Forget about the two-hour wait between turnstiles, like a cultural Disneyland-meets-UN ride: these Indians don't wear deoderant! Religion can be so vulgar. The Customs official gave me a skeptical once-over: "And what is the purpose of your stay?" Drugs. Lots and lots of them. Political revolution. You see, I'd like Maggie replaced with someone to the right of Kul the Unmentionable. "I'll be studying at the University of London," I smiled, benignly, my teeth a little stained from the complimentary red wine offered to us of British Airways. "And how long will you be staying under the Queen's tyranny?" "Five months. But maybe I'll marry well here." Stamp. And have a pleasant day.
At a deserted bus stop stood some mop-topped fashion-plate. Beatles revisited. Senior partners of a local barrister's firm waiting patiently for their lift, tucking paisley ties into cinched-up waistbands. A couple of park people scrambling for a pub, before the close of afternoon Blue-Law dry period. The only thing recognizable between London and Phoenix was the language. But then I caught a sign that read: "Please form for the queue," and I began to have doubts. No word could have four vowels in five letters, could it? I was in the village of some strange jabberwocky. * * * George Stephanopolous, first cousin of the bad-haircut character, could count himself my first friend on that stint abroad, whether he likes the recognition or not. And although he supported Dukakis in '88, I still consider him a fine human being. I don't know too many people who can resist the sight of a burning chunk of hashish stuck atop a safety tack, fuming and filling the glass with gorgeous smog...and then Just Say No. An extraordinary creation. Which is why I liked him, and is why we became fast friends. George and I met at a corner market while doing a bit of shopping. I eyed him trying to decide between a cluster of red seedless grapes and five expensive kiwi fruit. He chose the grapes, which explains part of his personality to me now. Two kinds of people choose kiwi fruit, after looking at the outrageous price tag: those of the vile Yuppie mode and genuine kiwi lovers. George chose the grapes. Why? Why do you care? Well, because seedless grapes are the simple man's fruit. The stuff of guys named Hal and Burt. Have you ever seen a Greek Orthodox sit down to carve over a hairy green nut with weird-sour juices and lots of suspicious seeds? Grapes can be brought to the most unsophisticated mouth without toil. Without being called gourmet, or faggot, or Yuppie. But when you carry a large basket of kiwi fruit to the checkstand, you've got to be so fucking sure of your own individuality that the barbs and snickering won't cause you to drop it all, in the middle of the checkstand, and run screaming humiliation. Greeks grow up slamming Budweiser and quaffing Ouzo with buddies named Constantine and Papandraou. They are not content to wander alone in a foreign country without first visiting relatives, nor would they dream of having their sexuality questioned in the middle of crowded London supermarket. George was a buddy. A chum. A Regular Guy. "How long have you been here," I asked. "We made a tour of Greece and the Low Countries during the rugby tournaments. So, I guess, since May." "You'll have to teach me about the game," I said. Which was a ruse. I already knew as much as an outsider could about rugby, having had two drinking buddies at UCSB on two different semi-pro teams. I wanted a friend named Sal. George would do. Moving every five or so years, while Dad toppled hospitals, and, in turn, got toppled, left me with painfully few friends. And so, when I found one, as in Zane's case, I co-opted his interests...which has led me to this gory and backward account of three years. George played rugby. He was neither a revolutionary nor an addict, and I was neither able nor willing to enter into a discipline which would lead to a five-inch scar on the eyebrow, or two broken front teeth. I was safe, and finally forged a friendship that could lead me to no harm. . . . By evening, we had ferreted out a drinking den called The Harrington. I found London pub life a kick: If you asked for a beer, you might as well cut your losses and turn in, shivering, abjectly, under the comforter. You could be thirsty for barley, hops and malt, but there was a vocabulary to be learned, far more expansive than that of Mickey's and Budweiser. A woman, for instance, would order something light. such as a lager or a pilsener; or, she might become adventuresome and and have served up a Black-and-Tan: half Guinness Stout, half lager. Mix Black with pilsener, and what