Rent Boy

by James Anthony Ford

  I went straight to Edwards’s apartment and was greeted not only by Ed but about fifty or so of his closest friends! I cannot possibly remember all the names even though I was speeding off my head. I also noticed a few familiar faces lounging around on the couch snorting speed and cutting up ecstasy pills. I will not name these famous faces for privacy reasons but if I told you who they were you probably would not believe me anyway. Let’s just say they were big Australia names during the nineties and the least expected people I would have expected to see at a rave party.

  Eddie handed me a bottle of water topped with raspberry, the drink of choice for the classic raver and there was no hurry so we sat around the lounge chatting about fuck all, as we were all speeding of our nuts! There was also a DJ in Ed’s lounge room spinning some classic old-skool house and garage tracks, very cool stuff. This was the room for the elite raver. Then my heart dropped when a certain man entered the room. He was my hero of the rave scene and a super cool DJ from the UK. Again I can’t name the DJ for privacy, but we are talking about rave royalty. I literally pounced on him when he entered telling him how much I love his music and the tracks he chooses when he DJ’s and he was very impressed with how much I adored the music and art of it all. I knew my stuff and having a super cool DJ tell me that was the bomb! But perhaps the speed was helping me with my vocabulary if you know what I mean. So on one side I was chatting to the DJ and on the other was one of Eddie’s friends. A woman, probably about twice my age, quite attractive and obviously a cougar. She kept trying to get my attention and was constantly feeling my chest and abs. But the party in that elite room after about an hour was getting pretty heated, and I hadn’t even made it to the main area of the rave yet. Two people, a guy and a girl, I have no idea who they were, I was introduced to them but forgot their names, started having sex underneath the coffee table. Nobody even cared. Everyone just kept on chatting away, snorting speed, drink water, dancing around to the DJ or downing e’s. This obviously got the cougar a bit aroused so she decided to slide her hand in my pants grabbing my pubic hair. “Okay, I think it’s time I hit the dance floor” I said as I jumped up in a fright. “I’ll come and join you sexy” said the cougar in a steamy sultry voice. “Okay, I’ll see you.....ummm....out there soon” I said quickly. Then I basically dashed out of Ed’s lounge room and made my way through the backrooms of the warehouse, following the noise of the bass until it got louder and louder. Then there it was. It was a whole new world. The magnitude of this beautiful room of energy glowed. The party was pumping. Stompers were dancing everywhere with massive smiles on their bright faces. There was not an ounce of hate anywhere. The room was filled with love and happiness and tonight we will dance the fuck out of ourselves.

  Having entered the main arena first, I stayed there for a while dancing to the cream of the crop when it came to acid techno and hard house. The lights and strobes just took your breath away as it was perfectly in sync with the pounding bass. Everyone, or I should a lot, of people were watching me dance and quite often came up to me telling me I’m such a good dancer. I wonder if these people would say that to a complete stranger if they were not on ecstasy? I didn’t care, I thrived on the compliments and the compliments about my body. It got to my head eventually so I got on top of one of the podiums and danced away. I was the star now, well, so I was thinking at the time. But I danced and people loved it.

  The e’s were staring to get to the peak stage and I thought this would be the perfect time to down another ‘e’ and head for the underground house and garage room. It was my favourite music of choice. And I was right, the room was jumping and going completely off. My mind was going to explode to the coolest house on the planet. There was not a slight hint of commercial crap pop in it, this was dirty, filthy, sexy, deep house at its best. The grooves almost took over your body as if it was hypnotizing you. The great sound of the music only made me want to dance harder and faster and the feeling of euphoria overwhelmed me with the love I had for the world, for the people and for the rave scene. This was our world, this was a sub-culture in unity and we loved it. Everyone danced in the own world facing the DJ, bowing their heads to the DJ like he was a god. Ravers stuck their hands in the air when the strobes hit them looking like they were cutting the air with a knife. The DJ took control of the room and I could feel his energy rushing through my body. I felt like I wanted to scream with intense euphoria but I knew I had to contain myself. I loved everything and anything and I loved these ‘e’s. So I had to have another one. This was my third in two hours but who’s counting?

