Low Expectations (24 page)

‘As I hope you continue to. Sarah, my dove? Drink?'

When the happy, illicit couple return, any pretence of discretion that Sarah had been making goes out the window. Seemingly welded together in homage to The Kiss, they embrace with myopic passion. Meanwhile, Rose and I ride the light fantastic. Inhibitions shattered to smithereens, we dance like loons, twirling each other around and feverishly masticating chewing gum. We flirt with the boys next to us –
from their enraptured smiles and rapidly chomping jaws, it is obvious that they too are riding the wave. We persuade them to give us some dabs of MDMA. Licking my little finger, I stick it into the baggie; it emerges with much more than intended. My default setting when confronted with a questionable idea being: ‘fuck it', I roll the thick layer underneath my tongue, trying not to make a face as a battery-acid flavour floods my mouth.

Seconds, minutes that feel like hours elapse; we are gripped in the strange time-suspension of the really very fucked, interrupted only by sudden intense desires that must, absolutely must, be fulfilled at that instant – to drink, to go stand over there, to urgently explain an epiphany, to smoke and of course, to piss. It is the one urge we resist, knowing that once in the toilet after a forty-five minute wait we will produce an absolutely piddling amount of wee as our dehydrated bodies desperately retain whatever water they can.

Eventually the siren's song of the grotty johns becomes too much for me to bear; I turn to leave and see someone standing a few feet away from our group. A strange figure, stock still amidst the arrhythmic spasms that now pass as dancing. Staring fixedly at Sarah, face void of all expression.

It is Henry.

Lying in the foetal position in my darkened room sixteen sleepless hours later, I am trying not to obsess over four horrible things that have now come to pass. Luckily, I had some emergency Valium left over in my room, bulk-bought from Annabelle when she got back from India. The emotional trauma I would otherwise be experiencing has been mitigated by a Zen-like distance; the full impact will hit me sometime tomorrow, along with the full comedown.

My despondence is not helped by the shuffle on my iTunes, which chooses songs specifically designed to elicit existential angst. Surely the random sequence of ‘Piggies', ‘Meat is Murder', ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun' and ‘Strange Fruit' is a sign from a long-abandoned God, calling on me to readmit
him into my withered heart and give up the self-destructive behaviour that has led me into this mess.

I think about doing volunteer work for a charity, quite seriously, for five minutes; preferably one working with addicts, prostitutes, or similar lost souls, with whom I currently feel a spiritual kinship. This would have the dual advantages of doing good for once in my life while also hearing horror-stories of lives derailed that would make me feel better about the comparatively trivial misery of my own. Which isn't terribly altruistic, but my transformation into Mother Teresa will have to be baby steps. Rome wasn't built in a day.

The first disaster of the night was the Henry affair. I could only watch with stunned horror as Sarah, sensing something, broke off the passionate embrace she had been sharing with Alistair. Turning with her hands still clasped around his neck, she met Henry's eyes. The immobile blankness that had settled on his features changed into implacable fury. Henry, who I have always known as even-tempered, grabbed Sarah by the shoulders and pushed her into the wall where she fell like a crumpled packet of crisps. He then launched himself at a stunned Alistair, tackling him to the ground and proceeding to beat the living daylights out of him. Rose ran to help Sarah as I ineffectually tried to pull off Henry, whose wildly flying fists caught me in the face once or twice.

On a normal night in an English pub or club, other drunken spectators would have got involved, roused by half a
dozen pints of Stella and bloodlust. However, everyone being drugged up, the crowd just parted like the Red Sea for the giant bouncers scuttling out from the woodwork, trying not to let it ruin their buzz. Though the whole episode probably happened in the space of ten seconds, by this point Alistair's nose had been broken and one eye was beginning to swell shut. Blood was streaming from his nostrils and a cut on his head; he half sat up, looking at his shaking hands in a daze as if perplexed by what had actually happened. Henry, with a strength I didn't think he possessed, threw off the fourteen stone of pure muscle restraining him and legged it, though not before shooting Sarah a glance that truly chilled me.

We were swiftly chucked out of the warehouse. Police were not called, nor was an ambulance, which was a relief to Sarah but possibly not to Alistair. A guy whom I was chatting with years ago who worked security told me that the only concern bouncers have is to get you out on the pavement as quickly as possible, whether you've been in a fight or OD'd. If you die inside a club, the management is held liable. What happens to you once you are on the street is none of their business.

