The Tribe of Spiral; The Final Gathering – (The Gunthering)
The day came when the most recent of our gathering places began its process of disbanding. Draco and Jessin had lived there together for the better part of the last five years, creating a home for the collective to call their own on many an occasion in the afterhours.
I talked to Void on the phone, as I got ready, to tell him about the night ahead. He was, after all, the progenitor of our past. Despite his commitments to home and family, he was still a part of our future. I could hear his infant son in the background cooing… I knew I needed to see him soon, to see them both, before it was too late, before our time has come to pass, and one of us is gone forever.
That night at the gathering, there were people from all different branches of the tribe. We sat in a circle in the middle of Dracos’ living room, talking of the good times, of the old times and the new.
We did a round of nitrous whippets together, as a toast to our reunion. Even Sleepwalker eventually took one, as staunch and straight edge as he is, albeit after a little bit of coaxing and friendly jeering. Zari did one too, her very first, and so I told her about my own first experience, years ago at the Temple of the Void;
“It was wild.”
I said with a shake of my head, even then the memory of the moment still clear,
“Everyone was looking in the opposite direction, so I was the only one who saw Sparrow walking out of the wall.”
From somewhere off to the side of the circle, I heard Phyta revelling in her cosmetic wisdom;
“You know what the best part of using makeup to deceive people is? That you can do it forever.”
A sceptical reply came from someone I couldn’t see,
“But there is an age point where that doesn’t work anymore…”
This was a truth that Phyta was particularly sensitive to, now a mother well into her 40s and still desperately playing the role of the newly born ClubKid. The thought of having to act her age terrified her into even wilder exploits, often coming at the expense of her emotional stability and peace.
The music pounded on, the vid screen mounted on the wall rack cycling through random visuals of rainbow fractals. Throughout the night, people continued to come and go in a steady flow, smiling and laughing and loving together, moving through the different dimensions of spacetime within the apartment, through different conversations, different states of mind. Entire worlds were created and dismantled in a flash, over and over again.
Empty nitrous canisters scattered the floor like tiny silver torpedoes, heavy and cold from the release of the pressurized gas. There are an uncounted number of tiny paper cutouts of a cartoon penguin named “Gunther”, their presence a silent army, glowing starkly white in the blacklight from overhead.
Mostly everyone was wearing black, only some in white or various colours of neon, so the effect of the light was always more for ambience. It’s something about the spectrum as it hits the eyes. It makes your brain tingle, makes your mind feel full of that magical violet glow.
A girl I didn’t know started talking about sizing out of her dress. Her friend said,
“Don’t throw it out! Go buy an underbust corset and wear it.”
She replied,
“I wasnt going to throw it out, I was going to re do it! Look.”
She thrust herself forward off the couch where she had been sitting and onto the floor, and we all laughed together,
“See, this is why I keep you around!”
“I love the thrust.”
“Whoop, we’ve got thrusting here!”
Some time later, I was waiting by the bathroom door for my turn to freshen up. I looked to my left to see Draco standing in his room, his back to me, looking over his altar and out the window. He took a deep breath, popped a pill and downed it with a swig of beer. He turned around, looked at me and smiled wanly.
“Whatcha riding boss?”
I asked with a gentle smirk, sensing his mood was shifting into something darker.
“Just to stay awake for a little while longer…”
A few minutes later, after I finished up in the washroom I came back out to find him and Tom standing by the kitchen counter, each setting up a nitrous whippet. He hit it hard, and held it in for a long, long time. Far too hard and far too long. His face started to turned red, and his head almost looked like it would explode if he held it in any longer. He swayed to the side and I put out my hand in case he fell into the counter.
“Breathe now.”
We all cried out in a disjointed unison,
“You have to breathe now!”
At last he let it out, and a collective sigh of relief washed through the room as he breathed in again.
Everybody knows it, though we never say it out loud; Hits like that are the kind that cause brain damage, put you under so deep that you might never come up. It was a secret fear that we all shared, that maybe one day it would be one of us that would take it too far, and be gone from the world far before their time.
The moment passed, and the mood of the room soon shifted again into one of joviality and pleasant chaos.
In a casual use of his brute strength and size, Squatch twisted a beer bottle open with his elbow. He looked around and said,
“But where’d the cap go?”
I replied with an amused deadpan,
“It’s still on the beer.”
“oh.”
We laughed together, and he spent the next few minutes showing me more from his bag of party tricks. With pride, he showed me how to blow a balloon within a balloon. The next one, he put one of the empty nitrous canisters inside. We playfully batted it around for a moment, before it landed next to a younger girl I didn’t know. She picked it up to toss it back, looking confused,
“What’s in it?”
And as she tossed it back it popped, the sound of it momentarily startling the room, but soon turning again to laughter as they realized the source.
The hour was growing late, well after last call in ClubLand, and more refugees from the closing hours began to arrive. It was around this point that I had meant to leave. But to my surprise, Will, of all people, graced the room with his arrival, along with a mutual friend of his and the tribe, Bey. I was quietly thrilled. I had seen him last night too, but I was too far gone to make anything positive from an encounter, and so I had let myself pass him by, moving into the crowd unseen. He was here now chasing after Phyta, of all people, so the opportunity to make that connection was again put aside; It was not the right time, not the right place for us now. There was so much tension still between us, too much that had been said in anger, too much left unsaid in love. So I decided to stay on for awhile and carry the twist of our fate as far as I could.
The atmosphere starts to calm as the last of the night fades into the wee hours of morning. Couples break away, leaning casually against the kitchen counter in quiet conversation, others laying down to stretch out on the sofa, bodies blending together softly in the dim light, communicating without words in their secret lovers language.
I sit in the circle on the floor in front of the corner couches, with Draco, Will, Phyta, and Bey, the mutual friend who had arrived with him. We smoke, talk, laugh. We all put aside our darker thoughts and remember the good times, mourn them happily together and give our blessings for the better times to come. With love and gratitude, I watch my tribe grow and change and shift again. Without thinking, I quietly muse my thoughts aloud, and Bey says with a proud smile,
“Ah, so this time *I’m* the bridge of worlds.”
At last, my energy wanes, and I know the time has come that I must go. I say my hellos and goodbyes for the final time, as Draco calls me a cab. We embrace, standing toe to toe in his room before his altar. I am left permeated by the scent of his cologne on my collar, in my hair, and the hint of incense and pot smoke; An air of remembrance to tie me to this moment in time.
From the window of the cab, I watch the city speed by and away into the night, thinking of all the times past, and those yet to come, and I smile; Here we have gathered, here we remain still, together forever, united from the many branches of this beautiful family tree.