CHAPTER NINETEEN

PAST

When we got home, I was still deciding how I was going to tell her that I wanted out of the relationship. It was not going to be easy, not only because I didn’t want to hurt her but also because losing Angel was going to be difficult for me. She had ruined me in a way that I knew that I would never be able to find another woman that could possibly come as close as she did to my perfect partner. But as perfect as she was there some things I would not, could not tolerate.

“I have a surprise for you,” she whispered from behind, right into my ear. I hadn’t even heard her walk up behind me. The breath tickled my skin and a warmth ran through my whole body. As mad as I was at her she could always produce the most powerful reactions in me.

I turned around and she began to unbuckle her coat jacket slowly, in the same manner she had done for the pharmacist. I wasn’t impressed. If anything, she was simply reminding me of every reason why I needed to run and never look back.

As the jacket hung open I forced myself to not devour her with my eyes. I was not going to get distracted from what was important to me at this moment. Her hand went into the side pocket and produced a plastic bag. She tipped out six small green turtles from the bag onto the table.

“They cost me 50 dollars each, they’re direct from Amsterdam.”

Impressed I picked up one of the E’s and took a close look at it. It was beautifully pressed, rock solid with very fine details, the signs of a good ecstasy tablet. She had spent $300 dollars on these pills, an amount equivalent to her long-suffering mother’s monthly salary on a weekends drugs.

“Who did you get them off?” I asked.

“You don't know him,” came the ominous reply.

Never having been one for randomly filling my body with chemicals of an unknown origin I sat in front of my sleek 27” iMac, smacked the space bar on the wireless keyboard to spark it into life and a second later the screen sprang into full high-resolution glory.

I’d switched to using an iMac computer ten year earlier after the Ctrl, Alt and delete buttons had worn out on yet another windows PC keyboard and I’d since had 10 wonderful years of not shouting at a computer. I looked up bluelight.org's pill report; an online archive of nearly 30,000 different ecstasy pills. I pulled out micrometers and milligram digital scales. First sort by color - green. Next motif - turtle. There is a surprising number of green turtle ecstasy pills out there. Ok - size, 7.5mm long. Down to about 5 pills now. Weight 145mg. Two pills remained. Bad news. The two that remained looked identical and looked like the pills Angel had bought. One had a big read X over the listing to indicate it contained a dangerous substance and no MDMA.

I pulled up the image of each pill on the screen and to the casual look they were the same. But there is no such thing as a casual look when you have $300 in six little green turtles. I counted the columns of “tesserae”, the hexagonal shapes that made up the shell of the turtle. 1, 2, 3, 4 on the “good” turtle and, crap 4 on the bad turtle. How many vertically in each column. Good turtle column 1, 4. Column 2, 5. 3, 5 and 4 back to 4 tesserae. The bad turtle, uniform four in each column.

Ok, I knew how to spot a good turtle from a bad turtle but which was mine. Good or bad? I rummaged in the bedroom drawer for the jeweler’s loop, a small but powerful magnifying glass for inspecting the gemstones I collected. I grabbed my turtle and started counting 1, 2, 3, 4 ok next. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 YES!!! I quickly checked all six of the turtles to be on the safe side. I had six good turtles and a whole weekend to enjoy them. A quick read of the online details informed me that each one contained 135mg of MDMA and nothing else but 10mg of binder to hold them together. Even better they had only been released a month ago so there was very little chance of them having been “skanked”.

Angel stood open jawed with amazement that someone would go to all that trouble to make sure they didn't die from a “bad” ecstasy pill. What she had no idea of was that thanks to this gift, thanks to these beautiful, pure turtles – the idea of breaking up with her had completely left my mind. Or maybe she did have an idea of that and that was why she chose to produce such a gift at the very moment I almost ended the relationship.

------------------------------------

The world is split into two groups of people. Those who have taken ecstasy and those who have not. And no matter how long the former group take, no matter how many words they use, no matter how many languages they speak, not a single one of the second group will have any idea what it is like to be high on ecstasy - until they take it.

When they do take it, the first things they will say is “WOW”. The next thing they say will be “you cannot describe it can you?” And everyone around them who have taken before will say “no, we tried to tell you that when you kept asking us for the last 18 months”.

Ecstasy has been called “penicillin for the soul”, and for very good reason. Taking ecstasy for the first time was, for me, a life changing experience. I am an atheist but it was like opening a doorway into the mind of God. It was the single most powerful event of my life.

