Rave Reviews: A Treasure Map Proved Fruitful

Saturday night had a post-apocalyptic, debaucherous kind of feel. Which, for the record, is the only type of Saturday I’m into. 

The bar around the corner to us was closing down and the owner had invited ‘round. “It’s gonna be free booze- we need to drink this place dry”. Well, that’s one way to pique our interest. We said we would offer our services, selfless as ever, and rocked up a little after 8PM to help him out with his problem. 

An hour later, our friends had taken over: roleplaying as bartenders, doing shots out of belly buttons, smoking as they made cursed cocktails with anything they could scavenge. People were making out on the bar, the owner made a drunken speech that resulted in him falling off the bar (twice), some dickhead was being an arsehole, a fight broke out. We split. 

At 2AM, the house party we’re at is shut down. Police stand at the door to the garage and shine torches at us.

We spill out onto the road, our phone screens lighting up our faces, trying to work out where to go next. We shoot off a few messages and get sent back a treasure map that looks like it's come straight out of a 90s video game. To the rave it is. 

We sail down the highway in our (sober) friend's little yellow car, our knees on our chins. We piss in bushes and walk across a field, attempting (and failing) to avoid the waterlogged green. The rave location is covered in graffiti and illuminated in blue and red lights. When we get in, it's heaving, too squishy to dance properly. The music is a drum n’ bass wet dream. There’s probably enough ketamine floating around to put a deposit down on a mansion in Gordon’s Bay. 

We go for an explore, walking past party goers hunched over striped phones. I feel as though I am constantly losing and gaining friends as the night goes on, like a well-oiled soccer team, players subbing in and out. We ballroom dance with each other and scavenge for drinks. Somehow we end up with a molotov of (what I’m pretty sure was) orange juice and tequila. 

People are sitting up high, surveying the scene. We find a vertically-blessed friend and employ his services at a forklift. He stands by us, ready to carry us down at a moment's notice. The People Watching available to us is first class. If someone had told me we were in Griessmuehle, Berlin, I would have been like “damn that was a short flight” and have otherwise believed them.

We dance until we’re sweaty and then some more, taking wordless breaks to sit down and melt into each other. We stand repeatedly, in-sync, to dance some more. We’re getting pretty good at telepathy these days. 

When I run into people I ask if they’ve been here before. Everyone says “never”. Somehow, I feel like this is not going to be the last. My friend tells me that the event hosts held the first ever rave he went to, where his love of dance music began. They’re a super hard working crew that have been hosting events for years. They have managed to stay true to whatever notion he has of what it really means to be underground. 

We clamber into the Uber, gliding towards our last stop of the night: bed. Windows down, hands on each other's knees. We hear the morning’s first birdsong, comically clear and chipper, mocking us. We groan and climb into bed. We’re asleep before we’ve even finished nestling into one another.

15/10

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