We are in a warehouse party in Hackney. An old band mate from Los Angeles was in town doing the lighting for a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club show with the Libertines headlining. He called me out of the blue to tell me he was in town.
Vanessa and I walk in there around midnight on the tail end of a forty-eight-hour cocaine, Ecstasy, and sex bender that has taken us to a variety of bars, clubs, flats, and houses all over the city. As we stagger into the place, all eyes turn to us. We are on fire, radiating an aura of invincibility that everybody is picking up on. A man walks up to us and asks, “Can I take your photo?” and we say yes, so he does, temporarily blinding us with the flash. He hands us his card and says, “E-mail me and I will send you the picture!” and we walk away as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
The DJ is spinning Primal Scream at a thunderous volume, and we dance and kiss to “Swastika Eyes” furiously. Love and empathy is radiating out from us in great telepathic waves. I am swimming in Vanessa’s eyes, lost in them for a moment.
Somebody bumps into me, and it is the guy from the Libertines, Pete Doherty, and he looks as if he is about to collapse onto the floor. His skin is ashen, and he is barely standing really, his eyes fuzzy and unfocussed.
“Sorry mate,” he slurs, rocking on unsteady heels.
“No problem.”
And then he staggers away, careening into someone else.
“He’s gonna play tonight?” Vanessa laughs. “He looks like he won’t make it.”
A guy comes onstage and is joined by a DJ, who starts to blast abrasive metallic noise. The singer, a tall, spastic-looking skinhead, obviously half-deranged on Ecstasy, starts to rap over the top of the music in lunatic yelps. The place is suddenly packed, shoulder to shoulder, and we are drawn toward the front of the stage by the swell of people and the heat is brutal and the noise is almost terrifying and it feels like we are at the end of the world and my eyes catch Vanessa’s and I never want this to stop, never never want it to stop.
Spilling out into the night air. The Ecstasy has come on so strong we both looked at each other at the same time as Black Rebel Motorcycle played and we decided—without speaking—“Home. Bed,” because we could no longer be contained by clothes.
And in the taxi home I rest my head on her lap and look up at her face as the streetlights bounce from her cheeks and I say: “My God. The scene is so incredible right now…. It feels as if there is fucking revolution in the air…. When did London wake up all of a sudden?”
And Vanessa laughs, telling me: “London wasn’t asleep. You were.”
She is right, of course. And we laugh, as the taxi speeds us home so we can fuck frenziedly until the sun rises again.
Shoreditch. The weekend of the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, and all of London it seems is staggering from one party to another, blissfully drunk and wasted. Wherever you go, carefree hedonism is the order of the day. The days are endless, warm, and infused with the surreal logic of dreams. We are drinking beers and people-watching from a sun-drunk table outside of the Barley Mow, enjoying the bustle of Curtain Road. It seems as if the whole population of the city is emerging into the light for the first time, blinking molelike into the mid-morning sun.
“Do you know something?” I tell her.
“What?”
“It’s been three months since we met.”
She laughs.
“I have something for you.” She smiles and looks over. I reach into my pocket and take out one of my old AA sobriety chips. It is red, and on one side is inscribed “90 DAYS” and on the other “ONE DAY AT A TIME.” She looks at it and smiles. I smile too.
“This is so cool,” she says. “Thank you!”
She places it on her key ring, and we pick up our beers, clanking them together.
“One day at a time,” we toast, as we drink. Vanessa is so beautiful today. She makes the sun on my face feel warmer. She makes the beer I am drinking seem colder. We are free.