So I woke up this morning with the line "she's got the blues, this girl, she's got the blues. you can hear it in her music.." in my head, and couldn't for the life of me remember where it's from. Still can't. It's a bit annnoying as that's the only part of it I can remember, and it's running through my head on loop.
Anyway, I do got the blues. It's been a weird couple of weeks.
My birthday was,as ever, a total disaster. I don't know why every year I think it's going to be different, and I'm not going to have a shit time - birthdays are crap. They're a time where you can't help but take inventory of your life, and you're never where you wanted to be at this age (not that I ever thought about who I wanted to be at 22 specifically) and the day itself is always a letdown (I blame, as ever, childhood. Birthdays are always such a big deal when you're a kid and they feel really special, thus you feel really special. But as an adult, you're not special. You're just another year older, and it's just another day that no-one really gives a crap about but you.) And the celebration itself is always shite, as nobody ever has a birthday party, rather birthday drinks, as everyone knows birthdays these days are just another excuse to get drunk. But even so, you're the one that has to organise it thus its all your responsibility to sort everything out - where is it going to be (restaurant? pub? club? restaurant then pub then club? then someone's house after? whose house?) and who is invited, which is a nightmare in itself - do you downsize and keep it only your closest friends? That could be nice, looking around a table to see only the faces of the people you love, your closest friends. The problem there is that you have to think to yourself, who really are your closest friends? And you start overanalysing your existing relationships, and thinking about the people you've lost along the way who aren't going to be there, and thats mildly depressing, so fuck it - lets just invite everyone, and have a bit of a party.
But having a party thats all about you isn't as fun as it may sound. Because you're the one who has to make sure it's good. Because suddenly it's all about making sure your party is fantastic and the focus is slowly shifting off making sure you have a good night with your friends and its turning to making sure there's lots of people there, who are all having an amazing time, so they can talk for months about how much fun your party was, and you can feel like a popular social butterfly of a hostess and like you've somehow validated your own existence. So the pressure to make sure its good is now the main priority, in your head.
So you settle on a venue (pub with beer garden, then club - guest list) and invite everyone. Done. Now time to decide on what to wear - something that makes you feel special, and gorgeous, but not something too fancy because although you want the night to be all about you, you don't want to seem too look at me - I'm the birthday girl! about it because, well, you don't want everyone to know you're that egotistical. And also, birthday parties aren't what they used to be - where you wear a pretty pink dress and a tiara and a badge saying "I'm 5 today!", and all the girls wear dresses and the boys wear little suits and everyone has a brilliant time because it's a birthday party, and they're fun for everyone involved - all your mates are there, there's lots of fun food like crisps and little sandwiches, and cake, and at the end of the night not only do you not have to clean up the mess, but you get a party bag with more sweets and toys in it to take home.
Anyway so you've now settled the venue, the invites, and the day - which is another thing; because everyone either works or has uni, if your birthday falls in the week you have to make it a weekend night, Friday or Saturday. And you are then left with your original problem - what am I doing on my birthday? So you think fuck it, I'll just have a quiet one in with a movie and a glass of wine. But as the time approaches you start to think god how depressing, sitting in my flat alone, on my birthday and the words just scan across your mind-
alone. on my birthday. alone.
So you do something small and personal, with a friend or two, but you don't want to blow all your birthday excitement, you want to save it for the big party (notice how there's suddenly a big party - what happened to just going for drinks?) so you end up treating it like just another night, and everything feels a bit understated. Plus, when you start a night off with the sole purpose of not wanting to be alone, you're never going to feel particularly pleased with yourself.
So the night before the party arrives and invariably, the worry starts to set in - shit, what if it rains, what if no-one comes, what if everybody comes, what about all the people that don't know each other, what if they don't mingle, what if they hate each other, what if for some reason I forget to wash to conditioner out of my hair and end up spending the whole night trying to fix it... and it's the night before, so it's too late to do anything about anything. And if you're me, at this point you think fuck it, maybe I won't go.
But the day arrives, the weather is fine (not as sunny as I'd hoped, but by London standards pretty good), I remember to wash the conditioner from my hair (which actually doesn't let me down - good old John Freida), I find the perfect dress in the back of my closet (brown silk classic number, red bag, red shoes) and leave the house, shades on, cigarette in hand, feeling pretty good. Fuck it, I'm on my way to the pub and whoever comes comes. I'm going to get wasted.
But the good mood quickly evaporates when I spend the entire bus journey picking up phone calls from people "where's the pub? can you give me directions?" "what time are you getting to the club, cause I might just join you there" "I'm going to be late, sorry" "Can you put 5 strangers I'm bringing on the guestlist?" and the inevitable "I'm really sorry mate, but.."
So by the time I get to the pub, I'm pissed off and stressed out, and I've forgotten my hay fever tablets, so I can't see anything through my itchy eyes. But, my saving grace as ever, Pickled Lily is there, having saved a perfect table, sitting calmly with a few friends, playing cards - and immediately I'm happy and chilled. I get the Happy Birthday celebratory welcome I was looking for, we all hug it out, and someone immediately goes to buy me a drink. I sit down and Pickled Lily gives me a present from the Stig - a sparkly red top hat, and I start to laugh. The Flatmate gives me a pretty red flower he bought me, and we play some cards.
The next few hours is my favourite part of the whole night - late afternoon in a beer garden, playing cards, sun shining lazily, getting slowly drunk as people start to arrive bit by bit, and everyone is getting along famously.
It doesn't last for long, however, as the phone calls start up again. It turns out Looney Toon is having a party, and most of The Cats have gone to that. Gutted doesn't even cover it.
