by Two Fingas
I dance through the smoke, clicking my fingers, and smoking Alex’s joint slowly, savouring the intoxication it brings on. I Wanna Be Down slides into Creep and I enjoy the mix. The DJ’s good, knows his stuff. I find that I’m drifting over to the window and let myself get pushed over in that direction, going with the flow. I stand there for an instant and am surprised by how large the moon is tonight. Maybe it’s something in the water. The music plays on, soft and seductive, voices silky smooth as the words glide through me.
LA LUNE
Mistress of my heart, controller of my destiny. How I yearn for you, burn for you. I want to be encircled in your embrace, through the cold winter nights. Your form above me in the heavens as I stare at you. Desiring you always and forever desiring you. Desiring to be close to you. When the sun goes down, where are you? Who knows where you appear from? I want you all around me, through me. No more sitting in the dark and waiting for you. La Lune, rise above me and let me feel you. Let me touch you, know you, thrill you. I wish to know the pleasures of you, pleasures that no earthly delights can sustain. La Lune.
AFRO
Mr Meth
I wake up and I’m not sure where I am for a long time. My eyes search for a familiar landmark, some point of reference that will shift me into a stratum of existence where I’m aware of what’s around me. Planes, levels within levels, overlaying things, my point of view shifted out of whack, out of gear. Toothed gears crunching against one another, making a whole heap of noise. My eyes are burning and I feel the need for some cover. Light is pouring in from every angle, and my whole view is tipped upside down. My eyes slowly open, but I’m not seeing anything, nothing is familiar, nothing is mine. I’m trying to make sense of it. Rolling over onto my front so that everything’s level is a good start.
It’s a big room, I’m lying on a sofa that’s pushed hard up against a curved wall. In fact, the whole room is curved. Some decks laid on a high worktable sit next to some big speakers over on the other side of the room and next door to the speakers is a huge expanse of glass. A window on the world from which all of the light is emanating. Cover my eyes and stagger over to the decks just to see whether the DJ’s left some records as well. In the process find that I’m only wearing my boxers and that I’m holding rather tightly to a blanket, which trails behind me. Even when my senses are making no sense to me whatsoever, my brain has enough gusto to keep me covered. For some reason that makes me laugh and I fall into a laughing fit as I hold myself up at the window.
The view is different from the one I know. Higher up and showing a lot more. Long rows of houses, curving off into the distance. Tall tower blocks shafting like spears into the sky as if some giant has left his spade in the ground. My eyes squinting hard against the light, I turn my head away and look for shelter, still unsure of where I am. I’m not really a morning person, it always takes me several hours to get into a day, several hours and enough coffee to keep South American coffee producers financially stable forever. My clothes are crumpled up in a heap on the floor next to the sofa and I can’t be bothered to put them on just yet.
Wrapping the blanket around my waist I move slowly from the front room into the kitchen. Unsure how I know where this stainless-steel monstrosity was supposed to be. It’s almost as bright in here as it is in the front room. The venetian blind split open, letting long slashes of light through. I turn on the kettle and retreat to the toilet, my bladder desperately needing release. It’s only as I stand in front of the toilet that my mind kicks back into gear. Watching the hands on the ornate clock above my head tick around to half four.
This is Alex’s place. We must have crashed here last night. I shake the last drips from my little soldier and put it back into my boxers, reaching over to pull the musical toilet chain. As I head back to the kitchen, the stainless steel reflecting light like a diamond, I’m still trying to figure out how I lost the last eight hours in my life. I don’t even remember going to sleep or anything. Nobody’s in the flat, but there’s a note on the front door telling me to use the spare key and that everyone will be back around six. Sip my very strong, very black coffee and pull my clothes on, heading out of the door quickly and down into Camden. Never really like Camden too tuff, it’s a bit pretentious for my liking, too much up its own arse. I prefer Brixton or Streatham, Clapham’s a bit iffy, but Camden just got a bit too much… I don’t know, I think it takes itself too seriously.
