‘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 made 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.
There’s a girl looking at me. She’s wearing those tracksuit bottoms with the buttons up the sides, a cheap satin cami and heavy hoop earrings. I’m still bewildered by this act of appropriation: rich white girls pretending to be poor white girls （who I assume were originally appropriating 2000s hip-hop culture?） pretending to be rich black women. It’s bizarre.
I’m staring at her, and she’s staring at me. Not sure who started it.
‘What?’ I ask. She finishes washing her hands, I start washing mine. ‘What?’
‘You’re beautiful,’ she says. Her pupils are huge.
‘Thanks pet.’
‘Your hair is so nice.’ She blinks at me. ‘Is it… extensions?’
‘Nah, just good hair. Coconut oil and hot rollers, you know,’ I say. She nods, and repeats coconut oil, dreamily, tripping on her gleaming white Nike Airs as she walks out.
I look for the others, giving the dance floor a sweep. Busier than I thought it might be. All students. What did I expect from a Monday night? All students, and mostly boys. Like a school disco, a few small groups of girls are clumped, or coupled off already, while the remaining single men shuffle-dance, clutching warm bottles of Beck’s and scanning the doors to the entryway and the toilets and the smoking area, as if any moment a whole horde of women could pour in and correct this dire ratio. I go to the bar. They’re playing The Smiths, on purpose, in this post-racist-Morrissey economy. I mean, there’s an argument to be made that he’s been racist for fucking ages, and shit for even longer, and I don’t know why we’re all just deciding now that it’s bad.
I watch the young white people dance badly to the bloated old racist’s music while I wait to get served. This is a white-as-fuck club, and I like… I know I’m white, but there’s just a lot of white people White People-ing in a very small area, like it’s just some very, very densely packed mayo, you know? Densely packed mayo, jiggling about, doesn’t know what to do with its arms, doesn’t know what to do with its feet, undulating loosely, barely in time to the rhythm.
‘HI. HI THERE. WHAT YOU DRINKING?’ asks a man. He’s standing more or less eye to eye with me. He has a bun. Buns went out almost as soon as they came in, didn’t they? It’s weird to see one out in the wild in this day and age. He doesn’t even have a beard. Maybe he’s just hot; it’s a reasonable thing to do with long hair if you’re hot. He’s okay looking. Big. Muscular. I try to stick with men I imagine I could physically overpower if push came to shove. ‘DO YOU WANT A SHOT?’
‘I’M GOOD,’ I say. He either mishears me, or wilfully ignores me, and he hands a shot to me, which he watches me drink very, very closely （white sambuca, cheap） and then he indicates that he’d like to high five me when I’m done. I leave him hanging. His pupils are enormous – but aren’t all of our pupils enormous?
‘I’LL FIND YOU LATER. I’LL FIND YOU IN THE SMOKING AREA, OKAY? I’LL GIVE YOU MY NUMBER. IMAGINE HOW TALL THE KIDS WOULD BE! RUGBY PLAYERS, MODELS, THEY’D BE. I LOVE THIS SONG.’ The Cure is playing now. He scampers off, a lightness to his feet despite his size. I watch him swing around to ‘Just Like Heaven’ as if it was techno. Still no sign of my quote-unquote friends, who I assume are in the smoking area. I finally get a drink. A string of texts from Will on my phone, and one from Flo, which simply reads SMOJKING OUTSDIE, and I’m delighted, because they just started playing the Weezer cover of ‘Africa’， like, as if it wasn’t lame enough in here already? As if the vibe couldn’t get any whiter? And like I said, I’m aware I’m adding to this deluge of whiteness, but at least I’m local, and I’m not from the Home Counties, which is the whitest kind of white. Geordie girls are up there with Irish girls and Scottish girls; the black women of white women, you know?
I’m outside. Strange mix of cigarette smoke and fresh air. Quote-unquote friends huddled in a corner, Finch smoking and rolling at the same time, standing awkwardly beside Flo while two studenty-looking blokes chat her up. Beta males, the pair of them, but the alpha betas, the most confident of their jittery, sweaty friends who like Star Wars and think that that’s a personality trait. That’s not even a guess – there are three more lads stood to the side of this interaction, and two of them are wearing Star Wars shirts. A Darth Vader design, and one simply reading ‘Han Shot First’。