Long Weekend

Ah Easter. Gertrude and Smith Streets were busy. There were queues for the bars. The footpaths were full of people in singlets and T-shirts, most of them chewing madly as they headed smiling into the night. My quiet corner of Fitzroy has turned into clubbing central, like they've all discovered this brave, new thing. I can see it in their eyes. I caught a taxi outside my front door, got to love living in the middle of it all and slipped away quietly and smoothly, down Language Street, in the silky night air. I've got to marvel at how different life is from childhood, endless streets in endless suburbs all deserted and quite in the night, just shadows and trees lining all of them.

There would be parties all weekend. People wouldn't be getting home for days. Not sleeping until Sunday night. Going straight through. I used to do it, not that long ago.

The perfect drug fucked weekend. People take leave from work for them. Hell, most of the people I know revolve their lives around them. A mountain of speed and a mountain of E. Float through, zush from house to hose, venue to venue. It would all go so fast, suddenly it would be Tuesday morning and I'd be fronting up to work at 9am. But that was all a part of the fun really. We all knew we had to do it, so it became a test. You can have all this fun, we used to say and drugs are fun, so much fun, but you've got to keep your day job, to keep having fun. So that was always all of our barometer to drug taking. We had so much fun, we got up to all the mischiefs.

But, you know, after ten years, you don't get that buzz any more. You don't get the euphoric "I am the king of the world" feeling any more. And when I realised I was just taking the stuff to feel altered and not fantastic, any more, I kind of lost interest. Drugs tend to just make me feel isolated, now a days, so I pretty much don't any more. But it was fun while it lasted; free love, free dancing, devotion on the dance floor, your mouth in the DJ's beat, chewing, preening, showing off, feeling amazing. A family of fellow-minded travelers, congregating under the lights, celebrating to the house beat.

Smart people with their shit together won't have any problem with drugs, they won't tell you that. Baggage makes for a difficult journey and when you start taking them to make yourself feel better and not just for fun and only for fun - hundreds, thousands, millions of people across the globe do. That's the reality that they don't want people to know. It's like being let into the world's biggest party; the world wide party scene - you are heading for trouble. (All of my friends who started injecting had trouble with it and none of them do now)

Suddenly, we all have careers in high paying jobs and we've got to tend to those now. The party is over, well, I should only speak for myself.

I don't know how I used to do it?

I was going out for a quiet beer with mates. How times have changed. (home by 2am on the first night of 3 nights easy)