’t worry about tomorrow.
‘We may be dead tomorrow,’ says Mona.
Emmy and Bex turn around simultaneously, metallic superheroes in all that glitter and fake gold and they look old and sad for a moment, under this particular streetlight.
‘Just me, it is possible, a bit before the rest of you girls,’ Mona says. We all laugh. We aren’t afraid of death. I shake my head, left and right. Tonight, death is only a notion. Look straight ahead. No tears, not tonight.
It’s our girl Alanna’s big night.
It’s going to be fucking BRILLIANT. Our eyelashes are glued safely on both sides. We pushed them in with a cotton wool bud until we saw white, and then flashing stars and diamonds when we opened our eyes again. We helped each other out. The glue is holding. A girl’s best friend never leaves her best girl alone. Our make-up stays on. Of course Alanna will still be our friend after she gets married. Let’s worry about that tomorrow.
The others are meeting us at the venue later. So far the night is ours: we are the inner circle. It’s us. We are the girls. We walk under the violet glowlights leading up to the entrance, skip the queue. ‘Girls don’t pay,’ says the bouncer, and it suits us.
‘We’re fucking princesses! They should pay us!’ says Emmy, and she really believes it.
‘Well, she’s the Queen.’ Bex coyly stamps her cigarette and looks up at Alanna. We feel the bouncer’s eyes follow us inside, as we spill through the padded door and it huffs shut behind us. Inside is a red and black and gold kind of bar, balanced between sleazy and smoky. No one can hurt us, so long as we stick together in the soft dark heat. We stand so close our cool arms brush against each other. We don’t need the cloakroom because none of us brought a coat. We didn’t want it to get in the way. You thought a short walk in the spring chill would scare us? We can walk three miles to your house in the snow if we love you, six miles from your house if we’re leaving you. We can do impulsive, crazy things sometimes. Be unpredictable. It’s our night, remember? We break from our huddle. There is loud music playing, Mona is the first to lay her thick heel on the dancefloor – or actually, it’s Jessica. I follow, I have always been Mona’s best student, filling her shoes in her absence. I pull on the hand of our girl, Alanna, while Emmy and Bex cover her eyes from behind, one hand each, then uncover them when two beautiful boys, hair sleek like a raven’s wing, not a day over twenty-seven, which is the age at which boys are ripest, square but gently rounded shoulders and lickable skin, escort us to the back of the room. They are so courteous. They may very well be fanning us with ostrich feathers.
‘Perhaps they should,’ I say, and Bex winks at me.
See that girl strutting on in front of her, leading the way with steady grace? Who is she if not our Jessica?
‘How very gentlemanly,’ she says, when the boys each slide an arm into the crook of hers.
‘Mona! Stop it! You could be their mother.’ Emmy is laughing.
‘It’s Jessica,’ says Mona in a husky voice that sounds like nobody’s mother.
And Emmy keeps laughing, but this time she’s in on the joke. And now she understands that Jessica is only gracing these boys with her attention because she knows there is nothing they can do to hurt her. These two boys, each exactly half her age: boys, only men at a stretch. It is a fictional stretch Mona is willing to consider tonight, because it’s the big night, Alanna’s big night. Jessica knows that these boys have been corn-fed to exert sex appeal with no hint of a threat: a rare delicacy. And look at her side-butting one of them out of the way to pop herself up on the leatherette, sending for a drink immediately. ‘I’d rather die of old age than of thirst and I ain’t got that long left, boys,’ she says.
When googling ‘woman drinking’ by far the most popular entry is ‘woman drinking wine’, probably for subliminal reasons tethering a woman’s physique to the shape of the glass. Our girl Alanna has her crown on her head and each palm wrapped around a magnum of Prosecco. She does look mighty fine. Her rings sparkle.
Here we are: the girls. We’ve filled in a semicircle around her, and then Mona, or Jessica, in any case no boy’s mother, pops the cork and pours. Of course it is pink wine, pinker in the low light that reflects off the red sofas.
Alanna takes a sip and sticks out her lips. ‘Jeez, this Prosecco sucks, let’s do cocktails!’ We got you, Alanna, we got you, just you wait, just wait, baby girl. We raise our glasses and clink them. ‘To our girl Alanna, on her big night.’ Soon we’re squabbling over the last half of the second bottle. When it’s gone the boys return to the table, carrying a tall bottle of a liqueur they say they’ve invented. They call it The Cherry Punch, says the one holding a gold-plated Zippo. It’s just a lighter. Why does it make him so smug? They exchange a look and it’s not a hard task, all you have to do is pour some cherry pop. Hey! Over here? We’re ready. It’s our night! We were born ready. We forgive them when they put down the frozen shot glasses. We cheer! We’re thirsty. The velvet liqueur pours out too slowly; we lick our lips. The other boy sets the shots aflame. We are parted from them momentarily by a wall of blue fire.
