Jeremy Clarke: When public vice improves private virtue

So I go to the all-night house party with my rolled-up yoga mat under my arm. Nice house, middle-class crowd, everybody drunk. Women’s screams coming from upstairs. Looking for the lavatory, I find one vacant at the top of the stairs. I’m in mid-stream when this bloke bursts in and slams the door again behind him. He’s a big bloke and it’s a small lavatory. To accommodate him, I shuffle around the bowl and come at it now from the side. ‘Don’t mind me, pal,’ he says, all business-like. He delicately opens a tiny plastic bag, licks his thumb and shoves it into the powder as if it’s sherbert and he’s ten years old. He licks his thumb lovingly and plunges it into the bag again. ‘Here you go,’ he says, and he offers me his white MDMA-coated thumb to suck. ‘The Yorkshire method, pal. E by gum.’

He stands his thumb up in front of my face.