I was out the night before The Dry Night, at Nacelle’s B-Side on the rooftop of the Nile Maxim. The uplifting, funky-retro beats and smiling faces where juxtaposed to the somewhat despondent and melancholic state I was in at the time, having ran into two exes, both, of course, with other guys. One of which no longer talks to me due to the fact that, on two separate occasions, after seeing her with other guys, I ended up in fights with said male specimens. Until now, I vehemently deny it was my fault. Well, the second time wasn’t, anyway. Needless to say, she thinks I’m a cunt. Which leads me to my state of mind on the dry night of Wednesday 23^rd January. I thought to myself,“Fuck it, Waleed. You’re young, charismatic and people think your cool because you put pictures on the Internet. Let’s make something happen.”

10.00 pm – I’m going to call the crew and throw a house party. I finish work, put my game face on and get ready for some debauchery and shenanigans. All I would need is some speakers, booze and friends and, at that point, my depressive thoughts of the previous night were but a fleeting memory. I made some calls and Whatsapp-ed a DJ friend of mine for speakers. Then dropped some texts, had a shower and sat down to await the madness that would ensue. In my head, I saw friends and acquaintances turning up all with different, shiny, vibrant bottles of exported booze. We would listen to nu disco, dance and smile. Perhaps I would find a willing girl to take back to my bedroom and consummate how happy we were together.

11.00 pm – No one’s arrived yet. “No matter,” I thought. “It’s still early days.” It occurred to me that, although most alcohol outlets were closed on this glorious dry night, Mohamed in the supermarket down my road sells Mesiter Max under the counter. Bam! Meister Max on the way.

11.30 pm – Door bell rings. Result! I thought must be some guests. It wasn’t. But it was a dusty black bag with 14 warm Meister Max beers in it. Well, that’s a start. I walk into my brothers bedroom and asked him to partake. We didn’t have speakers, or Internet for that matter, but I was playing the same Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs song on repeat from my laptop which was already loaded on YouTube. He suggested we shotgun the warm Meisters. I agreed, so we stabbed holes in the sides of the cans and proceeded to chug. I felt sick after a few gulps and spent the next 15 minutes cleaning up the mess we had made on the floor. That was fun…

11:45 pm – No one’s arrived. I’m starting to lose hope and thinking of sleeping for the next 12 hours and forget I ever existed. Instead, I head down to the pharmacy in my building and request some Xanax. He saw my face, whispered to his colleague, and said ‘la2a’ in a very stern tone. I later found out that, due to an ‘accidental overdose’ on my part a few weeks previous, my mother had contacted all pharmacies within a 3-mile radius to ensure I no longer purchased Xanax. Very cunning, indeed, Mother. You’ve won this round…next time you may not be so lucky! While I was there, I purchased some lemon and honey flavored Pectol throat lozenges instead…

12.45 am – I had accepted at this point that A) I’m probably not as popular as I believe I am, and B) I don’t for see any party happening. I headed to the kitchen again and ate some of the remaining sogo2 sandwiches I had left over from lunch, while staring at the kettle in front of me and wondering why, across the bottom of it, there was a label that read: ‘kattle for tea’. Hmm. ‘kattle’ ….’…’KATTLE’

1.00am – I remembered that I still had some really low-grade hashish left over from this dodgy dealer who also tried to deal cocaine to a friend of mine once. Well, it wasn’t cocaine, actually. He tried to rip my friend off by selling him a form of low-grade heroin called bisa. So, as you can imagine, he wasn’t the most honest of characters, not to mention his stuff was laced with Tramadol. I didn’t even have proper rolling paper, for that matter. Just a couple of sheets ofOttoman. I rolled two shitty joints, sipped down on the remaining warm Meister beers and danced around a bit with the little yellow construction man sign my brother Timmy had stolen from Beirut airport. I was starting to feel rather drowsy from all the Tramadol, so I went to my room to watch TV and fell asleep to Top Movies where Are We There Yet? featuring Ice-Cube, was on for the sixth time that week.