I remember
"I remember crying to songs on my Walkman at college on Mondays..."
Anna Wood
(with heartfelt thanks and full respect to Joe Brainard)
I remember crying to songs on my Walkman at college on Mondays, and being consumed with excitement on Fridays.
I remember moving, and grooving, and really feeling the fire.
I remember bruises on my wrist joints from the way I danced, with my arms out in front, banging my hands together.
I remember ups and downs.
I remember not caring when they turned off the cold water taps in the toilets. (No one was buying drinks at the bar.)
I remember coming home and seeing people walking their dogs and mowing their lawns.
I remember a gramme of speed at nine o'clock and half an E at half ten (that's all I ever had).
I remember having a drug partner, for when you halved an E.
I remember green lasers and dry ice, and hands in the air.
I remember thinking, This is the happiest you can be, and it was very happy. (I remember the DJ was playing SLD.)
I remember Beat Street record shop, down Bradshawgate in Bolton, where I bought my 12-inches.
I remember Eastern Bloc in Manchester, which was cooler.
I remember falling off the podium when the DJ played a song I'd heard a few weeks earlier in Ibiza, because the rush was so powerful. I was caught and put back upright.
I remember people wearing hard hats and dust masks and armbands. I remember Vicks Vaporub.
I remember a girl called Nicola, who had whispered a threat to break my neck in school assembly a few years earlier, went to the Pleasuredrome too and was really friendly.
I remember, at the end of the night, shouting, One more!
I remember phase 4s and sledging.
I remember biscuit corner and dancing on chairs.
I remember seeing blood in my pee and not taking so much speed after that.
I remember buying capsules that I then suspected were ketamine, because they were yellow and white and I'd heard the yellow and white ones were ketamine, so I took them straight back and got a refund. They were from a man with curly hair in Farnworth, he used to go out with Karen.
I remember mixtapes from friends with decks, and DJ mixtapes from Sasha and Nipper and Summum.
I remember climbing on to the fence at the front of a rave in Leeds, singing along to Lost in Music.
I remember that burnt cocaine smelled like olives.
I remember getting a lift home from a Stalybridge all-nighter in the boot of Unsy's Capri. Caroline was wearing a black shiny catsuit that night.
I remember buying a grey Champion all-in-one hotpants suit from the sports shop outside the Arndale in Bolton. I wore it with navy suede Diadoras, almost every week.
I remember Claire Kay rubbing my shoulders at the side of the stage at Orbit in Morley, on new year's eve, with Candi Staton singing, and I was crying because it all felt so good.
I remember What's your name, where you from, what've you had?
I remember speed was £10 and Es were £15.
I remember buying a wrap of speed and it was just paper, folded up.
I remember the paper was sometimes cut out of porn mags.
I remember the service station at Charnock Richard, and dancing in the headlights of parked cars.