Culture and resistance, having always been intrinsically linked, were now a growing interface between aesthetics and revolution that was becoming more pronounced in a world of growing dispossession and accelerating global communication. Annie and Lilly were in the vanguard of a subsequent new wave of Anarchists that embraced this state of affairs.
They sat next to Shiva and Bobby at the festival. Shiva and Bobby had decided not to discuss their extra-temporal experiences with anybody they met on Earth whilst walking through The Forest of Id. Anyway that was already beginning to feel like a dream to them.
Annie Arsenic and Lilly Lace were both about 5ft. 7 inches tall and boasted an array of facial adornments. Annie had a stainless steel rod sticking out from the small indentation just under her bottom lip. It was about two inches long and was in almost constant motion as she toyed with the part inside her mouth with her tongue. She had a four-inch steel rod through the top of her right ear too. This pierced the front roll of gristle that makes up the outer front rim of the ear. It then passed in front of the top of the ear and then pierced the roll of gristle that makes up the back rim of the ear. Her other ear lobe boasted a large hoop. Her hair was a grade one dyed blonde crop and she wore a skin tight, off the shoulder, black top with a neck line that came up to just below the chin. She also wore skin tight, black leggings and big, black, military style boots. An array of bracelets, rings and necklaces enhanced this fusion between African fetishism and post-Punk industrial hard-core.
Lilly, on the other hand, had a ring through the base of her nose and an inch long steel rod through her left eyebrow. Her hair was fantastic! The sides were a dyed blonde crop and the top was a medium length purple flourish which was split into pigtails that stuck out in a mad eccentric manner. On closer inspection her admirer would notice that these pigtails did, in fact, consist of a variety of mauves, purples and pinks. She wore a black hooded top and a bright orange and yellow paisleyesque mini- skirt. Last, but not least, she wore knee-length bright red platform boots that would have made Slade spit their tea everywhere in shock and envy.
Annie and Lilly (whose favourite musical style was the almost atonal pumping rhythms of “Gabba”) were living proof that in this, the last decade of the millennium, nothing was out of fashion. Bobby’s usual astonishment at seeing these wonderful Art Terrorists was because they rarely looked the same from week to week. One consistency though was that at all times they pervaded an atmosphere of subversion, revolt and sexual aggression. In “Whip the Minister” Bobby had sung about Annie, Lilly and their fellow squatter, Liberty.
“Short printed skirt and all-purpose boots,
She don’t wanna’ flirt and understands her roots,
Make a sexist comment and she’ll kick you in the nuts,
Liberte’ the only way with no iffs and buts,
She decides her partners no matter what their sex,
She’s into multi-media and radical F.X.,
Revolutionary with bosses whom she’ll vex,
If she’s a witch I’d willingly be put under a hex,
Tight fitting top and pierced body parts,
Dances with a vigour as soon as music starts.
Reacts to misogyny with an acidic tongue,
If you take the piss out of her you will get stung,
She’ll put the cuffs on you without much provocation,
Dislikes authoritarian exploitation,
Anarcho-Socialist, a sexual elation,
Interprets the city with a riot education.”
The title of the song was “Teenage Drug Dealing Woman” and held a great deal of poignancy for Bobby owing to the fact that the first time he met Annie and Lilly they sold him some good quality LSD. They were both sixteen at the time and had recently been arrested for occupying the “Cutty Sark” (a huge sailing ship) in Greenwich as part of an anti-road protest. They had moved to Saaaarrff Eeeeaast Lundun and met Bobby when Liberty, Young Offenda, Annie, Lilly and a selection of other travelling protesters moved into lower Wickham Lane in Abbey Wood where a host of other Anarchists and activists lived. At the time Wickham Lane was full of squats and housing co-ops. It was at the heart of local action trying to stop the Sow Feast London River Crossing from demolishing homes and woodland.
Liberty and their group had, before Wickham Lane, been part of The Offshore State Circus and had been some of the resident protesters at Clairmont Road trying to stop the M11 link-road that threatened many peoples houses and lungs.
