R F COLES

Dominate your life with DOMIFY™: the pill that’s a sure cure for all your aches, pains and messy personal issues

Paul Stumbles PhC (pharmacist) would love to pop his woes away but won’t be so lucky. Fresh out of a divorce and shaken by a recent family tragedy, he’ll just have to do his best and cope until this wonder drug is available, unless of course, he can find a better alternative to Domify™ and prescription medicated bliss.

Pill-popping his way to Spain after inheriting his brother’s flat in Madrid, Paul, gets off to a good stumble. There, lingo challenged and happily addicted to antidepressants, he encounters demon radio sets, karaoke sadomasochists, suspicious drug trials and drag acts, and even true love on the rebound. Hardly a good start for a man supposed to avert pharmaceutical apocalypse when Domify™ the wonder drug hits the market. Then again, praying might just help.

Starring Chlamydia Parker Balls and Loneliness Help [me] Neighbour (Soledad Socorro Vecino), and a host of the most unforgettable characters, Pillpopdom trips a humorous line between cures for all and the dangers of over self-medication, in a world where attention deficit pills have become study aids and the home medicine cabinet a veritable DIY drug den.

Why, oh why is it that every woman I fancy has only one thing on their mind? I asked myself. Most women in fact would ask the same of most men.

What people don’t know about stuffed animals and (some) men, is that we’re not cutesy harmless; we’re cutesy vicious. We can growl. We can be ferocious. We can maul a person to death, or, in my case, to boredom.

Rising out of their pits came a cacophony of cries, grunts, hollers and rabid human babbling like the ground had been sundered and the dead were rising on Judgement Day. It was just the sort of theme-tune din that a religious cult whips out their semi-automatics to.

The hippie lady in her Gucci fakes could’ve been one of them, a maruja; the typical Spanish housewife Titan, like Medusa with vipers-on-a-stick for a mop.

I was both surprised and elated that she hadn’t taken offence, at my spitting at her like she was a bad doggy. Thank Jesus! I said to myself, and added for theological neutrality’s sake: Buddha, Vishnu, Moses and the thetan of a dead space alien.

Single-handedly I, Paul Stumbles, murdered the chat-up with my bare mouth. Verbally I took a revolver and shot it between its doe-startled eyes.

You just had to look on the bright side of things, chilly as it was at this time of the year. If not, well, that meant having to introduce your parents to the woman of your dreams and your brother’s, man of his dreams, as the pair of vino winos and Prozac poppers they were.

“Domify, Domify,” I’d better add the trademark or Pfizimp will sue me, “Domify™.” It’s not something a bloke says to the girl of his dreams as he’s humping her, but then it hadn’t been me the one who was scream-moaning it out loud. “DOMIFY™!!!”

I always end up getting my wires crossed when it comes to the Stockholm Syndrome, not knowing whether it’s your fellow hostages or your captors you sympathize with, but in this case, it was the mice, each and every furry blighter that has to scurry around some infernal maze conceived by a genuine genius of a moron.

Everyday now, I could find myself harassed by suicidal Goths, muscled male-dolls from Tom of Finland’s pervy imagination, and, oh what-a-joy, bitter drunk drag queens nail-clawing their way to impersonation fame.

An inner voice in my head, I think, was singing in a heavenly choir. He, my horny inner cherub, would’ve broken out in a contralto for everyone to rejoice at, had I got but a single passing look.

“How did you know?” I replied somewhat distracted. I was calculating the evidence in ‘Paul time’ where everything takes longer than a London bus.

What harm could it do? After all, I was a trained expert in pills and popping them.
It was my pharm party and I cry if I want to, cry if I want to. You would cry too if it had happened to you, before at least the codeine took effect.

Mr. Happy Head got decapitated and tossed down the plane like a beach ball to a roaring fanfare of jubilant passengers, or so, I pictured him bounce by.

Oh what joy!

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FULL PRESCRIBING INFORMATION

1 INDICATIONS AND USAGE

1.1 Adjunctive Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder

If a story is a journey then what better place to start than an airport. Luton, London’s least internationally known departure point, was to be mine. Everybody had a story, like the Mrs. hamster-lookalike in the revolving doors I passed by, who’d just won the National Lottery, or the perfectly poised man in the adjacent check-in line, who was to fly long haul to Bangkok and later return with Cup Size double D bazookas, high heels and a 100% human hair Kimberly. Even the penultimate owner of my baggage trolley had his tale, though alas that involved a missed flight and rendition to a temporary holding cell. Yes, airports were architecturally the stuff that binds a good story, but even though any of those people’s could have made it into this one, none of them were my own.

“He’ll catch his death like that. If I haven’t told him a dozen times to wrap up.”

“Mum.”

“Haven’t I always told him?”

“You have, dear, you have,” reassured Dad rhetorically.

“Mum. For Christ’s sake. It’s Spain, not the Outer Hebrides. A t-shirt will suffice.”

She had that motherly look of worry on her face; the one that I couldn’t tell was a ruse or not, and which by default had lead to its frequent usage.

“Well, at least eat,” she crooned. “I made your favourite: cheese and chutney sandwiches. There’s a packet of salt-n-vinegar crisps and a Mars bar,” she said, handing me the luncheon box. There was a hesitation before she let go of it, confessing: “A Coke too.”

“You want me to get arrested, or something?” I chided, lightly, in faux protest.

“Paul, what do you mean?”

There was always implicit threat whenever Mum used my name. It was that kind of tentacled danger that lurks beneath a luckless swimmer in the black abyss, and comes with ‘Paul this and Paul that; and haven’t I told you a thousand times Paul, you really ought to know better’. Well, I did, and that was to go on DEFCON 1 offence-defence.

Mum’s eyes darted 45 degrees to indicate something to Dad. I was sure it was about me.

“You know you can’t take liquids through,” I admonished her. “It could be a bomb.”

“I didn’t know,” she professed innocence, guilty as charged. “Would I give you a bomb?”

“Well…”

“Paul – really!”

Well, she wouldn’t have, unless provoked, that is. Mum was not a woman to be crossed, which is why I stuffed the sarnies into my backpack even when I’d no intention of eating them. I loathe chutney. There’s something about those soggy chunks of condiment that brings an unpleasant picture to mind, involving late nights and pavements.

The chunky thought didn’t jolt my beam one iota though. I was the happiest, most contented soul on the planet and I wanted it to show. That in itself had nothing to do with chutney, or the roadside grit-n-polish of my shoes that morning, nor Mum asking me to smuggle on-board liquid explosives. My own irrational exuberance; that idiotic perma-grin of mine, was simply a boarding card and my ticket with its smudge of capitals printed in ecstatic bold: ONE WAY.

A one-way ticket. Mine, ALL mine. I could hardly believe it. To hold that slip of paper in my covetous palm was like being touched by an angel.

Unpatriotic some might think, but they’d be wrong. I wasn’t putting the country down. Unlike those of you unfortunate to have been born elsewhere, I could appreciate a stroke-inducing fried breakfast, greasy fish-n-chip suppers, pub quizzes and more pub quizzes, TV soaps with their whole cast acting themselves into the grave (if they hadn’t already), the weather: damp and drizzle with occasional showers (that, being my one and only fat lie). In fact, the national diet of lard and cloud-borne spittle is what maketh the Brit, and we’re a much hardier bunch for it (arteries for sure). I jest, naturally. We do have the Tesco organic section.

So, I knew that I was going to miss a lot of things. At the top of my list, I think, was hot fried chip butties (buttered French fry sandwiches, in my case, with a dollop of ketchup) and of course, my pub around the corner (where mythically all pubs are located). Still, I wouldn’t be missing the bingo or Friday night’s sing-a-longs.

Daft really. Anyone else would’ve felt a tremor at least of trepidation at a such a life-changing trip. I mean, it wasn’t like I’d be back with a tan in a fortnight. Yet I, Paul, was fearless. Some might call it bravery, others, idiocy. To me it didn’t matter. I just smiled on. ONE WAY was me tripping on cotton candy sunbeams.

Put off perhaps by the gushing sunniness, Mum and Dad said that they’d really ought to go. Dad gave me a pat-on-the-back and his special girder-grip, that blocked any physical proximity to him. We’d always been very close. Mum, being Mum, extended her world renowned, ‘the Queen’s’ handshake. Well, I admit, my folks have never been one for the touchy-feely stuff of pecks on the cheek, or god-for-forbid-it, a hug, but even I could feel the chill emotional updraft.

There wasn’t a window open, anywhere. I looked.

So they disapproved of me. Nothing new there. Besides, it wasn’t me as such this time, but rather, my smile. I think they thought it was inappropriate after everything that had happened. That was why I wore it.

“Well, Paul. Um… I suppose we’d better be off,” Dad coughed up the courage to declare.

I almost said something, but kept my cool. We hadn’t always been this way as a family. Then, I hadn’t always been in need of a quick pill pop.

“See you Christmas then,” Mum curtly bade her farewell.

What’s got into the both of them?

I knew of course, and it wasn’t my daft perma-grin. You see, there are waves and there are mega waves, beautiful at a distance and lethal up close. So I kept my cool and mouth shut. Mum and dad had been through a lot. We all had, flattened by wave after sorry wave.

“Yeah Mum,” I confirmed, “Christmas. It’ll be nice.”

Sometimes words dry up. Sometimes it’s best to keep them to yourself. Mum didn’t concur or agree with me, nor say anything. So I left her, taking my trolley’s reins as if I were about to ride off into the sunset on it. Double-checking that the trolley in fact was mine, I wobbled on, choosing to forego the wave back at my parents as I went.

Negotiating my way out of the assault course Check-in lines, with one wheel of my trolley about to fly off and hit someone in the cheek, I seesawed-screeched by holidaymakers and passed back through the why-are-we-waiting coffee and grab-an-exorbitant-bite-to-eat section onto Departures. The exit to my new life in Spain was a white-clad birth canal to the left. It’d been scraped to a buggery by suicide-bomber trolleys, which went to explain my one’s dodgy wheel.

It was nice that life had some answers. Then, I thought about my parents. How do they think I should act? I reconsidered their disapproval. I couldn’t hide my emotions. Why should I? I couldn’t hide my smile.

