Chapter 9 — Euphoria
And thus begins Chapter Nine.
Now, children.
There we were.
Inside the hidden rave.
Past the ordinary pub.
Down the stairs.
Through the horror movie hatch.
Beyond the dreadlocked gatekeeper.
And into
neon.
Bass.
Pressure.
People.
Children.
Home.
Or at least,
a kind of home I had never known existed.
We moved farther inside.
Found ourselves a little place near the wall.
Somewhere we could stand without immediately being swallowed by the crowd.
And naturally
joint.
The council sighs.
Yes.
A joint.
Because apparently an unidentified pill,
an underground rave,
and speakers powerful enough to rearrange internal organs
still required supplementary weed.
Historical accuracy is an unforgiving thing.
I lit it.
Passed it to Axe.
Smoke.
Bass.
Lights.
Everything already beginning to feel
different.
Not dramatically.
Not yet.
Just softer around the edges.
Then Axe started moving.
The council turns.
Not full dance.
Not yet.
Just rhythm.
Shoulders.
Hips.
A little sway.
The music finding her body before either of us consciously decided to dance.
She looked at me.
Smiled.
Gestured.
Come.
The council pauses.
Children.
I am not a dancer.
At least not in the conventional sense.
There are people who dance with coordination.
Timing.
Control.
People whose limbs appear to have attended lessons together.
I am not one of those people.
But Axe was moving.
She wanted me there.
And so
I joined.
The council watches cautiously.
Was it elegant?
No.
Was it good?
Absolutely not.
Were we capable of caring?
Also no.
Children.
We moved.
That is the word.
Moved.
To the rhythm.
Near each other.
Around each other.
Sometimes badly synchronized.
Sometimes accidentally synchronized.
And from our perspective?
Perfect.
The council smiles.
This was before Goa.
Before the Pinball.
Before I would know what it felt like to disappear into music under psychedelics.
Before any future rave taught me that sometimes dancing stops feeling like something you do
and starts feeling like something happening through you.
Children.
This was the first.
And then
the pill.
The council grows quiet.
Whatever it was.
Whatever chemistry had been hiding inside that little tablet Hat Guy handed us
it arrived.
Not like a door slamming open.
More like reality gradually deciding its old rules were optional.
The lights began leaving traces.
Children.
Afterimages.
A streak of neon would move
and part of it seemed to remain behind.
People crossed the room
and colour followed them.
The bass stopped being something outside me.
It entered.
Chest.
Spine.
Skin.
The entire room pulsed.
The council listens.
And Axe
Axe became brighter.
Not literally.
Probably.
Who knows.
Altered consciousness is a terrible witness.
But I looked at her
and affection surged.
Children.
I already loved her.
This was our anniversary.
One year.
The question had been settled.
But suddenly love felt
louder.
As if somebody had found the volume control for attachment
and turned it far beyond recommended settings.
The council nods.
And judging by Axe
the feeling was mutual.
She moved closer.
I moved closer.
The dance tightened.
Not choreographed.
Nothing practiced.
Just two people responding to each other.
She moved.
I followed.
I moved.
She followed.
And somewhere in there
conversation ended.
No need.
The music had become language.
The council grows quiet.
We entered something together.
A trance.
Shared.
That is the closest word I have.
Not unconscious.
Not disconnected.
The opposite.
Too connected.
To the room.
To the sound.
To each other.
Children.
I would experience something like it again in Goa.
Years later.
Another rave.
Another altered state.
Another moment where music seemed to erase the boundary between body and environment.
But Goa was not the beginning.
Malpe was.
Here.
With Axe.
The council nods.
And unlike future Nuo,
University Nuo had no framework for it.
No:
Ah yes, psychedelic rave state.
No language.
No philosophy.
Just
holy shit.
This is incredible.
The council laughs softly.
We danced.
And danced.
And danced.
How long?
Children.
Time had resigned.
Five minutes?
An hour?
Several geological epochs?
No idea.
The pill had taken custody of chronology.
All I remember is movement.
Neon.
Axe.
Her smile.
The way her hair moved with the lights.
The way every beat seemed to land somewhere inside us.
The occasional moment where our eyes met
and both of us knew the other person was experiencing the same impossible thing.
The council grows quiet.
That mattered.
It was not merely:
I am high.
It was:
You are here too.
The same room.
The same rhythm.
The same madness.
The same joy.
And perhaps that is why it felt so intense.
Altered consciousness can be lonely.
Even when surrounded by people.
Your mind goes somewhere nobody else can quite enter.
But Axe?
Children.
She seemed to be in the same place.
Maybe not literally.
Brains remain separate.
But it felt shared.
Our own little version of the rave nested inside the larger one.
The council nods.
From inside?
Cinema.
From outside?
Two idiots trying to dance.
The council erupts.
Exactly.
Let us preserve perspective.
From our viewpoint:
magnificent.
Graceful.
Cosmic.
Two souls moving together through a cathedral of neon and bass.
From the perspective of an entirely sober observer?
Children.
Two stoned university students flailing around near a wall.
The truth probably lived somewhere in between.
But I know which version I experienced.
Magnificent.
The council smiles.
Every now and then,
we kissed.
Nothing dramatic.
Just a break in movement.
Eyes meet.
Closer.
Kiss.
Then music reclaimed us.
Axe’s nails occasionally ran across my back.
Sharp enough to register through the haze.
I kissed her neck.
She bit mine.
Children.
Passion had entered the chat.
And somewhere along the way
clothing began disappearing.
