| Copenhagen |
I had performed 8 shows in a day,
I felt hard working and rewarded myself by catching a taxi to my good friend
Chris's place.
He was having a housewarming and
I decided I would go in a moderating
capacity, knowing full well that
everyone else there was going to get
shitfaced.
There were about ten people there
when I arrived, there was a table stacked with delicious home made food,
everyone else had eaten.
They were sitting in a roundish
arrangement talking in groups of 3 or 4.
There were two cases of beer, a
litre of 20 year old rum, a large bottle of
blue label vodka, couple of
bottles of wine, a tiny bottle of orange juice
and five grams of assorted hash
and buds.
I was tired, I was going to take
it easy, just a beer and listen to the
chat. I felt together.
Messy old mescal followed by
vodka, in dispersed with joints strong enough to simulate a direct meteor hit.
I started to loosen up, my
earlier tiredness and resolve dissolved.
I opened my mouth and 40 minutes of
verbiage emerged.
Storys of nighttime mescal raids,
of snowstorms striking tree bound, speed
storys, love storys, philosophic
musings, enthusiastic sports quotes.
There was English Chris whose new
flat it was, there was American Chris who cooked and prepared the food, salads,curried
chicken,lots of guacamole--mashed avocado stuff
and beans of sorts.
Skipper Dave and his Danish main squeeze, a Welsh guy whose
name escapes me and his reluctant brooding girlfriend, Nathan, Rick and a
carpenter called Danny who had a swollen face from a tooth and his girlfriend
and two English friends who no-one else knew who had arrived that day and were
staying.
Nathan spearheaded the latter
evening. In energy, stamina and in total intake Nathan took the party
fearlessly into his own uncharted waters. His curiosity, his capacity to
overindulge while remaining conscious, his going where few others would want
to, standing, lashed to the wheel of a storm dashed large sailboat mid
ocean, enjoying every moment. That was Nathans condition.
Multiple repetitions "yeah
pass it here--you know tequila’s my very favorite drink."
Reaching for the bottle and the
thimble like plastic cup.
At one point he talked for an
hour, his arms waving, his hands flicking.
Hyper manic happiness and you
knew it was real.
Taking time out he rolled
everyone a large joint then stood on the spot waving his arms about slowly.
This enthralled us until he fell
bumfirst into a green plastic beer crate.
He tried so hard and for so long
to extract himself from that crate that we feared for his and our sanity.
In
despair he fell sideways and found that in that position he could simply
push the crate away from him.
To us all this was a great
victory.
Nathan spent the next hour
standing up, falling the length of the room then getting up again.
Two am. Half of us remain
,English Chris wisely decides to make coffee,
Nathan with difficulty could hold
his cup, but bringing it up anywhere near his head or specifically near
his mouth was impossible.
Chris took his cup and placed it
on top of the fridge.
Nathan devised his own dilemma-
he could steady himself by hugging the fridge and tilt his mouth towards
the cup on the edge. But to tip the cup with the same arm needed to hug
the fridge proved after many attempts to be futile, the dramatic ending being
an incomphending Nathan lying in a pile of bottles covered in coffee front and
back- waving an empty coffee cup.
There were five people hanging
off furniture or lying on the wooden floor in the morning.
After waking and coffee and mild
investigation it was worked out that the latter part of the party must
have taken place in a collective blackout.
Some lost their memories earlier
and others could fill them in but no-one could remember going to sleep or
anyone else going to sleep.
What did we say to each other,
who were we?
A room full of celebrating
people who had literally forgotten who they were.
Three cheers for the brainstem.