They blow the shots out and order us to drink them immediately. The hot syrup hits our throats with its balsamic edge and we nearly cough, but hold back. Our eyes water. We are stronger than they want us to be. We laugh through our tears and at the end of it we all have big fucking smiles on our faces from the effort.
‘That’s why we call it a punch,’ says one of the waiters.
‘Get it?’ says the other.
We burst out laughing and when they return with a new shot paddle we’re still laughing about them.
‘Oh,’ says Alanna, voice soft like a kitten’s belly. ‘Is this another drink you invented?’
‘Now, ladies,’ says the taller boy, tallest by an inch perhaps, but we can only tell them apart because this one is consistently eager to talk. We can imagine them discussing the terms of this interaction beforehand: claiming the right to speak to the ladies first, for the simple reason that of the two he is tallest. These are simple creatures. ‘Now, ladies,’ the taller one says. ‘This drink is called a Sasha Grey. Who knows who or what a Sasha Grey is? For a free shot!’
‘I thought they were all free shots,’ I observe.
‘She means paid for,’ clarifies Bex.
We’re pretending not to know that Sasha Grey is a famous porn star. Emmy takes the bullet by pretending to fall for it. ‘Let me guess, boys,’ she says. ‘Is it a cock-tail?’ She clicks her tongue on the hard K. The boys are obviously elated. They begin to giggle.
Mona doesn’t get it, though not for want of trying. She picks up on the sexual tension but blanks on the cultural reference. She doesn’t care. She slides in with her elbows on the table, cowgirl-like. ‘So, are you going to show us your Sasha?’
The boys lose their composure. They are howling with laughter. They’d roll on the floor like dogs if they had freedom to move in those lackey outfits.
‘What?’ snaps Mona, and her tone shuts them up.
Emmy pulls her in by the strap of her bra. ‘Let me show you,’ she says. She pulls Mona into the crook of her arm and to the side of the table. They huddle in the light from the touchscreen. Mona gives a small genuine yelp and recoils from the device.
When her fingertips make contact with the sticky gloss on her lips she composes herself. ‘Oh my, dirty boys,’ Mona or Jessica whispers in an unmotherly rasp.
And the boys happily pour chocolate liqueur into the thick bottom of the shot glass, and then another liqueur and then whipped cream: truly a nasty, deranged concoction.
Really, we’re starting to think that this is sub-par entertainment and certainly it lacks class. We look at each other. When will this pathetic excuse for a support act sing its swansong and make room for the main party piece? The girls are unimpressed. We’ve paid money for this. We down the shots. We get cream moustaches; isn’t that the point? We stare at them while we lick them off. And sure enough it all becomes a bit too much for the two fancy mice, because finally they excuse themselves and scurry away. Before they leave they say, ‘Are you ready for the soft touch of the World’s Best Mixologist? Cocktails for the ladies!’
SINGLE CREAM
Ruth
Now
What got into me?
The first thing I see is my wristwatch. At 2:53 in the morning I am holding tight on to the plastic bar fixed to the wall of the disabled toilet. This isn’t the toilets in the club, which have blue neon lights and sticky surfaces – so that people can’t do drugs in them, although I never know what exactly happens to drugs under blue lights – but the toilet out back, the one only staff use.
Stuart Brandon Pierce, the World’s Best Mixologist, is fucking me from behind. I can feel his perfect abs pushing into the small of my back. Who takes their shirt off to have sex in a toilet? But then you would, wouldn’t you, if you had abs like that. Maybe I took it off him myself. I can’t remember, but I suppose I would’ve wanted to. Although wait. Was he wearing one? He was shirtless at one point in the evening – but I think I remember him wearing a hoodie when we stepped out of the building. My memories are all out of order since the Blue Volcano. That’s the one he stirred into a tall-necked glass bottle, the sugar spoon plunging in and out of the Curaçao. Except now I have come to, and we are here and he is fucking me. A bright shard of pain cuts into my right temple and all the details in the room are hurting. I’m thinking of nothing but the practicalities of the act itself. I spread my legs a little to achieve better balance. One of the white tiles in front of me is cracked and the crevices have been filled in with whiter silicone. I can feel the latex of the condom chafing against my skin, which means he is wearing one. I’ll be sore tomorrow, but it’s better than the other option. Of course Stuart Brandon Pierce uses protection. On her second or third Brandy Alexander, Mona turned to me and whispered, ‘Bloody hell, there’s enough cream in this to kill one of our oldies.’ Then, to him, she said, ‘Boy, how are your sugar levels coping?’ It was supposed to be an in-joke between us and not something he was expected to have an answer for or even enough context to figure it out, but he became very sombre. The man must have a serious customer service complex.
