HIM    I fucking stink 
I haven’t washed
I haven’t slept
I haven’t
My pits smell like 6 hours ago
Like dancing like skin like tequila
Like one and a half pills
I should’ve stopped at one
You stink
She says, careful as she kisses my cheek so as not to scuff her make up and she’s not wrong
I can still smell the ketamine up my nose
The smell of the queers around me
Shirts off
Wet 
All of us wet from ourselves from each other from the ceilings our foreheads our shorts our dicks
I fucking stink of the rave-
Go clean yourself up.
She irons out the crease in the ugly purple dress he’s making her wear and she tells me she’s glad I could make it.

Their bathroom smells of mint and lavender
It’s always lavender in places like this
Bathrooms like this with reed diffusers and no air freshener sprays
There’s still glitter around my eyes and some lipstick on my chin from that person with the wig that looked so dry it made my teeth hurt but she felt good when she was inside me-
I splash my face and I remember watching my mum get baptised
How I’d got hard looking at the priest cos he reminded me of Andrew Scott
How I’d put the hymn book on my lap to cover it up as I imagined him telling me how bad I’d been how I was going to hell and how he’d demand I got naked so that-

They’re playing Kylie outside. 
That’s gotta be appropriation of some kind
Playing Kylie at an engagement party full of straight middle aged church-goers
I peer out the window and I see him.
Him- what this was all for
All those weeks of her going to classes, learning bibles verses- all for him.
I watch him in the garden laughing with some other person who probably smells like fabric softener and too many hours in a bank
They’re drinking beer but it looks like piss and I feel a tingle in my dick at the thought of them both urinating on me.
My mum appears behind him, the purple dress does nothing for her complexion 
And she rubs his back and whispers something in his ear. 
I touch the semi that’s pushing into the fabric of my underwear, rub the precum around my foreskin and I close my eyes and bring my fingers up to my nose, slip them into my mouth
Tasting every stranger from last night
How we’d teased one another 
Above that monotonous bass 
Our hair stuck to our bodies
And how we smiled
There
So Fucking Euphoric
I could see it
In their eyes
Smiling,
Me-
Me smiling at them and them smiling at Nothing
Eyes closing, the techno stealing them 
Hips moving together in some basement in Tottenham 
Ecstasy tingling through to our fingertips thinking we are so much more beautiful here–

The door opens and I snap out of it
Feeling filthy again against the glossy tiles, the immaculate sink, the citrusy toilet and he stands in the doorway bigger than me but that’s because I haven’t eaten since yesterday morning 
Not today.
He says, not making eye contact. 
I’d like you to leave.
I swallow the semen on my tongue and imagine it’s his.
I said I’d pop round. Show my face. Say my… congratulations. 
Thank you. 
I could try, I think. I could try
Make a move
These religious types- they have a reputation 
I could get naked, I could tempt him 
I could be the apple to his eve 
Show my mum he isn’t worth it after all
She could find better
I can show you to the door, now. 
His eye flicks to my boner and then to my eyes and I realise I don’t think he’s ever properly looked at me
Probably too afraid of what he’d see or smell-
I wonder what he smells 
What he thinks 
Whether he’ll spend the rest of his day trying to claw back my scent
Trying to figure out what it is
So I walk past him in the doorway, brushing my shoulder against him in the hopes it’ll leave some kind of aroma on his hairy forearm for later inspection
But he isn’t following me so I don’t go out the way he wants
I turn instead and head to the garden
He’s probably knocking one out up there
Knocking one out over his step son to be
Wank out the shame wank out the shame!!!!!!!!!

