ni.chol.as

The sign above the stairs down to the toilets reads, “Tight Ship People, Tight Ship”. An exhortation to watch the slippery floor would have been more useful. It was like someone had spiked the cleaner’s mop and bucket with KY lube. I have been convinced to come here tonight, partly against my better judgement. It was always bound to be a weird experience, and I acknowledge that I wanted that. In spite of this, I didn’t need to see the girl with red-stained sanitary napkins masquerading for epaulettes on her Hitler costume. “Be thankful for small mercies”, I remember thinking, “at least her tampon earrings are fresh from the wrapper.”

Tonight, we’re in Interzone, a real-life homage to William S. Burroughs’ heroin-spiked nightmare visions from “Naked Lunch“. The dresscode read “misfits, gypsies, pirates, terrorists” and as best I can see it’s been taken quite literally. Tonight there are bands, performance art, artists, DJs, a marketplace, all orbiting the common theme of this weird 1950s beat novel. To buy drinks we head to the Bureau de Change where I’m offered a one-to-one exchange rate on Hell Pounds which look and smell like real money and have, indeed, got HELL POUNDS written on them above chinese characters and a picture of some doubtless important man from Asian history. We get booze, since this entire place will clearly not appear to make any sense at all until we are thoroughly wasted. The menu charged 3.5 Hell Pounds for Organic Beer and, if you can get past the implicit message to be a good boy, “Corporate Beer” costs 2 Hell Pounds. We do the Right Thing and drink some zero-carbon-footprint hippy lager until they run out.

We walk through a large room with a stage in. A man with a crop of flowers on his head and a silver bin-bag ensemble masquerading as clothes is dancing around whilst a girl sings. The rest of the memories faded but their enthusiasm in the face of absurdity was impressive. Another band featured a compact-faced girl singing some kind of Russian soprano lead vocals against a remarkably competent violinist with snappy drums behind. Then a man kicked in with a rap and the whole thing descended into Linkin Park with violins.

A man walked past with a vest made of large silver donuts wearing a bright red horned helmet. Later, I noticed that all of the silver donuts were actually little clocks. None of them told me the time. Someone upstairs, in the bazaar, had painted a giant multi-titted pig-monster on a massive canvas. People stopped and stared and I’m pretty sure at least one nerdy looking type touched himself. The rest of the Tangiers bazaar was made up of little stalls and large numbers of sofas upon which the exhausted residents of Interzone collapsed and frolicked, slept and zoned out. A genius DJ played tracks that crossed over North-African sounds with conventional Western electronica whilst above, giant white raptors hung from the ceiling waiting to fall on the unsuspecting. A man who came dressed as a butcher was wearing sausages around his neck. We found him later, bereft of his meaty necklace. Apparently he’d been convinced to try turning them into balloon animals which had catastrophically failed when the sausage-poodle’s head leaked everywhere. The butcher had also managed to lose a pair of gammon steaks which failed to turn up despite me keeping an eye open for the rest of the night. He seemed a little morose; I felt sorry for him.

Later, a man with no clothes on whatsoever was queuing for the cloakroom to, presumably, get his clothes back. I can’t quite peg how weird this seemed at the time.

The latter part of the night, into the very small hours was spent in the company of a pair of Dream Machines. A light bulb obscured by rotating cylinder of cut paper designed to project light at a certain frequency to coincide with particular brainwaves. In the background, an array of electronics and a single guitarist tuned out a long sludgy soundscape. Everyone in there was, in the spirit of things, pretty much stoned, tripping, asleep or a combination thereof. Given the preponderance of cushions, we jumped at the chance to relax. A guy in a Russian military uniform sucked on a pipe and was struck pale and wordless until his struggling brain rebooted into safe-mode and rendered him capable of movement again. I saw him later looking very content with the world. Another girl was writhing around on the floor clearly in the throes of ecstasy and wanting any kind of physical contact she could get. She had the tiniest feet I’ve ever seen.

With the atmosphere and sound effects slowed down to an idle thrum, I took the opportunity and went home. I took with me my new silver glittery cowboy hat whose origins will forever be lost to that bizarre place.