. . . a scientifically provable, universal truth.
We’re sitting on the sofa with the kids, watching You’ve Been Framed. I haven’t seen the show for years. Coming to it fresh, it seems to be an unspeakable montage of horrific testicular injuries, and unstable toddlers being terrified by massive dogs. All I can see is pain, and fear. It’s like some awful illustration of the fragility of human existence. With rewinds. The children are laughing at it, joyously.
“He fell!” Nancy gurgles. “On his head!”
“What time is it?” my husband asks, staring at the screen.
“Nearly six,” I reply. “We should start getting ready.”
The babysitter is due—we’re both going out tonight. My husband is off to see the KPM All Stars Big Band—a collection of TV theme-tune composers who gig four or five times a year, rolling out all their big hits: Countdown, Grange Hill, Dave Allen at Large, Channel 4 News. Apparently, last time they played everyone sang along to the Channel 4 News theme, with the spontaneously composed lyrics of “Channel 4 / Channel 4 / Channel 4 / Channel 4 / Channel 4 / NEWS!”
I, meanwhile, am going to a gay club in Vauxhall, where—if it’s anything like the last time I went—I will end up soaked in sweat, dancing to Azealia Banks with a bearded man in a rubber dress, margined on gin.
We have both chosen our nights out to cater exactly to our interests and desires. These nights have been on the calendar for months. They are our rewards for being hardworking employees and parents.
“I don’t want to go,” my husband says.
“Neither do I,” I say.
We continue sitting on the sofa.
“I’m really tired,” my husband says, piteously.
“Vauxhall is so far away,” I weep. “It’s practically in France.”
There is a pause. A man falls off a chalet roof and crumples his thoracic vertebrae. The kids scream with laughter.
“The thing is,” I say, “no one ever wants to go out.”
My husband nods sadly.
“No one ever wants to go out,” I continue. “At the point when you write down the night out in your calendar, that’s the most excited you’ll ever be about it. After that, every day that passes, you become a little less enthusiastic about the whole endeavor. This reaches its finite point on the morning of the night out itself, when you wake up to find that the engagement is lying across your face like the body of a dead horse. It is like a warning. A terrible, terrible warning.”
“Why have I put something in my life in the slot where I would usually be having a hot bath, and a bowl of cereal, then watching BBC4?” Pete says, miserably. “What was I thinking I would achieve? Something better than that? There’s nothing better than that. I have made a terrible error, viz. the other side’s grass.”
I think back over my social life. One of the most enjoyable drunken nights I’ve ever had with my friend Grace was both of us admitting we’d spent the whole afternoon wishing the other one would cancel.
“I was sitting at home, going, ‘She’s not had cystitis for ages. That bitch must be due a bout by now.’ I was praying you’d got it. Not in a bad way,” she clarified, as we ordered more drinks and stayed out until three a.m.
I found her feelings perfectly understandable. Once, a hen night I was due to go on was canceled with five hours’ notice. I think it might actually be the best phone call of my life. I spent the evening watching reruns of Come Dine with Me—chuckling in the way that Wile E. Coyote does when he feels he’s got one over on the Road Runner. I felt like a winner. A social-engagement-less winner.
I’m sure that this universal feeling—sleepy four p.m. dread over seeing “the guys” at eight p.m.—is why adults rely on alcohol. It’s not for the booze. We don’t really care about the booze. It’s for the sugar, instead. We need the calories—for energy. City nights are essentially full of massive, tired thirty-something bees drinking shots of boozy sugar for the rush. Until we get stuck against a window, buzzing, and have to be herded into taxis by bouncers wielding rolled-up newspapers. We are bees. And bees should sleep when it’s dark. It’s all wrong.
The babysitter arrives, bang on time. I go, wearily, to back-comb my hair. I should never have said yes to this night out.
Five thirty a.m. I get into bed—hair standing on end, eyes pointing in different directions. I think my nightie might be on backwards. Pete wakes.
“Good night?” he asks.
“Yes!” I say. I am flying. I have laughed so much I am practically mute with hoarseness. “We danced in the pouring rain, I’ve gone deaf, and a gay man pretended to have sex with me while I queued up for my coat. You?”
“They played Grandstand three times,” he says, happily. “We went right down the front and pumped our fists to the brass bits—I think nonironically.”
“I love a great night out,” I say.
“A great night out,” Pete agrees.