The ecstasy and the agony

Chapter one

Back in the early nineties when ecstasy really was ecstasy not the tepid shit that they sell to the kids these days I smuggled a couple of tabs into Zante. Only two tabs: one for me and one for Marie – enough for her to fall in love with me for a night and me with her. Although I’d lost count of the number of times I’d been carrying I always got a little nervous when I went through customs. However, I prided myself on my originality when it came to hiding drugs. I’d never needed to swallow anything or shove it up my arse, I was too subtle for that. So on this occasion I individually wrapped the tabs in clingfilm and dropped them into a bottle of thick gloopy yellow shampoo. Then I wiped the top and put a smudge of PVA around the thread. This would add a little authentic stiffness to the lid on the off-chance that an overenthusiastic customs guard should decide to open it. I shook the bottle and held it up to the light. There was no way you could tell it was concealing anything.

Even so, I was sweating a bit when I went through; that musty, under-the-arms kind of sweat that always smells bad. Stupidly, I was wearing a biker’s jacket, a personal statement which guaranteed that I would be stopped and searched at customs. On this occasion they went one step further and pulled me into a little room and got me to empty my suitcase. If I say so myself I showed a great deal of panache as I did so, affecting the resigned but amused air of somebody who was obviously put out by what was happening to him but apparently viewing the experience in a post-modernist existential kind of way. In a display of unfeasible braggadocio I even handed the shampoo to the plump matronly uniformed woman whose job it was to go through my socks and underwear. But she wasn’t interested and eventually waved me away with mock embarrassed shrugging.

Marie was waiting for me by the MacDonald’s with that dumb face of hers sitting blankly atop a body that she appeared unaware of, although this couldn’t possibly be true. She asked me what had happened, which seemed a completely senseless question but for the time being I was content to indulge her innocence and her stupidity. If everything went according to plan I would soon have my hands on that body of hers, which seemed adequate compensation for such admirable patience. 

But things started to go wrong.

Inevitably the hotel was a shit-hole. It was damp and smelled of piss. Whatever colour it had once been had been bleached away by the sun. Nothing like the picture in the brochure. And there were two single beds, which fucked me off no end. Worse still when I poured the pills out of their hiding place they had somehow reacted with the shampoo and more than doubled in size. They had become soggy, clingfilmed pouches of shampooey dust that were no good to anyone. I resolved to let them dry out in the sun for a while and curtail my nefarious plans until later. This turned out to be a bad idea because as soon as we hit the bars Marie was immediately surrounded by panting admirers who were oblivious to my presence. And before I knew what was happening she was sitting on the lap of one of them, a seven foot Devonian cavemen who really was Neanderthal, not in the pejorative sense but an actual, living breathing Neanderthal, complete with bone jutting brow, undersized eyes and oversized hands and feet capable of crushing my puny Public School digits. And then he took Marie home with him and presumably had sex with her, leaving me alone to wank away my frustrations back in that shit-hole of a hotel room. That was Day One – surely things could only get better?

On Day Two we did the beaches. Marie in a bikini, inevitably already bronzed. Me in shorts and a t-shirt that made not even a cursory attempt to hide the rolls of fat beneath. I didn’t mention the events of the previous night to Marie in the hope that they never actually happened. The Plan was back on and I was once more Dick Dastardly. We had lunch and then lay together on the sand listening to a radio. I took off my shirt, sucked in my belly and allowed the hot sunshine access to my flabby white torso as I fell into a dream. When I awoke four hours later that torso was still flabby but now it was pink and radiated its own heat source, moreover I was shivering like it was the middle of winter. I spent that second night alone again, trying to keep warm under the flea-ridden bedsheets in the shitty hotel room as everyone else on the island broiled in the Mediterranean heat. Marie was nowhere to be seen.

The next morning hit me with dehydrated agony, every part of my body blistered, my taut skin ready to crack. Unable even to turn my head. Unable to leave the hotel room for fear of the cruel burning sun. Round about six Marie finally rolled in. She had bite marks on her neck and her eyeliner had run to form black tears. She refused to speak and slumped on to her bed, immediately falling into a deep coma. I lay in the next bed listening to her grind her teeth, my balls aching and the rest of me slow cooking, too sore to sleep.

I lost track of time: Marie disappeared and I spent days and days on my own prowling the island. Staying in the shadows like a vampire, avoiding direct sunlight. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of Marie in the distance with her various companions. As well as the tall Neanderthal one, there was a black one, and a white one, and what looked like twins. One time she saw me looking at her and waved at me happily. Not a trace of concern for my well-being on her beautiful face or any regret for abandoning me. As the days trundled by I got drunker and drunker and stumbled blindly into women, desperate for attention, for companionship. Even the ugly ones swatted me away as you might do an irritating tick. However, one woman spent the afternoon with me, drinking my drinks and telling me tales of woe, of unwanted children, of beatings. She was attractive in a proletarian way and my standards had dipped so down below the bar that I would have happily have clambered on top of her. Finally, she asked to borrow money and I gratefully obliged. She said she would go back to her hotel to retrieve her forgotten purse and pay me back straight away. It would only take five minutes, she said. Then we’d get drunk together. I never saw her again.

