Full face. Properly done, I will give her that. Contour you could land a plane on. Dress that hit mid-thigh and then gave up, like it had been told to behave. She had two friends behind her doing that little laugh that is not a laugh, more a warning shot. I was three people back, phone in one hand, lip gloss in the other, because of course I was. I look in every mirror. It is not a personality. It is maintenance.
She clocked the dress first. Then the heels. Then me.
“Tarty,” she said, not even quietly. “Looks cheap.”
I smiled. What else are you meant to do at 12:40 in a corridor that smells of perfume and drain? Start a debate on fabric quality? Ask her to define cheap while a stranger hammers on a cubicle door shouting for Tanya?
I took the photo anyway.
The dress, since we are here
It was not cheap. That is the boring part. Black, thin straps, sits where I want it to sit. I have worn it twice before and both times someone asked where it was from like they were going to copy the homework. I bought it on a Thursday afternoon when I should have been answering emails. Sophie said it was “a choice.” Mia said I would get chatted up before I reached the bar. Both of them were right, which is annoying.
Cheap, to that girl, did not mean the price. It meant I looked like I wanted something. Attention. A man. A story. All three, if I am being honest, which I usually am when it makes me look worse.
I wanted the photo. I wanted the comments. I wanted to post it before last orders so the night still had a pulse when people opened their phones in the Uber. That is the job, even when I pretend it is not. I do not need the money. I need the eyes. Being nobody is the thing that actually scares me, and a dress that sits a bit short is a quicker fix than therapy.
She can cope.
What the loos are actually for
If you have never done a London night properly you will think the dance floor is the main event. It is not. The loos are where the night tells the truth. Girls lend each other mascara. Girls tell each other their boyfriend is outside and they do not want to go home with him. Girls take photos under a light that is trying its best and still losing.
Usually you get the compliment first. Love the bag. Your hair is doing that thing. Where did you get those shoes. It is a truce. You say it back even if you do not mean it. That is the deal.
Every so often you get the other version. The scan. The little sniff. The word that is meant to put you back in your lane. Tarty. Cheap. Try-hard. I have heard worse in better rooms. I have also said worse, which I am not proud of, except I sort of am, because at least I say it to your face and not in a group chat three hours later.
This one wanted an audience. Fine. She had one. I gave her a better one.
I stood at the sink, fixed the lip, turned side on because that is the angle, and took three pictures. First one was blurry. Second one made my arm look weird. Third one was the one. I looked like I had been out. I looked like I knew it. I looked, if we are using her language, cheap. Good. Cheap photographs. Tasteful does not always.
I posted it before last orders
There is a window. Miss it and you are just another girl in a black dress at 3am with a story no one asked for. Hit it and the night is still happening while people are still drinking.
Caption was nothing clever. I did not write a thesis. I did not mention her. Why would I? She already did the work. I put the photo up, checked it had loaded because the WiFi in that place is a rumour, and went back out.
Mia found me by the bar and said I had a smudge. I did not. She just likes to have a job. Sophie was outside with a boy from work who keeps “ending up” in the same places as us. I told them about the queue. Mia wanted a description. Sophie wanted to know if I had been rude. I had been polite, which is ruder if you think about it.
Last orders happened the way last orders always happen. A bit of a scramble. Someone trying to get four drinks in one go. The lights a fraction brighter than they were, which is the venue telling you to wrap it up without using words. I checked the post on the way to the coat check. It was already doing that little tick-tick thing. Not viral. Not nothing. Enough.
In the taxi Mia read comments out like a newsreader. Love this. Where is that dress. You look feral in the best way. One person said I looked like I charged by the hour. I laughed at that one. I have been called worse by people who have actually paid.
Sunday, because there is always a Sunday
Parsons Green at 11am is not Soho at 1am. The flat smells of coffee and whoever used the good towels. Sophie was already in her robe doing that face that means she has opinions stored from the night before.
“You looked good,” she said, which from Sophie is a speech. Then, “She was jealous.”
Maybe. Maybe she just did not like the dress. Not every comment is a wounded inner child. Sometimes a girl in a queue just wants to say something and you are standing there looking like a target. I can live with that. I have been the girl who said something too. I am not going to pretend I am above it just because this week I was the one in the photo.
Mia had already screenshotted the comments and put them in the group chat. She does this. It is her love language and also her way of keeping receipts. There was one from a boy I have slept with, which felt a bit much for a Sunday, and one from a girl I vaguely know from university who wrote “iconic behaviour” like we are still twenty-two and everything is a bit.
I made tea. I looked at the photo again on my phone, which I always do, and then I put the phone face down because even I can hear myself.
The dress is on the chair in my room. There is a mark on the hem I have not identified. Wine or someone else’s foundation. I will take it to the cleaner and pretend I do not know how it got there.
What I keep coming back to
Look. I know how this reads. Girl gets slighted in a toilet queue, posts a selfie, writes a thousand words about it. I can hear the comments already. Main character syndrome. Attention seeking. You proved her point.
Maybe I did. I am not going to do the bit where I claim I wore it for me and me alone. I wore it because I like how I look in it and I like what happens when I leave the house looking like that. Men talk. Women talk. The camera talks. I collect all of it. That is the blog. That is the flat. That is the reason I still get in the Uber when I could stay home and be tasteful.
Cheap is a funny word. It is meant to shrink you. Make the dress smaller than the girl. Make the night smaller than the photograph. I did not shrink. I posted it while the DJ was still playing and the girl was probably still in the queue telling the next person what she thought of their shoes.
If she sees this, hi. Your face was nice. Your timing was not. I still think about the lighting in that bathroom more than I think about you, which I suppose is the whole thing.
Anyway. I am wearing it again next weekend. Different shoes. Same mouth. Sophie has already said she is not coming if I “do a bit.” I am going to do a bit. That is rather the point.