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FOR OPENERS: I know it is Tuesday not Monday as is indicated above. THIS WILL: Be fixed later. RIGHT NOW RE-POSITIONING: Kurt Cobain, the Internet, graduate school, frowning automatically when someone threatens to open the curtains, my attorney, book design, what we publish here, Lewis Lapham, Harper's, Douglas Coupland, Geist, boards, e-books, silverorange, copyediting, Flash, Heather, drugs, Prince Edward Island, mission statements/mandates, the word "ingratiate", being a man/woman of the people, nicknames, A & W, the Vancouver Canucks, the Cadre, fatherhood, McSweeneys, Alejandro Bustos, rabble.ca, Sven Birkerts, publicity, Franny, the future, cigarettes, Entertainment Weekly, postmodernism, the fate of reading in an electronic age, Douglas & McIntyre, the Mike Lecky. SO: I beg your continued patience. WELL: Not beg really. MORE: Ask. SHIT: You know. MORE IMPORTANTLY: Below is a great essay. SEE I KNOW IT'S GREAT BECAUSE I: Just read it myself — Ed.

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Edinburgh is full of them: wanton souls who put so much shite up their nose and into their veins that they lose their love for partying. Those who still manage to leave their house in daylight hours: the partiers. The ones who can’t because the sun is too bright, the police warrants too numerous and the effort too much: the trainspotters. Charlie is doing an ungraceful pirouette on the line separating the trainspotters and partiers.

Charlie no longer dances through life, like when he was 13 and on his first hit of ecstasy. Now he wanders. From swagger to saunter, Charlie’s resume of drug intake grows. So does his vinyl collection in its shimmery, orange box. The box is Charlie’s eternal date.

The curtained light reveals his chiseled, scarred cheeks. Attractive, Charlie’s just as comfortable bent over his turntables as he is over a coke-dusted mirror.

Today isn’t a day for tea and turkey, according to Charlie. Christmas is for nite-clubs and after-hours, where revelers go to "get fucked, coz that’s what we do in Scotland," Charlie says.

On the scratchy sofa, next to his comatose buddy Dan, Charlie’s eyes peer into fake fire. The propane flames light up his shadowed, tired face. In the dim living room he’s tough too, showing a new arrival his nape-of-the-neck piercing. Then you see Charlie in the daylight. His monoexpression and dilated hazel eyes aren’t straight. Purple half circles hang below his gaze.

In a decipherable accent Charlie details his December 25 feast:

"Oh tonight." He deadpans."I’ve taken about 7 pills, some coke, smoked some microdots [of LSD], a couple valium and there’s some Ketamine on the way."

But he refuses to smoke hash or marijuana.

It’s day 14 of twenty-four hour holiday partying.

Charlie is the nucleus of these living-room after hours clubs. He provides the soundtrack for binging in exchange for beer and acid. As the partiers come up on their ‘nth’ cap of E, 6:30 am Boxing day, Charlie fades in some French techno…Isolee. His second calling after getting fucked is djing.

"I like the old school stuff, ay. Kraftwerk and the like," Charlie says flashing one of two gapped-tooth smiles of the night.

While his brain floods with another dose of methylamphetamines, he mixes tracks seamlessly. "My ma, has been calling for two weeks wonderin when I’m gonna come home," he says, "I told her Merry Christmas yesterday. I’ll go home when I get tired o’this, ay." Flicking switches and matching beats, there is no euphoria in his expression. He never brags about how high he is. Charlie just divines the synthetic rhythm with his feet and fingers.

Around noon, easing back into the scratchy plaid couch, sniffing from the last rail his right foot taps twice as fast as everyone’s head bobs. He’s able to pin point speedy beats in the most downtempo music. In the post-dawn artificial darkness, a doctor’s checklist of debauchery would show almost nothing. Aggro, skittish behaviour? No

Hands and black-flame tattooed forearms tensed? Nay.

Out of control shaking, convulsions, giggling? Nope.

Just one 140+bpm techno beat channeling through Charlie’s right foot.

Foot still patting the carpet, his second grin comes when Louie arrives with some horse tranquilizers to snort. A minute later, he frowns when someone threatens to open the curtains.

Miranda Post knows today is Tuesday and so do we.