My chucks tango, unlaced. Tobacco fresh air—inhaled. So this is ecstasy.
Three days prior. The tires of our taxi crackle on the cobblestones. Uniform trees, Thom Browne grey. Exhaling the cabbie’s stench we arrive at my grandmother’s townhouse: 24 Heriot Row. The 18th-century façade reminds me of decaying teeth. I buzz the bell, rotten gold.
A wooly embrace, then the door seals. That’s the thing about Edinburgh: everything feels reinforced with steel, then welded to the ground. In my room the carafe of water is indestructible. So is the glass. Pouring one into the other feels like putting on nice jewellery.
At dinner the hygge is out of control. I waft down carpeted stairs to the smoked-out salon. Cousins and uncles break bread above mounds of ribs and roasted veg. Bottles of bubbly pass in rhythm with the laughter.
“And how’s Hux?”, asks an aunt.
“He’s good, he’s a bit—”, dad says, gesturing, “he trips a lot. If there’s a step he’ll find the edge and manage to fall.”
“That’s because he has…Parkinson’s?”
“Tomayto, tomahto”, dad concludes, motioning for a top-up please thanks. I recede to the back garden, an unswept courtyard with Hitchcockian views.
Lotty comes out and rolls me a spliff, which I light with a match. We discuss drugs. She doesn’t understand how I attend gigs til 4 a.m. without cocaine. Back in the 90s people did coke on its own, she says; after the 90s they started mixing it with liquor. And these days people club sober. Society—it is doomed. I tell her about Xavier, a friend from adolescence who showed me the potential of one hit before the first drink. It’s a fine line, but when walked with care one that leads to glory.
Morning coffees and sausage patties. I spot a tea towel that uncovers a core memory: arts and crafts at my Anglo Spanish Nursery. I envision one day using these sketches to design a graphic tee, but until that day the idea will stew with those that preceded it in my baby monkey brain. Mmm—stew.
More coffee, upload video to YouTube. My nascent channel surpassing 150 subs and 25,000 views is cool, but the stat-checking isn’t. Some rando is hating in the comments; I thank dumb-dumb for his candor. With the fam I check out an interactive art exhibit to see if I find solace in another man’s psychosis.
January, 1887. One year before gifting his go-to prostitute a severed ear, van Gogh writes brother Theo from his Anvers studio. He is painting what he saw in the depths of Europe’s oldest mine: pale fire, black snow. “It often seems to me that the night is much more alive…and richly coloured than the day.”
At precisely midnight, a cocktail. In strut six pibones from Zaragoza. At some point during my journey to their banquet I lose consciousness, then regain it while landing this killer: the pandemic-delayed issue of my European passport. By end-of-opener my audience is comatose, brunette buns dipping frothily into espresso martinis, and as I head to another bar I feel certain there is no man suaver than I. Inside a discotheque: an orgy of accents, where Sexy Swede and Bolivian Ballerina reminisce on Parisian Nightlife. When one asks where I’m from it sounds like tu viens j’ou instead of tu viens d’ou. I am amused, later seduced.
Twelve hours, two Ibuprofen and one seven-pound steak frites later I am resurrected right in time for my date with a dance music festival. Rolling Billy No Mates, I’m completely sober for the first 90 seconds to really soak it all in. One of few hotties dressed fly and always dancing, I emit a particular aura, which I soon discover is that of Italian criminal. Bruh asks if I have any coke for sale. I get a crack out of his mates shouting in my wake, “Oiii, Johnny! Johnny! Johnny Depp!”
I am deep-throating an XL Extendo Glizzy when a second NPC inquires how much for my Swiss-made sunnies. “My mate needs them for FJAAK,” he says. I look quizzical. “He took three ecstasy before coming in the venue,” he explains. I am an empath—but no deal, Howie, no deal! Glizzy and I wrap it up before my fav DJs commence hypnosis.
Cinthie (Berlin), Kerri Chandler (New Jersey) and Chaos in The CBD (Kiwi) spin deep-disco sets of sex. The double RBVs taste like candy and my face is stuck on what-is-this-disgusting-little-beat. I rack up eight Shazams at the front of the crowd, feeling like marathoner Eliud Kipchoge pacing a pack of rabid champions.
As Chaos cools down and sweat dries cold I make a move on the cute morena. We get along, she’s from Lisbon. Nice voice. I tell her I need to collect my camera from the locker rental, does she mind waiting. She does not. When I return she says she needs her jacket, will I wait up. I nod, curling drizzly locks behind deaf ears.