by Eliza Clark
‘Come and do my eyeliner for me,’ says Flo.
‘Come and do my eyeliner for me,’ I repeat, with a sneer.
‘I never get it as good as you do. You’re baking, you have time.’ She’s got me there; powder is piled up on my cheekbones and cannot be disturbed for at least a few minutes.
‘Fine.’ I shuffle over to her on my knees and sit between her thighs. Nothing gay about this. Just a pair of regular gal pals here. Her lips are slightly parted.
I rest my hand on Flo’s shoulder for balance, and there’s this sharp little intake of breath down her end. Demi warbles in the background. I tell Flo to stay still, and gently sweep the liquid liner from the corner of her eye, so it almost meets the point of her eyebrow. Always looks a bit daft when I do that, but she likes it.
I’m almost waiting for her to lean in and whisper, Oh, Irina, remember the summer that we were ‘cool’? Flo licks her lips. I could slap her – she’s posting about it on her fucking blog again. I can practically see her having flashbacks. For the record: we were never cool for the summer. We were more… lukewarm for the September/October period.
I hate that she tells people. I hate that she fucking blogs about it, like my sex life is just fucking Tumblr discourse for her. You know, for someone who claims to be woke, she truly does not give a flying fuck about consent the second it comes to flapping her skinny lips about my personal business.
‘Did I tell you Serotonin is going to be at the Hackney thing?’
‘No,’ says Flo. ‘She’s quite big now, isn’t she? Like, doesn’t she live in New York?’
‘I think so. It’ll be nice to see her again. I used to be—’ I move from Flo’s left eye to her right. ‘—so close to her. Weird we didn’t really keep in contact.’ Flo hums. She fucking hated Sera. It was very transparent – a lot of ‘I suppose you’re busy with her’ when I told Flo I couldn’t speak to her on the phone. I always assumed making exactly one new friend was one of the main reasons we stopped speaking for a bit while I was in London and she wasn’t.
Ariana Grande kicks in next. ‘Greedy’. Flo’s eyeliner is finished, and I shuffle back to my corner of the room.
‘I’m not doing your falsies for you,’ I tell her, and I brush the powder off my cheeks. When the chorus to the song kicks in, I sing ‘greedy for cum’ instead of ‘greedy for love’; I do it every time that line pops up, and I do it specifically because Flo thinks it’s disgusting.
I’ve gone for a bronzy eyeshadow look – everything else tends to be a bit clashy when you’re ginger. Flo’s hair is bobbed, and bleached to shit, but it does mean she has a lot more by way of eyeshadow choices. She’s gone for purple tonight.
‘Should I do a red lip?’
‘If you want to look like a slapper, then aye, absolutely,’ I say. Flo has no taste; she just copies. If left to her own devices, she’d wear total trash. And not trash in a good way, like when I do trash.
‘Don’t you think it’ll look quite editorial?’
‘Not on your bone structure, no,’ I say. Flo is… cute. Like, she’s pretty but she’s not stunning, she’s not beautiful. ‘You’ve got those round baby cheeks. You’ll just look like you’ve made a mess with your mam’s makeup.’
‘Hmm. You’re probably right,’ she says. ‘Nude lip?’
‘If you pair it with, like, a lilac and wear a blush with kind of a lavender tone… that’d look… like, editorial without looking super OTT.’
‘Genius,’ she says. I don’t think she has the bone structure to pull off a monotone makeup look either, but I’m wearing a nude lip tonight, and I’d rather we didn’t match. She’s always trying to match me. I never tell her what I’m wearing.
A knock on Flo’s door – probably Finch. She sticks on a dressing gown before she trots over to answer.
I’m right. He looks cute tonight. Concealer on his acne, and a half-open shirt. He’s been very determined to be as shirtless as possible since his recent top surgery. Fresh haircut too. Short back and sides, heavy on top. Not very exciting; I think that’s the only haircut barbers are doing at the moment. I’ve offered to let him model for me, but he said no, even though he’s a bit of an Irina Sturges fanboy. I think he caught on I was just interested in the novelty factor – or maybe he was just shy. This was years ago, though, early transition. His skin’s been consistently garbage since he went on testosterone; I’ve fully lost interest.
He’s holding a bottle of prosecco, which I loathe. Flo immediately pops it open, firing the cork out of her front door, into the garden.
