One morning I arrived at the flat to find Spider and Vicky fast asleep in bed and the lounge a complete mess – beer cans, pizza boxes and, for some reason, loose plastic daffodils were strewn over the carpet. There was an overflowing ashtray on the windowsill and the cushions had been pulled off the sofa and piled next to the television. They’d obviously had a party of some sort and judging by the degree of devastation it had been a good one. While I waited for them to stir, I took a photo of the scene and tweeted it with the caption:
You know it’s been a good night when you wake up to this.
As I read the replies, I quickly realised that my followers had interpreted my comment to mean that I had been part of this wild evening myself, rather than just encountering it cold the next day. I didn’t do anything to correct them.
I liked it, this impression I was creating of myself, as someone on a non-stop party rollercoaster. So what if that impression was a little contrived? Who cared if the persona was based on a curation of true and less-true events? Didn’t we all spend basically our whole lives carefully manufacturing the impression we wanted to create of ourselves anyway? That was why we wore clothes, after all, or got our hair cut.
That was why we went to school on Mondays and told people we’d had a brilliant weekend when really we’d just watched Masterchef with Mum and Dad and made sure all our socks were in matching pairs.