Part 1. Acid Midgets

The key to being a good liar is making sure you almost believe the lies yourself. Come close to the truth. There are lies I have told that I can’t even remember, lies I now believe are true. This helps with problems of guilt. I figure there are probably some things I remember as lies that were actually true, and this evens it out.

I’m walking down the street and this guy is walking towards me at the wrong trajectory. At this rate we risk making eye contact. This is not good. What is wrong with this guy? I know if I step one way he’ll do the same. He’s locked on. I shimmy across the street, holding out one hand to stop the car that nearly hits me. Stop.

Once I’m in I head for the men’s. I’m in the cubicle looking for my wallet and I’m struggling. I look at the tiles on the floor, which become circular. How can the tiles be circular? Out of the corner of my eye I can see someone standing next to me. I stand up and turn around, back to the door. This will stop more people coming in. Where the fuck is my wallet? It’s in my hand. But I can’t open it, the opening has gone. And it’s really small. Or are my hands too big? Then I give up on the wallet and try to find the coke I put in a special place. I used to do this at amusement arcades when I was a kid. I’d put some change in a secret pocket that was supposed to be untouchable, but I’d always spend it. I’m an extremely weak individual.

I can’t find it. I unlock the door, childlike, and walk back into the club. My legs are so light I keep looking down to check they’re there. I’m being shunted along by the bass like a glass on a table, heading for the edge. I pass a group of people, and think, what is a group of dancing midgets doing in here? Then I realise. The fucking acid midgets. We meet again. I appeal to an unsympathetic god: “Who the fuck has put acid in my fucking drugs?” This is a sub-optimal development. I have a flight to catch in five hours. This was not the plan.

Now I’m hanging on to the walls, palms flat against the sticky surface. Robert catches me, he’s laughing. He says: “Spiderman!” I say, “Robert, have you seen the midgets?” He nods seriously. I ask him, “Who put acid in our fucking drugs?” He weighs this up. “I dunno, Jay. Judith got them.” I’m losing patience. “Jesus, Robert, this is a fucking problem. What am I going to do?” He shrugs. “Coke?”

Of course. The straightener. If cocaine is the answer, what is the question?

I see Judith, although it takes me a while to realise it’s her. She’s trying to order a drink from the DJ. This is not good. I grab her arm and lead her away from the dance floor. She’s following me, hanging onto the wall, edging carefully along. Spiderman’s sidekick.

I shout “Judith, where’s the coke?” into her ear.

She looks at me. Fucking crackzilla. Her mascara is running.

I lean in closer. “I gave you my coke to look after.”

She nods and she’s trying to get her hands into her pockets but they’re too tight. I stick my hand into her back pocket and fish out the cardboard pouch. She’s smiling and nodding at me.

It’s actually her coke, not mine, but she doesn’t know. Sometimes these small lies need to be told. She’s had enough anyway. I’m doing her a favour.
I head for the men’s.

Robert has scar tissue on his heart from a meth induced heart attack three years ago. This deterred him from meth but little else. I love the way he compartmentalises. Personally, I’ve never done meth, but then I’ve always been the sensible one. He says he talked himself out of dying. He walked around his flat rubbing himself to keep the circulation going, washing his hands over and over again, willing his heart to beat normally. He says if he had lain down he would have died. He didn’t go to hospital but got tests later, which confirmed he’d had a heart attack. This sounds fucking unlikely to me, and also fucking stupid. Why wouldn’t you use your hands to pick up the phone and dial an ambulance? He loves to tell the story, like he’s in rehab. Except he isn’t in rehab. He’s on the dance floor looking at the lasers. He turns to me and says “Wow! Jay! Look at the sky!” I say, pull yourself together Robert. We’re in a fucking nightclub for fuck’s sake. That isn’t the sky.

I’m wearing one of those old digital watches where you push a button and the screen glows blue. I press and see the countdown: 48 minutes and 30 seconds. I perceive immediately that this is not long enough.

Judith shouts: “How long? How long, Jay?” I reply: “T minus forty eight”.

When the watch strikes T minus two I hit the cold air outside the club and feel momentarily better. My car arrives on cue, clearly a cut above the other dilapidated minicabs waiting outside. Only the finest for me. I hand the driver an inexplicably small bag and he says, “Heathrow?” Clearly what he wants to say is: “What the fuck?”