Going out again tonight. Got to look good, got to look sharp. Find a barber’s — that’s what’s at the top of my list. And after wandering through huge waves of shoppers, like a crowd of football supporters spilling out of the ground, heading for the markets, I’m starting to feel very aggrieved. When I do find one just around the corner from where Alex lives (if I’d gone right instead of left I would have seen it almost immediately), I’m a bit taken out by the prices. Cutting hair is cutting hair, the next thing you know they’ll be charging fifteen quid for a short back and sides.
I step through the glass door into an area where magic still lives. What is it about the barber and the magic that he wields over us, who sit in the chair. I’m like the only customer. It must be a really slow day, it’s usually not this quiet on a Saturday afternoon. The emptiness of the place shocks me for a while: maybe this barber is really bad and he’s going to destroy my hair. But I’ve only come to have it all shaved off anyway, so there’s no big deal.
I sit in the leather seat and feel the magic weave around me. The rustle of the cape being pulled tight under the chin. The electric hum as the clippers stroke across my scalp, the back of the neck, my ear pulled down. Hair falling gently along the nape. The constant electrical hum that resonates within the eardrums, an ode to drowsiness, with the ability to pronounce a sentence of tractability on anyone who sits within the chair. For those minutes in the magic chair I’ll make no sound except to answer when a quiet question is asked, make no movement except for those that he asks for. Head down, as if in prayer, supplication to a barber god. The strong, sure hands, moving my head this way, that way. Gentle pressure, gentle strength.
The hair’s lying on my cheek, on my eyelids, held from my eye by the soft, gently moving lashes that wave there. Snorted breath from mouth or nose has no effect, the hairs stay unmoving and resplendent in their ability to irritate, in such tranquil surroundings. Sleeping almost as I sit, feeling detached from reality, hypnotised into immobility by the drone of the clippers. The quick and urgent sounds of the scissors as they pass lightly along the hairs.
Pauses: some long, some short. Waiting, hardly breathing, waiting for that soft, white, long-haired brush to be lifted from the shrine of instruments, creams and lotions on the shelf in front of me. My reflection bears no resemblance to the person who sat in the chair those long moments ago.
The talcum powder, sweet smelling and angelic, floated softly onto the brush. It is swished gently across the back of the neck — quickly, surely, expertly. Another flick of the wrist pulling it slowly along the path already traversed. A finger pulling my collar away. The cape that has captured all of my hair is pulled off, and the chair swivelled with a flourish. Look in the mirror, nod, smile: satisfied.
BLOWING THROUGH
A quick tilt of my head, hands thrown high, dipping my shoulder, pimp limp in effect. Jerky yet rhythmic, off-key, slanted off-kilter. Method man on some shit.
I’m foul an’ I’m sick,
And I’m coming for that headpiece protect it.
Don’t you just love Black music? I’m walking over to the car, all fired up for going out. The Cortina sitting there beside the kerb, as if it’s done something wrong. A dog that’s just been told it’s bad. Time to blow through. Q and Biggie are moving in front of me, as I wave my hands generally acting like a madman.
Night has swept through again, painting its dark self over everything. The stars twinkling in the dark sky. Look up and watch Orion’s Belt and the Big Dipper. Those are the only two that I know, but I’m always amazed when I find them tim
e after time, as if they’d disappear on me. Q chucks himself into the car, slamming the front door as he always does, and I wonder how last night affected him. He’s made a radical shift away from who he was for a woman and that’s always bad news. I try not to think about Cassie at this point. I’m still taken by surprise by the force of emotion that charges forth at the mention of her name.
I’m sitting in the car thinking about her, listening to the wind finding cracks within the body shell. Thinking these deep thoughts and wondering, as I always have, whether I made the right choice. Cassie: she was my first love. Bright, intelligent, funny and she loved all of me, all the time. I loved her as much as I was able to.
