Getting Over Mr. Right (24 page)

“That’s what you think. Because I’m always holding my wobbly bits in.”

“Oh.”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” I said.

“I’m never going to wear support underwear,” said Karen.

“I think I said that once, too.”

She handed me the T-shirt. I didn’t need to put it on to know that it was going to be a disaster. I held it up to my chest.

“Karen, this is a
child’s
T-shirt,” I said. “I won’t even be able to get this over my head.”

“You totally will,” she said, taking it from my hands and starting to tug it over my head for me. “It’s full of Lycra. See? It’s, like, really stretchy.”

True. It did stretch. And I did get it on. Though when I looked in the mirror, I was not in any way comforted by what I saw. Imagine stuffing a pair of slightly misshapen melons into an elastic bandage.

“This T-shirt is way too small,” I said to Karen. “In fact, I’d have to say it’s borderline obscene.”

Lola had joined us. “Oh my God,” she said. “You have a magnificent rack! Have you had your tits done?”

“I have not had my tits done,” I said.

“Well, it looks like you have. In a good way. You are going to stop traffic.” She jiggled my breasts
à la
the dreaded Trinny in the early days of
What Not to Wear
.

“I’m putting my dress back on.”

Karen pouted. “Come on, Ash. It’s my hen night. I’m only going to do this once. You’ve got to enter into the spirit of things. We’re all dressed up so people can see we’re together. We’re a team.”

“Yeah,” said Lola. “Team Karen. Come on, Ash. Have a laugh while you still can.”

“While I still can?” I winced.

She took a pair of nail scissors out of her handbag.

“It’s all right,” I said. “I’ll wear the T-shirt. There’s no need to threaten me.”

“Hold still,” she said, getting dangerously close to my neck with the pointed blades. “This T-shirt needs customization.” Lola was training to be a fashion stylist.

She snipped a channel from the round neckline of the T-shirt down to the top of my cleavage. Instantly, the little cut spread into a rough-and-ready V-neck, of the kind that Pamela Anderson or some other glamour model might wear to flaunt her expensive and not entirely successful surgery.

“Oh. My. God.” I could only stare at my reflection in horror. I looked as though I was going to spend the evening working as a superannuated promotional “model” handing out shots of vodka with a free serving of innuendo.

“Fantastic,” said Karen. Her friend agreed. “Now you’re ready. Hello, boys!”

I wrapped my arms across my chest. “I cannot leave the ladies’ looking like such a … such a slut!”

“Oh, come on!”

Karen and her friends were not taking no for an answer. We had been joined by two more of the girls. Daisy, whose Bond name was Solitaire, and Jools, who for that night only was Vesper Lynd.

“We’re missing happy hour!” said Vesper.

I was bodily dragged back out into the bar, where one of our crew—code name Plenty O’Toole—had lined up twelve shot glasses. Behind the bar, a lad who didn’t look legally old enough to be working as a barman was performing some pretty impressive juggling with two bottles. In a seamless move, he
stopped juggling and began to pour liquor into our empty glasses. A layer of peach schnapps was followed by a layer of Baileys and a few drops of grenadine as a garnish. The Baileys started to curdle.

“That looks vile,” I said.

“It’s a brain hemorrhage,” said the barman proudly. “If you can drink five of these without throwing up, you get the sixth for free.”

“I can do that,” said Daisy/Solitaire. She quickly dispatched four of the twelve glasses lined up along the bar. Then she covered her mouth with both her hands. She couldn’t do it after all. But she did manage to keep the four she had already drunk down, which was a good thing in the circumstances.

“Ready, ladies?” Lola handed out the remaining glasses. “Let’s toast the blushing bride! Up your bum, Karen!”

I did my best to look game as I sipped at my own brain hemorrhage. Really, who comes up with these things? The combination of peach schnapps and Baileys Irish Cream was quite the most vile thing imaginable. The Baileys and schnapps wouldn’t mix in the glass, resulting in a blobby emulsion that looked unspeakable and tasted worse. It was so sweet I felt sure I heard my teeth squeak. Having forced the evil stuff down, I slammed the glass back on the bar with a shudder and hoped that was the end of it. I needed a proper drink to wash the taste away.