Escape. I couldn’t help it. The thought was blessed. I suppose, it would’ve helped, I could’ve cried myself silly with bucketfuls of irrational exuberance. Nope, I doubt it. Nothing would have. Sorry, Mum. Sorry, Dad. I was leaving them, and I couldn’t have felt happier.

Guilty, a bit maybe, I plucked up the courage to stop the trolley and give them a proper farewell wave. Since Departures was to the left of the exit/entrance to the terminal, I had assumed that Dad and Mum would be following on behind me. Rash of me, I know. They hadn’t.

They had just left.

Nice one. Don’t bother saying goodbye. See you Christmas – bloody not likely! In truth, my thoughts would’ve been a flaming and effing lot worse, had I not been on uppers (adrenaline, serotonin and my body’s noradrenaline). All natural. I should know, I have a biology degree.

My natural high had been dented. Pushing on, against friction with a wobble, I reached Security and offloaded my luggage onto the scanner’s conveyor belt.

A finger gently tapped me on the arm.

Caught by surprise, I swivel-heaved myself round, overshot the direction of the finger, and wound up accusing a man beside me with an evil stare.

He blanched, almost jumping back in fright.

“Paul,” a familiar voice called. I took one look at my suitcase vanishing into the scanner and charged for it like a mad rhino. Irradiating half an arm in the process, fortunately, I managed to grab a hold

“Mum – ” I realised in relief, “where’s Dad? You nearly gave me a heart attack!”

“Oh, did I?”

I rolled my eyes and swung them over in the direction of the man who had just jumped out of his skin. He was like a spooked squirrel, gawking at us.

“And Dad?”

“He’s gone to get the car.”

Well, not so bad, I thought. One of them cared.

“So?”

“Um, er… Now, what was it? I’m certain there was something I forgot to give you.”

Not more chutney! I prayed to God, the almighty, and anyone standing in for him.

“What then? What did you forget?” I asked with whiskers a-twitch in trepidation.

“Just some pills, dear. Brought them for travel sickness.”

“But, I’m a pharmacist.”

“Well, yes, I know. Besides, you were always too busy dispensing for other people, to take care of yourself. You know, a pill pop a day makes the doctor go away, didn’t I always used to tell you that?”

“Yes, Mum. Yes, and you wonder why I ended up in the medical field. You might as well have left me in the ward where I was born, and been done with me. So what are they? What did you get for travel sickness?”

“Prozac, dear. Took a handful on the way here.”

My whole family’s stark raving bonkers! So, that’s why Mum passed out on the roundabout when Dad was asking her for directions. Poor Dad, he’d forgotten his glasses at home. No wonder we’d been going round in circles for hours. Mum had been on the Prozac, again.

Then a certain word came thundering back into my head, and in upper-case: ESCAPE.

Mum and me rehashed our bye-byes:

“No! I can’t take liquids. For fuck’s sake, I told you.”

“Paul. There’s no need for such language. You was brought up properly, not dragged.”

“Yes, yes.”

“Bye then, dear.”

And off she trotted.

Celebratory fireworks exploded in my head to light up that certain word. Escape. The urge in me was like salmon returning to their spawning grounds, or ostriches’ penchant for the safety of dark holes. I wanted to get out of my life, as if it were some Nazi prisoner of war camp. With a spoon to dig a tunnel out, if need be. But I didn’t need to. I already had my way out. I had my flight to take.

That was where I was headed with my golden boarding card. Nothing could stop me.

“Hold it.”

I did, temporary paralysed.

“Passport,” the control officer demanded.

He examined the document with electron microscope precision and then turned to me.

“You have a familiar face. Very familiar. Why would I have seen you before, sir?” I didn’t like his accusing tone of voice and what it implied.

Most other people though would’ve panicked at being stopped and questioned. For me, it didn’t raise a whisker of concern. With my boarding card, and divulged of my luggage, I was lost on a cotton candy sunbeam.

“I don’t think we’ve met, no.”

“Now sir, would you tell me if we had?”

I scratched my head for a second or two before it dawned on me from where he knew me.

“Internet porn?” I suggested, with the serenity of a newbie to the Playboy mansion.

The officer replied with a manly whack of a wink.

“Hell yeah. Your missus is one foxy lady,” he told me, affirming with a raunchy smirk, what would’ve been for any other man, instantaneous combustion-in-embarrassment. My sunbeam was starting to lose altitude.

“Why thank you [kind sir]. We’re divorced.”

Even though reality had started to creep back into my world, I didn’t care. So what? So what if (and it was more than a hypothetical) the fat-arse had seen me in my birthday suit? I had my ticket to freedom. That was my Great Escape. He couldn’t take that away from me.

It was mine, all mine.

“I said, give it to me!”

More than likely then, the attendant in the toxic orange uniform should have been made aware of this, so she wouldn’t have had to wrestle my boarding card from my unyielding fist. The passenger vs attendant fight (I exaggerate), played out before everyone else in-line, while all the time, the attendant maintained her professional but sour I’m-not-being-paid-enough-for-this demeanour, and I, that well-worn smile of mine, verging on drugged-out loon (which by then, she was convinced of, along with everybody else).

The momentary conflagration didn’t lead to any further unpleasantness, however. I managed to board the plane minus handcuffs, which was rather for the best, since I doubted if I could’ve have successfully negotiated the leg-room with my hands tied. As it stood I had to still squeeze in between the front seats and the two passengers already occupying my row. As luck would have it though, I’d been given a window seat. I think that was a first in my whole life; a veritable minor miracle. It really was my lucky day.

After getting myself comfy, I turned to my two companions to say ‘hi’ but they didn’t take any notice, since they were fully engrossed in each other.

“I’m sorry, don’t I know you from somewhere?” the man on my left said to the woman.

Yeah, likely one, I thought.

“Perr-aps. You a-rr famili-rr,” replied the woman in a rolling, foreign accent.

At the pip of a giggle coming from my direction, the same woman gave a screwed-up look of half puzzlement, half offence. My hilarious self-amusement it seems had been mistaken for ridicule. I hadn’t been laughing at her. No, I’d been trying to imagine myself speaking Spanish. Besides, try as I might, I couldn’t put the irrational exuberance down or my perma-grin on a cotton candy sunbeam.

Awkward at having offended the poor woman (accidentally, I stress), I did my best to deflect her and the boyfriend-to-be’s attention. Noticing the complimentary in-flight earphones, I snatched them and pretended to tune out. In a jiffy, I was busy hopping channels to see what I could find. Ignoring everyone else, most deliberately, I enjoyed alley cat Opera, a symphony in B Major (for boring) and the usual fare of smash hits which audio splice catchy with throbbing migraine. I couldn’t find a single thing until, finding a channel that I kind-of liked, I settled back to relax.

Unbeknown to me an orange light above had blinked on. By then I was distracted and humming away to a favourite song of mine, a classic Peter Gabriel, with full-throttled discretion; which, was the one other thing that had blind-sided me. A confession: I’d never in all my thirty nine years with headphones, managed to match my perceived volume to my actual output. You could say it was symptomatic of the Walkman generation, that, and the tendency to be near deaf.

Heedless to the loudness of my tuneless humming, and the degree to which I was attracting the scorn, of the row in front and the one behind me, I continued with Zen-like inner peace. I was overjoyed after all.

Happy happy.

The music and my song all-of-a-sudden cut out.

In the interim silence I heard: Chirp. Ring-a-ling. CHIRP! There was an electronic tweeting like a nest of newly hatched chicks. I was just wondering what it was when an announcement pierced my eardrums:

“PLEASE TURN OFF ALL MOBILE PHONES AND ELECTRICAL ITEMS AS THESE MAY INTERFERE WITH NAVIGATIONAL INSTRUMENTS. WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION.”

Everyone else’s consideration, more like. My phone was still chirping as it had been for a minute or more. Apparently, it hadn’t been just my tomcat Mumbling-along that had provoked the ire of my fellow passengers.

Someone had, and still was, calling me.

Hitting panic at my predicament, I fumbled for my phone. Then I remembered, with relief, that the nest of birdies was in my back pocket. Taking out the earphones to get to the mobile, the cord suddenly got twisted and my neck yanked. An errant thumb, in that awful instant, clobbered the wrong button and set the screen in motion. I had just received a video message from my legally designated ex.

An air steward appeared insisting that I switch my mobile off, but, it was too late. The video message had already started playing with the sound up.

Knowing what to expect, I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see it. You see, our breakup and subsequent divorce had not run the normal, nasty course – it had been more like open trench warfare, with me squarely in the shit and mud. This had been my last and final retreat.

The scud missile with her name and bouncy bits plastering it struck home. KABOOM!

Oh NO! I wailed quietly to myself.

BUGGER!

I’d popped open an eye. I shouldn’t have.

It was number 10 – The Wheel. This was an improvement I had to admit on number 9, the Shoal of Fish, where I’d watched a man come from behind my ex to lift her onto our kitchen worktop. He, the nameless john, had then proceeded to carry her legs over the edge of the food preparation surface. This allowed him, with her torso front down, to thrust into her. Not a pretty picture for the average married bloke (although, I admit, those Yoga classes had clearly paid off).

The Wheel was more ambitious yet. It required utmost dexterity on the part of the female. A man behind me and the soon-to-become couple next to me, plus, the thoroughly disgusted air steward (by all the man-on-woman action) – all of these strangers bore witness to what happened next. On the bright-lit mobile screen, my ex wife did a perfect cartwheel to end up on her head, minus panties and bra, though with a strategic skirt flopped down over her waist. Shameless. Oh, and, some other john there giving it to her.

Upside down and smiling into the camera for me she blew a seductive, lipsticked kiss.

Lovely.

Warning: The above copulatory examples require considerable flexibility and agility to perform safely. Muscle strain and bodily injury may result.

Don’t even ask how the censures sneaked that in!

How sweet of her, I thought, quite numb to it all by now. This was number 10 god-forbid-it, nearly half way through the twenty four most famous positions of the Kamasutra. The complete nympho set is sixty four.

