by Liam Livings
I explained to Marilyn and Roger how much the island had to offer for holidaymakers, more than its reputation for clubbing and debauchery: the beautiful scenery; the shops full of local artists’ paintings; the markets of local produce; the restaurants with authentic Spanish cuisine.
A man ran towards us from a group of people who were dancing to a portable CD player on the beach. He leant on the rock, took a few deep breaths and turned to face us with a smile, eyes like bin lids, pupils enormous, deep and black, his jaw clenching with chews. Facing the sand, he threw up, wiped his face with the back of his hand, then turned to face us again.
“Sorry. Coming up, like, really strong, you know.” He walked back to his group while moving in time with the music.
Marilyn said, “What do you suppose is wrong with him?”
I stared at the group he’d returned too, all now waving their hands in the air and cheering to the music, and because there was no answer I could give, I said nothing.
We made small talk between bouts of awkward silence, each commenting on how long it would be until Paul returned, talking about the weather being warmer than the UK, how golden the sand was and how the sea was a particular shade of blue they’d not seen before.
Time ticked on. Very. Slowly.
After a while, Roger said, “Full of drugs, that’s what I was told when I said my son and his partner had moved to Ibiza. That’s the first thing everyone told me. Drugs—full of them. Drugs for breakfast, drugs for lunch and drugs for dinner, that’s what it’s like there. Judging by that little party, I don’t think they were too far wrong.”
Marilyn took in breath sharply. “Is that what it is? Is that what he meant, coming here and being sick all over the beach. What do you suppose it is? Heroin? Cracker? Marijuana? LSD? Or maybe it’s one of those new drugs they’re all taking at the acid-house parties—acid, I presume? I read something about it in the Daily Mail, but I lost the thread after a while, all these new terms.”
I checked my watch. Paul was, undeniably, half an hour late. My shoulders tightened and raised themselves so they were near my ears.
Marilyn tapped my shoulder. “I say, Tom, are you listening to us? The drugs, it’s terrible. Don’t the police do anything about it? Spoiling it for people trying to get on with their days surrounded by cracker addicts and people out of it on smack or heroin. It’s liberalism and progression all to blame. You mark my words. It wasn’t like this in my day. No, there were some people who may have had a little bit of marijuana, and even then only for medicinal purposes, help you to sleep, that sort of thing, and everyone simply got on with their lives. Now there’s designer drugs, manufactured drugs, it’s like a Glaxo for illegal substances. I mean, honestly how did this happen? And, more importantly, why did you choose to live here, amongst this filth?” She gestured to the group of people dancing on the beach, hugging one another, laughing and kissing cheeks.
“Shall I see where Paul’s got to?” I stood. “I’d better see. Won’t be long.”
“What about us? What are we to do? Alone, on this beach, near the smack and cracker addicts?” She pointed towards the group of dancing people.
“Honestly, I don’t have time to explain to you how wrong you are about pretty much everything you said, but maybe tomorrow I will. Just for now, I’ll leave you with this: smack is heroin, and it’s crack, not cracker. None of those people are on anything remotely like those two. They’re just enjoying a dance from an ecstasy tab. And alcohol and tobacco kill more people than drugs every year. You’re more likely to die from a bee sting than an ecstasy tablet.”
Marilyn opened her mouth, poised to respond, but I had gone.
I walked to barman in the bar where I’d left Paul and asked where he was.
The barman shrugged and pointed to the door with ‘Management’ written in Spanish across it.
Once inside the dark room, I was confronted with the last person I’d wanted to see: Jessie. I tried my best to charm him, to apologise for leaving so suddenly last time, and thanked him for the work he’d given Paul, and then asked where I could find him.
“He’s gone. He’s gone a long time.” Jessie shrugged, reaching into a wooden box on the table to retrieve a cigarette and a small clear ziplock bag of white powder. “He has gone a long time to do me a little favour.” He grinned and licked his lips. “You want some?”