“Another round,” someone shouted.

“Can’t we have a bottle of wine?” I asked.

“Nah,” said Karen. “It’ll take us ages to get pissed drinking wine. Plus, if you do shots, you spend less time running back and forth to the toilet.” The logic of youth …

A fresh round of hemorrhages had already been prepared.

“Come on, Ashleigh! Down in one this time,” yelled Lola.

I suppose I could have refused. I could have wished Karen the very best with married life, given her the “Congratulations,
you’re getting married” card that I had in my handbag, and hightailed it out of there. But there was something infectious about the enthusiasm these girls had for life. They were out for a good time and, heaven knows, I needed a good time. So I stayed. Maybe if I just let go and got bladdered … I downed my second hemorrhage. By the time I’d had three brain hemorrhages, I was definitely starting to “chillax,” as my young cousin would have said.

The bar in which we found ourselves at around ten o’clock that long night seemed to be full of hen and stag parties. A DJ took requests for all those who were about to give up their freedom. Karen asked him to play “Hit Me, Baby, One More Time,” which is the first song she ever got into. She was just ten when the song was released and asked for the DVD for Christmas. I remembered the family party when she and her little sister dressed like hookers and performed the Britney dance for our horrified grandparents. I dread to think what Granny Polly would have thought if she’d seen Karen dancing to Britney on her hen night, lifting her overly tight Pussy Galore T-shirt to reveal a Day-Glo pink bra.

Karen’s performance was so energetic that she was soon invited to dance on a pedestal in front of the DJ’s decks. Her bachelorettes whooped with delight as Karen did a bit more bump and grind and was rewarded with a bottle of cava. “Better than champagne,” the DJ assured her.

Karen had dispatched half the bottle by the time she made it back to our table. She offered me a swig and I took it. The cava was as warm and sweet as if it had been left on a sunny windowsill for a week and a half. Ordinarily I would have turned up my nose, but four brain hemorrhages into the evening, I was no oenophile. I had quickly reached the stage where I agreed with Daisy and Lola that I was happy to drink anything as long as it was alcoholic.

“My round,” I said. “Barman, line ’em up.”

Four shots later, we found ourselves in a nightclub called Histeria. I wondered if the misspelling was deliberate and gave the word a double meaning that I simply couldn’t see. A double meaning wasn’t the only thing I was having trouble seeing by this point. Gazing up at the blackboard behind the bar in search of a new and more interesting cocktail, I found myself unable to focus on the equally creatively spelled cocktail list. Either I was going shortsighted or I had been poisoned by Baileys. Never mind.

Unable to find anything more appealing than a brain hemorrhage on the list, I had another two. Then we hens took to the dance floor en masse, creating a little circle around our bags and Karen’s shoes (a pair of high-heeled tranny platforms, which were killing her) like early settlers on the drive to conquer the American West. Though much, much, much drunker.

“Like this,” said Karen, showing me how to grind. “You’re not doing the Locomotion now, Auntie Ashleigh.”

“I am not old enough to have done the Locomotion!” I exclaimed. “And stop calling me auntie. I’m your cousin.”

“I know, but I always thought of you as an auntie,” said Karen. “With you being so much older and really boring and that.”

“You think I’m boring?”

“Not anymore. You’re being a really good laugh tonight.”

I thanked her for the compliment, but I was irked and the
thought of being considered dull made me go back to the bar for another round of shooters. A neck full of undiluted spirits improved my grinding technique no end. So much so that a red-faced rugby player on a stag do was inspired to press his genitals to my buttocks. I should have been outraged but I wasn’t. I was that far gone. Karen whooped as I actually turned around and jiggled my breasts in the rugby player’s face.