Okay, I confess. I know because I bought myself an illustrated (somewhat sticky) copy. Only, I add, once my ex had embarked on her sexual protest, or better put, crusade. The fact that she’d do such a thing was not that out-of-character. The first time had been at Sunday lunch with my parents, which had been the initial experiment with video messaging. My ex-wife you see, has always been the kind of radical Feminist (fine) who loves showing off her private parts (awkward), pinky-pinching (ouch) and inviting exploration all the way… Sorry, but it really has to stop there.

She was the one who decided one day that monogamy was outmoded and obsolete. And who was I to argue with the volumes of sociological data presented in support of the claim? Taking the first couple of extramarital forays in our bed the wrong way (pardon me), I soon found myself vilified as an ‘anti-libertine’ and ‘coveter of sexual energy’. Our marriage of course, never recovered from that ‘experimental’ stage, and wound up in court to the be-amused witness of strangers. Taking the house (since it was hers) and Sandy, our Golden Retriever, the Kamasutra campaign was her attempt to stuff down my throat, the fact that my own sexual ‘intolerance’ had caused our divorce. It was all my fault. Nuclear proliferation and the melting of the ice caps too, for all I knew.

Happy happy. You could stuff happy.

Especially, as I’d caught my reflection off the screen. It wasn’t a pretty sight: my mortification. The handset tumbled from marbled fingers, much, I have to say, to the ire of the man behind me who hadn’t got his fill of the boobs on show. In that stitch in time, of gob-smacking awfulness and humiliation, I witnessed myself freeze in an Oscar winning cameo of Edvard Munch’s The Scream.

I did, scream, deep inside. My poor lungs were shred from the ballistic force of it.

Argh – Ar – - – ! You get the picture.

The foreign, most-likely Spanish woman on my row exclaimed: “You put yell-ow.”

Nice of her to comment, and pretty amazing given that a few minutes before I’d been practically laughing in her face. I guess she’d realised that I was harmless. Snatching a pair of earphones to hide behind and Peter Gabriel humming it away had probably given the game away.

More concerned for my well-being than offended, she’d been the exception. The others though hadn’t fared so well, regarding explicit mobile content. The man next to her for instance was currently studying the fabrication of the luggage compartments, while the voice of authority, the air steward himself, didn’t appear to know what to say, though his look was one of don’t-EVER-do-that-again, with a subtext of perplexed yuck-that’s-disgusting. Although, going by the head of a man jammed next to my headrest, some wished the show had gone on and that, my ex, had more offings planned.

He would be pleased to know the show would go on, with her it went without saying. I imagined that she’d already be moving into production studios.

It’s gonna be a real Mr. Happy Head, I thought.

Mr. Happy Head decided to answer back: “Eh,” he complained, “I was watchin’ that.”

“I beg your pardon,” I replied. “That’s my ex there. Who do you think you are!?”

“Cor – she don’t half have big knockers.”

“Do you mind?”

“You got her number since, like, you two aren’t an item any more? Email perhaps?”

The flippin’ nerve of some people.

“Shut it!”

Mr. Happy Head got decapitated and tossed down the plane like a beach ball to a roaring fanfare of jubilant passengers, or so, I pictured him bounce by.

It was in fact my last positive thought (ish). The venomous poison of my ex’s call had worked its way into me and I could feel the constricting paralysis. Happy thoughts of freedom and escape from blame and ridicule collapsed. The cabin’s walls closed in, or, at least that’s how I imagined it, given the maxed-out mini-confines of a chartered jet. To me the plane was being scrap-metal crushed.

I wanted out. I wanted off it. I wanted people to stop staring and toddlers to restrain their chastising mitts. I wanted my gob shut and to look normal like a man who hadn’t just seen bloody murder take place. For Christ’s sake, was that really too much to ask!?

Why won’t you people leave me ALONE!

“There, there Trish, leave the man alone.”

“But Mummy – he’s odd.”

“I know, poppet, but it’s rude to stare.”

“Mummy – he’s trying to catch flies with his mouth.”

“No poppet. He’s in shock, that’s all.”

The voice of the woman and all the others slurred to a slowed-down perpetual whine.

Grumble grumble. The sound was like Mum when she was having one of her bad days.

It might have been catching.

The fabric of the seat grew itchy with polyester thistles and gnarls. Blotches of spilt coffee and tea, and in-flight snacks appeared across the clad-panelling. Goblets of spit sprinkled the air like Saturn’s Rings in orbit around a black hole with teeth: a jaw-broad mouth. The passenger sat uptight in a rictus. The passenger was me, Paul, and not me, not any more. Hyde had taken over Jekyll.

Mr. Hyde was depression, gobbling up any sense of self. Depression is an ‘out-of-body experience,’ which is how I think of it. For some reason my mind always disconnects and it’s like I’m floating above my body, and I find myself peering down, like now. I could see the Mr. Hyde me. In both of his eyes three tiny incisions had appeared, like he’d just been poked by the fork from a doll’s house. Tissue traumatised, his eyes red-tide muddy while some sort of fluid seeped out from the trident of tiny puncture holes. Unseen, I imagine, by anyone not attuned to the plane of fantastical flights of fancy, this Mr. Hyde me, started to bleed. It was not blood though, but streaks of primary tricolour: red, blue and green, until the last drop of it had run off his chin.

It must’ve affected me too, the incorporeal Dr. Jekyll me, for the colour drained from sight and everything became devoid of vibe and hue. It felt like the whole world had switched back to black-and-white telly.

The vision of the depressed, and it shouldn’t be surprising, is depressingly monotone. Drab. The glare from an overhead reading light bored down into my cranium in photons of pale grey to dark. Even the ventilation blew out a dead skin-cell soot that got right up my nose.

Huh! Running off to sunny Spain! Who d’ya think you are, an ex-Eastenders star? Get real. You gonna tell me that the grass is greener over there?

I’d learnt not to listen to the Mr. Hyde me.

So, why you off? And don’t give me that about kicking the habit and turning that sad little life of yours around. It ain’t gonna happen mate.

Panic was bile. Where was Dr. Jekyll to defend me?

You step right into his shoes and presto! you’ve stepped into his life. Just what you’ve always wanted, now ain’t it? To be him – your own brother.

I took a deep, sulfurous gulp.

Well, he’s dead mate. There’s nothing that gonna bring him back. Nothin’. Living phantom vicariously through his belongings just ain’t gonna work. Too late, I’m afraid. You could’ve spent some real time with him though, then just maybe Adrian would be living through you, now.

I spluttered, choking myself red-in-the-face.

Abandoning the idea of Dr. Jekyll coming to my rescue, I took upon myself to rebuke the Mr. Hyde me: There’s no turning back, you git! There never was. I owe it to Adrian to go there. Madrid for him was a love. For years it was central to his life; a side to him that I am missing. This isn’t about bringing Adrian back. This is about closure.

Depressed decompression. I could feel myself change. An agape gob shut tight, my own. I was back in the flesh, so to speak. Mr. Hyde however still struggled against my will. My body, partly under his control, lurched up trying to get out of the seat and off the plane.

A sturdy but delicate hand held me, and him, back.

“Sir, you alright?” I was asked. “Please remain in your seat. We’re about to take off.”

All I heard was: “…ta-ke or-f-f.” Or so, I thought I did. This Paul was not alright.

“Can I get you anything? I’ll have to be quick.”

Latching on the tail end of what the air steward had said to me, I got the drift.

With my face ashen and my hands a-trembling, I replied: “W-water. Water, please.”

My weak, stuttering delivery drew fresh concern from the steward who immediately did just that, and brought me back a cup and a bottle of water.

“WILL THE CABIN CREW PLEASE TAKE THEIR SEATS FOR TAKE OFF.”

“I’m sorry sir, will you be OK? I have to go.”

“Yes. I think…” A little help is in order, I’d decided.

Fumbling around in my trouser pockets (a bit too much for the comfort of the man on my row, who still had the mobile incident scored into his mind (all the dirty fleshy bits, that is)), I produced a pillbox which I thumb-clicked open. From the top compartment I took out two lozenges and placed them on my palm: 20mg of generic paroxetine.

Paroxetine (par-OX-e-teen) is used to relieve symptoms of depression such as feelings of sadness, worthlessness, or guilt; loss of interest in daily activities; loss of appetite; tiredness; insomnia; and recurring thoughts of death or suicide. So it was a perfect fit. I had all of those symptoms. I should know, I was a trained pharmacist. Yet, paroxetine in itself would not be sufficient. When I got like this – beaten down to a black raggedy pulp by the chemical imbalances raging through my cerebrum – I would co-administer the drug with generic aripiprazole (air-ee-PIP-ruh-zole); 15mg usually hit the spot. It always helped me outrun my furies in that depressed compartment of my soul.

So, taking a juicy big swig from the bottle of water I:

PILL

POPped

and swallowed that freeDOM down.

“Whoa, that’s better,” I said to myself. My fellow passengers seemed highly nonplussed.

Big, busting eruption. Belch. Burp.

Colour in high definition switched back on. Not only did I have vibe and hue but contrast and brightness as well. The pills had done their trick.

I felt much better, I can tell you. Sweet, gaseous stomach juices and all, freedom.

Don’t get me wrong. For me the freedom of pillpopdom isn’t a hit; a chemical high by whatever opiate or narcotic that’s on the black market or in the medicine cabinet, but just freedom, the freedom to be me.

Right at that moment the plane’s landing gear raised with the familiar pneumatic whirring that proceeds a blood rush to the head, from conceiving of oneself above the ground, and the whole absurdity of heavier-than-air flight. That wasn’t quite what I felt, but near on it.

For a second or longer I could feel myself weightless. We were up in the air. Flying.

The sensation was familiar, all too familiar.

Beside me, tin-rattling out of those disposable headphones was a song sung in Spanish:

♫ No sé que me das, pero me hace volar. ♫ Don’t know what you give me, but it makes me fly.

(No sé que me das (Naturaleza Muerta 2001 by Fangoria, song by L. Posper, I. Canut, O. Gara))

I could relate.

The singer’s husky voice sounded like a Spanish siren calling to me, albeit, in drag. The pharmaceutical overload kicked up a notch, and I collapsed into the self-medicated freedom of dreamless, hog-snoring.

