I feel very sorry for myself today. The rare sight of clouds has given me an excuse to drink Yorkshire tea and watch Friends in Spanish… What’s worse, all hope for a bikini bod has been quashed by 55 cent cartons of wine and 43 cent chocolate biscuits that are my new love interests – between them they have given me far more satisfaction than any guapo.
As for the job hunt, I like to call myself freelance… I’ve been a complete job slut and have got around most of San Antonio. One of my favourites was a short stint working at a tiny reggae beach hut serving cocktails; I spent a few days learning every type of mojito under the sun and perfecting my glass polishing technique. Sadly, it was just across the bay and a deathly hangover meant that I couldn’t be fagged to get the boat one morning and haven’t dared to go back since. My boss was a white rasta who was very proud of his bar, and had made it explicitly clear in sharing his secret cocktail recipes, he was trusting me with his life’s work, and I ought not to abuse that. Oops.
Basically, now I’m completely impoverished and have been on an egg diet for a week because eggs are complete bargains. Eggy bread has re-entered my life after years of abstinence, while every morning starts sunny side up.
But Ibiza brings a new meaning to getting scrambled (that was awful, sorry). This place is filled with “wreck-heads” and “ket-heads” and Mandys and Charlies. Drugs is a favourite topic of conversation for a huge number of workers out here. A friend offers an in-depth account of his deliberate “k-hole” on a daily basis – probably more actually. The biggest workers’ apartment block is dubbed “Ket Castle”, or “Ketless Castle” for the last few days because of a ketamine drought on the Island which, needless to say, hasn’t gone down very smoothly.
The clubs, of course, are a hotbed for pills and powder. It’s a different place when you’re on drugs to when you’re not; half the crowd are in their own world beneath their sunglasses even though it’s dark (it’s meant to stop paranoia of people noticing their fat pupils, but of course in any normal world this actually makes it pretty clear what’s going on). Another outright clue is in the fact that even guys are queuing to use the toilet cubicles; not that many blokes need a shit in one night.
Basically, it’s pretty undisguised. If anything, the clubs embrace it and probably make more money selling €8 water than all their other drinks. The funny thing is, people do actually know what they’re doing. Workers who’ve been out here months know to force some food down the next day even when it feels like chewing sawdust, and to constantly drink water all day to flush out the nasty pill remnants. I’m learning that it’s when people think anything goes when they’re on holiday that it gets serious: people popping pills for the first time every night, then lazing in the heat all day and getting back on it by mid afternoon. This week a girl died in Space superclub while I was there after taking a dodgy pill or something; the next day another girl fell over her balcony in the hotel down the road while she was pilled up… I’m starting to notice the nasty underside to this buzzing island.
