I was sat on a closed toilet lid at ten past four with my heels off and my phone torch pointing at the ceiling because the overhead light made everyone look like they’d died. Two other girls were in there with me. One had her back against the door so nobody could barge in. The other was redoing her liner in my compact because hers had vanished into whatever she’d been doing for the last hour.
We were not friends. Not really. You know how it goes at these things. You clock each other in the kitchen at midnight, you share a cigarette on the fire escape, you end up in a cubicle because the main room is still too loud and your feet have given up.
Tash I sort of knew. She does something in production and always smells like expensive hair oil. The other one said her name was Imogen and then immediately told us she’d just left a boy called Will on the sofa with his belt still undone. That was how it started.
Nobody Comes In Here For A Wee
Let’s be honest. At that hour the toilets at an afterparty are not about needing the loo. They’re about hiding, fixing your face, and saying the thing you would never say in the kitchen where people can hear you.
Imogen started talking first because she was still buzzing. Not drunk exactly. That wired, shiny state you get when the night has gone further than you planned and your brain hasn’t caught up with your body.
Will, she said, was the tall one in the navy jumper. I’d seen him. Everyone had seen him. He’d spent most of the night doing that thing some men do where they lean against a doorframe like they own the building.
They’d gone into the spare room because the bedroom queue was already a situation. She said he kissed like he was trying to win something. Hands everywhere. Proper greedy. She had her dress up round her waist and one knee on the bed and he lasted about four minutes, came with this stunned little noise, then immediately asked if she wanted water.
Tash snorted so hard she nearly dropped my compact.
Imogen looked offended for half a second and then started laughing too. “I know. I know. But the mouth beforehand was good. I’ll give him the mouth.”
She said he didn’t go down on her. Didn’t even try. Just the kissing, the dress, the four minutes, the water offer. She came back out, saw us heading for the toilets, and followed like she needed witnesses.
I wrote that down. Not his surname. I’m not a monster. Just: Will. Navy jumper. Four minutes. Offered water. No tongue south of the border.
Tash Had A Different Night Entirely
Tash waited until Imogen had finished complaining about the water thing. Then she sat on the edge of the sink and said, quite calmly, “Mine made me come twice and then asked if I had a boyfriend.”
The silence in that cubicle was excellent.
His name was Ollie. Works in music, or says he does, which in London could mean anything from actual producing to knowing a man who once met a man who DJs. Dark hair. Bit of a nose. The sort of face that photographs better at 3am than it probably does at noon.
They’d been in the bathroom down the hall, not this one. Door locked. Her back against the tiled wall. She said he was rough in a way that felt considered rather than sloppy. Hand in her hair, not yanking like an idiot, just holding. One of her legs up. He talked the whole time, which she usually hates, but it worked because he wasn’t reciting porn. He was just filthy and specific about what he wanted her to do.
She came the first time standing up. The second time he had her turned round with her hands on the cistern and she said she bit her own wrist to keep quiet because there were people in the corridor.
Then, afterwards, while she was still trying to get her breathing back, he asked if she had a boyfriend.
“I said no,” Tash told us. “Which is true. And he looked almost disappointed. Like the risk was the point.”
Imogen wanted details. Positions. How long. Whether he was big. Tash rolled her eyes but she answered anyway, because that is the contract of the 4am cubicle. You asked, so you tell.
Not huge, she said. Good angle. Knew what to do with his fingers first, which is rarer than it should be. She still had a mark on her hip from the sink edge.
I put that in the notes too. Ollie. Music. Two. Asked about the boyfriend after, not before. Rude in a useful way.
Then They Looked At Me
I was hoping they wouldn’t. I was also hoping they would. You know that feeling.
I’d left someone in the main room as well. Not on the sofa. By the speaker, looking at his phone like he’d just remembered he had one. His name is not going in this. He does something that means people in this city would clock it immediately and I am messy, not stupid.
