(FS shakes his head, remains silent for over a minute)
Alright, let’s change the subject. Why don’t you tell me about this girl?
Jesus Christ.
What is it?
How long have I been coming here? Three months?
Four, but you didn’t turn up for three of the appointments.
Right. Three months. And all this time you reckoned I was making progress. I was getting better, you said.
And you are making progress.
Well, apparently not. Apparently now there’s something else wrong with me.
Try and remain calm please.
Calm? Calm? You just told me that unless I solve this negative aggressive thing, then I’m gonna be a friggin’ head case for the rest of my life.
I never said that, Felix.
Not in so many words. Tell me, Susan, you’re the fourth shrinker I’ve been referred to, I wonder if you can help me on something that’s been bugging me about this whole therapy lark: how do you know when you’re cured? I mean, when is anyone ever cured?
That all depends, Felix. As a professional, ‘cure’ is not the word that I would choose to employ. We prefer to use the term ‘understand’. Working together we develop an understanding of our problems. It’s only by exploring certain issues that we can work towards that understanding.
Yet more psychobabble.
Well, I don’t know what else to say to you. That’s a full and open answer to your question, which, I must say, is a lot more than you ever give to me.
So I’m a liar now?
No, I didn’t say that. However, you do seem to see me as the enemy – another figure of authority to be spurned or ridiculed. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Your feedback and general reluctance to enter into meaningful dialogue betray you.
Alright. You want open dialogue? Fine. I’ll answer your friggin’ questions. Ask me one.
OK. Can you remember when it was that you first experienced feelings of frustrations and fear?
Easy. It was when my mother first told me about the bomb.
Sorry?
Y’know, the bomb. That was the first time in my life that I felt really afraid.
I see. Go on.
Well, I remember, she was ironing at the time. There was some documentary on the TV about what would happen in the event of a nuclear attack. When I asked her about it she explained that there were a bunch of people in the world who were responsible for a very special button, and if they wanted to, they could press that button and kill every living thing on the planet. Erase it all, just like that.
And how did that make you feel?
I thought it was a joke at first, like something out of my comics. But she never looked up. She was so calm. It scared me so badly that I cried myself to sleep. And do you know why?
Because that was first time that you became aware of your own mortality?
No, I couldn’t give a fuck about that. It was because it wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that someone else was free to decide when I died. No one has the right to make that choice. But the possibility that someone could – and at any time – is what frustrated me the most. It still does. So, Susan, unless you can tell me that there’s some cure for that fear, or there’s some way that you can stop me thinking thoughts like that, then I don’t think there’s much point in me coming here anymore.
I see. Tell me, Felix, did you take drugs last night by any chance?
9
What Ant sold me was not good ecstasy.
Remember, I used to live for the stuff and so I know a decent E when I take it. I know how they feel. I know what to expect. Usually, the second you drop a pill down the hatch you’re as tense as a virgin surgeon. On tenterhooks, wondering whether or not it will work and, if so, how strong it will be.
The first thing that your heightened senses pick up on is a powerful but comfortable glow in the ditch of your stomach, as though you’re wearing a belt buckle that has suddenly developed a half-life. Then the air around your face constricts, pulling the skin of your flushed cheeks so tight that the hair stands erect at the back of your head. You feel a tingle – a lit fuse – at the base of your back. It creeps slowly up your spine, branching out across the shoulders and arms until, out of nowhere, it finds the keg of gunpowder that you never realised had been hiding away in your skull. Then…
Fwhoosh!
Next thing you know you’re travelling so fast and loose you can feel the mechanism rattling free upstairs. Your heartbeat trebles. And there’s no point in fighting it. That fat pump suddenly has an agenda of its own. It’s pushing you up.
Out of your seat.
Onto the dance floor.
Into the air.
Higher and higher you climb. Then, once you break free from the earth’s gravity, once you punch through the cloud base and level off, it’s clear blue skies all the way. See, with good ecstasy there’s no drag. No friction. No hassles. Everything just flows, enabling you to see life for what it really is.
So easy.
So effortless.
So uncomplicated.
And this crystal clear perspective and delicately precise insight turns you into a creative genius. There isn’t any question that you can’t answer and no concept that you can’t comprehend. You can distinguish and craft relationships that were previously obscured by the burden of self, and because everyone else on the drug thinks and feels the same as you, it forms the most solid bond of unity imaginable.
Take good ecstasy and people who you would normally cross the street to avoid turn into family. You become identical pails of water taken from the same heavenly lake of love. There’s no room for ego. No time for agendas. No energy for politics. There is only pure and total harmony. But like I said, the ecstasy that Ant sold me was not good.
No, the ecstasy that Ant sold me was absolutely astonishing.
It sent me to altitudes that I never dreamt were possible. I swooped and soared with the angels. I loved everyone and everything.
Like so many times before, the drug drew me towards the beat of the music and as soon as I found myself a quiet corner, I pretty much stayed there and danced all night. I returned a few smiles and exchanged a few words with the odd person, but I have no idea what the hell we discussed. Everything and nothing probably.