If life is a journey then I was finally on my way.

- – -

2 DOSAGE AND ADMINISTRATION

2.1 Agitation Associated with Bipolar Mania

I didn’t wake upon landing. Actually, nobody would’ve seen fit to advise me that indeed we had. I could’ve been left there until at Mogadishu International (several unconscious trips later), and finding myself under mortar fire from rebels, I would’ve stumbled out of the plane to find the Bermuda Triangle of baggage reclaim and passengers-cum-troublemakers. My surname is Stumbles, so only I, Paul Stumbles could claim such a dubious honour. Luckier for me I woke in Spain instead, while still taxiing off the runway, and after having swallowed a mucous-thick strand of dribble.

It could’ve been Africa for the major difference that evinced it was not Hertfordshire.

I was in Spain.

Outside the window, if you could call the pressurised peep-hole that, the slabbed expanse of airport concrete took on a vibrancy that my eyes were not accustomed to. For all I knew, there could’ve been stadium floodlights out there fitted with orange-tinted filters.

To a ping of joyous astonishment in my heart, the monstrous evil of drab, had been bestowed with brilliance and grey vanquished, at least, that particular life-sapping tone so beloved of the British Isles (irony most foul). Drizzle and rain was a million miles away.

Hooray!

I was feeling much, much better after my pill-induced nap, with less nausea than I was accustomed to (26% on paroxetine vs 9% on placebo), reduced light-headedness (13% vs 6%), almost no sweating (11% vs 2%) and zero ejaculatory disturbance (13% vs 0%) as far as I could tell.

My mind was as bright and shiny as the day itself. I swear, I must’ve been positively a-glow with anticipation (and not from any feverish turn).

Energized, I wanted to take in everything that I could. The new terminal at Barajas, Madrid, at once upstaged my view from the window. Like the roof of a Japanese shrine propped up by a rainbow flag-line of stilts, the terminal ran a close vanishing-point race with infinity. To have said it was ‘massive’ would’ve been an understatement, for the building (twinned, in fact) was humongous. Eagerly, I awaited my gawk within. Back from his frequent stays in Madrid, Adrian, my brother, had shown me tons of photos of its playful Gaudi-esque inside, of coral forms and shapes that had appeared to me like a part-breathing, part-mechanical ecosystem of levels, escalators and walkways teaming with shoals of travellers.

I’d longed to be one of those fishes. I couldn’t wait to get inside. And, I’m not referring to another number 10 variation on the shoal of fishes theme.

My grand hopes though were to be dashed; stamped on like a misplaced toy. We came to a stop, at the opposite side by the Benidorm cubes of an earlier, less confident era, with its messy additions and decades-hopscotch of styles. Echoing again the distant sea, the original Barajas terminal was painted in sand-bleached yellow and ochre.

The faux-beach paint effect didn’t work for me. I was not impressed. I was upset. My reaction may come across as petulant, but, it was for real. I’ve always found some buildings, just well, sexy. That’s just me.

So, the rest of the experience was cursory and nothing to write home about, then, baggage claim never is. The sourpuss in me didn’t stay long thankfully, and, having ascertained that my luggage hadn’t been sent on route to Somalia, the pissed-off airs soon evaporated with a return to my former, giddying spirit of adventure. This coincided timely, with the doors to Arrivals parting like some portal to a fabled temple full of secrets and treasure. I stepped out to taste Spain for the first time. Why is it that every country’s air has a unique, ineffable pong to it? Surely O₂ is universal?

I certainly didn’t have time to come to a conclusion on that one, nor conduct experiments. Quique, which is short for Enrique, was there, Adrian’s boyfriend. What I didn’t realise was that he wasn’t alone.

“Paul. Over here. It’s Quique,” he warmly greeted, with a deft insertion of his name in case I’d forgotten it. I’d only met him one time, I think.

As for general hopelessness, I did have a reputation to uphold, but if Quique was expecting me to be true to form, then he would be disappointed.

“Quique – HI,” I quickly responded, a bit too fast for it to come across 100% natural.

Enrique didn’t seem to care if I had turned chihuahua hyper on him. I suppose he would’ve just shrugged those shoulders of his at anything odd that I did, and put it all down to my quintessential Britishness. Trying to give me a hug, his towering basketball player physique, had to stoop down to my midget height (in comparison, that is; let’s not exaggerate). Ouch! It had hurt. Quique’s scouring pad of a chin-beard must’ve grazed me. At least, I consoled myself, he wasn’t about to kiss me on the cheeks like the ladies here. Five o’clock shadow in Spain is more like two day’s worth for me, and it stings with the grit fury of sandpaper.

In prescient forewarning, I caught a blur of rapid head-on movement and should have realised what was coming, and ducked. No, Quique hadn’t come alone.

It belted towards me quicker than I could react. The ursine creature gripped me in its paws, throttled the living daylights out of me with yes – you got it – a bear hug, and gave me another stubble-raw facial.

What had I done? Why had I given up my non-eventful life in Wiggington to embrace rampaging bears, with enough hair on their arms to make toupees out of? What have I done? Did actually go through my head. While it did, my expression however had an alternative commentary to make: I’m not Gay. Which was not: I’m not Gay, or: I’m NOT Gay! Adrian was, and that was fine with me. Why then was this man kissing me?

“Oye Juan! No es maricón,” Quique informed the bear.

Hey Juan! He isn’t a faggot.

The bear replied nonplussed: “Qué pasa? No voy a besarle en los labios, tronco.”

What’s the big deal? I’m not gonna give him a smackeroo on the lips, you idiot.

OK, artistic license has been taken with the translation, but basically, that’s the gist.

A moment later I was released, and could breathe again.

First time in Madrid and met by a brown bear was, perhaps, a good omen since the city’s mascot was one and the same. The, having my cheeks flailed part though, didn’t strike me as in any which way portentous.

“Sorry about that,” Quique apologised by way of explanation, “Juan is just happy to see you. Everyone kisses everyone in the family, and I suppose, he sees you as family now. You’d better get used to it. Right.”

“Who is he, anyhow?” I asked.

“Juan? My cousin. They’re here for the weekend,” Quique replied, adding in a menacing bass: “You’ll get to meet the rest not here this evening.”

Now that was ominous. Growing up in a small market town, I didn’t care much for crowds. Me being me, I didn’t pick up on the more immediate implications.

Quique went on to introduce his mother, Dolores, Loli to friends and family (as the name ‘aches’ or ‘pains’ was literally too painful to use on a daily basis). She kissed me on either cheek and I returned the gesture, copying it from a posh soiree film scene I recalled. Then, all hell broke loose. It hadn’t been just the bear, Quique and his Mum, Loli. Oh no, flocking to me came a guest list’s worth of people. There was Soledad, Loli’s friend, Laura, Pilar (I think) then tía Maria and, tía Tequila (for all I could make out). Pucker-kiss-pucker and again and again until my lips were rough and sore, and I felt like I was being pecked to death.

‘The rest‘ Quique had said. Wasn’t this them? How many more cousins and tias could there be? All at once, 2.4 children lit up in my head-file labelled: General Assumptions, and ignited in a nuclear family mushroom cloud. OK. I have cousins; even uncles, but we haven’t seen heads-or-tails of most of them since the infamous Christmas of ’94.

I chewed on this great revelation while my trolley got seized, and my suitcases lugged off by who-knows-who, in the female mob. Shoved onto the escalators, I found myself surrounded by a protective flock of squawking and screeching women, none of whom could understand a single word of mine, nor seemed a bit fazed by it.

Chit-chatting with me a while until my: “Si, yes – me no español” standard replies hit their mark, they returned to feathers-a-flying gossip.

Quique, at seeing my predicament, chuckled a shout at me: “Don’t worry, they’re harmless.”

“You sure?” I wanted further confirmation, for sure.

“Certainly. Isn’t England the same, no?”

I didn’t have to stop to think about it. “NO.” Actually (and this is for real), I’d only ever seen Mum flustered over one of her candle-lit suppers (that are NOT a suburban myth, in our household, anyhow). With her restrained ‘the Queen’s handshake’ and ways, I wondered how she’d react to the huddle of puckering Spaniards gabbling on so.

“Well, you’re in Spain now. Spain is different.”

I was just beginning to realise.

Presently, I wasn’t sure if we were still in the same building. The moving walkway had taken us deep into gleaming glass, and stainless steel column territory, and the kind of ultra-organisation, that was in sharp contrast to the terminal’s dowdy 60s exterior. Quique bought me my first metrobus, a ticket for ten trips by metro or bus. How civilised, I thought. As we descended to the well-lit, apparently mould and mildew-less bowels of the Madrid underground (again in contrast, to another I could think of). A head-first illuminated mural of the city caught my attention and whimsy. There, LED-encrusted diamonds twinkled in the half-light, to reveal unto me (and only me), a veritable treasure map of the city. I wondered what wonders I was about to discover.

Thinking about it now, I must’ve been regressing to some Freudian pedo-child state. It’s all rather embarrassing, but there you have it, never underestimate what an emotional blow to the head can do.

My bleeping mobile – and I really do mean fucking, for the trauma it had put me through – bleated at me, that its battery was low. At the sound of it, a nasty thought came to mind, but rationality quickly stepped in to shove it aside; although, the ex missus and logic hardly went hand-in-hand. No, I decided, she couldn’t have possibly got the production crew together; not for another episode of a 1001 Kamasutra Frolics. From the superb video quality, I knew that she wasn’t using any old camcorder. I took the NiCd slug out.

Ding went the automated doors to the train carriage, with an accompanying, buffeted swish of chilled air. Following Quique, my protector, and apparently the only group member who could speak English (meaning a proper conversation), we sat down for the ride. Quique wasn’t much in the mood for speaking though, and spent his time watching the train’s LCD and snippets of news that interrupted the greater stream of hard sell; which, transcended semantics anywhere. For someone who had never been in Madrid before, the journey into the centre struck me as a whooping, steel and space-station-white divergence from the rambling old city alleyways, and grand old dame boulevards of my guidebook. Adrian had never shown me any photos of the metro. Then again, why would he have? I doubt if tourists take many of the London Underground.

