Last Night in Brizzy. Ecstasy Anyone? (part3)

"Alright youze druggies!" The crowd around Sarah had dispersed; I have to admit that it was quite a sight watching her unload so many pills in such a short time, "Anyone else? I'm 'bout to go downstairs and I've still got six left!" No one spoke up. "Alright then fuck yaz!" She started to shuffle her way to the door. "Have fun, and thanks for my – er – our party, it's much appreciated."
As Sarah closed the door behind her I felt as though I had a duty, while everyone was still relatively quiet, to make people aware of how intense the drugs were meant to be. Dealers always talk up there drugs so it was probably all bullshit, but as I hadn't tried one of these white lightnings before, I figured I'd better be on the safe side. "Alright guys, one more quick thing. Before you all go swallowing all the tablets you want, I noticed there are some newbies in the audience. Fair warnin' to you – Oi! Shut it!" (a couple of the lumpys in the doorway to the balcony thought their conversation was more important), "That's better. As I was sayin': a fair warnin' to everyone in this room, these won't be kickin' in for at least an hour. They're slow acting but when they do hit, from what I've heard, they should hit hard. I wouldn't eat more than a half if it's your first time, and everyone else, well, you know where you're at, just don't be stupid." I hated talking to groups. My telling anyone to be careful with their drugs was pretty hypocritical. I felt awkward, "Well… anyway, it's getting close to midnight, so let's move this party outside! Family anyone?"
The Family was my favorite Australian nightspot. It had been the undisputed number-one place to go when looking for something crazy on the late-night streets of Brisbane. Named appropriately, it's the kind of club where everybody you meet is a friend, whether you know them on the outside or not. This is due largely to the fact that ecstasy is so popular within the Family's irregular walls, and the main reason that I myself had become such a regular. Every weekend you were guaranteed a live show from one of the best in the techno industry. Management wasn't stupid either. They knew which crowd was their target audience, and you could tell by the price of a bottle of water. When ecstasy is coursing through your veins, it tends to dehydrate, so water is a necessity. Alcohol is barely needed at all, and to some, it seems like a waste of money. "My mindzz so fucked up, what's th' point of alcohol?" Ingeniously, there is not one water bubbler inside, and the water from the tap in the bathroom is set to only come out at the temperature of a hot bath. Your only option for water is to either buy a five-dollar bottle of water from the bar, or pass out on the dance floor from lack of fluids while the lights and lasers flash rhythmically on your soon-to-be limp corpse. It's not in the bag that you will die, but if not quickly attended to by a medical professional, anyone will die of extreme dehydration... people tend to pay the five bucks. As I said, the management at Family knows their clientele and they know how to get your money, but Jesus, they do put on a good show.
We walked the pristine streets of the inner city towards Fortitude Valley, the place to go in late night Brizzy. In the Valley you could find any kind of club you wanted: top forty, house, rock, cover bands, karaoke, trance, indie, grunge, jazz, strip, gay… I must be forgetting something, but you get my point; it was a melting pot of young culture.
Of course I wasn't headed to the Val by myself. Along with Sarah, our gang included Eliot and some not-so-cute female lumpy he'd been tooling for a while. Jewels, I think her name was. Also Freddy, a pit boss from the casino who was much too old to go out but couldn't help playing make-believe that he could still party with the adolescents. I never could have had the heart to say it to his face but… come on. Just 'cause someone spends their youth waxing the balls of their superiors in order to climb the cooperate ladder instead of enjoying their youth like they should have does not give them an excuse to have a midlife crisis while dressed like a twenty-something on the red-light streets.
Of course there were also a few other non-descripts. The people who you know are there, but honestly, deep down, you know you don't care that they are there. They just fill the space. Make the party seem full. They're fun, they really are or else you wouldn't be hanging around them in the first place, but really, are you going to miss them when you move away?
This was true about everybody else there except for one, so I saved him for last. That was Perry. Perry was pretty much one of the only true male friends that I had grown in Brisbane. Then again, he was gay, so I don't really even know if that counts. To me, a person has always been a person, nothing more and nothing less. Something as trivial as sexual orientation should not be what is used to judge someone's true character. Perry was easily my best mate. We didn't get to talk about hot chicks in short skirts but we still got to have a helluva lot of fun. We hit up nightclub after nightclub, and party after party. We downed drink after drink, and drug after drug. We didn't share a taste in genitalia but we shared a major taste for exhilaration. It went deeper then that though. I trusted him, and I had no problem pushing that trust as far as it could go – we both already had on a number of occasions.
The closer we got to the Valley, the dirtier the streets became. Australia's cities are some of the cleanest in the world, but I don't care what country you're in or which city, when you get to the "over-indulging" part of a city, the part where people spend their nights doing everything in excess, if you take your poodle for a walk around the block you will be dodging vomit along the way.
As we got closer to the club I could feel myself getting tense, my jaw tighter. I had to check in with myself. Was I just fervently anticipating our arrival or had the drugs already started to take effect? I looked down at my watch, not even a half hour had gone by. These were definitely going to be creepers.
We passed the Monastery, a club that, in my book, was rated as shit when compared to the Family. I knew when we got around the corner we'd have a clear view of the dimly-lit, off-the-beaten-track entrance. There was never any reason to come to this scrap of sidewalk unless you were about to enter this holy shrine of nightclubs. I glanced down at my watch; it'd been thirty-five minutes. As I rounded the corner my heart was thumping like a preteen's touching his first slightly-developed breast. I stared down the street and saw a line that nearly stretched down the entire block. A wave of disappointment washed over my slightly drunken and soon to be detached-from-body soul, for I knew how slow this line would move. The pain of this anticlimax escaped audibly through my lips in a slight, out-of-character whimper, and physically through my legs coming to an almost full stop.
"Come on now Monty, don’t slow down mate!" Perry piped up, "We've got a club to get to, and a certain master DJ called Paul Van Dyke to listen to."
"I know man, but that line…can't you see it?" I stuttered.
He didn't answer, he just pushed me forward. Grudgingly, I continued my hike forward, past a couple smokers lining the brick wall. I could hear the soft thud of music pumping away inside. Boom, Boom, Boom. This sucked. It was going to be at least an hour in this line. I started to pass the heavily guarded entry so I could walk past the start of the mile long line and join at the end when I was grabbed by the arm.
"Damn it, Monty, you don't think we'd'uv let a little thing like a line stop us on your last night do ya?"
"What… w'd'ya mean?"
"I got us a booth man! Sarah and you are partying right tonight, mate!" This was excellent, pretty much the best way to do it. We'd have our own place in the club, which we could seclude using drapes. We'd have drink service all night. But most importantly, the thing that really mattered was that we wouldn't have any line, "It's under Treasury my friend, Mr. Security Guard, first name Conrad, thank you."

"Last Night in Brizzy, Ecstasy Anyone" will be finished soon in Part4… probably.

-strongmonty

Disclaimer: Ecstasy is a serious drug. Ingestion of MDMA can cause serious side effects. Get more information at: http://www.intheknowzone.com/ecstasy/chemistry.htm