“Did you ever consider,” I asked, “that maybe you died outside the Moulin Rouge? And that all this,” I waved my beer around, “is just a fantasy running through your fevered brain as you lie dying in the gutter?”
“That would make you a figment of my imagination, then, wouldn’t it?” Damien enjoyed this kind of conversation, but I could see Ian starting to lose interest. Metaphysics and philosophy weren’t his cup of tea. In fact, I’d never seen Ian with a cup of tea.
“If it was true. Of course, the real truth is that you guys, this club, only exist in my head. And all your memories are just stories that I made up and put there when I created the universe this morning.”
“And one day you’ll wake up, right, and we’ll all just go poof?”
“Who are you calling a poof?”
“Do you really think that could be true?” Morag made a surprise entrance into the conversation.
“What, that he’s a poof?”
“Fuck off.”
“No. That we could all just be parts of someone’s dream, not really real. And that one day he’ll wake up.”
Damien and I looked at each other. Morag’s approach to magick had always been more down to earth than ours, with an instinctive, emotional grasp of what was required.
“Could be,” I replied, slowly. “I mean, how do you really know that you exist? What if you only think that you exist?”
“Or,” added Damien, “what if you do really exist, but the rest of us don’t? Like, there’s no way for you to be sure that I’m actually thinking my own thoughts, is there? You think that you are sure that you are thinking things, but what if the rest of us were just reflections of your own thoughts, appearing to think and act, but actually just thinking that we’re thinking?”
“What the fuck have you been drinking?” roared Ian as he got to his feet. “You’re all out of your fucking heads!”
“Sorry I made you say that, Ian,” I grinned. “I’ll make you a bit more tolerant next time around.”
“Aaargh!” He stomped off towards the stage.
“Maybe we’ll bring you back as a woman!” Damien yelled after him. “Think what fun you could have, looking at yourself in the mirror! Jumping on yourself!”
This last was a reference to one of Ian’s more daring sexual exploits. He had picked up an exotic dancer, and they’d gone out for a while. One night, probably not in a sober state, she had tied him to a bed, stripped in front of him to get him aroused, rubbed him with lubricant, then climbed on top of a chest of drawers. Taking careful aim, she had launched herself onto the bed, spreading her legs in mid-air and landing perfectly on the target.
Unfortunately, no amount of lubricant could have prepared poor Ian for this sudden wrench to his manhood. The doctor had been sympathetic, and had administered a local anaesthetic as well as a liberal dose of painkillers while stitching things back into place. Ian was now fully recovered, but for a couple of weeks he had been drinking even more than usual, and the story had eventually come out. Being the man’s friends, we had of course been extremely sensitive about the incident. Only one song had been composed to commemorate the event. Only three pictures had appeared on the toilet wall. And we had resisted the temptation to go that extra mile and have a T-shirt printed. After all, he was a mate.
Extract from Burning Roses, a decadent tale of sex, drugs, rock n roll & magick. Available from www.amazon.com/author/burning
Till next time. Cheers.
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