Standing in a messy kitchen at the tendril tip of a county line at three o’clock in the morning, Trev was applying his concentration to the intricate business of washing the coke in a dessert spoon with acetone and a lighter flame. When the impurities had burnt away, Trev goggled with incredulity at what remained in the spoon. Then he swore in a low, disbelieving voice because the washed remainder was the most he’d ever seen.
Three were a crowd in the small, narrow kitchen. Our hyperactive host, whose eyes were out on stalks and whose voice was hoarse from shouting, was carrying on two conversations at once. He would hoarsely shout at us for a minute or so, then run upstairs to shout at whoever was up there. He was an attractive, self-consciously comic character wearing a blue T-shirt adorned with the decorations of a high-ranking US astronaut. The pipe under construction was Trev’s third, but repetition hadn’t lessened his astonishment at the purity. Our host wasn’t surprised. Indeed, the exalted state of his mind, his shouting, his goggling eyeballs and his manic tripping up and down the stairs to conduct two conversations at once, was as compelling evidence of purity as the surprisingly large amounts left in Trev’s spoon.
I hadn’t seen Trev for many months. Much earlier, as arranged, we’d met in a sedate pub. I had his usual large vodka, lime and soda waiting for him. He began telling me a silly joke as soon as he clapped eyes on me and the punchline left him helpless with mirth at his own joke. Then he faced the other drinkers in the bar, flailed his arms at them to whip them out of their boring conversations and lives, and yelled, ‘Come on!’
But that was seven hours, three pubs and a club ago.
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