Gurriers (45 page)

I felt a lot more nervous than I was comfortable with during the short walk down to the club on Dame Lane in the knowledge that my system was by now working on a chemical that was going to act on me as no chemical I had ever ingested before had.

Vinno, Mick, Charlie and Naoise had me surrounded, all “flying out of their bickies” as they would say and even more excited about me doing my first pill than they had been. All of their banter and the many encouraging pats on the back I received en route to the unknown did nothing to stop my palms sweating profusely every step of the way.

The club itself did little to improve my nerves. It was smoky, loud and dark and full of scary looking strangers all jumping around and screaming in drug induced frenzies. It smelled of sweat and deodorant and cannabis. We were the first of the several groups that we had split into to arrive in this scary place. I felt totally outnumbered by these wild people, as we jostled our way down the packed corridor in single file towards the main area of the club. The energy rush as the corridor opened into the vast chasm of writhing bodies, hit me as the more daunting cousin of the experience of walking into the pub earlier. The place was heaving with the energy of the packed dance floor which occupied most of the floor area of the room. The only seats available were bar stools which ran the length of each wall to accompany the chest high shelf that also ran the full perimeter of the room. The shelf was packed with bottles – most of them surprisingly water - in the absence of any tables in this area. Despite the amount of people in the place, there were plenty of stools unoccupied and Mick had little difficulty leading us to a corner that could be designated as our own, diagonally opposite one of the two gigantic six feet tall speakers that pounded out sounds and straight down the wall from the other. I don’t think we could have found a louder part of the room if we tried. The lads threw their jackets onto stools while I nervously took in the surroundings, heart beating like mad and covered in sweat but still oddly reluctant to take my jacket off in this place. I definitely felt a little bit different, but not in the good way that I had been led to expect; I wasn’t enjoying the palpitations or the sweating and every time I focussed attention on my jaws, I found them to be clenched. People kept bumping into me and then reacting as if we had just shared some kind of special moment.

I calmed down a bit with the arrival of each clump of my buddies, despite the extra attention to me and the inevitable recanting of the well meaning question, “Are ye flyin’ yet?”

I hated to give the negative response over and over so I developed a face that was intended to mean “not quite yet”, but the clenching jaws and a general stiffness of all of the muscles in my face turned the efforts into a collection of slow forming grimaces that befuddled me totally. I wished that my friends would go and dance instead of crowding around me just so that I could have a little face-making session to myself.

Things were feeling decidedly different now, and not in such a bad way either!

A slow contortion of a smile battled its way through the muscular tension at the notion of me sneaking off somewhere on my own with a mirror to make faces at myself. Then a titter snorted its way out my nose.

Ten minutes later there I was, topless atop the huge speaker, facing and screaming into the middle of the dance floor crowd, my feet planted firmly but with my weight shifting from one to the other with the music, as I punched the air above my head with one hand, then the other, then both in sheer jubilation, filled with the most energetic and exciting feeling of well-being I had ever experienced, culminating in the rush of sheer ecstasy that had made climbing onto the speaker to share my joy with the whole world the only thing to do!

And there they were - my brothers! All twenty something of my workmates and locals from the pub in the middle of the packed dance floor but with space to spare around them, all facing me, all jumping up, punching the air, screaming back at me, laughing, cheering, shouting encouragement.

“You fuckin’ will, Shy Boy!”

“Gowan, the Shy Boy!”

The effect this had was to magnify the surge of pleasure even more – further again beyond my previous conception of how damn good I could ever feel. I was screaming, laughing, shouting and dancing with a ferocity that I didn’t know that I had in me. I was enjoying myself so much more than I had ever thought
possible.

I was celebrating the moment as if my life depended on it.

I was flying out of my bikkie!

I don’t know how long I was on the speaker for but it was a while. I was almost relieved to finally get – for the only time ever in my life – a tap on the ankle from the bouncer.

I’m not sure if the drug brings out repressed wild behaviour or if it’s only the rushes of pleasure that make people behave differently on E or maybe in my case, I was also being a cocky bastard because I was so unaccustomed to being a part of a big gang of rough, tough, not-to-be-fucked-with party animals, but instead of climbing down peacefully I motioned my gang to move closer to the speaker and mimed my intentions to jump.

They reacted sharply – now aware of the presence of the bouncers – and positioned themselves to catch me with military efficiency. I really, truly remember intending just to jump off the speaker but before I knew what was going on I had turned around, positioned myself balancing on my toes on the very edge of the speaker, bent my knees and made my first ever attempt at a backwards somersault.(well, a three quarter one anyway!)

With all that was going on in my head in the seconds that the somersault was generating another rush, due to the head rotation involved, I latched onto one distinct little gem of a thought - you’re fucking flying now, Sean!

It felt as if I had executed the somersault perfectly. I was caught, in a horizontal position, comfortably by many strong hands, stood up and placed at the back of a three person deep line between me and the approaching bouncers – who were placated with vows of “never again” before they sullenly withdrew, shooting bemused glares at me all the way that didn’t actually bother me now that I was superhuman or, more accurately, now that my buzzing brain was telling me that I could do anything.

“Shy Boy, ye mad bastard!”Shay said.

I was instantly overcome with an urge to hug Shay, which I did. Then Naoise slapped me on the shoulder with a grin and got himself hugged also.

So began the huggy hour.

Everybody I was with got hugged, every female who came within range was hugged. The woman with the ice cube in her hand who was rubbing it all over my face as I hugged her had to be prized from my arms, and everybody that I bumped into was hugged, as if we had just shared some kind of special moment!

Suddenly I loved everybody in the world, and wasn’t afraid to tell them, especially the ones that lavished gifts of chewing gum and overpriced water upon me - the first one for the well being of my overheated body and the other to dampen the frantic machinations of my jaws and protect my teeth from their neighbours.