So, for those of you in the know, you can imagine how unprepared I was, for changing lines at Nuevos Ministerios; a buried, cavernous Kings Cross and Euston put-together, that was either a showcase for public transport, and/or, how to spend EU development funds, spectacularly. I thought that it’d make a great Trekkie convention centre. By the time we got to our destination, which was the plaza (square, which in English isn’t quite the same) of Chueca, I was itching to get myself above ground, like an attractions deprived tourist gasping for a lungful of souvenir air.

The epitome of drab vanquished, the plaza was everything I’d imagined it to be. Chueca was an old, smallish square of salmon masonry façades, sun-drenched to saturation, with galleon shades shielding the multitudes with their drinks and their talk, and their noisy babbling fun. The air buzzed with the heat and the calm thunderous rabble.

I could’ve stayed there a minute, an hour, a lifetime to take it all in intravenously.

Loli and the tias (all I had to do was think of the drink tía Maria, to remember the word) had, as I was getting used to, gone on ahead with my bags – I certainly hoped so – and were near to exiting the plaza through a side street, crammed with beads and hippy-knickknack stalls.

“Hey,” I said to Quique beside me, “would it be alright if we stopped for a beer?”

I had thought the suggestion harmless enough, given we were in street café heaven, but his smiley face had pealed itself off, and was about to commit hara-kiri, by jumping off his nose. My idea didn’t look popular.

“Is anything wrong?” I wanted to know, naively.

“We’re having lunch.”

Oh. Is that all, I thought, relieved.

I checked my invisible watch for the time. I often do that. Actually, I believe it’s a personality tick, since carpus strangulation (the phobia of things restricting the circulation of the forearm), apparently doesn’t even exist. Having the correct time on me however, would’ve proved useful. I’d a hunch it was getting late-ish.

So I asked Quique.

“Four,” he told me, as if that were perfectly normal.

“Four o’clock,” I repeated, not even crediting my echo with a proper question mark, it was that unthinkable. “We could be having dinner in two hours.”

“No. That’s at ten or eleven.”

“Eleven?” The unbidden interrogative came punctuated.

“You’re not in England now.”

The plain fact of it, spoken aloud brought on a queasy mix of foreboding and quite, bizarre relief, either one of which was too formless an emotion to be rationally dissected. They were gut feelings, along with digestive enzymes and juices; the image of which, worked well to keep any further shock down. It’s wonderful the placebo effect on the mind, having just stimulated in me the production of famotidine (a popular stomach acid inhibitor). However, despite the wonders of biology and stomach ulcers, there are forces at work in this world greater and more poderosa (powerful) than anything in nature. Loli and the tias had spotted us dawdling and given us a collective housewife’s, Vulcan-mind-thingamabob stare, compelling the pinkies of my toes into motion; Quique too.

Housewife, or rather, house-person (the more politically correct version) is in Spanish maruja, and it’s a word of awe and terrible might.

Be very, very afraid! Destiny it seems really had it in for me, to face this terror.

First though, the cheek by sandpaper-jowl tío (male form of tía), of my all too recent brush-with-his-searing-infamy, popped into the corner store for cigarettes, which gave us the time to catch up with the maruja posse. He came back out with a packet blessed by the Roman Goddess of Tobacco herself, namely: Fortuna (actual brand), who I hear spins a mean Russian roulette with various types of lung rot.

We continued on our way to my new apartment and appointment with the almighty herself, that time in the day, when marujas gather in the temple of the kitchen to roll up their sleeves and give creation to lunch.

I was starting to get hungry. That’s positive thinking for you. I’d pay for that one.

Taking the second or third street on the right, we left fag hag shoe heaven (as Quique called it) to enter my new road, or should I say, the Calle de Pelayo. If the all-male around the pool, towel-hipster adverts had not given it away in the metro, then my calle certainly did. Looking up I saw dusty pink and vanilla turn-of-century buildings with fanciful wrought-iron balconies (fanciful, since they’d the space to toss a kitten). Looking down though, apart from the driving school, I saw a rainbow-flagged bar with mirrored, self-admiring glass. There was a tattoo parlour and a t-shirt place for we-are-so-dark-we-wear-the-brand, Goths. We passed Tienda Erótica, which needs no translation and reached SR, apparently Madrid’s in place for S&M and bondage gear. Our door was the one next to it. Not to say anything about Adrian (and certainly, leaving my brother’s bed and/or harness life out), but I should have guessed at his choice of neighbourhoods.

Everyday now, I could find myself harassed by suicidal Goths, muscled male-dolls from Tom of Finland’s pervy imagination, and, oh what-a-joy, bitter drunk drag queens nail-clawing their way to impersonation fame.

Welcome to the new street.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At least, Mum and Dad had promised not to visit.

Egged on by Quique and his stubble-rude tío (cousin) as a way to commemorate my first time in my new home, I took out Adrian’s – my key – and turned it in the apartment building’s front door. That proved insufficient, and a good ol’ shove was needed to push open the age-warped planks, that could’ve withstood a peasant uprising or two.

“Oye!” shouted a voice from inside.

I hadn’t the slightest idea of what that meant, but its harsh shrill made itself clear.

“Sorry,” I said, correcting myself: “Pardon.”

At first I thought, that I may have knocked the voice’s owner flying, for the ram-attack I’d given the door, but she emerged unscathed from within, although a little puzzled as to why she’d been greeted in English.

Quique said something to her in his lisp-lingo, during the customary smackeroo-on-both-cheeks, and she left with a feeble wave to us, carrying with her a stack of shoe boxes filled to the brim with glittering, glittery stuff. I imagined her at once as the neighbourhood magpie, flitting hitherto and there, to nab all that was precious and tinsel foil shiny. Beneath those freaky Frida Kahlo eyebrows and raven hair, almost as if she dyed it black, the girl was attractive. And, I’m much relieved to say, given the proximity of a certain shop, she had on none of the horror-liner of a die-hard (and they do) Goth. In bright sartorial opposition she had on disco-ball earrings, a black catsuit sown with blinding pink offcuts of some vinyl material, and, a tartan mini-skirt.

Quique mentioned her name to me: Marciana. Martian kinda stuck for me, despite repeatedly on many occasions being told that she went by Marci. With that unibrow of hers, she’d always be my neighbourly Martian.

“Does the Martian live here,” I prodded, jocularly.

“Don’t call her that.”

“And why not?”

“I don’t like it when people make fun of people like that. I mean, how do you think I feel? My surname’s Alcoholado Calvo, Bald Alcoholic bastard.”

“Er… I see your point. I, um, was wondering… Have you seen any of my suitcases?”

“Upstairs, third floor. They should be there.”

I certainly hoped so.

“Is that the way up,” I asked, “by that man over there. Is he another of the neighbours?”

“That’s Jota, yes. Looks like he’s with his son.”

J, I thought, how cool a father is that.

One floor up a forced, girlie alto serenaded: “Papi chulo, papi chulo, ven a mi.”

Come to me.

I’ll just skip over the rest. It’s for the best, believe me. Suffice it to say, Quique’s look was as sharp steeled as a sushi bar cleaver, and in one chop, had purged that prior statement of his, from living memory.

That wasn’t Jota’s – well, J.’s anyone.

With neighbourly blinkers on, as to what was about to go down, we trudged on up the rickety stairs, avoiding any eye contact with the neighbour as we passed. I paid special attention to the varnished woodworm, and not, for one second, the grey chest hairs and steroidal pecs bulging out from a skimpy vest. Indeed, the stairwell Mummies were stuck solidly into their former holes of dietary preference. A part of me wished somehow, I was too.

A part of me felt, I was too.

Whether it was down to Mr. Papi Chulo himself or something else, Quique left me at my door with the luggage and didn’t bother to offer a hand.

He hardly even said bye.

Nice. Cheers mate, mentally I thanked him, for nothing. I mean, he hadn’t even been roped into offering a hand with my suitcases up the stairs.

I should have thought it odd, antisocial behaviour for Quique. I should have, perhaps, but then I’d already learnt from my trip from the airport, that everything I took to be quirky and offbeat, was perfectly normal here. It was me, I realised, who was the odd fellow out.

Him, the British person. Him, the foreigner.

Amazing, really, how quick the tables of life can turn. In a matter of hours, or in my case, three to be precise (of in-flight hog-snoring), the world had turned upside down. I was the stranger in a strange land.

I shut my front door to discover the joy of magenta leather in a tasteful (I tease), crisscross of brass studs decorating the back, that, and enough chains and security measures to put an asylum cell to shame.

This was home now. You could have fooled me. Why did home, feel so un-home-like?

Those plastic petunias would be the first to go.

2.2 Dosing of Orally Disintegrating Tablets

The 4 O’clock lunch, really wasn’t meant to be. The magenta muffled rappings on my madhouse door never got through to me. Then, nothing could’ve. The sofa had claimed my life and only it could give it back.

Nine o’clock and finally it did.

Bolt-upright, waking without recollection of having taken a nap in the first place, I was gripped with the guilt of not having turned up to lunch, as per command. In the most expensive alphanumerical string I’d ever sent, rerouted via outer space and Hertfordshire, I texted Quique a heartfelt apology. It was an hour before I got a reply.

He was pissed, apparently.

DINNER @ 10 was all his message said. Succinct, I thought, socially peeing myself at my faux pas, and the fact, that dinner was bloody well now. I just hoped I wasn’t in too much trouble with his family. After all, lunch compared to dinner was the lesser of the two meals.

Wrong. Again. Not in Spain, I learned at my own expense. The bill was fast adding up.

I got dressed, put on a shirt and a tie, though opted out of the evening jacket, given the August hairdryer-in-your-face heat. I was insanely starving, not having even eaten on the plane earlier, which ordinarily would’ve been for the best; Paul Stumbles though – little ol’ me, had the super-social powers to bungle and botch anything, even dinner. Unbeknown to me, of course, my smart attire had me down for a pratfall. I might as well have gone in a tux.