He looked Mona right in the eyes and said, ‘I don’t drink on the job.’ He said he gets his blood washed once a month to get rid of the toxins. What did he call it? Hemotherapy. He tried to explain the medical process and then remembered he was talking to nurses.
‘It sounds like unorthodox medical practice,’ I said. The girls laughed.
Alanna pinched the side of my arse. ‘Ruth! So sassy!’
This memory is quite clear. Then there are bits that I can’t remember. Some holes. Some dancing. The feeling that Alanna was both proud of and irritated by my behaviour. It made her harder to approach, but not in a way that was altogether bad; a little like a thread tensing up between us.
I angle my neck uncomfortably to avoid my face rubbing against the tiles. I catch a glimpse of him, busying himself over me, a large bird tattoo twitching on his right pec, right under the collarbone. Is it a bird of paradise? A peacock? A phoenix? This is obviously a man who revels in simple visual signification, probably identifies with one of these birds or has at one point in his life identified strongly enough with it to get it tattooed on his body. He has his mouth wide open as if in a song, which frankly seems inappropriate, even to me, and I am the person this man is currently fucking. His eyes are shut tight, creased with those sexy smile lines. I remind myself once again: he’s fucking me.
He utters a broken-up sequence of virile ‘huhs’ that sound suspiciously like porn. Animals don’t emit that sound in nature. Would someone like him consume so much porn that he’d learn to mimic it? Doesn’t he get laid all the time? Does he rehearse his sex cry in front of the mirror? I look at the crack in the tile and try to imagine him as a little boy, with braces on, dark hair he hadn’t yet learned to straighten, olive skin turned yellow by the lack of sunlight, long before he discovered tanning salons, before the Pilates and the weightlifting and the therapeutic blood cleanses.
It’s hard to think with him pounding me so hard from behind. The grunting never ceases, but now he adds something extra: a slap on my arse cheek. I hear the noise first, before I feel the sting. Again, I look sideways and see the underside of his arm flexing. It makes me think of the reclining armchairs we have at work, leather stretching with a creak as the foot stand snaps out of the bottom. Is his rhythm quickening? I think it is. I see the side of his calf muscle tensing. He leans in against me, his padded torso rubbing against the small of my back, my spine. His hands slide up and cup my breasts from below. Can he feel the exact sag of them, the weight, the stretch marks riding up the inner sides? He tries to reach my lips with his mouth, fails, settles for my right earlobe, and leaves a trail of saliva down the side of my jaw. His tongue is thick and rubbery. It rummages in my earhole, and then my ear pops, like when you’ve got water inside it. I tilt my head sharply to clear it. Which must startle him, because he stops mid-action. He freezes. Then he shouts:
‘I’m about to come!’
His hands push against the walls either side of my head as he expels himself from my body so quickly I swear I can hear him pop out. He comes twitching, the plastic head of his penis contracting against my buttock. I feel a droplet of sweat make its way down the back of my thigh.
I turn around. I have tinnitus in the ear he’s spoken into. I shake my head again, like a pony. I wipe my cheek with the back of my hand. I pull my bra back in place and roll my dress down. I inspect the backs of my legs. There is a rip in one knee of my hold-ups, but nothing noticeable, not in the dark of the club. How long were we in here? Where are the girls? Are they still going? When there’s nothing else left for me to do, I look at him. Stuart Brandon Pierce. He has tied the condom in a knot and laid it on the side of the sink. He’s leaning against the wall, his sweaty back forming a halo of condensation on the white tiles around his shoulders. He’s buttoning up his formal trousers. His red braces hang loose about his hips.
‘Why did you have to pull out like that?’
‘I told you. I was about to come.’
‘Well, so was I.’ This isn’t technically true, but I want him to
feel as bad as I do.
He slides down the wall, with a light skidding sound, wet muscle on ceramic. He sits on the floor.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
‘You were wearing a condom.’
‘I … I feel like climaxing together is a bit too intense for a first date. It makes me feel … very naked.’
‘You looked pretty naked for a first date.’
I shut the toilet lid and sit down on it. I swipe a hand across my face to push away the damp baby hair.
‘Did you enjoy it, though?’
‘Sure.’ I look around for my heels.
Stuart is on the floor, motionless. His face a mask of disappointment. My perspective from up here makes the whole scene look quite pathetic.
‘What’s up?’ I say.
‘You know,’ he says, bottom lip out. ‘I just really wanted you girls to have a good night.’ He looks like a beagle on a PETA flyer.
Before I know it I’m on the floor, too, taking him in my arms. I feel the sweat cooling on his back, the skin beginning to goosebump across the strong dorsal trapezius. He smells of mint and talcum powder. Holding him feels different from being fucked by him. It feels worse, in a way. I’m not used to holding anyone who I’m not in love with. I only know how to do it tenderly. I don’t want him to be sad, but his body feels different.
‘Hey, look, look, of course I’m having a good time,’ I whisper in his ear.
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