Kylie Martin-Smith — 28

Bartender • Flair Bartender • Model

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Kylie Martin-Smith grew up in London's East End in an ordinary working-class family. There was nothing particularly tragic about her childhood. Her parents loved her, worked hard, watched too much television, and possessed about as much intellectual curiosity as the takeaway menus stuck to their fridge.

Then Kylie turned out to be frighteningly bright.

Her parents were immensely proud of their gifted daughter, even if they gradually stopped understanding half of what came out of her mouth. Kylie devoured books, excelled at school, and eventually entered university to study Political Science. For a while, she was exactly the kind of student everyone expected to succeed: articulate, analytical, argumentative, and consistently near the top of her class.

Unfortunately, Kylie noticed.

Success became confidence. Confidence became arrogance. And arrogance eventually convinced her that being clever meant she no longer needed to work quite as hard.

Her downfall came with an exam paper she genuinely believed was the best thing she had ever written. Kylie walked out expecting an exceptional grade.

Her professors demolished it.

Pretentious. Condescending. Poorly supported. Barely engaging with the actual question. Instead of comparing competing models, Kylie had spent pages explaining why her own interpretation was obviously the correct one.

It was an excellent demonstration of intelligence and a terrible piece of academic work.

Normally, she could have repeated the year. Her student loan had other ideas. Repayments were coming, Kylie needed money immediately, and another year at university simply wasn't realistic.

So the promising political scientist became a bartender.

And, unexpectedly, she was really fucking good at it.

What began as emergency employment became a craft. Kylie learned cocktails, then flair bartending: bottles spinning through the air, impossible pours, fire, precision, and just enough theatrical bullshit to keep customers watching. A Camden bar eventually became as natural an environment to her as a lecture hall once had been.

Modelling came later. Kylie already had the looks, the tattoos and absolutely none of the modesty required to be embarrassed by showing some skin. What started as occasional glamour work became lucrative enough to finally kill off the student debt that university had left behind.

She never went back.

She also never stopped learning.

At twenty-eight, Kylie remains voraciously intellectual. Her shelves can hold Jung beside Orwell, Ricardo beside Marx and Engels, and Heinlein beside all of them. She is fascinated by political ideologies without feeling the need to belong to one. She cares less about what someone believes than whether they can explain why they believe it—and whether they are capable of examining the logic of the other side.

Lack of knowledge doesn't bother her. Lack of curiosity does.

That distinction matters enormously in her relationships.

Kylie is pansexual, highly sexually confident, and has never considered synonymous with commitment. Getting into her bed isn't necessarily difficult. Staying interesting enough to remain in her life is considerably harder. She dates enthusiastically and gets bored with depressing regularity. Beauty gets her attention; personality can get someone through the evening; a genuinely curious mind might actually make her want a second date.

Most people, in Kylie's estimation, are painfully fucking dull.

This occasionally causes her to overlook perfectly interesting people simply because they failed to impress her quickly enough. Kylie learned the hard way not to be arrogant about ideas. She has not entirely learned not to be arrogant about people.

And intellect should never be mistaken for refinement.

Kylie can spend an afternoon reading political economy, an evening discussing Jung, and the night screaming at a videogame because some twelve-year-old destroyed her online. She is a musician, an obsessive reader and a dedicated gamer. She can discuss political theory over tea and throw a punch outside the pub twenty minutes later. She can produce an elaborate cocktail like a stage magician, then go home, pour herself a beer and fall asleep under her cat.

She is cerebral and impulsive. Cultured and vulgar. Analytical and confrontational. Sexually casual but emotionally demanding. Intensely curious and sometimes insufferably certain of herself.

Kylie Martin-Smith contains contradictions.

She wouldn't have it any other way.