Out in the City: Thanks, Marina, you saved me from my own sad party

On Friday morning, I found my housemate Willa hectically packing. She was off to Rome to have an audience with the Pope and had nothing to wear. On Friday night my cousin Blair had taken a slash in the middle of a street in Camden and had been arrested. So on Saturday night I threw a party.

By 10pm all my friends were there. By 11pm all their friends were there. By midnight a paparazzo was outside. At 1am I walked into the darkened bathroom. There were some candles in the corner and a girl lying next to them sucking on a water bottle with a Biro stuck in it — and next to the girl was a piece of paper with white powder on it. On her wrist was a vintage Baignoire Cartier watch. I shut the door.

I walked down the stairs where a blonde cornered me and droned on about how she was sleeping with her step-brother. I looked around my sitting room, which had all the hallmarks of one of the great Notting Hill house parties. There was a minor royal and a supermodel, both of whom were DJ-ing, obviously. There were the usual gatecrashers and the same old people circling the room in search of their next bump. There were the habitual dirty secrets. There must be something more to this, I wondered, lighting a cigarette and strolling into the garden.

And then I got a text from my gay friend Anthony. Marina, from Marina and the Diamonds, one of my favourite bands, was throwing her 25th birthday at G-A-Y on Old Compton Street. And 40 minutes later I was there, leaving the assorted selection of friends I've collected around me behind, leaving them to get lost in their wealth of unhappiness and unaccepted vulnerability.

G-A-Y is fun. There are no inhibitions. Everyone's on the same level. Nothing matters, no one cares, no one remembers. Anthony bumped into his ex-boyfriend, another of our friends, Tom, who had just broken up with the 20-year-old gymnast he'd met at Heaven.

I was having a cigarette outside and bumped into Marina as she left. She was wearing a phallic dress with a massive pink swan coming out of the front. Now that's something you wouldn't see at a straight party in Notting Hill. Guess what, I thought, I am not a robot.