‘Skateboards and Methadone – No one should be asked to handle this trip’, 2001
Anonymous
Confessions of a Middle-Aged Ecstasy Eater
I HAVE OCCASIONALLY been asked how I became a regular Ecstasy-eater. I was aware of its reputation as the ‘love drug’, had heard it described as a ‘four-hour, full-body orgasm’ and I found this intriguing, alluring and worthy of further investigation.
Ecstasy is delicious. Or, to put it another way, Ecstasy is delicious and I recommend highly, loudly and long that everyone whose health does not contraindicate or preclude its ingestion, ought to ingest it. Go out, I admonish you, all of you, hit the streets or collar that neighbourhood kid, drum up a contact, do a deal, repair thyselves home, soften the lights, put on some music – the best stuff – pour yourself a pitcher of ice water, perhaps two, keep a tin of Altoids handy, as well as a tube of Vicks inhalant and a couple of packs of mineral ice, make yourself comfortable, lie back and . . . swallow. An hour from now, perhaps less, you are going to experience something that shall for ever change such times as remain to you on this earth. You are going to experience something that is, every second of it, delicious – deliciously, positively, unprecedentedly w-o-n-d-e-r-f-u-l.
It is your self-anointing, and I envy you that first time. So relish it, savour it, languish it, treasure it, that sacred four hours. You have just swallowed wonder, ambrosia and mead, you have partaken of lustre and grace. Just make certain that before you swallow you know that the pill is authentic, and not some rip-off. Do that, and the rest is a piece of cake that is like no other you have ever tasted. Think of the best day of your life, or recall the sweetest, purest, most special thing along the way – person, place, moment, experience, accomplishment. Now multiply that tenfold. That does not begin to describe how impossibly delicious E is.
I am not unaware of how redolent this is of Timothy Leary’s often loopy proselytising for LSD, and its ‘quasireligious’ associations, but this has nothing to do with that. Ecstasy is a clarifier. It enables one to see, feel and think, if not more deeply, then certainly more clearly. The high subsides, but the lucidity lingers. In that sense, not to mention in its chemical composition, it is quite the opposite of LSD.
Ecstasy is a clarifier, but it is a personal clarifier. It is not – despite all the peace/love/unity/respect hype surrounding it – a universal one. Its lessons may be universal in their implications, but they are intended to be applied to oneself. Which is not to say that the drug does not have its social dimensions or that one ought not to do E in the company of others. Indeed I would not find it congenial to do, nor have I ever done it, alone. (As close as I ever came was on an unpeopled, night-time side street in London, and it was raining, and it was one of the memorable experiences of my life – neon, glistening, menthol, veneered in layer after thickening layer of thick honey. Lovely streets, London, and lovely, so lovely, its rain.)
But better by far to do it with those one loves, and best of all with one’s one-and-only lover. And if what one takes in the broadest sense is all about human connection and empathy – E has proven highly effective in certain kinds of couples therapy – it is all the more about connecting with and feeling empathy for oneself. It is, contrary to its image as the current drug of choice among teenagers and the prevalence of its use at their ‘raves’, the most intimate of drugs.
I did it my first time with the woman who saved me. It was her first time as well. We were, as zero hour approached, visibly apprehensive, an attitude, I think, that is only sane. We had cleared our schedules, switched off the phones, and we were in her home, just the two of us, in our bathrobes, in the living-room, on the couch. Van was on the stereo, Astral Weeks, Moondance, Common One, The Best of: Volume One. A fire was roaring in the fireplace. The lamp was turned down low. It was mid-evening, and we had ready – as my son had taken care to instruct us – our pair of tumblers and pitchers of iced-down spring water. E increases body temperature and heart rate and elevates blood pressure, so drinking water – not beer, not liquor – is pro forma as one rolls along. And one wishes to drink because E causes dehydration – one of its most immediate side effects is a dry mouth. With much mutually nervous, serio-comic, ceremonial chit-chat, then, we each popped our pill, swallowed, waited, and – nothing. We locked eyes. We still were alive. I think we were only half amazed. I know we were relieved. Van was still belting as only Van can. It takes a while for Ecstasy to kick in – and then the world around you billows open like an eye and you are lifted and taken – coronaed, crowned, spangled and lantern-lit, your smiling face flambeaued as by a thousand chandeliers.
