The Ascendant

Chapter Twenty-Two

‘Marijuana,’ a young man with dreadlocks whispers in my ear as we pass him by.

‘Skunk weed,’ says another, and many others lurking in the shadows are offering similar products as subtlety as they can, but none of my house mates or Joe’s work colleagues are acknowledging them in any way.

‘Are they selling drugs in the street?’ I ask Iain.

‘Some of them are selling drugs,’ he replies, ‘but some of them are just pretending to sell them. I’ve got a friend who bought a packet off one of these guys for twenty quid and when he got home all the guy had dealt him was a couple of scoops of loose tea leaves. Half of them are on heroine or crack, and you can’t remotely trust any of them. Steer well clear is my advice.’

‘Will do.’

I can’t believe they are openly dealing in the street; it may not be broad daylight but there’s a high enough concentration of them to make their presence highly conspicuous. Sirens are going off all over the place and there are police vans rolling by on a regular basis but no-one seems to pay any attention to their ubiquitous enterprise.

We get to the club and after a brief period of queuing in the cold outside, we get in and Joe orders some more drinks. I’m back on the lager, as are most of the gang and that includes Dawn who started out on wine.

The music is mostly seventies and eighties pop, with the odd nineties song thrown in here and there. The club is at basement level and quite small; hot, clammy and very busy.

I’ve taken to leaning against a wall located between the dance floor and the bar, while Iain, Greek and Dawn are drunkenly swinging their stuff to the music among the throng below.

Joe and his colleagues are stood in a circle next to me and all continue to look a little too lively for my state of comprehension. I don’t know exactly how much Joe has had to drink today but I think it’s far more than his coherent manner suggests!

Greek and Dawn are still dancing with each other but Iain has broken away and is trying his luck with what seems to be every girl on the dance floor, so far without success. He’s not easily deterred, however, and is still grooving, bumping and grinding with yet more strangers by the time Greek and Dawn have decided it’s time for a rest.

They buy themselves more drinks and offer to buy me one as well, but I’ve barely managed to sip my way below the neck of my latest bottle, and progress is terminally slow. I don’t want to seem to be a wimp but the Spartan lifestyle I have led for the past year or so has hardly conditioned me to drink copious amounts of alcohol into the early hours. One thing I hadn’t accounted for in my dreams of high living were grungy clubs, a state of insipid nausea and a yearning for sleep whilst having a particularly loud rendition of Culture Club’s Karma Chameleon blasting into my left ear drum.

‘How’s it going?’ asks Dawn. She still looks like a figure of beauty, although her shoulders are now slumped and her face is masked with a sheen of sweat. She also no longer speaks like the intellectual panther I've come to know over the past week, but she’s still doing significantly better than I am.

‘Shit-faced,’ I reply. Sometimes, it just isn’t possible to pretend.

‘Me and Greek are thinking of heading off but Joe and Iain are staying, so you can either come with us or stay with them, it’s up to you.’

‘Count me in.’

I put my  near full beer bottle out of harms way and stagger towards the fresh air.