It’s a wonder, professionally speaking, that I never got a prescription for high blood pressure mixed up with Viagra but, then, I’d always had my trusty counter to keep the customers at bay, and calm my nerves. The thought of the whole Bald Alcoholic bastard family watching my every move (sorry, but I couldn’t recall their name for the life of me), had me in a flap, and I had to take a tranquillizer.

I knew I should have taken the bottle with me (stressed, for medical clarification only). I’m not a pill popper, if that’s what you think. I digress.

This was my great opportunity to impress. The evening could’ve been so, so perfectly lovely. It could’ve gone absolutely swell. I could’ve been accepted with open arms into my new Spanish family.

I was.

Well, make that, for the very first few seconds.

I did get that welcoming embrace. The Italian silk of my tie chafed on the cotton of Quique’s t-shirt. Despite that, it was going well. After his surprisingly open arms (given the earlier curtness), I looked up to see the hall crammed with strangers greeting and interrogating me with torturous, happy smiles: all of the Bald Alcoholic bastards. I panicked, took the short, very bald man nearest to me to be Quique’s father (which he was, praise be serendipity) and promptly cheek-smooched him, having gotten my cultural etiquette more twisted in a knot than knickers around a lamppost.

I’d clearly forgotten the 12 o’clock shadow incident, and so kissed everyone, be they man, woman or Martian. Then, just to seal my colossal disapproval in the eyes of my flabbergasted, not-knowing-what’s-he-doing hosts, I kicked my shoes off to regale them with pungent, travel-worn socks. I’d forgotten to change pairs. They sported a Doctor Who knit. Time did seem to be running in second gear.

Boni, short for Boniato, who was anything other than bonny, arm-wrestled Quique and his wife into the kitchen, and exploded in a lisp-jabbering uproar.

“Who he think he is!?” he demanded to be told.

“Calm down,” placated Loli, his wife.

“Why I calm down, when he come and take his filthy shoes and kiss me in front of all?”

“But,” she trawled for an answer and hit on a pearl (not) and declared: “he’s British.”

Him, the British person. Him, the foreigner.

“Oh, and that make all thing spiffy. I think no.”

“Um… Yes,” Quique came to his Mum’s rescue, arguing for her defence: “He is English.”

The combined, mother-and-son tour de force, of an explanation for my, let’s say, peculiar-to-down-right-wrong behaviour, didn’t make a dent however.

The rabid lisping screeched on.

“They think they come here burning themselves pink, and fall off balconies with beer.”

“Boni.”

“They think OK, British. Well, I say f@#%…”

I could go on, but I think you get the drift of what Mr. Bald Alcoholic bastard, the master of the house, was ranting on about in the kitchen, while I had my shoes indicatively thrust – thrown – back at me.

So, anyhow, that’s my own take on how Boniato would’ve sounded, had he been speaking in English. Given the tone and deafening ‘th’ of the man, his rage wouldn’t have left much room for grammar and syntax.

Neither did it for Quique, who ushered me into the living room and the table set for supper, pointed to the chair and ordered: “Aquí. Stay.”

I got the message. So would an Alsatian.

Then again, imagine Mum confronted by a foreign guest, chasing her round the living room after a nose rub greeting, or a Japanese bowing and accidentally smacking her one, or worse still, her going upstairs to find the guest in the bathroom with his trousers down, squatting on the toilet seat to do his business. The mind simply boggled. Well, this member of the Stumbles family, had gone and done the equivalent of them all, in his utmost to impress.

I hadn’t, clearly. Though I had definitely managed to get myself immortalised.

Apart from the message, I got discomfiture, ignominy, dishonour and a dose of shame. All I could do was look contrite and deeply apologetic.

There was only so long, you could keep that up.

At long last, we got down to the food and, at this point in the evening, more importantly: the vino (wine). Which was heady, I must say. The earthy, mildly acidic tang got better the more I drank. Compared to this, the wine back home (make that, plonk) must’ve been diluted to ditch water. One glass, and it had already gone to my head.

Following on from the first course, as unrecognisable and foreign to me as the rest of the food, conversation started flowing, along with the tinto.

“My father asks, ‘What’s the occasion?’”

“Oh, he’s referring to my shirt and tie, isn’t he?”

“Sorry, but does anyone else here look like they’re going to a wedding? Well, CLARO.”

“Tell him, I fancied dressing up. OK. Joke.”

“Urh.”

Neither Boni nor the others got it.

Trying to fill the humour-hole I’d made for myself, I asked for the plate of mushrooms.

Everyone guffawed in unison, choking almost on what they were either eating or drinking. It was odd, for me, being the only one to authentically dead-pan it in all sincerity. Honestly, I couldn’t see the joke.

Quique turned to me and informed: “Those mushrooms are – how do you say? – pig’s nose.”

WHAT!? My mind and expression responded at once, in a rare example of coordination.

“You must be kidding me!” I exclaimed, at the top of my tonsils, bacon fried-red in the face. Apparently, I should quit the matter-of-fact comedic delivery, and just go for it. The room was beside themselves.

I wanted to hide under the table and stop myself from mentally rewinding and playing the pig’s snout in tomato and basil sauce, again and again. If I’d kept my mouth shut, it would’ve helped a lot. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Sliced porcine nasal passage, had forced me into re-evaluating all the food around me, and the only person contentedly stuffing her face at that instant, was Pains herself, Dolores. It was to Quique’s Mum that I took my paranoia.

“What’s that?” I asked Loli in English, regardless if she understood me or not.

“Rata,” she answered, gnawing a morsel of flesh off the tiny skull in her bare hands.

Rata? Perhaps may be, rattan? I think not.

Rat.

I believed her, absolutely.

Besides, it wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d known that it was a baby goat’s head instead. I just wasn’t into eating kids, period.

No pun (actually) intended.

In fact, I’d lost my appetite entirely. My reluctance to eat seemed to encourage serving plates of this and that (I tried not to think, of exactly what) being fostered on me, with increasing frequency and to cries of, ‘gracias no’ on my part. It was only inevitable that I’d be asked why, I was turning down the best pig and rat’s arse in town.

“Paul,” Quique intervened in the capacity of UNF (United New Family) translator, “is the food, OK?” What could I say? I mean, what could I have said?

“It’s delicious,” I complemented, in my best performance of Englishman stereotype. “I’m just not very hungry, that’s all,” I explained. Poorly as it turned out; the excuse didn’t wash after my lunchtime absentia.

“Why?”

I had dreaded the idea of being asked that.

Fast and furiously, I had to think, which for a 30ish bloke didn’t come so readily.

“I’ve a stomach upset,” I ad-libbed a lie. “My tummy hasn’t been right since the plane.”

Now, they believed me.

I tried telling Loli to carry on gnawing her skull, but to no avail. She and the other women decamped at once from the table, to disappear into another room. A minute later, they were back with a Tupperware chest filled to the brim with lotions and potions and pills. The transparent treasure chest took two of them to fully carry in.

Oh my, my ex pharmacist’s heart.

It was pillpopdom itself, made see-through plasticky real. I had never ever dreamt, to see the holy grail of prescription drugs laid out before me. It was more than an ex-pharmacist’s tickety heart could take.

I was in heaven; had died of a non-stomach ache, and was on a privately chartered cloud. The view of the cotton candy rainbow was particularly fantastic.

Reality always has to creep in to ruin the show. In my case, it doesn’t usually sidle on in, like normally it should, but bludgeons the whole affair.

The door buzzer sounded, and asylum chains and padlocks went clickety-click for half a minute, or so. A latch turned and a bolt was drawn. Even a psycho with a chainsaw would’ve thought twice about breaking in.

“What’s going on,” I asked Quique, bewildered, as my natural state was quickly becoming.

“Can I have one of those?” He was referring to the silver tabs with pink lettering.

“Sure, you got indigestion too?”

“A bit. Must be that rat, ha-ha…”

Ah, funny bunny, went my inner snarl.

“Yeah, it’s the monthly resident’s building committee. You’re a member of it now.”

“So, who’s-”

I didn’t get the chance to finish my sentence; the resident’s committee burst in.

Still clutching an addict’s handful of Omeprazol (treatment for dyspepsia, peptic ulcers, gastroesophageal reflux disease and Zollinger-Ellison syndrome), and reasoning: when with a fictitious tummy upset, take the drug-cabinet version of Shock and Awe, I got introduced for the second time to the Magpie Martian. She’d arrived in a sunny number. Then I got my hand squished by Mr. Papi Chulo, Jota, who going by his Action Hero smile hadn’t seen us sneaking by, nor had he come with his ‘son’. Then Sole, Loli’s friend Soledad, arrived with yet more food, which was all I needed!

It seems that I was expected to stay and participate in the meeting, which meant nodding affirmatively in incomprehension, whilst stuffing my gob to appease the mob. I’ll just get out of it, I decided to myself. That belief though got immediately shaken to its foundations.

The last in the group to enter, was a man built to kick doors down; a hirsute, formidable throwback to the age of barbarians with a name to match: Matamoros, Moor (Arab) Killer, and by the looks him, he was a pro.

Senor Matamoros was the owner of two apartments in the building, one rented out to students (in perpetua), friends of Quique, and the other to the Familia Fu Manchu, as they were known in the building. It was an urban mystery in the community, as to why he rented to Chinos (translation: all Asians irrespective of nation or ethnic background) and not Moors, and secondly, even more so, the means by which he communicated with his yellow peril tenants.

Chino, the word held me spellbound with forbidden lure. It seemed the Spanish hadn’t a politically correct bone in their national body, which went to explain the football supporter’s penchant for chanting: ‘Negro Shit’ at the poor ethnic member of the squad. Calvo de mierda, gordo de mierda, bald shit and fat shit, it was the same insult regardless of racial or sexual prejudice, equality equal.

Chino. You had to hate yourself for liking it.

I loved it.

Excuse the roaring self-amusement, but it was all I could do to keep my wits about me.

Exotic as it was being in a country where I didn’t speak the lingo, and attending some commie meeting in disguise, dubbed and not-fooling-anyone: the Resident’s Committee for Repairs and Maintenance, bureaucracy under Leninism or Capitalism didn’t differ, it was a bore.

