I went back to his after the pub feeling proper cocky. That is the sentence I keep repeating in my head like it might make me sound less mental. It does not. I am twenty five. I have a degree. I can do a spreadsheet in my sleep. I can talk a supplier down from a stupid quote before my second coffee. None of that matters when your brain clocks a clown face in a stranger’s wardrobe and decides the only reasonable response is to scream like you are being murdered and then flee in one shoe.
This is that story. I am telling it because if I do not, I will keep replaying it at 1am with a vape in my hand like a woman who has made better choices.
It started ordinary. That is always how the worst nights start. After work drinks on a Thursday because someone in the office had a birthday and the birthday person is the sort who books a table and then looks wounded if you do not stay for “just one more.” I had the smart casual on. Blazer. Nice top. Boots I can walk in but still look like I tried. Hair doing that thing where it looks expensive if you do not inspect it too close. I was in a good mood. Baseline happy, which for me means I already knew I was going out and I already knew I was not going home early.
He was at the end of the bar with a pint and a face that suggested he knew he was good looking and had decided not to work too hard about it. Tall enough. Dark hair. Clean. The sort of man who smells like a decent shower and a spray he actually paid for. We got talking because I am not shy and he is not shy and the music was just loud enough that you have to lean in. I like that. I like the lean. I like watching someone realise I am fun and a bit much and then decide they are into it.
I vaped outside twice. He came with me the second time. That should have been the first little warning, not because there was anything wrong with him, because I was already clocking exits and bedrooms in my head like a woman with a diary and no patience. We talked rubbish. Work. Trains. How Essex gets judged by people who have only ever driven through it on the way to somewhere they think is better. I told him I was a PA and he did that nod men do when they are trying to work out if you are clever or just pretty. I let him wonder. I am both. I am also smug about it.
By the third drink I was touching his arm when I laughed. By the fourth I had already decided. That is the bit people pretend is romantic. It is not. It is practical. I like sex. I like the heat of it. I like being wanted in a room that is not my flat and is not my office. I like leaving with my make up a bit ruined and my mouth a bit used and my head quieter than it was at 6pm. He asked if I wanted to come back. I said yeah. No big speech. No pretending I needed convincing. I finished my drink. I checked my phone. I told the group chat I was getting a lift so they would not start a search party. One of my flatmates sent back a row of eggplants and a clown emoji. I ignored the clown emoji. That is how the universe works. It teases you first.
His place was a newish block, the kind with a lobby that smells of paint and other people’s dinners. In the lift he kissed me. Proper kiss. Not shy. Hand on my waist, thumb under the blazer like he had been thinking about that exact move for an hour. I kissed him back harder because I do not do half measures when I have already said yes. He tasted like lager and mint. I had the vape in my bag and the thought crossed my mind that I should have one before we got inside. I did not. I was too busy being the version of myself I like best. Confident. A bit arrogant. Already imagining how I was going to look on my knees in his hallway if the timing worked.
His flat was fine. Tidy enough that I did not immediately want to leave. Shoes by the door. TV too big. Kitchen that had been used but not destroyed. I put my bag on the side and he got two glasses of water like a man who has done this before and does not want a headache later. Good. I respect a man who plans for the hangover and the hookup at the same time.
We did not make it to a polite sit down. I did not want a polite sit down. He pushed the blazer off my shoulders and I let it drop. His mouth was on my neck and my back hit the fridge and I laughed into it because I get happy when it is good. Hands under my top. My thigh hooked around his hip. He was hard against me through his jeans and I rubbed against it like I had all the time in the world. I did not. I never do. That is half the point.
We moved to the bedroom in that clumsy shuffle people do when they refuse to stop kissing. Lights on low. Bed made, which I noticed and filed under “he expected this.” Fine by me. I undid his belt. He got my top off. Bra stayed for a minute because I like the look of it and I like watching a man work for the next bit. He got there. Mouth on my tits, a bit greedy, the right side of greedy. I had my hand in his hair and my other hand down the front of his boxers and I was already thinking about how I was going to take him in my mouth and make a whole performance of it. I am good at that. I know I am good at that. It is one of the few things I am allowed to be openly smug about without someone calling it unprofessional.