One of the most discernible early effects – it happened that first time, though often it does not – is what I have heard described as ‘fluttery’ vision. This phenomenon is as close to an hallucinatory quality as E produces, and it is so mild – and weirdly pleasant – that to label it as such is frankly inaccurate. When it happened to us, we looked at one another, smiled, and virtually in unison commented on it. Cool. Images remain intact, they just move a little, as if jagged were a verb, within the texture of their own lines. These striations are very unthreatening, and very, well, cool. And then suddenly Van was singing waaaaay over there, and then waaaaay inside the very pith of my brain, yet away outside and all around as well. And that also was. Cool.
What happened next was that everything and all at once, while clearly remaining itself, was transfigured, transmogrified, a new self, a simultaneously deeper and higher, older and newer self – smoother and softer and rounder. The world was suddenly guilt-and-worry-and wrinkle-free, palpably, beautifully buoyant – visually, texturally, aurally – transcendently right and glorious and divine. Whatever beautiful thing one can imagine, it is that much more beautiful on E. And so we looked at one another and felt one another, with our fingers and our lips and our tongues, indeed with the whole of our new-found faces, this plumbing of the new map of our bodies – new softer hair, new smoother flesh, new pinker, fresher, more fragrant, shimmering, altogether fluffier genitalia – and we smelled and tasted one another – she smelled of burst peaches and tasted as the recent salts of pearls – because sense of smell and taste is no less honed and heightened than the other senses.
We bathed in one another, each of our five senses, ten in all, because that comingling is what had taken place, its rhapsody, and humanity, and caress. And we looked to one another exactly as we felt and smelled and tasted: rapturous, heavenly, transcendent, numinous, aglow. She a resplendent, bejewelled goddess, I a radiant god. Later, I got up, walked to the bathroom – walking on E is no more difficult than walking on water or floating on air – and looked in the mirror. I wanted to see what I looked like – I am just vain enough that the thought occurred to me even in the midst of the roll – though I already had seen reflected in my lover’s eyes that I looked sufficiently, there is no other word, gorgeous. (If I looked half as gorgeous as she did to me I reckoned I was in for a treat.) And the person I saw looking back at me was gorgeous, but gorgeous in a way that floored almost as much as it thrilled me.
Here, now, as I stared grinning in astonishment, I looked twenty-eight. And not some fifty-year-old version of myself at twenty-eight, but me the way I was back then. I moved closer, peered harder. I could scarcely believe it. I had recaptured myself. Dorian Gray. Fountain of Youth. Spontaneous regeneration. Somehow I had been restored, and I felt what I can only describe as an all-consuming nostalgia for the present.
And then, after helping each other off with our bathrobes, our old, nubby, cotton-twill bathrobes – suddenly spun of the finest cashmere and angelica, these clouds of talcum and down – we embraced, and kissed, and she whispered in my ear: ‘We’ve found fucking gold.’
From: The Guardian, Saturday 14 July 2001
He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth; and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make his face to shine, and bread w
hich strengtheneth man’s heart
Psalm 104, verses 14 & 15
Stuart Walton
Out of It – 2
A PAIR OF dining companions scrutinizes the menu in a smart, trend-setting restaurant in a European capital city. One has opted to begin with the tempura-battered strips of calf’s liver with pomegranate cream dressing, and go on to herb-crusted rack of lamb with Provençal vegetables. For the other, it will be quail terrine with redcurrant relish and rocket, and to follow, poached perch with a sauce of lemon and capers. Now for the tricky business.