In the end, sick non-fictionally to the stomach and, very very tired, it was way past the witching hour when I got home. The all-powerful, committee-in-foreign-language spell of Boredom Orrorendum had done me in.

It was now off to bye-bye land.

I planted my keys in the Made-in-China pot of petunias on the hall table and headed there.

Music was playing.

In mid-step I stopped, and grumpily stomping I followed the beat of techno to the living room. It was the weirdest of things. For the life of me, I didn’t remember turning the radio on, not once. The 60s set was by the courtyard window, blaring out an eerily familiar tune.

♫ No sé que me das, pero me hace volar ♫ Don’t know what you give me, but it makes me fly

I’d heard that one before, some place, somewhere. But way too shattered to give it a second thought, I yanked the plug out of the socket. As I left, I caught a glimpse from the window, of what looked like Quique’s t-shirt dart across the patio below, and dissolve into a pitch black corner. A polyester twilight sunbeam headed in the opposite direction. I could hear hushed voices talking down there.

The radio, spluttered statically alive to a final chorus of: ♫ No sé que me das, pero me hace volar ♫ Then it, the voices and everything fell silent.

And so did I.

- – -

3 DRUG INTERACTIONS

3.1 Potential Affect of Other Drugs Taken

Silence is golden they say. I don’t know if it’s so glitzy, although at times like these, it was certainly priceless to have any kind of peace at all.

I’m referring to Radio Patio, a sitcom gag that everyone here gets, but for me was a WGF, Who Gives a Fuck. Well, I hadn’t, only just the night before.

Seven hours in a strange room in a strange bed and Radio Patio was in my face – metaphorically, because actually it was in my ears. It was nothing less than community rape of my external auditory canal. It was totalitarianism. One single radio station and that had a FM signal that could reach Alpha Centauri. This was unadulterated torture. If you don’t believe me, then listen yourself:

“La la,” from the top floor, “like a virgin tucked fur the ve-ry hearse time,” warbled a girl piano-wire-throttle style, while the floor below mixed in a they’re-at-it-again rhythm of: “Papi chulo – que SI.” Then, from the mysterious vomit-hack bandit floor, throat-rinsing pleasantly cut in. And so, the neighbourly chorus harmoniously built, “Like a v-ir-gin;” crash-bang-a-crockery – there goes another set; “Papi, oh si – QUE SI”. The kitty cat mutilations of the Marquis de Karaoke got layered by a pop beat, ♫ Eres como el interior de una nave espacial abandonada ♫ you’re like the inside of an abandoned spaceship ♫ eres como el interior… brillas pro fuera, por dentro nada ♫ on the outside you shine, on the inside you’re NOTHING; bang-a-plate-a-go-go and there came the crescendo: “Papi, oh PAPI, penetrarme – fuck yeah” to an all-screaming finale of: “PI-KA-CHU!”

(Interior De Una Nave Espacial Abandonada (Arquitectura Efímera 2001 by Fangoria, song by I. Canut, O. Gara, P. Sycet, M. Campoamor))

I’d quite forgotten about the Familia Fu Manchu. They kept to themselves. I wonder why.

Even with the shutters down I could hear the cartoon, Pokemon, from the Chinese family’s flat. I think they had it running all day, that and tongue-whip-lashing ghost films. The noise itself just didn’t stop. At least the Familia Fu Manchu kept the volume to bearable, which was more than Jota and his ‘son’ could manage. I had already tried closing the windows and pulling down the shutters, but at best it only muffled the racket. Besides, with the windows sealed I couldn’t breathe. I don’t know what was more exasperating, the non-stop noise, or, having to hear the most intimate details of other people’s lives, being audio-fed in.

To someone used to semi-detached properties, it was most disconcerting if not outright upsetting. I didn’t know whether I could put up with Radio Patio. Seriously, I was thinking that taking on Adrian’s old place might have been a bad idea in the end. Perhaps I should have put it up for sale, like Mum and Dad had advised. ‘Why do you want to go and live there? What are you going to do in Madrid?’

It just hadn’t seemed right at the time.

It’s Adrian’s home, I’d just been thinking, when I suddenly realised that the abandoned spaceship tune from a moment ago, hadn’t been coming from outside the flat. I was sure last night that I’d pulled the plug. Still, that didn’t distract the radio from its techno-creepy self-playing. Of all my luck, I had the FM wireless of Rosemary’s Baby.

Thinking that the song was some cryptic message from the devil, or something in that vein, I got my dictionary to flick through the words I didn’t know. There was something about ‘you shining on the outside and being empty on the inside’. What could it mean? I just hoped it wasn’t directed at me, as in, personal criticism set to music. If so, then sod the devil, I’d take up Christ instead.

I’m kidding. I didn’t really think there was anything to it. I mean, demon radios, honestly – talk about bullshitting myself! In fact, put the mad ravings down to the drudgery of not having to go to work, and the torturous hell of not having any daily routine as yet. I’d already given it a look for batteries, and concluded that it was one of those imitation antique ones, which required unscrewing. I didn’t have the tool for the job, so the OFF button sufficed.

A good ten minutes later while slaving over the hot stove of my ceramic hob and managing to bury it in Colombian lava, of ground beans-cum-mud from a percolator gone boiling mad, the radio in the living room came back on. It was at the same moment I’d made the voyeuristic discovery, that you could see into Quique’s apartment, with neck-gymnastics from my kitchen window. Boniato, his father, was sat there in his room doing sod all. A USS Enterprise dangled over his head precariously. To one side was a case of figurines from various Sci-Fi films and shows, past, present and obscure.

Coincidence? I couldn’t help wondering.

So, pulling on the cord of the blinds, I let them crash-a-clatter (on purpose, really!). Taking an expectant breathe, I was anxious to the result.

The music stopped.

Now, even at the extreme of impossibilities that the OFF switch to the radio had a timer, there was a way of knowing. I could test my hypothesis.

When uncertain of the results, repeat the experiment.

Boredom makes silly buggers out of people. I’m speaking from first-hand knowledge.

Pulling the blinds back up, the music at once resumed all by itself, freakishly playing. Still, I couldn’t believe what my ears were telling me, and had to repeat the experiment umpteen times until satisfied that it’d met rigorous scientific verifiability. So borderline OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) had I been, that the blind had got snared. At least I proved one thing to myself, apart from the reality of phantom radio sets, that the song, hadn’t been a commentary directed at me, as I’d feared, but, at Boniato.

At every pull up of the blind he’d been there, under an abandoned spaceship: the model of the USS Enterprise. It was difficult to see his face, but I could sense an unease in him, like Ahab with his whale.

I would be needing a new cord for the blind, I think.

Why?

Not that.

That was the next conundrum. I chewed on that one, while the percolator gave birth to a miniature Yellowstone Park of 100% Arabica mud volcanoes.

In its place I opted for a glass of milk. Besides, who’d come up with the daft idea of a hexagonal metal jug filled with water and beans, that alchemically transmutes into liquid coffee. An easier bet was Starbucks.

It didn’t help to come down to earth with a bump. I still had a hundred unanswered questions. Though, I could’ve killed for a large mug of Starbucks.

What’s it trying to tell me? What does the song mean?

No, no, no, it just couldn’t be. Ridiculous.

Let’s be honest here, there was no way the radio could be trying to tell me anything. My mind was just playing tricks on itself. That’s it. I was jet-lagged. An hour time difference in GMT was enough to do it.

Surely?

For sure (repetition for repetition’s sake).

Putting the hocus pocus out of my mind, I concentrated on my stomach. I’d get that coffee and then explore the city. There were untold secrets and treasures to be found and I wanted them, starting with a mug of gold.

Besides, what was the point of hanging around the kitchen all day playing with the blinds? Despite hearing demonic FM stations I wasn’t that raving bonkers.

Comments kept best close to the chest.

Easier than I’d anticipated, I found my way to the nearby Plaza, Chueca, which at this hour was near empty. Seeing the vacant opportunity before me, I was half-tempted to run back and get a beach towel to lay claim to a chair, and the spend the day there basking and a-sipping, and a-watching the foreign folk (and that’s not me, OK).

After two coffees, I got a wondrous caffeinated, brain-burn from the non-supermarket blend. What a discovery! My cup had real, actual coffee in it. I was ready to brave the urban elements and begin my adventures. The natives certainly hadn’t proved hostile. The only thing was, that I’d forgotten my guide book and, was lost without it.

Paying, I headed back. Meandering through the thongs of shoe-worshippers like a Bulldozer down a supermarket aisle, I reached the corner of my street, just as Boniato himself was taking a left turn ahead of me. I don’t know what dark force took hold of me, but I followed him, keeping a good sleuth’s distance (or so I convinced myself). The rainbows should have flagged a warning, but in my empty headedness, they didn’t. I carried on in hot, sweaty pursuit. It was only when I surreptitiously surveyed the building he had gone into, that a chill of 95 degrees Fahrenheit went down my spinal cord.

What dark force had taken over me? Why hadn’t I just gone home for my guidebook?

I’ll never know.

The place was the same one that had been advertised on the metro billboard of the male-only, towel-hipsters: Sauna Hombres, SA (Sociedad Anónima, Ltd.).

To fully stress the type of local, perhaps I should have underlined the name. None of the above. This bold, literary heart says bollocks to that!

For nothing needed to be added. It stood as it stood.

So Boni liked blokes, either that or he preferred steam rooms to the dry heat bath of Madrid. It didn’t look likely that he’d gone in there to lose weight.

I didn’t mind much. It just wasn’t my thing, the fancying blokes bit. What had left me more than a little sun-stroked, was the fact that Boni was married, and not only that, but, to my brother’s partner’s Mum.

Shit.

And shit again.

Well, at the bottom of the positivity barrel at least, I had proof now that the radio from hell had been trying to tell me something, and it was diabolically twisted as fuck. It seems that the Devil digs techno.

Sod this, I mean, why did this have to happen to me. It’s only my second day here. Either it’s that stupid radio or me, who is possessed, or wot?

The varnish of a good education had come clean off.

Wot, gotta problem with that?

This was bad, very bad.