He got his jeans off. Socks stayed. They always stay at that stage, do they not? There is a moment in every hookup where a grown man is standing there in socks and an erection and you have to decide whether it ruins it. It did not ruin it. It made me want to laugh and suck him off anyway. I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled him toward me by the hips. Kissed his stomach. Looked up at him with that face I know works. He swore under his breath. I liked that.
Then I decided I wanted a towel.
That is the detail that makes me sound unhinged. It is not unhinged. I had a drink on my chest. His mouth had been wet. I was about to get more wet. I like to have something to wipe my mouth on after. I like not leaving a slick patch on a stranger’s duvet if I can help it. I am messy in the ways I choose. I am not messy in the ways that make me feel cheap in the morning. So I said, “Have you got a towel?” like a normal person. He pointed at the wardrobe without looking, because he was busy watching my mouth and thinking about where it was going next.
I stood up in my underwear and boots because I had not taken the boots off yet. That is another image I cannot get rid of. Me, tits out, knickers on, work boots, crossing a man’s bedroom like I owned it. I opened the wardrobe door with that little smugness still in my shoulders. I was thinking about his cock. I was thinking about how I was going to make him make that sound again. I was thinking about whether I would stay the night or get an Uber at two and eat cereal in my own kitchen like a queen.
The clown was on the rail.
Not a little novelty thing. Not a joke shop bag in the corner. A full face. White. Red mouth stretched too wide. Blue around the eyes. The hair bit frizzed out like it had been loved. It was hanging there between a coat and a hoodie like it paid rent.
I made a noise I did not know I had. Not a cute shriek. A proper scream, the sort that comes from the bit of you that is still six years old and convinced something in the dark wants you. I stumbled back so hard I hit the bed with the back of my legs and sat down on it without meaning to. He said “what” and then he saw my face and then he saw the wardrobe.
I was already moving. Shoes. I needed shoes. One boot was half off from when he had been kissing down my stomach. I jammed my foot in and could not get the zip. My hands were useless. The mask was still looking at me. That is the worst part of a clown. It keeps looking when nothing living should look like that. I grabbed my top off the floor and pulled it on backwards. I did not care. I snatched the blazer. I could not see my bag for a second and that made it worse, because leaving without my bag meant leaving my keys and my vape and my whole adult life in a room with that thing.
“It is just a costume,” he said.
Just. Just a costume. Men love that word. Just. As if the word shrinks the object. As if I had not just had his hand in my knickers and then opened a door onto my actual nightmare.
“Why,” I said, and my voice came out husky and wrecked and not sexy anymore. “Why have you got that.”
He started explaining. Work do. Fancy dress. His niece. A mate’s birthday last Halloween. The words piled up and none of them mattered because the mask was still there, hanging, smiling with that painted on joy that is not joy. I could feel my pulse in my teeth. I could feel the room getting smaller. I do not do well with clowns. I have never done well with clowns. People think it is a cute little fear, like spiders or lifts. It is not cute. It sits in me wrong. It makes my skin feel like it belongs to someone else.
He reached toward the wardrobe like he was going to take it down and show me it was plastic and harmless. That was when I properly lost it. “Do not touch it. Do not bring it closer. I am leaving.”
I found the bag. I found the other boot. I did not put the boot on properly. I hopped to the door with my top on backwards and my blazer over my arm and my knickers still the only thing covering the fact that five minutes earlier I had been about to have a very good night. He followed me in his socks. Just the socks. Cock still half interested because bodies are stupid and do not understand fear the way brains do. I would have found that funny on a different night. On this night I wanted him to put a wall between me and the rail.
In the hallway I tried to breathe like a person. He stood in the doorway looking baffled and a bit rejected, which I understand, I do, because from his side of it a girl went from licking his stomach to screaming at a piece of polyester in under ten seconds. He asked if I wanted water. He asked if I wanted him to put it in another room. He asked if I was serious.
I was serious.
I got in the lift and the doors took a year to close. My reflection in the metal looked like a woman who had been interrupted mid crime. Hair wrecked. Mouth smeared. Top backwards, tag sticking out under my chin. I fixed the top in the lobby with my hands shaking. The night air hit me and I vaped so hard I made myself cough. Mango. Same flavour as always. It did not help as much as I needed it to.