‘You look nice,’ Finch says, Flo dangling on him.
‘Oh my God, he is such a ladies’ man,’ says Flo, to me. Finch gives her an uncomfortable smile, his lips rolling back into his mouth.
‘I’ll grab some glasses,’ he says, plucking the bottle from Flo’s hand and slinking into the kitchen. Flo mouths, So cute. ‘Have you picked up?’ he calls.
‘About a month ago. Hang on, I’ll go and ask the old ball and chain what we’ve got—’
I cut Flo off. ‘I’ll ask, I’m going for a drink anyway.’ I cut through the kitchen and bump past Finch on the way. I pluck a glass of bubbly piss from his little hands.
‘I like your top,’ he says.
‘It’s a bra,’ I say. It’s longline and sits just above my waist. I didn’t want to get makeup on my top. I’m heading to Michael’s ‘man cave’, a small room off the kitchen where Flo keeps him. There’s a recliner, a huge desk and this big, loud gaming PC with a three-monitor setup. He’s playing some crunchy looking medieval RPG on the centre screen, with football and Archer on either side.
The PVC of my skirt squeaks slightly as I nudge open the door to his room.
‘Hey.’
‘What,’ he says, pulling off his headphones. There’s no need to perform pleasantries without Flo here. He gives me a look, sullen and lascivious. Scowling at me, sneering, while he looks at my thighs, my tits, the bare sliver of stomach between my bra and the waistband of my skirt.
‘Flo wants the drug box,’ I say. He sighs, and begins digging through his desk drawer. Michael is not unattractive, but his urban-lumberjack look is very 2015. He’s heavy set: fat but solid, you know? I like his arms, but he always wears long sleeves. He holds out a Tupperware box for me to take, opens his mouth to speak, then doesn’t.
‘What?’
‘Nothing.’
I wink when I take the box off him. I’ll get Flo to do a slightly suggestive snapchat to send to him later, when she’s getting sloppy. Cry-wank and a Pot Noodle for Mikey tonight.
Flo labels her drugs with little stickers, which is dorky, but it is a massive time saver. Michael’s weed lives in a separate Tupperware box, so we have here only powders, and a few scattered dud pills rattling around beneath the baggies. I knock back my drink and return to the living room where Finch tops me up. Flo has removed her curlers and is combing her hair out with her fingers.
‘Doesn’t she look just like Marilyn Monroe with her hair like this?’ says Finch. She doesn’t. She looks up at me, expectant, like a dog after fetching. I hum, non-committal, and perch on the sofa, cracking open the Tupperware with my thumbs.
‘You have, about—’ I begin lifting each baggie, holding it to the light, giving them a shake so the powder settles at the bottom. ‘—like, two grams of coke? A gram of MDMA, and a mostly empty thing of ketamine. Like, less than a third of a gram?’ There’s also a small, unlabelled wad of tinfoil in a bag, which I hold out for her. ‘What’s this?’
‘Acid. We bulk-bought the last time we picked up,’ Flo says. ‘We have, like, ten tabs if anyone’s interested in going halfsies with me on one tonight?’ Acid is Flo’s new thing. Acid and ketamine. She keeps banging on about how she’s gone off uppers, and she’s into dissociatives now, even though she can’t physically say no to coke when it’s stuck under her now highly unfashionable septum piercing. Tomorrow, she’ll be picking dried-up coke off it, I’d put money on it.
‘
No thanks. Acid isn’t a club drug, IMO,’ says Finch. Flo protests – she thinks it can be. Finch shakes his head. ‘I just feel like I’m three when I’m on it, like everyone’s scary but I fucking love shapes and textures? Like, no thanks.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Flo says. Flo and Finch bicker for a moment about whether or not Flo should take half a tab. He tells her it’s antisocial, I say I agree with Finch and point out how unpredictable her little trips can be, so she pouts and says, ‘Fine. I’ll just stick with MD.’
‘Good lass,’ I say. About eighty per cent of the time she’s fine on LSD. She says it’s a way she can be up without a comedown, without a risk she’ll throw up, conveniently forgetting the occasions I’ve had to put her in a taxi because she’s gotten paranoid over nowt.
I drink my shitey prosecco, and I tuck the cocaine and ketamine into my bra, in the slit where my chicken fillets are currently stuffed.
