Low life | 17 January 2013

I woke in an upstairs room, face down on bare floorboards, my body wedged into a coffin-shaped space between a divan bed (unoccupied) and a chest of drawers — which wasn’t half as uncomfortable as you might imagine. I stood up, checked for phone and wallet, and looked out of the window. Although the sun wasn’t visible in the sky, it was possible to tell by the latter’s lighter shade of grey that the day was well advanced. I went downstairs to look for my coat and to see if there was anyone else in the house.

It wasn’t a big place. Downstairs consisted of kitchen and living room, both about eight feet square. The two rooms were connected by a doorless doorway. I found my coat without having to look very hard. Looking through into the kitchen I could see two people still sitting at the kitchen table with a miniature forest of empty bottles and cans between them. The man with his back to me was wearing a blond wig and slumped in his chair at an angle of about 45 degrees. The one facing me was our hostess — I’d no idea what her name was — a short-haired woman in her early forties.

We’d danced last night, she and I. But she’d become quickly bored with that, pushed me to the floor, and ridden me like a horse instead. I don’t think we were ever formally introduced or spoke to one another all the evening. It wasn’t the kind of party where one did much speaking. If he were still alive, and had been invited, and had come, Sir Isaiah Berlin, for example, would not have found the eager audience that he might have expected.