Tell Me I'm Worthless(27)

Jon and Sasha live in an apartment above a pub that’s always closed. It’s hard to find the door, and the buzzer, which you have to press, but I’ve been there enough that I know it. It’s around this little corner, here. It seems a bit scary, if you don’t know it, like you’re being lured somewhere under false pretences, because the corner that the door is in is permanently shadowed even during the day. Nobody has ever bothered to put in a streetlight here. I go up the couple of steps and press the buzzer, which is low, worrying about whether they heard it over their music. The thought comes again, quicker this time. Maybe I should just turn around and head home. Maybe that would be better. But the door opens. It’s Leon, glimmering with new blonde hair and golden eyeshadow.

“Hey, Alice!” he says, and grabs me in a burst of unexpected affection. I feel him kiss my cheeks and leave a slight pink lipstick mark on them, then he ushers me inside, to hang my coat on a hook. There are a lot of coats there. It’s hard to balance mine on top of the others on the same hook, but I manage it just about, I think. I don’t know where these coats come from. Do Jon and Sasha own that many? Or, the far worse possibility, are there more people here than I thought?

“So Alice, how have you been?” asks Leon over his shoulder as we head up the stairs to the main part of the flat. Well, Leon, I say in my head, my hook-up ran out on me after being attacked by a ghost possessing a picture of a cancelled 80s pop singer, I made some sissification porn, and my rapist tried to get in contact again. I don’t say that. I say: “Oh, you know. I’ve been sleeping a lot. Just felt so tired most days I can barely get out of bed.” Which isn’t a lie. “What about you?”

“Well,” Leon jumps up the last few steps. “I’ve been trying to get back to doing linoprint, which is fun but god you cut up your fingers so much, see—” he shows me his hands for a moment, which have shallow scabbed-over cuts all over them “—but I find it really rewarding to return to something like that, that I used to do at school, but with my new perspectives, you know.”

“Aliiiiiice,” calls Jon. He’s leaning in the doorway. I’m surprised to see that he, too, is wearing eyeliner, and lipstick as well. “How are you ma love?” He kisses my cheek. I must look like an old cartoon of a man covered in kisses. Sasha pushes past Jon and kisses me too.

We’ve never been affectionate like this before. I look around and realise what I should have known from the number of coats. It isn’t just the three of them here. Other people, in groups, are clustered about the living room and the kitchen. Even as I’m trying to find somewhere to stash my bag the buzzer goes again. Some of the people, with faces I half recognise, look over at me in the middle of their disparate conversations. Can they tell there’s something wrong with me – is there something wrong with the way I look, or is it just because I’m trans and the only trans girl here and fuck, I didn’t realise this was going to be a real, full on party. If I had, I’m not sure I’d have come. Maybe that’s why they didn’t tell me. The thought of being in a throng of sweaty, drugged up bodies again is making me shake. I need to be out of my head, or this is going to go badly. It might go badly anyway, even with me out of my head. I brought some wine, and swig it from the bottle, trying to get to a level of drunk that makes the situation more palatable. The wine bottle is half empty before I start to calm down.

Their flat is too big, far too big for a flat in this part of the city. God, I know Jon’s parents are rich, but this is obscene. The living room is like a cavern, and there’s a dining room connected onto the kitchen, and a balcony outside, where people have already started to gather. Does he know all of these people? Are they friends, or have they just smelled the scent of booze and coke and come clawing at the door until somebody lets them in? Sasha is sitting on the couch, and I sit down next to her.

“You okay?” she says. She’s holding a glass of something very strong and lets me take a sip through the same straw that she’s been using. Strong and sweet. She puts her arm over my shoulder. “Alice, are you okay?”

“I just didn’t realise there would be a lot of people here.” Even as I say that I can see, through the archway of the living room door, three girls have arrived in short tight dresses.

“Didn’t Jon tell you?” Sasha asks.

“No, he just said he was having a couple of people over. Not a whole party.” I try to laugh but it sounds about as forced as it is.

“Tell you what,” says Sasha, “we set up a chillout room upstairs. I’ll take you up there and you can come down when you’re feeling a bit better. How’s that?”

“Yeah, sure, yeah. That sounds great.”

There’s a second layer to the flat, a further floor with smaller rooms up a smaller staircase near the kitchen. The stairway that leads up there, which she guides me up, is almost too tight for me to cope with. But the room itself is larger. Not too large, not a looming empty space, but not claustrophobic. Sasha sets me up on a beanbag in the room. It smells like incense, and there’s a mood light transitioning from green to blue.

“I have to go back down,” says Sasha, “call me if you need to though, and hope you can join us soon.”

It feels horrifically embarrassing, being left here on the soft bean bag with a half empty bottle of wine. Kids parties have chillout rooms. There’s music playing from a laptop up on a desk in the corner. I can’t tell what this room is when it isn’t a chillout room. An office? The roof is slanted and practically cuts off half of the headspace. The quiet, electronic music feels like it is stuck on a loop. I swear, the moment one piece ends, it starts again. An endless electronic squeal.