For seventeen years I’d trained myself to hold everything inside: I couldn’t allow anyone inside me. No one could see the real me, the emotional me, the child that cried during Kramer Vs Kramer. The child who felt betrayed when his closest friend in school spat out the secret I’d gifted him with in the middle of an argument. Cassie got inside me and stayed inside me for the duration. She was my first love. I was just out of my first two sexual relationships, looking for more lust, not any deep meaningful into-the-bloodstream, full-on, going steady thing. But that’s what I got.
I met her at a party in Brixton. She was standing alone (her friends had deserted her for a second) and she was getting charged from every direction. I think she saw me as an easy out, and I wasn’t getting heavy or nothing, I was just in one of those any-girl-in-this-room-will-succumb-to-my-charms moods when I felt nothing would stand in my way. We talked, found out that we were very similar, I walked her home, tried to get into her panties and she blanked me. I didn’t mind, she wouldn’t give me her number, so I gave her mine and forgot about it until she phoned me four weeks later.
From then on it was a descent into that madness called love. She infuriated me, she drove me crazy, but I always wanted to be with her. And she always loved me, that was never in doubt. Then I got scared. Nothing was the same, everything was changed, I wasn’t the same, I felt differently all the way around, and then I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I broke it clean and quick. Except it wasn’t.
It broke my heart. Turned me into a quivering, crying wreck. I just wanted to stay in my house and cry, away from everyone and everything. All the emotion I’d kept locked away inside of me was let loose in an intense conflagration. It burned to the core. I don’t know where she’s gone or what she’s doing but every time I think about her — her laugh, her smile, the way she would hold me close and whisper I love you in my ear, then snuggle into my neck as if she was embarrassed — I think maybe she was the one. Maybe I’ve made the worst mistake of my life and I’ll never be as happy ever again.
It haunts me. Sitting on my shoulder, night and day. I was with her for two years. It still hurts. I think maybe it always will. Cassie, like every woman, has that strength that women possess, a tough that men can’t understand, strong and fragile at the same time. Able to show emotion and be honest about what is going through them, not hiding it deep inside. It’s just there, written on their faces, just beneath the surface: this innate ability — maybe it’s hormonal — that gives women such inner strength to push through adversity.
I switch my head back on and try to get myself into some fit state to live in. Q’s driven aways from Camden and I’m not sure when he did it, so deep was I into my own thoughts. I’ve got to get myself back into that frame of mind I had when I stepped out of Alex’s door. I have to delve into myself, search for that feeling of light-headed giddiness. I’ve got to get it back, or I might as well be staying in my house right now watching some bullshit film on ITV. We’re heading for the Lazerdrome and I’m going to enjoy myself.
Q’s speeding as he usually does, rushing around London in a broken-down Cortina, listening to the radio. It ain’t no jeep and this ain’t Sunset Boulevard, but we still jeeping. Sound swarming around us like bees, swarming like a fucker, getting under your skin. Taking you back to the place where you had so much energy. Putting you back right there. Where the walls were sweating and the women were half-dressed and your cock’s rubbed raw from whining up on her bottom — or, if the truth be known, standing still while she moves her bottom on your crotch. The music reaching back and tapping that latent pool of energy that has been filled up every time I go raving.
Q takes us around a corner on two wheels and pushes even harder to jump the lights, flashing us towards Peckham.
HEART OF DARKNESS
Saturday night, strobe light on slow, putting the real world on hold, setting yourself free and living in this State of Bass. As a love song has no meaning unless you’re in love, a Jungle tune makes no sense unless you’re in the Jungle. The crowd bursts into verse, on the corner of this world; away from Jazz, Soul, Hip-Hop, Techno, Reggae, the smoke creates new dreams, you’re traveling through another dimension — a dimension of sight and sound. With the world coming to the end of another century the extinction agenda is almost being set, and all the way around you feel perhaps this is a comfortable end.
We’re here together and it’s a party after all.
So a peace was struck, the Irish boyz looked beat up, the nigga’s around the way were looking for Craig and world was still on the same axis.
