I met this old guy in the shelter yesterday. I’m not sure I believed a word he said, he didn’t look like he’d ever amounted to anything, even a small time dealer, but this is what he told me:

I used to be specialised, me. Pills, pills were my thing. You wanted uppers, downers, hallucinogens, designers, I had the lot. I even ran to some acid of the sort that went out of favour many many years ago. Had quite a few old timers and burn outs come to me to live the sixties all over again. Sad, really. But nothing like as tragic as this particular story I’m about to tell you. This was a proper tragedy and soon after these events I gave up pushing altogether.

So anyway, I’m at a party - this is many years ago you understand? I’m at this party, it’s a fairly upmarket do. That’s one of the perks of my old line of work, lot of invites, lot of parties. People who wouldn’t give you the time of day as they run out from their posh hotel to the cab, or even the limo, waiting outside, they’re suddenly keen to have your company if they know that you can supply the necessary to let their little party go with a swing.

So. I’m at the party, ‘soiree’ actually was what the chap called it, in some huge loft-space apartment in the city. It was all white walls, discrete lighting, modern art. In fact the place would’ve looked like an art gallery which someone had dumped a bedroom and a beer fridge in, except it had far more people in it than any art gallery I ever heard of.

I’m actually getting on quite well with a young lady. She’s sampled some of my more extreme wares early on in the evening and is no longer standing on the same planet as anyone else. She’s in her own universe, in her own bubble and she’s grinning at me a lot and clutching onto me like she might fall down any moment if I wasn’t there. She’s got a tiny dress and huge hair (this was a while ago) and I have to say I’m rather enjoying her clutching onto me.

Anyway the chap who owns the loft-space-gallery-house (I can’t remember his name for the life of me now, but I remember he was wearing a red shirt and braces to this do. Twat.) introduces me to Mark and tells me to give him something to chill him out. Mark’s from out of town, he’s nervous, he’s a friend of a friend and unused to these little debauches.

Mark grins up at me. Timid. He’s got a little downy moustache and he’s sweating slightly. Good grief. Poor guy. I decide to start him on some new and exciting stuff I got from the Russian and one discreet transaction later (I am renown for the discretion of my little transactions, or at least I was) he’s the proud owner of two tiny blue Angel Eyes. “These will calm you down, make you feel good, help you enjoy yourself” I tell him. I pat him on the back as I’m telling him this, but gently, he looks breakable. I’ve told him to take them both at once, down them with the remainder of his rum and coke. Dutifully, he does so. In fact, looking at his pale little face and his worried eyes I’m thinking, Jesus, here’s a guy who’d take twenty pills and chase it with a bottle of bourbon if someone told him to. He had the look of a man whose been doing what he’s told his entire life.

He slopes off and I turn back to the attentions of my young lady but she’s buggered off while I was transacting. Damn. I saunter through the press trying, and failing, to scope her out.

I’m heading towards the kitchen-bit of the loft when I hear shouting and hollering behind me. Everyone’s heading towards the noise which is soon drowning out the electronic music they’ve got playing. In the centre of the loft the party-goers have made a circle around something: my first thought is ‘fight! Fight! Fight!’, it looks just like a circle of children crowding round a playground scrap.

In the centre of the circle though there’s no scrap, in fact there’s just one figure. It’s a man: shirtless and with a bottle of JD in each fist. It looks like he’s poured most of the JD down himself: his hair and face and hairless chest are slick with it. He’s whirling faster and faster and faster round on the spot and spraying the rest of the JD at the circle of people round him some kind of insane fountain. It’s Mark. And he’s screaming as he goes round, screaming and screaming. At first I think it’s just a shriek, but then you can make out words: ‘Angel Eyes! Angel Eyes! Angel Eyes!’. Oh shit. I’m going to get in trouble for this one. They don’t seem pissed off though: the people around him are hollering and egging him on.

Even when he strips his trousers and pants off and stands stark-bollock naked in the centre of the room people are still applauding him: it’s great entertainment. But when he pushes open the big loft window and steps out onto the window ledge the mood changes. Two things quickly become apparent: 1) he’s managed to scramble up onto the flat roof, 2) everyone’s turned to glare at me: it’s now my problem.

I hadn’t even realised it was raining out; the slippery ledge nearly proves my undoing as I clamber after the mad bastard. He’s standing, arms upraised to the lashing rain laughing and laughing like he’s never going to stop. I call out but he doesn’t hear me, or he can’t hear me.

“Angel Eyes! Angel Eyes!” The mad bastard screams up at the sky and the rain and then, with a huge grin plastered all over his mad bastard face he runs full pelt at the edge of the roof and leaps off. For one stupid moment he hangs there, bollock naked, wet from the rain, suspended in mid-air and I actually think ‘he’s going to fly, he’s actually going to fly’. He doesn’t, of course.

I can barely make out what’s left of him, the rain and the dark make it hard to see and it’s a long way down. Knowing that there will be questions and a whole load of policemen to ask them, I slip straight down the fire escape and head back home.

I can’t sleep that evening. I think ‘fuck it, why not?’ and, for the first time try one of the Angel Eyes. I want to feel the hit that made Mark feel he could fly. I’m not daft though, I just take the one. After half an hour of absolutely nothing I take another Angel eye and, finally, two more. Nothing.

In the morning I take the Angel Eyes to my chemist friend. He tells me that the bastard Russian I bought them off stiffed me; the Angel Eyes contain just two things: paracetemol and blue food colouring.

I gave up dealing a few months after that, I didn’t have the stomach for it anymore. Sometimes it’s not the drugs you need to be scared of you know: it’s the things your own mind is pushing.