Chapter 2

THE ROCK OF EXCESS

Cocaine makes the night messy. I suppose that is why we take it. The first cocaine I ever tried was pink champagne, the purest form of blow, refined in the fields of  Chefchaouen, Morocco. No one has better stuff in the world, or so the old man used to say. I was sixteen years old and I bumped into Sandy in a seedy Gibraltarian night club, Penelope’s, opposite the Casemates City Gates. I recognised him immediately. His departure from our home in Varyl Begg Estate meant we had spent very little time together but there was no doubt he was my father. I recognised his deep dark-brown eyes, the protruding eyebrows, the droopy earlobes, the shiny dark brown hair hovering over his shoulders, the olive skin and the freakishly wide shoulders. His mannerisms were familiar too; I saw him squint his eyes as he praised the Union Jack and raise his left fist while claiming The Rock should forever stay British even if he thought the English, especially the English sailors he would brawl with in the pubs, were all bastard sons of the fucking empire. Three or four hairy smuggler minions gathered around him. The desert-skinned men in black jeans, black vests and Moroccan sandals encouraged his remarks and downed whiskey and cokes. It was not the father-son reunion I had fantasised with. There was also the matter of the  black leather biker jacket. It was the same jacket Sandy wore the morning he left. It corroborated his identity. The leather had suffered the tear and wear of ten years of night clubbing but I would have recognised that jacket anywhere; rock band patches and all. 

‘Toma, take another line hombre,’ ordered Sandy as his index finger wiped up the remains of the cocaine line scattered on the toilet tank. 

‘Another one?’ I grumbled, ‘really?’

‘Of course papón! It’s there! Can’t you see it?’ 

I could NOT see it. The toilet tank and the line of cocaine were all one blur. I was so high. So bloody high. I kept swinging my head from side to side and biting my lip. Sandy held my hair in an improvised pony tail as I snorted the line. I shot up like a space rocket. Sandy laughed. 

‘It’s the best, no?’ he gloated, ‘from the  shosho of ChefChaouen.’ 

‘Yes, no hay coca mejón,’ I agreed. 

In truth I had no way of judging the blow. I had never experienced class A’s before. All I knew was that my cranium was buzzing. In those first moments I suspected I had been born to play a major role in the unfolding of the world’s future. I left the toilet in a state of rapture, hobbling towards the dance floor and grabbing my testicles with both hands while I screamed ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns and Roses. I don’t know why I decided to sing the post-glam rock anthem. It was definitely too high for my baritone voice, and the 90’s techno music crackling out of the speakers would make my rendition inaudible. The scene was ridiculous. The Gibraltarian smugglers in the disco, wearing gold chains and stretched dark blue Levi Jeans, improvised a human ring and gathered around me to mock my singing and copy my gesticulations. They moved in a circular motion, jumping up and down, performing their testosterone-infused tribal dance while pointing their fingers and laughing their heads off. I felt I was in a kind of prehistoric ritual which would end with my flesh being cooked in a massive iron receptacle. The half-dream dissolved when Sandy burst out of the toilet slamming the door behind him and rattling the hinges. He was in a foul mood. 

‘Me cago en Dios!’He stomped towards the dance floor and grabbed me by my leather belt.

‘What the hell are you doing!? Don’t be a murcio,’ he shouted as he dragged me towards the bar. The smugglers dispersed and Sandy ordered some drinks. The English bartender had been watching the scene unfold and could not contain his laughter. 

‘Y tu de que te ríe guiri de mierda?!’ bellowed Sandy, ‘Whiskey now! He screamed as he threatened to punch the bartender. 

The lad turned around in panic and disbelief. He did not have a clue what Sandy had said but he knew he was in the shit as we llanitos would say. He put his quivering hand inside the icebox and withdrew six cubes. The lad tried positioning the cubes inside the long cocktail glasses but missed. The ice cubes rolled along the surface of the bar. When he finally met his mark he poured a quadruple shot of whiskey in each glass. Sandy smirked and downed his drink. 

