Party

‘Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development—Turn On Tune In Drop Out—were often misinterpreted to mean “Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.”’   

- Timothy Leary

I.

Saul woke up that morning with a vague awareness of the party to come and wouldn’t feel roused in spirits, nor in the naughty bits, until much later when Theresa’s rsvp gloriously arrived: “Well, why not.” Theresa knew she was fine and fine ladies do not usually occasion places like this, that is to say, riddled with junkies and dominated by gigantic speakers on the onslaught to conquer your senses and lull your soul to trance.

It wasn’t Trance music though. What made him tick was D’n’B proper, i.e. 160-180 beats per minute. What captivated this particular group of friends was a fine Raggajungle tune occasioned by monstrous Dubstep drops. Starting in the late 80s the father of all these instrumental delicacies—Rave—with its rate of about 135 BPM swept Britain. All having been imported from the British Caribbean (Jamaica), Jungle then gained grounds and its fans— Junglists—would become the heroes of the now classic motion picture Human Traffic. By the late 90s the unifying term for all these reggae & dancehall & ragamuffin inspired genres and subgenres was coined—drum and bass. Here may be marked the starting point of its gradual descent from the ‘pirate radios’ into the fabulous garish world of mainstream entertainment.

   Crudely simplifying, asked who he was passing by the half-blind doorman, he answered that he was Saul.

“Silly name,” the doorman thought to himself, buzzed the door and let him in. He wasn’t a doorman per se but an old tenant that thought he was one and made a peculiar buzzing noise every time somebody would be just about to push the door; he relished the imaginary power he thus exercised. Placing himself into ancient times he imagined a society, which would collapse as soon as he’d miss one day of duty. The other tenants rather liked him. But Saul was already out on the street reassuring himself he didn’t forget to bring the skunk and all the smoker paraphernalia. He got on the bus just in time, leaned a bit against the cushion tablet and eased into some Benny Page.

Here he was standing in the sector of the parking lot adjacent to the club.

“Where are they,” Saul wondered and tried to tower over the growing crowd to spot the idiosyncrasies of his friends’ gait. Josh would be the fat one. Jenny had a beautiful vivacity of gesticulation. Mark would be the one smoking the cheap cigar and Hester would beam her heavily eye-lined gloom. The crowd was amassing; loud murmur humming like a sea of articulate bees, a laugh here and there shooting its way up and down like casino fountains.

   “Hey man, how’re you?” announced Mark just about to light a fat cheap ‘cubano’.

   “Hey dudes, I’ve just arrived. Been here long?” asked Saul letting his hand sink into his pocket, “Got the bottle?”

   “Got the guts?” smiled Jenny and flourished a bottle of Absinth.

   “Man,” began Josh with a long emphasis on the middle part of that address, “it’s a killer. You gotta try it.”

   “Dude, I wanna survive till Pixie’s on,” countered Saul and examined the bottle inquisitively.

   “Chug, chug, chug…” started Josh the chant.

   “Man,” Mark dropped in and resumed, “are we some bloody Americans? Czechs don’t need some stupid drinking chants or games, they just drink,” said he with a confident ease and laid his eyes on Saul.

   “You bastard,” said Saul smiling and so he chugged. His impressions rather resembled those of a Big Bang exploding. In the first few milliseconds there was some smooth pleasant titillation to the tongue but it soon expanded rapidly and degenerated into green terror. Every drop stung. It was as if Hulk would thrust his hunk arm down his throat. Progressing fluidly towards his stomach, it tore the tubes as it passed leaving a scorched wasteland. Upon finally reaching the stomach, the muscular green fairy grabbed it firmly and clenched it into a powerful maalstroom—

II.

   Shot, shot, shot, a spliff and some foosball. People, lots of people; talking, dancing, drinking, smoking—pounding beat of life—beers, fags, joints, blunts, bongs, pipes—pounding beat of life floating in the grassy air, in the vapid beer, in the plugged up urinal. Finally free, finally out of the shell.

   “Hey what’s your name?!” Saul shouted towards what seemed to be a nice blond.

   “M(/XX” answered she.

   “What?! I’m Saul.”

   “Mary. Wanna get out of here?”

   Saul’s smile broadened. He grabbed her hand and began leading her towards the exit with a flash of triumphant spark about him, but was met with resistance.

   “What are you doing?” said she, her mimicry confused, hand protesting.

   “The bar’s that way,” she yoked her hand out of Saul’s which started to sweat upon his realising the misunderstanding. She wanted to get beer, not to get out of here. Luckily, the queue wasn’t that long so the awkward stifling silence that hung between them like a steel lump and pressed upon their skulls with a claustrophobic intensity, was soon to be broken by them toasting hastily and darting their separate ways.

   “You wouldn’t believe what just happened to me,” began Saul panting.

   “Had some kind of a, ehm, faux pas with a girl again?” uttered Jenny who was used to Saul’s terrible amorous ventures and stretched her arm languidly in his direction. Saul accepted the J, toked deeply and as he was exhaling he sighed:

   “Yeah, nevermind.” Hester wasn’t there were no signs of Theresa, Josh was ordering beers, and Jenny turned back to Mark with whom she has, once again, been engaged in an argument:

   “But how can you say you wouldn’t legalise it? Isn’t that the goal of those marches we all so eagerly go to? And isn’t that what we all want? What the Nature wants?” insisted Jenny.

   “Yeah, we go to the marches to get high [posh cough] en masse; the communal spirit, good vibes. That’s about it though. And I don’t care about the nature—in this case—I care about us,” reacted Mark and sipped the beer Josh had brought. Josh looked sad.