So, summarily abandoned, Sarah was left to cry as she mopped the blood off of Alistair's face with his blouse. Alistair tried to soothe her, acting manfully unaffected by his trouncing. This performance was ruined rather when it suddenly hit him that his mink had been lost in the fray. He shouted, ‘Fack! I've lost my favourite stole!' in the tones of
anguished frustration a thespian would reserve for ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?'

Rose and I had been trying to console Sarah with lies to the effect that everything would be all right, but at this, both of us burst out into the kind of nervous, unstoppable laughter that inevitably strikes at moments of total inappropriateness. For a moment, Sarah barked a hoarse laugh, before breaking into miserable sobs yet again; Alistair saw no fun in it. Huffily, he took his lover by the arm and marched her down the road with what little force he had left.

We scurried after them, supplicating – ‘No, come back! We're sorry! It was a beautiful stole! Call us if you need us! We're here for you, Sarah!' – but they jumped in a minicab before we had a chance to offer to accompany them. We took a rest stop for morale (racking a few lines on a windowsill) on the way to The Newt, reliving the whole sorry palaver in scandalized tones. Our loud gossiping must have disturbed the occupant; just as we finished snorting the curtains twitched open. We legged it; I lost a shoe in the process.

The second terrible thing to happen was almost a wonderful thing. Thinking back on it now, on the moments just before it all went wrong, constricts my chest with miserable pleasure. It's that or an incipient stroke.

When we arrived, it was just gone four – a bit early for the after party, but with celebrations in full swing. The people there were the odd sort that gather for New Year's Eve at a
pub: friends of staff members, some regulars and random locals who couldn't be arsed to fork out for a proper party. Donna Summers was playing loudly. I guessed, correctly, that Gary had taken over DJ duties briefly but the power had corrupted him.

‘Lover! I adore your disco tunes. Happy New Year!'

‘Georgie! My darling, you look like such a slag tonight. I love it! Why are you here so early?'

Though I had been sworn to secrecy over Sarah's infidelity, even keeping it from Rose, Gary already knew everything. Being one step removed, it felt safe enough and as a gay man, he inevitably acted as a modern Roman Catholic confessional. Now that the cat was well and truly out of the bag I felt free to fill him in on the violent denouement to the rave, all the while casting around for Scott. I saw no sign of him and inwardly scolded myself for this pathetic mooning. The conversation segued into altercations involving ex-lovers (Rose's ex once stabbed someone in the arse; Gary has been chased around with a butcher's knife). Having nothing to add myself (I have always gone for lovers, not fighters; the problems arise when they start loving someone else) I make my excuses to go to the loo for a top up, catching Joy's sneering eye along the way.

‘Joy! Cheer up, love, it might never happen,' I said by way of greeting, temporarily transformed through my buzz into a Cockney cab driver. She was slinking around in an oversized
T-shirt with a faded Andy Warhol print of Marilyn Monroe and very little else. I always feel it is a mistake to wear women who are more beautiful than you. It invites comparison.

Coming out of the toilet, freshly invigorated, I spied Scott emerging from the stockroom, gripping two bottles of whiskey with an unlit cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. A bubble of pure happiness burst inside of me and I thought to myself, ‘God, I am totally in love with this man.' So I did the only rational thing in the circumstances. I nodded casually when he smiled at me, walked back to Rose and proceeded to ignore him entirely for the next half-hour, wishing all the while he would come over and strike up a conversation.

At 4.30 a.m., the lights came up, off, then on again and gradually all but a select few were ushered out of the pub. Cigarettes were lit inside and in a surprisingly short amount of time the fumes of ten people made a bluish haze through which the old-fashioned lamps on the tables glowed. The bar became a boozy free-for-all; Gary and I engaged in a bad-cocktail contest, a game I invariably win as my knowledge of fine liqueurs is limited and I am unafraid of ruining them with Tabasco. The loser is required to down all of the offending concoction and thus really is the winner. After some particularly raucous rounds of this game, only my frequent forays to the toilet were keeping me on my feet.

I tried to get Scott involved, flirtatiously asking if he could
help me find another bottle of Cointreau in the storeroom after I finished it (cocktail: The Ivory Coast. Equal parts Cointreau, Malibu and Absinthe. Verdict: Awful). He gamely led me away and I managed to keep my face composed, but felt myself dying a little bit inside with want. Completely off my tits and far more indiscreet than I would normally have been, I couldn't keep myself from mouthing ‘I love him!' with a sort of pleasant anguish to Rose behind his back. When inside, however, he merely picked up a bottle on a shelf directly facing the door at eye level and shook his head at me with a little smile, before looking down and asking me why I had no shoes on. I couldn't remember.