Ecstasy is an empathogen, an entactogen, as well as a psychoactive psychedelic amphetamine. What this means is it will enhance 50-fold the pleasure of whatever you are doing – regardless of how big or small. If you’re at a rave - it will be the BESTF rave ever in the world. If you’re at home on a winters evening with your wife in front of the log fire - it will be the MOST romantic evening ever spent by anyone ever in the world. If you’re walking the streets of Burgas on a summer evening looking at the lights of the city at 3:00am - it is the MOST inspiring and wonderful experience in the world, which is how I was feeling at this precise moment.

I could feel the breeze of the sea on my face, to sound cliché, it was the most wonderful breeze in the world. Time felt frozen and the city lights were shattering into apocalyptic beauty as we rounded the corner onto Tzar Simion 2nd Street – that’s when we first saw it.

1000 meters away and there it was. It pulsated a path through space time. It was immediately in front of us and then 1000m away, back to our faces and 1000m away, back to our faces and 1000m away. It was the single most mesmerizing thing either of us had ever seen. Well since the last mesmerizing thing we had seen at any rate, and remember, you get to see a lot of mesmerizing things on ecstasy, each one more mesmerizing than the last.

The green glow illuminated every detail of the buildings on the street, as the pulsating green cross teleported back and forth up and down the street. I could see every detail of every speck of sand in the render on the facade of every building. I could admire the trowel marks left by the artisans who applied the plaster a century before; they were invisible in any other light. Only the ultra-light of an ecstasy trip could render these details visible.

The green ultra-light of the cross engulfed me once more and demanded I admire its holiness, partake in its sacred communion of green. Together Angel and I worshiped the deity in front of us as we chorused its praises in unison, “WOW, GREEN”.

WOW GREEN it was indeed, it was the greenest thing we had ever seen, it was the brightest thing we had ever seen, it was the holiest thing we had ever seen and it was the most pulsating thing we had ever seen.

It was the LED sign of the local pharmacy.

We traveled towards it, feet may or may not have been involved in the transportation. All we knew was our destination: the amazing green light that seemed to draw us to it until we were standing directly in front of it. To Angel and I it was the light at the end of the universe, the light that caused the big bang, the birth of the universe, but technically it was simply the light at the end of our street. It was the ultra-light, the green “Ok now it’s killing my eyes” light that I now had to tear myself away from and just like that the spell was broken. Angel was also rubbing her eyes in pain.

The sign was a hazard to motorists every night. It’s stupidly bright LED’s flashed on and off every five seconds. To make matters worse, it was placed directly adjacent to an intersection traffic signal. Multiple times every evening it triggered the pavlovian reflexes of a driver waiting at a red stop light, causing them to set off as their peripheral vision caught a green light switching on. There was perennially a covering of cubic crystal glass fragments on the road surface as a result of the numerous crashes the light cased.

The cubic crystal glass fragments on the road surface were picked out in a dazzling display of exploding green light for five seconds before switching off and plunging into the blackness of tarmac.

Just as my eyes dilated to the darkness, the universe detonated back into existence as a shimmering display of a billion bright green stars captured in the heart of each cubic glass crystal blazed my vision.

Angel and I watched the amazing spectacle unfold before our eyes only for it to vaporize out of existence and into the existence of black. Black was no longer the mere absence of light; it was a bright shining ultra-light that cut through the green with its intense blinding blackness. It had texture and substance, it was enveloping and “we better get home while we still can, these are f*&% pills are strong” said Angel in three dimensional words that bounced around my head making friends with the black ultra-light and the green stars.

We walked the 300m home trying desperately not to be mesmerized by every single thing that caught our attention. As we walked through the amazingly interesting door of the apartment an amazingly fury dog came to greet us. It looked exactly like my dog only much, much furrier and much, much more lovable and much, much more cuddle-able. The amazingly fury dog had an amazingly long memory and in that memory, were many incidents of it being an amazingly fury amazingly lovable and amazingly cuddle-able dog and it knew what it was in for. It shot into its cage and blocked the door with its amazingly fury ass.

Angel put some amazing music on, I decided to listen to the amazing music on my Beats Pro headphones to see if it was any more amazing than it already was. Seeing me lost in a universe entirely constructed of the simply transcendental beat and spiritually uplifting lyrics of Enrique Iglesias’s magnificent life changing collaboration with Pit Bull in their epic hit “I’m a freak,” she disappeared to get me her DJ outfit.