And, slowly but surely, I realise the people I actually want there, the people who I'd ticked off in my head as definites, aren't coming (with the exception of Pickled Lily, obviously) - my closest members of The Cats, one by one, let me down. Charlie Brown hasn't bothered to take the time off work, J-Lo forgot and booked a weekend away, and Yankeedoodle (my partner in debaucherous crime) got so fucked the night before she couldn't get out of bed.
But I'm having a great time, so I think fuck em, and get a round of shots in. And proceed to get exceedingly drunk and merry, and force cards and drinking games upon everyone. Then a few of The Cats turn up, to my immense delight, and Robocop takes me aside and tells me, in hushed tones, that everyone will be arriving later because something came up. I hug him, filled with love, and tell him I know about Looney Toon's party and it's fine. I'm just glad to see him. (Secretly, I'm delighted at the knowledge that they chose to go to her party first. Which means they chose mine for the rest of the night. They chose me. And a small, petty, bitchy part of me is congratulating myself and sticking two fingers up to Looney Toon. The sane, friendly part of me, is touched.)
So all is well - turns out The Cats didn't actually let me down (not all of them, anyway), everyone's having a great time, and I feel good.
But then we go to the club, and it's a nightmare again - there's about 20 if us, with another 15 or so on the way, and Jewburg (a mate of mine from adolescence, who moved back into town recently and we've all reconnected as mates. He is, however, a typical cliche'd North London Jewish private school boy. And an accountant.) hasn't put down the guestlist right. And it's a tenner entry - so we stand around trying to sort it out for a while and I figure on people in under pseudonyms, which I then fail to remember so end up paying for everyone to get in. Great. It's not even midnight and I'm £100 down.
I then spend the next hour on the phone to people telling me they're outside and they're either not on the guestlist, or they've already been ticked off because one of our lot's come in using their name, and don't want to pay/can't afford the £10 entry. So they all head to a different club and arrange to meet me at the afterparty, and I agree - good plan. The afterparty is the best part of the night anyway. But SHIT, where's the afterparty going to be? We can't go back to mine, it's too small, we can't go to Charlie Brown's as he's not here, all of The Cat's regular afterparty haunts are a no-go and .. shit.
By this point, I'm sobered up and stressed out, and we're all crammed outside in the huge (but somehow packed) smoking area so it takes about a half hour to actually get to the bar. I could cry. But I don't, I round up The Cats and get a whip-round for drugs. Right, £300 between us, let's get some orders in. Coke, and some MDMA - party lines. But everyone goes to get cash out, so I'm left to make the calls, and organise meeting places and all that seedy crap that I like to pretend isn't involved. But, fine. It'll be worth it when we're all back at someone's living room playing cards listening to crappy electro and chatting shite about how much we love each other, and how Skins is rubbish, and how Britain's subcultures are too divided to have a collective union, and how politics is bollocks - it'll all be worth it.
Then, Jewburg takes me aside for a chat, which is mildly inconvenient because I'm still trying to sort everything out. He's absolutely wasted, and slurring about how when he asked me to dinner earlier that night, he meant as a date. He wants to be a couple. And the reason he's been so sweet and attentive to me since he's moved back to London isn't because he's a good mate, and he thinks I'm a cool person, he just wants to get in my pants. (Except he didn't say that last bit)
I then get a call from a Cat - "Mate, we just got here. We're outside but they're not letting anyone in. What shall we do?" and I tell him I'll call him back in a sec, someone else is trying to get through - "Right we've got the cash, but we can't get back in. What are we going to do?" and I tell him I'll call him back, I've got another call waiting - "Alright it's me. I'm round the corner. You got the money?" and I tell him I'll be there just give me a few minutes, then Pickled Lily finds me through the crowd and tells me she's going home. Great.
I stand in the crowd for a second, let everything blur around me and I wish I'd stayed at home and watched a movie, with a glass of wine.. I wish he was here. And, while I'm letting myself think it, I wish she was here.
Fuck this. "Right everyone, we're leaving in 20 minutes. I've ordered 3 cabs, 5 grams, and lots of booze. I'm going outside to collect the others, and I'll meet you at the entrance."
Half an hour later (half past midnight), we're all back at Robocop's house, and the rest of the Cats are on their way from the other club. The Flatmate has somehow managed to spill gin all over my dress, somebody broke my red sparkly hat, and in a drunken solitary depressive moment, I hid in the toilets of the club before we left and played "Does he love me? Does he not?" with my red flower, so all I'm holding is a bent stem with a mildly alarming stain of red on it, as if the petals had been bleeding all down it. At this point I'm ready to go home (I live down the road) but the night's just getting started, so we get the gear going, booze it up and put on some crappy electro. The others turn up and I can finally relax - nothing left to sort out except the task of getting absolutely trashed. Much more booze and drugs later, I'm pretty much there. As is everyone else. We rock out for a few more hours, 30/40 of us chatting, dancing around, playing poker.. it's good, actually. Everyone's having a good time, including me. But I can't help but look around and, even in my drunken haze, feel the void. Because, much as I like everyone here, and we're all friends, nobody I'm actually close to, who knows me as more than "one of The Cats" or "what-a-laugh Dylan" is here.
Anyway, to round it off, we ended up partying at Robocop's til about 7am, which (despite all my inward ups and downs) was a hell of a lot of fun, and I ended up bringing a few people back to mine for a chilling-down drink and a smoke, which was nice, and we ended up all crashing at 9ish, waking up at about 1 in the afternoon, at which point everyone went home and I sat around watching Britain's Got Talent on the couch all day, feeling a bit crap about myself. And I can't afford to get hangover take-out pizza because I ended up spending 200 quid last night.
Next year, I'm staying at home watching a movie, with a glass of wine.