Briefly, I thought in for a penny in for a pound, might as well have some Dutch courage to go on the hunt for Paul, then very quickly afterwards realised that was a terrible idea, especially given I was parents-sitting.
It wasn’t that I’d not tried cocaine before; I had. It had its place, it was all right, when it was actually cocaine and not huge mountains of dextrose powder doing nothing of any note. The instant high—the chattiness, the feeling of being the king of the world and the most interesting person in the room and having to tell everyone how amazing you were—had been quite fun, in the right situations. But the comedown. Fuck me gently, the comedown.
Once, after a particularly bad coke binge when me and Paul had worked our way through two grams of the devil’s dandruff—that’s two of the little bags like Jessie held now—we’d stayed up for two days, at first at an afterparty with others, then back to our place alone, just chatting, drinking, smoking and sniffing. Each time you do a line, you think you’re almost at the point of discovering the most interesting thing ever, uncovering an amazing thought you must share with everyone else, whether they’ll listen or not. Inevitably, that’s not the case, and you just do another line to stave off the comedown. That time, I had lain in our bed for twelve hours in the foetal position, crying in a fitful half-asleep, half-awake state, my whole body aching and crying out for just another bit of coke to make it all right. I realised how people become seriously psychologically addicted to coke, and since then I’d avoided it except in very small moderation if offered at a party, to be polite.
Instead, my drug of choice was and always had been ecstasy. Nothing could beat the floaty feeling, the strong impulse to dance, to make the world at peace—the way it made you feel, not as if you were the most interesting person in the room like coke did, but that you wanted to open up your innermost emotions to your friends and new friends for the night, because you experienced a deep intimacy and empathy with other humans. Those three things made ecstasy my drug of choice.
Now, I thought of Marilyn and Roger sitting under the tree on the beach. I thought of Paul being fuck knows where, leaving me alone. I thought of the conversations we’d had about him disappearing at the most inappropriate moments. I banged my fist on the table. “Fuck it, yeah. I’ll bite.”
Jessie cut out two long, fat lines of white powder on the dark wooden desk and handed me a rolled-up note.
I stood, blocking one nostril, put the note in the other and hoovered up half the line, swapped nostrils and finished the rest. The chemicals immediately hit my bloodstream through the inside of my nose. I felt my head swell and my heart race. I am Tom, here me fucking roar. “Giz a fag, will ya?”
“What did you say?” Jessie leant backwards, rubbing his nostrils after snorting his line.
“A fag. A ciggie. Can I have one?” I mimed a cigarette, while putting my feet up on the desk. I was Tom, I needed a ciggie, and I wasn’t afraid to ask for one.
In fact, at that point I wasn’t afraid of anything.
He threw me a cigarette and a lighter.
I lit it, inhaled deeply, the smoke filling my lungs like the chemicals that were filling my brain. This was good. This was a good situation. This was a fucking brilliant situation, and only I knew why. I started babbling about Jessie’s clubs and what Paul was doing for him, and whether Paul had said where he was going.
Jessie listened for a few minutes then interrupted me. Puffing on his cigar, he told me where he’d sent Paul: “On a delivery errand.”
“Nice.” I nodded slowly. I was enjoying this. I could stay here all afternoon; sit in this small, dark room with this fat, icky
man and sniff fat lines of his beautiful white powder as if my life depended on it. And it would be fucking amazing. But why did I come here? Ah, yes. Paul. His parents, the beach, the tree. Yes, all that. “Write it down.”
“What you ask?” Jessie poured some more white powder onto the table.
“Where Paul has gone. The address, please.”
“Tell you what, you write it down and I’ll do us another one of these. Do you want another one of these?”
No, I said inside my head. But I nodded and said, “Yes,” out loud.
CHAPTER 16
EMBOLDENED BY A few more lines of coke, I stormed out the bar into the bright light and heat; I’d forgotten what time of day it was. Drugs can do that to you, I’ve found. I checked the address on the piece of paper and strode off in what I thought was the right direction.
