A Gambler Born and Bred 16

At Christmas, I went back to England to see Mum for the first time since 1990.
Nothing had changed. Even Mum’s luck was the same. Her boyfriend, weeks from their marriage, had run off with his secretary.
I wanted to strangle him and watch his face judder. I wanted to feel the life seep away from every pore in his body as his eyes flickered from lack of oxygen, but he’d gone, just like Dad.

I skulked off to the pubs of Guildford to play fruit-machines and lost, as usual, but I knew that I would be returning to Paris before too long. They weren’t a threat, although I still managed to lose half of what I’d come home with.
I thought of the lovely presents that I could have showered Mum with, the grand return from Paris. In the end, I went to Boots and bought her some expensive perfume.

We moved venues for a sizzling summer season at Espace Marbeuf, just off the Champs Elysees. The venue was the best yet. Down the palatial staircase was a huge, circular dance floor with a stage. Upstairs were two mezzanines with chairs and tables.
Cipri, a rave organiser and ecstacy dealer, had asked if Richard and I if we wanted to do a joint party and we’d agreed. We called it ‘Arena’.
We did six big parties there.

Cipri went to prison for smuggling ecstacy after the third party.
I always had about a hundred pills to sell but that was never enough. Besides, I only dealt to the British lot. There were a thousand people at the parties by then.
According to a friend of Cipri’s, the police were also in attendance. I had to be careful and the whole scene became much more cagey, as it had in London, but no way to the same extent.

Conventional clubs, that had always allowed me to dish out flyers randomly, had become wise to the power of housemusic. They’d tried to keep rock alive but it had died in their hands.
Letting me lure away their customers had become a thing of the past and I was getting booted out of places.
One time, at Les Bains, I was caught giving flyers to Robert de Niro and his pals. Security threw me out but my flying buddy, Lisa, who’d seen me being ejected, carried on flying till everyone in the place had one and then joined me on the street outside.
When Marilyn, the doorlady, realised what she’d done, we had to scram when she called for security.

Valerie and I drove down to St Tropez the morning after the final party at Marbeuf.
I’d got paranoid about police at the party and failed to sell more than ten pills. Added to that, Richard told me we’d only broken even and could only give me 2,000 francs.
I had 300 top quality ecstacy pills but hardly any money.
I’d sold the Fiesta and bought an old Rover P6 from Wandsworth Bridge car auctions in the spring. It was a great looking car but it was greedy on gas.

We arrived at St Tropez at about eight in the evening. Her Mum hated me by then, so I dropped Valerie off at the holiday park where her parents had rented a villa and headed for Antibes.
My friend, Alex, who’d put me up at her studio flat in Montmartre when I’d been in between places, had invited to stay for a few days at an old school friend’s villa.

I arrived at Juan Les Pins at midnight and called the phone number that Alex had given me, hoping it was the right one.
No answer. Again, no answer. I tried again and Alex answered.
‘It’s the coastal road on the Cap. Boulevard de la Garoupe,’ she said. She’d been asleep.
I found it, eventually, and Alex showed me to a room upstairs and said goodnight.

I woke up to a glorious day.
Her friend, Helen, was equally glorious.
On the second day, I’d gone halves with Alex on some hash, which we’d bought at Le Bar de la Porte du Port and mentioned that I had a pile of ecstacy in the boot of the car. She told me off.
‘Don’t mention it to Helen,’ she’d made me promise.
The day after, the time came when the topic of drugs was brought up.
Helen wanted to do some, so after a boozy dinner, we headed for Juan Les Pins in the Rover to get high.
Helen and I hit it off in a way that I had never known before.
We hung onto each other’s words as if our lives depended on it, and Alex started to feel left out.
We went to a sleazy rock club in a basement on the promenade and we kissed the moment Alex excused herself to go to the toilet.

We were ravenous. The ecstacy was mind-blowing; waves of lust caressed with tongues.
We headed to Cannes and found a little transvestite club.
Helen and I went to the toilet together and tried to have sex but security almost kicked the door down.
Outside, day was breaking.
Alex saw a street-cleaner with a hose and asked to be sprayed. She held her arms out and we watched as the water pelted off her back into the form of wings; an aura of ecstacy.
I wished for a camera.

We drove back, the girls in the back seat with their eyes in the back of their head, listening to some rare groove.
Once back, they decided to go for a dip in the bay and swam all the way out to a buoy.
I smoked Marlboros getting bitten by flies on a rock.
The ecstacy had me seeing things through the eyes of Seurat. I went into a sort of trance and everything in my vision became heavily pixelated.
I felt as if the gods were watching me; planning my destiny.

It went a bit funny after that. Helen and Alex stopped talking to each other.
The day after, all was well again.
The girls had to go back to London so I took them to the airport. I was utterly broke.

On the way through Antibes, I heard a loud yelp from behind me. A man was chasing the Rover, waving his hands for me to stop.
It was Sheldon, an Australian that we’d met at the transvestite club. I’d sold him a pill and he’d asked to buy the whole lot (they were very, very good pills), but I’d totally forgotten our arranged meeting the night after.

I stopped the car and told Sheldon that I had 290 pills and they were 170 francs each, so he ran back to his flat to get the money.
When he returned, we went to a bar and did the deal.
After ten minutes, my crisis was over. I had about 50,000 francs.
Saying goodbye at the airport to the girls, I promised to call Helen in a few weeks.

On the drive back to St Tropez, I felt deflated and lost.
I picked Valerie up and took her to a hotel behind the port. It was colourful and buzzy but my mind was transfixed by thoughts of Helen.
We stayed one night and had an argument over a pizza in the square behind the port.
The next day, we returned to Antibes. I told her how beautiful it was but she knew I was being drawn back there for an unknown reason.
She kept asking if I’d been faithful.
Of course I had.
I kept the lion’s share of the money in the boot and told her that my sister had sent out some money for me, so we could afford a good hotel.
Antibes was far cheaper than St Tropez.
I had a bad dream on the first night and managed to smash the window of the balcony’s door.
I’ve always had bad dreams.
Valerie kept quizzing me about my fidelity and I kept Mum, but I’m a bad liar.
She saw right through me.

Then, my worst nightmare happened. I looked inside the boot for my old unfinished novel ‘still in progress’, but it had gone. I asked Valerie and she claimed that she knew nothing about it.
It was gone forever. I blamed Valerie.
We left for Paris the next day.

I hung around with Piers, the guy that did the backdrops for the parties, but it was boring.
In August, Paris is a dead zone. It’s great for tourists who want to take in the sights without being pushed from pillar to post, but for Piers and I it was a disaster.
All we could find to smoke was bakelite from the streets of Belleville, and there were no parties or friendly faces anywhere.
No one who lived there ever wanted to be in Paris during August. It was where those who couldn’t afford to get out stagnated in silence. And it was hot.

We got so bored that we drove up to Calais, across for Dover and London. I’d lost touch completely with family (apart from Mum) and had my phone book of London numbers had gone missing ages ago.
The only number I had was Helen’s, but she was in New Orleans with a school friend.
I called an old girlfriend and stayed on her sofa.
It was nice to be back in London again but I felt like a tourist.

I hung out at the Crystal Rooms in Leicester Square and blew some money, then I headed off to Chelsea to play some machines in pubs I knew there. Then, after losing a load, I got drunk and lost a load more; the usual pattern.
After a week or so, I realised that I’d spent over £2,000 since leaving Antibes. Most of it had gone down the gullet of fruit-machines.
I went to visit Mum and bought her some flowers. I took her out to a restaurant and told her all the things I was doing in Paris. She seemed pleased with me.