The Cubicle

“Why do bathrooms have to be the only private spaces in nightclubs?” I asked Katie. She looked ridiculous: her blue tights stained with drink, her face smeared with glittering UV paint—she resembled something between an over-enthusiastic Christmas Lover and an extra in a Twilight movie. She sipped at her beer like it was the first alcoholic beverage she had ever tried.

“S-shit happens,” she slurred in-between sips. “In bathrooms!” She giggled and slipped further down the side of the cubicle, her high heel stilettos impervious to her skinny weight as she landed with a thump and a giggle on the floor.

I sighed and reached into my impractically sized handbag, removing my last cigarette from its squashed packaging and lighting up, without a fear for a fire alarm or security.

“You’re supposed to be distracting me.” I said, more to myself. “Not getting pissed past standing.”

I inhaled on the drag as though the flame was the last on earth. I closed my eyes, so that only the smoke and the fading sound of that week’s crappy music pounded through me, like off-key choirs in my head.

“Dude!” Katie screeched suddenly.

I jumped and found her slumped over with her top pulled out in front of her, her bare chest exposed. I looked away. Although I’m a woman with the exact same body parts, maybe smaller, I don’t necessarily want to see other’s people cleavage.

“What?” I asked.

“Huh?” She murmured, looking up at me like a child distracted in their play.

“Katie…what are you doing?”

I tried to make her let go off the elastic of her top, but my flailing arms did nothing against her grip. Surprising since she held her top with one hand whilst gripping her bottle with the other.

“I’m checkin’ on my boobs!” she cried irritably.

I rolled my eyes and gave up on her and my cigarette, which I dropped to the floor and stomped on. I allowed my anger at Katie’s oblivious drunkenness and the fact that I had just been dumped, fly away, like the embers of the dying flame. The cigarette joined the toilet paper and condom packaging already disintegrating generically on the floor.

“Nice to know,” I grumbled as she finally released her top. “Still there?”

She tilted her head, like an angst-filled teenager and scoffed. “Well duh! They don’t walk, y’know. It’s not like they can get away. Fo’ god sake Jeanie.”

I finally knew how drunk she was. Katie is the loveliest person I know, one of those sickly-sweet people that everyone loves and you just can’t hate, and who could never be rude or mean to anyone...also my name is Janey not ‘Jeanie’—people do not rub things to get me to do what they want, although men have tried.

“Thanks for that.”

Katie tried to force herself up straight as a woman in the next cubicle started battering at her stilettos which had slipped under the cubicle wall.

“Ow!” Katie cried as she kicked at the woman’s snakeskin handbag and pushed herself up. “Fo’ God’s sake!” I barely laughed as I rubbed at my mascara matted cheeks, which she noticed, finally. “Cheer up Jeanie—Janey!—Cheer up Janey!” she groaned, annoyed at herself. “Sorry. I’m a lil drunk.”

“A little.” I murmured.

She slapped my thigh, unexpectedly gently, although her thick layered nails caught in my tights and caused a rip, which I knew would become a ruinous ladder later on.

“Sorry about Steve. But you know he ‘ad a dick—I mean, was a dick, Christ! Can’t speak!” I pushed her sweaty hand off my thigh with one hand and snatched her drink out of the other, gulping down the remaining contents, wishing it was a bottle of wine to drown my sorrows. “Slow down, you’ll get bubbles.” She started to giggle at the word ‘bubbles’ repeating it over and over again like the fish in ‘Finding Nemo.’

‘That’s what I should have been doing,’ I thought. ‘I should be tucked up in my flat, wearing an unfortunate Elmo onesie, with a hot chocolate and Finding Nemo on the telly. Warm and comfortable and able to enjoy myself without the company of a lazy, opinionated man. But no, I am sitting on a wobbly toilet seat, wearing ripped tights, a dress a size too small for me, which has bunched up around my bum, whilst babysitting a friend who clearly needs to attend Alcoholics anonymous.’

“Uh…Janey…” Katie began. I sighed, closing my eyes so that the irritable tears wouldn’t start to flow again.

“Why did I let you talk me into going out? Why didn’t I stay at home?”

“Janey…” Katie repeated. I opened my eyes to see her crawling to her knees painfully, her face turning green.

“Oh geez.” I muttered as I stood, just in time for Katie’s body to twist and her head to meet the toilet seat garishly.

With a little help from me she buried her face into the e-coli incubator of a toilet, whilst I, like the wonderful friend she was supposed to be, held her hair and patted her back conspicuously.

“I told you not to touch the Sambuca.” I said sarcastically, grimacing as the smell hit me and I stumbled backwards.

“Oh God…” I hear her whisper as I brush my fingertips over the automatic flush and laugh. “I hate you.” she whispered.

I pulled a loose strand of hair from her sticky face, the UV residue rubbing onto my fingertips. “Love you too babe.” I returned, as her body spasmed again. “Christ! How much did you drink?”

“Too...much.” She replied between evacuations.

I keep refreshing the flush, like I refreshed Steve’s Facebook page, waiting for the dreaded moment his status turned from ‘In a Relationship’ to ‘Single.’ He got twelve likes when it finally happened. Is that twelve likes sending the message ‘It’s good to be single, mate’ or was it twelve likes saying ‘She was a cow. Good riddance to her!’ Because I kind of think it was the latter.

“Katie,” I asked, as soon as the vomiting turned to groaning. “Why do you think Steve dumped me?”

“You’re askin’ me this now!” She cried, her voice echoing in the, arguably, porcelain dish.

