It was entirely possible that the intentions of the night had been fun, or touted as such, but that notion had been long forgotten now. It was the imprint of a memory eroding fast; merely a note-to-self scribbled in haste at the time of the last intelligible conversation, and on that precipice written illegible. This was endurance now and the brain staggered on. Urged by its blind faith in booze and boosted by the boisterous peer pressure of previous anecdotes, which lay stored in some dark recess and saved for moments such as this.

‘Remember the time when?’

But nobody ever ‘remembers the time when’, not really.

Long intervals spent stood by a wall in confusion as his stomach rumbled its disapproval. Disappointment from his liver. Was he winning this war or losing it? And anyway just what war was this exactly?

He edged cross legged through the long room. Cavernous in scope and scooped out of the old and red brickwork of the archways and foundations, that lay in the belly of the station. Where up above hours before commuters had filed about in shades of grey, of blues and browns and of blacks and the odd infusion of a Friday tie that coloured in silly the Lowry scene.

Now down below, in a hot and sticky lot letted out for club nights, he squirmed in the toilet queue, holding it in and thought the words, ‘permanent damage.’

He hopped and began to leak. He was losing the war, he decided.

From the queue he could observe the mass in front of him, they were jumping up and down in unison. There was nothing wild about the movements of the crowd that flowed and swelled as one. The only wild thing was what lay behind the fervour of their collective nod to the beat. The wiggles of a hand at the end of an arm, rising up to the lights that beamed down from the old industrial arched roof; the subtle differences of pointing index fingers that shot upwards in recognition. These were the only markers of the wild individual.

The faces smiled dumbly. Faces that said: “This is me dancing, I am Bernays’ child!”

The arrows aiming up and signposting the cries from within of “I am here and this is me, and I am here doing this”.

There was something of school about this picture, and they looked more and more to him like children, sat in classrooms pushing one finger to lips and the other to the heavens. Attempting to stifle the urge of calling out the answers that seemed so desperately obvious, and which seemed to be in such frantic need of sharing.  Hands in classrooms that shoot up high and straight like a ruler, as though the measurement of straightness and height will be used to judge in the automatic system of being picked first. The teacher nodding in random selection and encouraging in a fatherly/motherly tone: ‘Yes, go on...’  

A strobe light is the answer in this scene. That is all that it is and all it can be. And that’s what it appeared to him to be as he stood there blinking in its flashes, squirming uncomfortably for the toilet.

‘Then why ask?’ he muttered.

By now his thoughts had led him astray. He had staggered wayward and lost his place in the queue and he cursed slurring and wondered if it was time to go home.

Then through the writhing crowd a figure walked with purpose, parting the dry ice which steamed out of unseen tubes as though the building were angry and irritable. He recognised the figure as linking in some way to that alien memo he had sent himself earlier in the evening. The figure had a face and the face had a smile. This night has something to do with fun, he thought.  

The figure moved closer and he saw that it was a woman.

‘You look terrible’ said the woman and a frown replaced her smile.

Was this his girl? Did he have a girl?

He looked deep into her eyes; he saw no spark of anything sexual or of anything at all that he could recognise, only the dull sigh of concern. After a while and after opening his mouth several times in failed attempts of communication, he broke his dumb state and spoke slowly.

 ‘They’re all pointing up!’ he shouted in her ear and gestured towards the dancing mob.

 ‘Yes’ she said.

 ‘At what?’ he asked, and he raised his shoulders in a confusion so drunkenly honest and innocent that he resembled a child only sickeningly larger and aged.

‘At what?’ he mouthed sadly and she giggled bored.

‘Here drink this’ she said and held a large glass of water up to his face.

He shook his head. Even though his tongue was dry in his mouth, something inside pushed him to decline.

‘Don’t be daft’ she said ‘You’re pissed’ and pressed the plastic glass to his lips.

He drank heavily and greedily and the clear cold water ran down his cheeks and chin and onto his t-shirt.

Then as she took the empty container away from him, his head craned towards the toilet queue and his eyes flickered in panic. She looked down at his waist and the nervous immediate jitters of his body slowed and stopped, and he hung his head low and remembered just why he hadn’t wanted the water. He felt the warm damp spread across his groin and down his leg and into his shoes and onto the floor. And what could he say to that, and what could she?

She was gone back into the crowd quickly and he was left stood alone once more by the wall in confusion, and he looked on as one or two of those fingers that pointed up to the red arched roof, instead broke the mass pattern and pointed over at him.