how getting to london was like a rave*
I showered before I left, got all ready too. Dark-thirty in the morning, I was throwing my whole internal clock off for this. I stayed up a late as I could, then got up all super early–just so I could sleep on the plane–I stared at my messy apartment and decided one long, last, hot, home shower sounded better than trying to clean this tornado-struck place. I had a handful of hours since I didn’t fly out until noon. Plus, I didn’t know what kind of plumbing to expect. The major lack of sleep left me with an unusual and familiar feeling; that certain spaced out, mildly removed perspective I get when I’m seriously sleep deprived.
After spending 11 or so hours flying and nodding off, I landed at Gatwick at 9am London time. Then, over-payed to get to London and around town. After that, made it to the hotel where I got to wait for about an hour for the room to be ready. But I finally did make it to the hotel bed. And when I did, I slept hard. Just for a few hours, then I got up to let H in when he got there, then fell back asleep. We woke up in time to run out for a bit and see some of the city, but it was Sunday and already getting late. Everything was closing. My sense of time was long gone at this point.
When we got back to the hotel, we chilled in the bar for a bit with gin & tonics and talked for a while. H started to tell me about Amsterdam–which of course led off into a million other tangents, just like most of our conversations. The mix of excitement and energy of my extended day and listening to his stories just added to how out of it I felt; all topped off with a dollop of some insane giddy happiness. It was total sensory overload. At least the alcohol was starting to make me think about sleep.
I turned on some crazy TV and struggled for a bit to sleep. It finally hit me hard and I passed out. When I woke up, I stumbled to the shower. I still felt a little funny from my sleep getting all thrown off. And I felt grimy. While I cleaned up, I coulda sworn that all the exposed areas of my skin–in my case: hands, wrists, face, neck–were extra dirty. Like just walking around the city left you a little grittier.
When I got out of the shower, I caught my reflection in the mirror. Clean, but still tired. I was reminded of a former self. The past day and a half made me feel like I did after a weekend of partying when I was 17. The going non-stop, the excitement, newness, the slight disconnect from reality, how dirty you get when you have fun. It was just like those days about a decade ago, only without drugs.
rave: used in a very vague fashion here, because I didn’t start going out until ’97–some say raves were already dead by then.
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