weekend. part two

The place where they do really excellent Pimms made with ginger beer is where President Obama is attending a meeting today. It was lovely there – I hope he enjoys himself as much as me, but I bet he isn’t going to go back to wherever he is staying afterwards and do what we did.

We stopped momentarily after the airport, to drop off my bags at T’s new flat. It’s right in the city centre and he’s so pleased to be back after ten years in the suburbs. He told me how, on the first night, he sat on his balcony, and watched the sun set, and then rise again on the buildings opposite. I think if you grow up in a city, you are never truly comfortable anywhere else. It’s small but nice there. As we went upstairs, I noticed that about half the books on his shelves are also on mine, and also that he has been there two weeks and arranged the books, but still has no television.

We stayed at the bar until midnight, talking and talking. There’s something really special about being with someone from the same place, and we had so much to discuss. All the things I’d banned him from telling me while I was writing about them - our friends, and the way we used to live – we hadn’t had a proper chance to talk about them, and share our memories.

We toasted Joel with the little copper cups they served the drinks in. That was another first for both of us – talking about Joel and how it was when he died, face to face with someone who understood. It was sad, reliving the consequences of those days, but it felt like the right thing to do, to include him in our evening.

Only T could have used the explanation he did the next morning as it got light, that what he did after the bar was to reassure me that he was in control of his life - to show me that I wasn’t to worry about him. I did understand, but I’m not sure many others would. I think you need a particular kind of twisted logic.

“I’ve got a little black here, to celebrate. Would you like to join me? You don’t have to – up to you completely”. He had an “I dare you” look in his eye, even as he said it was up to me – it was very funny.

“Okay”

Black in London in the nineteen seventies and eighties meant hash – black Lebanese, or Pakistani black. I hadn’t had a joint for years but I thought why not. Black in Las Vegas in 2009 means something different. It’s heroin – but not the stuff we used to do in London – the grey or brownish white powder. This is a dark, sticky substance, like opium, or treacle, only it’s not. You can’t do lines of it, or smoke it – you have to put little dabs of it on silver foil and burn the underneath, following the smoke as the black dots bubble and blister, with a plastic tube to inhale it through.

Our London smack came from Afganistan and was of a higher quality, T explained. It’s all from Mexico in the States now, which makes sense I suppose – buying local goods and all that. He said it ‘s not so strong either.

I wasn’t sure for about two minutes, and then I thought fuck it. I would trust T with my life, and I believed him about the strength when he said it doesn’t lay you out like English smack would. So I said yes, and he was right of course. It was lovely. I had been craving that sensation ever since I described it in writing. T said he’d read what I’d written and guessed - I am so lucky to have such wonderful friends. We spent all night and half the next day chasing the dragon, and each time I got worse at following the vapour with the little tube, because I was smiling too much.

It was really the perfect thing to do under the circumstances. We talked and talked, catching up on all those lost years. I understood so much more afterwards than I did before. We still had the elephant in the room - the questions that stayed unanswered until yesterday, but it was a lovely gentle way of coming to a conclusion about each other. He told me so many things about his life, and we compared the things we’ve done, the mistakes we’ve made along the way – they’re frighteningly similar. He even has a great uncle who was a famous anarchist in Russia – just like I have, although I don’t think I told T that part – I was mostly just smiling by the time we got around to great uncles.

I haven’t felt as relaxed and happy for years. When you move around, you lose the comfort of the familiar. Whatever you replace it with, it’s never the same. For me, all the beauty of the woods and the fields where I am now, will never really beat the smells of a city and the joy of a night talking to someone who’s known me forever, who shares the same past and has come to the same conclusions about everything. The heroin just made it even better. It was such a wonderful night.