Bobby wondered whether buying acid off those as young as Annie and Lilly was ethical and then he thought about it.
“Bollocks....It’s not only ethical, it’s fucking cool!”
Bobby believed it made for a forward thinking life when a thirty-one year old man could score psychedelic drugs off of a couple of teenage women. It was good quality acid too!
It was interesting really. In the late Seventies and early Eighties, when Bobby served his time as an adolescent, if you wore the wrong type of clothes to a particular event you may have been likely to get your head kicked in. In the Nineties all of the subcultural tribes seemed to have mixed and seemed to be manifesting themselves as one tribe. At Raves, Gigs, Festivals and Squat Parties you could wear almost whatever you wanted.
It seemed that the ethics Bobby and his generation had attempted to strive for, once a certain level of cultural independence was obtained, had gradually revealed themselves. Their efforts were not for nothing. Despite the tribal battling that had sometimes arisen amongst Punks, Teds, Rockers, Mods, Rastas, Skin-Heads, Hippies, etc. most subculture had seemed to be working for the day when all of these aesthetics would fuse and be acceptable in each others sights.
In the last decade of the Twentieth Century, with the common enemy of Government even more evident in everybody’s minds, it seemed that these aesthetics had fused. Bobby considered this as an attempt to take what was best into the next millennium. As he often found himself saying, modern culture seems to be a fusion between so much of what we as a species have achieved over the last two thousand years. It seemed to him that the “world video” was rewinding, on search, to see what was worth taking into the next two thousand years and what was worth leaving behind.
“You know,” Bobby said to Annie, “I think we should collectively attempt to ascertain what we should leave behind in the Twentieth Century.”
“Leave the fucking lot of it behind, I say,” said Lilly, turning from her conversation with Shiva.
“Subculture seems to be a step ahead of consumer culture,” said Bobby. He continued.... “Subculture has whittled its more competitive side away to almost nothing. You can wear whatever you fucking like, whatever event you choose to go to.”
“Yeah, well,” said Lilly, “that’s not the same in the job market. Job interviews are becoming more one-dimensional in what people should look like.”
“And how they should behave,” said Annie.
“There’s greater uniformity in the job market and less uniformity in subculture. I can come to only one conclusion where these two things are concerned,” said Bobby.
“What’s that then?” asked Lilly
“We should take the ethics of subcultural fusion into the next millennium and we should leave what we know as the job market to the annals of Twentieth Century history.”
“Yeah, well, having a job’s got left behind anyway!” Annie added.
Annie and Lilly pulled faces for a photograph and laughed hysterically when they saw how out of it Bobby was. As a wave of MDMA euphoria hit him he had to concentrate really hard in order to hold the camera straight. They realised that conversation was getting way beyond him so they wished him an exciting day and bad him adieu as they jumped up and went off in search of dancing crowds.
It appeared that Shiva and Bobby had had MDMA at this event. They obviously took to it like ducks to water.
There was then a scream that made Bobby jump like he’d had a whack off the mains. The scream was followed by a succession of assertive hugs. It was Suzy Q. She was closely followed by her brother Dr.Phibes and Buffalo Matterhorn.
“Forest of Id?” Bobby quickly asked Buffalo.
“Forest of Id.” replied Buffalo looking relieved.
On Earth, since they had met at the “Slimelight” in February, Suzie had had a fiery relationship with Buffalo involving copious amounts of amphetamines, acid, marijuana and ecstasy which had led to a subsequent succession of steamy scenes of erotic eccentricity. Buffalo felt as though the whole situation was rather like having his virginity broken all over again. On one occasion, in a Sow Feast London Pub they often had debriefings in, in the period between the “Slimelight” and the Brighton Free Festival, he had talked to Bobby about it.
“Where can it go from here?” he said. “Me and Suzie have reached such a height of prolonged passion that I’m frightened it can only go downhill from here. I know that isn’t certain but I don’t want a good thing spoilt. All of my carnal indulgences are matched if not surpassed by Suzie’s mad desire to take it further and further. I thought I was unshockable but these days I feel like a baby rabbit sitting hypnotised in front of oncoming headlights!”
