CITY OF PRETTY Emergency Exit
The majority of the people I meet here in England are not English. This is what I love about London – a conglomerate of cultures and agendas. All of us seeking our gold nugget in the big smoke. I have forged an amazing bond with a model from Bulgaria. Gia for short. She looks like a forest fairy, and you can watch her do her best elfin in the Filthy Dukes’ music video ‘This Rhythm’.
Whilst living together in the agency apartment, we have grown close over compulsive laundry washing and the odd bottle of red wine or three. Her boyfriend, a Bulgarian events producer, has been staying with us too. They, in turn, have a mutual girlfriend who is dating an Italian house DJ.
This is how I will eventually end up at a house street-fete in the town of Middlestone. I have my hesitations about being the seventh wheel at a party an hour outside my newly found and still fragile comfort zone, but Gia looks at me with her massive brown eyes and the sweetest smile and my marshmallow arm is twisted. Besides, most of the spontaneous invites I have accepted here have lead to some or other exciting encounter, so I decide to throw caution to the wind in exchange for an adventure.
So the three Bulgarians, the DJ who is playing at the party, his Italian film producer housemate and his Polish girlfriend are my crew for the evening. We rendezvous at the producer’s house. He works solely with one director, the man who did Leaving Las Vegas with Nicolas Cage, and he tells us mad stories about the Cage. After a few glasses of bubbles in his plush Chelsea apartment that looks like an opium den we cram into a rented car, me wedged between three hot-blooded couples not afraid of PDA. At this point I still have no idea where our party bus is headed.
The drive is gorgeous while the sun sets over the Thames, and we arrive in Middlestone before dusk. We park the car behind the stage at the end of a cordoned off cul-de-sac. I catch first glimpses of what is to detail this evening. In between stage and the back barricade are about 3000 house-bobbing restless natives. Fluorescent acrylic nails with stencil designs, moms in fanny pelmets and highlighted streaks as a unisex trend – the whole works. For the men there are aviator type sunglasses, just bigger and with no frames and always on, even at night, and plenty of popped collars. If that’s not enough, I’ll throw in some dog tags dangling on shaved chests, just to prove a point.
We walk up the stairs onto the DJ podium. My deep-house pulsating rib cage beats faster than my eyes can process. The strobe light isn’t helping! Pushing past fellow backstage dwellers to locate the bar trolley, all I can think about is how a sneaky shot will ease my nerves. The stage is about 20 square meters big, and filled right up to the DJ decks. From this height I can see the full extent, and I give out a stunned chuckle. It’s a profoundly new cultural experience. They move simultaneously to the throbbing bass with limbs flailing (often around each other’s waists and asses) whilst the smell of berry cider and sweat forms a steamy cloud above the mass.
I sit for two hours and observe in awe from the safety of the podium. Eventually I migrate from shell-shocked to easy going thanks to some recreational alcohol consumption. I get up and shuffle my feet a bit under giant silver floppy disks suspended for decoration. The Italian house DJ is not all bad and I talk more with the producer about the drunken Cage and making movies. I am now drinking Zambucca with water like Ouzo to keep up, which I regret from that point onwards.
Before the clock strikes 12 we are homeward bound. Gia has come alive with her own housey pulse and the crew moves on to the after party, while I take my ringing ears to bed. Though not the most glamorous excursion, I conclude that I got to see some more of the ‘real’ England. I might not be meeting Brits in London, but at least I’m diving real deep to make the acquaintance, one shooter at a time.