  Hours later I decided to take a break even though I could have kept on dancing. In fact I danced my way to the bar area only to be greeted by some friends with a scream of “James!” and a hug and kiss. This was love, joy and happiness and we were all feeling damn good. Then I did something spontaneous, just for the hell of it. I asked if they needed a hand on the bar serving drink. After all, the ravers were mainly drinking raspberry water anyway and I thought it would be fun. “Sure thing!” they said. “Jump behind the bar and have some fun, but you won’t get paid for it though James” one of the chirpy bar girls said with a Chupa- Chup bulging in her left cheek. “That’s fine” I said. “I just wanna do somethin’ a bit different “I said again. I was in the right mood to love people and it showed. Of course they let me behind the bar, I was not getting paid for it, I just wanted to take a break and have some fun. It was the perfect way to use my increasing energy but giving my body a break it deserved from the stomping I was doing out on the dance floor. So I started serving smiling happy people. It was all about “One water bottle with raspberry please”. Then I would say “No worries, that’d be 8 dollars thanks”. No one cared about the cost even though it was a rip off as everyone tended to refill their bottles in the toilets and just pay a dollar later with a raspberry cordial top up.

  For about an hour I was jumping and pouncing up and down the bar, tattooed with a smile on my face when Edward appeared. He acted like he hadn’t seen my for years. “Jaaaaaay!” he shouted. “I’ve miiiiiiiiiised youuuuuuu” he went on. I just giggled and we had one of those peaking on ecstasy hugs that everyone was doing. Then he said open your hand. So I did and he put right in the middle of my palm a green pill. “These are the best, only the best for my friends, I love you, you know” he said sincerely. “What are they called?” I asked inquisitively. “Dunno, I think they’re called green aliens” he said. The name rang a bell and I remember people were raving about how good these e’s were. So without delay it was straight down the hatch with the good old raspberry water. He hugged me again and skipped away to hug someone else. I just kept on serving people behind the bar not even thinking about how many e;’s I had already taken by now. I think I was up to my fifth by now. I really had lost track and shouldn’t have. But I thought, well, I aren’t dead yet, I feel too fuckin’ good!

  Suddenly I heard the crowd from the main room getting louder and louder and was trying to tune in what the fuss was about. I think one of the big named DJ’s were appearing to start his set in the main room. I was right. This DJ was what I was waiting for. He is the best tech-house DJ in the world and his tunes rocked the house down. Then the music paused, I knew he was about to start his DJ set. I said to the other bar girl “See ya, I’m going out there, it’s gonna go off, my DJ is on!!!”. The girls yelled out “Go for it Jay!” in sync and I ran my way to the main arena. As soon as I walked in it was dark, then the lights flashed with the first sound of the bass. Then the bass gradually grew in volume in sync with the strobe lighting and there it happened. Boom, Boom, Boom, the music pumped out a classic rave anthem to get the crowd go insane. Shivers went up and down my spine with complete intense pleasure. I loved the music so much that I thought I was having an internal orgasm. But I could probably blame the fifth ‘e’ for that. So I danced and danced and danced and danced.

  After I was dripping with sweat I knew it was time I give my body a break. I could see daylight peeping through the
metals walls of the warehouse and knew it was now sometime during the day. I looked at my watch for the first time that night and it was 10 am. Every room in the party was still full to capacity. I also noticed the police made themselves known as I saw them in the distance. It was probably just a routine inspection thing as I was aware that the venue had a licence to run the party well into the day, but I was not sure what time it had to be shut down. I thought it was time to catch up with Edward so I niggled my way through the crowd of dancing people and into Edward’s apartment upstairs. Of course I had to flash my ‘staff’ badge to the security guys before I can get access to Ed’s apartment. When I got there Edward and some friends were completely out of it. More than me. People were lying around half naked, laughing and giggling and sliding off the couches like they were completely drug fucked. Well, they were actually. “Jay!” Edward yelled. “come in!.....we ...are...ummm....Oh, I don’t know what the fuck I’m sayin’ anyway....!” Ed stuttered. Then he just giggled like a little schoolgirl and I could not help to laugh as well and found myself falling on the floor as the laughter in the room got so intense. I had no idea what on earth we were laughing about, we were all totally drug fucked. It’s as simple as that. I began think I might be losing touch with reality, but what the fuck, “Ed!...I want some more coke!” I yelled. He laughed and said “The cola kind or the real stuff!” he giggled. “What do you think?” I said as I was laughing. So he gets a silver platter from a cupboard, staggered to a drawer and pulled out a huge clear plastic bag full of cocaine and poured it onto the platter. Then he cleared everything off the coffee table by thrusting his arm across the table knocking everything off like he was angry, but he was actually still giggling. Then said “Here you go guys, dig in”. Then we all reached for our dollar notes, rolled them into straws, got out a credit card each and all of us scooped out a big serve of the white powder, chopped and lined up a few even lines of the white stuff and then started snorting line after line of cocaine like it was going out of fashion. The image of about six or seven of us snorting off the same silver platter simultaneously made us look like absolute drug pigs.

