When the Party’s over

He’s above me, snoring in the window. I was in the hands of a hangover, and five tranquil minutes in the intoxicated but rested garden was my instant cure. The sky snoozed above me, clouds crumbling like fresh linen, yawning in the morning. Alike myself, it hesitantly opened its teabag-what happened last night?-eyes, and let a little, sobering, light in. The quite distant train station sat small in my eyeline. A train swooned down the track smoothly, like a bird peacefully embracing the sky, or the six shots of vodka charging into my mouth the night before. Oh god. What’s the ridiculously high fascination with alcohol again? What even happened after midnight? Oh god. Drunken whereabouts that sink down the drunken plughole. The sky starts to brighten, like milk swirling into coffee. But coffee was not what I

needed right now. Water to the rescue. I could hear the jaded kitchen tap chant, glumly hanging its head down at the basin bruised with naughty neon shot classes and questionable liquids, lingering with the smell of great regret. As I tiptoed towards the hungover house, my feet kissed the poorly paved, sour, sticky path. Avoiding the eerie thought of the unknown beneath my fed-up feet, I looked up at his window, the blue chipped paintwork cried down to the ground like tears. “What have you got to cry about?” I thought. I’m the one who drowned themselves in ten soul destroying sambuca shots and sleepless sleep, accompanied by the

pissed-up crew screeching ‘don’t you want me baby?’, at four in the morning.

The block of flats by the station austerely peered over at me, like a disapproving parent or teacher. ‘Don’t you start’, I hissed to myself. Tranquil, childish birdsong unclogged the mischievous drum and bass nineties classics from my tired ears. Soulless bottles of booze barricaded the garden grounds, like sorry soldiers mid-attack; defeated. Machine-like drinking funnels hung from the trees like ferns, a large, frivolous party leaf. How did they get there? Don’t ask why, it was probably him and I, stumbling through silly party games under the ecstatic fairy lights. To my right, a mirror glares at me, an uneasy eye. My hair in knots like bolts and my eyes blitzed with black running mascara. I felt like roadkill. A car low on gas. The mirror lined up behind a sunflower, singing tall in the sunlit sky, funkily but inappropriately, in a fur bucket hat. Cigarette butts sank in the soil like bugs, and as I stood there, a bottle cap pinched at my toes. Silly bits of silly string, baffled in the cracks of the burgundy stone. “Oi”, chanted the sunflower, “last night was fun.” It slurred, loud. “I’ve been seeing things since five!” What a mess. He was what I wanted next, the sobering softness of his skin, the bed. As I started to make my way back to the house, an apple tree bulged over me with quintessential romance. I was a princess, and he was my knight (if Disney wrote a love story about sleep deprived, chaotic nights, full of drinks, sex and one too many lines). I knock a glass by my feet, I look down, his shirt stopping at my knees, a short attire for short sleep. A lighter by my ankle winks at me. A train cries from the station again, with the squirm of the nine to five crowd. The ringing of the train doors follows, our cruel, crushing alarm.

As I step through the shattered doorway, I’m met by the aroma of bewildered cans of boyish bud, and it calls nausea through my tummy. Oh God. “Be sick, be sick, be sick!”, the cans devilishly laugh towards me in their disorientated shapes, folding into the messy floor.

“You’re the ones that started it”, I moan with a poor eye roll. I tiptoe through the kitchen to the dining room, bravely dodging the nights spew. I leap over the menacing pile of glazed glass ; previously consisting of Ben’s ‘dirty pint’, before he slipped doing an impression of Alan Carr and a shocking rendition of the macarena at three in the morning. My bare feet innocently brace the not so innocent floor, a ray of tickling sunlight covering them like a lighting blot. As I wonder through the sleeping house towards the lounge, I am graced by a sombrero, a guiltily spilt bong and an unimpressed ginger cat. My friends, the clowns, lie like empty bottles on the sofas, rugs, stairs - in fact - I think Will and Ellie might have gone top and tail in the bath. The clowns they are. Ellie sleeping in Will’s ludicrous dress-up apron; Will in Ellie’s blue, horny bra. What games had we played? Like I said, don’t ask. It’s the

morning now and all we have are photos and the aftermath. But I know what I got up to, before I hit the hay. I wonder if he’s up yet. The remote, homely singing of the train doors echo through the house again. “Urgh give it as rest man”, Jonny whines, emerging from a blanket covered in monopoly money and a wounded copy of The Times. “Morning Em, you guys finally hit it off last night then?” Jonny yawned, rubbing the giggling glitter from his transient, already-closed-again eyes. The savouring, liquor stained blanket swoops him away again, like a hero hiding him from the awakening hangover. “Can you shut that blind that light is painful”, the blanket rumbles. I smile as I play hopscotch across the night’s profanities, and make my way towards the bombarded stairs. “First question, yes, and second, do it yourself!” I loudly whisper.

The stairs soft, sponge like steps bring me comfort. Yes, I may have sponged my way off them too quickly at times last night, but a single shot drink doesn’t exist with this lot. Three steps closer, my feet start to blush. Oh God. A God oh God. He’s just up the sandwiched-but- celebrating stairs, and I’m going to linger in his body till dawn. My feet giddy up, dodging the bruised balloons that boogied down the stairs; like petals that party, or the hysterical footprints of adolescent criminals. “Morning Kate”, I nudge her as I slide up the skinny stairway, her dozing body like a mixed Rubik’s cube, tangled in the bemused, plush, staircase. How can she sleep like that? And she’s still wearing her knackered, black DM’s?

My chipped, painted nails wave at his fatigued door. I open it with tender caution. Is he awake? My fingers grace the door, it hums with anticipation and I see him there, he snores. His hair blossoms through the covers, the duvet is mangled with our excitable pants and socks. My knee-high sixties boots boogie at the end of the bed, and make love with bottles, his leather belt, a smug empty condom packet. The bed looked as messy as my hair, but his peeping head was like the sun, rising behind the marshmallow, mountain like duvet. How sweet he was. The hangover. The bed. The mesh of our drunken, glorious clamber up here for smokes and sex. A dogeared poster of The Clash grins at me, as I swoon to the bed. “Snog his face off, then clean up kid”, Strummer grunts, “this place is a fucking mess”.