LAST CUBA LIBRE

CLAUDIO

As I walk, I pat the inside pocket of my Valentino coat and for a minute I panic because I can't find my Motorola, then I realise it's in the back pocket of my jeans and we turn the corner into Piazza Cavour. Greta and her girl friends get into her car and Leo, Tony and I get into Max's X5, but Tony and I suddenly change our minds because we don't like the idea of leaving the Maserati and the Porsche in the hands of the junkies and immigrants who infest the area, so in the end we drive slowly in single file along the Via Emilia towards Modena.

I turn up the volume on the radio and when I hear the notes of Lithium by Nirvana on K-rock I tap the steering wheel in time to the music, singing along with the vocalist: I'm so happy 'cause today/I found my friends/they're in my head/I'm so ugly, but that's OK/'cause so are you... and after a while I see the ray of the Labyrinth's spotlight raking the night sky and I turn into the car park, followed by Tony's Carrera.

Two parking assistants with electric torches tell us to park beside each other in front of the entrance, in the area reserved for expensive cars. I get out and give the parking assistant in earmuffs and a padded jacket a ten-euro tip. I feel amazingly good thanks to the excellent snow that Max provided.

Greta and the girls join me, with Max and Leo. The queue in front of the door is discouraging, but Tony signs that we should follow him and he slips down the path marked by hurdles to the entrance reserved for groups with tables booked and tells the hostess in a red Marlboro jacket that we are on table X and the hostess gives us our drink cards and the bouncer in a dark suit and earphone unhooks the velvet cord and stamps our hands so that we can reach the private room.

I hand in my coat to the wardrobe girl and follow Tony into the pulsing darkness of Labyrinth already packed with people who are smashed and half-naked moving sinuously to the really bad house rhythm that the transsexual DJ, TBC, has selected so carefully.

The club is called Labyrinth because it's designed like a labyrinth, with long bare corridors that cross over and lead to the various rooms with the bars, steel tables, electric blue couches and, in the central room, the largest, is the dance floor with stroboscopic lights and laser beams pointed in every direction, so that it's like being on the set of a science fiction film.

It is decidedly hot, but I am quite comfortable, out of my head in the crowd that packs the corridors. I squeeze past the bodies of sweaty girls wearing only shoes, panties and bra and bare-chested guys in leather trousers or ripped jeans, queers in transparent satin t-shirts and topless animators. Tony is in front of me and suddenly we find ourselves in a human river and we start out down this unending corridor full of young zombies with dilated pupils all going in the same direction and suddenly I find myself facing a girl who screams "Help me! I'm claustrophobic! I can't breathe! Help me find the way out!" and I step round her and continue walking behind Tony because I can't be left behind and I'm terrified of the idea getting lost in this labyrinth.

My shirt is soaking in sweat and I decide to take it off and tie it round my waist because I've lost all conception of time and it seems to me that we've been wandering around the corridors of the labyrinth for hours and I haven't the faintest idea where the exit is and suddenly a thought flashes through my mind - I will never get out of there – and I feel as if I'm going to have a panic attack and that perhaps I should ask Max to give me something to help me relax and the house music is deafening me and the sweat is dripping down my temples and my heart is beating a bit too fast and a topless girl coming down the corridor towards me along the corridor dimly lit with blue lights rubs her tits against my chest and I squeeze her arse and she doesn't even react and then the corridor opens into an enormous square room and there are topless dancers moving jerkily like robots and I put my hand on Tony's shoulder to point them out to him and when he turns round I realise that he's not Tony and I've been following a perfect stranger for...I don't know how long... and I'm alone in the middle of a swarming crowd and suddenly foam rains from the ceiling and covers us all.