‘Is that a push-up bra?’ asks Finch. ‘Your tits look cracking.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘So you know, I’m holding the coke and ket. We should be fine.’
‘Should we make some bombs?’ asks Flo. I shrug.
‘I’m just going to stick with coke,’ I say. Flo makes a face.
‘I’ve gone well off coke.’
‘No you haven’t.’
‘I mean, like, morally,’ says Flo, smugly. I sneer at her and tell her to shut the fuck up.
‘I’ll make bombs,’ says Finch, ‘Better to have them and not need them.’ I throw Flo’s MD at him, and he starts making up a few little bombs with cigarette skins. I’m not into MDMA – I always end up with a harsh comedown, the kind they report on anti-drug sites for teenagers, full-on everything’s-shit-I-might-as-well-just-top-myself comedowns. ‘Do you want one?’ Finch asks, looking at me.
‘No thanks,’ I say. I pat my tit. ‘I’m good with what I’ve got.’
‘Oh, don’t let me smoke tonight, guys,’ says Flo. Finch and I exchange a look.
We finish hair, makeup and dressing, and opt to walk, rather than taxi. Flo lives slightly closer to town than I do, and it’s a warm night – close and sweaty. My damp thighs rub together beneath my skirt, and Finch rolls up his shirt sleeves. Flo complains about her heels and asks Finch if she can have one of his rollies, before changing her mind.
She makes us stop in a Sainsbury’s for gum and comes back out with gum and a pack of Marlboros. She immediately lights one up, her eyes rolling back into her head when she takes the first drag.
‘Gimme one,’ I say, and she does, handing me her lit cigarette, and lighting another for herself. Finch is already on his second nasty rollie, complaining his baccy has exploded in his pocket.
I walk ahead while they faff about. Flo stops and tries to stroke a ginger cat she says looks just like Fritz. She tries to get me to stop and look at it, but I just keep walking.
‘So.’ Finch appears at my side, trotting along like a puppy. ‘Hackney Space? Holy shit.’
‘Yup,’ I say. ‘Big deal.’
‘It is,’ he says. ‘I hate to be this guy, but can I send you some of my photos on Monday? I could really do with some crit. It’s like… photos documenting my top surgery, but everyone on my course just keeps telling me I’m so brave.’ He takes a drag of his cigarette.
‘Oh my God,’ I say. ‘I hate that shit. I used to get it all the time.’
‘It’s fucking obnoxious,’ Finch says, puffing smoke from his nose. ‘I swear down, I could come in with an out-of-focus photo of a dead pigeon, and be like, the pigeon represents my dead name, and everyone would be like—’ He tucks his cigarette into the corner of his mouth, goes ‘Ooo’ and applauds. I snort. ‘Like I just want to know if the photos are any good. And right now, I have no idea.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Send them over. I’ll be brutal.’
‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘I know you will. That’s why I’m asking you and not—’ He nods his head back at Flo. ‘You’re honest. I appreciate it. I really do… Um… If you need, like, an assistant for hanging your show, or anything, I’d really like the experience. If you need someone.’
‘Can’t afford you, babe.’
‘I’ll work for free?’ he offers.
‘I’m not comfortable having anyone doing unpaid work for me. Plus, they do have people at the galleries who do that.’
‘Yeah. Of course. Fair enough. Um. Well, the offer’s there just… in case.’
We get to town for around ten, and head to BeerHaus, where the manager gives me a free drink. Everyone else pays.
We find a table in the corner. I’m drinking a negroni; Flo twists her face over the top of her piña colada and wonders aloud how I can drink it.
‘More refined palette,’ I say. ‘Plus, less sugar.’
‘Ugh, I don’t want to talk about calories and sugar content,’ whines Flo – spoken like someone who was a size six till she was twenty-five, then ballooned to a fourteen over the course of a year and a half. I raise my eyebrows at her and sip my drink. Finch sighs into his pint and complains about the prices.
We’ll have one more drink here, then move on to Universal Subject (or UnSub, as people have taken to calling it), where we have tickets to the ‘alternative’ club night Big Deal. It wasn’t my choice. I’d rather go somewhere out-and-out naff than somewhere trying so hard to be ‘alternative’; it swings back around to being naff. It’s aimed at the kind of people who get really, really excited when a DJ plays The Smiths. I suspect it’ll be full of nineteen-year-old Home Counties student girls in vintage Adidas tracksuits – if it’s unbearable, we can fuck off to Will’s party. He texted me the details this morning, and I didn’t even know he had my phone number.