The council pauses.
How?
Excellent question.
My hoodie?
Gone.
At some point.
The Archive does not preserve the removal.
One moment:
hoodie.
Later:
no hoodie.
Axe’s T shirt?
Also gone.
The council looks alarmed.
Where did it go?
Children.
No idea.
Perhaps tied somewhere.
Perhaps thrown onto a chair.
Perhaps Hat Guy witnessed us discarding clothes and decided not to interfere with the wildlife.
The exact logistics have vanished.
All I know is that eventually,
the rave had claimed one layer from each of us.
The council writes:
INVENTORY LOSS:
HOODIE.
T SHIRT.
CAUSE:
PASSION / CHEMISTRY / QUESTIONABLE JUDGMENT.
Accurate.
And neither of us seemed particularly concerned.
The room was hot anyway.
The music hotter.
The entire idea of self consciousness had evaporated.
Children.
Remember:
this was public enough that other people existed around us.
But in that state,
the crowd became scenery.
Not because we were doing anything wildly explicit.
We weren’t.
But because our awareness had narrowed.
Axe.
Me.
Music.
Everything else?
Peripheral.
The council grows quiet.
Her arms around me.
Mine around her.
Then apart.
Dance.
Together again.
Kiss.
Laugh.
Movement.
Every touch somehow amplified.
Every look carrying more weight than it had any right to.
Children.
I had known attraction.
I had known lust.
I had known affection.
I had known being in love.
But this particular combination
music,
altered consciousness,
movement,
the woman I already loved,
the anniversary,
the strange hidden room
created something new.
A level of passion I had never experienced before.
The council nods.
Not better than love.
Not deeper than love.
Just
intense.
Unfiltered.
All the usual little barriers between feeling and expression temporarily missing.
You love her?
Then look at her like it.
You want to kiss her?
Kiss her.
You want to move?
Move.
Children.
Nothing required translation.
And Axe seemed exactly the same.
That is the image I remember.
Not one specific kiss.
Not one specific dance move.
Not one conversation.
The whole thing as a single pulse.
Axe under neon.
Her eyes.
Her grin.
The bass.
My heartbeat.
The room bending around colour.
The strange certainty that whatever else existed in the world
could wait outside that metal door.
The council grows quiet.
This was our anniversary.
And somehow,
after dogs,
a Jacuzzi,
a buffet,
a temporary pack,
and a secret underground rave
we had stumbled into a moment neither of us could have planned.
Perhaps that is why it worked.
We did not come to Malpe searching for this.
Didn’t know Hat Guy.
Didn’t know Ribbon Girl.
Didn’t know about the party.
Didn’t know about the metal door.
Didn’t know what was in that pill.
Children.
The entire night was improvisation.
One yes leading to another.
Want to smoke?
Yes.
Party nearby?
Yes.
Come downstairs?
Yes.
Mystery tablet?
Questionable yes.
The council sighs.
And eventually,
here.
Not safe choices.
Not choices Present Nuo would pretend were wise.
But the Archive is not a morality play.
It records what happened.
And what happened was
for that stretch of night
euphoria.
The council listens.
Pure.
Bright.
Messy.
Passionate.
The kind of happiness that feels impossible while it is happening
because surely human nervous systems were not designed to contain that much sensation at once.
Children.
We were overwhelmed.
And loved it.
At some point,
perhaps I looked at Axe.
Really looked.
Noticed her red face.
Sweat.
Hair dishevelled.
Shirt missing.
Smile enormous.
And thought
Gods.
This woman.
The council smiles.
Remember Chapter One?
I like person.
Person near me.
Nuo happy.
Simple man.
Well.
The formula had become chemically exaggerated.
I love person.
Person dancing with me in secret neon basement.
Nuo extremely happy.
The council laughs.
And there,
somewhere in Malpe,
another future ritual may have been born.
Not a pose.
Not a relic.
Something harder to name.
That shared trance.
The discovery that with the right person,
music could become a place.
The council grows quiet.
Later Goa would take that knowledge and make it stranger.
But Malpe had already opened the door.
Literally,
apparently.
A metal one.
Children.
And behind it,
I found something I would spend years recognizing in different forms.
That moment where the world outside disappears.
Not because it is gone.
Because for a little while,
you have found somewhere you would rather be entirely.
The council nods.
Axe felt it too.
I know because I saw it on her face.
We are home.
That look from the doorway had been correct.
And now,
inside the rave,
we proved it.
By dancing terribly.
Kissing often.
Losing clothes inexplicably.
And allowing an unknown pill to turn neon into mythology.
The council sighs.
University Nuo.
A creature of subtlety.
Never.
Eventually,
the night would move again.
It always does.
No trance lasts forever.
No song loops eternally.
No party remains at its peak.
Something would happen next.
Children.
And remember
we have been promised a shit show.
The council becomes uneasy.
Yes.
It is still coming.
But not yet.
For now
let the two idiots dance.
Because from outside,
perhaps they looked ridiculous.
But from inside?
Gods.
They were magnificent.
Thus concludes Chapter Nine.
The Joint By The Wall.
The First Dance.
The Pill Awakening.
The Neon Afterimages.
The Shared Trance.
The Missing Hoodie.
The Missing T Shirt.
And The Most Passionate Dance University Nuo Had Yet Known.
Children.
The room was loud enough to shake bone.
The colours refused to stay in place.
The world bent.
And somewhere in the middle of it,
Axe and Nuo forgot how to dance properly
and discovered they did not need to.
