Who knew that a bursting fallopian tube would burst the sense of what’s the point? I woke up with the gloves off, a nineteen-year-old in a ravers paradise, Manchester at the height of her powers. The hospital ward of pink fluffy slippers and women with no wombs held me for a week of painful recovery. My mother came to see me. So did the boy. And then I put on my brown corduroy hotpants and Minnie Mouse platforms and went out to Flesh at the Haçienda. I think this was the first time my heart touched rave. I think I knew, immediately, I had found my love. I found a puppy on the way home too, it was crying in the gutter. We picked it up, named it Flesh and gave it to my godfather who renamed it Flash for the preference of shouting it in West London. I took revenge on the boy who’d made me pregnant, who’d been my love and left me for the buffet of university girls, by having an affair with his brother. I broke his heart. Sorry about that. I’ve always felt bad about it. Meanwhile the drugs of the early nineties exploded like my tube; the first time I took ecstasy at Naked Under Leather I raised my hands to the crystal tear drops cascading from the ceiling. A large Liverpudlian boyfriend gave me my first acid and was sweet and gentle in my enthusiasm to recite Yeats on a swing in the park. I got into playing squash on speed. I did no work. In my second year I moved into a house in Withington where my friends wrote essays while I ate instant macaroni from the corner shop. They went to lectures, I watched Neighbours. It was fun and absent and what’s the point so when the boy arrived with the story of being kidnapped I was ready. Who needed university, a degree, even another night at the Haçienda when there was this adventure waiting to be had? No other excuse was needed. We packed our bags and bought our flights. I’m not convinced I told my mother. When I went to my tutor to tell him I was dropping out he had no idea who I was.
*if you’re new to this series, scroll back to A Journey To India to find out what happened.
Oh the nostalgia. I remember my first rave. The first pill. Such magic, joy.