JFK's (1)

In my early twenties I would sometimes go to a nightclub called JFK's on a Friday. Friday night was rock misfits' night and the whole place was a sea of black. Black denim, black leather, black lace, black suede, black cotton, black lycra, black hair(frequently), black eye makeup(more often than not).

Amongst incomplete memories that precede terrible hangovers, some of my fondest are from JFK's.

• The first aider dressing a wound on my hand and telling me that the only reason it was bleeding so profusely was that I'd been drinking. "That makes sense" I said "alcohol is an anti-coagulant". She replied "I wouldn't know about that love, but it thins the blood".
• A very attractive young woman walking past my friend and I, and once she was gone, my friend conspiratorially (and yet proudly) telling me "I caught scabies off her".
  
• A female friend of mine falling down drunk so suddenly that it looked either as though she'd been shot my some unseen marksman, or she was a tree that had just been felled for her valuable timber.

I went to JFK's for the last time on my 29th birthday. I went again for the very last time after a drunken works night out in my early 30's, and I went again, for what really must be the very very last time by accident, a couple of weeks ago. I was far too old, and it isn't the same, not everybody was wearing black, I only recognized about half of the songs and none of the people, and it hasn't even been called JFK's for over a decade.

Richard "Too old. Too old to begin the training" B