Hanging up the high heels (but only temporarily)

You are alone on a Friday night, with your cat for company, a little leftover vodka from the party, Desperate Housewives on at midnight and your laptop. Your friends have all decided to migrate to South Bombay for Friday night, and since you are a) broke and b) lazy, you are instead sitting at home with freshly washed hair and an almost-full packet of cigarettes and the desire to put keyboard to MS Word document.

You have also been taking photographs of yourself on your camera phone, in order to change your Facebook profile picture. Several very nice sepia tinted pictures later, you realized that the Bluetooth connection on your laptop wasn’t working. Normally, if you were alone on one of the big party nights, at home, watching tv, generally vegging, you’d feel a little depressed, a little like watching one of those Sony TV New Year’s Eve specials with your maid, while even your parents went out smelling expensive. But tonight, you stretch into the nothingness, accepting the non-plan, feeling the vodka curl itself into your system, feeling the wellbeing that comes from the end of the week and also, it must be admitted, feeling quite righteous at being at home.

The phone rings and it is, well, it is someone you are involved with. You asked if you could blog about him and he balked, but you explained you wouldn't name him, or even describe him at all. In fact, you said, "I'll call you a friend." "A friend?" he said, sounding dubious, "Is that what I am?" "Okay," you said, "The person I'm involved with?" He seems satisfied with this, and so that is what you are going to stick to. He does not read your blog though, and for that, you are grateful. Also, very anxious to keep it that way. It's not yet time to change the Facebook relationship status though.

Tomorrow--you have promised an old school friend who is in town--you will go dancing. You will wear your Dominatrix high heels and you will tilt back your head and pretend your finances aren't giving you a stomach ache at that moment, and that it's time to get your eyebrows done and that there are still things that niggle at the back of your mind and the base of your spine. Tomorrow night you will let go like you were still in college and your smile will be wide and genuine and your eyes will sparkle and people will say, "Oh, that girl has no problems at all."

There you go again. You're happy now, why sound like you're not? You enjoy the angst, you enjoy the drama, in your heart, you wear black nail polish and thick black eye makeup and leather wristlets. In your heart, you are that girl who cuts herself and thinks smiling is uncool. But you don't have the energy to be that unhappy, so for now you wear blue and feel smug and content with your situation. For now you focus on the stomach meltingness of an afternoon kiss, the bliss of staring around a room where you are sitting with your good friends and realise there's nowhere else you'd rather be, the mellowness of a rainy afternoon and a sleepy tabby on your lap, the satisfaction of a cigarette after a good meal, the wonder that comes every now and then of looking around a new city and seeing how it is becoming home.

Vokda makes you profound and profuse.