“Buffalo, my dear fellow”, Bobby had replied, “You and Suzie do tend to stay in for days on end....neither sleeping nor chatting that much. D’you not think that now might not be a good time to start getting in a few other shared experiences? I mean, as you know, I’m often a poor follower of my own advice and advice for other people is invariably easier than sorting your own problems out so who am I to say and all that but understanding that most of us don’t practice what we preach because we’re not the kind of people we’re preaching to and all that....”
“Cut to the chase Bobby....”
“Maybe a cut to the chaste might be more appropriate,” said Bobby. “What about going for a meal or a movie or a gig or a walk in the country?”
“Yeah....granted....the trouble is as soon as we get anywhere we leave in a twinkling of an eye.”
“But surely,” Bobby cut in, “if neither of you can resist this tirade of excessive behaviour you should just go with it until your relationship planes off and you reach a new level of shared social experiences.”
“Maybe,” he replied.
So here they both were at Brighton Free Festival. Five months and twenty two days into Suzi and Buffalo’s relationship and BINGO Suzi and Buffalo were at a social function sharing each other with a host of people on a virtually non-physical level.
Shiva, Bobby, Suzi, Buffalo and Dr.Phibes all settled down and looked at the stage in front of them.
“Do the Moog” were on their last song. As the music moved from one octave to another it gathered pace until all the respective sounds merged in an escalating wash of electric mayhem. Everything stopped. There was a split second and then a loud roar signified the response from the audience. The applause continued for a good minute and, since this was the band’s final gig for a long while, the compare would have had a bugger of a job suggesting that there was not enough time for an encore. He went with the flow and the band came back on and cranked up their sound for a grand finale.
“These have been fucking good!” Bobby turned to Suzie, Buffalo and Dr.Phibes. Alternating quickly between them with his head twisting and turning like a twisty turny thing Bobby rushed out some conversation before a wave of MDMA dragged him back into a grinning stupor. Both he and Shiva’s bodies and clothes were now the ones they would have had at that point in time. They had instantly known, when they arrived into these bodies, that they had dropped ecstasy at this festival before their conscousnesses had surfaced from Eden. The ecstasy had had an immediate effect on them as soon as they had travelled through the gateway that was The Forest of Id.
Bobby was dressed in a paisley shirt with a paisley waistcoat, long black denim shorts and Doctor Marten boots. He had black shoulder length hair. Shiva was dressed in purple crushed velvet hot pants and a tight fitting white cloth top. She had sown a medieval image of a sun on the back. Her hair was a hip length wash of black cascading softness as it hung down her back. She also wore Doctor Marten boots. To Bobby she looked fantastic as her long silver earrings glinted in the sunshine.
Bobby took a deep breath and issued forth a frantic, eager tirade of passionate Learyite philosophy.
“It’s environments like this that provide us with the cathartic moments in our lives. It’s like some cosmic debriefing when a load of “heads” get together and relinquish their temporal responsibilities. Anyway you all look gorgeous so I must take some photos.”
Bobby produced a camera.
Suzie Q. had that quintessential Sixties feel about her. Since she was eight or so years younger than Bobby her parents were to the Sixties what his were to the Fifties. Whereas Bobby hankered after more Edwardian styles of fashion (albeit within a scope that still took in everything from Mod style button-down shirts to Seventies-style Harlemesque floppy caps) Suzie could not help but typify the colours and economy of material that made the free-love decade what it was. Her hair was a short blonde bob that seemed layered in a way that made it sit on her head as if it were about to take off. Neither flat nor upright it had an autonomy that seemed to symbolise the “hang loose” ethics of its historical origins. It seems her mother dipped her toes into the maelstrom of first generation Hippie mania. Suzie remembers a photograph of her mum with the relevant beads and bangles sitting on some paisley cushions. She was both heavily pregnant at the time and sucking on a large, elaborate hookah pipe. Owing to the “kick-back” from authoritarian convention and the economic downturn of the Seventies her mother must have swung away from the Libertarian risk-taking of her youth because Suzie said she avoided the subject with a wry smile these days. She was barking mad though and, from what Suzie told Bobby, still lived life at a thousand miles an hour. Maybe that same Libertarian still existed but had altered her modus operandi.