‘No one laughs at a Durante,’ he whispered as he wrapped his right arm around my neck. 

I was too high to sense the tightness of his grip. I considered it a fatherly embrace at the time but now I see it more as a wrestling move. I remember placing my hands on my head to help with the weight of his arms and with the cocaine fuzz. I also remember a mixed feeling of dread and excitement. A sense of awe fused with sadness and existentialism and the smell: the smell of dampness and ashtrays, the smell of sweat and beer. The smell of abandonment and the night. The smell of a man who has seen the caverns of the mind. Perhaps my father was an orphic creature too, like the Romantics I had studied in school who explored the darkest corners of the human condition, to reveal the mysteries of life, to come out of hell with a song. Or perhaps he was just really really into cocaine and booze.  

‘Buen coke, no pichón?’ remarked Abel. 

Out of  all of my father’s minions, Abel seemed to take a more empathetic interest in me. Abel was lanky and scruffy. His most common attire were black flannel trousers, a white vest with many holes and black patent leather shoes. He also wore a white haired mop-top that could be confused for a black toupée. I liked the fact that he did not fit in with the rest of the men. I remember trying to talk to Abel that night but words were not rolling out of my tongue. My language was stuck somewhere between my larynx and lips. During those first cocaine exchanges with Sandy and his mates, I had the sensation of discovering a new form of communication. A new tongue. A strange mix of Andalusian, Sefardic Jew, Cockney, Mapuche, Arabian and animal grunts and sighs. It was what they call cocaine talk. A slurring of words, an extension of vowels, an aberration of the rules of grammar.

‘Qué dice boy? Speak clearly! Me cago en to!’ bellowed Sandy. 

Cocaine changes the synaptic connections of your brain. It creates new passageways for thoughts and emotions to travel through. Taking cocaine is like firing electricity into a high-voltage circuit. You feed both the fear and the hope. I was elated, shit-scared, confused and losing my ability to conjugate verbs. The grammar was getting worse because of the intensity of the emotions and the drugs. I could hardly believe it! I was snorting pink champagne with my absent father. The lost cowboy; the darkened rogue. Was he as tough as he made himself out to be? Would he have used his cowboy boots on the barman? Was he liberated from moral chains? Was he a hero of freedom and the anti-establishment? Was he just a scared thud eager to run away? How could I tell? An abandoned child will often mythologise the departing parent. I learnt this later on by skimming through psychology books and dating women who were much cleverer than me. Natalie always said: it’s not rocket science. Parents leave and you shelve them in the fiction section of your brain-library. You make them into myths and characters of films. We all do it. 

I suppose she was right. I had turned Sandy into a llanito mix of Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean and Al Pacino in ScarFace. It turned out Sandy was actually a good fit for a Hollywood version of a Gibraltarian pirate and father. The leather jacket, the black hair, the cuts on his skin, the drugs, helped fortify my fantasy version of the progenitor. 

‘Here, have another line. Use the silver pipe to snort it. If you snort, snort well or don’t snort at all!

I could not make myself call him dad. The word seemed so hollow on my lips. So void of meaning or roots. The last memory I had before the pink champagne was of Sandy in the living room of our two bedroom council flat in lower Varyl Begg. He stood there motionless. Dressed quintessentially in his leather jacket and his cowboy boots. With a suitcase planted beside him. His friend Abel, babbling about the queues in the frontier that day. 

‘Thanks Sandy. Thanks.’‘Call me dad, niño.’ 

At school, I bragged about the inhuman amounts of alcohol and drugs I had consumed with el viejo. I felt like a Judas to my own feelings. I was still confused and hurt by my father’s absence  and yet I walked around the patio with a mighty swagger, swinging my shoulders and dragging my feet like an emperor penguin. Another part of me felt damn good to be a Durante, whatever that meant. My mates mocked me at first but when my rating on the school patio improved, many of them started hovering around me during break time and called me chulo, a badass, a clan brother. I joined my father for several more drunken escapades in the months leading up to my departure to Hull University but nothing beat the first encounter at Penelopes and the first line of coke.  

