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From: Dave Death Category: Art Date: 12 December 2006 Time: 06:43 AM Review: Saturday night, a flat in Shoreditch. The host is a young hairdresser / make-up artist who's a friend's cousin. I get there around 10pm. Gianni is DJing. He's a fashion photographer in his mid-30s; with short dark hair, black tailored suit and white shirt. He could be from a Gucci advert. Like me, he made the same journey from goth/new romantic/indie music into minimal techno. It's early in the evening, people are standing round talking. He plays Nirvana 'Polly', Visage 'Fade to Grey', something by Siouxsie and the Banshees, Soft Cell 'Memorabilia', Morrissey's 'Suedehead'. Sara, who I know from previous parties and greets me warmly, puts on Madonna's 'Into the Groove'. I have a glass of red wine. I am the only English person there; the majority are Italians. Diego is there. He's an art school graduate in his mid-20s. Tall, dark-eyed, high-cheekboned, dressed in black, aware of his own attractiveness, he looks like a new romantic or a member of Bauhaus. He has a theatrical manner. Whether he curled up in the corner, dancing, or jumping around as he DJs in the manner of a man fighting a fire, he demands the room's attention. Then there's Antonio, a fashionista in his 40s who I haven't seen in a year. His life reads like LCD Soundsytem's 'Losing my Edge'. He left home as a teenager and moved to Berlin, and found work escorting rich old men to the opera. Early 1980s London post-punk, he was there. Ibiza, 1987, he was there. Now he has a senior job at a fashion label and goes to catwalk shows around the world. He is charming and camp; a sophisticated man who has known many pleasures. I ask if he is working on his own collection. He says he doesn't want to since he already has the most important thing: the ability to be happy alone in a room. I enviously concur. I've glugged down half to a bottle of red wine. I see the host has put out a bottle of absinthe, with spoon and sugar. At first I feel hesitant drinking it, fearing my own greed. The reluctance goes, and I have maybe five shots. As it goes down my throat I am surfacing from underwater; my chest warm, a smile spreading across my face. I am so alive. As more people arrive, the music switches over to minimal techno, which has always been the soundtrack to the lives of these people, from parties in Naples and Ibiza in the mid-late 90s to London in the present day. It is part of my history too, since these are the parties I've been to and the friends I've had. The most popular DJs are Richie Hawtin and Ricardo Villalobos, but of course most of the music is more obscure. Unlike with my English friends, these people live with a beat in the background. At 11.45 I take a pill. If I'd had the sense to anticipate this I'd not have drunk alcohol, which clouds the ecstasy experience. When I haven't come up, I ask someone the time. Their watch is an hour fast and they tell me it's 1.30. Thinking the pills are weak, I do another one/one and a half. So when I come up, I come up fast. Nobody can dislike coming up on a pill, because it's pure happiness; as impossible to dislike having an orgasm. I'm rushing - my eyes can only capture one in two frames and I can't keep up with movement of the people in front of me. I can talk to everybody. I tell Gianni how pleased I am we're still in touch - I want to display my gratitude to him. Everything is all right now. I have a desire to do good things, to share the happiness I feel. There is no barrier to me talking to anyone. Normally I'm an awkward person who avoids physical contact, but I've become touchy. I will place my hand on your arm to emphasise my sincerity. My eye contact, normally avoided, is now solid. It feels so good to be close to someone, anyone. I talk to a girl I'd seen earlier, who turns out to be doing an MA at St Martins. A Serbian guy I realised I'd met before. Diego has climbed out onto the window ledge high above the street and is facing out, holding the frame with his hands behind him, his friends holding his legs . Surely he'll fall? He's pulled back in, and nobody mentions it again; it was nothing unusual. People flicker in and out of my consciousness. I focus on the music, picking a particular part of the track to pull myself higher. Minimal techno, like jazz, has high-frequency sounds designed to stimulate the effect of drugs on the listener. For example listen to 'Dessins' here: http://clone.nl/item5886.html . The synth sounds connect directly to the ecstasy; like harp strings, piano keys or pebbles rippling across your ecstasy-surging brain. I tried telling myself simple things: "This is God's music. I'm listening to the music in heaven" and I'd surge upwards. But when you're high enough you let go of words altogether. The ecstasy connects directly with the music, with no need to put it into words. You become pure sensation. My onetime housemate and central party figure Gigi has arrived. He is DJing using his laptop. Katja is here too, another friend familiar from previous parties; I feel safe with these people; they are accepting and warm towards me at all times. I have synaesthasia, hearing colours, shades of blue. I try to close my eyes and feel the ecstasy rise up from my stomach, into my head, then exploding from my centre all through me, to the tips of my toes and hands, butterflies fluttering through me and exploding in an all-body orgasm, my eyes rolling back in my head. Well, that's how it is when you're really high; but I didn't quite get there. I was high, but not that high, not as high as when I've snorted bombed gummed and drunk pure MDMA. This was good, but all too soon the rushes stopped and I started to come down . What happens is you get your consciousness back, your capacity to think. Your sour little brain reasserts itself over the ecstasy, and you don't like it. I don't want myself back; I want to stay high. So I ask my friend if there are any pills left. No, there aren't. The ecstasy experience is bound in time. You want to be coming up at the same time as everyone else, and to be at your highest when the party is at its peak. While you're on ecstasy you lose any awareness of time, but time must reassert itself. Sadly, you should also be coming down at the same stage as those you're with. The initial stage of realising you've come down and stopped rushing is horrible but then you adjust and, realising that you're still pretty high, you continue to have fun. By 5am there are about 15 people left; Antonio and Katja have gone or are about to go. Diego, Gianni and Gigi are still here. I notice the host has been tidying up constantly, removing cans and bottles, providing people with ashtrays. I've smoked at least thirty cigarettes. The tempo of the evening is not constant. For a while everyone is in the bedroom on the bed, then on the sofa in the hallway. Then they're dancing again. Diego climbs on top of an eight-foot high cupboard and I'm sure he or it will crash to the floor. I look on with drug-addled detachment. The Italians have switched on to coke. I decided at the start of the night not to do any. Coke kills the ecstasy, any feelings of altruism and benevolence replaced by self-regard, and my only interest becomes how can I get more. When I'm doing somebody else's, this is very anti-social. I am envious as I see the plate passed round repeatedly. I don't like coming down, and not having the energy to join those still dancing. But I made the right decision. At 6am a girl turns up, and soon after four of her male friends turn up with a crate of beer and sit on the sofa in the lounge. I feel a little uneasy at strangers joining us, and feel threatened. I stand in the safety of the kitchen with my friends. Diego is cooking pasta, and chopping up vegetables for a tomato, olive and garlic sauce. We eat off plastic plates. I find an unattended full plastic cup of red wine and drink that. Someone is still DJing and the music seems to have got harder, but I am not high any more and there doesn't seem much point me staying here. I see Gianni has changed his clothes – impeccably smart at all times. At 7.30am I drink a beer with the intention of knocking myself out. There are still people dancing. I need to go. I walk into the cold street – how strange it always feels, after ecstasy, to return to the outside world – unlock my bike, and cycle the short distance home to sleep. I wish I could be so happy more often, with or without ecstasy.