Fabric

Lady Ardour attempts Travel Writing ...
            
             
             “One o’ the girls goes to mai, Julie you look too prettai to be going to Fabric,” she said in her Welsh accent as we met by the Pret, close to Leicester Square Tube Station.

I giggled, she had a skater skirt and crop top on, I similar.

 As we made our way down the steps of Leicester Square Tube Station we converged with drunken men in suits, who had spent the last few hours boozing with their mates.  It was ten thirty on a Friday night and I’d finished my shift in the Mexican, smelling of pork cornitas and churros.

               Our stop was Farringdon and there we met Victoria. Walking out onto the street we were greeted by a guy who called over to us, “tickets for Fabric, MDMA, E. You want it I’m selling?” Flashbacks to Felicia, my co-worker telling me “don’t take any shit someone tries to sell you. It will be spiked.”

 As we neared I could almost feel the vibrations through the tarmac, as this world unfamiliar to me uncoiled underneath my feet. Joining the queue we waited forty minutes; those around us surprisingly sober. A limo pulled to the door and out stepped a black man in a leopard print suit, top hat, sunglasses and cane. All eyes were on him as he entered the club before us.

               “He’s well dodge lookin’,” Victoria said.

Thirty pounds for a ticket into “London’s Best Nightclub” and we were shoved down into a concrete chamber that at best resembled a prison. Later I would learn it was once a meat factory. Inside, we roamed from room to room, dj after dj playing repetitive dance tunes. A largely male population inhabited the club and each time a song changed in the slightest the crowd cheered.

               “I fuckin’ love this song, mate,” the ones who could talk managed to say.

In pools of sweat and saliva they jerked and convulsed on the dance floor at speeds unknown to Usain Bolt.

               To the bathrooms we went to join queues of people. A fountain of water lay in the middle. At least thirty or forty jets of water spouted and people stumbled over each other trying to reach this beautiful resource. Pouring it over their face and into their mouths – the experienced had brought bottles.

On our way into the next room we met security guards; they carried a girl who looked younger than us, purple t-shirt and jeans with hole at the knees, her head lolled back. She looked cold. A creeping in my gut and we were now walking into seating area; it had a lowered ceiling and barely any light. People passed out on couches, groups of friends chatting and laughing, others staring into space. We found a seat in the corner and watched as security shined lights along the floor and up to the pockets of people in an attempt to find narcotics.

               “Is this the best they can do?” I asked.

               One hour later, through the staircase we had earlier descended, we left. Again we were checked by bouncers who shoved us out onto the street.

               The sharp London night met us. With a shock to my chest I gulped the air. A Big Mac Meal and the N65 Bus, ninety minutes later we lay safe in our beds.

Another morning rush into the city, stopping at Sainsbury’s for a bottle of water and pre-packed tuna sandwich; from the The Guardian on the newsstand I read the headline: “Girl Dies in Fabric Nightclub London After Bad Batch of MDMA.”