Warning: Contains recreational drug use.
The Lapdog and I had officially parted ways, and it has been pretty quiet for the first few days. I mean, yes, there were phone calls and texts where he asked, pleaded, then begged for me to change my mind, but nothing too drastic, you know? Just the usual one-sided breakup stuff. It wasn’t until a couple of weeks later, when the subject of a festival came up – a festival that we had already bought tickets for. Pretty costly ones, too. Well, they were for a couple of dickheads of our calibre, anyway.
“So, do you still want to go to NASS Festival?” he asked. “Or shall I try to sell your ticket to someone at the skate park?”
I said yes to selling my ticket originally, but then The Lapdog asked again, and again, and then another couple of times after that.
Fuck it, I thought to myself. What’s the worst that can happen?
Famous last words, huh?
NASS Festival
I thought things would be easy, breeze, beautiful for me at the festival, but it was anything but those things. Lapdog immediately pissed me off, as soon as I got in the car… but it was like, five am, or something stupid.
“I thought we were travelling with your buddies,” I said.
“Yeah, we were. They’ve gone in that other lad’s car instead.”
That meant, we’d be together in the car for at least four hours. Alone. Just me and him… in the midst of a breakup. Oh, the joys. I correctly guessed that we’d either fight or fuck, and we did plenty of the former. We fought about Grey, us, friends, jobs, the one tent he brought with us, and even life goals – and that was just in the first hour of our journey. I wanted to throw myself out of his Vauxhall Nova on the motorway at 60-ish miles per hour.
By the time we stopped at the motorway services, approximately halfway through the journey, the atmosphere in the car was so frosty that there was practically ice on the windows. I slammed the car door because I knew he hated that, and he didn’t hold the door to the services open for me for the same reason.
Such petty, silly idiots we were.
When we finally got to the field-come-car park and parked up, I reckon we were both ready to throttle the other… and things hadn’t even gotten started yet.
Day + Night One
The Lapdog and I actually didn’t argue for a full twenty minutes once we’d gotten inside the festival itself. I was in awe at the size of it: fields full of tents already, huge stages, fairground rides, and too many food stalls that actually weren’t enough at all. It was my very first festival, and my very first skating event of any real kind… so, of course, I’d forgotten to pack my rollerblades. Tut.
The tent was a lot smaller than he’d realised. I knew we’d be sharing one, but I hadn’t realised that we’d be sleeping almost on top of each other. I’d made my big decision: I’d chosen Grey. This, whatever it was, felt like cheating on Grey already. I hadn’t signed up for that.
“We’re not shagging,” I told him, as we fiddled around with the sleeping bags. Thankfully, he’d brought two of those.
“I know,” he sighed. “I’m not going to do anything.”
We both knew that was a lie.
We socialised with his group of friends, who had arranged their tents in such a way that we had a small, blocked-off circle of our own, which almost served as privacy.
One of them handed me a metal camping mug with some sort of broth with chunks and strands of something unrecognisable in it.
“Mushrooms,” Lapdog quietly told me. “Magic. You can say no.”
No? Don’t be silly. I was a youngster who wanted to be grown, so I took the little cup, sipped the broth, then spluttered as a mushroom chunk went down with it. The broth was actually chicken noodle soup, which made me chuckle for no real reason.
I’d never done magic mushrooms before; just cannabis and some binge-drinking. The Lapdog talked me through it. Patiently. Kindly, too. It was quite lovely, which made me feel quite bad about my decision. Still, I only had forty-five minutes or so to feel bad. That’s how long it would take, apparently, for “the effects” to kick in.
“What are the effects?” I asked. I probably should’ve asked that before I consumed the entire cup, then half of another one.
“Colours will get brighter,” he said.
“Your hands will have a tail,” one of his friends chimed in.
“Oh, you ate the mushrooms? You’re about to see some weird shit!” another friend added.
The too-late anxiety must’ve been splattered across my face, because Lapdog squeezed my hand. “I’ve got your back. No funny business, I promise.”
I didn’t realise until many years later, but Lapdog didn’t take the magic mushrooms that night. He didn’t take anything. Why not? Because he wanted to make sure that I was okay and had the best time. I wish I’d known that before. It’s such a beautiful, innocent, lovely gesture, don’t you think? Maybe I had chosen the wrong man?
An hour later, tripping away only marginally because my cups apparently contained a “beginners dosage,” Lapdog had the bright idea to go on the fairground rides. I basically skipped to the cage-style one, that uses gravity (etc.) to keep you glued to the half-seat as it spins at a ridiculously fast speed. I turned to face him… and he was twenty-five feet tall, at least. Many, many, many times the size of me. I turned in the opposite direction, and the other people on the ride were even taller. They also had exceptionally large heads, but still regular human-sized eyes.
