The Magic of the Afterparty

Going out. Coming back. Going in.

The out part of a druggy night out is really just an expensive preamble to a messy morning in.

After a taxi journey shivering along to the babble & squeak of breakfast radio, inside really is a special place to be. Even the most barren of lonely-bachelor pads feels downright palatial. 

It’s a wonder that 4 people stomping around a laptop can have as much fun as 4,000 swamped around a festival stage. 

Safe at last 

A few friends and a couple of strangers enter their own private principality, safe from all the justified paranoia of the outside world. 

Although rave-themed nights pretty much encourage drugs, there’s always a low undercurrent of worry. Some prize chump will get bounced out for doing the thing that’s keeping the club open, by a person that thing is keeping employed.

Back at the gaffe, there’s no more restroom peekaboo with large bald men. Druggos can give the degenerate origami of opening a wrap the time and attention it deserves. 

Lighting up a joint is way more relaxing without a pack of fluorescent bullies sniffing after it. In fact, smoking on pills on couches is a damn-near spiritual experience. Each inhalation feels like a suck on the Dalai Lama’s tongue - and, trust me, I would know. 

Bass and guard lowered right down, it’s the perfect environment for trading compliments, insecurities and insults.

Vibe maintenance 

Having it large - as large as the gap between a couch and a tea table allows. 

The battle to stay in the game is fought on a number of fronts: drugs VS exhaustion, happiness VS sadness, uppers VS downers. For these reasons, the vibes of an afterparty hang precariously in the balance. 

The ironing board DJ is the master of everyone’s destiny. Just the right song has the power to reverse a rapid-onset comedown, pull a lost soul out of a K hole or turn back a trudge upstairs. 

It’s half-past sense in the morning and the seconds of the last tune are ticking away. Our resident YouTube selector squints down at the search bar, their brain bankrupt of all song. The fate of the morning resting in their jittering hands. 

Fuck, what’s that tune that goes…… it goes .….. it does go………………

Fumbling, they Google a generic fragment of a song - “lyrics ooh baby” or spell out a beat phonetically “bumbumbum bum bum bum.”

Ok, got one!

Cross-tab-mixing blasts out the smug spiele of a get-rich-quick ad, to the groans of the dancefloor. 

Right, that’ll keep us going - for another 3-something minutes.

Spangled camaraderie 

“Give me your tired, your gurned, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming dive.”

With everyone at their worst for wear, there’s a real feeling that we’re all in this thing together.

Gone stupid o’clock, afterpartiers are responsible for dancing in shifts. Morale is so fragile that every empty vessel has to pull its weight. Even the poor sod sat on the brink of their own personal armageddon lends a supportive fist pump - or whatever they can manage. Everybody is willing each other on through the next tune.

Look, if we just hold on for another 2 hours and 15 minutes, the shop will be open.

The thirstiest of the bunch will head out on a gallant expedition for booze. Only to realise - yet again - that today is the garage sabbath and Tesco Express is forbidden from selling booze before 10 am. So they putter around the aisles for three-quarters of an hour, disconcerting pensioners, revolted by the prospect of croissants. 

It’s the little things that count. Finding a baggie thought lost, exactly where you thought it was. Or reinforcements crashing in from a neighbouring blow-out, injecting new life into the room.

At some stage, even cliquey coke distribution gives way to sharing. Because if you don’t do your coke with someone, you soon won’t have anyone to do your coke in front of. 

At the end of the day

As the day wears on, and the drugs wear off, the last of the woozy boogieing grinds to a halt. The point is reached where no banger can bang hard enough to keep the troops marching on the spot.

If even 1 out of the 5 bows disgracefully out, their loss is felt terribly. The couples are the first to slip off for a snuggle. Forget lifelong companionship - there’s no better argument for coupledom than waking up on a downer in the arms of someone you love. Next to go are diehard gearheads who coincidentally lose all interest the moment they're out of fuel. 

As the last stragglers try to smoke themselves to sleep, paranoia becomes the prevailing school of thought. 

Before long, it’s just you and some affable randomer with an unhip face-tatt and an increasing edge about them. Quite suddenly, this guy you bundled into a taxi with feels less like a dead cert for your wedding reception - and more like someone who might half-inch your modem. 

It’s time for bed - or the best available approximation. Here’s to hoping your new bunk buddy doesn’t touch you up. 

Lovely thoughtful girls will pull out quilted guest blankets stored in a nearby poof for just this occasion. At a boy's house, dirty stop-outs are left trembling on a leatherette settee. Wearing somebody’s parker back to front or unvelcroing sofa cushions on top of themselves for warmth. 

Were I in charge it would be the early deserters made to sleep on the cold hard floor. Leave the spare room for those who’ve earned it, I say.

Short of a chancey valium, the gatekeeper of the coke will be left examining a stippled ceiling for just about infinity. Eventually, giving up on the idea of sleep. Then scavenging ineffectually about for a charger or some alcohol-based numbing agent.

For something that is fairly likely to kill you, sleeping pills really are a lifesaver. Valium is so convenient that even though it gives me sleep paralysis - where I’ve been frozen wide awake as living demons I can see and feel penetrate me - I’ll still pop one, quite happily. Give me quiet death or hell-born gangrape over a shift in cokey limbo, any day of the week.