Janine teeters balanced on her stilettoes and applies herself: black and red, glossy slashes, again and again. She’s putting on her game face. To be who everyone thinks she is. Ready to rouse the troops and lead the way to the next dire, smoky, dark, smelly nightclub, with its impenetrable noise, its groping hands. And then the next, and the next…
Onwards to a final outpouring of vomit on some cold, grey pavement.
It’s who she is.
It’s who she’s not.
But for a trance-like moment at the end of the evening she’ll finally be in the place she wants to be. Nowhere.
“Ready Janine?”
“Yeah – let’s do it.”
Her lips stretch sideways in a wide rictus slash: the silent scream her friends think is pleasure.
She’s a laugh. She’s up for it. She’ll do… anything to fill her void.
She’s the life and soul.