 ***

‘Here, come on! This part is flat. It’s about the only good thing about not having tits,’ repeated Tara. ‘One more line before we go. Come on! One more now. It might come tonight.’ 

‘What do you mean, it?’‘Who sold you the gear? 

The toilet of the Betsey had barely enough space for one adult to piss in. There was less than fifty centimetres between the sink and the seat. It was almost impossible for two people to sniff cocaine there. I was squashed against the door while Tara was sitting on top of the toilet-seat with her long pale-skinned legs spread in front of me. My hands were shaking. I thought I was either going to drop the sachet or throw-up from the smell of bleach. It’s not easy to arm lines on a leather wallet while the white cage-cubicle creeps all around you. Then you have to watch out for the steroid-swelled security guards sniffing around like mad wolves, and pissed friends banging on the door and demanding the blow. 

 ‘Snort one from my chest! Here! Arm it on my skin. Go on,’ she mumbled as she unbuttoned her white linen shirt. Her eyes were indigo red and her jaw was unhinged. 

‘It’s not going to work. I’ll drop it, ‘I assured. 

‘Oh, don’t give me that shit. Go on you pussy!’

Dante was due in three weeks. I had decided to organise a farewell decadence/welcome baby piss-up with some friends from the scene. The alcohol and drugs had made us strike up a conversation with two shiquillas in their twenties who were sitting at a table near us. I was especially drawn to one of them, Tara. Tara was a waitress and an aspiring singer- songwriter and poet, or so she said. She was an extremely skinny dark-haired shiquilla with two massive green eyes, which seemed to pop out into the world like deranged frogs. Two minutes into the chat I was rambling on about the unexpected pregnancy, my fears about ending my night-life, and how I was on a mission to get plastered. 

‘It will work. I do this with my bitches all the time,’ she continued. 

‘Bloody sachets are impossible to open.’

‘They open from the side, you nob.’ 

I wondered how snorting cocaine from Tara’s naked chest would rate in my lifetime graph of decadence and excess. The darkest corners of my psyche had always unleashed their needs and desires on drugs and sex. It was my way to abandon the grimness of my reality and indulge in the chaos of meeting intoxicated strangers and exploring the consequences of my own colliding neurons . But this time it was harder to escape. The image of Dante punching the walls of Natalie’s uterus was holding me back. How could I indulge on a journey of nocturnal madness with the little Stasi on its way? He was watching me. He was judging me and giving me marks. I was definitely failing the tests.

‘I will spill it and then Dorian will murder me for messing up his coke,’ I assured.

Dorian was already knocking on the toilet door. He had been getting off with Tara’s friend, Caterina, in the smoking area of The Betsey. He was responsible for the drugs and the flirting.

‘No way we are all going to fit in here!’ I warned, ‘no way.’

The night was on its way out. Trying to celebrate when fate and your body are against you is a recipe for disaster. It only leads to frustration and anger. Sandy taught me this. Unfortunately, I also inherited my father’s stubbornness when it came to drinking and drugs. I found it impossible to go home. Not until the room had been completely cleared. Not until the last punter had buggered off. I don’t know what it was. A fear of missing out, perhaps? An aversion towards domestic reality? In retrospect I don’t think anyone wanted to be out late on that specific night at The Betsey. The after-hour locals were trapped between their expectations of a great night and innate boredom and we were taking drugs to avoid the feeling of being completely out of place. I suspected Jez and everyone else had had enough of the drinking, the snorting, and the nonsense small talk. Everyone except Tara. Tara was connected to the moment by a cable rooted to the cosmos. I could see it in her eyes. Tara’s spirit was glued to the core of the bar and its habitat. The night mattered to her. Perhaps it was the only thing that mattered. She sprang out of the toilet and saved the scene by dancing wildly to ‘Brainy’ by The National in the main room. Her enthusiasm provided momentary meaning to the scene of desolation. Jez followed her around and jumped like a maniac. He looked like an overexcited baboon. He was drunk and pathetic, but the guy made me laugh. We also frequented the same pubs. Went to the same gigs. Listened to Dylan and Cohen. It seemed we were part of the same clan and had to stick together. After a few drunken excursions we had started jamming and ended up playing some duo shows at The Betsey and The Green Note in Camden. We had some nice reviews from drunken punters. They said our instruments and voices were a good match. Jez, with his cello and his lighter airy vocals and me with my nylon string guitar and hefty baritone voice singing away my alternative folk songs with a latin twang. We had a very small following and never made any money, but decided to keep on playing. 

