Why we are building a new centre left Media
Benyimin Hudenyatu
The cocaine just wasn’t taking the edge off. Maybe edge isn’t the right word. Just that feeling that you are always in the preamble to the next thing. Thinking about how you will get somewhere. Finishing the drink so it’s out of your hands, out of your way. Now you’ve got to piss again. You are hungry. You can’t allow yourself to relax. You are on the treadmill my friend and there is always another task to complete. You only feel contentment for a moment after sex, and occasionally on Class A drugs. That’s when the scratching at the back your brain stops.
But even after finishing the first bag and licking out the rest of the contents there was still something gnawing me as I sit down opposite Morgan. One look at his pupils and I could tell that the drugs were having the desired effect for him. I knew it was would only be moments before-
“Ehhhhhh, d-d-d-d-dya, dya tink-”
As surely as night follows day. Morgan, when he could stick to just the pints could be reasonably good company but as soon as he’d had some of the marching powder he would just chew your ear off for hours with different business ideas.
“Dya, dya, dou ya, you ya tink, ya tink do, do you tink now do you tink now d-ya-”
“Morgan, please, slow down.”
Morgan tried to look at one of his phones to calm down but he was so high on cocaine that his eyes were flitting spasmodically and he was unable to focus on anything, his nose still smeared with white powder, face increasingly red. He was beginning to look so ridiculous that I worried that the stuff at the Rosemary Branch would lose their patience with our intermittent trips to the bathroom. Dribble forming in the right corner of his mouth, I saw a vision of how Morgan the serial University dropout could have ended up if he had never come into contact with Peter Mandelson. The Morgan who would have woken up in some underpass in Knocnaheeny and started the day with some Lyrica and then strung himself out on Skag by Cobh Heritage centre. No wonder he ended up owing Mandelson such a debt, a debt so enormous in trying to repay it he would consume he destroyed himself.
“Deeeya, deeeyaaa-”
Morgan’s eyes were now just up to the ceiling grinning, completely reclined in his chair. We receive a quizzical look from behind the bar.
“Morgan will you get a hold of yourself!”
At once my terse language began to restore his executive function. He leans forward to take a sip from his Asahi (dry). It is always Asahi, when you don’t really want it, when you don’t really care.
“S-sorry fella. Ehh, so, what I was saying, emmmm…so…ehh, what if we went into business together like?”
One of the best things about climbing up the ladder are the chances that you don’t have to take. Those think tank drinks that you used to box your way into that you would now never be seen dead at. No more networking over cold sandwiches. No more pub quizzes for you, you are a London author. You’ve got somewhere better to be, even if that somewhere is on your own, because your time to think has a premium on it now my son. But then you start to drift back down. You are no longer a sPAd. You are no longer in No.10. Just another middle-aged man looking to get a second wind in their career by leaning heavily on your contacts from journalists you used to leak to. It cannot just be this and then retirement, surely not? So instead of genial sneering you are forced to listen.
“What sort of business, Morgan?”
“Roight, ehhh…”
Morgan furrows his brow.
“So fella, d’ya ever see in Bee and Queue yeah? Have you been there? They’ve got these fecking great big things for ehh, well, now, ehhh, for feckin washing a patio loike. Three hundred euro. Maybe we pay two hundred loike get it second hand on d’ web loike. And then we go door to door and we charge forty euro for a wash.”
“Morgan I don’t think I want to power wash people’s front drives for a living.”
“Yeah, yeah, was just ‘tinking”
Morgan’s brow furrows once more.
“Well. Roight. Listen, ehh….roight. How’s this? You see out in Ealing, ehhh, zone five like, that sorta thing well, you see they leave their washing machines out in the yard, ehh, well, what if we went around with a van and said we’d take ‘em loike, and ehh, well I know these brothers in Kilburn, and we could sell them the copper wiring.”
“Morgan…”
“D’ Churches got lead in their rooves loike…”
“MORGAN!”
“Roight, yeah ok so, ehhh.”
Morgan then started to rub his temples. “Ehhhhh…soooo….ehhhh”
Forty will become fifty. Fifty will become sixty. All of that time thinking if I stay on as a journalist I’ll never know what it’s like. But now I do, or rather, I’ve learned something about myself. That I just couldn’t make it happen. Not for more than a year, I couldn’t even make it happen just mucking about in an irrelevant department. What on God’s green earth did I do to deserve this fate?
I look over at Morgan and see that he is roots around the pocket of his coat behind him. Suddenly his eyes light up.
“Janie Mac! Would ya believe it?” Morgan holds up a hitherto unseen bag of white powder.
His eyes darting around for staff, he scoops out a key and holds it to my nose. As soon as I take it in I realise that the white substance was not a powder but was in fact a crystals. Very large crystals.
“Morgan…what…the…fuck…have you done…”
“Ahhhh easy now.”
Ketamine. I won’t try and describe the feeling since Christian Bale captured it so well in Knight of Cups. All I will offer to the reader is how strange it is that this psychedelic drug is used in casual social situations, parties or nightclubs, mind leaving your body, every stage of your life and each person around you given new meaning. Perhaps I’ve just never been able to stop at the first key. With Morgan that wouldn’t make a difference, knowing him, this Ketamine would be of the Rhinoceros variety. They don’t call him ‘Captain Morgan’ for nothing.
Soon enough we are outside. I think I want a cigarette so I light it, but it doesn’t feel a part of me, the sensation of smoking isn’t working, my throat isn’t catching properly. The last dribble of Asahi is bitter.
“Wha, wha, wha if we loike…made our own…loike…emm..you know…centre left politics, ehh…that…fella wha was his name, ehh from the old think tank, eh….he could…ehh...”
Marie Le Conte pops into my mind. “Morgan…Changing Politics….”
“No no, no, not it won’t be loike that at all fella, ehhh-“
“We could even claim that I was the first to come up with the observation that Downing Street is too small a building for Prime Minister to operate out of…”
“That’ll show those feckers at the Canary…”
To be continued….