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I met J after my first brush with a spiked drink.

Who was it who said the right combination of drink and drugs can make anyone feel the prettiest, wittiest girl out there? I discovered that magic combination that night, as I moved from guy to girl, drink to drink, line to line and dancing, dancing, dancing. Most of them gave me a glance, got me a drink, shared their toys with me, their pharmaceutical secrets, then passed on to someone coherent; someone likely to remember them come morning or the next hour, but he didn't. In turn, the Stranger latched on to me, ignoring the swift and laughing dismissal I'd given him earlier in the evening.
"Oh, honey, I really don't think so."

Bored, bored, bored.

It took me a while to notice the Stranger following me around the party that evening, trailing his fingers across my waist, keeping my glass full. Catching it whenever I stumbled or my hands shook, which was often. He danced behind me, his hands around my waist- first as a way to get close, but becoming more and more a means of support.

"Here, sweetie, you've been drinking the wrong stuff all night, this'll make you feel better."


An hour or two later I resurfaced, sitting on the cool steps outside the apartment. There was the heavy pressure of a hand on my shoulder; with my head down, I could just glimpse from the corner of my eye a black shoe, a pair of dark jeans.
My vision blurred and as I raised a hand to rub pointlessly at my eyes I swayed in place. The hand on my shoulder tightened;

"Don't do drugs with anyone except your friends; noone else gives a fuck."
I smiled a little, shifting slightly away from this overbearing stranger to lean on the railings.
"Now where have I heard that before?"
He didn't say anything, for a minute, a few seconds, an hour, and I tried to summon the energy to move, make my way home.
"But you're not my friend, what do you care?"
He moved then, and more of him came into view as he stood on the landing below my feet. Tall, blonde, traces of red lipstick across his collar and a hicky on his neck. He knelt by me on the steps, and..
"Oh. You have brown eyes."
"So what? You do too."
"Guess we must be soulmates then."
"But of course! We even have matching lipstick traces," he said, smiling a little.

Suddenly, even this was too much effort. I got up to leave, feeling frightfully like Blanche fucking DuBois, and he made no move to get out of my way. I stepped round him, ignoring him even as the hem of my skirt brushed his cheek. He sat alone on the step and watched me, as I tried to pretend I didn't want to just curl up in a corner somewhere with my eyes shut; like a child, pretending the world vanishes if you don't see it.

I sat in the park, across the street from the apartment I'd just left. Sitting on the swings, gently scuffing my bare feet on the tarmac as I watched the lights in the top window flashing; pink, red, green, gold, blue, orange, on and off, as the party went on.
I heard him walking towards me, and instinctively turned my face down and away from him, knowing my expression would be too nakedly helpless, revealing.
I tried for flippancy, but it came out closer to cynical and weary; expectant.
"So are you going to tell me what happened up there?"
"Do you really want to know?"

I guess not. He walked me home that night, and spent what was left of it curled up in a cold ball on the couch- nothing if not diligent.
The next morning, I learned his name, and in the following months I learned more and more about him until, poof! like magic, he exited as swiftly as he'd entered.