The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories

by Howard Marks

  I had DJ bookings stretching through till October and I was as high as a fucking kite. That night I was playing for a mate in a sweaty gaff in the basement of a kebab shop on the Edgware Road. The vibe was perfect: underground and mellow. The boys on the gate were super-chilled and you could puff if it was done discreetly.

  I had a few beers and socialised a bit, trying to stay straight-headed. If I tuck into too much skunk or bugle before I get on the decks all sorts of chaos is likely to follow. It’s a question of getting locked into the groove. The ideal night is one where the first mix goes right. There’s a surge from the crowd as they sense new energy on the decks and you go with it. After that, you can stuff yourself with what you like – even done it tripping a few times, which is quite a challenge. I’ve heard a couple of DJs who brag that they play best on a trip. So do I, but it’s a social one, tense with the anticipation, keeping an eye on my watch.

  It was one of those nights you dream about, when everything falls into place. All the right records were at my fingertips as soon as I dug in the box. Then, halfway through my set, I saw her best mate giving it some shimmy. So she was bound to be here! My senses tightened and I concentrated on the set. The records kept on coming, the heat was building, the vinyl grew hazy with condensation as soon as it came out of the sleeve.

  The heat was outrageous. I was throwing beers back. We had to cane all the charlie before it sweated up. People were starting to lose it, but they kept right on dancing. We were all locked in together, a rare and utterly fucking wondrous moment: pure ecstasy. More coke, more beer, more T-shirts pulled off, more skunk in the air, and when it seemed like there wasn’t any further to go, the buzz just kept building, bodies sliding against each other to the music. It was so hot, so scary, everyone was laughing in amazement. They were shrieking, hollering and whistling when it seemed like there just wasn’t any more air to even draw breath.

  I play house. When I first heard it, I was into reggae and funk and a mate came back from America with a bag of tunes. We had already developed a boys’ club – trainspotting Fred Wesley, Maceo, the deep dirty funk from America’s East Coast and the crazy Latin boogie from Los Angeles. Washington threw out mad go-go beats that had us all sweating our arses off, speeding things up. Then came dark, marijuana nights down in Melon Road, Peckham, with Jah Shaka giving us pumping acid dub. We’d stay out until the break of dawn, dancing all night, fuelled only by ganja and Red Stripe.

  That was then. And with the help of a few little pills and a bit of understanding, THIS is now.

  I play house. I keep it fat and I keep it funky. I want to convey that happy sexy vibe I got through funk, as well as the moody weird shit and the trippy frequencies of dub – like when you realise that you’ve been dancing for two or three hours just to a rhythm. I want people to feel what I feel. I want them to feel the simple joy of dancing, the release of losing the plot in a little room with a couple of hundred other people who want to do the same. Shit, I love dancing!

  Then she was there and we hugged each other, bursting with a simple feeling of happiness and we held each other tight. I could feel her body pressing against mine in the heat. With sweat streaming down my face, I kissed her mouth and she kissed me back and at that moment I was the fucking king of everything and this was RIGHT.

  We stayed up until Tuesday: hanging out in Full Circle, then round someone’s house, then off to Strutt, then off to someone else’s gaff. We were full of each other, in fucking LOVE, mate, buzzing, drugged-up with Es, spliff, charlie and more charlie . . .

  Got me thinking about that coke. I should get rid of it before I hit customs. They might have a dog, like in Naples. I’m sure that dog isn’t a drug dog, it snarls and lunges at everyone. You can see the handler making stupid secret noises and twitching the fucker’s leash so he goes for me (it’s the BOX). I was clean. They gave up when I was down to my Calvin’s. So what to do? Go and do it now and risk my boxes getting raped by the handlers when they go back through the rubber curtains unclaimed . . .? Or wait and squeeze into that toilet over there with all my boxes and trolley . . .?

  WHAM!!! Ah, that’ll be my boxes, last as usual. There’re couple of nice Swedish girls watching me now, a bit of the old DJ mystique. They look furtive and almost interested but I can see they’re not ravers, they’re just curious in an anthropological way. My first box, a big steel fucker, has KO’d one of those sad anonymous blue Samsonite copies and scarred the corner and there’s a sort of fluid seeping out on to the rubber. My boxes are hardly scratched (I’m always amazed they let these through with regular luggage, it’s senseless violence!). The bag’s owner, herself a bit of a dented old bag, looks at me with a beaten look on her face like she’s used to it and my victory is diminished sizeably.

