It’s 9pm on a Friday and you’ve just chased a schooner with a tequila shot at the bar of an underground club, your hair is dirty from a lock-in the night before and your eyeliner hasn’t budged since then either. You haven’t brushed your teeth.
A middle-aged promoter is talking your ear off about low ticket sales and trying to convince you to street-promote later on to draw a crowd – they’re not convincing you. You side-eye the club manager as he mansplains how to put a paper wristband on, ripping his own arm hairs in the process. You have his number saved in your phone but you always forget his name anyway. The sound engineer is blasting shitty techno music while the DJ scrolls Instagram in the corner drinking a Red Bull.
You ask if you can go have a cigarette. Upstairs and outside your only ally in the vicinity, a 45-year-old security guard who sold you coke when you were underage, cracks a joke. You laugh for the first time since arriving at the venue, out of politeness. It’s been a long few years as a door bitch.
