Black Tie

Our friend came home drunk and though it was dark it was clear he had been crying. His voice bumbled softly through the room, dry and defeated. He had been at the opening party of a festival and it had been requested that guests dress ‘black tie’.

He had been excited to have something special to dress nicely for, to try for. He had the suit from his brother’s wedding, and the expensive shirt he’d saved up for a few years ago, so he spent the days leading up to the opening sourcing his outfit’s accents; cufflinks, good shoe polish, a black bow tie. The day of the party he had a haircut, a haircut he shyly confessed he had had the hairdresser copy from a picture he’d shown her of a Mad Men character.

In the evening, before the party, our friend had dressed with more care than he’d taken dressing in a long time, if he’d ever dressed so carefully before. He’d bought hair product from a nice shop, and applied it with ceremony. He said he’d felt lovely to take such care. To pay attention to every detail of his own appearance with a kind of kindness.

When he was ready, he had gone to the mirror in the lounge room to get a full-length view of his efforts and he had been unable to suppress the smile. He looked good and he felt good, and now all he had to do was wait for a few minutes for his friend with the tickets to call before he could head down there.

Half an hour passed. And then an hour. The bright nerves sparking in his stomach had turned to spikes of anxiety as call after call to his friend went through unanswered. Finally her nonchalant voice sighed down the line, telling him to chill out man they’d be there soon.

When our friend arrived at the venue, after waiting for almost two hours, the sight that met him had made him want to turn around and run home. No one had dressed formally. It was all the usual, Melbourne, I don’t give a fuck look. Draping, blankety, black. Scruffy fringes over scowling faces. Ironic backpacks. Fluorescent sneakers that were so many levels of ironic that they ceased to be ironic anymore. The air prickled with self-consciousness. People talked in childish, cut-off rings to their own friends and no one was smiling. And no one was wearing a black tie.   

Our friend would have left undetected if it had not been for an acidic acquaintance, who popped up suddenly from nowhere, turned to him drunkenly and trumpeted that oh god they couldn’t believe what he was wearing it was so cute and oh god he looked like he was with the brass band playing inside. And then the ticket-holder friend turned up with a patronising comment of her own and there was no getting out of it. 

The rest of the night followed suit; he barely spoke to anyone in that hall full of people, including his friend, who was too busy trying to climb some social ladders propped strategically around the ballroom. Our friend finished the night standing on his own at the bar, sculling a few more cheap sparklings, and leaving.

“No one…cares…anymore,” he gulped to us in the dark, “and I’m sick of…caring.”