Chapter 21 - Paul Oakenfold at The Escape - Part 3

My eyes search the room to survey the scene, and I feel a gentle smile deep inside. Suddenly, I feel calm and at one with the world. My eyes rest on Katie as I find her in front of me. She smiles back at me, a little excited, her eyes clear and deep and full of joy with the world. I feel like we are back in place, back in control. I reach out my hand to hers, and she takes it and lifts up both to the ceiling. I step closer to her, lost in the moment, lost in the face of the girl I am falling for. My mind wanders, my feelings, like Yoda told Luke, an idea I have quoted many times, but until now, never understood. I watch in wonder at the smile that spreads across Katie's face and engulfs her being. Then it changes into a wide-open exclamation of surprise.

I feel my own mouth mirroring hers, and with confusion, I mouth, “What?” my excitement matching hers.

“That girl!” she replies, spinning me around and pointing me towards the bar and Manny.  “She was at your gig, she couldn’t take her eyes off Manny . . .  and now she has found him again.”

Manny is standing at the end of the bar, looking somewhat shocked. He is nodding enthusiastically with a fairly large hint of utter confusion. “It's her.” I mouth to myself as much as Katie. We both dance a little, underwhelmingly watching the two of them in wonder.

“She looks happy.” Katie smiles in my ear.

“He looks  . . .  attentive?” I laugh as we watch him struggling to stay focused.

Manny has an innate and incredibly impressive ability to be across everything. Many folk have their finger on the pulse, but this is more, it's like he has all eight fingers on eight different pulses. I can focus as well as anyone but it is very much on one thing at a time, to find my next think means moving my gaze from one to the other. Manny is a literal multitasker. The problem with this is that it takes constant scanning of the world around him and the pulses he is across. In situations like this, he is all at sea. This girl is demanding his full attention, and it is obvious from where we are that he is struggling.

The irony of the tables being turned is not lost on me, and it is causing me no small amount of guilt that I am somewhat enjoying his social discomfort. One thing you can say about me is that if you have my attention, you know it. My guess is that while he is trying to talk to this girl, he is also trying to identify the tunes being played, focus on the mixing and check out the faces down here. Bobby Gillespe and his crew walk to the bar, and I feel how disappointed Manny would have been to miss this.  I simultaneously want him to take her to the dancefloor and continue in this entertaining and agonising social torture for a while for mine and Katie’s amusement.

Soon they cheer and punch the air, and Manny leads her, his hand behind him holding hers, snaking through the crowd towards the dancefloor. Katie takes my hand as we enjoy the combined feelings of relief and disappointment. Heading to join them on the dancefloor for the end of Paul Oakenfold's set.

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As I ascend the steps out of the Escape wonderland. Back to life, back to reality, the reality of a cool Brighton summer night. The breeze from the sea hits and cools the sweat on my body and t-shirt. The new feeling rushes through my body, combining with the remnant of the pill still in my system, and makes me stumble on the lip of the top step. Tripping between worlds. I feel Katie’s grip on my elbow tighten and slide away as I regain my balance, some of my composure and none of my small reserves of cool.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the uber cool front man of Murmuration.” I look up and smile at the shimmering, blurred figures standing in front of me.  I smile and join their laughter, but feel confused with my lack of clear vision and a growing understanding that in the cool dark of the night, I am somewhat more fucked up than I thought. I focus on the laughter and hold on to the thought that my friends are my friends, a battle raging against the circular notion about my total lack of cool and the burning understanding that I am a charlatan ever closer to being unmasked as the fraud I am. My insides are ripped apart as I chase the ribboned thoughts throughout my brain and guts. Katie hugs in close and helps me balance. I laugh at the irony of having never thought of myself as cool, I am taking to heart when someone suggests I am momentarily not.

My ears are ringing and the blobs in my blurry vision as testament to my inability to respond or retort to the now subsiding piss-taking. I am aware that the conversation is shifting, but I cannot hear the face that it has shifted to formulating a plan of what we are going to do next. I feel a rising panic cut through me, unable to centre myself or even remember who is here with me. I look into the darkness and feel myself being drawn into it like falling into a deep well.  I shake my head and murmur, “Katie?” The sound breaks my fall, and I snap to fear that she is not here and I have embarrassed myself on a boys night out.

“Alien” she whispers without movement, gently next to my ear, “check out the moon”.  She runs her fingers through my hair and guides me towards the silver blur just to the left of the well. The blur shifts from hexagons to octagons, twisting and flickering, turning in colours like a kaleidoscope. “All the songs that fill my head, dance around you when I’m dead.” I start to sing as the moon snaps back to focus, complete with the man. I turn to look into the kind and calming brown eyes of Rich, who continues, “All the love I ever known, Kaleidoscope surrounding you.”

He then lights two cigarettes and hands one to Katie, and carefully slides the other between my fingers. “There you go, man,” he says. “Back with us after your trip to the moon, man.”

I lean in for a hug and smile into his ear, “Thank you for your guidance, Polestar.”

I open my eyes and feel calm again, a cheer surrounding us, the moon in focus. Over Rich’s shoulder, I see Manny and the girl stepping out of the escape, bathed in light and shining like stars. Manny waves at us and smiles broadly as he approaches. He loudly introduces the girl as Gloria and tells us she has invited us to a party at her friend’s place. 

Link to rest of the story - https://www.abctales.com/collection/alien-murmuration-1st-person