With the first rays of the August sun, sometimes at noon, sometimes in the afternoon, and even the next day, with the same sun of the previous morning, scorching destructive action, destroying the vampire, they came out of the late hour. dressed like a louse. Clothes stuck to the body due to moisture, a wrinkled jacket and a shirt in skirt mode over pants are like an abstract painting, dotted with hives from various alcohol mixtures and you don’t want to know what else, recognizable traces of a night of parties and empty; perhaps a neck smeared with make-up from a flirtatious attempt four hours earlier, legs burning and swollen from so many hours of body support or dancing in circles on the sticky floor, steps like Neil Armstrong on the moon, a stranger’s phone number hastily marked on a local card, parched mouth and bangs, welded to the sandy forehead, calcareous from the sweat of different watches. The rest of the day was like Alpe d’Huez.
Dressed for a Saturday night, penniless, and mingled with tourists who are preparing to conquer a condominium on the sand by the shore at this hour; or mixed in ancient times among those happily jogging to an aperitif of vermouth and 100 pesetas sardines, the last survivors of a beach night in so many enclaves of the Spanish coast trudged along as they do today.
It doesn’t matter where on the coast it happened. It is still observed as a hereditary custom, which – out of modesty and parental responsibility – was never passed down from parents to children, but which, among some young people, was passed down from generation to generation as a summer habit. Unexpected, almost hidden and at the same time exciting, the vampire night represented the loss of nocturnal virginity, after which many decided not to repeat this experience. Others have not traversed the path since they first crawled out of a coastal dive, leaving their dignity inside the after-party since the DJ announced the end of the session with a piece by Snake Corps, for the hundredth time at dawn. there was a Chimo Bayo hit or the latest acid house remix brought from London clubs.
As the years go by, everything from nostalgia to shame is remembered. For those who love to giggle that today’s youth is hopeless, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Young people 35-40 years ago, fathers and mothers of young men who today leave another slum with circles under their eyes, like a raccoon – exactly the same as in the past – did exactly the same, with the difference that the then opportunity to buy house, get a couple of cars throughout your working life, or get two full years of unemployment. Some have even gone as far as creating a family, unstructured or not. Where it used to sound like house, now it’s Steve Aoki or Carl Cox.
After-parties were and still are places to collect skulls dragged by an invisible broom machine, where the coals of the time limit of modern nightclubs and bars ended and end. Rogue holes, suitable for loosening the tongue, where the interesting happens in the toilets, and the tedious in the bars; waitresses and waitresses who carry the plates of those who refuse to return home and spend the next hours eating the roof, stories that repeat like an eternal return from the last quarter of the 20th century when Radio Futura sang “August moon, / make me arrive tomorrow / without that killer dream. Mother and lady of wine. / August moon.
Sometimes I look on the Internet to find out what happened to those I met when the end of the century was ten or twelve years away. Some of them are grandparents, one heads a subsidiary of Ibex; some continue to be vampires, eternal villains straight out of an Anne Rice novel. Others have died. Facebook is full of abandoned accounts no longer followed, a phantom metaverse populated by people who are no longer among the living, where bushes of round globes cross a virtual street back and forth at the mercy of an imaginary wind. The owner didn’t leave a password and so he continues, with time stopped and his photo album full of smiles and memories of when he left the after-party, of those August nights that merged with the morning sun and seemed like they could last everywhere, eternity. But it turned out not.