Eventually—after much asking of directions, going back on myself, swearing and calculating how long I’d left Paul’s parents on the beach under the tree—I arrived at a white house with a blue door: number 73, matching the number on my bit of paper.
I knocked and waited.
A voice in Spanish spoke over the intercom, asking who it was. I told them my name and that I was looking for my boyfriend, Paul. My throat was dry, my jaw clenched, I heard my blood racing round my body, and my too-fast heart felt as if it was about to explode from my chest like some terrible over-the-top scene from a horror film.
The door buzzed and I let myself in, up two flights of narrow stairs into a room with a tiled floor, a white sofa on the far side and a large TV on the near wall. Paul sat on the sofa next to a man who looked like a slimmer and more attractive version of Jessie, surrounded by little bags of white powder and white pills.
“What’s this?” I asked, staring at the two men and the drugs between them.
Paul laughed. “What’s it look like, sweets?”
I grabbed him and led him to the far side of the room. “Don’t you fucking sweets me! You said you’d be half an hour. It’s been an hour and a half. You said you wouldn’t get involved in any of this shit—just the party promo work, you said. And look at you. Caught with your pants round your ankles. Your parents are still on the beach under our tree and here you are, getting high with whoever this is—one of Jessie’s henchmen, I assume.”
“Sorry. It was meant to be a chat about the parties this week, and he said while I was there, could I drop something off for him? I should have come to tell you.”
“Drop something off… You’re not the fucking Royal Mail dropping off a Christmas present. It’s drugs. Which are illegal. And if you get caught with that much on you, they’ll put you in prison, none of this personal use shit. Intent to supply. Bang. Spanish prisons are meant to be lovely this time of the year. Do you know what they do to cute, posh, British boys?”
Paul stared at me, pursing his lips. His eyes darted to the man on the sofa, then back to mine.
“I don’t know who you are anymore. You say you’ve not changed since we got here, but you have. This isn’t you. You wanted to show your parents a good time, and look at what you’re doing.” I stared into his large, black pupils. “Been sampling the merchandise, have we?” I pointed to his face, my hand trembling.
Paul looked up and down my arm, then stared into my eyes deeply. “You know what they say, don’t you? People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Looks like you’ve been having your own little party without me too.”
Banged to rights. Realising this had seriously weakened my argument, I hung my head and looked away. “I didn’t know what to do. He was there. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I needed something to keep me going while I looked for you. However, I was so fucking angry, I think I’d have managed to get here on pure, undiluted fury without any chemical enhancements.”
He held my arms. “It’s all right. No harm done. I’ll tell these guys I can’t do the delivery. We’ll have some water, get our heads straight and walk back to meet my mother and father. We’ll say we got caught up with some work—Father would approve of that. He has a strong work ethic. And we’ll take Mother to a nice four-star seafood restaurant tonight—she’ll forget about all this once she has a cocktail in her hands.”
“Sometimes, and this is definitely one of those times, I don’t know if I’m a bad influence on you or you’re a bad influence on me.” It was usually Paul who said that to me, but in this instance, I’d repeated it back to him. With hindsight, I realise this showed we were both in so much trouble.
A small cough sounded from the other side of the room, breaking the silence. Paul said he needed to sort something and he’d meet me outside by the door.
“Like you were going to meet me on the beach with your parents? You must think I’m fucking stupid.”
“Promise. Cross my heart.” He crossed his heart.
Because I had nowhere else to go and no more strength to argue at that point, I went along with his suggestion. Leaning against the wall outside, I lit a cigarette and thought about how this afternoon had suddenly began to resemble the plot of a Quentin Tarantino film rather than a Richard Curtis rom com as I’d originally hoped.
After a short while, Paul appeared at the door. “I didn’t realise it was drugs when they first said deliver something. Then I worked it out. I dunno why I said I’d do it. Stupid.”
“Very.” I scoffed.