  The toilet’s great – typical Scandi hygiene. Loads of shiny, gleaming, sweet-smelling surfaces. Perfect. I’m scooping the gear out and as my eyes sweep the interior of the cubicle I notice a little flash of colour right down behind the toilet bowl.

  Curiosity drives me and I bend down. I pick up a wrap and it’s FULL. The powder twinkles, maybe a little too much, but it’s got that right crystalline tweak to it, the overhead lighting glancing off it in wide beams. I take a dab. ‘OOH! It’s bitter-as-fuck. Yoinks!’

  I start off with the rest of my gear, which perks me up and then I cut out a gleaming sexy curve of the new stuff. A quick double-check. It’s not ketamin, smack or speed, and it’s free. Greedy old me. ‘If she wasn’t sure it was me on the phone, then who did she think it was?’ I think. A sharp lancing snap of suspicion in my belly and then gone.

  The light outside has improved when I step out of the cubicle. It has a kind of twinkling property that I hadn’t noticed before. It’s a little bit stuffy but that’s bound to be partly down to the drugs. It’s weird, the muzak and people’s voices blend and then jar slightly.

  I look down to check my bags. All present and correct and they look fucking ace: gleaming steel boxes, tools of me trade, mate. I’m the Lone fucking Ranger, blown into your town so strap yourselves down ’cos I’m-a-comin’ in! I’m the hired gun with his pistols packin’ blazin’ HOUSE MUSIK! Come one, let’s have you!! I’m itching to play. I square my shoulders and stride on. Fuck me, this gear’s the business.

  The victim’s wobbling ahead of me, the liquid still oozing out of her bag. It dribbles on to the (fantastically shiny, sort of like when you look at a deep pond and you can see the surface, but you can see the dark depths as well) brown linoleum floor. It looks like a beautiful glittering cord. Her feet splatter through it. We’re going through customs. I’m cool and totally clean and buzzing like a bee. Just then the old woman notices the brook of gunk and starts squawking. I swerve round her, expert in my trolley-handling, but the incident has been enough to get some unformed twit out of his office. First thing he sees are my boxes.

  ‘Pssst!’ goes the official and nods in the direction of the counter. I follow him. His trousers are neat and pressed and halfway up the crack of his arse. His hair is cut neat, halfway up his red neck.

  ‘Passport!’ He holds out his hand. He looks at my passport photo and back at me, like I’m a wanted criminal, narrowing his eyes. He’s either on a highly sophisticated wind-up or he’s so fucking dumb he doesn’t think I’ve seen all this before. Off comes the immaculate cap and he puts it on the steel counter and gently smoothes his pink hand over his blond hair.

  ‘And what is your purpose for coming to Sweden, Mr . . . S . . . m . . . ithhh?’ He fixes me with another of those killer looks. Well, now, with those record boxes, I wonder what I could possibly be doing, for fucksake?

  ‘I’m over here to DJ . . . Mr . . .’ I say and peer at his name tag, but the letters seem to be dancing around. ‘Yeh . . . Mr.’

  ‘Your bag?’

  ‘Yes, they all are, mate.’ I reply. I’m not going to pass it straight over to him. He’s going all the way so I may as well go with him to see how long it is before he gets fucked off with it. He looks
up sharply, now he knows it’s ‘Game On’.

  ‘Your bags, please. Up here!’ He slaps the counter. I move faster than I’ve ever moved before and in one gorgeous fluid movement I twist round in a kind of t’ai chi (crane gets angry at monkey picking nuts from tree) move and my heaviest box smashes with a crash on to the counter. A crash that’s only partly softened by his cap taking the first hit. He’s so gobsmacked at the speed of my move, he hasn’t even noticed the cap.

  ‘Open please.’ I twist the box round, grinding his cap and smiling. ‘There! My records! Help yourself!’ He’s a bit confused. There’re almost two hundred tunes there. Is he going to go the whole hog? Go on, I dare you! I think. If he does he has won, because he doesn’t actually have to put them back. This is one chance to wind me up.