Then the walk of shame that is not even a walk of shame because I did not get the sex. That is the insult. I did all the work. I did the chatting and the leaning and the after work pint and the lift kiss and the fridge and the belt and the look up through my lashes. I was ready. I was wet. I was in the mood in that specific way where my head goes quiet and my body takes over and I feel like myself. And instead I was on the pavement at half eleven with one boot zipped and one boot sulking and a man upstairs who now thinks I am unhinged.
I ordered the Uber. I sat on the little wall outside the block. I texted the group chat “do not ask.” They asked immediately. I sent a photo of the empty street and the words “clown in the wardrobe.” One flatmate thought I was joking. The other one sent the same clown emoji from earlier. I told her I would kill her in the morning, affectionately.
In the car I caught the driver glancing at my face. I did not explain. What would I even say. Excuse me mate, I was about to suck a man off after Thursday drinks and then I found a full clown face hanging with his coats and now I need to go home and watch telly until my nervous system remembers I am an adult. You cannot say that to an Uber driver. You sit there and stare at the map and pretend you are normal.
Fallout lasted longer than the scream.
He texted. Of course he texted. First message was “you ok?” Second was a photo of the mask in a bin bag on his kitchen floor, like evidence. Third was “I chucked it, swear down.” I left him on read for an hour because I was on the sofa in the flat with a blanket and last night’s pasta and a programme I was not watching. My flatmates came in one after the other and I had to tell the story twice. I did the scream again for effect. I did the socks. I did the top on backwards. They howled. I howled. Then I went quiet because under the joke there is still that jolt, that old stupid jolt, the one that makes me feel six and unprotected and ridiculous for being twenty five and scared of a face that cannot even blink.
I almost went back. That is the part I do not love admitting. Not that night. The next afternoon, after work, after I had done my emails and booked three meetings and acted like a competent human. He had been decent. He had not laughed at me in the doorway. He had offered to bin it. My body still remembered his mouth on my chest and my hand down his boxers and the sound he made when I looked up. I like finishing what I start. I like getting what I came for. I nearly typed “put it in the building bin and I will come over.”
I did not.
Because I could still see it on the rail. Between the coat and the hoodie. Smiling.
Work the next day was a special kind of comedy. I had a mark on my neck I had to hide with the blazer collar. I had no sleep. I had a manager asking if I was “a bit peaky” and I had to say late train. I sat at my desk doing actual maths on an actual budget and every time someone opened a cupboard in the kitchen I flinched like a cartoon. One of the girls asked what I got up to. I said drinks. I did not say I abandoned a half naked man because his fancy dress from October had been stored badly.
He tried again at the weekend. Different tone. Softer. Said he felt bad. Said he would like to take me for food in a public place with no wardrobes. I nearly said yes because food is food and he was still fit and I am still me. Then I pictured standing in his bedroom again, even empty, even cleaned, and my stomach did that drop. I told him I was snowed under at work. Which was true enough. Promotion season. I need my head. I need to look like the girl who can handle a diary and a crisis, not the girl who screamed at a mask and ran.
People love to tell me I am dramatic. I am. I know I am. I also know what my body does when it sees that face. It does not negotiate. It does not care that I was wet and willing and good at what I was about to do. It slams the door. It grabs the shoes. It leaves the man in his socks.
So that is the night. After work pint. Kiss in the lift. Hands, mouth, belt, the start of something that would have been filthy and fun and exactly what I wanted. Then a wardrobe door and a painted smile and me on the street with my top on backwards, vaping like it could rewind ten minutes.
Never again. Not his flat. Not a surprise costume. Not a man who stores his nightmares next to his coats and thinks “it is just” is a sentence that helps.
If you take nothing else from this, take the practical bit. If you are going to bring someone home, check the wardrobe. Check the top shelf. Check whatever you think is harmless because you have lived with it so long it went invisible. Some of us are fine with mess and noise and being a bit slutty on a Thursday. Some of us can handle a lot.
A full clown face at dick height is not a lot. It is the end of the night.
I got home. I showered. I put the telly on. I did not sleep well. In the morning I did my make up and my job and my little smirk for the office and nobody knew. That is the other side of me. The part that can fall apart at half eleven and still send a calendar invite at nine.
And if I ever go back to his, which I will not, that rail had better be empty. I am fun. I am cocky. I am not doing that scream twice.
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