I trip over a weed and its really embarrassing but everyone notices me cos I make a noise and I realise how much I love attention and I notice a blonde woman cover her nose with her Moroccan scarf.
My mum walks up to me and her eyes say
You can’t let him see you here
And she’s pleading with her nails digging into my skin and I consider that the cocaine hasn’t worn off yet cos I barely feel a thing which is refreshing because I’ve tried everything to feel nothing
I make eyes with a man across the way smoking a cigarette and I recognise him from my dad’s funeral so I push my mum out the way and ask him for a fag.
His nostrils flair and I wonder if he can place the scent
I wonder if any of them can place it
If they can smell the concrete underground
The vibrating the beat the power
Cos their power smells like lavender 
And mine smells like the hidden, the invisible
The cocaine the methadone
The cigarettes and the vomit 
The piss and the shit
The water keeping me fresh
He hands me a cigarette and flicks his lighter. 
I put the fag in my mouth and let my lips sink around the paper before I lean into his flame, watching the embers take form. 
He looks like he wants to say something but I don’t care to listen, 
I get distracted by my soon-to-be step father standing in the doorway to the garden
He’s wiping his wet hands on his GAP jeans, he definitely had a wank 
A woman makes a noise and I turn to see the horrified look on her face before I feel the warmth of the blood pouring from my nose
It starts dropping on my shirt 
So I think fuck it and I wipe my nose with the sleeve cos the damage is already done.
It feels like I’m pulling my brains out as I slide the cloth along my nostril but turns out it’s just a blood clot
I hold it up for everyone to see like its show and tell and
The woman vomits and I think it’s pathetic so I giggle and then I cough and then I have a toke of my cigarette and the coughing stops. 
I take off my shirt cos it’s a little unsightly now and at least I’m still wearing the mesh bodysuit underneath which I totally understand isn’t quite the vibe of the gathering but at least it shows my personality.
Can you just leave, please.
His voice took me by surprise and I turn to see my mum crying
Is she crying because of me or because that woman has vomited all over her geraniums and if there’s one thing my mum loves it’s geraniums.
The bleeding has stopped from my nose and I scrunch the shirt up in my hands. Maybe I’ll frame it. Put it in an exhibition somewhere. I’ll call it the day I ruined my mum’s engagement party and I think about how I could make a whole series off it
Pieces of clothing I wore to different family functions
The trousers I wore to her baptism which I later came in or the tie from my dad’s funeral which I cried in, the shirt that I bled in at her engagement party like a patchwork quilt of my destruction 
You are not welcome here.
He says
And I feel the congregation go silent. 
The man from my dad’s funeral flicks his cigarette into an ashtray. The woman who vomited is sitting in the shade drinking from a single use plastic bottle of water, another woman with a terrible orange perm is rubbing her back 
And I realised I’ve never wanted to be naked so desperately
To be naked with the strangers last night
The ones I danced with cos we’d danced so close I could feel them in my pores, like part of my fabric my DNA 
Cos we hadn’t just danced we had existed as one 
Under the city under our city our city finally ours in the confines of the underground 
Finally ourselves where we were naked and alone in control
Hips moving throats moaning 
I got fucked by a drag queen last night, 
I say to him and whoever else is listening which by the perturbed faces is everyone
I didn’t catch her name but she came inside me and I haven’t had the chance to shit her out yet. 
I’m not sure why I say it.
My mum closes her eyes. I wonder what she sees
I wonder if she sees the child she wanted
The one who has his fathers tenderness and her sense of humour 
Her wise-cracks and her jazzy singing voice 
The child who smells like lavender or mint 
Who makes her friends laugh and her deceased husband proud
The child who can sit in her new husbands armchair
Who can sit and exist within her new husbands furniture without making a fuss
Who’d sit and smile and thank him for the stability he gives my mother 
And I see her squeeze his hand the way she used to do to my knee
Like she did when we found his body swinging from the living room light 
Or the time I told her I got haemorrhoids after this Italian boy fingered me
The way she’d squeeze my knee to tell me I’d be okay and now she’s squeezing his hand
I’m going to ask you one more time to leave my house
He’s staring me down, trying not to drop his gaze in case he gets a glimpse of my nipple that’s poking out one of the holes in the mesh
And its in that moment that I feel everyone taking a few steps away from me like I’m Moses and they’re that sea  or like they’re a classroom of children and I’m holding them all at knifepoint and I realise I’ve never wanted to smell so fucking bad  
I see my mother loosen her grip on his hand and I’ve never wanted to feel so fucking repugnant To make an old christian woman vomit over my mums favourite plant
I watch as his fists clench
And I’ve never wanted to feel so repulsive and powerful cos in their space I’m a bad smell but in mine I’m a perfume
In mine I am licked and kissed and adored but in theirs I’m punctured and bleeding and beaten and pleading to be revolting and alive-
You’re not allowed to play Kylie fucking Minogue!!!!
The words come out louder than I’d anticipated so I throw my cigarette on the perfectly mown lawn in attempt to fully commit to the statement. 
I think about the parties of darkness that must be taking place all over the city right now
The people who don’t wanna sleep cos sleeping means waking up again 
And you know purple doesn’t suit you. 
My mum looks down at her dress and someone gasps. It’s the woman with the perm. I smile at the woman who vomited and say
That was really embarrassing for you. 
I walk past my mum and the man she’s going to marry some point next year. 
I walk past them and I hear them hold their breath. 

I keep walking.

I keep walking until I’m in a place that I’ve never heard of and I keep walking until I hear people singing Donna Summer in the basement of a townhouse.
I knock on the door three times and then ring the bell cos I figured they might not hear. I dry my eyes cos if they see I’ve been crying they might think I’m sad and no one wants a sad boy at their after party. 

A woman with thick black eye liner and huge pupils clumsily opens the door.
Fuck me I thought you were gonna be the landlord.
I smile as Donna Summer mixes effortless into Kylie and I ask if it would be ok if I joined.

written by Tobias Graham
originally performed as part of Show Face Festival 2020