  I got into this business through house music, which is all about understanding and togetherness. OK, so we all took drugs too and people have got fucked up, but on any journey there’re casualties. The upside of the house movement was amazing, but now commercial interests have elbowed their way in: big-time drug lords, crap clubs, stupid records. More people go to clubs now and with the growing market the quality of drugs is lowered, so more people get sick and the witch-hunt begins. And who is it who gets it in the neck? The most visible members of the movement those of us marked out by our metal boxes. It’s like we’re the drug dealers.

  If I was going to be smuggling drugs I’d scarcely be doing it with a couple of record boxes. I bet that old lady had half a kee of coke in her doffed-up suitcase. It’s a battle that I’m used to. It’s like the border guards used to be like when you were travelling abroad for the football. One false move and you’d be straight back home, so you had to bite your lip while they treated you like vermin.

  He puts his fingers on the records, where to start? I’m just looking at him in a totally unthreatening manner, which will make it worse for him. He’s hesitating. I can feel his mind clicking away. Shit, I can feel it, it’s a kind of rapid tremble like a small dog shakes when it wants to do something but is held back. He looks up at me, his eyes have still got some fight in them.

  ‘Come on, mate!’ So he goes to my holdall, rips it open, throws all my clothes around in a frenzy, thrusts and pokes his thick, clean fingers in corners, but he’s moving slowly and missing loads. He goes back to the box and scoops about thirty records out. I notice the beads of sweat on his head. He looks through those records, quite thoroughly, bless him.

  He takes my ticket and passport and goes into a back room. Oooh, he’s shaken me up a bit. I suck in some air right down into my lungs, charging through bronchial tubes, swelling those little aureoles down there, squeezing the oxygen into my bloodstream, powering me up. I let the air hiss back through my teeth. I mustn’t grind them. Jesus, they’re clenched so tight . . .

  Then he comes out again. ‘Put your bags back on the trolley.’ I’m free! Then his clean young face crumples up when he sees the ruined cap. He points! In the back of the net!

  ‘Follow me!’ The Search Scenario. Here we go, Round Two.

  ‘Can I have your clothes?’

  So I strip off in a flash. I feel like my body’s in perfect nick, honed down by careful years of drug use and the good life. I flex my muscles gently and stare into his face, still with that nutter’s friendly look.

  ‘I see you are used to this,’ he sneers.

  ‘It’s the Box isn’t it? That’s why you’re doing this,’ I say.

  ‘Ah, you know it is my job. You know what I’m looking for.’ He’s on his trip now, the justification (you’re sick with your acid house and children dying in the clubs).

  He gives up. I’ve kept my cool and I’m clean, although a urine test might tell another story. I pick my passport and ticket up and fuck off to the bar on the other side of customs. The ice-cold lager tastes so fucking sweet I feel like eating the glass, so I order four more and tip them down my throat. As the last one goes down I catch a glimpse of myself in the bar mirror. My face is streaked with sweat, there’s beer foam round my chops and my eyes are bulging out on bleedin’ stalks. What was in that wrap I found? I guess it must have been PCP.

  But Sweden made me feel kind of cheap. The punters have to pay over the odds to get me in their club – wouldn’t they be just as happy with one of their homegrown DJs? Isn’t this all part of the cheapening of the scene? It makes me yearn for the simple underground. I just want to play house.

  From: Disco Biscuits, ed. Sarah Champion, 1997

  He did not see any reason why the devil should have all the good tunes

  Rowland Hill

  Howard Marks

  My First Ecstasy

  I WENT TO the Reading Festival. The Super Furry Animals had promised me I could drive their tank, which had been converted to a giant technoblaster with a gun barrel modified to fire sliced bread into famine stricken pockets of the festival crowd.

  ‘Creation Records won’t let you drive the tank, Howard. They won’t let any of us drive it,’ said Daf, the Furries’ drummer.

  ‘Why the fuck not?’

  ‘Something about it not being insured, I think. Anyway, we’re thinking of getting a Spitfire once Creation get shot of our tank.’

  ‘Why are they getting rid of it?’ I asked.

