There is a version of this story where you stayed in the jungle, and I came back to England and our relationship remained three addictive magical months in a house in Possum Creek and none of the terrible happened and none of the beautiful either. But that isn’t this version because when my visa ran out and I had to leave I returned to a boy from Kent who was still trying to take over my home – remember? The shaman is still there, still cracking eggs, some other poor mug hauling sweat lodge blankets from the dome to strings in the barn. And I was mad about you. And I hadn’t had nearly enough. So when I returned to England I rang you and said, Come, and I sent you a ticket and you arrived like a bird of paradise into the grey, muted lines of Heathrow, emerging through arrivals with wings folded, hair piled, a being from another world you may as well have had arrows on your back for all the difference you were to the ordinariness of English luggage trolleys and coffee shop chairs and square, dusty air. I had a thirtieth birthday party. I introduced you to my friends. I had left them large and soft round the edges, brown hair, un-pierced and come back a peroxide stick, a wild man at my side, your shark’s hook earring, tattoos and rings and I think they looked at each other and thought, Okay, and said, privately, Jesus. I remember all the things unsaid at the table like Who is this guy and What’s happened and I remember not caring because we were in our bubble and we were staying there. We found cocaine to go in our needles instead of crystal meth which we had swapped to in Australia instead of speed because it made us invincible. It cannot be unknown; it cannot be undone. It sealed up, in those early days, all the fear and all the dread and cocaine did the same when we couldn’t get hold of it in England. We locked ourselves away and built altars to our art and the shaman skipped from room to room not knowing what to make of it, of you who held him in no regard whatsoever. You had come from a land of unbroken lineage to holy powerful people, you didn’t give the boy from Kent half a second of your time. You said, Let’s go to an eclipse party in Zambia, and we went.

“Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.” Stamisław Jerzy Lec (1909 - 1966)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe