*Towels will be provided
ACCESSORIES
Anything remotely phallic you have in your house,
including bananas but no brown ones please.
Rose: What’s my allocated drunk Pippa? Sorry, just catching up.
Jessie: In the doc!
Rose returned to the document and, in the ‘DRUNK PIPPA’ tab found her name next to the words: ‘Freshers’ Week’.
Pippa had gone to Liverpool. Rose’s allocation was surprisingly poor organisation from Jessie, who would have surely thought to give this role to one of Pippa’s uni friends. It was impossible for Rose to know what Pippa was like during Freshers’ Week; she had been set up for failure. She guessed Pippa would have gone to one of those awful traffic light parties during Freshers’ Week. The ones where single people have to wear green, people in couples wear red, and those with so-called ‘complicated situations’ wear orange. It was a tiresome university ritual. Rose packed a green T-shirt and a green bobble hat Lola had given her.
The rest of the packing took all evening and by 11 p.m. Rose had sunk half a bottle of white wine she’d found in the fridge, trying hard to ignore the flavour of vinegar.
When she was done, she set her alarm for 5.30 a.m., wincing at the thought. She closed her eyes and tried to feel optimistic about the weekend.
What could have been ten minutes or ten seconds later, she opened her eyes and found herself opening Instagram. It was an unconscious habit by now. The message she had sent to Milo after that night with Clara was still not ‘Seen’. Rose grunted.
She hated herself for googling him again, even more so when his name was predicted the second she opened Safari on her phone. Still, she tapped it.
There was a new US chat show appearance, presumably conducted to promote the upcoming US leg of his tour, which would start next month in Chicago.
Rose watched the full clip on YouTube, recoiling and lusting in equal measure as she saw this man play up to the role he had long ago established for himself. He was reclining on a black leather sofa, sipping from a branded mug as the sycophantic host asked a set of pre-approved questions designed to make him look good.
Host: ‘Now, Milo, obviously you are one of the hottest pop stars in the world right now.’
Audience whoops and cheers loudly.
‘But it wasn’t always that way, was it?’
‘Oh, I know where you’re going with this one,’ Milo grinned, eyes lighting up at the prospect of making himself seem relatable.
‘Go on, tell us about the school talent contest.’
He laughed and ran his fingers through his hair in the way men are told to do in order to flash their bicep.
Female audience members swoon.
‘I can’t believe you’re making me tell this story.’
‘So, you auditioned, right?’
‘Yes. I was eleven and was a little bit obsessed with Madonna.’
Female audience members swoon louder.
‘Who you’ve met several times by now, surely, right?’
‘Yes, I’ve been lucky enough to meet her, yeah. Oh God, I hope she doesn’t watch this.’
Audience laughter.
‘Anyway, I decided to sing “Vogue” at the audition.’
Louder audience laughter.
‘Suffice to say, I did not get into the talent show.’
The host could barely control his laughter. ‘Wait, wait. What did they say to you when you finished?’
‘They suggested I try out for the tennis team instead.’
Both Milo and the host were now in hysterics.
This was the difference between actors and musicians. Actors are supposed to play a part; the line between who they are and who they pretend to be is explicitly clear. But musicians are supposed to play themselves, which makes that line blurrier. After all, they are still offering some sort of identity, one that is often misconstrued as their own.
‘Cunts,’ Rose said out loud, surprising herself. She opened Twitter and despite never having tweeted anything since she created her account in 2016 found her thumb hovering over the icon to draft a tweet. Milo’s name was trending – it was always trending. She wondered what would happen if she tweeted the words ‘I fucked Milo Jax. I don’t remember what happened. Then I woke up bleeding.’ She tapped the icon and typed out those exact words just to see how it felt to have them there in front of her, written out on a public platform. All she had to do was tap ‘tweet’ and the world would know. It was a strangely satisfying feeling. Because seeing those words there, realising that her experience could be validated in writing, even if just for her own eyes and even if just for a few seconds, it gave her a feeling of something she hadn’t had in a long time. For once, Milo’s name did not mean confusion, frustration or fear. It meant she had power.
Feeling emboldened, she closed Twitter and opened Instagram, armed to confront Milo. She did not expect to find the word ‘Seen’ underneath her last message to him. But there it was. Staring back at her, waiting for her to do something about it.
Then, without the words ‘Typing’, another word appeared in front of her.
Hello.
His message came out of nowhere, like he’d written it in his Notes and copied and pasted it to her. This, she rationed, was unlikely because it was just one word. Five letters.
