Spiral Tribe - Part 1

Henri and the Secret Raves

The location was always held secret until the last minute.

Rêve parties, free-parties, teufs…. They were all illegal. It was rare for the police to show up, but even in 1995, raves required a measure of cunning on the part of the organizers. So no one knew where the teuf – French pig Latin for fête – was actually happening until about an hour beforehand.

Henri and I arrived at the edge of the city by metro precisely at 11 pm, at one of the portes. We exhaled clouds of condensation into the mid-November chill and stomped our feet to kill time, carefully observing the cars swerving through the roundabout.

After an intense wait with no way of knowing if they were coming or not, a tiny white car finally stopped for us. It was close to 11:30. Henri and I both squeezed into the back seat, piling onto the two friends already there.

Kim, from the front passenger side, turned around and offered us each an ecsta. She always had some type of pill or tab to share: her supply of dance-friendly substances seemed endless and effortless. I’d declined her previous offers, but tonight felt different, and I swallowed the E because I was tired of overthinking it.

We peeled away from the curb in our pot de yaourt, and no one talked: Radio Nova was cranked to a deafening level. Petit Pierre gunned it and we sped off past the entrance to the beltway around Paris, preferring to take small roads to reach our destination.

Le pot de yaourt, or yogurt container, a nickname for a tiny car.