Chris From Dubai

Read more! I went to London, England with my brother for a week in August. One night we went to the infamous nightclub known as Fabric.

August 15, 2008
To Chris from Dubai,

Tonight I went to my first rave. I didn't realize I was @ a rave until after I left the club. I was @ Fabric, one of the most notorious night clubs in London. Weekends are different in London. Everyone works their asses off during the week so no one goes out during the week nights, but come Friday, everyone goes out late and stays out even later. Fabric didn’t even open it’s doors until 10pm and people didn’t start to show up until closer to midnight. All through the night though, dozens upon dozens of ravers entered the club, there was a constant influx of people.

The club is like a maze. Multiple levels and bars with a constant drone of thump, thump, thump, pause, thump, thump, thump. It’s impossible to escape the noise, not that you would ever want to. To give you an idea of how the club is layed out-you enter from the upper level. It feels almost like the club is tucked into some sort of cave. The stairwell that leads to the main dancefloor, called room 1 I believe, wraps around the wall as you enter into this dimly lit knook of a bar. Machines fill the enter club with synthetic smoke adding to the haze of the establishment. You can look over the main dance floor from the main bar, like god watching over his people, you feel the energy of the life underneath you.

Morals and emotion are nonexistent @ a rave. The theory behind the noise is that you’re having a good time, he's having a good time, were all having a good time. @ a rave, people don't communicate with words, they communicate with their bodies. There's no asking a girl if she wants to dance or offering to buy someone a drink @ the bar. Bodies gravitate towards one another. Body language, that's the official language of raves. I was in the middle of the dance floor, my domain for the night when a gorgeous young Italian girl went from boy to boy begging for a cigarette. You weren’t suppose to smoke on the dance floor, but after I gave this chick a cigarette, she proceeded to light up right on the dance floor, she couldn’t give two shits about what security had to say or who she was bothering with the fumes from her Winston light. I was mesmerized by the way she danced, held her cigarette in her mouth and managed to flirt with any guy that had the courage to do the same.

All morals are left @ the door when @ a rave. Beer bottles are left on the floor, body odor almost smells pleasant, men brush up against men in the most heterosexual way, all genders share the same bathrooms, condoms are on sale for 2 pounds, patrons go from person to person asking if they have pills and everyone smokes cigarettes. Atleast five people asked me for Ecstasy pills. I came to the conclusion that all the black residents of the club probably sold Ecstasy. A rave is the only kind of party of club where you’ll see people drinking bottles of water. After dancing, drinking and doing drugs for a few hours, your body naturally deserves some H2O.

I found it impossible to communicate verbally with anyone. Words just sounded like gibberish to me. The only words I could really pick up on were slang; a zoo is a joint, beanies are ecstasy pills, etc.

I met an interesting person outside on the smokers patio. His name was Chris and he moved from Dubai about 9 months ago. He had a real thick English accent and talked rhythmically. He was throwing all sorts of slang at me, somehow we got on the topic of drugs. Whenever I hear of Dubai, I automatically think about some of the horror stories I’ve heard about people getting busted for drugs or having sex on the beach, Dubai seems like a wonderful country, but they’re completely backwards when it comes to sex and drugs…do your research before you book the flight.

At around 4am my brother and I got tired and decided to head back to our rooms. It took us like an hour to get home though because the transportation system in London is fucked up. The “tube” (train) stops running after 12am, just about the time when some people are going out, and doesn’t start running until 5am. Being that cabs in London are so damn expensive, the only other ways to get home is to walk or take the night bus. Night buses are a pain in the ass. There’s some convoluted system involved with getting the right bus to take you home, a system that I didn’t even bother to learn. My brother, the navigator handled all transportation duties for the trip, thank god, because if it wasn’t for him I would have just stayed out all night.

I think people say that NYC is the city that never sleeps? From my experience, I’d say London is the city that never sleeps. The nightclub we were @ didn't close until 6am. Even on our way back home, the kabob eatery was filled with English lads still drinking beer and munching on these platters of food that looked disgusting but ironically tasty @ the same time. I wondered when the guys that worked at the Kabob places slept, they worked all day and on weekends, all night. When the hell did they socialize? Did they fucking socialize? I thought back to America, where everyone seems to complain about work, regardless of how much or how little they actually DO work.

As I walked back to my dorm room, an intoxicated figure offered to pay me for a cigarette. Pay me for a cigarette? Who was I to be compensated for a cigarette? I happily dug into my pockets and presented the man with a Marlboro light and lit his cigarette for him, “thanks mate”, people are so nice in London, as I walked to my room I saw him disappear behind a deserted pub, quite suspiciously.

So as I sit in my 10x10 dorm room @ Westminster college and the sun rises, the night clubs officially close, the shop openers prepare for another days work and 1000s of scenesters emerge from the depths of the nightclubs only to see daylight. In one big mass of adrenalin, they migrate to eateries, tube stops, bus stations and taxi cabs. Its Saturday morning, no one has a corporate office to go to, just another night in this cold city that never sleeps, a great night in this cold city that never sleeps.

To be continued hopefully.

Cheers mate,

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

My Friend From Afghanistan

Read more! Metra Night Club in London, England. I went outside for a smoke…

August 13, 2008
Unknown Friend from Afghanistan,

“Where are you from mate?” he said in slurred speech as he swayed from side to side, taking drags from his cigarette. “New York City” I replied proudly. I’m not actually from NYC, I’m from Connecticut, but considering people from The States don’t know shit about CT, I wouldn’t expect a foreigner from London to know shit about CT either.

“No…where are you from?” He kept repeating; I couldn’t answer the question. Where the hell was I from? I insisted that I was American, born and raised, same with my parents and grandparents and so on and so. Where did the lineage end? Well, my Mothers parent’s are actually from Haiti but I don’t identify myself as Haitian American or anything like that. I’ve never been to Haiti, don’t know shit about the country other than what I learned in French class. So what am I?

“Where are you from?” I asked to turn the question on him. “Afghanistan” he replied proudly. What? Now didn’t I just open up a can of worms. I remember reading somewhere that it was impolite to ask someone where they were from and I think it was for this specific reason. I can honestly say, I didn’t judge the man because he said he was from Afghanistan, not initially, I just felt bad for asking. Obviously if you tell someone you’re from Afghanistan, you’re welcoming an endless list of stereotypes and prejudice and if you ask someone that’s from Afghanistan where they’re from, you’re just an asshole.

This kid didn’t stop there. He went onto list all the people in his family that he lost, presumably from acts of violence. This many brothers, that many sister, uncles, aunts, grandparents, close to a dozen relatives he named.

I thought about my own life. The only person I’d lost was my grandfather, essentially from old age. I cried at my grandfathers funeral, we all did, but suddenly my grandfather being dead seemed insignificant. Atleast he lived a long life, I couldn’t even begin to imagine burying my brothers or sisters. It was hard to react to what he was saying, normally when someone says they lost a member of their family you reply by saying, “I’m sorry to hear that”. That cliché bullshit of a response didn’t seem appropriate in this situation, nothing did. I imagine I probably said something like, “wow”, or maybe nothing at all, but the guy wasn’t looking for anything from me, he was just fucked up.

“And I still love my country”

What!?!? I was mesmerized. His country had taken so much away from him, and yet, he had the balls to tell me he still loved his country.

That’s more than I could say about my country.

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