I didn't know it but I was about to do something intensely stupid. For once it wasn't dangerous, it was just stupid.

Dawn had broken and given birth to a stunningly beautiful Sunday in June in the port city of Burgas. It was10:00 a.m. and the beautiful people of Burgas were heading to the beach. This ensured a good portion of them, the majority in fact, were going to head north until they reached “Oborishte”, my street, and then head along the length of Oborishte to the Sea Gardens and the golden sand of the adjoining beach.

Angel had finally returned from many hours of being mesmerized by household objects. She was dressed in a new silk Basque replete with suspenders that clutched at lace stocking tops, previously unseen high heel shoes known universally as “stripper heals” and a black silk band directed her throat. Finishing off the mesmerizing outfit were a pair of glasses.

She threw me the “DJ” outfit as she circled me in my swivel “Boss’s” chair. Seeing my head connected to the iMac by means of a bright read “Monster” brand cable that lead to the headphones, she resisted the temptation to swivel the chair. Instead she opted for straddling my legs and the chair arms - the additional 6” provided by the stripper heals making this possible. Reflexively I slid down slightly so my groin was directly under hers, the possibility of an errant erection was eliminated by the strong vast constriction of the “E”.

She gyrated her pelvis in leisurely circles and said “put that on or you don't get any.”

“These tablets better wear off or you won't be getting any,” I replied with false joviality.

“Well, you better get yourself off to the pharmacy for some Viagra then hadn't you?” she answered back.

She didn’t have to tell me twice, I stood up quickly and ready to go.

“T’s, T’s”, she made the Slavic tutting noise for “no" and added in English, “put that on first,” pointing to the DJ outfit.

“You want me to walk to the pharmacy to buy Viagra in a one-piece black, girls DJ outfit with let me see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9……… 13, 14 shiny chrome zips on it? And whilst were at it, since when were you ever a DJ?” I asked playfully, imagining she was joking.

“If you want any of this,” she said gesturing to her curvaceous body strapped into the silk Basque, “you’re going in that!”

I paused and looked at the prize on offer, up and down. Now keep in mind that I still had ecstasy in my system and for that reason I can understand why I overlooked the cold stare, the smirk, the seeming enjoyment of the public humiliation I was about to endeavor upon. Now don’t get me wrong, I found it extremely amusing as I squeezed myself into her outfit as I am the least person to feel embarrassed by a stupid act.

It wasn’t what she was asking me to do that was the problem, as much as it was her motive and way of asking. But my normally observant and inquisitive mind was willingly choosing to ignore the controlling way she demanded my compliance as if it wasn’t meant to be funny but rather humiliating. I would normally have picked up on her desire to control me, to embarrass me, to subvert me to her will – I would normally have pondered over her motives, her goals and reasoning, but not tonight; tonight, one look at her curvaceous body and three minutes later I was striding quickly against the sea of beautiful people on their way to the beach.

Thankfully I didn’t have to push through the crowd that was walking toward me – the crowd was making plenty of room for the guy walking as fast as he could in a one piece, black, shiny 80’s “Rave DJ” outfit covered in silver zips, complete with huge black and red “Beats by Dr. Dree” Professional Series cap on his head.

By the time I reached the pharmacy I was Billy Elliot and still high on ecstasy. I had been walking so fast that I had to gasp for breath at the pharmacist. After being offered two alternative Asthma inhalers I grabbed a pen and wrote “VIAGRA” on a medical leaflet. The pharmacist looked at it and shook his head, in accented English he started to explain that Viagra would not help my breathing, no doubt internally he was thinking ‘it won't help your fashion sense either mate!’.

“You need anti histamines do you understand?” He said, clearly believing I was the one who had difficulty understanding English. By now my core temperature had cooled enough to allow relatively controlled breathing.

“I don't need anti histamines - I just ran all the way here - I need Viagra.”

“You ran all the way here for Viagra? How hot is she?” He smiled wryly.

“VERY.”

“Hmmmm”, he snorted and went off to get Viagra.

He returned with a selection of boxes.

“Why are you wearing her clothes?”

“She said I could only have sex if I went to the pharmacy in this,” I responded honestly.

“Is she THAT hot?”

Obviously dressing in her clothes was not a fashions statement but more like visual terrorism.

“Oh yes, she is,” I said and pulled up a photo of Angel on my iPhone, taken an hour ago when she first appeared in the Basque.

“Dang!!” He said. “I’d have walked here naked for just a chance with that,” he said.

We both drooled indecently over the image for a few seconds longer before morality washed over the two of us, we both shuffled uncomfortably. “So, er, the Viagra?” I reminded him.

“Oh right, yes, well you want 50mg or 100mg?”

“I don't know; I have never used it before.” I could see disgust wash over his face; here I was about to be with this amazingly hot woman and my junk wasn’t working. He looked at me as if I were a disgrace to the male race.

“NO, I’ve taken something,” I looked around before whispering “ecstasy.”

And as usual, the Bulgarians had invented a new name for something that already had an international name for it; like Pico for Meth or “The Criminals” for “Pulp Fiction”.

I finished my artistic drawing of the 3D ecstasy pill complete with traditional smiley face and held it up to the glass divider.

“Right Ekstazi-khapche,” he nodded knowingly.

Khapche in Bulgarian is pill and ecstasy is Ekstazi- so how on earth had he not understood me when I said ecstasy?!?!! He gave me the dosage I needed and I ran back to the apartment as fast as my constricted body allowed me.

I arrived at the now uninteresting apartment door and let myself in, an uninteresting dog came to greet me. It looked just like my dog except it was very uninteresting and not at all fluffy. The uninteresting dog, realizing it was no longer in danger of a seven-hour cuddle, was suddenly super interested in me and even more interested in the possibility of the food I might give it. It bounced up and down insanely and ran in circles around my legs leaving stripes of white on the black satin DJ outfit. It knocked the 2 x 2 sized blister pack containing 3 blue Viagra pills out of my hands.

Truffle caught the spinning pack midair and I instantly regretted the hours I’d spent teaching her to catch potato chips midair. Sensing she had something valuable, she shot off at full speed, she had been ignored for 18 hours and was now going to make up for it with as much attention as she could get. I thought about leaving her with the pills but unsure what 300mg of Viagra would do to a female dog I reluctantly chased after her.

She hunkered down in her cage, her two front paws on the blister pack of blue pills. She looked at me, head down, eyes up in her “I’m bad but it’s fun” expression. I reached in to get the pack that was easily within reach. ‘GGGGGggggrrrrrrr’ she growled deeply and gently took the packet of pills between her front teeth. She occasionally did this with food that she didn't want now but was saving for later. It signaled ‘this is mine and you’re not getting it’ and I knew there was no way I was getting the pack of pills.

I paced around the apartment trying to think what to do about the bloody dog with the pills when I realized Angel was not there. Or at least she wasn’t in any room I’d been in, which meant Angel was in the bedroom. The thought ricochet within – Angel was in the bedroom and the PILLS were in the cage with the dog!!!!

What to do? What to do?

I ran back into the kitchen and shot head first into the dog’s cage. Truffle was shocked and did what Springer Spaniels do when shocked, she pissed herself. However, pissing herself was not sufficient a distraction to take her mind off the now urine-soaked Viagra, as my eyes looked down at the packet she detected my intention and snapped it up in her teeth GGGGGRRRRrrrrrrrrrr.

Thankfully I was dog piss free but I certainly was not dog hair free; I was now liberally coated in white dog hairs, a good few of which had gone up my nose and were irritating as hell. Right, what to do??

I had a flash of inspiration, Truffle hated the cordless Makitta vacuum cleaner on account I once chased her around the house with it after she drove me nuts trying to eat it. I grabbed the vacuum cleaner and pulled off the wide flat surface head, leaving only the long 1-meter extension tube and switched on the motor, it whizzed into powerful 18v lithium Ion driven life. I put my hand over the end of the nozzle expecting a hurricane of inrushing air.

Nothing, Nishto as the Bulgarians would say. The vacuum was completely full.

I shot down the apartment stairs, dressed in satin black with contrasting white dog hair motif, accented with silver zippers carrying a Makitta cordless vacuum cleaner and swearing loudly in English, out onto Oborishte and into the beach bound beautiful people outside. I was heading for the trash container 100 meters down the street. However, the trash container was at that moment heading for the hydraulic lift on the back of a dump truck and not quickly.

There is very little fun in the life of a trash collector, but Saturday morning on a hot July day as the beautiful people, well beautiful girls, head for the beach in bikinis was something to savor. It sure as hell was not something that was going to be rushed.

