The rough, damaged hands of the bartender wrap around me once more, and I am unceremoniously thrown into a grey plastic basket. I flinch at the clink of glass on glass, a sharp pain coursing through my side as a small chip of myself falls into the plethora of glass beneath me. We are lifted, the feeling of weightlessness as we are carried through a light wooden door, the sudden shift in light forcing a slight shine off each and every one of us. Placed in a metal box, soapy water engulfs us. It is uncomfortably hot, the water takes on the heavy scent of stale beer and herbal Jagermeister, the mix is churned around us as we lay, trapped against one another, unable to escape the unbearable environment. A beep, the light reaches us again. The clock on the wall reads 01.57. Before I can be placed back on my shelf, I feel a slender hand against the warmth of my outer edge. This is a different bartender, female, redhead – the kind who has to put up with the advances of tens of men during the course of the night. She pours a sticky, sugary liquid into me, almost fluorescent green in colour, and pushes it across the bar towards a group of girls, one of whom sports a baby pink sash across her skin-tight-dress-clad torso. A plastic tiara sits atop her perfectly coiffed hair. I am lifted into the air by the girl, her friends surrounding her squealing ‘Happy Birthday!’ as she does so. She cringes at the impact of the low volume liquid as she swallows it, and I inwardly laugh – it is clear to me that this girl is barely old enough to drink.
“Selfie!” the girl shouts, and her friends surround her as she holds her phone aloft, discovering her perfect angle before snapping a picture.
“I’m so glad it’s finally your birthday babe! It feels like so long since we all turned eighteen!” a blonde girl shouts over the music, as two other girls begin to confidently and swiftly drink the remainder of their sugary alcopops before making their way to the centre of the dance floor.
“I know, I was starting to think it would never happen!” the birthday girl, who – according to her sash – is named Jess, replies, her grin wide, four bottles of the tropical flavoured WKD clutched tightly in her hand, a pink straw peering just above the rim of each one. One of the straws bears the print of a bright pink lipstick around it, and I pray that I have not suffered the same fate. Pink is not my colour.
An equally scantily-clad girl grabs Jess’ hand, leading her towards the dance floor. She stumbles slightly on her shoes – this is the first time she has worn them, and she looks like a new-born giraffe trying to run from a pride of lionesses. The stumble, coupled with her outrageous advertisement of her own birthday, draws the attention from a number of surrounding males, including a vaguely familiar looking man sporting a leather jacket. I can tell from the looks in their eyes that they are hoping she will be drunk enough to go home with them within the hour. Her mouth spreads into a lipsticked grin as she soaks up all the extra attention she is receiving, and her lips close around one of the straws to take a large sip from her drink. My view of her is disturbed by the people surrounding her, but I can see the smile on her face, the excitement in her eyes. Never before has she been the recipient of this much attention, and it is clear that she is soaking it up as she moves to the consistent beat of the music under the coloured strobe lighting. A young man, not much older than Jess, dances behind her, leaning forward to whisper in her ear. I see her giggle, tilting her head slightly to the left as he brushes her long hair away from her ear. I can tell from his face that he has had the same thought as me – she revels within the attention too much to pull away or send him packing, and he plans on using this to his full advantage. He hands her another shot glass containing the green liquid and I feel a slight pang of jealousy as she knocks it back, her head tilting back slightly as she shouts a slightly slurred thank you into his left ear. He turns his head, the tip of his nose burrowing under her earlobe, his lips finding her neck, nuzzling closer to her. His hand slides down from her waist to just below her hip, and the smile fades from her face slightly. Her eyes flicker between two of her friends, silently begging one of them to rescue her from the situation in which she has found herself too deep for her comfort. She reaches out a hand, grasping air, hoping someone will notice her pleas. The song changes, her friends turn, noticing the downcast look on their friends’ face, and they pull her away from the stranger, walking back towards the bar, back towards me. She no longer bears the excited grin she had before when her presence invokes the glances of the predatory men in the room – instead, she lowers her eyes to look at the floor, and walks quickly back towards the bar.
“I think I’ll just have a glass of water,” I hear her mumble as she pulls the tiara from atop her brunette locks.