‘Stop it Jez, you are making a monkey out of yourself,’ I protested.

‘The only apes I know come from Gibraltar,’ said Jez as he continued throwing his limbs around in a quirky attempt at dancing. ‘Que te jodan!’

Jez took off his T-shirt and growled. He wanted to show-off. His adolescent training as an Olympic swimmer helped him sculpt an impressive torso. His chest and shoulders assimilated a Roman statue. I envied his body and the effects it had on women and men. I was skinny and bent and had only visited the gym to spread flyers for Grunge concerts. 

‘Why do you have to take your shirt off?’ I complained.

Tara wrapped herself around Jez’s half-naked body and howled, “brainy! brainy! brainy!”. A middle-aged drunk lady who looked like a worn out second rate version of Vivian from Absolutely Fabulous cornered me and started babbling about immersive theatre. Something about the English adaptation of The Great Gatsby. There was saliva drooping down her shirt and she was making no sense. She was two inches from my face. I tried to get away but the intensity of her eyes locked me in. I searched for an escape route. The roof of the Betsey started to close in and I felt my throat turn into an old, worn-out shoe. 

‘Are you alright, dear?’ she mumbled as she took notice of my worsening state of mind. 

No, I was not alright. I was definitely not alright. English cocaine is poison. It’s a load of toxic soap and nervousness mixed up in your gullet. Before you take it you feel you are about to transcend, but it ends up giving you the shits and a titanic headache. So you take more, in search of those initial seconds of surprise, those fleeting moments when you thought you'd manage to forget your parents' mistakes, the rent and your ailing knees. But cheap English cocaine changes nothing. Cheap English cocaine does not bring absent fathers back. Cheap English cocaine makes your intestines rot. The next day your head collides with a giant trailer truck and you don’t think right. You have pains in areas of your brain that are unknown to your senses.

‘Do you have any more?’ whispered Tara as she landed on my shoulders. Jez was staring at us from the middle of the room. Motionless. Perplexed at Tara’s departure. Cross at her sudden interest in me.

‘Where is Dorian?’ I asked, ‘where is that handsome bastard when you need him?’

‘Ziggy Stardust’s done a runner with Cristina,’ she said. 

We looked all over the venue; on the first floor, in the basement, outside in the smoking area. Dorian and Cristina had left and with them our prospect of more cocaine evaporated. Tara’s mood changed abruptly.  I thought about Sandy. What would Sandy do?

Jez came out looking for us. He was bitter and confused. Tara wrapped around his perfect torso again. I dragged my body out of the bar. Jez followed.‘The night is blessed,’ he said.

‘It’s nonsense,’ I replied in a strop.

‘What is?’

‘All of it. The blow, the music, Tara. It’s all nonsense.’

‘What's not to like? And look at her,’ he continued, ‘she’s all over me.’ 

I looked at Jez’s perfect torso and sighed. 

‘What’re you gonna do?’ 

Jez laughed. 

‘I sure am  happy I spent all those hours swimming.’

‘We 're all gonna rot in the end, Jez. Even your six pack.’