I talk Finch and Flo into shots before we leave.
We end up queueing for UnSub for ages. Flo smokes two cigarettes, I smoke one. Finch clears the loose tobacco from his pockets, trying to salvage what he can. He and Flo drop while we wait, which means Flo will be gurning and wriggly in an hour. Alcohol tends to leave her maudlin and solipsistic without the intervention of MDMA, so I’m guaranteed a low-maintenance night with her. She might chuck up, but there’s a low risk of crying, or her rehashing being bullied at school.
There’s a group of underaged girls behind us muttering about IDs. It sounds like one of them has her sister’s old passport, but the rest are going to blag it. I never get ID’d. It was a huge boon when I was younger, but in the last few years… I mean, the rule is challenge twenty-five now. It’s absurd not to ID me.
When we get to the front of the queue, the bouncer only asks for Finch’s. I recognise him – the bouncer. We chit-chat for a moment (Yes, I do work with Ryan! Aye, he is a tosser, isn’t he? Ha ha!) and I tell him he should make sure he cards the girls behind us. I hear them whining while I get my hand stamped.
It’s gone midnight by the time we get in. I head straight to the bathroom. There’s an unreal number of posh girls buzzing about. I hear one call her friend Pollyanna, genuinely, Pollyanna. A name someone chose to give their child in Britain in, like, 1998. Pollyanna is being asked for toilet paper, and Pollyanna can’t find any. She knocks on the door while I’m pissing.
‘There’s none in here either. I’m just changing a tampon,’ I say.
‘I can hear weeing, though,’ she says.
‘It’s the pipes. I’m not gunna lie about having no loo roll. Pet.’
‘Soz babe,’ says Pollyanna. Soz. Like she’s not from Surrey. That’d get her decked in another club.
There’s a whole spare roll in here; I hope she gets a UTI. I have a bunch of texts from Will when I check my phone.
Hey.
R u coming tongiht?
What do u drink I’ll pick smth up befro the family shopper closes
*before
I’ll just some spare vodka n hide it 4 u ;)
**get some
Sorru im quite stoned
U bringing firneds?
Its rlly cool that ur coming
All my friends think i m
ade u up
Lol
We’re at Universal Subject now!
Seeing what the vibe is like.
If it’s shit we’ll be at yours for 1-ish
He texts back before I’ve even wiped.
Yaaaayyy
Idk if your into it but the vibe here is quite geary
Like
Drugs and stuff
I’m sure we’ll fit right in
Patronising little shit. He texts me his address again, just in case I’ve lost it when it’s, like, two scrolls up.
I can’t be bothered to rack up a line. I also have, as a general rule, a policy against doing drugs off toilet seats. It’s tragic for one, but for two, I’ve gotten stomach bugs before, and there’s nowt quite like a bout of the shits which you know you’ve gotten from taking coke off a dirty toilet seat.
I pull the baggy out of my bra and dig a lump of coke out with my index fingernail. There is something particularly visceral about sniffing drugs off your fingernails. It’s like eating rice straight out of the pot with your fingers. Like the bit at the start of Temple of Doom, where Steven Spielberg’s wife and Harrison Ford are getting fed by the 1980s racist-caricature Indian villagers, and she’s all like, ‘Eww, eating with my hands, disgusting,’ and he’s like, ‘This is more than these people eat in a week.’ An apt comparison, because I bet what I’ve just taken is three, maybe even four, times the amount of cocaine oppressed movie villagers get.
You can’t really romanticise a drug you’re sucking off your fingers alone in a toilet stall. I’m doing it like this because I need it to be here, not because I’m going to especially enjoy it.
It does occur to me after I’m done sniffing and rubbing the remnants onto my gums, I could have just used a key. I have a second bump, off my fingernail again. I’ve committed to it now.
I deposit the baggie back in its hiding place, and exit the cubicle, finding the bathroom more or less empty when I attend to my nostril in the bathroom mirror. I brush it gently, trying not to wipe the makeup off the tip of my nose.