Back in the bar, delusions of seducing Scott shattered, but with a new, obsessive question to ask myself (‘Why do I have no shoes?'), it was starting to get rowdy. More people had filtered in and Someone-Not-Gary took over the iPod playlist and put on ‘Killing in the Name'. For those of us who were around when indie-rock was cool, this is like throwing a lit match into a barrel of gasoline. A mosh pit formed and I happened to be in the centre of it. Normally I love a mosh pit (manic pogo-ing while stranded somewhere between a group-hug and a brawl is exhilarating) but it resulted in the third accidental punch to the face I'd taken that night (a well-timed elbow during the ‘Motherfuckeeers' scream). This time the injured party was my nose, which began to bleed profusely.

‘Muuuuck!' I gurgled, the ‘F' becoming strangely contorted under the pressure from my squashed sinuses.

‘Georgie! Are you all right?' Scott appeared, as if from nowhere (even moshing I had managed to peripherally track his whereabouts; he had been talking for a distressingly long time with bloody Joy). He clasped my shoulders and peered into my face with concern.

I tried to nod while tilting my head back, blood recoiling back into my nostrils. I felt, to my horror, my eyes start to brim with tears.

‘Ah, you poor thing! Come upstairs with me and we'll get you sorted out.'

Thinking that it was almost worth a bloodied nose just to have his hands on my shoulders, I let him lead me upstairs. Through my watery eyes, I spied around his apartment. There were a large number of books piled willy-nilly on antique table tops and around the giant leather couches. I sat down on one and waited as he returned from the bathroom bearing loo roll, cotton balls, scissors, a glass of water and a handheld mirror.

‘Let me take a look at this. It doesn't seem to be broken. But you are bleeding a hell of a lot.'

‘Ids da coke,' I mumbled, as Scott gently wiped at my face.

‘Ah. That will do it. I thought you seemed a bit … high-spirited tonight. Aren't you getting a bit old for carrying on with that stuff?'

‘Almodst twedny-five.'

‘Ah, you've got a few years on you yet for hell-raising then. Do you have a tampon?'

Being alone, us two, in his flat, my hopes had risen. My treacherous mind had already leapt to fantastic and unlikely conclusions. Tampons were not the turn I had hoped things might take.

‘Hab you god your period?'

‘No, it's for your nose, you cut it in half and stick it in … for absorbency.' Scott looks embarrassed, ‘As in the usual fashion, I guess. I saw it once in a film. It's okay, I'll just twist some loo roll – like this – tilt your head back. Okay, next one – good. Does that hurt? Sorry, I'm not very good at this stuff.'

‘Yer gread,' I said, and burst into tears.

As Scott sat on the couch next to me and folded my body against his broad chest, I desperately tried to stop crying, but his soothing hands stroking my hair produced only mild hysteria. As I hiccupped and tried to catch my breath, one snotty, blood-soaked cone of bog roll shot out with the force of my exhalation and lodged itself in the armpit of his white T-shirt. I stared at it in horror and disbelief, wondering how it is that these things happen to me.

Looking up at Scott from my crumpled position, one nostril trickling blood and the other stuffed with stained paper, mascara trails down my cheeks, our eyes met. We looked at the bloody cone. Our eyes met again. We both burst into
convulsive laughter. When it had subsided, my body was practically lying on top of his. Our faces were inches away from each other; the green flecks in his eyes seemed to glow. His hands had wandered to the sides of my cheeks, his thumbs caressing my skin. His lips parted and he drew me in for what, I am quite sure, would have been the most passionate, loving, sensual and tender kiss of my shortish life, had we not been interrupted by the door swinging forcefully open, revealing Joy.

‘Scott! Alice is downstairs, she's very upset. She wants to see you.' Throwing me a filthy look, Joy whipped around and stomped down the stairs.

‘I … I need to find Alice. Wait here – I'll be back in a minute,' Scott said huskily, after a pause.

Cursing Joy to a merciless circle of hell, I tried to at least make use of this opportunity to fix my face. Luckily I had all of the makeup essentials that might be required after an unexpected bout of heavy rain or passionate sex, but equally applicable to a nosebleed.