Daytime me budgets and makes plans
Night me wants a mouth on mine and no chat about next week. Lighting does half the actual lying.
I know how that sounds. Like I am blaming a disco bulb for my own decisions. Maybe I am. I still think it is true.
There is a version of me that exists under warehouse lights and Tesco lights and the nasty white light in our bathroom. She counts. She checks the rota. She puts lip product on like it is part of the uniform. She wants the promotion and she wants the account to look less tragic by Wednesday.
Then the room goes dim and she clocks off. Not fully. Just enough.
Daytime me is trying to be sensible
Mornings are fluorescent. That is the problem. You cannot be mysterious at 6.40am on a packed tube with a rucksack in your ribs and last night still vaguely on your skin. You can only be on time or late.
I am good in the day, in the way that matters on paper. I can add. I can talk to a supervisor without sounding like I want to fight. I know where the stock is. I know who is skiving. I want the next title so badly I can taste it, which is embarrassing, so I dress it up as ambition and not as rent.
Daytime me makes lists. Food shop. Laundry. Do not buy the top. Do not get the cab. Do not text him first. All very grown. All very 30.
She lasts until about 6pm. Sometimes later if I am on lates and the radio is doing my head in. Then a voice note lands in the group chat. Someone says out. Someone sends a photo of an outfit that is already better than mine. And the list starts looking optional.
I tell the flat I am only popping in. They do not believe me. I would not believe me either.
The bathroom is where the switch happens
I do my face like I am going to work, then I do it again like I am not.
Harsh light first. That is the honest one. Every mark, every bit I would rather not see. I talk to myself in the mirror, which would be tragic if it was not useful. A bit more here. Soften that. Another coat. If I look finished, I can leave the flat as Els and not as the girl who spent the afternoon doing mental maths over a pint she has not even bought yet.
One of my flatmates will bang on the door. That is the soundtrack of this house. I shout that I am coming. I am not coming. I am checking the side of my face like it owes me money.
People call it vanity. Fine. Call it what you want. For me it is armour. Daytime me needs to look competent. Night me needs to look like she already knows what she is doing, even when she does not.
Trainers go in the bag. Heels or the almost heels go on first. I have learned. London pavement does not care how pretty you felt at 8pm.
The lights drop and I get louder
It is not even always a club. Sometimes it is a dark pub with a sticky floor and a playlist that thinks it is still 2016. Sometimes it is a bar with those low bulbs that make everyone look like they slept and drank water. The principle is the same. Once I cannot see every pore, I stop behaving like I am being marked.
Music up. Voices down. Eye contact gets easier because nobody is examining you under a ceiling panel. You can stand closer. You can say something filthy and pass it off as the volume. You can let a hand sit on your waist and not immediately start a committee meeting in your head about what it means.
I get braver. That is the simple version.
I talk more. I laugh with my whole face. I stop checking my phone every four minutes to see if I look unbothered. I am bothered. I just hide it better when the lighting is on my side.
Makeup looks less like work in the dim. That helps more than I want to admit. In the club light I look like the girl I was aiming at in the bathroom. In the office light I look like someone who has to be on the floor at seven.
A man will lean in and I will not flinch first. Daytime me would clock the rota, the money, the fact I said I was being good this week. Night me clocks his mouth and whether he can hold a conversation for longer than a drink. Sometimes I do not even clock the conversation.
What I actually want when it goes dark
Not a five year plan. God. Please no.
I want to be wanted in a way that does not come with a performance review. I want a body against mine that does not need my job title. I want the kind of attention that feels like heat, not like homework.
People love to tidy that up. They call it empowerment or they call it a cry for help, depending on how much they like me that day. It is simpler. I like sex. I like being chosen for an hour without having to explain the rest of my life. Lighting just makes it easier to admit.
Daytime me would like a boyfriend. I can say that here and still feel a bit sick about it. Night me does not want the chat about next week. Night me wants the now. The two of them share a body and a makeup bag and they are not always speaking.
That is why the lights matter. Bright rooms ask questions. Dark rooms let you skip them.
I am not proud of every skip. I have left with people I would not text in daylight. I have stayed for one more when I had already had enough. I have talked a bigger game than my feet could cash in the morning. Bravery and stupidity use the same coat sometimes. Especially after two drinks when someone smells good and the DJ has landed on a song that makes you feel 22 again.
The house lights are a different person
Nothing good happens when they put the big lights on. That is not poetry. That is fact.
You see the floor. You see the time. You see your own face in the phone camera and think, right. There she is. The one who has work. The one whose card has opinions. The one who told herself this was a quick one.
I go quiet in the cab. I always do. The performance drops faster than the makeup. Window. Condensation. That little inventory. Did I say too much. Did I give him my actual number. Did I spend money I had already spent in my head on Thursday.
If it was good, I still do the inventory. If it was messy, I do it twice.
Back at the flat I take the face off like I am clocking out. Bathroom light again. Honest again. I look like a warehouse manager who went out. Which is what I am.
Sometimes I write a line in my diary and pretend it is nothing. Not a novel. Just enough to get the night out of my mouth so I can sleep. Music on low. Something on the telly I am not watching. That is how daytime me takes the keys back.
So which one is lying
Both, a bit.
Daytime me pretends she does not want to be grabbed and liked and taken out of her own head. Night me pretends she does not care about the raise, the rent, the fact she would quite like someone who stays after the kettle boils.
The lights do not create a new woman. They just turn the volume up on the one I keep in the makeup bag. Cocky. Flirty. A bit much. Fun until she is not. Brave in the way that looks like confidence and sometimes is just noise so the quiet cannot sit down next to me.
I am not going to stop going out. I like it. I like the walk from the bathroom to the door, when I still believe the night might be simple. I like a dark room and a look across it. I like being 5 foot 3 and still taking up space because the lighting said I could.
I will keep packing the trainers. I will keep saying one drink. I will keep doing the face twice.
And when the lights drop, I will get braver again. Not because I become someone else. Because for a few hours the room stops asking me to be sensible, and I am weak for a room like that.