There is little doubt that resistance to international capitalism went more underground in the West by the time the Seventies were in full swing.
Suzie wore a psychedelic mini-dress made from incredibly clingy material. This blue, purple, yellow and orange spread of swirling liquid lycra glistened in the sun. She thrust her hips to one side as Bobby clicked the shutter on the camera.
Her brother, Dr.Phibes, was a strange kettle of fish. Just as Suzie had inherited the style and joy de vivre of the Sixties so Dr.Phibes had its weird, inventive brooding. He painted pictures with as many different mediums as he could scramble together and built life-size multi-coloured monsters out of shop-window dummies. Bobby had yet to see any of these exquisite products of derangement but he looked forward to the day with bated breath. Donald the Druid often related tales of pubescent pandemonium concerning his and Dr.Phibes’ youth. Not only were they explosives experts by the grand old age of fourteen but Dr.Phibes had a habit of locking his father in wardrobes for short periods of time before making a quick exit to escape his dad’s wrath. Dr.Phibes also had a keen interest in fire-arms but never took it beyond the usual hypotheses about the eventual decline of civilisation and the need to defend the common weal from rampaging government officials who, by this time, would have reached psychosis over losing their extraordinarily well-paid jobs. It seemed quite poetic that having the same cultural starting point as his sister had led him to the other extreme when it came to the philosophical standpoint of the revolutionary. It was almost as if the economic downturn took the toys that the Hippies were beginning to play with away. As a result of this some their children developed an interest in toys of quite a different nature.
Bobby reckoned that this was more evidence that governments eventually get what’s coming to them.
Dr.Phibes had neck length hair and a turquoise shirt, jeans and multi-purpose footwear. As Bobby took his photo Dr.Phibes covered half his face with his right hand, partially out of shyness but mostly out of a subconscious desire to remain anonymous. Dr.Phibes considered any act of ego as too much of a risk in a world where police spies could be anywhere.
Both Dr.Phibes and Suzie Q. had urgent grins for much of the time and both had wide mouths that hinted at the kind of cynical wisdom you would expect from the Cheshire Cat in “Alice In Wonderland”.
“Do the Moog” finished their set and retreated to a dark corner of the back stage area. Most of the audience sat down and skinned up. Wheeeeewwww!
“Stiff Little Fingers” came blaring over the P.A. and Buffalo and Bobby recounted their undying appreciation for the band. Bobby was beginning to develop a greater ability to speak now.
“This is fucking good ecstasy,” he said to Buffalo. “You’re a fucking genius!”
He continued relating to the fact that not only had they got the ecstasy off Buffalo but that Buffalo had managed to find an outlet that sold it for only £5 a pill which was half the usual street price for 1996. It was a “Swan” and as good as any pills Bobby had had in the past. Bobby gave him a hug. He whispered in his ear.... “Buffalo, I gather you haven’t mentioned Eden to Suzie and Dr.Phibes.”
“No I thought it better not to.” Buffalo whispered in reply.
“Well we should be out of The Forest of Id soon so hang on in there pal.”
“Don’t worry about me. This is great fun.” said Buffalo with a grin as his eyes turned to Suzi Q.
“Good.” said Bobby as he withdrew from Buffalo’s ear.
“One last thing,” added Bobby as he quickly swung his mouth back to Buffalo’s shell-like, “isn’t it odd how we can remember everything you would expect to remember had we never left Earth and simply lived this life since February.”
“Extremely odd.” said Buffalo grinning.
After a smoke of fine “cottage industry” skunkweed they all stood up. Bobby felt like his eyes were going to explode and staggered about like some drunken bastard. He steadied himself.
“Buffalo you had any “billy” today?”