“Got carried away with Jessie. One minute we were chatting and he’s telling me all the stuff he has lined up for us. Then casually he mentioned the delivery. The pick-up point. No big deal.”
“You’re either very naïve or very stupid, or both. And I bet he gave you some coke so it seemed like a good idea.”
“Idiot. I thought if I did as he wanted, he’d get us a big break—even bigger clubs, more money, everything.”
I was satisfied he was sorry, and although the execution was idiotic, I understood the intention behind it. I don’t want to lose him.
We slowly walked back to the beach to meet his parents. On the journey, we worked out a story to explain what had happened involving a promotional emergency and an irate club owner worried about having an empty club tomorrow night.
Paul said, “I don’t think you’re a bad influence on me. And I hope I’m not one on you.”
I shrugged. “Maybe. I worry I’m losing you. Losing you to all this. Every time you disappear, I worry you’ll not come back again. You hear about it in the news—clubbers found drowned in the sea, dead in club toilets.”
“That’s not going to be me.”
“It’s not just that. I worry I’m losing myself, doing drugs during the day. I worry you’re losing yourself too—the boy who wanted to impress his parents, show them how proud he was of his new life, and you disappear like this. That’s not you. I worry we’re both becoming untethered from ourselves. The longer we stay here, the more we’re pulled into this world.”
Paul said nothing for a few moments, then said, “This world we wanted for ourselves. This world we came out here to pursue. This world we used to love back home. This world was the only thing that kept us going from one weekend to the next. And now you think it’s destroying us?”
“There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Having to get up for work meant we kept ourselves in check, always tethered to reality. But out here, there’s none of that. We can party and stay up as long as we want. And we sometimes do.”
“What’s wrong with that? We’re young, we’re enjoying ourselves. We’ve got the rest of our lives for serious commitments like mortgages, responsibilities—all that bread-head stuff. What else should we have used Luella’s money for? It’s what she would have wanted.”
“Don’t say that. You never met her. Don’t just say that and think it makes it all right. That’s a sneaky thing to say. It’s not that, it’s when sometimes turns into often, and soon it’s usually, and that’s only a hop, skip and a jump away from always. That’s what I worry if we carry on together like this.”
Paul sh
ook his head. “You’re overthinking things. I don’t see the big deal. Even if you hadn’t come to find me today, I’d have still come back to meet you on the beach—on our bit of the beach. Or I’d have gone back to the apartment. Eventually. You would have seen me again. Trust me. I just don’t need to be tied down. Besides, I wouldn’t have actually done the drugs delivery.”
I raised my eyebrows. Tied down? “It’s not just physically missing you, it’s how it’s changing us. How everything here’s making us different people.”
We were approaching the tree and Paul’s parents.
Paul said, quietly now as we weren’t far from where his parents were lying on sun loungers, “I don’t understand what you mean. ’Course we’re different here from back home. We’re doing different jobs. We have different friends. Family is further away. It’s inevitable.”
“Is it inevitable you change so much you can’t see the change because you don’t recognise the person you used to be, and I don’t recognise the person you—both of us are becoming?”
But Paul hadn’t heard that. Or if he had, he’d chosen to ignore it because now he was hugging his parents, apologising for leaving them for two hours, and offering to take them to a beautiful seafood restaurant round the corner, and asking how they’d got the sun loungers and parasols and did they want an ice cream?
And so, in a bundle of hugs and money for ice cream and scrabbling to get more sun loungers, everything Paul and I had been talking about was put to one side. Again.
***
That evening, Marilyn, Roger and I sat on the terrace of the seafood restaurant that Paul had booked. It was only yards from the gently breaking waves.
I was making small talk with Marilyn and Roger about how wonderful the weather was and whether to go for the raw oysters or the cooked ones. After a pause, we all looked around to see if Paul had arrived yet.
Marilyn said, looking at her watch, “Where is that son of mine? To disappear once is unfortunate, but to do it twice in one day is definitely approaching carelessness.” She pursed her lips. “Does he often do this?”