Kadoc

After the small measures in Albufeira we didn't know what to expect of Kadoc. The night porter at our hotel had told us the discos were big, but he hadn't been where we were going. He ought to have said huge. We now understood why the place was 12 km outside the city, in the middle of nowhere. It wouldn't fit in a city.

"We'd like to go to Kadoc," Mirash said in his American accent, when hurling into the cab. Everyone else speaks the name in a more European fashion, but Mirash insists on his American pronunciation; the freaky "A".
    "You go there," I hear the taxi-driver reply as I close the door. He's already driving, giving me the feeling closing car doors while driving isn't a have-to herearound.
    "How much?" (You always need to ask for the price in advance, because they don't have any taximeters. And if you haven't settled for a price the driver can take as much as they pleasure once you're there. You don't want that.)
    "Seventeen. Two thousand with the tip." He doesn't laugh. We're waiting for that laugh telling us, "I'm just kidding, motherfuckers", but he there's no sign of any laughter. We work our brains out over this driver. 2000 escudos, that's about 100 kronor. He looks dangerous.
    "Was that a joke?" Mirash asks in Swedish.
    I shrug my shoulders. "He said 1700, we don't have to tip him unless we want to... do we?" I look at the driver in the back mirror and he still looks dangerous. No, it's dark, and that light in his face. Of course he looks dangerous. And he's driving like a maniac. I have to hold both the car door and Mirash not to hit either one of them.
    "Where you from, London?"
    "No, Sweden." Mirash' voice. The driver gives me the fuck-you-man-are-you-from-Sweden?-look, and I nod. "Yeah, Stockholm. You know the city?"
    He doesn't reply.
    Shit.
    Some five minutes later both Mirash and I shut up with our Swedish in the back seat, and the ride begins to feel just fine. In spite of his crazy driving.
    "You're okay?" For the first time in a friendly voice. Mirash and I are shocked. We're cool — like two blocks of ice — but we're shocked.
    "We're just fine."
    "That's good, with me you're safe. He makes a forbidden overtaking and fuck-yous the car going in the right direction. "Don't worry, that's the only way to take them." If we collide, we die. Don't worry, you won't feel a thing." I'm desperately hoping for this to be a joke, but I'm afraid either way he's right. If we collide we won't feel a thing.
    We're both pleased as he makes a U-turn outside the disco to let us off. Mirash pays him 2000 escudos, but he returns us worth of 300. We give him a 200$ tip and he is overjoyed. "Thanks, man! Fuck a lot! You need condoms?"
    But we're already far away from the ticking time bomb, and not into condom throwing. We're admiring the building, it shines. Literary shines.
    It's 11.15 p.m., but we're early. The disco doesn't open up until half past eleven, the guy pushing us out of it explains. His English isn't that good, so he points at the "3" on his wristwatch then on the "6", while saying something in Portuguese, and quasi-English. We're trying to understand if it opens in fifteen minutes, in an hour, or if it opens tonight at all, but he doesn't understand.
    A big guy approaches, saying something in Portuguese. Bot Mirash and I shout "ENGLISH", stamping our feet. It works. He begins to speak English.
    "We open up in fifteen minutes. You've been to Kadoc before?" We shake our heads. "Okay, I'll explain the rules." There were quite some rules so they needed being explained. And they wouldn't let us in with the camera, at first. "Our staff doesn't like being photographed," said a third guy. They had an argument in Portuguese, leaving the big guy with the victory. "Some people don't want to be photographed, but a few pictures are okay. I'm okay with it, you can come up to me and take a picture, there's no problem."
    So we wait.
    The place is opening up in fifteen minutes, and there's still no one there but us and the solemnly black-dressed staff.
    Fifteen minutes later we’re inside glancing big-eyed to our lefts and to our rights. The place is still empty... just us and the staff. A guy I would later recognize as one of the hired dancers passes the dance floor in checked pants and those thick-soled shoes, trendy in Portugal, and also in Sweden. His pony tail swaggering back and forth with the rest of his head shaved.
    The place was larger than we had expected; it looked smaller from the outside. The furnituring was that lil’ weird; chairs and couches not always comfortable but fun to watch. On the upper floor was located one of the main two bars, headstamping the DJs and opposite it, on the other side of the dance floor, was the other one. Another bar was to the left of us and one to the right, one behind us and one in front of us, one above and... I was spinning around when meeting Mirash’ smiling face. I smiled back with the word "bars" on my lips and kept spinning for a brief while. I had sweet firewater on my mind.
    Above the heads of the people in the upper main bar there was a huge TV-screen, broadcasting some old western. The balcony reached all the way like a counter through the room. Following it we found a place behind glass, with a smaller dance floor of its own. Salsa music and small TV-screens, building up this big TV, screaming back and white cartoons at us. And later, whatever was on that channel.
    The garden, just outside, still Kadoc Campus, was another world. Palms and ponds shining in bright, exotic green in the darkness of the night. Farther away it shifted in pink and red, and there were arcades and a toast bar. But the garden wouldn’t be full tonight, the girl working in the bar looking like a giant orange told me later. "Yesterday both the house and the garden was full, but not tonight," she smiled. Though the house really did get full.
    As we make it back in the soft music stops and the floodlight darkens, light softens until nearly pitch. As by an invisible force everyone gathers round the dance floor, which is a plastic blue pool, still empty. It’s like we’re all silently chanting and this is some holy ritual. There are so many of us, so many. I think I never noticed before just now. And then it begins.
    A green laser beam makes a sudden appearance and ricochets through the air. Smoke is above the pool and classical music is playing. The disco lights in the ceiling were slowly approaching the floor and the light show operated in symbiosis with the music. Making the room all sunshine whenever the bass hit.
    At 2 am the house music began, putting the chanting souls in the pool and within the hour they where all sprayed in foam. People where jumping, screaming, bathing and swinging their arms and clothes, all covered in foam. The hired dancers had these futurelike style, one of the guys dressed in a miniskirt, high heels, and a weird-looking hat with a bluish fishing net over it. The other guy looking like a metal dragon, and the girl swimming around in her high heels and fish suit.
    Dum, dum, dum... a voice calls from allover. Everyone’s jumping in trance. The guy by the foam canon looking like the devil himself with the red light against his naked upper body. Yabi-yabi-yabi. Their hands now above their heads and I sense the beginning of something bigger than all of us.. Rug — argh. Rug-rug-rug... Aaargh! The light switches on and for a second it’s daylight in Kadoc. De dancing crowed is screaming with their hands far above their heads, and the foams spraying above them. DANCE! The voice commands, the music continues and the dancers are wild again.
    It keeps up all night.