“Does the Pope shit in the woods?”
Buffalo loved his speed. Recently he was at it every day, mainly for sex and work. His long-standing job was as a debt collector who collected weekly repayments on hire-purchase goods. He would set up his own list of cash-flow possibilities which he would present to the client. These possibilities allowed both him and his clients to rip off big retail companies for modest amounts of cash. Such was the non-confrontational nature of his methods that he had not only developed a client-base over the years that would have made “The Avon Lady” jealous but had also ended up in a variety of sexual relationships with a modest proportion of these clients including a threesome with a married couple who wanted to spice up their love lives. Of course the money he earned was spent on wholesome things. He kept his proto-Hippie daughter’s hired horse in horsy snacks and bought her those things he felt were necessary in a thirteen-year old girl’s life. He did reckon, though, that the horse was taking the piss at times.
Buffalo also put his share of housekeeping money into his and his former partner’s list of domestic responsibilities and blew the rest up his nose. Apart from still feeling that the working class and unemployed deserve a whole lot fucking more from this fucking wretched society he was normally a happy chappy who never suffered from jealousy and had a healthy dislike for work of any kind.
In fact it was work that meant he could not spend enough time with his daughter, Suzie, his mum and dad, his former partner Sandy and his mates. That was the real crime in his eyes. Some work in a lifetime? Maybe, but not the amount most of us are still expected to do in order to NEARLY make ends meet! Buffalo was what you might call a regular Cockney geeeezer. His theory was that with all the work that the proletariat has done since The Industrial Revolution it must surely now be time for a break. Surely all the work must have been done. So why are we still expected to do it? If we are being taken for a ride by the bosses (and it seemed to him we are) their promise of some grand reward is, was and always will be a load of old bollocks.
He was only doing speed every few days now and this had put a number of Suzie’s fears to rest.
Shiva, Suzie, Dr.Phibes, Buffalo and Bobby all staggered in a line towards a much larger outdoor stage halfway across the festival site. As they got nearer they realised "Tribal Drift" had just started their set.
Now this band were at some peak of audio-visual awareness. Their TransglobalAfroAboriginalDubDancefusion rush of psychedelia pounded out of the huge speaker-stacks. The stage was twice the size of the one they had just left. The intimacy and rootsy feel that the previous stage had had was equally matched by the epic splendour of this larger temple to electric mayhem. The band looked fantastic! Shiva, Bobby, Suzie, Buffalo and Dr.Phibes wove their way in and out of the hundreds watching and touched down right at the front. They looked up and a feast of balletic movement and intense passion met their eyes.
There were white silken parachutes hanging from the roof of the stage. As they rippled, suspended above the heads of the performers, they billowed and shivered. To Billy’s drug-addled brain they resembled the clouds he and Shiva had stared at earlier at this event. Above them another huge turquoise tarpaulin gleamed in the sun. It was the same colour as the sky and thus this microcosm of the summery heavens was complete. Above and to the rear of the stage tall trees provided an ornate wooded frame for this picture of vitality and Eco-Anarchy.
The band consisted of a keyboardist, drum and bass programmer and singer, a didgeridoo player and singer, a percussionist and dancer and another dancer who twisted and gyrated around the players.
As the loud throbbing Dub bass lines of “Tribal Drift” rose and fell they seemed to Bobby to be ebbing and flowing like a silvery sea caressing a long beach. Echoes and hisses swerved from each speaker stack and Bobby thought it sounded as though this sea of sound was brushing a beach full of pebbles. His mind swam along a lateral path and led his thoughts to Brighton’s sibilant seafront.
There was a flash of bright, white light.
Bobby came round in a club.
He was in such a state that he was only partially aware of this fact and certainly had no knowledge of where he was geographically. His mind was a torrent of seething, drunken dementia. He started thinking out loud.