  Amazingly I do not remember the next few hours or so. I think I really was completely drug fucked that my brain and my mind went into numbness. I do remember at some point I started to hear the music from the party was getting lower and lower in volume and at that point I looked at my watch and it was around 3 pm Sunday. A looked around and a few people were either asleep or just staring at the wall like they were possessed or something. We were fucked. I also remember sometime after that, we all came back to earth again and started chatting. Then Ed said “Let’s have some music”. I think he realised that the mood of the room was getting a bit tense as some people were starting to come down so he wanted to cheer the place up a bit. So I said “yeah, I’ll chuck on some music and spin some discs on the decks!” I said as I jumped up like all my energy came back to life. As I had done a short course in DJing, yes I know, another course! I had some skills on how to use the equipment. Ed just cleared the way and said “Ready please Mister music!” So I got a couple of vinyl records, recognised some of the title as classic underground rave tunes, pumped up the volume, and started to spin the vinyl on the decks. Everyone started dancing around the lounge. I was good. I knew how to mix and knew how to beat-mix which the essence of the art of DJing was. The other established DJ’s hanging out in Ed’s room sat there with a jealous look on their faces. It was strange. It was like I entered their territory. DJ’s are very passionate about what they do and don’t like the limelight taken away from them. They pretty much thought of themselves a ‘king dick’ most of the time. But then again, why wouldn’t they? They were good at what they did. But right there and then, it was all about me. I was the DJ and everyone was loving it. It was like the entire rave was transferred from the main arena into Ed’s lounge room and everyone was going off. I was having a ball apart from fighting off the cougar a few times where she her hands where she shouldn’t have. But I did not really care, she was having innocent fun so I let her do what she wanted.

  The party died down by around 7 or 8 pm Sunday night, quite frankly I can’t remember exactly. Everyone by this stage was completely fucked and partied out. I remember I was just lying on the couch and one of the DJ’s, that I also thought was very cute, was lying next to me staring at me. I got thoughts, dirty thoughts. I was just in the mood, but wait! He had a girlfriend, so of course he could not be possibly interested. I looked around and everyone had passed out. He just kept looking at me and then by surprise he nodded his head as if to ‘come on follow me’, and I did. We both crept out of the lounge and I just followed him behind what looked like just one of Edward’s junk rooms. There were boxes and junk piled high, I think it was just old furniture or stuff, I wasn’t sure. But I followed this guy and he kept looking back to check that I was still following him. Then he went behind a pile of boxes, stopped, looked at me and pulled my pants down. He was just about to lower himself down when we heard “What are you guy’s doin’!”. It was one of the security staff from the party. We both shit ourselves and ran back to Ed’s lounge room, whilst I was pulling my pants up. When we got back to the lounge everyone appeared to be conscious again. Then I thought “Fuck!....missed out on that chance’. The DJ looked at me as if he was saying “Next time”. Then everyone started leaving one by one, everyone was going home. The party was over and we could not take anymore. Our bodies were totalled. I hung around until everyone else left. Edward was not very talkative and neither was I. It was clear we were coming down. God I hated this part! “Well, I guess the party had to come to a close some time or another “I stuttered my words out like I was shivering. “Yeah, but it was fun though” Ed said enthusiastically. “Thank you Ed.....Thank you for the good time tonight, it was great” I said sincerely. “You’re welcome, it’s nice when friends say thanks” Ed said softly. Then he handed me a small pile of something wrapped in aluminium foil. “For you” he said. “Just so you can chill out and get to sleep” he continued. I said thanks. I knew it was dope, so I didn’t have to open it to check. But I was a little apprehensive about doing this stuff as I did it once before a long time ago and didn’t like it. But I took it and thought well I need something to get me to sleep as my pupils were enormous and I was wide awake. I gave Edward a tender and friendly hug, said see you later and staggered out of the warehouse not even thinking about how I was to get home.

