Excerpt
Disappoint Me
Max, 2023It’s four a.m. and the house party hasn’t thinned. New Year’s! Everyone wants to go to a party, but nobody wants to host a party, and so a party’s a party and people will stay. At a certain stage of life, people leave house shares for smaller flats, because they can afford to live alone, or because they’re in a couple, or because their parents give them some money for a modest two-bed, though they’ll assure you they pay the mortgage themselves. In all cases, houses become less like places you live and more like homes, less like places you’re willing to trash. House parties are rare. Caspar, who lives here, is a friend from university. We were also in a writing workshop with my ex-boyfriend, Arthur, though I’ve obviously since left. Now I barely see Caspar outside of these parties, which he continues to invite me to despite our estrangement.
I’m flirting with sobriety, which means I’ve only had two drinks and the small bump of ket that Caspar just offered me. The decision to restrict is not because I’m an alcoholic or addict. I’ve always been able to pull back, to eventually say no, to go home early. I’m restricting because drugs and alcohol make me feel bad. After Arthur broke up with me, I’d wake up with a gravitational compression that anchored me in bed. I’d be much worse the day or two after a bottle or two shared between friends. It shouldn’t have been a revelation that alcohol is a depressant, but my baseline finally dropped low enough for me to notice it. Since stopping, I’ve been more emotionally robust, and also more superior, as if I’m the first person in history to wake up to the dangers of hedonism.
I’m dancing with my eyes shut, because I’m dancing with Caspar and his eye contact is severe. He’s brilliant. I don’t particularly like him, and so I’m saying this in an objective sense. A genuinely brilliant mind. He did a PhD in PrEPenomics, and then went on to write a book of essays on pre-millennium London club culture, which he was not present for, published by an independent press stocked only in Hackney bookshops. It sold a lot more than anyone anticipated, thanks to a well-known actor-singer-cross-stitch-artist who posted a nude selfie with Caspar’s book covering his crotch. It sold a lot more than my book of poems, obviously, because who in the world buys poetry any more? After the crotch selfie, Caspar got a US deal. And a German one. Even a Japanese one. He is glamorous in a way that will wear off for me. Time is kinder to men, even gay men. I won’t always be beautiful. I think about that a lot, now that I’m in my thirties. Now that I’m thirty. My marionette lines are a giveaway; even though I insist to myself that it’s the structure of my face, that I’ve always had them, I know they’re getting deeper. How long have my eyes been shut?
I open them. Caspar’s gone. I survey the crowd and regret it immediately. Some people should really stop taking drugs. I scratch the ketamine off the hem of my nostril and look up. Lights! A light machine shoots lasers across the room, creating an illuminated sheet overhead. Simone and Eva are next to me. Simone never sweats. She’s in a boxy blazer with matching shorts, like a child in their dad’s suit, but sexy and poised. She is my favorite person in the world. Eva, her girlfriend, is not. It’s not because I’m possessive, I just think Eva’s a little boring. She’s a fashion videographer for cool brands with asymmetrical knitwear and expensive shoes that look like Transformers. People who do jobs like that are only ever interesting on paper. Except Simone. Simone often defends Eva’s right to be boring to me, in neat aphorisms that are conflicting but even in the strength of their presentation.
Listen, Max, everyone becomes boring when you’ve spent enough time with them. Am I boring, Simone?
No, but she talks about things that we never talk about. She does talk about Crocs a lot, though.
Eva places her hand on my back. I feel my own sweat against the curve of my spine.
“I love your bag,” she says.
It’s a vintage, black leather baguette. I don’t think she actually likes it; she just wants to endear herself to me, maybe because she knows that I know she’s boring.
“Thank you,” I say. “I love your Crocs.”
I feel hot, and only in the unpleasant sense of the word. I wish I wasn’t wearing a silk slip. My awareness of my moist armpits is acute. I shut my eyes again. Maybe I should actually be grateful for Eva. I’ve lost many friends to heteronormativity in the last couple of years. Even queer ones. Engagements. Cardigans. Looking out at the sea while rubbing the outside of their arms.
Eyes open again, and I look toward Simone. She gurns so much. Not judging, just observing. Her teeth chatter like she’s naked in the Arctic. I’ve known that noise since we first took MD on a side street off Lan Kwai Fong sixteen years ago. Simone grabs my hand and brings her mouth to my ear, and I know what’s coming. Rattle, rattle, rattle.
“It’s like they’re talking,” she says.
“What are they saying?” I ask.
“Help.”
We laugh. I lean away and search my handbag for gum. Eva’s palm slides over my arm.
“I love your bag,” Eva says, again.
“Thank you,” I repeat. “I love your Crocs.”
I know I’ve long been the perpetrator of many of these looping conversations, and my penance is to bear my own annoyance and smile. I take out the packet of gum from my bag, stacked pillows of xylitol, and pop out a couple for Simone and Eva, and then one for myself. Simone throws it into her mouth, nodding at me through droopy eyes.
Eva pulls me and Simone farther into the living-room-cum-dance-floor. I look at them, and suddenly they’re bent backward. Who the f*** brought out a limbo stick? Am I doing limbo? I throw my spine back like it’s a normal thing to do. It’s not like they just found a stick outside. This is a stick of specific length, circumference, and texture. Who brought this?
As I’m upside down, my eyes go to Carla, a Spanish woman I know through Caspar, who Simone once said looks like Poundland Arca. Carla and I are friends, in the sense that we’re both trans and therefore vaguely supportive of each other on social media. Her sequin dress is lovely. So slinky. When I swing back up, I’m thinking of microplastics. I try to keep dancing, but purse my lips, imagining those little beads slipping from those sequins and into the sea, and into the fish we eat, and into our bodies, clogging up hormone receptors and pulping our gametes. While I’ve already met a version of this apocalypse, it’s not a fate I wish to befall everyone else. Is this what abstinence does to a person? When you can’t turn the world to mush, make everything dissolve and stop making sense. When the mind can’t crowd itself, where is it left to wander?
Carla comes off the decks. One of several bleached buzzcuts ascends to replace her.
“You were so, so good,” I say.
“Thank you, baby,” she says. “You look amazing.”
“I love your dress.”
“Same,” she says. “You look amazing. Let’s go upstairs.”
She grabs my hand with a violent tug, pulling me out of the room and toward the staircase. Our skin contact is feigned closeness through shared experience. We met a few years ago. All I remember from that evening is that she gave me a cigarette and told me there was a man who paid her top dollar to smoke vapes from her butt, and that she could introduce me if I wanted. I think she still sees him, even though her paintings are selling okay. The next week we went for a drink at a bar in Dalston. I was mortified by how rude she was. Some trans women serve cunt, in that they’re quite rude, because when the world shits on you it’s easy to be a little mean, but she sent a negroni back for having too thin an orange slice on the rim. No amount of pain excuses that.
We sit on a beanbag upstairs. Three men in mesh tops are on the couch to Carla’s left. One of them looks forty-five, another looks thirty, and the twink closest to Carla looks too young to be here. The forty-five-year-old squirts G from a dropper into a glass of orange Fanta.
“This is my friend Max,” Carla says. “She’s a lawyer.”
“That’s amazing,” says the twink. “You must be so smart.”
“Sometimes,” Carla answers for me.