Several times during the night I looked down at the Breguet, but it was no use. I’d hold the watch face close, till it was within an inch of my nose, but the digits were illegible. Time became a blur. And so I danced and I smoked and I drank until eventually my legs began to buckle at the knees. That’s when I knew that I was in trouble.
See, anyone who has ever taken narcotics will tell you that there comes a time in the night when you realise you’re coming down. The heavy rock that you flung into the air, and which has defied gravity for the last few hours, eventually reaches the peak of its trajectory and starts to fall. When it does it’s the worst feeling imaginable.
You deny it at first. You kid yourself that you’re still in the ascendancy. Or that maybe you’re levelling off. But deep down you can feel the nose is dipping. You know that all that mindless fun you took for granted, that you thought would last forever, but that actually flew past you in the blink of an eye, is coming to an end. It’s like turning thirty. All that’s left now is pain. Lots of it.
So you’re faced with the choice that sooner or later every substance-abusing partygoer has to make: do you take more drugs and fuel the flight for a while longer, or let the tanks run dry and brace yourself for the unforgiving ground?
I knew which alternative I was going to choose. I had no intention of landing yet. Having already side-stepped one crash this week there was no way I was about to walk headlong into another. I rummaged in my pocket for the second pill.
Where the hell was it?
Mindful of flashing the gollywog money, I walked to one of the toilet cubicles and emptied the contents of my pockets. I filtered through the papers and coins but it was no use. The other E
was gone.
Perhaps someone had stolen it. One of the nonces I’d been speaking to earlier must’ve picked my pocket when I wasn’t looking.
I walked back to the bar and ordered another drink. Best way to catch them was to sit here and scan the faces of the people that came by. Stare them down. Draw out the guilty look. Then I’d…
I’d what?
Oh, where the fuck was it?
‘Alright geezer, what’s wrong wiv you?’ Ant was suddenly standing next to me. He placed a hand on my arm. The skin prickled to his touch.
‘I’ve lost that thing, mate.’
‘Eh? What fing?’
‘You know, that thing. Well, not the first thing obviously, the second thing.’
‘Geezer, what the fuck you bangin’ on about?’ He was humouring me, tilting his head to one side. I felt mine following it.
‘Come here.’ I said, and dragged him away from to the bar. ‘You know them two things you sorted me out with earlier? Well I had one left and it’s gone. Some bastard’s nicked it.’
Ant’s expression mellowed. ‘You dozy fucker, you necked that three hours ago.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, I came over to see if you was OK and you said that you never felt better. You wanted more. We both did another one at the same time. It was almost a double drop. They’re fuckin’ pukka though, inn’t they?’
‘Yeah, pukka.’
‘They’re a fuckin’ danger to society is what they are. Put enough of ‘em in the water supply and we could start a new fuckin’ religion. Know what I mean, Felix the Cat?’
I burbled something in response and offered to buy another brace of drinks. Ant accepted and carried on talking at me, but I was too busy trying to fill in the blanks to pay much attention.
A double drop? I couldn’t get over it. I’d never done that. Not even back in the old days. Jesus, I really was trying to wipe my hard drive clean.
*
At some point I must’ve passed out, because the next thing I remember was the sound of breaking glass. When I opened my eyes I saw I was slumped on one of the sofas. The house lights were on and the bar staff were busy tidying the empty club. In their haste to get out, one of them had tipped a bottle onto the floor and it had smashed nearby. I blinked away the tears. So this was what a nightclub looked like without its make-up on: pitted woodwork, flaking plaster and cigarette damage. Still, not the first time I’ve woken up to that.
I sat up to the acrid smell of a drunk’s crotch, of spilt beer and stale sweat. A stench normally cloaked by smoke and perfume, but which now, in the absence of punters, was free to batter the snot out of my senses.
A familiar record started playing in the background.
Remember the good old nineteen-eighties, when things were so uncomplicated? I wish I could go back there again, and everything could be the same.
I’ve got a ticket to the moon; I’ll be leaving here any day soon.
Yeah, I’ve got a ticket to the moon, but I’d rather see the sunrise, in your eyes.
‘Ticket to the moon?’ I squinted at the guy sweeping up the broken glass. ‘I never thought I’d hear ELO in a dance club. Do you not like your customers or something?’
‘Not at this time in the morning. Come on, time to clear out.’
‘What time is it?’ I was still having difficulty focusing on the Breguet.
‘Around six-thirty, I reckon.’
‘Six-thirty? Listen, is there anywhere I can get a drink at this time in the morning?’ My mouth tasted like a coalscuttle.
‘Why don’t you try a milkman?’ the barman said. He looked contemptuously down at me and then dropped the broken pieces of glass into an empty bin. For all the pain the noise caused me, he might as well have been ramming them into the side of my head.
I fell out of the sofa and juddered towards the exit with all the grace of a newborn calf.
Fly, fly through a troubled sky, up to a new world shining bright, oh, oh.
*
The Camden High Street that greeted me when I resurfaced was a very different proposition to the one I had walked through the night before. The jostling streets were now deserted save for the odd council worker, dreamily brushing the flyers, bottles and other Friday night debris into the gutter for the trailing road sweeper to collect. Standing there among the discarded peelings of hedonism’s fruit, I felt an overwhelming emptiness. All I wanted was to lie down in the cosy gutter and be taken away with the rest of the worthless trash. Taken away and recycled. Turned into something useful again. Something operational.
