2002-01-06 - 9:54 p.m.
�The ecstasy is voyaged through swaying, interplaying, Perennial gardenia gardens, Flowing into fuscia fountains, Leaping into warm purple pink gaseous fumes, purple pools, Moving in, undulating emanating jewels, Into a timeless spaceless place.�
So the temperance and moderation of the new year lasted a not particularly impressive four days. Well, what did you expect?.
Of course, cometh weekend, cometh the health-endangering levels of hedonism needed to navigate nights out with a social-anxiety inducing two new groups of strangers. Friday�s descent into memory loss kicked off on the tube into town. I�m sitting staring at the adverts � the usual mix of barely legal loan sharks (reduce your outgoings to one easy to manage monthly payment � of course, we have to keep you artificially alive for 370 years�) and sickeningly healthy models created in labs by the drug companies whose vitamin products they�re endorsing. There�s an attractive young girl next to me doing her makeup. As she finishes, she starts to make jerky movements and strange yelping noises � I thought at first it could be an allergic reaction to a bad batch of mascara, but it turns out she�s doing sign language to someone opposite her. Her friend isn�t paying her much attention � maybe my neighbour had signed something really offensive by mistake and was trying to apologise. At the next stop, though, the woman opposite gets off without so much as looking over, and is replaced by a mother and small child. The girl next to me then starts signing to them. As I look on in considerable bafflement, I catch her eye and she starts signing to me. She�s obviously as mad as a brush, and I briefly consider improvising some random hand movements just to humour her, but eventually plump for just sitting there with a patronisingly placating grin on my face, and by the time I leave she�s frantically signing pretty much the whole carriage. Deaf and insane must be a pretty weird condition. Though maybe this is just how mute people busk.
The rest of the night is kind of a blur. Drinking with friends of a friend, who is lovely for inviting me out, and who went home when normal bar hours finished (which is apparently what some people do), leaving me with strangers that I somehow hadn�t bored senseless with my nervously crap conversation. A mere eight hours later in cold daylight, I�m leaving the club that we stumbled into, the obvious course of action when out with new people being to completely cane it for as long as possible. Details are elusive, but thanks to the artificially-enhanced nature of the night, I remember thinking the following�isn�t meeting new people amazing? Isn�t kissing beautiful Swedish girls that you�ve only just met the best thing in the world? Aren�t face massages the best thing in the world? God, I really do love everybody. The experience of dancing to this repetitive music is really enhanced by being able to wave your hands around in front of lasers. I don�t think I�ve ever done as much hugging in my life. Isn�t bottled water in clubs expensive? Why can�t people just feel like this all the time? Isn�t it great that you can just kiss people that you have no intention, or, more accurately, chance of going home with? Isn�t it funny how your legs hurt after dancing for six hours straight?
�Couch surfer (such a cute face), I'm surfing, couch surfing, Move into your house, I'm a couch surfer�
Yesterday�s mid-afternoon (gotta love having 4 hours sleep) recuperative pint of Guinness was meant to be a short affair. The company was fashionistas, a crowd I would usually shun given that it seems to be a profession that specialises in illiteracy, but a best friend�s presence demanded some degree of compromise. Sure enough, a couple of them were too cool to talk to anyone, and just hung on the edges of the table, smoking and sneering in a kind of disaffected, judgemental stasis, but mostly it was fine, even given that some of them had jobs like �Head of Denim Design� for The Gap. The crowd gradually thinned as people realised they had to be somewhere cooler, leaving me and my friend eight (ahem) hours later arriving back at my place and gatecrashing the party next door and then coming back and watching some �Ultimate Fighting� video, where pituitary cases elbow each other in the face until someone�s skull splits. I had to take him to the station at 9am (gotta love four hours sleep) � needless to say, today hasn�t exactly been a flag day for productivity.
Definitely detoxing this week, natch.
�Mind if I eat those chips? Oh that's okay, I don't like salt and vinegar anyways. No no no, I didn't use pay-per-view. I figured it was free. Yeah, I'm going. I'm a couch surfer, couch surfing��
