We are walking, the dawn is fresh rather than icy, when we hear the dreaded faint hum coming from behind; I turn around in panic and my fears are realized: its lights lick the cars parked on the road side and shortly its strange vintage toy shape appears. “It’s coming!” I shout and the Pill responds “Fuck! Really? RUN!” and starts sprinting. We run as fast as we can considering, giggling and panting. As the tram passes us by I signal it with a limp arm but we have no idea where the stop is, it is marked by a tiny sign glued to a lamp post.. The driver stops 50 metres down the road and waits – a fragile act of kindness in this crabby city. We climb in out of breath and say Happy New Year! and thanks! but the driver does not reply, his reserves of politeness are precious. Inside it is looking like a bathyscaphe from Jules Verne but warm and filling up with exhausted figures, wasted youth with formerly plastinated hairdos now in shards, red eyes with hyper-dilated pupils darting around out of phase, random shouts, weird walks on feet mutilated by trendy shoes, skinny jeans, lumberjack chic, shiny dresses and bling sex worker attires. Swimming through the stroboscopic mosaic of neon lights the bathyscaphe slowly takes us home, shaking and rattling.
6 am, sitting on a bench in front of a hipster-mommy coffee shop on Roncesvalles, a flash of day-glo orange and the Pill stands up and joins me; earlier in the evening she was taking her tights off and stage-diving on a futon, flashing the audience (me and Maria) with her fluorescent blue pants. A bit later on Sid makes an entrance, his Australian accent and party laughter deflecting the hostility of the people he offends, we love it, me and Pill sniffing off his thumb nail on the balcony, us three and Maria on Sid's roof, he is the next door neighbour and one can jump from the balcony on his roof, Sid on his belly, his turn to flash us with his builder’s crack: ‘I’m cleaning the eves trough of leaves as you asked!’ he shouts to a mysterious missus, laughing, laughing and we dance like crazed zombies, 7-8 desperate hedonists left, Pill's orange tights back on bouncing around like glo-sticks, drinks after drinks, Maria collapsed, we get out and start north towards the tram stop. There’s going to be a long wait so we decide to walk along College, into the fresh night, the city a shabby theatre set, Victorian houses of rotting wood and stucco with carved flights of fancy on the roofs, the new night already worn out, other living dead shouting greetings from across the street, the city recoiling on itself and exhaling from industrial chimneys and I hear the dreaded faint hum behind me.
La mordue
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