Oxfordshire
We left Brighton at midnight. Marcus and his boys Tim and Ben Balde had been promising a wicked party on Saturday night. They had been talking about it for a week. I was excited which was not surprising because in my youth I was generally excitable. Saturday night had come and I couldn’t understand why we hadn’t left Brighton yet, just more smoking and the spinning of more tunes in Tim’s flat. We finally hopped in Marcus’ red Golf and left town at just after midnight.We drove north for three hours. Our destination was the countryside around Oxford or more properly Oxfordshire. We arrived at the party just after 3a.m. The party consisted of a small valley. There were three separate music areas. There was in order of importance according to my tastes ~ The Drum and Bass house which was actually housed in a small farmhouse, The House tent which was housed in a kind of small circus tent, and the Evil, Rude, Take-You-Down-To-the-Depths-Of-Your-Soul Industrial Techno area which wasn’t properly housed at all. So as a result the valley was filled with some pretty Rude/Evil/Industrial sounds. It seemed there was about two hundred or so people in attendance. Ben and Tim set off into the night in search of acid. Marcus and I set off to find us some pills.
It didn’t take long for Marcus to track down the desired pharmaceuticals. I think he got four pills, well I guess that because he gave me two. I took the first one straightaway. I headed deep into the Drum and Bass house for a few hours of gigging ~ to those of you not in the know gigging = dancing. Once the ecstasy was coursing through my system I got well lost in the night. I remember breaking the second pill and taking it one half at the time at about hour intervals some time after the first rush had worn off. I do remember having a great time and talking to some really cool folks that night. There was this one dude, a black man, who had been dancing right round my space on and off all night. When the sun started coming up a lot of the kids went outside. Well I was chatting with this guy and he found out I was American and from Texas at that and he was highly amused that I was so into Drum and Bass. He kept calling me a Home Grown Rude Boy, a badge that I wear with honor to this day.
As the sun was coming up and everyone started going out of the tent and house and all out in the open, the DnB and the House music got turned down in favor of the Rude/Evil/Industrial zounds. Whoever was controlling the PA from that section took the dawn as a cue to turn that shit up, way up, loud as you like. The valley began to reverberate. The light brought a better understanding of the whole situation. There was this geezer who seemed to be presiding over the crowd. Word was it was his land and this was a party for his daughter’s birthday. He stood in awe at the mash-up he had created and indeed quite a mash-up it was. I had never seen a crowd of such seemingly dedicated party people. Everyone from the slickest wide-boys to the crustiest of traveling crusties was in full effect.
I found Marcus in the melee, he too was having a lush time. I hadn’t seen Tim or Ben for hours. Those nutters had found enough acid to blow the lid off the noggin of the common man. They had spent the night trippin their blessed balls off right up next to the speakers for Rude/Evil/Industrial bizness. They brought out a van that was serving tea. I qued up.
So I’m standing there in the tea line all blissed out from the drugs and the love and the dancing. I’m all happy polite young Texan guy which I just can’t help being. So I start chatting with this older hippie couple in line just behind me. All kinds of~
“Hi, How ya’ll doin,” shit.
They’re all~
“Oh just fine,” looking hella blissed out themselves n’ shit.
And I’m all “What do ya’ll do?’
And they’re all “Oh you know, travel, live, make acid.”
And a little taken aback I’m all “Oh…that’s cool.” All of the sudden I looked into the guys eyes and I could see how deep they went and how they seemed to hold a tiny scale model of the cosmos.
They were really nice and in retrospect I must have seemed as strange to them as they did to me. The guy asked me if I had ever done any LSD. I said that I had and that I liked it quite a bit. He handed me a little piece of tin foil. Inside the tinfoil was the strangest bit of LSD I had ever seen. It was a tiny black crystalline rock. I was all~
“What’s this?”
And he replied, “That’s a microdot, just put it in your mouth and chew it up.”
So I did. It was a little like a pop rock. Remember pop rocks? Within minutes I could feel the effects. It was clean, it was crazy, it was cosmic. I was flying within a half an hour. Everyone was sprawled out on this hillside taking in the morning sun. I was sitting near Marcus and his friends. I had assumed the lotus position and I was lost in my own inner universe. It was lovely.
This slapper sitting uphill from us calls down to Marcus in a loud classless cockney and says “Oy..Oy…Is your mate meditating?”
Well maybe I was but she totally brought me back down to self-consciousness. I think Marcus was afraid for my safety. Some hooligans who were calling me Wanky Yank had already threatened me that morning. I don’t blame them, most Yanks are quite Wanky. Of course Marcus wasn’t too afraid for my safety cause he ended up heading back to Brighton and leaving me in the dubiously capable hands of the Mad Man Tim. I wasn’t ready to leave yet but if I had known what was a head for me I would have gone with Marcus.
We stayed out in those fields till past noon. As the sun got higher in the sky the flowers started to bloom and the histamines filled the air. Now I had ingested through the night two ecstasy pills a microdot and uncountable spliffs. I was dehydrated and as the pollen got stirred up by the morning I began to have a histamine reaction. No one likes to be tripping and wheezy. The police helicopter flew overhead everyone gave them the bird. Sometime after noon we headed back to Brighton in Tim’s abysmal car. I was crammed in the back with this super crusty fellow named Flak. He didn’t have much hair but what he had was knotted up into one long white boy dread. The thing must have been four feet long. The worst part about the car ride back to Brighton was the glaring lack of water. Tim wouldn’t stop for refreshment and all that was in the car was this evil shite called White Lightening Cider. It was like 7.4 per cent alcohol and it tasted, in my fragile state, distinctly like battery acid. I was suffering. The main thing that will exacerbate a histamine reaction, besides more allergens, is dehydration. I thought I was gonna die.
I didn’t die. We made it back to Brighton and Tim dropped me off at Sarah’s house. She was a girl that Marcus had arranged for me to stay with. I was a mess. I told Sarah all about the nights adventures. The acid was still running strong. I was in danger of being gripped by the fear. Sarah said that Sunday nights down at the seafront were big fun and that lots of people met up there to finish out the weekend. I didn’t want to be left alone at her flat where I was sure to be snatched up by the fear so I got ready and we headed down to the seafront pubs for a pint or three.
The seafront was like a madhouse on ludes. All the party people had come down for last orders and were spread out on the beach like a herd of sea lions without a predator on the horizon. It was lovely. I have only experienced that kind of collective meltdown in one other place. That was at the Sunday morning party at the End-up there in Babylon Towne. Do you want to hear about that? Stay Tuned lovelies.
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