“Hey, why are you taking that off?” one friend shouts indignantly, her hand reaching out in an effort to wrestle the cheap plastic crown back on Jess’ head.
“It’s just a bit uncomfortable, that’s all. I’ll keep it in my bag for now,” Jess placates, reaching for the plastic pint glass that has been placed next to me. I hear her relieved sigh as she begins to sip at the clear refreshing liquid it holds. I can sense from her new demeanour that Jess finds herself far from her comfort zone. Perhaps all she wanted for her birthday was a night in with pizza and a cliché boy-meets-girl romantic comedy. Her friends certainly seem like the forceful type, bolshie and overconfident, the kind of girls who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Jess, to me, seems like the girl who used to sit in the corner of the classroom, working silently, until she happened upon the inscrutable desire to be one of the popular girls. From what I’ve seen in my short time here, it happens to everyone. The pressure of being surrounded by peers eats away at individuals until they can no longer survive without the attention of others. I can see it in Jess’ face, the light in her eyes as attention is paid towards her, the discomfort when she becomes forced into a social situation she has never experienced before. The girls around her are far more assured, smiling at every passing male they deem worthy of their time, snaking their hips as they move in time to the music.
“Do you wanna go and dance again?” a slightly older girls asks – maybe a sister of one of the others, perhaps an older girl they knew at school. She seems even more confident than the others, and hasn’t once been short of both negative and positive attention – from males and females alike – since she entered the room.
“I’m okay, honestly, I might get another drink in a minute,” Jess lies to the girl, turning away from the dance floor and inspecting herself in the mirror behind the bar. She grimaces, it becomes clear that she is not even comfortable with her appearance this evening – her eyes are rimmed with thick black kohl eyeliner, heavy false eyelashes feather far above her natural ones. Blusher occurs high on her cheekbones, her lips painted with a thick layer of fuchsia. I silently assume that one of the other girls applied her makeup for the evening, maybe even lent her the dress that clings to her thin frame.
The other girls relocate slowly to the dance floor, leaving Jess standing by the bar on her own. She clutches her tiny black handbag tightly to her side, wary of the group of dangerous looking young men standing to her right. She is nervous, her forehead is shiny with perspiration, and her breathing is heavy. She feels abandoned, completely alone, reverting back to her old self. Suddenly, I can see it in her eyes, she is that young girl, sitting alone at lunch, picking silently at the sandwich her mother made her, her nose buried in a book. She was not meant to be one of these girls, the girls who love to drink, the girls who socially smoke, the girls who go home with boys they met that night (and it is almost a guarantee that one of her companions will do so this evening). Jess debates whether to leave the club completely – she knows she will pay for it on Monday at lunch, when she meets these girls on the steps at the front of school, but all she wants to do is go home to her bed and a warm cup of tea.
Her peers are calling her name, beckoning her towards the area of the dance floor they have claimed by the DJ booth. They are illuminated in blue, red, green, white, their faces change as the strobe hits their perfected skin. Their hair whips wildly around them as they move, their hands alternating between raising above their heads and temptingly caressing at their own undulating hips. It seems to Jess as if the entire night has become one antiquated mating ritual, every girl in the room bar her trying to attract a mate and a warm bed for the night. Jess scoffs derisively as she pans the room, desperately looking for someone to rescue her from the disaster that is her birthday. She feels a strong desire to call her mum, ask her to come and collect her, take her home, tuck her into bed and sing her a lullaby like she used to so many years ago. Jess craves her childhood, hating this new found pressure to grow up and enter the world as an adult. She remembers the Saturday nights when she was young, curled up under a blanket in pyjamas with little booties sewn in, a small, soft Dalmatian filled with beans clutched tightly in her hand. Times were simpler then – she did not know of makeup, or the pain of walking in high heels, or the nervous feeling of being in close proximity with a particularly attractive boy. The young brunette closes her eyes, attempting to drown out the music with her thoughts for just one moment. She sighs deeply, her shoulders relax, and she heads out onto the dance floor to dance with her companions. I can almost hear her thoughts as she walks away – ‘If you can’t beat them…join them.’
I am plucked from my hiding place between a black plastic straw holder and a cold beer pump dripping with condensation, and passed from the delicate hand of a barmaid into the rough, dehydrated grasp of a burly bar back who smells vaguely of women’s perfume but mainly of sweat and cigarettes.
“You can take those ones downstairs,” I hear a feminine voice order. “We’ve got plenty up here.”
Tossed once more into the carrier, I am surrounded on all sides, the glass distorting my view into the world that lies outside this grey, plastic prison. The strobe lights still reach me, however, and I can still feel the humidity in the air, smell the sweat and pheromones radiating off every human being in the room. I am jostled, pushed, shaken about as I feel the man carrying me begin his descent down a quiet, private set of stairs, emerging moments later on another darkened floor. The atmosphere is different here. Less people are dancing, I can tell by the clarity of the air compared to the claggy thickness in the place I previously occupied. The music is quieter here, and much less repetitive. It sounds less polished, and, as I am removed from the basket and placed onto the end of the bar, I can see a man playing slow, sensual guitar on a slightly raised platform, people sitting on tables around him, appreciating the music rather than dancing just for the sake of dancing. It is a slightly older crowd in here, and I doubt I’ll get much use – most people seem to be drinking out of beer bottles or wine glasses – but I am keen to observe the difference between these two seemingly opposing worlds. Three women in knee length, dark coloured dresses sit around a table, a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc half empty between them, their glasses almost empty. One wears a pair of thickly framed glasses. Two impeccably well groomed men – one a close cut brunette, one blonde with a slight smattering of designer stubble – sup on their imported German bottled beers, their fingers loosely twined together on the black faux marble table top. A man stands at the end of the bar, around thirty in age, alone, his brow furrowed as he gazes at the screen of his top of the range smartphone. He wears suit trousers, a blue shirt, the top button undone. His hair is artfully unkempt, the kind of bedhead style that takes hours to perfect. His aftershave is musky, but not too overpowering, and I conclude that he is waiting for the arrival of a date. He gestures to the bartender who, unlike his upstairs counterparts, is dressed smartly in black trousers and a white shirt.
“What can I get for you?” he asks politely, a far cry from the ‘what’ll it be mate?’ that I’m so used to.
“Can I get a bottle of Corona and a shot of tequila please?” he replies, the courtesy extended by the barman is echoed in his response.
I am, shockingly, picked up from the bar – I think the barman believes me to be clean – and knocked against one of the glasses that surround me. A small crack forms in my side, barely big enough to notice, and almost invisible in the darkened atmosphere, but I wince in pain, before being placed in front of the suited male. In the close proximity, I can see the faint lines around his eyes, the dark circles beneath them, the tiredness and pain reflected in the dark brown irises. He is fed up.
“Hard day?” the barman asks as he places a small dish of salt and a wedge of lime next to me. I feel somewhat neglected as the man picks up his bottle of beer, favouring the slightly sweet taste of the blond lager over the bitter strong taste of the tequila that sits in me.
“You could say that,” the man rebuffs. “My date’s running late.”
“Ah, lady problems,” the bartender smiles wryly. “I know how that feels.”
“Don’t we all,” the man grimaces, lifting a pinch of salt from the dish and placing it upon his tongue before swiftly lifting me to his mouth and knocking back the shot, the sharp inhale as the warmth of the tequila hits the back of his throat. His lips purse together, his eyes squinting as he sucks strongly on the wedge of lime, the sourness eliminating the bitter aftertaste of the tequila. The bartender pours another shot into me, gesturing the man to drink again.
“You look like you need it.”
The alcohol goes down more confidently this time. There is no grimace, no slight cough from the man’s throat, and I am gently, almost gratefully, placed back onto the bar.
“Thanks, you’re right, I did need it.”
“So, nervous then?”
“I guess so…it’s my first date in a while,” the man responds, and it is clear from his face that his nerves are getting the better of him. His knuckles have turned pale, the skin stretched over them as he holds tightly onto the edge of the bar. He looks sick to his stomach as his phone – which he has placed next to his beer – buzzes in a sharp staccato against the surface of the bar. He looks down at the screen, his eyes briefly lighting up. I assume it is from the girl whose arrival he awaits, his face falling slightly as he reads the content of the message.
“She’s um…she’s stuck in traffic, she should be here soon though,” the man takes another sip of his beer, the corners of his mouth turning up in a slight smile. He is hopeful. “Listen. ‘Sorry Adam, the cab is stuck in traffic, will be there asap.’ No kisses, but it’s a start, no?”
“Definitely,” the bartender forces an uncertain smile, and, looking around and seeing no one waiting to be served, begins to peel oranges on a small surface just below the height of the bar. “Another shot?”
Adam shakes his head indicating a negative response, and the two men continue in silence, the only thing breaking through is the scraping of the knife against the plastic cutting board that lies beneath the peeled orange zest. Adam’s hand has loosened its grip on the bar edge, but his fingers remain resting along the blunt corner of the false granite surface. His other hand runs through the front of his hair, pulling at it, lifting it at the root, perfecting it. The woman he is waiting for is someone he knows from the office – it’s taken him four years to get her to even notice him, never mind agree to a date. She’s the assistant to the president of the company. He fixes the photocopier. She is perfectly curvaceous, leggy, the perfect shade of redhead, piercing blue eyes. Adam is ever-so-slightly overweight, his hairline is receding somewhat, and his eyes are a muddy, unremarkable brown. She eats her lunch at upscale sushi places. Adam is lucky if he can afford a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s. She wears Alexander McQueen shirts and Yves Saint Laurent pencil skirts with Karen Millen heels. Adam sports a denim shirt – Primark’s finest – and black Topman jeans on an almost daily basis. She is so far out of his league that Adam can’t even begin to fathom why she said yes when he asked her out for drinks. She must be inundated with offers from men with much better jobs and much higher pay than him – so why is she spending her Saturday night meeting someone who lives in a ground floor studio flat where the walls are so thin he can hear his neighbour watching Jeremy Kyle at two o clock every afternoon? Adam’s nerves start to kick in again.
“Can I just get one more shot of tequila please?” he looks up at the barman, who nods in agreement.
“Consider this one on me. First dates are hard, we’ve all been there mate.”
I am once again filled with a feeling of completeness as the tequila is poured into me, and then left feeling dissatisfied as Adam swills it back, discarding me as a simple vessel for his desire. He breathes a small sigh of contentment, his shoulders relaxing even slightly more than before, his hand finally relenting its grip on the edge of the bar. She agreed to meet him. There must be a reason for that. He has won half of the battle. Now all he has to do is relax.
His phone buzzes again, and he leans slightly forward in order to read the preview on the screen: I’ll be two minutes. Get me a glass of wine?
Adam grins widely – he hasn’t been stood up after all! – but I can sense the immediate panic on his face.
“I don’t know a lot about wines…what do you think she’ll like?” Adam questions, his eye panning the lit up refrigerators and shelves.
“Pinot Grigio is pretty popular if she likes white, I’d go with a Cabernet Sauvignon if she prefers red…” the bartender responds, pulling out an example of both bottles for Adam to inspect. He tries to cast his mind back to last year’s company Christmas party – she was wearing a tight green dress that fell mid-calf, her neck was exposed by an exquisite up do, her perfume was intoxicating…but what had she been drinking?
“Let’s go with the red,” Adam requests unconfidently, and the bartender pours the burgundy liquid into a large, delicate glass. Adam adjusts himself on his barstool so he can see the door, eagerly awaiting the woman’s arrival. He brushes down the legs of his suit trousers, leaning down to pull them slightly at the ankles so they cover the tops of his recently shined lace up shoes that he has owned for almost seven years. He swipes a couple of wrinkles out of his shirt just as the door to the bar opens and she walks in.
The head of every straight male and gay female in the room turns towards the door. She sports a tight fitting black pencil skirt with a ruffled shirt the colour of oxblood. Her feet are swathed in expensive leather peep toe heels, a black leather bag rests in the crook of her left arm. Her hair falls in delicate waves, tendrils framing her face, her eyes perfectly surrounded in a light dusting of bronze shadow. Adam stands up, taking a couple of steps towards the absolute vision of perfection that has just entered the room.
“Adam, hi,” she smiles, extended her free arm and wrapping it around his shoulders in a hug.
“I hope Cabernet’s okay for you. Shall we grab a table, Sophie?”
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