The car is in a tunnel. We keep passing the Oval, the road gently curving away and back into the tunnel. I have a feeling the driver is talking but I can’t hear anything. The stereo is playing 10CC, or my mind is; that whoosh at the beginning on loop. Even in my twisted state I think what a fucking cliché. I look up again and there is the Oval. I want to ask the driver whether he’s going the right way but that’s really not going to be possible. I thank god it’s a long way to Heathrow.

I think the guy is asking me something but it’s like a he has a lisp, like listening to a sea shell. I can’t understand what he’s saying. I start handing him notes and stop when he holds his hand up. I get out of the car and start walking to the terminal. He catches up with me which scares me but he’s holding my bag and the money I gave him. I say thank you and almost well up. The car is pre-paid; on some level I wonder why he didn’t take the money, and think I must look better than I’d feared.

I get into the terminal. Things are coming back. I keep repeating in my head: all gone, all gone, although it’s not quite. It’s too bright for my eyes and the floor is shimmering. The lines of the floor and the walls keep curving and everyone’s head is too small. I buy a muffin and sit down, avoiding eye contact. It’s like ashes in my mouth. Why did starbucks stop putting 800 calories in their muffins? At least then they were edible. I can’t drink water because it tastes like my mouth, which tastes like shit.

I’m thinking about being a kid and all the things you’re good at, running over tree roots and jumping off things. Thinking about what leaves smell like. I’m thinking all that stupid crap you’d expect at this point, having a little crisis. Promising I won’t do it again and all that. People on drugs are tedious and predictable, believe me.

I think I must stop doing this. I smile. Quite so much.

I need to get a move on. After all my time-keeping efforts it would be fairly remiss to forget about the plane now. But I can’t stop pissing. I’ve been pissing several times an hour since about three and have barely drunk anything. There is something unhealthy in this equation.

As I head towards security I have a sudden panic. The coke. The secret coke. I go back into the men’s and essentially strip search myself, destroying my bag, stopping marginally short of a full internal inspection. No coke. Where is it? Of course, of course, the fucker. Robert fucking stole it. I laugh out loud.

I breeze through the checks, smiling and nodding at the airport staff, no idea what they are saying. I can hear distant sounds but I can’t hear anything close. I’m like a fucking dolphin, or whale, or something like that.

Once I am on board I feel a wave of relief, mingled with nausea. All I have to do now is sit on my arse and not be arrested. In fact I am suffused with pride that I have managed to achieve so much already today, whilst Robert is still avoiding imaginary flights of stairs on the dance floor. The person next to me asks a question to which I reply urbanely. Some time later I become rather uneasy as I note his beaky face continuing to observe me. I realise I have no memory of whether I replied or not. I close my eyes and immediately we seem to be in the air. I order wine. I avail myself of the free things in business class.

Half an hour later I have become convinced that I am sitting in my own living room, and I am overwhelmed with a warm conviviality. I have a glass of red in my hand, an eye mask perched on my forehead and a blanket over my knee like Franklin D. Roosevelt. I am cosy. I laugh loudly at the program I am watching. I raise my glass to my neighbour, who may or may not be waiting for a response to a question he asked some time ago.

An hour before landing I summon the courage to go to the men’s and survey the wreckage. An important client is meeting me in arrivals; I might as well know the worst of it. I brush my teeth, avoiding eye contact, and nearly gag. Then I look in the mirror. Not too bad, considering. A bit sweaty, but then I am half French. The eyes though: the eyes are fucking gone. I snap down my sunnies, which are still on my head, and smile. Not a disaster. Slightly degraded but otherwise workable.

I sit back down and I’m thinking, it’s going to be ok. I just need to make some chit chat with this Arab fellow then get to the hotel and the mini bar. And then I remember. I’m going to fucking Bahrain. Just what I need, touching down in a dry Muslim country with an entourage of pixies. That cunt Robert. I need to drink the pixies away and I’m in fucking Ramadan.

My worst lie was saying that my sister fell off the roof while I wasn’t looking, when in fact I know that it was my fault, because we were fighting when it happened and I was supposed to be looking after her. She smashed her head in. It was bad. Well, I say I know that’s what happened, but actually I’m not sure. I’ve told the story so many times, so plausibly it might as well be true. When my sister woke up, she couldn’t remember. No one saw. Did it really happen?

My client greets me warmly, with concern.
“Habibi, you look pale. Is everything ok? Rough flight?”
“Yeah. I think it must be something I ate.”

You see, almost true.