I let my head fall back and drew in the fresh morning air. Above me the sky was a wash of black clouds. The sun hung behind them, blurred at the edges, like a giant cyst in the sky. My aching eyes were grateful that it was obscured, but those clouds meant there was more rain on the way. I needed to find shelter before it arrived. I looked around. The only sign of life came from a small fast food outlet across the street.
‘You got any tea, mate?’ I asked.
The vendor, sandwiched between a grill and a fridge, raised a pair of tired eyebrows, filled a polystyrene cup and promptly turned his back on me. So I really did look as bad as I felt, then. I leaned on the edge of his pitch to feel sorry for myself and watch the tea’s steam blow away in the wind.
It was while I was waiting there that a couple of kids no older than twelve, one wearing a Burberry cap, the other a grey Nike sock hat (and both with the obligatory hood hanging out of their jackets) approached. They exchanged greetings and discussed the night’s events with the fast food vendor, who actually seemed pleased to see them. I waited for a lull in their conversation and then spoke up.
‘Here, do any of you know where I can get a drink at this time in the morning?’
The kid in the sock hat smirked, glanced at the trader and replied, ‘What you tink dat is in yo’ hand, fool?’ The Burberry cap joined in with his friend’s laughter.
I shrugged off their immature jibes and turned my attention to the vendor. ‘Seriously, you got any idea where I can get something a bit stronger than this, mate? Y’know, somewhere warm, with a seat?’
‘Nah, that’s not my scene,’ he replied, and turned his back on me again.
Sockhat elbowed his friend and pointed at me. ‘He’s not from this yard, blud,’ he said.
‘Way ahead,’ Burberry replied, pulling out his mobile phone.
Burberry looked sideways at me, ‘Say, I got sometin’ for ya, waste. Dere’s dis undagrown vibe out Primrose Hill way. Basement crib on da Chilcott Road. Open twenty-four on the dial. Sell’s everytin’. Dat’s ya destination, right dere.’
‘Really? Sounds ideal.’ I glanced along the road. ‘There a taxi rank around here by any chance?’
Both of the youths started to titter again. Sockhat slapped a hand on his companion’s shoulder. ‘He for real, Bossman?’
‘Dey is shut down ‘ours ago, man, innit,’ Burberry chided.
‘So which direction is it?’
‘You wanna bust one canal side, slide long down the path.’ And without moving his shoulders, he dropped his head and indicated behind him. ‘Signs is all dere for ya, man.’
I thanked them and set out in search of my after-hours oasis. I had no specific address but thought that if I kept my wits about me, I might spot a taxi along the way. Some must be running. Point a cabbie in the right direction, strike up some banter and flash a twenty; chances are they’d fill the blanks in for me.
It was not destined to be. There was hardly any traffic on the roads and by the time I reached Camden Lock I was resigned to completing the rest of the journey on foot. I crossed over the canal bridge, stared longingly at the Holiday Inn that lay to my left and headed out along the towpath. Then the clouds cracked open.
The rain tore into the canal’s surface making the water bubble and spit as though it were boiling. It streamed down my face and into my mouth, picking up the dried perspiration and jabbing my tongue with the sickly taste of salt
. I might’ve puked if my stomach hadn’t been so empty.
I tried to rally myself, to remain positive, but it was a losing battle. The fuzzy warmth of the drugs was all burned off and now I was trembling uncontrollably. The only thing coming down harder than the rain was me. My feet scraped heavily against the gravel path. Why was I bothering? There was no way I was going to find the place. No way on God’s earth.
You see, that’s the other side of what happens when you take an E. The comedown. That heightened positivity that you earlier felt, that catapulted you into the cosmos and brought you closer to something divine, is quickly replaced with a crushing negativity. Only this lasts far, far longer. Days. It’s jetlag of the soul.
You start to notice all the faults in the world. All those little repulsive details that you’ve learned to overlook suddenly scream out at you. The dirt living, growing and breeding underneath your fingernails; the fish skeleton spilled out from the bin liner that looks like a giant rat eating millipede; that bird pecking at the chunk of matter in the puddle of vomit on the pavement. You see them all.
When I was younger they weren’t so much comedowns as slowdowns. No matter how much I caned the night before, I would still be able to function. But that was nearly fifteen years ago, when vitality was an energy that coursed through my body, not just a word that I read on a margarine tub. No, I was coming down – and hard. How low this would get was anyone’s worst guess, but at the rate I was falling I could sense carnage.
Just say no? Damned right. Take it from me, kids. It doesn’t matter how euphoric the high is, nothing is worth feeling like this. Stupid old man.
I’d gone about a quarter of a mile along the path when I passed under a bridge. On the other side was a lamp, still holding out against the morning light. Suspended below it was a mangled umbrella and underneath that stood two girls, hunched around a mobile phone. They must’ve heard my footsteps echoing around the archway, because they were already looking for me when I emerged. They glanced briefly at the phone’s screen and then at me.
Felix Shill Deserves to Die Page 20