you got was a dingy blend that refused to group together, and which resembled vaseline floating atop a can of Castrol GTX. The barkeeps are knowledgeable about such things and never failed to laugh aloud when some dim American sot called out for the ridicilous. Bitter is what we Yanks call ale. It is served up piss warm and takes some getting used to. Once acclimated to bitter, though, it was my drink of choice, as its carbonation is very light, enabling one to get fucked up in a massive way without the standard intestinal debauchery perforced by commercial swill. The natives have two other drinks of abuse, and both render a man helpless. Guinness is the equivalent of fermented sorghum and, when held up to the light, is as opaque as the fullest eclipse. The taste is foul, the recipe never chilled, and, taking into account its high alcohol content, I'd rather drink dark Jamaican rum if a heavy buzz is what I was after. Hard cider is another matter altogether. Cider turns anodized brass fittings into sluice nuggets. Its alcohol content can be as high as sherry, tastes great, and leaves the crisp finish of apples on the tongue. In short: the perfect drink to offer an unsuspecting virgin, if one has terrible things in mind after the 9:00p.m. show. I learned the hard way. Smarty-pants that I am, I swaggered up to the bar and ordered up a half-pint of bitters. Only a half-pint, being unaccusomed to warm brew. I slid a pound and change down the rail and nodded slyly to head barkeep. "Enjoy!" he smiled. I gagged on it. "What the hell is this." "It's `bitters,'" sir. It's what you ordered." He and the rest of the crew got an early belly-laugh. I did order bitters. Stupid, ethnocentric me. Angostura Bitters, in a half-pint glass. Stinking, vaporous iodide. He passed over a full pint of bitter. "No charge, mate. We're all friends." Scanning the crowd, I felt vaguely sorry for everyone, except for the American students soaking up London pub life. I had envisioned some writers' den, steeped in conversation and twice-fermented single malt Cardhu. What we had here was the interior design savvy of any Sambos U.S.A. The wallpaper was gold and crimson, the carpet being crimson, the naugahyde cracked and stained, but, underneath all, crimson. I was about to leave for a stroll up the street, to see what I could see, when a swarthy young con named Felippe settled into our table and disrupted conversation. He tapped me on the leg, I guessed sensing me to be the most likely member of our naive band to indulge in a bit of craziness. "Hey, man," he said, "do you like Black Leb?" "Um..." I mumbled, "you'll need to give that to me in broader terms." "Hash, man, black Lebanese, it'll stick to your fingers." The rest of the crew knew what was going down, and the girls giggled. I gave them all a once-over. "Yeah, we're into it. How much?" "How much do you want. I can score a good deal." Generally, the first day in a foreign country should be reserved for settling in, maybe a touch of sightseeing--not cultivating an addiction to a powerful Middle Eastern THC residue. I told him just enough to get the six of us high for two days. "Two grams," he nodded, "that will get you by. Fourteen pounds." He was a latch-key pro, so I didn't haggle. But I wasn't about to go around the corner into some filthy, unlit alley to do business with him, either. So we did the deed under the table and he split. I wanted to go home right away and try it out--that's just my compulsive nature with new and amusing substances. But I settled instead for a couple more rounds of Newcastle Brown Ale. And then someone else showed up. I was forced to Walk Tall and Drink Like a Man--a boorish ritual, which results in vicious hangovers and bloody stools; the kind of thing young men do in Calgary on long, snowy winter nights. Dave was also a Regular Guy. And we are drifting here... Davey resembled a baby buffalo calfling. He adorned himself in classic Canuck attire (from Calgary, he was)--buckskin coat, hearty 501s, ostrich-skin boots from his pappy's herds on one of many ranches, stretching from Calgary to Auckland. He chugged Captain Morgan from the bottle and became greatly offended when reduced to ordering a "dram" of strong spirits at the corner pub. "You've got to be kidding?" he was heard to whine, on more than a dozen occasions, "I got more juice from my mother's teat!"
We sat at the Harrington and got slaughtered on spiced rum, and Dave bought another bottle just before 11:00 closing. By now, I was feeling frustrated. It felt as if the hash had oozed out of the tin foil and over my leg. The only remedy I could see, was to burn the stuff up.
