Rejected agony aunt submission: [The Problem of Necking]

Cover Image: 'Candy Box' by Andy Warhol, 1980

If anything I was taller, and yet even taller was everybody else. I was in the corner talking to these celibate boys about White Album vs Abbey Road but really trying to figure out if whatshisname’s moustache was real. It wasn’t a costume party, and I wasn’t paying attention to what music was playing until it changed to what was apparently everyone’s favourite song (from a new motion picture), and everyone in the hallway goes into the living room and everyone in the living room goes into the hallway.

But then exiting the cloakroom, a young man has just put on a pair of blue contact lenses. When I brushed past him earlier his eyes were darker. Now he’s just like a Barbie I used to have. He compliments my coat, I compliment his contacts and he says he has a serious medical problem but forgives me because… and then stops, asks for my name, then if I feel like getting any higher. So we go upstairs. He takes my hand.

Harper I wanted to show you something! one of the boys calls up to me and then winces when he sees where I’m going and not going alone.

Oh, in a minute.

He tells me ladies first and then locks the bathroom door behind him. There’s a miniature satchel slung around his arm. He draws back the zip and removes a plastic sleeve, tips the sort of grey or slightly brown onto his phone and with relish, begins cutting it with a bank card. How old are you? 21. Good, I’m 27. He cuts some more, says he’s here because he goes way back with Abigail but get this—she doesn’t even know I’m here.

I tell him an abridged version of how I ended up here and he counters that he’s taken about four different courses in different subjects at different universities but none of them panned out, but to me he says You’re gonna fuckin go somewhere, that’s why I like you. You go first.

Ah. No, maybe you should go first. And he does, using a five pound note. I like these he says, Because they’re made using pork. That’s how they don’t rip, them piggies.

Of course I don’t snort hard enough, the rock is too heavy. These great chunks get stuck and I have to snort without aid while he returns to the phone screen to dust the rest off. Very clean. My nasal cavity is smoothing out when he dips in to share the new air. My first impression is that an especially bulbous cat has just pounced on me, but cats didn’t invent kisses, because that’s what this was wasn’t it, not to mention that he’s clearly ignorant to my flaw. It’s just that I’d not been kissed before, not that I remember. The setup eluded me. The way I see it, the front door wouldn’t open, so I immediately proceeded to climb up to the highest window, which in this analogy is where you go to give head. Necking is just for people who passed in oral expression with flying colours, know what’s supposed to go out and when. They feel and they act on it. Whereas I don’t speak I just blow and see what comes out. And then you know he of course comes to his senses and asks if I’m into it, and I’m sort of curious so we resume with added zeal. Then he glides across my leather jeans and cups my groin with his palm and I playfully slap it away because he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into but that only turns him on more and he insists on making these clawing motions with an even deeper thrust than before. I just look into his eyes because his eyes are closed. It’s then that I feel his stubble make a dent and then I have a stubble too, at least it feels that way. I couldn’t bring myself to explain what had actually begun.

What was that? as I pull back, That we snorted. Thought it was coke.

Ah, think I might have taken out the wrong bag.

What was in the other bag?

Just my side hustle. These kids who want to feel important and greater than what they are, I help them out. Don’t worry, it doesn’t last, Takes a joint out his pocket and leans on the window as he lights the wick, It’s just discontinued shits and giggles from joke shops. It’s big in Italy. Then they repackaged it as this or that a few times until it was finally discontinued and now it's just hanging around in warehouses.

I am not moved to throw a fit. I am having a premonition that in a moment or so that I will desire to throw a fit, but as of now I only see what is in front of me without it looking back at me, and not knowing if it is going to hit me or not, I stand waiting for it. It’s not even that I’m being a stoic, for me to become a stoic would take all of the same impossible willpower that it would take a fish to become the fisherman. It’s just that I’ve forgotten. I lift my head and look him flat in the face and he’s drawn open at the jaw, prettier than me because lipstick is faded across where it is ordinarily supposed to be, which I suppose means that he’s charming.

I tell him thanks and go downstairs before I can really realise anything, but I’m not entirely sure if he noticed that I left. The living room has been emptied because everyone is in the courtyard, and through a strobe machine and dark and fog of the glass separating us, they seem to be dancing around a pole, tossing ribbons in circles. Toxic by Britney Spears plays and I feel like lunging across the room because I sense a surplus of energy. The song plays for me and no one else. I keep turning when I come to a corner, even when my joints don’t stop cracking, but then somewhere over the course of the night I’m face down on the sofa and someone pulls me into the light by my shoulder. Although I do not see who it is, they smile with only their mouth and look through to the part of the cushion that I’m covering. I write all of this in lieu of a question. All I can really say is that now I know what Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is about and I know what was really happening in that factory. The whole night was horrible. And I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.