THE LAZERDROME
The Lazerdrome in deepest, darkest Peckham. Where the bad boys hang out, roaming the streets like so many dark wraiths, waiting to pounce on those unsuspecting enough to come through with no back up. Peckham’s a dump almost as bad as Dalston and it just makes me depressed every time I have to even come near both of those areas. The Lazerdrome, the latest outlet for our weekly Jungle fix, is a converted Quasar arena, now equipped with a huge sound system and lights that wouldn’t look out of place on an alien spaceship. It’s a maze of walkways and corners, spaces where you can just sit on the floor, or dance behind draping designs, away from prying eyes. The chillout room’s got a wall that they loop old cartoons on, while nearby they’ve got some arcade machines for us niggas that haven’t forgotten playing R-Type and Space Harrier in our lunch breaks in the local fish and chip shop.
The thing about the Lazerdrome that gets up my nose is the amount of rude boys who swing in as if they are No. 1 bad boy and ain’t no copper gonna take ‘em alive when they’re still in school and getting put in detention by their history teacher. So fuck the little snot-nosed brats. Just ‘cause you like the dark stuff don’t mean you know Jungle. They always get on my fucking nerves, screwing up their faces and looking to knife anyone that looks at them for too long, just to create some reputation of being a nuttah, a hard man. Don’t test him, he’ll kill you. Well they ain’t gonna kill me.
We saunter in and already the dark beats are on top of us. Them hard Ragga lyrics striding into the centre of the arena. The place is heavily male-orientated, which is another thing I don’t like about it, as well as having a few speed freaks running like Linford Christie on the beat — eyes wide, frenzied, just watching them makes me feel exhausted. The rudeboys are striding through the place like they own it, waiting for someone to bump them, spliffs held militant in their fingers, defiant. Waiting for someone to come up to them and tell them to take that shit out of their mouth. Waiting for a chance to prove their masculinity. I leave them to it and head over to the games arena to test my faded reflexes on some of the games they’ve got over there. Super Streetfighter II, Killer Instinct, Daytona Racing, Virtua Cop, Mad Dog McCree. The youths are all piled up in front of Killer Instinct, trying out new lethal combinations to destroy their opponents, jostling each other, eyes intent on the screen, mouths one moment tight and grimacing, the next wide and shouting obscenities, cursing their opponent, the character they’re playing, the game, everything but their own skill. Rocking the machine back and forth in their desire to win, to prove who is the best, to make themselves superior to their peers. I want to play a game but can’t be bothered to get through them. So I leave it for a while and stroll through the place behind Q and Biggie watching faces, weighing up
the atmosphere and how everyone is reacting to each other.
Luminescent banners hang from the walls as late-Eighties House drifts through the area. Most of the girls are in here waving their hands to the DUFF, I leave them to it and head into the Jungle arena. The dark sounds almost stifling thought. Pull out the gear and quickly roll a spliff, hand it finished to Biggie, before rolling another for myself. Let the first inhalation go down quick, then another one slower this time, easier. Me a twenty-eight-gun bad boy. The beats rolling over me, faster and more insistent, dark and dangerous, nebulous, underwater, slowing down time and interpretations. The crowd is excited and I get up onto my toes and let the sounds of now run around me as the lyrics stomp into indecipherability as the bass is turned up and the speakers start to distort the sound. Push my lighter into the air and flash it, feeling a wave of empathy as others flash theirs. We are all part of the same tribe. Drum and Bass binds us together.
Guerrilla dance, guerrilla musicality, coming from anywhere, taking what is needed, taking what is required. No waiting for copyright clearance, none of this bullshit displaying respect for a tune. Out to show that if someone comes up with the original tune, you can go one better by reinventing it, redesigning it. Just jumping in there to create a new version, upgrading it. Making it better. This is the end of the twentieth century, the edge of infinity. Twenty-first century just around the corner. Sample here, timestretch there, loop a beat, change the pitch on that guitar riff. Taking technology to its logical apogee. Music manipulated and redefined. Subversive in the extreme.