The girls needed help getting up the stairs of the Kensbridge, as we were so torn that nobody noticed a small elevator on the ground floor, just where it should have been. I grappled onto Gretchen, threw her over my shoulder and heard her giggle. At that moment, I realized just what I had in my possession: a beautiful, drunken girl from Flagstaff, Arizona, who had probably never met a guy who could read or write poetry, or was in any way involved with anything cultural, other than having a strong fixation for video games and old Mustangs. A few sweet compliments, a back rub, and she'd be mine for the rest of the semester. Living just across the hall would give me the vantage point I needed, night after foggy night. I had literally stumbled upon many a man's fantasy.
We packed into my room--one of only three singles in the hotel--which has a story all unto its own. The application form had asked prospective students to list their rooming preferences. But there was never really a question in my mind...I just didn't want to have to do to another nice guy what I had to six previous roomies. It had become something of a pattern, and resulted in several unfortunate incidents and bitter recriminations, one involving use of a switchblade (not mine) and response from many well-armed agents from the Santa Barbara Sheriff's department...
I had sent in my reasons as being: "severely allergic to cigarette smoke"; having "a weak bladder, which somehow finds its way into odd corners of the room" (we won't get into that one); and "an aggravating capacity to snore at loud decibels, particularly annoying to those who wear corrective lenses"... And I got my wish.
George's girl worked the sticky hashball onto the customary pin, setting it ablaze, a young flower working the rite like a Muslim-trained pro. "I've done it before," she smiled.
Gretchen plunged an icy hand up the back of my shirt, causing me to start, and sending the glass flying to the floor. Thank God for lineoleum. I'd have been picking shards from my soles for weeks, were it anything but the cruddiest of hard rummer. We tried it again, except that my urge for a lungful had waned and I was getting the fearsome Spins. Gretchen grabbed some smoke, turned to me and said, "Open your mouth."
I'm ashamed to even admit this, but my primal instincts took over and told me, "Todd, dear boy, you have two choices: You can usher these Heads from your room as diplomatically as is possible, given the drunken nature of your already twisted mind, relinquishing the hash to somebody far more responsible than yourself, to save for a Rainy Day; or you can open your mouth and vomit directly into hers as she tries to give you a second-hand hit."
I am, before anything, a gentleman, and Gretchen would genuinely thank me today for the gut-level reaction that swept them all out the door and into the adjoining room, before I could say, "Blaaaarrggsshhppptt!"
Professor John Schwartz is probably a decent man, and definitely "proud of all things Jewish"--a trait I found admirable in the secular-humanist bent of collegia. A former basketball star, friendly with New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, he had published two books on British and World Politics. I never questioned the man's intelligence; my concern was for the choice of texts we pillowheads were assigned to read for the semester. Man, the State and War was, by far, the most insidious example of Globalist bilge I had ever had the misfortune to read. The good professor also assigned to us a huge, chart-filled text espousing the Trilateralist belief in "world management," and other anti-American notions. And I knew I wouldn't be able to let him get away with it. Schwartz's lectures went far beyond the bounds of mainstream political thought. Most died-in-the-wool Jerry Ford moderates will shudder at the thought of surrendering corporate and political power to a family of Rockefellers and Hammers, when push comes to shove. So, after his introductory lecture, I decided to pay my new mentor a visit. "I'd like not to start off on the wrong footing," I said, "but your texts bother me, for reasons I'd like to discuss." "Oh?" He seemed interested in my thought process, and was evidently impressed with mine chutzpah. My notebook was a different matter, entirely. Only half-thinking, back in Arizona, I had pasted onto a cheesy plastic binder a sticker, which I caught him eyeing, as I tried my best to stay rational: "Get the KGB Out of the USA." "There seems to be some kind of common link to these books," I said. "I see. And what would that be." "Well, I looked at the publishers, and they all run in the same butt-stinking circle: Knopf, Oxford University Press..." "What's odd about that?" he wondered, his salt-and-pepper moustache beginning to bristle. "Those are the main political publishing houses." "Main for whom, sir?" Caught off guard, he waited for another segment of rehearsed monologue. "Have you ever heard of the Council on Foreign Relations? The Trilateral Commission? The U.S. Communist Party?" "I don't know what this has to do with the textbooks you are assigned to read." "Then let me clue you in, you lying snake." "Wait just a minute, young Nazi. Are you accusing me of--" "You bet! Outside, right now! I'll have the entire National Front down here before you can say Nikita Kruschev..." It might as well have gone this way, because I let slip in--accidentally, I keep telling myself--that I was the same foaming zealot who founded Students for the John Birch Society at Arizona State. It had to come out. Before long, my class disruptions would have forced him to call the States, to see just what kind of nut he had plaguing him, day after sweating day. At lunch break, I rode the Tube back to our hotel and talked to the Program Advisors, to see what a man of my political bent might do for the semester. Politely, I told a woman named Maria that I was a registered Republican, and that I needed a support group, seeing as how I was outnumbered by the Left. But probably, I would have fared better by tracking dogshit onto the carpet. "I'll see what I can do," she smiled, curtly. "We don't have many contacts in the Conservative Party. Let me get back to you..." Lies. All of them. I thought about crying foul to Ed Meese and threaten to have American Institute for Foreign Study investigated by remnants of the House un-American Activities Committee, tri-chaired by the ghosts of McCarthy, Larry MacDonald and the withered George Wallace. Actually, I did think seriously about bucking for a full-refund, minus plane-fare, and trying on my own with the London School of Economics. Birch co-ordinator Guy F. Roberts had given me the name of a free-market prof there, and I was certain that a few minutes with him, discussing the gold standard, would gain me my own key to the building, placed under red carpet. My only narrow hope was to go it alone.
Each year, the University of London holds Club Faire. The assortment of academic distractions was enormous. Two clubs grabbed my immediate attention, but for distinctly divergent reasons. The Society of Shootists lured me to its table, promising rapid-fire excitement for the duration of my stay. These were young power-addicts in a country that holds little toleration for renegades. But after scanning their arsenal and the varied shooting sites, I realized that: a) I couldn't afford the cost of ammo; b) I needed an expensive and lifelong hobby like I needed a barium enemy, and c) it would be just like this socialist enclave to try to get me out onto some barren stretch of moorland with a large-bore pistol, only to discover that I had no license and was involved already with a quasi-revolutionary political organization Stateside. Rotting in Old Bailey, studying Tudor History and Chaucer...they'd love it. No thanks.
The Revolutionary Communist Party had its mole on campus. She was pretty and slim and, well, I love a challenge. After perusing the brochures, I was quizzed as to Trotsky, Lenin, Marx, Rasputin...they're all the same to me, and I told her so. She then asked me whether I was aligned.
"The John Birch Society. Back in the States."
"You're a Bircher!?" she squawked. "Well...what the hell are you doing here!"
"Just narrowing my options," I grinned.
"You're a goddamn fascist. A red-blooded, Nazi-scum--"
"I'd like this packet. How much is it?"
She grabbed up everything on the table and poured it into a box out of reach, sneering, "Go fuck yourself!"
American Colonial History was about to begin, and I knew I'd need more time with her, to work myself into a truly proper boil. Besides, she was pretty and I knew I'd have to make her cry.
After scuttling an ugly debate, I slammed down a pint of Castlemaine and headed upstairs. A funny-looking man sat Indian-style atop the usual professor's desk: tweed coat with elbow patches, jeans, rounded specs, a grizzled beard--five-foot four of Ivy League genius.
"I'm Professor Burg," he stated, for the record. "B-U-R-G. Call me Richard, or Dick...just about anything not derogatory."
Looking around, I saw that several students had found a mentor.
"This is American Colonial History. Leave now if you aren't registered. I don't have room." Then he called roll. "If anyone knows these people, tell then what I'm telling you: I don't believe in attendance policies or excuses. My lectures are worthwhile and my students tell me so regularly. If you miss a lecture, I'll assume you had better things to do."
Puzzlement. Ecstasy.