   “From the viewpoint of an average smoker, that is us,” specified Mark, “the current almost decriminalised state is nearly ideal. You can smoke it, you can carry a decent bulk, you can grow a couple and once we get pass the arrests of poor ol’ grandma’s with their little gardens, I think we’ll be golden,” closed Mark and after receiving a shot from Jenny coughed a bit but composed his face back again by lighting a new cigar.

   “Exactly: a decent bulk! If caught with more than 15g’s you’re screwed. Considering that a usual plant yields about 50?... 100 grams or more, how’s that golden?” countered Jenny and resumed, “And once it’s legalised, it will be in the hands of the government to control the distribution, which means not selling it to minors, there’s gonna be a certainty of quality, dealers are gonna get pushed away from the market, the country will profit… everybody wins,” said Jenny slowing down and putting an emphasis on the every-body.

   “Government distribution means taxation, my dear ex,” returned Mark smiling as if more rejoiced about the latter than the former and continued. Jenny writhed.

   “Not only is it gonna be more expensive, the ‘quality’ you’re so hyped-up about will drop due to the mass production. Just imagine and compare the states now and what could be. Now, with at least some connections, you can get it from an individual grower who pampers it to get the stickiest of icky. If legalised, corporations take over and focus on growing as cheaply as possible and selling as high as possible. Moreover, it would lose the ‘forbidden fruit’ feeling, air, cache, what have you,” (Jenny here tongue-in-cheek confirmed the she actually did feel had by the last one). “The kids would find another drug that is illegal and therefore cool. This one, that only makes you happy & hungry, is a relatively healthy way to piss off your parents.”

   “Dude, have you seen Mohamed lately?” dropped in Saul, rising in tone to suggest a challenge.

   “Oh yeah, you seen that guy?” joined Josh and resumed, “dude doesn’t care about nothing but getting high. It’s a normal state for him, and how paranoid he gets, Jesus. And his girlfriend said he’s shit in the sack unless having his smoke on.”

   “Well sure, but that’s an extreme case,” Mark defended himself. “And you can’t blame that on weed, really, these dudes would sooner or later sink into doing something, anything, whether booze, machines, Molly... I guess what I’m trying to say is that the joint doesn’t roll itself, it’s always the man who does the rolling,” said Mark putting a dark emphasis on the last statement and leaving a semi-dramatic pause.

   “Poor little drugs are the victims in all of this,” deduced Jenny mockingly and went on as if addressing an elementary school class: “Kids? Don’t do people, people are bad, m’kay?” Everybody laughed.

III.

   Hester showed up with unusually coloured cheeks and rare life about her. She gazed at them, one by one, seeming to make certain calculations.

   “Shouldn’t we get on with it?” she finally breathed out. They understood. They chugged their drinks and stepped forward in the direction of the stage thus emerging from a green thick fog. Usually quiet and slumped within, now proud and composed Hester led the party.

   With perfect timing as in an imperfect movie, their favourite DJ just assumed the stage. The art of getting to the front of the throng and as close to the stage as possible is a tricky one and it requires great craft and cruel indifference. But getting there through all the stratagems and cunning slides into impossibly narrow crevices is just one battle. The war over holding the spot is something quite different. Though this was a small club so it wasn’t that challenging; take a 50000+ concert or a festival and you end up, my gorgeous reader, with a proper challenge. Here you were able to hold your spot easily for a couple of hours provided you had the stamina and that you hadn’t been screwed over by your dealer into taking sleeping pills instead of an E. In a proper concert mosh pit, one is being constantly swayed as in a tempestuous sea. One moment you are rocking out to some fine tune on your precious little spot, heroically won, and then in the next you suddenly find yourself 20 meters away involuntarily dry humping the gentle reader in front of you. You fall, you get dirty, and punched and kicked—a good soul sometimes appears and lifts you up again (which always feels awfully nice and bonding)—and from time to time you get buried under a pile of bodies. If the tune is right, it’s worth it. Crowd surfing is a chapter for itself, a full account of which, with all its ethical intricacies, is above the scope of this puny paper.

   I move yo body di jump s’don’t do it...“He’s playing it! Reload! Jesus yes!” cried Josh. Nobody heard him but they all understood his rapturous face. And they felt the same—this was the bomb that has been gracing their Winamps and BSP Players. And here was the man himself a few feet away spinning the living soul out of the record. He loved it, they loved it. There was a sense of euphoria bursting from both the sides exchanging energy. Earlier cultures had used drugs and music as the means to connect with their gods or to perform ritual festivities. Here, in the quasi-underground club culture of Prague, music and drugs themselves were the gods: Pixie was Odin and Weed was Athena; Aphrodite was Bacchus, Dj Katcha became Venus; Shrooms were the nymphs, Ecstasy Hathor, and LSD Vishnu in the supreme form of Vishvarupa. Manifold trumpets crying out at the pace of a speed-freak rapping the coked-up language of the tune that unites crossed fellows, emboldens timid souls and breaks open the mind. They loomed tall and large. Dark mechanical undertones of an army of gigantic creatures powered by electronic hearts glow crimson, pierced with rusty cables and galvanic sparks. Sad burning eyes they march robustly forth thus shake the Earth. Monstrous leviathans that echo straight out of Hades’ fathomless chambers; the dark lord himself tapping gently his black long bloody nails against the throne of slaughtered skin in the rhythm of Netsky’s Take it Easy. Jah! Emperor Selassie I, King of kings, Lord of lords, the Lion Prince of Judah, Jah!

   In the end, Theresa didn’t come and everybody vomited. ‘Twas a night well spent.

- Jaromír Lelek