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or lighter, dreamy vocals, or a saxophone wandered in search of a darker, jazz cafe. At such moments the crowd would begin to shuffle and look around disorientated, until rescued by the DJ. |
I am well past my 18 - 30 sell-by date and the idea of a week in Ibiza wasn't the attraction it might once have been. Still, I was happy to join several friends in early September in a villa several miles out of Ibiza town, complete with swimming pool, garden and no neighbours in sight. The only drawback was flying Go, which insisted on leaving Stansted at midnight and dumping me in Ibiza at two thirty in the morning. Despite good directions from my hosts, it took over an hour and the help of the local police to find my holiday home.
According to the internet, Ibiza has only two sunless days in September. They both decided to visit, and bring along their cousins. Still, time passed pleasurably, without television, but with plenty of books and games, meals to prepare, drinks to down and restaurants to visit. And of course, some of us had to go clubbing at least once. Pete and Augusta chose Gangsters, the Monday night hosted by Italians at Pacha, which is generally agreed to be among the island's classier clubs. Novices, we arrived early, explored nooks, crannies and stairs and inspected the layout of dance floors and island bars from different balconies. The overriding colour was white, muted by lighting that offered intimacy while allowing you to spot distant friends or talent. Black and white projections of James Cagney and his ilk twisted slowly on the ceiling while on two hanging screens lowlifes from films noirs mouthed insults and ironies at each other. |
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The music was house - a steady beat played loud enough to lure the body into its rhythm and soft enough to allow almost normal conversation. Only occasionally as the evening wore on did it drift into garage or lighter, dreamy vocals, or a saxophone wandered in search of a darker, jazz cafe. At such moments the crowd would begin to shuffle and look around disorientated, until rescued by the DJ.
The three of us sat on a balcony and ordered drinks from a stern woman in her late twenties and a maidenly blouse. I was slightly drunk and it was a couple of hours before I realised that the sensations I was feeling were due less to alcohol than methylenedioxy-n-methylamphetamine. I had taken Ecstasy before but either this tab was purer and more potent than those past experiences or I had accidentally stumbled on the perfect combination of drug, spirit and brew. Life was pleasant, almost perfect; people were attractive and if I had the urge to reach out and grasp the handsome men who passed, I both knew that such a gesture was unnecessary and suspected that it would be taken not as aggression but as the compliment it was. All around, it seemed that everyone was either on the same drug as I was. Whether on the floor or surrounds, singles, couples and groups swayed in fluid, unhurried movements as natural as breathing. My eye was caught by a youth in a striped shirt dancing intimately with a girl in a short top; behind him, a taller boy in white ground briefly into his back and buttocks before manouevring round until he was behind the girl. Then White Boy reached out and pulled the others into an embrace where all three swayed with the beat and shared kisses. Then, like clouds on a lazy afternoon, they drifted apart. Out of the crowd beside them a tanned bald-headed man in his thirties reached out and gently pulled the girl to him. They hugged before she wandered off with him, turning to wave goodbye as White Boy and Striped Shirt danced round each other before moving off in search of a new friend. In the heterosexual discos of my youth, such displays of affection, between men or between one man and another's girlfriend, were an automatic trigger for violence... That thought was my epiphany. Since most of the world's violence, whether in the nightclubs of London and Los Angeles, the streets of Belfast and Hebron or the battlefields of Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, is committed by - usually heterosexual - young men, and if the violence of young men can be tamed and transformed by a small white pill, then why in the name of sanity are such pills illegal? Why are they not dropped in their millions from converted bombers and gunships across the Middle East, Chechnya, the Congo and elsewhere - not to mention South-Central Los Angeles and the sprawl of Joburg? Why is a tab of Ecstasy at least once a week not compulsory for young adults? Why do we persist in legalising weapons and profiting from the sales and death they bring, while banning one of the few mechanisms we have for peace? I am not naïve. I know that regular or high use of Ecstasy may cause long-term brain damage. I know that deaths occasionally occur from its misuse or poorly manufactured varieties. I have read Brave New World and and am aware that some see Soma as a threat. But I still am convinced that the misery caused every day by the hotheaded actions of men, particularly young men, across the world is a thousand times worse than the damage that would be caused by universal access to MDMA or a similar drug. The next day a telephone call from London told us of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. We huddled round a radio listening to the World Service, shocked into silence by images that we had not yet seen. In the weeks that have passed, the horror has not lessened. Nor has my belief that an enlightened drugs policy is an important piece in the jigsaw puzzle of a peaceful world that we seem unable to complete. |
| 16 December 2001 |
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© Martin Foreman |