Pill Dealing Glasto Vamp

1998 and my first Glastonbury experience, I am unafraid and adventurous, the ‘neck it now and I’ll see you on the other side’ mentality. Funny how you go from immortality to morality in a couple of decades, still, there will be no mid life crises here, but let’s not get bogged down with the other side of this tale, nor the setting of the scene neither. When you first get to somewhere like Glastonbury and it’s all new to you, I mean the experience as a whole, often you’re still in early adulthood, spreading your wings with the goal of other things, you’re outside the confines of your teachings, and you end up somewhere like that, well, quite simply it just blows the cap off. Exciting isn’t the word, it’s beyond exciting. I’m sure that not only do experiences such as that define who you become, certainly for several years thereafter, they also stay with you as part of the mind, and I don’t mean just memory, I mean within the brain’s physicality and the formation of the mind. We get what we are born with, and then there is the fine tuning. On the Thursday night, you get the tent up, you find your feet and you explore. I always struggle not to overdo the first night of any weekender, but I just get so excited, I still peak early even now, despite approaching forty. The air’s thick with music, laughter, people, and just all manner of things all around. The cockles are warming from the cans and the cannabis, so off you pop to explore the site. From the tops at night it looks as big as a city, everything’s lit, the ferris wheels, roads, shops, bars, theatres, restaurants, high rise constructions and giant marquees. There are tents, and tents and lights for miles sparkling from the model’s outer zones. Herbal highs, mixed with drinks aren’t half bad, aiding a night’s blend into the sublime and causing its swift progression towards disappearance. We float about thinking it all in, absorbing the sights and the sounds, it’s the most extraordinary people watching ever to behold. It was then, out of the blackness of the deeper night a shadowy figure cut the flashing ambers away out in front then disappeared again. Things had begun to quieten down, or at least in the central business district they had, many were returning to their little camping communities, many migrating to the healing fields for the light show at dawn chorus. A man with porcelain complexion illuminating his face appeared amongst us, he’d come out of the invisible cusp of the unlit sidelines, and in full view so suddenly of my compadre and I. The gentleman’s clothes were most prominent, they appeared realer than real, set off only by the brightness of his face, this was no smoky silhouette, this was drug taking at its best. Beautifully decked out in a black velvet three piece with red silk lining and white silk dress shirt, a silver watch chain linked the pockets of his waistcoat and his collars rode high against his neck and down to a plunging chest line exposing some serious silver and antique artefacts adorning a pale torso, all finished off with a long black velvet coat, fitted like a glove but split with tails. His eyes were brighter than those of my compadre’s and thus no doubt mine, despite us being higher than cloud nine as his body language guided us in to a huddle. Glinting with pleasure he slid a length of hair from his cheek, then out into a neatly gloved hand came a gilded silver snuff box, which when opened exposed a single tiny white pill stamped with the bold red outline of a heart, ‘taste?’ He asked. Indeed we did, bitter, sour, crumbling and then melting, I’d heard the worse they tasted the better they were, ‘like some?’ he asked, ‘yes,’ I replied, ‘then come with me.’ We both followed, ‘only one of you,’ so my compadre held back. I was taken through a nearby exit gate and into a parking zone, it was a smaller parking area, probably more exclusive, but I couldn’t say where on site. A blood red Ferrari sat on the front row, it was his, ‘jump in,’ he said, it was a luxurious capsule of calm in a field of shit. The transaction was charming, you’d think I was buying a Rolex in Knightsbridge, I probably wasn’t even buying enough to have made the three minute walk worthwhile for him. Still, it was as if he knew.