It was an art school party. I didn’t attend art school, but I had more friends there than in my own course (English Literature), and there was always better dancing, better outfits and better drugs there. This night I was out of my mind on yips.

Whilst dancing, I caught the attention of a Goth gal. Short and pale, her black hair was cut into a bob and she had a strong set of artfully-drawn eyebrows. This same description would also accurately describe myself, at this time. I was gazing at myself in the mirror – and my reflection was alive. Magnetically attracted to each other, we swiftly found ourselves smooching. Before so much as a word had been exchanged, we were smearing our dark lipsticks on each other’s faces, getting sucked in to one another’s sparkly, drugged-up and dilated eyes, twisting our fishnet-clad legs around each other. Doesn’t everybody wonder what it’s like to get off with themselves? I now knew what it felt like to trace my curves, bite my own lip, lick my own neck. We melted into one, a palette of purples and blacks floating around us as I observed in gooey admiration the lights flashing on her soft, pale face. Time seemed to slow down as though we were under water. I was fully immersed in her, this aesthetic twin sister of mine, when I heard a voice I did not recognise call my name. “Caoimhe. Caoimhe!”

Simultaneously, we emerged from our sunken kiss to meet a stranger’s eyes. A friend of hers. Yes; this small, pale Goth babe to whom I’d been dealing drool was also named Caoimhe. We answered each other’s question simultaneously, a single synchronised movement, saying, “You’re Caoimhe, too?” It felt like the Groucho Marx mirror scene. After her friend left, she spoke to me in a voice like an Irish Helen Kane. Boop! We made vague plans to go home together, which never materialised; I lost her somewhere in the shoal of glitzy, monged art students.

After the campus closed, the revellers lined the street outside looking for the next session and I spied my classmate and co-conspirator Tara.

“Hey!” I said. “I’m looking for somebody. She’s a petite Goth with black hair to about here, great set of eyebrows – oh and her name’s Caoimhe.”

The look on her face wasn’t quite one of pity, just the gentle concern for a pal so out of it that they are unable to locate themselves. I decided this was too much to explain and she’d never believe me. What she thought was happening was probably much less weird than what actually happened. I weaved through the hipsters calling “Caoimhe? …CAOIMHE?!”, until I found somebody else to kiss.

Original artwork & words by Caoimhe Lavelle.