That dressing on the liver might present problems for a light white wine, and without knowing precisely how sharp it will be, the choice is something of a matter of stumbling in the dark. A crisp New Zealand Sauvignon might stand up to it, and cut any residual oiliness in the batter, but then, what of the quail terrine? Surely that needs a meatier white, even a light red? The merits of a sturdy white burgundy are discussed, but the proposal is soon relinquished. An excess of oak would suit neither dish. Eventually, a compromise bottle is found. The weight and extract in a grand cru Gewürztraminer from Alsace will cope with the battered liver, and is a gastronomically unimpeachable match with any kind of terrine. The first bottle can safely be ordered. How, though, to find a vinous chameleon to blend with both red meat and white fish? That way, gustatory madness lies: Pinot Noir might suit a densely textured fish like tuna, but could crush the delicacy of a river fish, while lacking the tannic heft required to stand up to lamb. The richly buttery sauce with the perch will happily negotiate the fleshiness of a Barossa Valley Chardonnay, but even that wine, with its layers of oak and alcohol, is just too white for rare red meat. An opposite half-bottle each would be the obvious answer, were the list not so lamentably deficient in them. After much fretful chewing of bread, and flipping of pages back and forth, the issue is imperfectly resolved in favour of a bottle of cru classe Pauillac, the game plan being that the fish eater will be left the lion’s share of the Gewürztraminer to go with the perch (which means drinking the same wine with two courses, alas), but will nonetheless be able to help finish the claret with some cheese. Now the logistics of it must be explained to the sommelier, so that he doesn’t over-serve the Gewürztraminer to the lamb eater during the hors d’oeuvre.
In certain wine circles, food and wine matching has reached the status of an investigative science. A British wine periodical convokes a bunch of journalists and trade consultants to pick wines to go with a succession of dishes, the linking theme of which is strawberries. There is goat’s cheese with strawberries, swordfish with strawberries, duck livers with strawberries in balsamic vinegar, and a strawberry and white-chocolate gateau. A forest of opened bottles clutters the table as the panel searches earnestly on behalf of the magazine’s subscribers for the precise wine to marry with each dish. At the Fetzer winery in Mendocino County, California, there is a dedicated school devoted to this pursuit, where interested parties may enrol to spend studious days tasting and conferring. Is Sauvignon a better match than Chenin for the acid bite of sorrel, or is its upfront fruitiness more obviously suited to watercress? Then again, it depends on the dressing.
Alcohol has accrued over the millennia a rich and almost infinitely diverse set of symbolic contexts in which it may be taken, whether the aim be celebratory, consolatory, medicinal, scholastic, sacramental or gastronomic. What motivates our involvement with all intoxicants, however, is what they do to us. That may range across a spectrum from gentle tipsiness to stupefied collapse, from mild mood-heightening to gasping elation, from slight drowsiness to bare conscious narcosis, from faint dissociation to full-on hallucinogenic psychedelia.
Out of It, 2001
It was not the subtle bouquet of wine, or a lingering aftertaste of violets and raspberries that first caught the attention of our ancestors. It was, I’m afraid, its effect
Hugh Johnson
Tim Mackintosh Smith
Yemen: Travels in Dictionary Land
LUNCH AT ALI’S is not merely a matter of eating; it is the first step on the way to kayf. The meaning of the term has been discussed by Sir Richard Burton. One might call it, he wrote, ‘the savouring of animal existence . . . the result of a lively, impressible, excitable nature, and exquisite sensibility of nerve; it argues a facility for voluptuousness unknown to northern regions’. But in the end the translator of the Arabian Nights admitted defeat: kayf is ‘a word untranslatable in our mother tongue’. Lexicographers, who cannot be so realistic, have described it as a mood, humour or frame of mind. I, who chew the leaf of the qat tree, shall attempt a definition.
Ali’s Restaurant is all to do with the humours. Blood, phlegm, yellow and black bile must be in balance to ensure perfect health and to enable the qat chewer to attain his goal of kayf since qat excites the cold and dry black bile. Prophylaxis against its ill effects means that the blood, which is hot and wet, must be stimulated. Hence the heat, the sweat, the bubbling saltah. Hence also the visits to the public baths before chewing qat, the insistence on keeping windows and doors shut during chewing, the elaborate precautions to avoid the dreaded shanini – a piercing and potentially fatal draught of cold air.
