365 party girl
Sober curiosity and the poetics of the party girl
I got drunk for the first time in my best friend’s wardrobe. We could hear the faint muffle of music coming from her big sister’s sixteenth birthday party downstairs. The guests were allowed one beer each, but we’d shut ourselves in a wardrobe to get wasted on brandy stolen from her dad.
I’ve stumbled in and out of love with alcohol since then. It has been a catalyst for many things in my life that might not have happened otherwise; kisses, conversations, creative bursts of notes app poetry on the night bus home. But it’s also slowed me down, stolen days and relationships and compounded periods of increased anxiety and depression.
Yet time and time again, I’m drawn back to drinking and partying in my writing, to the night and its potential. From teenage short stories dreaming up parties better than any I’d ever been to, to embarrassingly trite student poetry full of metaphors for MDMA. At uni, I always wrote the most prolifically after a night out because I was feeling like shit and trying to make the comedown feel profound.
Some of the best nights of my life have happened wrapped up in the arms of things we shouldn’t be doing. Careless nights safe in our criss-cross limbs and faith in forever, when those club floor conversations meant everything to me.
I search for an idea or a memory in the crowd and that idea and memory has taken me far and wide now. I searched for it in dusty student houses, in the back seats of taxis, at warehouse parties and in dark streets. Trying to work out if the magic still exists, to see how long I can make it last.
Many years ago, we smoked outside the club and watched a construction site across the road. The club closed down and they turned the construction site into a blockbuster cinema. They put nights like these on the big screen. But they will never understand. And now we can never go back. Years later, in a pub in Brixton, you would burn those nights to the ground with a plastic lighter. We were trying to recreate something we couldn’t get back to. It’s the idea and the memory again.
Still the weekend brings sweat smoke tequila spit lime keys coke feet aching ears splitting sunrise round the curtains glitter disaster. Spiralling into the night. Letting words spill over and floors get sticky. Saying things you wouldn’t say in the day. Letting your tongue grow heavy with it.
It’s the holy energy of the stranger you speak to at the party. It’s the lipstick smudge can of Stella you’re drinking. It’s the way someone else picks up the joke when it doesn’t quite land. How the sunrise kisses the city as we ride back south of the river. How when we look up at the sky, it is not really the sky, but the sky as seen on a cinema screen.
When we’re not dancing, we’re pouring our hearts out under porch lights, watching the way other people act when they’re drunk or high or in love. We ruminate in bathrooms then sway back downstairs to try and keep up with the rest of the room. Hazy memories are seen through the prism of the pale glow of streetlights, disco lights, porch lights, cigarettes that burn like fireflies so that in the morning, it feels like a dream.
When Tom spoke to me last year for a piece I was writing for Woo about New Year’s Eve anxiety, I thought the way he ended the interview felt poignant. “I’ll probably end up on a couch in one of our houses at 4:30am, my head full of the near future – when does the overground restart? – and the far future – how can I keep feeling this happy forever?”
I used to ask myself all the time, how can I keep feeling this happy forever? In the morning, it feels like a dream. In a memory, it feels like heaven.
Sometimes we don’t know where the good party is anymore. We dance in empty rooms and hope teenagers in the smoking area don’t ask us how old we are. I used to hate being awake when the sun starts to creep around the curtains, but now I cherish it because it happens less and less. When I do it for the last time, I probably won’t even know it’s the last time.
Sometimes the drinking isn’t even a part of it. Last year, I went to plenty of gigs, pub quizzes and house parties sober. It was exciting to discover that my love of going out was not exclusively tied to substances. I would like to do a longer sober stint at some point in the near future. Still, those months I spent drinking less, not dating and training for a half marathon started to feel like living my life with the stabilisers on.
I was more stable and contented, yes, but at what cost? Of course, some people want and need to be sober and/or celibate for various reasons and I was fairly happy during that time, but after a while, I needed something unexpected to happen – those serendipitous connections, sunrise conversations, the feeling that anything could happen even though probably nothing will.
Some weeks I exist like a machine, meticulously turning meaningful life experiences into days to be crossed out on a calendar. Partying helps me let go of the constant drive towards self-optimisation and instead lean into the messiness of life.
Living by the sea should be enough to draw me back into the moment, but I’m most in the moment when I’m dancing with my friends in a sweaty venue with graffiti scrawled all over the toilet walls saying stuff like, ‘I <3 LESBIANS’ or ‘SERVING CLIT.’
Thanks to the internet, we all over-categorise ourselves. I’ve dabbled in the 5-9 morning routine lifestyle long enough to know that I’m more of a 365 party girl, but mostly a mixture of both. I don’t believe that’s shallow or reckless or immature. I think it’s special.
On the phone, you say we won’t get a summer this year. It’s July now and the sun has retreated behind the clouds. We have a new government. Nothing is really going to change. But the perfect night in the perfect summer might still be out there somewhere. So we will keep getting dressed up and drinking to the disaster. And there will be moments when we find what we’re searching for.
04:12
You better be telling me the truth.
It’s 4:12am.
It’s the holy energy of the stranger
you spoke to at the party.
It’s the lipstick smudge can
of venom you’re drinking.
It’s the way the joke stays suspended
when it doesn’t quite land.
The sunrise kisses the city
as we ride back south of the river.
I say I can’t, I’m busy next weekend.
I have to tend to my dying poems.
I dream of whales washed up on Brighton beach
and I tell you like I have a point to prove,
but I will never write a song about it.