Time flies when you’re having fun and my fun times when I was having a fly began to wind down long before I wanted them to. I thought the club was closing early when the music stopped but was amazed to discover that it was half three already.

The flickering of the fluorescent lights coming on brought a sickening explosion of reality to the less crowded by the second room full of decelerating druggies, most of whom reacted like (and also looked like) vampires caught in the glare of dawn.

Without warning, I was now aware of muscle aches, particularly in my jaw and the backs of my legs, a cramp in my gut, and felt cold. I was still topless, and the glistening sweat that had covered my body to cool it was still cooling it – aided by the rush of cold air due to every door, including all of the fire escapes, being opened as wide as they could.

“Here ye go, man!” Vinno flopped my clothes into my arms. “It’s up to yourself, bu’ I recommend ye use yer t-shirt to dry yourself off an’ then jus’ throw on yer jumper an’ jacket before ye geh cold.”

“Nice one, Vinno!”

“Did ye enjoy i’?”

“Fuckin’ bangin’, man! Never felt anything like it in my life!”

I thought that there was no point in bothering Vinno or anybody else who obviously knew damn well what I was feeling about the negative elements I was experiencing.

“Daymo’s havin’ a session in the flats if you’re up to it. Most of the lads are goin’!”

“Will there be any women there?”

“Prob’ly jus’ a few girlfriends.”

“I might head home. I’ve a few beers in the fridge and I hope I’ll be able to make a joint by the time I get back. Haven’t been able to get one together all night. I’ve never sweated that much in my life!”

“Did ye drink loadsa wa’er?”

“Loads. Everybody was looking after me so well.”

“We all thought ye were goin’ to break yer neck jumpin’ off tha’ speaker, ye mad bastard! We had te look after ye!”

Naoise had joined us in time to hear my last sentence. Mick followed closely.

“Did ye enjoy tha’, Shy Boy?”

“I don’t know, Mick, I didn’t really get anything out of it!”

“No you fuckin’ didn’t! Jus’ a bi’ of a flashback to yer circus days, was i’?”

“Somethin’ like that, amigo.”

“An’ ye still love me also?”

“Was there ever any doubt?”

“No! Fuck off! He loves me!” Charlie joined the group.

“Are you talkin’ abou’ my boyfriend, Shy Boy?” Daymo added.

“No – he’s talkin’ about my bitch, Shy Boy,” Ray quipped.

As it happened, myself, Vinno, Ray and Naoise came back to ours to polish off my beer and to smoke lots of joints. To ferociously smoke lots of joints as if in desperation to flood our systems with one drug as the effect of another waned; to come down from our high.

There was a theory developing at that time somewhere in the back of my head about emotional equilibrium and the cancelling out of good feelings by bad ones. For example, the better a relationship makes you feel during the course of it, the worse you feel when it ends, as all relationships do.

Unfortunately for me, this theory held fast in terms of class A drugs. Apparently some people suffer a lot more than others on the come down, and I was cursed with a poor ability to recover
from the effects of ecstasy.

Every muscle in my body ached – and not healthy after-exercise aching either - more like the sickly aching of a flu. My eyeballs hurt also and I had these cramps in my stomach that caused me great discomfort and instilled the fear of God into me about my next visit to the toilet. My head throbbed incessantly and there were constant beads of sweat on my forehead despite the fact that I couldn’t seem to get myself heated up, as if I had allowed myself to get cold to the bone. A glimpse at my face in the mirror in the kitchen scared the shite out of me, so pale and gaunt was I and with such an amount of sickly looking blotches and spots on my skin.

I deteriorated so much after getting home that I was glad to finish the beer so that I could go to bed, where I stayed for 26 hours until it was time to get up for work on Monday.

Doing my first pill was a great experience. Getting over it was so awful for me that from now on, pills were never going to be anything more than an occasional indulgence.

Tramp’s death really upset me. Nobody close to me had ever died (I still had four living grandparents) and the cold, harsh overpowering finality of death was something new for me to deal with. I realised how much the grief involved in death is made more of a burden by the total and absolute helplessness associated with it.

Tramp was only a stray dog and I had only known him a couple of months, but I had opened up so much to him and confided in him so much that I had grown to depend on him a lot more than an outside observer might realise. The word therapy really did apply to my visits to the dog and the knowledge that my therapy was gone, forever, really did add to my hurt.

“Good afternoon. Eirtail, Jenny speaking.”

“Jenny, hi, it’s Sean - the courier.”

“Hi, Sean, how are you?”

“Fine…er…fine, yes. Just ringing to see if we could go for that drink tomorrow evening…?”

“Tomorrow…? Sure!”

“I actually only live around the corner from where you work. Would you like me to meet you there, or would you rather go
home first?”

“I finish at half five. Do you want to meet me here, then?”

“Half five tomorrow…? That’s fabulous! See you then. Bye! Four Sean.”

“Yeah go ahead, Sean.”

“Aidan, I have to finish early tomorrow.”

“How early?”

“Have to be home by five!”

“That’s just fuckin’ lovely! Make sure you remind me tomorrow.”

He was never happy giving people time off work because it invariably made his job that little bit harder.

Fuck him! I thought, I needed some good stuff. In fact, he’s lucky I’m not finishing early today. If Tramp wasn’t dead I would be.

A solitary tear escaped from my left eye and rolled down my cheek as I left the phone box. I needed consoling over Tramp’s death and consoling somebody is not the ideal first date, so I had decided to take Jenny out on Thursday instead of Wednesday. I could tell by her voice that I had confused her but that night I needed to get drunk and stoned with some buddies. I bought a tray of cans and asked Naoise and John, the two couriers I considered to be the most sensitive, to join myself and Vinno that evening.