I learned of the Kensington Young Conservatives--Britain's answer to the Arizona Young Republican League--after nearly a week of scurrying about, trying to find for myself a comfortable social niche. And I couldn't afford to be choosey. I was squandering precious time playing snooker and throwing darts, and wasting large sums of money on an advanced case of cirrhosis. George was going to see CATS, but I had neither the cash nor time, and, anyway, Marci looked like she wanted to spend an evening alone with her man. Before he left, though, I got my hash back, and rolled up a goodly hunk and smoked it with Gretchen, who was on her way to an internship as disk jockey for a local college radio station. "God, I hope I can talk," she said. "You shouldn't have got me so stoned." Then she knotted my new London silk cravat and sent me off with a pinch on the ass. I left her with a peck on the forehead, and stumbled across Gloucester Road for to menace yet another group of innocent know-nothings. After introducing myself as an American student of political science, a youngish spinster-witch named Charlotte gave me the once-over and sniffed, "You must be from the Monday Club." "No," I said. "But I could join if you think it'd make my life more interesting." She charged off in search of newt and mistletoe, and I took my seat in the back of a small room upstairs on Stratham Court, where the group met bi-monthly. Noticing a genuine shortage of quality women, I settled back and geared up for some serious heckling--the only way I knew to flush out the odd patriot in an audience. Richard Steele was the guest speaker, chairman of the entire Young Conservative brigade--a powerful figure, I was assured. The substance of his pep-talk was Unity and Progress: code for Socialism in Tory wool. "We have a challenge before us, and I need your help," he said, dramatically. "Every one of you. The Young Conservatives are tomorrow's Ministers of Parliament. But our party is divided. To continue as a united Tory front, we must choose between progress and anarchy; compassion and out-dated Victorianism..." It always runs downhill, in my general direction. "The Monday Club and various rightist loonies are attempting to wrest our party from a sane foundation. This must not happen." "Sewage!" "Pardon me?" "Raw sewage. Pure rubbish, Richard. Why don't you crawl back to your borough? You're not needed here...we have everything under control." A thin, pale spectre untwined his legs and unleashed a swift-running stream on the party leader. Unheard of, I thought. Impossible. Zane and I should bottled him, and make the John Birch Society drink from his spleen. "Richard," for as long as I've known you, you've been nothing but an old woman. A wet rag." "Mr. Shuter, it is your kind that I am referring to. Seditious notions, and highly dangerous to our party." "It's not your party. I think you're having trouble understanding that. I don't care if you yourself win ten more elections, the liberal wing is finished." Grappling for support, Mr. Steele turned to me, as an impartial student of politics--perhaps thinking I'd take the side of Titles and Official Approval, for fear of some ominous backlash on everything American. "I think you should examine your own backyard," I shrugged. "I've seen more conservative members of the Labor party." He groaned, looked around for help, but saw none being offered. Hugh Shuter cast me a long-lost brother smile. "Sound!" Seeing the rest of his evening reduced to ruinous ash, the junior minister begged off, stashing his notes and looking over his shoulder on a fast hundred-yard break, down the stairs and into the night. "You don't really know any Labor conservatives, do you?" Hugh asked. "Naaww," I said, "but I knew it'd piss him off." My hash buzz was wearing thin, so we took a walk down Gloucester Road, to the Texas Lone Star Cafe and Saloon, a favorite watering hole of American travelers. It was actually fairly authentic, and Hugh got a boot out of the Confederate flags and George Wallace bumper stickers, standing hampton in his land of long-forgotten glory. "You should have made him king." "What about Goldwater?" I wondered. "Minister of War. Would you like to meet some friends?" He rang through to the Monday Club, where some of the Clubbers were up late, discussing strategy for the upcoming Conservative Party Conference. "They'll be over presently," Hugh said, getting back to our table. "So, Todd, what do you do?" I thought about it for a few seconds. Besides being a lowly student of politics? "I cause a lot of trouble," I said, finally. "For whom?" "Well, I joined the John Birch Society last year, and I guess the world isn't quite as safe a place to rear your young." "Marvelous!" he said, brightening. "What a glorious