We’d been circling each other since the actual party, the one before this afterparty, the one with the badly mixed drinks and the photographer who kept taking pictures of people who did not ask. I’d decided around 1am that I was going to have him. Not in a romantic way. In the way you decide you’re going to eat the last thing on the table because you’ve already paid for the night with your time.
We found the utility cupboard. I wish that sounded glamour. It did not. Cleaning products, a fuse box, someone’s abandoned coat. I had one heel still on because the other had already been sacrificed to the kitchen floor. He hiked my skirt and went down on me first, which I will give him, because Imogen’s Will could learn something.
He was good at that. Patient in a way I didn’t expect from the way he talks in rooms. I came on his mouth with my hand in his hair and the fuse box digging into my shoulder blade. Then he stood up, turned me, and it got harder. Proper hard. The kind where you stop thinking in sentences. He came on my thigh because I told him to, which is a sentence I can hear myself saying even now, all matter of fact, like I was ordering another drink.
I walked back into the main room after and he was already on his phone. I went to find my other shoe. That was the whole romance of it.
Tash said “peak” and then asked if I came. I said yes. Imogen wanted to know if I’d see him again. I said probably, if the lighting was good and I was bored. They both made that face girls make when they know you’re being honest and they wish they were allowed to be as well.
The Rest Of The Inventory
Once you’ve started, you don’t stop. That cubicle turned into a swap meet.
There was a girl in a silver dress who’d been in the garden with two people, not at the same time, which somehow felt worse. There was a rumour about the host and someone from the first party who’d gone upstairs and not come down. Tash swore she’d heard the bedframe. Imogen said the host’s girlfriend was in Ibiza, which I already knew, and which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a night feel like a magazine.
We ranked them. Not kindly.
Best mouth: mine, apparently, though I think Tash was being polite because she’d already had two and wanted to stay winning on technique.
Worst manners: Will, easily. The water thing finished him. You cannot last four minutes and then play gentleman with a tap.
Most likely to text tomorrow: Ollie. Tash said she wouldn’t reply straight away. We all knew she would.
Most likely to pretend it didn’t happen: the one I’d left by the speaker. I said that before they could. Saves time.
Someone tried the door. We all froze like teenagers. Tash shouted “occupied” in her work voice and whoever it was muttered and went away. The three of us started laughing so hard Imogen had to sit on the floor. Her knees were red. There was glitter on the toilet roll. My compact was smeared with three different shades of nude because we’d all had a go.
That is the bit I keep coming back to. Not the sex. The three of us crammed in there, passing makeup, being disgusting and precise about men who were still in the other room acting like they hadn’t just been inside someone.
I Wrote It All Down
I always write it down. Sophie thinks it’s unhinged. Mia thinks it’s content. They’re both right.
While Tash was talking I had Notes open on my lap, typing with one thumb, misspelling half of it because my hands were cold. It looks unhinged in daylight. Broken sentences. Names. Who finished. Who didn’t bother. Who asked for a number and who just zipped up and walked off like they’d posted a letter.
People love to pretend girls don’t talk like this. We do. We always have. The only difference is I keep the receipts.
I’m not putting surnames here. I’m not putting the address of the flat. The host knows who he is and if he’s reading this he can relax, I don’t care about his girlfriend in Ibiza as much as he should. What I care about is the fact that three women who barely knew each other told the truth in a toilet at 4am because the main room was full of performance and the cubicle was the only place left that felt private.
I redid my lipstick before we went back out. Of course I did. There was a mirror. There is always a mirror.
Imogen went first. Chin up, dress tugged down, looking for Will, or looking like she wasn’t. Tash checked her neck for marks and then decided she didn’t mind if there were some. I put my heels back on, opened the door onto the leftover bass and the smell of warm wine, and walked back into the room as if I hadn’t just catalogued the whole night.
He was still by the speaker. He looked up. I looked through him. That felt better than the cupboard, if I’m honest.
In the Uber home I added one more line to the note.
Three girls. One cubicle. Everyone lying in the kitchen. Nobody lying in the loo.
Gold, like I said. I’ll use it. I always do.