unprincipled, not eclectic

But then I remembered that, very luckily, I was wearing a short skirt and quite a girly top, so I figured that if I went into the women's instead then people would probably just assume I was trans so it wouldn't be awkward. In most situations this plan would have probably felt fraught, but I guess I supposed nobody going to a Parquet Courts gig would be likely to kick up a fuss about this, also I was a bit drunk I think. So that's what I did, it wasn't awkward, nobody cared, I remember making mutually friendly eye contact with someone I passed on the way out.

It was a good gig as I recall. Walking away from the venue afterwards, towards a better taxi-catching spot, I heard a voice a few paces behind me saying (a bit drunk-louder-than-intended perhaps) "that girl's skirt is the perfect shade of orange", and her friend said "that skirt isn't orange, it's yellow", and they couldn't agree (maybe this was ambiguous under the streetlights?), so the girl ran to catch up with me and said sorry if this is weird but is your skirt orange or yellow? I confirmed that it was orange and she said she knew it was, because "I saw you in the women's toilets earlier" (I think this slightly awkward phrasing was meant to emphasize that she thought it was normal and fine that I was in the women's toilets) and she remembered thinking, that girl's skirt is the perfect shade of orange, which sentiment I thanked her for. We got to chatting generally, although I didn't say a lot because I'm not good at that, but the two of them were pretty self-sustaining talkwise. She asked me my name, which might have been awkward, except my real name could work fine as a girl's name so I didn't have to improvise, I told them my name, hers was Katie, I don't remember the friend's name. Katie had apparently been telling her friend about the Barbie horse racing game for the PS1 from her childhood, which was apparently weird in some way I no longer recall but she's never met anyone else who played it so she had no one to share the weird memories with. She asked me if I'd played it as a kid, I said no, I never played the Barbie horse racing game for PS1 as a kid actually.

It turned out my hotel was on the way to where they were going so we got a taxi together and small talked a bit more. They asked if I was up to anything else in Liverpool, I said I planned to go to the Tate the next day, I wanted to see the Francis Bacon exhibition; Katie was very excited about this, she had seen it already, it turned out she was an art student, although apparently after she'd finished her final big art piece or whatever she'd been advised that it wasn't good enough and she'd have to do something else. I asked what they said was wrong with it and she said they didn't really say, just that it wasn't good enough. I wasn't sure what to say to that but we all agreed that it seemed pretty harsh. As the taxi came to my hotel I got my wallet out to pay my share and both of them protested and waved dismissively at my wallet-bearing hand until I put it away and thanked them, some friendly goodbyes.