group that is. I've subscribed to the Bulletin for years, but it's so terribly expensive; that bloody overseas postage, you know. Robbery." I asked him why he would bother with the cash-drain, if they already had the Monday Club. His look saddened. "Oh, the philosophy is much the same, but the conspiracy theory just isn't there. The Monday Club still thinks politics is a matter of random accident." I hurt for him. "That's too bad," I muttered. "Yes, but it's the best we have, should we wish to remain in the Conservative party. There are alternatives," he said, shrugging meagerly. "The National Front, of course; but they're a motley bunch. Neo-Nazis, and so forth. But they have their good points, like expatriation, which doesn't have to become a racial issue. Look around us: Pakistanis, Indians, driving us from our means of livelihood." I nodded, ruefully, knowing not much more needed to be said, and his frustrated grimace took care of the rest. But I ordered a round of drinks, just to think about it, and smiled at a barrel-breasted cocktail waitress in a fringed-suede miniskirt. Two young, pale men in dark suits entered the place, nervously, dodging a young bison in mid-lunge, before seeing Hugh's outstretched arm, and breathed a visible sigh. "Todd Fahey, meet Adrian Lee and Michael McCrone." "Fahey," Adrian muttered. "Good Irish name. Not Ulster, but I'll presume you're not IRA." I caught a vacuum-wrapped twinkle of good humor in the eye of Lee--self-proclaimed "young fogey" of the Young Conservative Internationale, his name inspiring fear in the hearts and minds of foes and friends island-wide. "No, Adrian, he is not IRA," Hugh frowned. "You're impossible. Todd is with the JBS." "Sound!" McCrone bellowed, defying a slight frame. "We must discuss the Birch. I'd like to join up." I told him I'd look into it, and we spent the rest of the night in a mean-drunk, plotting forbidden things. . . . Professor Burg was in rare form, delivering a lecture on Anne Hutchinson and "the Monster Birth." Allied with the Quakers about the time of the Massachussetts Bay Colony, Ms. Hutchinson found herself banished to the wilds of Rhode Island along with dozens of believers, to practice her subversive leanings far away from the more Puritanical. But it seems that God intervened on behalf of the Establishment and delivered unto her a hideous, scaled, jelly creature, still-born. The impure birth shocked her disciples to the marrow, and soon she fell out of favor, creeping away to die like a cat. The thing should have been taped--one of those rarified moments when I was glad just to sit down and take it all in. I wanted to discuss Dr. Burg's latest book, Sodomy on the High Seas. Had he experienced it first-hand? Or, simply some drunken account of bestial sailors long ago... But business was pending. A program chum had some stats to run past me, regarding CAFE's acquisition of a fire-brand mainframe computer. Waiting impatiently in the second-floor bar, Union College, I dropped 10p into the music box, and selected a warped little dittie by Peter Gabriel, called "I Know What I Like (In Your Wardrobe)": "It's one o'clock and time for lunch John Morse wasn't interested in politics, which was fine by me: the last thing Zane and I needed was some amateur coming in and trying to muck up a working system. What CAFE did need was a top-flight computerhead, to set us up in large, unethical proportion. "What you need is a Cray 1," he said, confidently. There's always been Ethel, "What's that?" I asked, like any other greenhorn in the way of computers. "It's the marrow of artificial intelligence. You'll be able to clone your mother on it in a couple years--" Over the garden wall, two little lovebirds, "You've never heard of Seymour Cray?" John asked, in disbelief. "The name rings a bell." "Yeah," he said, fidgeting in his seat...beginning to get wet. "The guy's a fucking genius. He makes these beasts that only the best and brightest will ever have a clue how to operate. The guy builds tunnels under his house, and he never grants interviews." I nodded. "Well, that's interesting, John--but what's the use, if it makes everyone look like they're inbred. I mean, can you use it?" He flashed me a big, fine grin. "I own U of A! Too bad you're up in Phoenix...I could change a few grades for you." Davey Jones was pilfering embroidered beer towels off the bar, with traditional Canuck nonchalance: more dumb than smooth. His book bag was fully unzipped and gaping at the towels that kept falling, one by one, as he scooted it along the rail with a foot. Plop. Castlemaine, Bass, plunk. Guinness, Watneys. Drop. Fucking thief. Sunday night, Mr. Parker called, "We want to tap into the Russell Trust Association, the financial arm of the Order of Skull & Bones