Dan and I go to Milk Bar in Soho, to see Bonnie's mate's art exhibition. I cant remember the name of the artist. He's Bonnie's mate, thats all I know. And there might be free beer.
But we get there and all the beer is gone. There are a lot of people crowding outside the gallery, which is actually a coffee shop during the day, and they are clutching short, green bottles of beer, mostly empty. Dregs swilling around. It is dark and the crowd frighten us a little. They are oldish, 30s, but they look wild. Drunk, drugged, t-shirts in the cold and dark, starey eyes. The music is blasting out of the gallery and we are intimidated but we push through the staggering crowd and go in. There are more empty beer bottles on the table inside. The place is tiny. The music is blaring, banging, everything is in slow motion. There are 2 people inside. A girl in make-up and a fur coat, maybe nothing on underneath it, sitting at the back, legs in high boots folded over each other. A guy, staring at nothing, dirty jeans, dirty mind, another t-shirt. Everything is tense, they look put together, like a piece of art. they looks like they are frozen in time.
We pretend to ignore them, and we inspect the art. It is cartoon-like. Manga, in black and white. Skeletons in dark pen, skulls with personalities, no eyes, but smiles. On a sticker, below one of the pieces of art, it says "£10", the music bangs, bangs. We push out the door.
Back outside in the street, dark and scary and the thought of skulls, of dead cartoons. We go into the pub next door which is red like a mouth, and we buy vodka, and we come back out again and stand in the street, with the crowd. It feels like Soho. We lean against a brick wall and we drink and Dan smokes.
And then a guy with mental eyes appears, he's going up to everyone in the crowd, in their little groups and saying "got any coke?" and they all say "no" then he comes up to us and says "got any coke?" and we say "no".
