58. Crack Daddy Wanted

That was the kind of party it was. A thousand people on a plot of land in Zambia, gathered for an eclipse. We’d flown to Jo’burg with hand luggage of toy guns because scaring the s**t out of people at parties was what you were into. We’d hired a car, ripped out the seats and turned the back into a bed and driven from South Africa through Botswana to Livingstone. God knows how we found the site; these were the days before mobile phones and satnav, we probably had a piece of paper and a map. I don’t remember much about the journey except for sitting on the edge of a mattress, red sheets, white walls, in some motel we’d stopped in trying to find things to stick in our arm – wine, day nurse, crushed-up paracetamol, anything to stem the flow of craving that without our usual supplies of cocaine and crystal meth was driving us mad. But we found the party and parked up at an intersection of paths under a tree and found the drugs other people had bought out with them and I remember one night very high in the darkness of the back of that car having a vision of you at the gates of hell because that’s where I’d found you and that’s where I tried to bring you back from. And when I wasn’t in the back of that car I danced and danced, all of us entranced by the repetitive simplicity of beats, all night and all day, nothing stopping us but for the eclipse which happened suddenly to shouts and brought us all to a stop and me to my knees. A silence on a ridge, silhouettes lined up, three minutes of wonder as day became night became day. Crack daddy wanted – that was the sign around the neck of my friend who I met, who was beside me through the chaos that came after because the party didn’t end there. A week on that site, dancing without stop and then a hundred of us went on to the after-party, the Zambezi River, the island.“Show me the stone that the builders rejected: that is the corner stone.” Jesus This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe