The Last Supper

Inspired by a night out in 2016, just before a defining event that happened the next day.

We, throng of hopefuls, patient, resolved, wait in line - percolating anxieties.

Tall structure of glass-fronted venue doorway gives us some purchase on the scene inside – and the suggestion of some deep vaulted metal and mortar gallery area, as yet sparse of people, purist, minimalist, uncompromising.

Edging forwards closer to the framework, a little furtively perhaps, not sure if allowed to, then scuffling up more gingerly, noses to pane – one could almost coequally step back and draw breath.  The interior seems vast, bound like a fortress.  There’s also a dramatic bar hub stretching the full length of the North West wall at the back. 

Visibility and much detail obfuscated, shadowed under canopy of vague or ambiguous spot lighting here and there – in essence it spoke a dusky kind of opulence.  The ceiling of this impressive room loomed into view, overhanging as in an ante-hall of an ancient citadel – transmogrified into a contemporary setting.  A step removed from our recent hour- of the old time-honoured convivialities, chirping and fraternising at our friend’s art show [private view] across the road.  Which so happens to have been - yes - yet another of those raspberry lipped blueberry-flavoured something affairs where modern art’s latest profanities are once again reaffirmed by the powers that be, and thus is concluded another rueful step in the inexorable demise of our much beloved, the fine and old-school, the real draughtsmanship.  Naturally it’s all down to something called progress and the wonderful advancement of our species, in this our so-called modern and cerebrally driven abstract age.

Chiselled rock face of doorman brokers broad smile as he removes his blockade of self and motions us in. We’re casually straight past the counter and to the faux fire-lit section along the south west wall of the gallery at the back, separated from the main section by prismatic floor to ceiling standing columns of sheet glass.  We’re called upon by a hostess suitably prepped in slick black rayon, as in a layered bodice, somewhere in between where catwalk verve meets high line escort, naturally enhanced with bronzed décolletage.  Her femme fatale black stockings, 5” Louboutins, and naval piercing are faintly discernible in the shaded incandescence of the room.

Perfunctory pleasantries concluded, and some minor detail to do with a credit card and surety, aforementioned hostess places us nicely across a low-lying set of dwarf thrones serving some black onyx and quartz inlaid bar tables.  We take our pews.  Looking straight up and across, it’s high ceilings and lofty expanse of enclosure.  As I breathe in the view it strikes me for a whisk of a second that we may as well have been willed into place - teleported even – dwarf thrones onyx tables and fragments and all - to the grand summer palace of the great Sultan at Xanadu. I take a lingering glance across the line of the platform bar, the one that runs parallel to the North West wall of the gallery. It’s an eyeful, glazed panther black for its entire length, could easily be re-imagined as a modern art piece.  Black Amex smooth also part-defined by a long line of sliced watermelon, and fresh allure of soft pink and the Mediterranean.  There is an Apple lap-top which doubles up as a mobile money register, next to a DJ deck - sure sign of some bona-fide street cred here - and, running along the wall behind the bar, a switchboard of mirrored shelving: cascade of myriad reflections; bottles of rare and premium spirits, platinum filed in a two inch primer of cachet.

Behind us there’s a rumble of pulsating sounds. Monochromatic sub-base, like Trent-Moller, or a cross between German trance and Detroit techno. All in pristine fidelity throughout the sounded area.  And a whiff of synthetic lavender from the female comportment opposite, and other olfactory sensations mixed in, concocted to perambulate and infect.

We proffer selections as our new waitress, richly lashed and prepped for the order, is quill and order pad at the ready.  Teeming with cleavage she ripens into broad red tomato juice smile, teeth deep-scaled polished like a Vera Wang.  I motion for one of the house-specials, of the Watermelon Martini fame, while the others go off-piste: specimens such as a flame-eyed Caipirinha, or Whisky Old-fashioned, or sturdier Tom Collins, and - here’s one for the record – some jockstrapper of a Jaegerbom that got wedged in there in between.

Conversation ensues and opening gambit jitters distil into mellifluous exchange. Our troupe advances into certain intelligible discussions, about art and philosophy and the meanings of things, before it rapidly descends into lesser propositions.

Meanwhile there is palpable loss of circum-temporal awareness in the midst – and it must be closing on near forty-five minutes before teeming waitress returns. She reappears bustily re-armed, proferring libations on trays like figurines on a silver layered wedding cake.