“Well what shall I do next? What’s the game plan? What wonderful acts of consumption can I turn to now? I can breathe. I think. I can think. I think. I can see. That’s if you call this alcohol saturated, kaleidoscopic vision seeing. I can smell. Well, if smelling the cold dampness of stone pickled in the saturation of a thousand spilt beers, fallen perspiration and semi-diluted nicotine is indeed an indication of nasal information then sure, I can smell. I can hear. Boy, can I hear! Loud, pulsing rhythm, loud waves of electric harmony, loud screams and aural ringing pushing my senses like a jostled commuter. I can feel.... I think. Hands on cloying stone, my left cheek soaking up Lagerciderbittervodkaetcetc. like a sponge in a dirty bath. I can taste. hash, beer, ash, bile and vomit. Small beads of congealed whiskey sliding down my nose. I shouldn’t have eaten that burger. More breathing. There can’t be much oxygen going in. Body odour, the food tastes and vomit in my mouth and the steam from the great unwashed.”
Bobby tried to look up.
“This club”, he said aloud, “is like an extreme, frantic revolt against some imperialistic, ordered and putrescent Big Ben bastards congealed blood and iron spoon cafe.” His mind kicked into a more revolutionary, if not abstracted, gear.
“Yes, picture it, Big Ben, that symbol of human indigestion where the proletariat are forced to serve a diet of ulcerated eggs born of the fat, bloated chicken of international finance as it feeds on the labour of thousands of starving third world farmers. That Yuppie bistro where rashers of bacon are torn from the backs of jailed mammals as they struggle for that extra inch of space in their allotted cage in the vivisection laboratory of animal exploitation. That Ritz Hotel where the boredom of repetition fuels the mindless employees; servants to the needs of a handful of millionaire vultures who squat in their pin-striped suits sucking on cigars rolled from the burnt skin of war victims.”
When Bobby used animal metaphors to describe the machinations of international capitalism he always thought it was interesting how otherwise noble species come to look like the withered remains of a dying planet. Outside of international capitalism and totalitarianism he considered those same species, whether reptiles, humans, mammals, birds, amphibians, insects or fish, to be the anarchic poetry of freedom.
A smoke machine started clicking and humming.
“What do they put in those things, mustard gas?” The sight of frantic stamping feet. The sight of frantic twisting knees. The odd glimpse of a thigh and a sudden spark lit a flame in the back of his mind. It struggled upward like a starving snake climbing and shaking in anticipation as it stretched towards the “forbidden fruit”.
After a second and what sounded like the loud TICK of a clock an image of gallons of lager extinguished the flame and swept it away like matchsticks in the Thames. His mind, distracted by a spinning fair-ground cavalcade of surging images and distorted noise, made every nerve ending erupt like tiny volcanoes and, as each time-bomb went off, a shock-wave gripped his stomach and dragged its contents, rushing and seething, up past his haggard lungs, up past his larynx, pharynx, epiglottis, through his teeth and out onto the cold stone. The beads of scotch were swept away as nostrils flared, bulged and then burst forth with blue cheese, chilli and chives. EXALTATION! Vomit went everywhere.
Bobby raised his head abruptly and looked as if he was going to throw up again. This time, though, he screamed in relief....
“I HAVE EXORCISED THE DEMONS OF BIG BEN!”
The last sentence was shouted out so loud that a few club goers looked around in surprise.
Bobby Rewind lay face down on the dance-hall floor in a pool of vomit. A minute later he was up and a second later he was down again. The pool of vomit was merciless. His shoes just couldn’t grip such a vengeful mass of slime. It was intent on bringing down the body that had left it in such an “uncouth” environment. Bobby Rewind groaned as he resigned himself to a horizontal view of this evening’s entertainment. From the corner of the dance floor, just out of reach of the swaying torrent of revellers, he looked up and grinned one of those comfortable grins.
The skin on his face had relaxed with such abandon that his bottom lip seemed to be supporting the whole top half of his head including his cheeks, nose, eye-brows, forehead and, of course, his loose upper lip. As his Atlas of an underlip performed its Homeric feat his smile attracted the attention of a “samaritan”. One of those rare breed of people who help those in distress whatever the reason and whatever the outcome.
