Just follow the beams, man! (pt 2)
Just follow the beams, man! (pt 2)

Bernie and I cruised nonchalantly into the mega-club, conscious our heightened state of awareness might look suspicious if we continued to celebrate quite so joyously.

As if a six-foot-six inch man with dyed blonde hair, red plastic blackout sunglasses, a smile so beaming it gave the strobes a run for their money and to all intents and purposes, an outfit cobbled together from a thrift store catering to golf enthusiasts and performers in the Mardi Gras parade accompanied by a highly amused Irishman endeavouring to affect earnestness wasn’t enough to arouse suspicion.

A cornucopia of earthly delights was revealed to us.

Had Hieronymous Bosch bore witness to such extravagance and debauchery, he would have cast down his paint brush, sold his soul to the devil and got his freak on (to the break o’ dawn).

We bee-lined to the nearest bar to take stock of things:

All about was eclecticism…beauties from nations far and wide.

Men devoted entirely to a look, an image, an idea.

Not a dilettante was there to be found.

It was decided, that in the absolutism of our respective choice of attire, we would fit right in and having lowered something gloriously bright and strewn with mini-garden furniture, we decided it would be best to dance.

But where?

Shall we rave it up with the gurn-jawed day-glo-ers?

Or wave our hands in the air til we just don’t care with the hipitty-hoppers in huge baggy pants and gleaming white vests?

Should we take ourselves through to the 80’s disco where men in too-short drainpipe pants, cardigans and shoes with tassles leaned on the bar gesturing to the Siouxsie Sioux-style clad covens in the respective corners?

In the distance I can hear The Cures’ ‘Close To You’. I look through the crowds to see legions of black-clad miserablists stepping back and forth with their heads hung low.

I could join them.
I’d fit right in.

I motioned to Bernie.
He hung his head like a shaggy dog.

They would eat him alive in his polyester xmas wrapping paper ensemble.

We looked further on.

Then there it was:

An Indy club!

The final strains of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ spirited away the revellers as The Smiths,

‘This Charming Man’ tuned up.

The floor was empty.

But THIS is my tune!

I leapt forward and bounded onto the dancefloor.

“PUNCTURED BICYCLE –
ON A HILLSIDE DESOLATE –
WILL NATURE MAKE A MAN OF ME?”

I am punching the breadbasket, my lips pouting coquettishly as my hips and feet twist like Chubby Checker on VHS fast-forward.

The floor remains empty.
People stare.

I am unperturbed.
I taunt them.

Bernie approaches.

Two hulking meters of quality street wrappers with a halogen lamp for a head he appears grinning.

He mimics my movement then shuttles off into his own groove - a toned down rave-up in a field in an English summer.

Then the pretty girls gravitate towards the dancefloor.

Bernie and I have become centrifugal.

The sulking men give chase.

I sing to Bernie.

“…AND IN THIS CHARMING PAST –
THIS CHA-HA-ARM – MING MAN!! –
WHY COMPROMISE COMPLEXITY –
WHEN THE LEATHER RUNS SMOOTH ON THE PASSENGER SEA-EA-EA-EAT –“

Bernie joins in.

“I would go out tonight but I haven’t got a stitch to wear”

I am in stitches at this.

I raise my eyebrows to the roof as he realises what a spectacle he is and the irony of the words to him.

He is in stitches.

We are beaming.

Pretty girls are beaming at us.

As the song fades out, they try to speak but words are beyond us.

We are eyeball deep in the throes of acid euphoria.

We hug and kiss them all then make our way to the bar for another pitcher of something so shiny, it is enthralling and we have to drag our drug-addled eyes away from it.

We do the tour.

We hang our heads and oscillate with the miserablists.
We nod in time to the obscured thumping of hip-hop anthems.
We ‘Danser Le Mia’ trying not to grin at the over-exposed pastel –coloured towelling socks but they are so very colourful as they shoot tracers across the floor.

Not a thought of danger even knocked at the door of our minds as the evening drew to its’ conclusion around 5am and Bernie, perma-grinned, drove us home where he would sleep on the tiled floor of my tiny dorm room.

In the morning, he was deflated.

He put his sunglasses on and bade me farewell until the next time.
I had no idea when that would be.

Once he showed up around 1am begging me to accompany him to the mega-club but it was porno night on Canal+ and he didn’t have any drugs so I refused and he didn’t show up for a while.

We had several nights like the one described at length above though.

Sometimes I wonder where he is now.

I hope he’s alright but I imagine he is quite mad somewhere or still trying to rave it up on an island in the east.

I can’t do that shit anymore.

It hurts too much.

Rafter
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 10:06, 1 reply)

glad you posted the second half chap
pretty evocative and one of the best things I've read this week.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 16 Apr 2009, 10:26, closed)