He adored chemsex. He idolised the experiences of it out of proportion… No. Make that: He… He romanticised it out of proportion. Yeah. To him, chemsex symbolised the subversive nature of human existence which now pulsated to the rhythm of an inextinguishable desire that has awakened within him.’
Ugh. No. Let me start this over.
He was too romantic about chemsex, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the disinhibiting platform of sexual freedom it provided. To him, chemsex meant an abundance of hot and sweaty men, and an unceasing supply of desire which always found its way to his cock…’
Ah! Corny, too corny for my taste. Can we… Can we try and make it more profound?
He adored chemsex. For him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of individual integrity that caused so many people to take the easy way out was rapidly turning the town of his dreams in…’
No, that’s going to be too preachy. I mean, you know, let’s face it, I want to sell some books here.
He adored chemsex, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitised by drugs, loud music, internet, crime, death, Grindr…’
Too angry, I don’t want to be angry.
He was as tough and romantic as the sex he loved. Behind the curtains of the regular life he pretended to have had was an underground haven of surreal existential escapism that cut through space and time, sharp like the tip of the pin which drilled into his veins in order to open the gates of heaven - every Friday evening, when the weekend began.’
'Chemsex was his life, and it always would be’.
A bit of explanation here… I am not comparing my prosaic capabilities in any way to those possessed by that other Jew name Allen. I am using his monologue from Manhattan as the blueprint for my ‘Homage to Chemsex’ precisely because I possess no literary skills at all. And also, because the anguish of expression conveyed in the piece feels very appropriate to me. If someone asked me to write a book about chemsex when I was still a part of the scene, I would most certainly spend just as much time (if not more!) trying to come up with a fitting opening line as Woody Allen did whilst summarising his love for New York City. There was no simple way to describe the complexity of what I felt towards the lifestyle I lead. Chemsex was neither about chems nor sex. It was a calling. It was greater than life. It was divine.
I still remember those Monday mornings when I would get to work still high from all the drugs that I consumed over the weekend and instead of feeling ashamed of the state I was in, I felt like a superhero because of the two identities I developed. In one of them, I was a regular guy who had a regular, boring office job, and did regular, uninteresting things. But when the weekend started I was no longer Clark Cent. Oh no, I was Superman. No, wait. Superman was lame. I was more like Bruce Banner who experimented with some dangerous chemicals every Friday evening inevitably unleashing the Hulk whose actions and motives could only be summarised by his overused catchphrase, which in this case switched from ‘Smash!’ to ‘Fuck!’. And boy did I fuck!
The amount of men that I slept with every weekend almost never closed in a single digit number. The constant pursuit of new flesh resulted in such large quantities, the game lost its sports-like appeal and turned into an abstract form. Imagine if each splash of colour on one of the Pollock’s paintings represented a person you slept with over the weekend. Now, put aside the quantity of those splashes (yup, those weekends were *busy*), their shapes and forms are so inconsistent and deformed the entire experience becomes not only surreal but incoherent. That’s what my weekends felt like to me in retrospective. But just like Pollock’s paintings there was a force behind those experiences that always managed to lure me back in.
I would often walk down the street and see someone rushing towards me, and I got too scared to look them in the eye out of fear that we may have fucked at some point in the past. Or there were those times when I would get on a bus and the only free seat available was next to a guy whom I vaguely recognised from one of the sex parties I attended over one of these indistinguishable weekends. My life turned into a stream of loopy jumps between my identities, each jump irreversibly weakening my core.
So what is it like being off chemsex? Do I miss it? Would I go back into it? The short answers to each of these questions would be: it sucks, yes and no, not intentionally. Every addict is at some point faced with a choice between life and death. The tricky thing about overcoming an addiction though is that the desire to change must come from within. You must be the one who wants to quit using if you desire that change to be truly effective. And although Woody Allen’s addiction to his beloved city was never of life-threatening proportions, he too had to finally realise that New York was no longer doing the trick for him. He had to take a different approach to battle through life. He had to look for new surroundings, new people, new experiences in order to find the right inspiration and to fulfil his ambitions.
But if it is not New York City that you are addicted to, please don’t waste your time watching Woody Allen this autumn. Watch Chemsex instead. It’s a disturbing, graphic piece which captivates both the despair of being caught up in the vicious cycle of drugs-fuelled fuck-weekends, but also the hope that comes with a bit of determination to seek happiness again. And while we’re on the subject of hope - why not stop by 56 Dean Street on your way home from the cinema, and visit David Stuart who runs the Chemsex support group at the clinic? Tell him that Adam says thank you for helping him when he needed it the most. You’ll be in good hands.
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