His face became suddenly alert and full of strength. Rather than the limp, wilting flower it had just been a moment earlier the black preacher’s hat he’d borrowed off of Billy Fish-head now seemed to sit on Bobby’s head with the stiff elegance of an orchid in bloom. He hauled his body up so that it rested on his outstretched arms like a waking dog. It looked as though he were yawning with self-realisation. He looked up at the approaching “samaritan” - a lithe, longhaired, Asian “samaritan” in big black boots. She looked strangely familiar. It felt as if he knew her from some previous existence or perhaps some existence in the distant future. This sudden rush of familiarity coincided with her bending down and opening her mouth.
Bobby Rewind passed out.
He then awoke.
“Bollocks! Where am I? What shall I do next? What’s the game plan? What wonderful acts of consumption can I turn to now? I can breath I think. I can think I think. Boy can I think! Where’s the “samaritan”? Where’s the stamping feet? Where’s the noise, the smell and the magnetic pull of the crowd?”
“You gonna’ clean that up?”
“What?”
“That puke yer laying’ in,” the stony-faced cleaning valkerie with her broom/staff prodding, eager for contest, stared down at Bobby.
“That’s disgustin’ that is. Everyone gone and they leave somethin’ like this ‘ere. I ain’t cleanin’ it up. I don’t even know its name and I never touch a fella’ wots name I don’t know.”
“What’s the time please?” asked Bobby.
“About half seven gettin’ on fer eight in the morning young man.”
Bobby had had a part-time cleaning job himself some years earlier. He’d worked with a woman like this and wished he could explain that he understood how she felt; regardless of her severity.
He was too fucked to start a conversation like that though.
She walked off and Bobby looked round. Every square inch of the floor looked antiseptically clean and wisps of hot steam spun and twisted away from its surface.
“No don’t think of spinning, twisting things”, he thought, “for my stomach’s sake, NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
The smell was nice though, a sort of hot bath smell. Then a familiar sting cut across this moment of pleasure. It came from the sudden waft of stale cheese, chives and chilli embalming his black crombie over-coat, his torn black jeans and his black brogue shoes. The glistening molecules of regurgitation shone like stars on the cloth’s inky firmament. The floor beneath him was alive with three pound fifty’s worth of wasted veggie-burger, shake and fries. The cleaning lady, swearing in a corner somewhere, had cleaned the whole floor except the small area on which he was laying. He was an island of human excess amidst a sea of clinical, germ-free order. His chaos of delight and the price for delight stood sharply separated from the convention around him. He checked his pockets - still horizontal. Money, keys, half a ticket, travel-card, lump of hash, shades and lighter. Phew! How he hadn’t lost any of these things was a miracle to him. What happened to the “samaritan”? He passed out and she pissed off. Who could blame her?
“Fuck my head hurts like an open sore... Excuse me.”
“Wot do you want?”
The cleaner reared up like a figment of Mary Shelley’s imagination.
“I’d like to know where I am.”
Bobby used a most polite tone of voice but the simple ommitance of the word “please” provoked a sharp “Fuck off!” from the disappearing cleaner.
She swung round, just visible from a darkened doorway, and added “If you don’t leave soon I’m gonna get the police and HAVE YOU REMOVED!”
Through the darkened recesses of the club he staggered like a shambling primate. He was as pale as a Pre-Raphaelite princess with eyes straining and Billy’s hat in his hand. He mounted the outside steps and spent vast reserves of energy in his ascent. When he’d reached the top step a familiar freshness slapped his face and his nostrils heaved open and hungrily sucked in its perfume. The sea! He spun around, got his bearings and stood transfixed.
“I’m in bloody Brighton!”
VVVVVRRRRRRRRVVVVVVVRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUMMMMMMMMMMMM!
A thrum of didgeridoo blasted across his thoughts.
In an instant he had gone from the entrance of “The Underground” club in Brighton in 1989 back to The Brighton Free Festival in 1996.
“It’s interesting”, thought Bobby as he prepared to focus on what “Tribal Drift” had to offer, “the differences between alcohol and ecstasy.”