“Just answer. Please.” I said desperately, playfully plaiting her hair like I was still a first year student, even though I was nearly a mature one.

“I dunno. What did he say when you broke up?” Her green complexion was slowly fading to a pasty white under the neon face paint.

“That he couldn’t make me happy.” She scoffed and her defeated carcass twisted to face me. Breathless and floppy she rested her head against the toilet roll holder, smiling pathetically.

“The bane…of every relationship, is that no one is ever truly truthful to one another.”

            I smiled in surprise. “Thanks, Gandhi. Where’d that come from?” She shrugged as I took up her previous position on the floor. “My mouth.” She finally answered as I stretched out my legs and she curled up on top of me.

She was so small and dainty, and especially pretty—even when close to passing out and suffering with the after-effects of vomiting. She squeezed into a foetal position and stared at me from where her head rested between my knees. “You’re comfy.”

“And you’re drunk.”

“Can we go home soon?” I nodded and sighed. Neither of us moved, we were comfortable and dejected on the floor.

I sighed as I looked at the graffiti covered walls of drunk-girls-past. “‘Miranda hearts Kevin foreva!’” I laughed as I traced an answer beneath it with my UV covered fingertip. “‘Miranda is unrealistic!’” Katie giggled as she turned awkwardly and pulled off her stilettos. I leant over and picked them up for her, paranoid of pickpockets in other cubicles. I placed them on my lap and fiddled with the plastic straps.

The music continued to pound and girls tittered and gasped as they fell on the wet tiles outside the door. I was desperate for another fag, I could picture the girls outside puckering at their drags.

            “Do you think I was a bad kisser, and that’s why Steve dumped me?”

“How’d I know?  I’ve never had a boyfriend.”

Katie’s eyes seem to glaze over. The shiny pupils travelled up my dress, which had risen further up my legs so that my biker shorts were visible.

Without space for a thought Katie reached into the reticule of toilet roll and removed a strip. I watched her silently, as the material ripped at her sloppy touch, whilst she smiled knowingly.

She closed her eyes and placed the paper against her lips in a soft, peck of a kiss. It was so odd that I just stared. She pulled the tissue from her mouth and grinned at it, her crimson lipstick imprinted permanently on the surface of the coarse material.

She offered the tissue to me. “Go on.” She said, waving it in front of me, perfectly calm, however drunk. The shivering tissue hovered like a cloud in front of my eyes until finally I took it from her grasp. “Kiss it,” she said. “Kiss it.”

Without thinking, I did.

I placed my lips over the outline of her vixen, red lipstick and felt the thin touch of a gentle kiss, soft and tender. A perfect fit to my lips. In a moment I removed the tissue and gasped.

“Felt odd didn’t it.” Katie said.

I nodded.

“It reminded me of when I use to practice snogging on my hand.” She chuckled as she suddenly lunged for my hand and took it in her own. Bringing it up to her lips. She kissed my knuckles sloppily. I instinctively tried to pull away, but she stopped me.

I couldn’t tell what she thinking but her expression was kind as she removed her lips from my hand. She placed her fingertip to her lips and rubbed it across the skin, removing it to reveal a blend of her dark lipstick and bright UV paint. She began to trace swirls and lines up my arm, making patterns that reminded me of hallucinogenic dreams and pixel images on computers.

With a gasp I pulled my arm away and exhaled breathlessly. It was only as I laughed and pushed myself against the door, in a wave of shock, that I realised just how close Katie had come to my face. Her acidic breath plastered my cheeks and her make-up almost mingled with mine.

Confidently she retreated and sat up against the toilet.

I tried to think of something to say but merely smiled awkwardly and laughed. “You’re so…cheesy sometimes.” I said gingerly, as I saw a green hue cast itself across her face, forcing her to lean back over the toilet bowl with a groan.

“Oh God…cheese.” She muttered, making me chortle heartily. The vomiting began again, almost to the beat of the DJ in the distance. I couldn’t help but giggle.

My mind was ablaze with immature thoughts and wondrous accusations to do with Katie and why I had never known her to have had a boyfriend. I sat and wondered, giggling as she continued to suffer noisily in the toilet bowl.

There was nothing else to do but stare about the cubicle—a prison of effluvia and bad memories in the making. Katie said nothing to me as the vomiting subsided. She was my best friend, we shared everything from tissue kisses to stilettos, yet I found myself staring at her backside, well-formed under her tight black dress, wondering whether or not I really knew her.

“Home…time.” She breathed and I nodded.

“Mine or yours?” I asked.

“Yours.” I smiled and turned the stilettos, which I still held, over in my hand.

“Paracetomol, sick bin, water and Sex in the City Re-runs?” She made an ‘Mmm’ sound which echoed around us, as I began to push myself up from the floor.

“I love you.” She muttered. For a moment I stood stock still and considered what she meant.

But then I heard the tittering of other girls and noticed the tissue kiss on the floor. The tissue melding with my dead cigarette and pointless worries over my ex. I scoffed and rolled my eyes.

“Right, come on then.” I reached across Katie’s thin body and brushed my UV fingertips over the flush, marking where we had been like animals in a desert. “Time to re-educate ourselves with the help of four slutty, yet sophisticated, women. Who have no secrets.”

Katie giggled as I helped her up, my hands around her waist and her arms around my neck. “Y’know,” she began as I pushed the lock of the cubicle door away from the sticky cavity in which it rested. “I bet I distracted you quite well tonight.” I laughed heartily as I pulled the door from the lock, blinking at the bright lights, as I stepped on our tissue kiss. Forgotten like a whisper.