I yanked the larger section of the vacuum cleaner’s blue cylinder anti-clockwise and immediately two months of dog hair and house dust exploded under the compressive pressure of the filter assembly it was straining against. Approximately two dozen beautiful people in bikinis and shorts were treated to a mid-morning shower of dog hair and house dust, which they were distinctly NOT grateful for. It covered their bodies, arms and legs and stuck there, glued in place by the sun creams and oils they were liberally covered in. I dropped the larger portion in surprise at the unexpected explosion. I couldn’t believe the amount of hair and dust that had created the atomic bomb like atmosphere, after all I had emptied the unit every time I used it and I had asked Angel to do so as well. Clearly, she had forgotten.

I picked up the dropped half of the vacuum cleaner and without properly cleaning the insides shot back in before the shock wore off the dust and fur covered people that stood blinking and spitting on the street.

I was running up the stairs taking them two at a time and I shot back into the apartment and quickly re-assembled the vacuum cleaner, bits of dog fluff sticking out of the joints between the two halves. A pull of the trigger and the unit shot into life a hand over the nozzle confirmed that suction was now present in sufficient quantity.

I took a moment to savor my genius.

I stealthily approached the cage where Truffle was still guarding her new prized thing in; poked the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner slowly in as she watched cautiously, three inches from the packet, two inches from the packet, one inch - I figured the suction would be strong enough at this point and pulled the trigger. The motor fzzzzzzzeeeeeedddd into life and the silver foil backed blister pack snapped up vertically and stuck to the nozzle with a sharp ssshhhuuunnnkkkk. Truffle snapped at the packet but the suction was strong and the plastic just bent under her downwards bite.

I pulled the vacuum out carefully not letting go of the trigger. I grasped the packet and dislodged it from the nozzle, all three were still in there.

As I did my victory dance I noticed my reflection in a mirror that I passed – it was not pretty. I realized I was covered in dog hair, sweat and house dust. I needed a very good shower.

Not wanting to risk any further dog related incidents I locked the door on Truffles cage. She looked at me and went “Fuuuuffffff” through her lips. I shot to the bathroom furthest from the bedroom Angel was in and switched on the shower. What followed was the fastest, thorough, deep cleansing shower in history; less than five minutes later I was cleansed, lightly oiled - very hard water in Bulgaria - and smelling of possibly a little too much BVLGARI AQVA AMARA, which Angel had bought the previous week.

I shot to the bedroom and slid to a halt on the marble tiles of the hall floor. I waited a few seconds to compose myself. Ready to display my entirely fake shock at seeing her on the bed waiting for me. Ok, here we go, casually open the door and…. Well I didn't have to fake the shock, let’s put it that way.

Angel was fast asleep on the bed. I looked at my watch, it was 1:30 p.m.; the whole ordeal I had just undertaken had taken three and a half hours.

I suddenly realized how tired I was and lay down next to the sleeping girl. As I lay next to her, I could not take my eyes off of her, even deeply asleep she appeared somehow posing and photoshopped – her hair was flawlessly draped across the pillow casting shadows across her face. Her lips were slightly parted and still displaying the perfect tone of crimson. She looked so innocent, so delicate and beautiful that my emotions seemed to swell inside of me.

How could I have contemplated leaving her?

I thought about the pills she had produced for us, and the effort she must have gone through to not get the cheapest quickest drugs she could find but rather the best quality possible. When she wanted you to feel special, to feel cared about there were no limits with her.

Okay so she has character flaws, who doesn’t? What other woman has ever gone through the trouble to expand my limits of pleasure (and insanity) okay lets just focus on the pleasure, the sheer delight of every experience with Angel was beyond anything my imagination could conjure up.

She was the most unique, interesting, exotic yet delicate person I had ever met. I leaned over and gently let my lips rest on her forehead, she even smelled delicious. I inhaled deeply, hardwiring her scent within me so that I would never forget it. I couldn’t believe my luck, to find someone so amazing.

At that moment I truly felt the deepest love imaginable, it was not because of the tablets, they’d worn off long ago. It was because it was the deepest love imaginable. I let the feeling wash over me like a warm blanket and for the first of what would become many times I lay and watched Angel sleeping for hour after hour before drifting off into the most peaceful and deep sleep.

The thought of leaving her had disintegrated from my mind, in fact it was so far from my mind at this moment it was nothing more than a rumor.