Suzie had started dancing, Dr.Phibes was looking serious and Buffalo was staring at Suzie. Bobby started dancing. FFFFUUUUUUCCCKKKKK! Another rush hit Bobby like a ton of hot horse shit. The skunk they’d smoked after “Do the Moog” finished came on like a rocket as it fused with the remnants of the ecstasy peak still hammering away at his brain and body. Another surge of didgeridoo lifted his eyes to the sky and tentacular shapes wound their way across its blue consistency. Each spiralling coil was a shade of turquoise only subliminally visible against the colour of the sky. This hinted at their location as being outside this plane of existence as well as within this space-time continuum.
To those around him Bobby looked “off it”! He stood; staring straight upwards. His eyes were bulging yet oblivious to his immediate surroundings. Shiva knew he was having an out of body experience. Sometimes she considered this behaviour as scary. It was the sudden realisation that he had left his body in a state of vulnerability because his mind was temporarily elsewhere.
Shiva’s subsequent feeling that it was her responsibility to briefly protect this body seemed a dubious honour. She wondered at the fact that they both sometimes shared this state of transcendence simultaneously. She grinned. How reckless.
Bobby’s head was in a mess. He felt he was in a long tube whose walls were a swirling gamut of interlacing multi-coloured fractal patterns. He remembered seeing these patterns a year or two before the “Mandlebrot” set became a widely known piece of computer art. How could this kind of pattern exist in the mind and then manifest itself through a random computer program years later? Was it a glimpse of some universal pattern? Was it part of a key to unlocking some answers concerning who we are, where we come from and where we’re going? What did its similarity to the architectural make-up of D.N.A. spirals mean?
He felt as though his body were blasted out of this corridor through a vaginal entrance to some enormous cavern. He noticed a giant silver throne on a ball of fire suspended in mid-air. He looked above it and had an angelic visitation of his very own partner Shiva descending with one massive flap of two huge, black feathered wings. She lowered herself gracefully onto the throne and rested a booted foot on her left thigh. She seemed to be wearing a black, skin-tight body stocking that covered her arms and legs. She had long, black, skin-tight gloves on and apart from these and black, knee length boots wore a pair of black, oval shades. Her hair was tied back in a bun and she leaned forward slightly; resting her chin on her right hand in a quizzical manner. Bobby felt like a bug in a glass cabinet and liked it!
He then felt a rush of understanding that he was in fact free and liked that too! Shiva grinned at him and then in an erotic display of strength and aerobatics beat her wings and rose high into the electric air around them. Her whole body became surrounded in a bright light so her form became a sharp silhouette. She flew towards the light and then into it and Bobby took a second to consider that she may have gone to the place she had come from. Another second, another beat of a drum and POW!
Light flooded Bobby’s consciousness and consumed the images in his vision. Such was the intensity of this shock that it ripped his eyelids apart and he was again inside his body. Shiva was grinning at him.
“What happened there?” she asked.
“I don’t think I can put it into words just yet.” he replied gasping.
“That’s O.K.” she added.
“Fear not I will put it into words eventually.”
“I trust you,” she said and gave him a kiss on the mouth. He quickly considered the awe-inspiring fact that he had first had an erotic, trans-dimensional visitation by this aspect of his very own partner around the same time of day at a twelve hour Festival on this very site in May earlier in this same year. He and Shiva had had psilocibe mushrooms and MDMA at the time. Bobby considered the nature of synchronicity.
A series of flashes now filled Bobby’s head and he felt suddenly lighter. He looked down and realised he was off the ground. He then realised he was flying. He looked around him and noticed a blur of red movement in the periphery of his vision. It was his own wings and they were flapping wildly. Sydny Smith, the cherub, shook his head and wondered at the sudden rush of strange images he’d just had. There had been music, dancing humans and an overwhelming sense of randomness. “Oh well,” he thought, “I’m sure The Goddess has a perfectly good reason for abstracting my thought processes like this.” He carried on flying in the company he was with.