Geoffrey and I had got wind of it from a young (quite posh) hippie in the Marble Arch Okeefenokee Pancake House. He wouldn’t tell us the address until Geoffrey offered him a hallucinogen (in fact an asthma pill of mine he had momentarily immersed in a bottle of blue-black Quink).
‘It’s LDH,’ Geoffrey had whispered to him, ‘just over from the States. Better than acid. Stronger than MDA. Chas?’
‘Oh – any day.’
‘Make it a beautiful one, man,” Geoffrey nodded to him as we left. ‘Peace.’
Rachel arrived in a group of four – what looked like a random car-load – but stayed alone by the door, arms folded adultly. She talked to no one, although she kept waving and shouting hellos. I stood with some other girlless duds along the adjacent wall; my pits prickled as she twice refused offers to take the floor. The second loping Greek lingered awhile to remonstrate with her. Far from stepping in and saying ‘Okay, mac, you heard the lady,’ I waited for him to go away.
She looked confident and self-possessed all right, as young ladies in these circumstances generally do, but, like myself, excluded rather than merely detached from the festivities. She must have soul, I thought. In my case, though, it was simply a question of being unable to dance in front of other people. Geoffrey, who was gyrating away quite giddily not ten feet from me, postulated that it was one of the best, if not in fact the best, ways of pulling girls. But I dance only when I am alone, in ten-second spurts, usually before a mirror, sometimes naked, more often attired in sexter-style underpants.
She lit a cigarette. That would give me five precious minutes in which to think.
I did an instant assessment. She was fairly formidable, a bit out of my league really. She didn’t belong to the aggressively sexy genre, like some of the more tear-jerking girls there, whose golden thighs and teeming breasts I found about as approachable as leprosy. However: tallish, nearly my height, shoulder-length black hair conventionally shaped around strong features, she made much of her eyes, her nose made much of itself, black boots and black cowgirl skirt met at the knee, manly white blouse, expensive handbag, few bracelets, one insignificant ring, rather stern no-crap stance, intelligent lower-middle class with a good job, something bossy like public relations, living alone, older than me, possibly half Jewish.
The ethnic detail, yes, would provide me with an opening. I am in rny own appearance if anything rather oppressively Caucasian, but I could always go up and say This party’s none too kosher, is it?’ or ‘I see your schul-days are over.’ At that moment I glanced round and guessed that I was the proprietor of the only foreskin in the room. Perhaps I should appeal to her Aryan side then, or at any rate show my sensitivity to this two-way pull she must so often feel. ‘Hi there, couldn’t help noticing you looked possibly half Jewish. It must be…” Oh, I’m a right one I am.
In fact, I only just did it. A mental chant, timor mortis conturbat me, and I began on my clumsiest pull ever. My legs started off, at first spasticly shooting out in all directions, then co-ordinating into a groovy shuffle. The top half of my body sloped forward fifteen degrees. My arms flapped limply from the elbow. My shoulders became ear-muffs.
I opted for thick Chelsea :
‘Hhulloh,’ as if someone had just informed me that this greeting had an initial h and I was trying it out.
‘Hello.’ Her tone was patronizingly neutral; her accent instantly turned mine into educated upper-middle.
‘Hello,’ I said, now with prurient emphasis, a squadron-commander introduced to a fetching Parisienne. ‘I notice you haven’t got a drink.’ This was an excellent line because there usually followed: ‘Are you giving this party?’
‘Are you giving this party?’ she said. But here there was no gate-crasher cringing to be put grandly at its ease. Rather, a dull incredulity.
Nerve going, I elected to be literary. ‘Certainly not. Parties of this kind are not given, they are received.’
There was a silence.