An old joke illustrates this obsession with heat. The angels, it is said, periodically visit Hell to make sure the fires are turned up. One day a group of them are detailed to check on the really wicked sinners, who spend eternity in individual ovens. Inside the first oven is a Saudi. He screams to be let out. Roasting nicely, they think, and slam the door on him. In the next oven is an Englishman; then come an American, an Egyptian and so on. All beg to be let out, but the angels show them no mercy. Eventually, they open the last door. Inside sits a Yemeni, chewing qat and apparently oblivious of the flames around him. He draws languidly on his water pipe, turns to the angels, and says: ‘Hey, could you shut the door? I’ll catch my death of cold.’
The other day – it might, in fact, have been almost any day – I had lunch at Ali’s then bought my qat from blue-eyed Muhammad across the road. He swore I wasn’t giving him what he’d paid for it (the oaths of qat sellers are notoriously unbinding). I argued. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘take it for nothing. A present.’ I folded some more notes, stuck them behind his dagger, and walked off with my purchase. Wrangling over the price is part of the business of working up a sweat. (Real mawla’is – that is, those ‘inflamed with passion’ for qat – used to run halfway up Jabal Nuqum, singing, before they chewed.) It was half past two and I was ready to start. My molar, as they say, was hot.
In a house in the centre of San’a, I climbed the stairs to another room on a roof, grander than my own. On the way up, I called ‘Allah, Allah’ to warn women of my presence. Perhaps I should make the point here, if it needs to be made, that this is a very male book. As a man I am excluded from the society of women, as they from that of men. Outsiders tend to see this dual, parallel system as a form of repression. The idea never occurs to most Yemeni women. They know that they wield power in many spheres, notably in the choice of marriage partners which, given an endogamous system, is a major influence on the distribution of wealth. Women play only a small role in the public domain, as they did in the West until quite recently; at least in Yemen, in contrast to Saudi Arabia, women are able to drive cars, enter Parliament, become top-ranking civil servants. But it is in the private realm of the home that the woman dominates, in practice if not in theory; men often gather to chew qat together because their homes have been taken over by visiting women.
Panting from the ascent, I slipped off my shoes and entered the room. It was rectangular, with windows on all sides which began a foot above the floor. Above them were semicircular fanlights of coloured glass. Into the tracery of the fanlights, and in the plaster of the walls and shelf brackets, were worked the names of God and the Prophet, and verses of a pious nature. It was a very legible room. Polished brass gleamed everywhere: rosewater sprinklers, incense burners, spittoons with little crocheted covers, the great circular tray with its three water pip
es. Low mattresses covered with Afghan runners lined the walls. About a dozen men were sitting on them, leaning on armrests topped with little cloth off gold cushions. I greeted the chewers, interrupting their zabj, the rapid banter, the swordplay of insults that starts all the best qat sessions. I’d scarcely sat down when an old man opposite turned on me.
‘I was in Sa’wan this morning, and I saw this Jew. And, do you know, he looked just like you. You could have been twins!’
‘But . . . but I haven’t got any side-locks,’ I parried feebly. Jewish Yemenis are required to advertise their religion by cultivating a pair of long corkscrew ringlets.
‘Ah,’ he went on, ‘you know what they say: “Jewishiness is in the heart, not in the length of the side-locks.”’
I made a feint to gain time: ‘Tell me: exactly how many side-locks did this Jew of Sa’wan have?’
‘What do you mean? Two, of course.’
‘Well, it’s a funny thing, but I saw a Jew in the qat market today and he looked exactly like you. You could have been twins. But he had four side-locks.’
After half an hour of this verbal fencing, the zabj lost its momentum and devolved into solo joke-telling.
‘Once,’ someone said, ‘there was a blind girl. She was twenty-five years old and longing for a husband; but whenever she brought the subject up with her father he’d say, “My daughter, you are blind. No one wants you. But don’t worry. You’ll find a husband in Paradise.” Well, one day she was up on the roof hanging out the washing when she tripped and fell, down and down, six storeys. By chance she fell into a lorry carrying bananas and she was knocked unconscious. The lorry drove on. Ten minutes later, she came to. Ah, she thought, I am dead, then, as she felt the bananas, she remembered what her father had told her and gave a little shriek: “Slowly, slowly, men of Paradise! Please take your turn.”’