I went to a conference in the bush, some months ago. We had some big ideas about living the new world, the lot of us.
We were all dressed up and ready to reject convention for a little experimental moment or two. We set up tents and generators and sound systems around a little dam in the hills where the trees stood greying in dried mud, near a big pink hacienda that the property ownes lived in, and we ate lumpy porridge and hash cookies around flaming steel drums with our temporary neighbours in the tent city. There was a bondage marquee and everything.
There were some big parties there too. I remember one night in the courtyard of the hacienda seeing the kids from the next kombi dressed up in silver and black bodysuits and masks, twirling flames on the dance floor with a cheering audience of five hundred people. They made a better spectacle than they did porridge. There were big magenta lights in rotating concentric spirals on the audience, and speaker stacks tall enough to pop passing cattle in a consummate bass kick. There were flaming kerosene ropes of woven kevlar, and moth-people on stilts. There were paramedics in green overalls, including an undercover cop.
All in all, a fine show, especially when you're tripping off your hairless nipples.
As I stood there, agape, a small man in parachute pants and a baseball cap shouted in my ear, 'Hey mate, are ya on anything?'
My drug-paranoid cop-detectors were tingling. The man was so obviously undercover that he may as well have had a flashing blue light on his head and a nightstick in his jocks.
'Ah, no, my friend,' I squeaked in a gap between flanged snare hits, 'I'm here for the music.'
'Shit, that's no good,' he said, 'Put ya finger in `ere,' playing with his front pocket.
That was a tense moment. But he fished out a little baggie of cocaine before I could make any disastrous social errors.
'Go on,' he said, 'It doesn' cost me anything,' and held his stash out to me.
He swigged champagne from a bottle while I stuffed my nose. There was a conversational pause for me to choke on my confused sinuses in. Damn. I don't do cocaine very often. His voice rose over my splutters and the sound system: `I just come back, from the indig'nous welcome to the land. Didja see the Bundgalung welcome dance?'
*Cough* I said.
'They're the tradish'nal land owners round here. Gotta give `em respect for lettin' us have tha party, eh?. Shit, they're a tough crew, though. Had a bitta drink with `em before. Whew.'
The fire twirling was winding up, and the sound system getting louder.
'Hey, you should drop by and see `em, say thanks. They're the mob playin' cricket all day by the big marquee.'
I realised I had nothing to say to this man and his shiny teeth.
'Bundgalung? Right. I see my friends over there looking like they need me...'
I turned back to the crowd, who were officially commencing the shaking of their booties to the phat techno soundz.
Yeah. I was going to show them up. So I did.
I pulled moves so awesome that other innocent partiers thew me envious looks. They were daring me to go further, challenging my style. I wasn't rising to the bait, I was unstoppable, I was a techno Travolta. Limbs icily controlled, motions clinically precise, motions simple and transcendently passionate, an essay in the art of modern dance.
Then the cocaine wore off.