  ‘Economics, I expect, Howard. You know what these record companies are like. Nobody we know can actually drive it, it’s too big for most roads, a transporter has to carry it with a special police escort, parking fees are bad, and we never charge for anyone to listen to it.’

  ‘So this is our last chance to drive it.’

  Someone interrupted.

  ‘Howard, have you taken Ecstasy yet?’

  It was a guy I’d met some weeks earlier at the Bar Lorca in Stoke Newington. We’d got drunk and stoned for most of one night, and I’d talked about how I’d been busted in the eighties, had just got out of nick, and had missed the whole rave culture: the music and the psychoactives.

  ‘No, I haven’t. I’m still funny about pills. I have to be sure what I’m taking. I can do that with weed and hash, but not with pills.’

  ‘What if I guaranteed you with my honour that this tab is pure unadulterated Ecstasy.’

  I looked into his eyes. I trusted him totally.

  Half an hour later, I was gazing at the tank. Its name was Think. DJs were inside its body, letting loose tidal waves of hammering, honking and hoofing techno. Frenetic, serious and beautiful humans were dancing on its roof and all around. The tank pulsed to the lowest bpm, focused, and began heavily bonding with me. Think had had a pretty shite life lumbering through Northern Ireland, the Falklands and Bosnia. Think must have witnessed immeasurable misery, death and sadness. Think had been stuck in trenches, overturned in bloody mud, covered in muddy blood, shot at, given headaches by hand grenades, impounded and busted. Now God had given it a heart transplant. Gone were the arteries of artillery. This was a different kind of smoke that filled its lungs. Joy boom boom boom-boom-boomed from its veins. Sex danced on its head.

  ‘We’re on,’ said Daf. ‘Come with us, Howard. You can stand at the back of the stage. The view’s great.’

  ‘Can I bring the tank?’

  Eighty thousand people heaved and swayed while I hid in the shadows of speakers and scaffolds and while my Nepalese joint and ego simultaneously exploded.

  ‘Now I’d like to introduce Howard Marks,’ announced Gruff, the lead vocalist.

  ‘He’s going to sing his favourite Beatles song.’

  The fuckers! They warned me about this. I was cornered. I could slope off, lose my street cred, and be for ever mocked and reviled in the valleys of my homeland. Or I could walk to the front of the stage and sing a Beatles song with roughly the same result. A few refrains fought each other in my mind, but I couldn’t remember how they started. Then I lost the concept of language. The tank was winking at me from the distance. I tried to grab some pre-Ecstasy reality and started counting: one, two, three, four . . . that was it. Nine. Number nine. The
Beatles once wrote a song whose only lyrics were ‘Number nine, number nine, number nine . . .’ I’ll sing that one. I grabbed the microphone, screamed ‘Number nine’ nine times, ambled down from the stage, and went off to the Notting Hill Carnival.

  Jason Parkinson

  Skateboards and Methadone – No one should be asked to handle this trip

  IT WAS LATE spring, maybe early June. Night-time. It had just stopped raining. Varnish and myself were out on the orange-black wet Derby streets. We were by the hospital on Osmaston Road, looking down Keble Close that ran down the side of the hospital. There were wet, glistening cars on both sides of the road, all the way down to a dead end, a high kerb and fences with just a small alleyway to get through.

  ‘It’s a tight gap,’ I said, ‘but I think we can get through. Gotta mind that kerb though.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ replied Varnish, ‘it looks like a big kerb, and at that speed. I don’t know, besides I’m not completely with it.’

  Several hours earlier back at the flat we were on the nightly shift when, just before closing time, we had a late caller. I’d served her before, brought up by a good friend. The woman was probably early thirties, once good-looking, not just a worn-out shell, eaten away by heroin and a rough life. She had bleach-damaged shoulder-length hair and a cropped black leather jacket.

  ‘I need some hash but I haven’t got much money,’ she told us.

  I saw Varnish’s face of money joy drop. He got up, sat on the couch and loaded a bong.

  ‘Are you asking for a lay-on?’ I asked, not sure what she was expecting me to say. There was no way she’d get a lay-on, she wasn’t regular enough and we didn’t know where she lived.

  ‘Oh, good God no, I have these.’ She pulled out a pack of ten pills. From the packaging it looked pharmaceutical.