Gangs of youths in Gazza t-shirts marched the dusty streets squeezing wobbly plastic glasses of expensive cheap flat beer between their brutish fingers. Their yells made no sense to me as I submerged myself in a bottomless lake of alcohol. I swam in that lake and through a heat haze found myself talking to one of these pink-faced youths. The words refused to emerge but I still managed to say something that this person took exception to. He was smiling like an indulgent father as he smacked me hard in the mouth and I jinked to the floor like a cow in a slaughterhouse, blood squirting from somewhere within the roof of my mouth. ‘Fucking cunt!’ he said, the first time anybody had spoken to me in what seemed like a lifetime.

In blood and pain I somehow made my way back to the room. Marie was there applying the evening’s make-up. She looked at me in confusion. ‘Are you having a nice time?’ she asked, frowning at the blood and covering her love bites with a silk scarf.

And then it was suddenly the last day. If I was ever going to enact The Plan it had to be now. The sun had turned the soggy ecstasy into a fine dry powder and I took a shower and dressed myself in clean clothing. I put on aftershave. I cleaned my teeth. My flesh was peeling like a snake shedding its skin but I felt clean for the first time since we had arrived in Greece. Marie looked even more beautiful as she sat across me at the dinner table later that evening. For the first time in close to a week we were actually alone and I was able to put my Oxbridge charm into play, pretending not to talk about money and watching the effect it had on her. I fed Marie glass after glass of gin and her words began to slur as I produced the powered ecstasy and slipped it into her drink. Then I poured the other tab into mine and downed the mixture in one. I grinned.

Marie looked puzzled. Then she looked worried. And then she nervously asked about the powder in her drink. When I told her what it was she didn’t want to know. She had never taken ecstasy, she explained, and nothing I could say or do would make her swallow the contents of her glass. ‘But I’ve just taken it…” I protested in slow motion. I’d just taken the powdered ecstasy and was about to embark on a trip that would last the whole night. 

We argued for a while. I tried to make her see sense. But it was a waste of time. And so I did what any sane person in my position would do: I picked up Marie’s glass and drained it too. 

Smooth fade: 

I find myself standing on a beach. The biggest sun ever seen by the human eye sinks slowly beneath the waves as I’m overcome by a feeling of profound overwhelming absolute love for the world and its entire contents. I wander up to strangers and engage them in the deepest conversations that they will ever be party to. My mind travels at the speed of light. The people around me shrink to the size of pinheads. There is nothing around me but love. Love. Love. Love.

The seconds last minutes. The minutes last hours. Love. Love. Love. 

I’m sucked into the midst of a crowd. Every one of them my best friend. Every one of them a stranger and an intimate. We drink and we and we drink and we drink until there is nothing left to drink on the island. But it has no effect on me. I could drink the entire world if I wanted to. I am Jesus. I am God. I am love. Love. Love. Love.

Smoother fade.

There was a loud bang and I woke up on the pavement with a cut on my shin and two pairs of eyes inches from my own. Beside me was a buckled motorbike with its engine smoking, wheels still spinning. The owners of the eyes were shouting at me angrily in Greek. They wore police uniforms. In my MDMA haze I tried to make sense of where I was and what was happening. It is only much later that I realise that I had somehow stolen the bike and been hurtling through the Zante town centre at top speed, lucky not to kill anyone. To kill myself. The shouting continued and quickly escalated. A pair of handcuffs were produced. I was about to be arrested and put in a Greek prison cell.

It was then that a miracle happened.

‘There he is!’ shouted a female voice. ‘He’s always doing this. Give the stupid sod to me and I’ll take him home.’ 

Four Greek eyes and two English eyes turned in surprise towards the source of the voice. She was in her late twenties, mousey blonde, Essex accent, nothing much to look at. 

‘Come on,” she continued. “You two boys can leave him to me… He’s going to get it when I get him home!’

And this was the miracle: I’d never met this person before but she’d been passing by and noticed that I was in trouble. And even more of a miracle: the two Greek policeman put away the handcuffs and did as they were told. As they walked away I picked myself up and thanked my saviour. ‘You all right then, mate?’ she said, moving away from me. ‘See you around…’

And see her around I did. Because lo and behold who isn’t sitting right behind Marie and me on the flight home? And strangely enough, her name is also Marie.

By the end of the flight I was sitting next to the other Marie. And when the plane landed she did indeed take me home, as she had promised the Greek police. And I’ve never left. I even married the girl.

She’s in her late-forties now, mousey blonde, Essex accent, still nothing much to look at. And when dinner is eaten and coffee has been poured we never tire of telling our friends about the the day that we met.