I rang Quique. I texted Quique. I called him again, left a message (if after-the-beep is universal mobile speak for speak), and sent a did-u-get-m-msg text. Quique didn’t pick up, answer, reply, text me back or confirm that I’d indeed mastered Telefonica message etiquette.

Fuck him. No, I didn’t mean Quique, I meant: everything. Why won’t he bloody pick up?

I paced the joint like a timid punter of Sauna Hombres, not fooling anyone with my phone tapping, I’m-cool-’cause-I’ve-a-contact-list as to my real, dirty little intent. That man wants cock, everyone knew it.

Well, I didn’t. Although, stepping out of myself for a sec, I realised how I could’ve given off that impression. In a stroke-twitch of my body, I left in a sprint suppressed to an innocent stroll, or so I thought.

“Maricón!” someone shouted behind me as I sped away.

Ignorance is bliss, well, at times like these. I didn’t want to know what that meant.

In my tourist stroll-cum-legging-it-down-the-street, I headed back to the flat. For me, it still hadn’t earned that ‘home’ title yet. That would come later, I guessed. Making my way up to Quique’s place, or rather his parent’s, as seemed to be the case for most blokes his age here, the ghost of Jacob Marley had his mental-rattling-a-way with the door before it opened to Loli, in a face-mask of mayonnaise.

Mayo is reputedly good for the skin. The low fat ones though, are a waste of money.

“Como estás?” she asked me.

“Si,” I said, yes, “me bien.”

I tried to repress the having-seen-a-ghost look.

“Algún problema?”

Which, I understood word for word. I lie.

To cut to the chase, I’ve translated the conversation to give a gist of what ensued:

Loli: “Is there a problem?”

I might as well then have given up with repressing the having-seen-a-ghost look.

Me: “Yes.”

Loli: “What’s going on? You look terrible.”

Me: “Yes.”

Loli: “Are you alright?”

Me: ditto.

Loli: “Really?”

Me: “Yes.”

Loli: “Paul. Er, do you understand anything I’m saying?”

Me: “Yes, yes.”

Loli: “Then what did I just say?”

Me: “Yes.”

You see, yes is ‘si’ and si is ‘I understand’, the only problem being, I didn’t.

I tried again to communicate out of necessity. This is how I asked where her son was:

“Quique, here… No, what’s the word? Aquí. That’s it! Quique, aquí? Aquí?”

Did that make any sense?

Loli shook her head, and said something incomprehensible to the effect that he wasn’t.

I was both surprised and elated that she hadn’t taken offence, at my spitting at her like she was a bad doggy. Thank Jesus! I said to myself, and added for theological neutrality’s sake: Mohammed, Buddha, Moses and the thetan of a dead space alien. Praise be to them all, that I’d remembered ‘aquí’, or poor Loli could’ve wound up thinking that her son had been in an accident, or something. ‘Quique, here?’ didn’t say a lot. That he wasn’t, was actually worrying when it came from a ghost-faced yes-yessing foreigner.

Again I attempted to ask Loli where her son was, in my own haphazardly hopeless way (though with a positive result this time), and inferred that he was probably with friends. Now Adrian had mentioned spending a lot of ‘out’ time, as he’d put it, with Quique’s mates from college. They had a flat in the building, somewhere. ‘Where’ as it turned out was another of those words I knew. Loli’s babbling arm-flung answer though, was something else entirely.

Understanding her was never on the cards and that, luckily, didn’t prove at all necessary. It didn’t take much to find the the student digs after a few missed tries, that is. First I went up to the top of the building, to discover locked doors and dust-covered discarded furniture, but then, right there, my nostrils got stung by an acrid sweetness. Following my hunch and the scent back down to Loli’s floor, I continued on down two more. There, on the second floor, I found three doors, one of which was left wide open for larceny. The smell wafting out from inside was unmistakeable.

I peeped inside, my hunch meter going off the scale.

“Cómo lo has hecho?” the tone was of incredulity.

“Pardon,” I said.

“Hey, you walked through the door,” declared the same man. He was crawling on the floor, a designer label bandanna holding his dreadlocks in place.

“No, I didn’t,” I refuted, matter-of-factly.

“Then how did you get in?”

“The door was open. Shall I close it for you?”

“Wow, you are… right. I saw you walk through it. That was amazing man, am-a-z-ing.”

“Glad about it, so shall I?-”

What was the point? I shut the door behind me and took in the room I found myself in. The walls were bubbled in a nicotine shade of white Artex, the furniture, banged and dented belonged to a different era, while the walls displayed crinkled, dog-eared posters below a ceiling drapery of vibrant, Alhambra-esque patterns. The place practically shouted ‘student digs’ and stank just as loudly of it too.

“What are you doing?” I asked the designer hippie.

“Looking for Manolito. We can’t find him anywhere.”

“And this Manolito, would be?”

My attention was directed to an empty, lifeless cage.

“He got out. One moment he was on his wheel going round and round madly, you know, like he was craze, and the next moment we look, he was nowhere.”

“The – um- door,” I hinted at the blatantly obvious.

“It was closed. He must be in here.”

Well, you’re clearly not! I concluded, picturing the crazed gerbil bursting into a fit of marijuana-fuelled rage and gnawing its way out of the cage, to scarper down the stairs in search of liberty and some fresh air. The stench-aroma of burnt plant must have nearly choked the poor thing, either that, or freaked it out by the suggestion of an indoors forest fire. I myself was about to go for a look before little Manolito got squished underfoot. But, I saw that I didn’t have to. I called out to the hippie fashionista (or vice-a-versa), who had vanished under a table, and pointed out the trail of miniature paw prints and a freshly dug heap of soil, around a large plant pot on the floor. The brand new tunnel entrance indicated the whereabouts of the tripped out pet gerbil.

With its little whereabouts ascertained, it was great news. I doubted though, if Loli would be so lucky in tracking down the paws of her husband.

“Come everyone. Paul’s found Manolito.”

That got rephrased in Spanish, and a scraggly scrawny all-bones-and-no-meat of a man, emerged shirtless from the kitchen, when he’d been immersed in baking with silver foil and a ceramic hob for a Bunsen burner.

That just left the last of the three musketeers.

“Quique!” shouted the fashionista, who turned out to be Juan with Jose as his sidekick.

No response.

So, irrespectively, I enthused: He is here. I was right!

And I was.

Something from the Black Lagoon of the sofa righted itself an elbowed inch, and looked at us hazily, souring at once and grumbling foully to itself.

“Manolito’s made himself a little home, Quique,” said Juan. “Come and have a look.”

Quique’s expression scolded more than pissing acid.

Me being me, chose not to notice the fact, and went right over to him, my mind like a cauldron of old witch’s gossip brimming over with my news.

I should have thought twice about it; my news wasn’t so much as hot, as gravely scolding.

Gravity dictates what goes up must come down, and Quique was on a hell of a downer.

“What do you want?” Quique asked sullenly, as if he regressed to his teenage years.

“There’s something you should know,” I said, straight out.

“What?”

“I can’t go into it,” I tried to tell him, “not here.”

Probably this was not the time or the place.

“Why?”

“’Cause I can’t – that’s why.”

Enough of the why-explanations. My hope of him listening was both audacious and unhinged.

“Quique,” I cried, irate with him, and the condition he’d got himself into. “This is important. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have come barging in like this.”

No answer. Not a peep out of him. That was to be expected however, he’d nodded off.

“Hey,” I said, by way of a verbal nudge, and backed that up with a physical prod.

“¡Joder, dame en paz!”

“Quique, please. I can see you’re not up to it now, but, you’ve got to come over. There’s something you ought to know and something, you need to see.”

Whether he’d heard me or not wasn’t clear, unless the nasal grunting was Morse for ‘OK sure, I’ll come over and take a look at your demon radio’. FM possession compared to the thing about his father, sounded plain daft. I don’t know why I had put the two together like that.

With a jerk of his body Quique appeared to wake. An arm thrust out and laid across my shoulder. I could feel the weight of it pulling me in closer.

“Guapo,” a soft bass serenaded my ear, “ven aquí. Come. Where were you, cariño mio?”

I backed off in alarm. He could feel me withdraw and began to open his gluey eyes.

What’s he thinking!?

“It’s Paul, not Adrian,” I told him, wrenching those eyes wide and acutely aware.

“What!?” he squealed, gerbil soprano.

I think I glimpsed a head pop out from a hole.

“Adrian’s not here,” I told him firmly, in a soft hush. “Look, let’s talk later.”

He didn’t answer. I hadn’t expected him to. That last non-reply from Quique’s was the most understandable of them all. I don’t know how I’d be in his shoes. Fuck it! I still didn’t know how I was, in my own. Life, after the mega wave, went on. I coped, if you could call it that, and carried on. That’s what everyone tells you to do, but I knew, Quique deserved more than the same cheapskate advice.

So I left. I gave him his space. He looked like he was in dire need of the privacy.

On my chops a glum smile, the Dr. Jekyll take on irrational exuberance, gave my farewell to the bandanna man and to his even more stupendously stoned flat mate, and to little Manolito, safe now in his hole.

3.2 Drugs Having No Clinically Important Interactions

I don’t remember doing much more that day. I suppose I must’ve spent the evening unpacking and arranging things in the flat. I recall my frustrations with the kitchen, that took ‘cosy’ to its ultimate expression. It was modern with stainless steel fittings, a glass-ceramic hob, marble countertops and featured a unique, swivel-style of food preparation, that consisted of spinning on your heels as you went from counter top to sink and back again.

After making myself a sandwich, I had to take a paracetamol to quell the dizziness. If my balcony was fit for kitten swinging, this kitchenette wasn’t big enough for gerbil tossing, and that, at a stretch.

I’ll eat out tomorrow and the rest of the week, instead I decided on a backup plan.

It was with that happy (ish) thought in mind that I heard the squeak of sneakers outside, and went to have a look through the peephole at who it could be. Nobody was there. There was however a note under the door.

It read:

SORRY ABOUT EARLIER. I WAS HIGH. IF YOU STILL WANT TALKING

LET’S ENCOUNTER TOMORROW IN THE PLAZA. I’LL BE FREE AROUND

2 O’CLOCK. HOPE THAT SEE YOU.

QUIQUE

Author’s note:

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