“They’re real,” I added. In case he hadn’t noticed. He nodded his appreciation and asked if he could have a feel. I said he couldn’t. He danced off elsewhere.

Then at midnight the DJ interrupted the nonstop bump and grind to make a brief announcement.

“It’s that time of the evening, boys and girls. Time for our weekly competition. Last week the boys had the chance to win a bottle of champagne by having their eyebrows shaved off. This week it’s the turn of the ladies, with an old classic … the most popular competition
evah
here at Histeria nightspot. Ladies and gentlemen, your attention, please. It is time”—he played the sound effect of Big Ben bonging twelve as he intoned very seriously over the top of it—“for the wet-T-shirt competition!”

The crowd went wild. I whooped, too. It seemed appropriate.

“Come on, ladies! Step on up!” He quickly had three contestants. “I need at least five more!”

“Hey, Ashleigh,” said Lola, “it’s your turn to win us some drinks.”

It was true. The other hens had been working very hard to keep alcohol consumption up and costs down. Lola and Daisy had already climbed onto a podium and French-kissed each other for a bottle of Lambrini. Anna—aka Plenty O’Toole—had shown a rugby player her “chicken fillets” in return for a round of drinks for the lot of us. She let him keep one of the chicken fillets for another round after that. I had been paying
my way. I’d bought three ruinous rounds at Bolsheviks, but I sensed that Lola was more concerned about my getting into the spirit of things than merely flashing the cash.

“You really think I should do the wet-T-shirt competition?”

She nodded. The other girls agreed.

“On behalf of the team,” said Lola. “I’d do it myself but you have by far the best gazungas.”

What on earth were those?

“I can’t get up there,” I said. “I’m thirty-two years old.”

“So? That’s nowhere near retirement age.”

“All the more reason to do it,” piped up Daisy. “Have you ever done it before?”

“Of course not.”

“Do you want to grow old without ever having gotten your boobs out in front of an appreciative crowd?”

“That was my general plan,” I admitted.

It was Karen who piled on the pressure. She grasped my arm and told me passionately, “Go for it, Ashleigh. We only regret the things we haven’t done.”

She said it with such conviction. How could I possibly disagree? The stage was already filling with girls far less squeamish than me. I couldn’t help but cast an eye over the competition and wonder what my chances really were. Certainly, the only rack up there that looked any bigger than mine was definitely not a natural one. I’d get extra points for being 100 percent natural, Lola suggested.

“Go on,” said Karen. “You’ve got better tits than any of them.”

And so the combination of a skinful of spirits and the encouragement of my younger companions got the better of me at last. A switch flipped in my head and the sexist stupidity I would have run a mile from on any ordinary day suddenly seemed like an opportunity to strike a blow for real boobs and older women everywhere.

“I’ll do it.”

“Go, Ashleigh!”

With the cheers of my fellow partygoers ringing in my ears, I took my place in the lineup of hopefuls, while the compère of the evening’s festivities handed out buckets to an equal number of men. It goes without saying that there was no shortage of volunteers. He assigned one man to each of the girls before he donned a waterproof poncho and instructed, “Now I’m going to count to three, and when I have finished counting to three, you boys are going to—”

My bucket holder—who looked overly keen to do his job, I thought—didn’t wait for three. I didn’t have time to close my eyes and brace myself for the gallon of cold water that he tipped over my head.

“Not over her head, you doughnut!” the DJ shouted. “You’re only meant to get her T-shirt wet.”

“Sorry,” my bucket boy said shamefacedly. He dug into his pocket and brought out a packet of tissues. “Will this help?”

I dabbed at my eyes, in a pointless and futile attempt to keep my mascara from running down my face, while the other men did their duty, leaving ten girls shivering on the stage. The water was unnecessarily cold. Lola would later explain that that was all about the nipples. The DJ, still wearing his poncho, stepped out from his booth again to deliver his judgment. He walked the length of the line, pretending to scribble on his clipboard as he examined the boobs on display.