Pilot light reset, clocks turn back a dial. Exuberance takes a shift into 4th. I hear the chorus of bass drum rising in the penumbras, mingling with flurried voices, new arrivals as they enter, fizzing young hopefuls urgent on adrenalin, CT scanning the liquid dinner catalysts at stations across the bar.  One clique of tuneful French girls flounces past me in a frizz of cashmere, chirruping canzonets, cherry liqueur cocktails cocked in hand.  Bass drum amplifies and the walls close in, a sound-mist gathers and the lights dim.  The individuals of our troupe pipe down together, hormonally synchronised.  Calm before the storm.  We are in heady anticipation of part two of Trimalchio’s feast.  The click clock of clitter clatter unwinds as our high but hushed voices unfurl into the subdued establishment air.

We softly toast our libations, motion to serenade the silence.  A hushed clinking of glasses recharges the airwaves, like the first percussion sounds of a great symphony.  Our voices issue faint but hearty tributes of ‘cheers’ and ‘Nastrovia’, whispered as in a midnight séance.  Ambient echoes return as buxom waitress re-resumes, glazed in static, charged as an ion battery, heat plug in hand, ready for our devolution into this grand litany of wallet-scouring, nerve searing, sado-masochistic, come self-flagellating, and entrails-devouring, grand ceremony of libations.  I sample a first thrusted hand-out, tasting the zesty lemon tang of a Whisky Sour. 12 sharp volts unrelenting. Followed by a thimble-full of White Russian, that charged-particle sugar rush that fiercely hit the spot.  Boof!  One of each please.  A circle of rouged faces fluster, each melding into the other, in an all-in of-the-moment discourse, bonding through the adhesive of our shared establishment street-speak.  Female partner in crime Charlie is sat unhelpfully on my right knee, resolves to dig deeper with the thick of her weight, and probably unawares, into the narrow of cartilage just above my right femur.  Perhaps she’s intimating for indirect play. My side it’s the receiving end of needlepoint pains in the quad.  Thankfully I am also distracted by other titillative sensations in the woodwork. A recently formed parade of long limbed debutantes, some of nature’s finest. Arpeggios of flickering voices as they cascade across the chamber; an air mist of purple riffs criss-crossed with sepia red sound waves as they carry through. Rising notes strung where a new breed of techno meets metal, across the chasm of the sepulchral sphere down below.  And now over to Anastasia, newbie to our party, as she starts to elaborate on her Yoga intel from Sunday last, from somewhere out of the urbanites Ashram down West Eleven. In the moment impassioned and, effusive, Anastasia proceeds with live demonstration, carefully discharging the onus of her espresso martini head back and down, backing up against the iron frontage of the fire-exit behind us. I gently discard the noble hips of flattery of friend Charlie, my old pal, as I witness the grand spectacle of Anastasia.  All eyes are met with circus trampoline act come Olympic gymnast warmup routine as she limbers up – now captured in real time hot-night-out get-up-and-go gear.  Loyalties to Anastasia are firmly battened and secured.  Waxed vinyl stretch leggings refract flashings of white filament flashlight, as the wrap-around lycra of her outfit bares barely a ripple, sinuous with the equine line of her form. Heads all rolling, telescoping in, channel into the curves of her figure that’s now galvanised as steel, and she morphs into modulating shapes of the Bolero. Without further ado I take yet another swig from this my fine tumbler measure of some flame-distilled plant extract that I’ve been tenderly nursing all the while- this or some grade-A of a lighter fuel, also known by its common alias our God’s Abomination of a Whisky Sour – or also otherwise known as 12 Volts and Not for the Faint Hearted.

I’m viciously overcome, gently spiralling - into rapid descent and downward mobility; or somewhere in-between or some lesser state of sentient being, or some other equally lesser state of abundant liquification. 

Soon threads of bare consciousness float into a sea of flame coloured flickering tongues, whipped up into a whirlpool of dissonance and disarray - only to be further propelled by the fair currents of a hair-raising subconscious.

I soon detect an echo of heartbeat- climbing gently into the iambic, then accelerating chords, from an adagio to a vici presto, gathering momentum as in some raffle-prize drum roll.

And then there’s the other - perhaps less significant issue - of the incipient residue of a viscera-crippling nausea.

And then I vomit.

And then.

I Blackout.

And then,

I think,

The rest might be unknown.