The curtains were pulled, there were maybe about half a dozen people lounging in the lounge, all strung out. It was, after all, about 12noon and we were watching the Kirk Douglas film Spartacus. There were only three films at the Palace: Spartacus, The Godfather, Pt 2 and The Jungle Book. And round and round they went. Mostly, the same one went round and round cos, you know, it’s easier pressing “Play” than actually getting up and changing the film.
“I’m Spartacus. No, I’m Spartacus”.
In my best studied louche insouciance, I turned to one of the loungers.
“Hey, what’s going on? Anything happening?”
Louche insouciance. I thought my drawl was louche insouciance. He – Brad, the Canadian – looked at me like I was a kid on the first day of school, all new pencil case and freshly flossed teeth. Fat yuppie.
“Nothing much,” he said with the kind of louche insouciance that only comes with actually being louche and insouciant. “I’ll probably take some acid and go to Gold later, you know.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” I said in my best louche.
Gold I figured was a place – I might have been louche but I was still sharp as fuck – and acid, well I knew what acid was. I’d just never had any. I was excited by the idea – most of the music I listened to had apparently been made on acid and all my musical heroes were so-called acid-heads.
We went out that night, a whole gang of us to this huge warehouse somewhere, I don’t know where it was, it was somewhere.
Gold. From the outside it looked like, well, a door in a wall. There was no sign, no external indicators of what was going on at all. No external indicators apart from hoardes of tripped out Japanese kids lounging around, laughing and smoking and just hanging.
Every so often the door would open and there’d be a shard of light swathed in smoke and a swirling thud – the familiar “doof, doof” – of a beat. Then the door would close and the door would just be a door again.
Just as we went in, Brad turned to me.
“Here, take this. Open,” and as he said “Open” he opened his mouth. Talking to me like I was a fucking retard. I knew what to do. I just hadn’t… ever… done it before.
As he put the small square of paper on my tongue, he whispered “It’s a purple strawberry, fucking wicked man. It’s cool.”
As he put the small square of paper on my tongue, I thought to myself “Fuck me. Well, you wanted to go travelling.”
I looked around and there were all the familiar faces milling around: Polly, John, various faces from the Palace, a gaggle of Israelis… Had they all had something? John? Probably. Polly? Surely not. But then again me, so you never know.
I turned to Brad. “Hey mate, how long does this take to ki…” But Brad had gone. Bollocks to it. Worst thing comes to the worst, I’ll knock out an album of swirly guitar music.
Inside it looked like a spaceship – vast, with lights everywhere, the floors were moving and the lights kept flying around darting in one eye and out the other. It was really difficult to move around, what with the moving floor and the walls that were, i don’t know what they were made of, but they weren’t solid. It was like squidgy, like suction foam. Shaving foam. It was like shaving foam. The walls were made of shaving foam. I don’t know. Fuck, it was Tokyo. Walls made of shaving foam, it was possible.
I couldn’t see a thing, smoke everywhere. Light, darts, smoke… It was… I don’t know. The people looked amazing. Tall and angular with geometric hair – fuck, they looked fantastic and danced… moved like human liquid, just flowing and sliding in out of the music and the music, the music was… the music was the best music I’d ever heard. It wormed its way into my head, taking me on a journey. Or it would have done if I could have moved, but the combination of the lights and the smoke and the floor – what sort of fucked-up technology was that, that made the floor move? It was very fucking Tokyo, just the sort of thing you’d hope to see over here but not really expect – and was kinda funny, a club where the floor moves for you.
I leaned against into the foam wall, soaked back into it and grabbed hold of a small shelf that someone had thoughtfully put there. The smoke, the music, the people… the floor. The shelf I was… the shelf squidged up, just kinda melted. I’d have fallen over but rolling with the floor and the movement, it was like I was at sea, just going with the waves. This was some place. Clubs back in London had a lot to learn from Gold. I just stood there, taking it all in when…
“Hey, you OK?”
It was Brad, the Canadian.
I tried to answer. I had the words “Yeah, it’s cool” in my mouth but they seemed… stuck. There was definitely a blockage somewhere.
“Cool acid, yeah?” he said. “Purple strawberries, man. Fuckin wicked stuff. Just go with it.”
That was the acid then. I was sold big time. No wonder Syd Barrett and Julian Cope and all those other guys went for this one. Acid. I was going to take this again. I was going to take this every day. Why wouldn’t you want to take this every day?
There’s that story that Syd felt the same way and dropped a load of acid in his water tank at home so every time he had a cup of tea… Zap. Every time he brushed his teeth… Zap. Every time he did anything… Zap. Cup of tea. Zap. Wash your face. Zap.
It was an idea, though whether it was a good idea, I’m not sure. You take some acid, you feel a bit flush, you splash your face with water. If the water has got some acid in it, you’re just going to be flushing and splashing and flushing and splashing and flushing and splashing until you don’t know where the flush stops and the splash begins.
I’d slipped into Mark’s world easily and increasingly everything seemed to be revolving around drugs. If you weren’t working, you took drugs. That was it. That was the story. If wasn’t like it was even drugs. It was just normal. Going to Mark’s room was just like going to Sainsbury’s. Nothing more curious or subversive than that. And if you didn’t want to go to Sainsbury’s, there was also Waitrose (James) and Lidl (Yossi). No one went to Waitrose unless they were fresh off the boat and you only went to Lidl if things were a bit tight. But it didn’t matter where you went, because you went. And everyone went.
After a while it didn’t really matter what the drug was. Like Grace Slick said, it was only the ones that mother gave you that didn’t do anything at all. And mother wasn’t here.
I don’t know when I got home. I don’t know how I got home. I guess I could remember if I tried but who can be fucked to try. What difference? I made it home and home was sitting in Mark’s room holding a tin can of vending machine coffee, the most sickly liquid known to man, and smoking a spliff, one of an endless conveyor belt of spliffs going round.
Conversation, I don’t know, maybe but if it was there, I wasn’t part of it.
**********************
Something to take you up, something to calm you down. Something to take you out, something to bring you back. Whatever you wanted, Mark had a cereal box for it. I noticed that he was never out, but each to their own. And my own was acid. Fuck me, was that my own. I was going to have acid every day – and did for a few days until someone gave me some Ecstasy…
I can’t remember who said it but I can remember the conversation.
“You going out tonight?” I said.
“Sure, what else are we going to do? Going the Cave later. There are some wicked new pills knocking around. Coming?”
“Sounds good. I kinda fancied some acid tonight though. They’re supposed to be good these pills?
“Take the pill and then about an hour or so later, drop the acid. You’ll never look at things the same way again.”
That’s the great thing about life, don’t you think? There’s always new stuff to learn.