“Everyone is tall,” I cried to Lapdog, but he just laughed.
“You’re tripping balls. Welcome to the club.”
The effects wore off after a couple of hours, but my cheeks hurt from laughing for at least three days after the two-day festival. Lapdog was the funniest that he had ever been, and the same went for his friends, too. Oh, and strangers.
My mind almost blew clean off when random men with bags walked amongst the tents, offering their wares.
“I’ve got cocaine,” one said.
“Laughing balloons,” another shouted.
“Pills. Anyone want pills?” was the one that seemingly got Lapdog’s attention.
He popped them in his pocket. “Saving them for later,” he mouthed to me.
I couldn’t believe how open it all was, how little festival-goers and security cared, how perfectly normal it was to barter a crate of Red Bull for a couple of baggies of this-or-that. I’d been somewhat corrupted by the party lifestyle already, but NASS Festival opened my eyes in ways that only a festival can. I’m pretty sure that I saw someone using pretty much every drug in that place. I am most definitely sure that I saw people selling pretty much all of them. I learned about a whole new catalogue of drugs in that place. It was utter insanity.
Day + Night Two
After a heavy night of more mushrooms, enough Red Bull to kill an oversized man, baby-wipe showers, and a strip of chewing gum, it was time to do the absolute worst things you can ever do at a festival: use the facilities.
I must’ve waited for twenty-five minutes or more in a queue for the ladies, and then I had the utter misfortune of experiencing the kind of stomach that one can have after the concoction I’d had… with no toilet paper. Thankfully (or not,) I still had one of the baby wipes that I’d ‘showered’ with in the pocket of my shorts. No idea why I’d popped it in there, but hell, was I thankful for it.
Breakfast consisted of more Red Bull; some Pro Plus. which one of the lads snorted; and bacon baps with no sauce in rolls that were starting to go stale, cooked s-l-o-w-l-y on the world’s smallest camping stove. Everyone worked together. Someone made something akin to coffee. Another person handed out bottles of water that someone had had the good sense to bring, but no one actually drank. It was quite the sight to see, and one of the best memories I have.
We watched some bands that were on the main stages, some of which were big-ish but I didn’t know. Sponsored skater boys did tricks on huge half-pipes, taking the piss out of “dirty wood-pushers” that fell off their skateboards. There were even some small prize-winning stalls, but some of them had run out of prizes already. Lapdog won me a small bear with a love heart, which I took with a I’m-warning-you glare.
The day seemed to whip by in seconds, and it was time for the night begin before I’d even finished with the daytime activities.
I decided to stay sober on the second night, mostly because I didn’t want to have to violently shit in the tiniest of cubicles, in the most open of festival toilets, with a queue of a gazillion people outside. It was the only thing that kept me sensible on that day.
The Lapdog had other ideas. He popped a pill after dinner. Something with cherries on, apparently. I didn’t care about those. To this day, I’ve never taken a single ‘pill.’ I’d grown up in the Leah Betts generation, and I didn’t fancy dying in a field during my first ever festival.
That pill turned him into a lecherous, clingy, annoying bastard. From around one after he’d taken it, to our five-thirty am bedtime, I wanted to punch him. He kept trying to hold my hand, rest his hand on my knee, and even pull my camping chair closer to his… which, of course, resulting in me falling off the chair to rounds of applause from every bloody direction. It’s not a true festival without some light humiliation, right?
He repeatedly tried to sleep with me. I repeatedly said no. He kept taking pills. His hands repeatedly wandered, to the point where I got out of the tent and slept outside it. He’d never been like that with me before, and I fucking hated it. It made my skin crawl.
Day Three + Home
I refused to talk to him, the morning after the pilled-up night before. We packed everything away in complete silence because he was too afraid to talk to me. That just made madder, obviously. Not even an apology? Cunt.
The journey home was endless and horrendous, but at least we had an extra lad in the car to take the frosty edge off. I had no idea where he’d come from, and he wasn’t one of Lapdog’s friends. Just a randomer who needed a lift home, I’m guessing. We dropped him off not too far from our county.
“I’m sorry,” Lapdog said.
“Get fucked,” I said right back.
Those were the last few words that we said together for weeks.
I slept for 13 hours when I got home.
The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Cyprus.
Thanks so much for reading my blog today! 🖤
Want to read all about The Lapdog’s story, right from the very beginning? You’ll find that right here.
You can also read all about my disastrous dating history, right from the beginning, right here: Table of Dating Contents.
Alternatively, why not have a little peek around here: