It comes almost thirty minutes later, and this time there is no grey plastic basket. The tumbler I remain in is, instead, hooked onto the middle finger of a young man, jostled against two other glasses, and carried out of the bathroom, through the crowd, and deposited next to the washer that I have already experienced once this evening. It is two hours later now, and I can smell the stale dirt emanating from the metal box. It is almost sickening to behold. I am thrown in, another chip forming around my rim, an injury that only worsens as I am once more attacked from all sides by the dirty, churning water. How they expect glasses to be cleaned in this thing is beyond me. The wash is stopped halfway through by someone opening the door, and I am clutched from the darkness, back in the soft, welcoming hands of the barmaid. A cloyingly sweet, clear liquid is poured into me, and served to a small blonde girl. Her hands are so small they barely close around me, and she carries me towards a door I have never been through before. A flight of stairs follows, and we emerge through a set of double doors into the cold outdoors – we are on the rooftop of the building, and are both quickly surrounded with furling clouds of second hand smoke.
“Oh my God, have you seen all the weirdos out tonight?” the girl asks a small crowd of people, made up of both males and females. “I saw a girl downstairs with a stupid little birthday sash on bawling her eyes out. And some guy wearing big black boots and a leather jacket tried to chat me up earlier?! I didn’t even think they let people like that in here anymore!”
“It’s definitely going downhill,” a girl with perfectly dip-dyed hair responds, the smoke from her menthol cigarette releasing slowly from her mouth as she exhales. “It used to be fun here.”
“Yeah, when we were like eighteen, maybe. Now when I come here I have to get so drunk I forget where I am…” the girl holding me downs the shot that I hold, and places me on a small wooden table in the centre of the group.
“Maybe drink something a little stronger than Cointreau then Liv…” a dark skinned boy with curly hair speaks up from the corner, a smile painted on his face.
“It was the only thing they had under three quid. Jesus fucking Christ I can’t wait for payday,” Liv complains, pulls a pack of Marlboro Gold out of the small black and white bag she has slung over her shoulder, and holds her right hand out, waiting for someone to provide her with a lighter.
“You’re so fucking cheap Liv. You buy the most expensive cigarettes you can, but you’re too cheap to buy your own lighter!” the dip-dye girl laughs, sparking a lighter and holding the flame to the end of Liv’s cigarette.
“Well why would I spend a quid on a lighter when I know one of you guys will always have one?!”
Liv’s brow furrows as none of her friends respond, and she follows their gaze to the opposite corner of the smoking area. A boy stands there, his eyes wide, his left hand buried in his pocket, his right hand pinching the end of the cigarette that sits between his lips.
“Isn’t that Daniel Taylor?” a girl from the back of the group asks. “I hear he’s pretty big time now.”
“Looks it, I’m pretty sure that’s an Armani blazer…” the most masculine of the group says wistfully, and everyone turns to him with looks of surprise on their faces before dissolving into laughter. “What! Look at him, he’s got girls hanging off his every word!”
“It’d take more than an Armani blazer for you to get a shag!” Liv retorts, still laughing. The man smiles, punches her lightly in the arms, and Liv rolls her eyes in response. “Was that really necessary Jay?”
“Yes. You’re a bitch,” the man known as Jay grins, and Liv grins back positively.
“I know I am,” Liv takes the insult as a compliment, dropping her finished cigarette to the ground and twisted into the stub with the ball of her right foot. “Is someone gonna go over and talk to Daniel then? I mean, we did go to school with him after all…”
“Yeah, five years ago. And he was two years below. Believe me, he will not remember a single one of us.”
Liv shrugs, almost as if she refuses to believe this comment, and continues to gaze in the direction of Daniel. He looks really good – he’s grown a few inches since school, built some muscle around his shoulders. He dresses expensively, but doesn’t look like he’s trying too hard. He is indeed surrounded by a crowd of girls all hanging on his every word. One laughs, places her hand on his bicep and slides ever so slightly closer to him, almost as if she is trying to stake some kind of unspoken claim on the man. The smirk on Liv’s face grows wider – the behaviour of some of these girls is bordering on ridiculous as they vie for Daniel Taylor’s attention. If Liv joined them, she would become just as pathetic as them, or – even worse – the crying birthday girl she had encountered downstairs.
Liv and her friends had been coming to this club almost every Saturday since they were all eighteen – they had celebrated birthdays, New Years, commiserated break ups and loss. And now, all Liv could think every time she came here was that she was too old for this shit. At the grand old age of twenty four, Liv could no longer get away with drinking sugary alcopops and dancing the night away until four am, but she clung onto her youth like never before. She was terrified – although her outer shell exuded confidence, every day she felt more like she was being cast aside for the youth. Her boss ignored her in favour of the perky eighteen year old he had just hired; her mother preferred her three younger siblings; even her boyfriend’s eye was starting to wander towards the girls who were only recently out of high school. Her eyes glaze over as she reminisces upon her youth, shocked only out of trance by Jay’s fingers clicking in front of her.
“Come on you freak, we’re going back to the bar,” her friend forces her to move forward, his elbow knocking the table as he does so.
I, placed precariously on the edge, slip, and begin to fall. It feels like slow motion, the ground is not coming at me as fast as it should. But, eventually, it does, and the cracks and chips that have formed in my structure throughout the night do me no favours. I break, into five pieces, and I am reminded of each person whose journey I have been a part of tonight: Tom, Jess, Adam, Daniel, Liv. Somehow connected, I question to my broken self if the chain that binds these individuals is a product of my travels between them. It saddens me to think I will never get to be a part of someone’s night, to gain an insight into their lives beyond the four walls that enclose the club. Never again will I contain the social lubricant needed for a man to start a conversation with his future wife. Never again will I touch the lips of someone whose life is just beginning, or whose world is closing in on them. I lie there, despondent, not because my own life has ended, but because I will never again experience the joy, the sorrow, the happiness or the pain of someone else’s. I will never again experience what it means to be alive.
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