  Now, here is the interesting part. The time between leaving the party and getting home, I have no recollection of how I got home. I don’t remember taking a taxi, I don’t remember getting a lift from someone and walking was a bit too far so I wouldn’t have done that. So I really don’t know how I got home. If I had to guess, I think I actually hitch hiked as I remember that I had no money left on me. For which to me now, kind of scares me as being in that frame of mind I was in, it would have made me very vulnerable to being attacked or something. But anyway, I say ‘whatever’. The point is, I got home safely.

  I do remember getting home and remember that my housemates had gone out so they were not home. I do remember the first thing I did was make myself a cup of tea. I was really, really out of it. I felt like the last ‘e’, which was the sixth one, was never going to wear off. I was not peaking but still had an up and down kind of euphoria and I was getting sick of it. Like enough already! I need to come down! But I took my tea crawling upstairs to my room and just fell on the bed. I was not thinking of anything, I was blank, like my brain had been completely washed. I had nothing to think about. I felt like I was brain dead. Then I thought I’d better some of this dope to calm down and get some sleep. The caffeine in the tea seemed to kick in a bit more of the ‘e’ feeling which was interesting. I then rolled a dope cigarette, I was not very good at it, so it looked like a deformed sausage, but I took a few puffs. Boy it was strong! A few minutes later, my mind started to think again. But my mind was thinking too fast. I took another puff hoping it would slow down m
y mind. But my heart started to pound, and it was pounding hard. I could see my chest moving. I thought something is going wrong. I started to think the worst. Perhaps I was having a heart attack, perhaps my brain was about to explode, perhaps I’m am going to die! I started to have a massive panic attack. I wanted to run away, but where? I was trapped. I’m going to die. All these drugs, all these chemicals have finally taken their toll. My body can’t take anymore. I realised at that moment that this time I have overdone it and now I’m about to pay the price. I did not want to die. I was terrified beyond belief. What do I do? My housemates were not home. I had no one to turn to. I was scared. I ran to the bathroom mirror in a panic and saw the veins in my head bulging. My chest was moving and my pulse was racing so fast I could not keep up with the beats, I lost count. Sweat was dripping from my forehead. I am going to die. But suddenly something led me to the phone and call 000. “I need an ambulance!” I shouted as I was squeezing the phone in my shivering hand. The woman on the phone asked who it was for. I said it was for me and told her I was having a heart attack. She asked me how old I was. I think I said I 25 or 26 or something, I can’t really recall. Then she paused, I think she thought it was a joke. “Please hurry.....PLEASE!” I screamed. “Have you taken any drugs?” she asked. “Yes’ I said. “Can you tell me what you have taken?” she asked. “Ecstasy, speed, cocaine and marijuana. “How much of each drug did you take?” she asked,. “Fucking hell!! Why so many questions?, I need to get to a hospital fast, don’t you understand?” I yelled through the phone. So I gave her my address, unlocked the front door and fell to the floor. I was having some sort of seizure and all I can remember was I was drooling from the mouth like I was vomiting blood. In fact, I think it was blood. The ambulance arrived, and quickly I might add. They barged through the front door. One of the ambo’s shook me and said in a loud voice “Can you tell me your name?”. I had to think about the simple question like it was a complex thing to answer but I answered “J-J-J-Jay!”. “Can you tell me what drugs you have had?” he continued. With my eyes closing up, I blurted out the answer with ease “6 ecstasy pills, 2 grams of speed and 2 grams of cocaine and some dope”. I slightly opened my eyes and noticed they all just looked at each other with horror. I don’t think they could believe I have had so many drugs. Then I started to pass in and out of consciousness. I remember my head started to ache and my body was twitching and they were putting an oxygen mask on me and then that was it. I don’t remember anything after that until we reached the emergency department at the hospital. I remember seeing all the medical huddling around me and they were laughing when the ambo’s told them how much drugs I took. They made fun me and I was about to die. Then one of the doctors looked at me and said directly to my face “You obviously had too much fun, we will do all we can to save you....but then that’s it......there’s no more we can do...” Then he stuck a needle up my arm and I started to scream in agony. They had to tie me down to the bed as I was going insane. I was going to die. Then they gave me another injection. I think it was Valium to calm me down. I could hear the heart machine measuring my racing pulse and heard it was slowing down. I remember this very moment as I started to black out. I am about to die. This is it. This is how it is going to end. Then I went into darkness.