I am surrounded by punch bowls and little black dresses and thumping music. I'm swirling my mojito and silently cursing myself for the hundredth time that night for forgetting it was a cocktail party. Or rather, cursing myself for failing to make the connection between a cocktail theme and the expectation that one would come suitably cocktail attired. Then I curse my friend for having moments earlier left me and the party. I had been enjoying myself poised next to her in her canary yellow op shop cardigan, the two of us taking effortless swipes at the barbie doll brigade in the corner. Alone, I watch another gaggle of black dresses and sleek bleached heads bubble past. I slink back to the bar to get another mojito. I'm searching for any other female in the room wearing pants. I'm disappointed. After a couple more bad mojitos and increasingly inane conversation with forgettable party goers I start to loosen up. I quit dodging the circling disco lights determined to illuminate my misbehaved dark blonde curls. I jiggle about to the music in my flat shoes. I begin to enjoy the ostentation, I fondle the ice sculpture and gawk at the busty waitresses in corsets and fishnet stockings. I start to think the mojitos taste not half bad.

I am at the point of drunk where inhibition has left me and mischief has made me her friend. Unsteady and slurring have yet to arrive. I have attained that perfectly balanced inebriated state of confidence and wit. I look around the room to select an object to lavish my charm upon. The room spins ever so slightly. I look to my left and down. And there it is.

It's a security card, like the ones we use in my own office to get out in to the stairwell and use the bathroom. It is attached to a lanyard, one of those stretchy ones. Temptation leans over and kisses me passionately on the lips. I reach out and tug the card towards me and then release it with a snap. And then I look up, into a twinkling blue abyss that has already claimed me as its own.