at Yale; the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission. Can you do it?" "It's just a matter of getting the passwords. A simple modem trick," he sniffed. "No problem." Dave sped off with the goods, and John washed down the rest of his black and tan. "Thanks for the brew. I'll keep you posted." When the sun beats down and I lie on the bench, When I got back to the Kensbridge, I fished out some information on the British League of Rights conference, which was about to take place. I didn't know when or where, just that Mae Riley wanted me to go, and that some of her oldest and dearest friends would be there--and that if I couldn't afford it, to call her, and she would sport the bill. So, I hopped the Tube and made it into the lobby of a posh hotel many miles away, for to purchase a pair of tickets for the gig. Shelling out 120 pounds to meet a group of total strangers is always a weird concept, but I felt obliged to the kindly old lady in Phoenix. My wallet still held enough for a curried lamb at the adjacent Indian restaurant, a trip to the tanning booth, and a visit to the local Hard Rock Cafe, where I bought a T-shirt at a vending stand outside, avoiding the crowd. "Small?" the booth-master wondered. "You're at least a large." "A gift," I said, thinking of Tami's tiny frame, all ninety-eight pounds of sleek, Japanese... [Prol'ly 20,000wds of missing text, a few typos & strange formating glitches...we'll get it right. This is what happens when One Man is forced to do his own publishing, editing, yaddayadda, w/o aid from the NY Majors; Chronicle III will be completed someday soon...this message will self-destruct.] There were twenty hours left in London, and they had to be good ones. Either a rabid romp, involving the whole of neighboring St. Mary's preparatory school, or a high-speed helicopter cruise to Fire Island, way out there between the Upper Hebrides and Iceland, or... Through the cigarette smoke, from the open door of my cramped room, I saw a black beret rising slowly over the hotel stairs. It was Felippe, which meant trouble of some rare and virulent form. And I knew, just out of simple goodwill--in the Christmas spirit--that I would buy whatever he was hawking, and consume it instantly, in large quantities, and remained boggled throughout the tortuous eleven-hour flight back to LAX. He carried with him a duffle bag, a huge Masterlock around the zipper, and I felt a little giddy. Genesis' The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway played on a stereo nearby. The company upstairs was an odd mix: three fellows in the program, but not terribly close friends...just that `hey, it's the last night here, so let's figure out what this guy is all about, anyway'-style gathering. Which was neither here nor there. In fact, it presented a unique challenge--coping with three mere acquaintances and a head-steam of black microdot. Which was what Felippe was carrying. "This stuff's burning my fingers, man!" he complained. "Take all you need. Cheap. Only five pounds a hit." Put on a simple sliding dollar:pound ratio, that wasn't cheap. In fact, it converted to $8 a hit, compared to an average of three bucks in the United States...for acid. LSD. Yes, that is what we are talking about, here: Haggling over a five-dollar differential unto a drug that will make you instantly forget such things as Money and Responsibilities and Basic Reality for at least ten hours. So we bought a paltry five hits, and shooed him off like a dungfly, and then moseyed on downstairs to a larger room shared by Sam and Barry and Charlie. Sam preferred Marlboros to LSD, so we counted him out, and divvied up the drug between myself, Charlie--a happy-go-lucky leather/rocker, with the hair of Buffalo Bill, and the temperament of Robin Williams--and Barry, who was a bit harder to figure. Our first meeting hadn't gone well. After my having cracked something about welfare bums and Social Security fraud, in one of Professor Schwartz' lectures, Barry remarked that his father was on persistent kidney dialysis, and their family unit would not have survived without Federal assistance. And I felt bad. Not because of my opinions or theories, mind you, but that I might have caused this young man to consider his dad a loafer, a cheat and a parasite. Which wasn't my intent at all. And now I had to make it up to this figure with long stringy hair, two-inch black-painted fingernails, and the capacity to lash out an essay before the start of a class--longhand--half-scratched out...and set the curve. I admired Barry, although I wouldn't trade whole lives. Charlie was clearly game, but Barry was nervous. So I asked him if he'd ever taken mushrooms. "Twice," he said. "No freakouts?" I wondered. "No random spurts of yelling or thoughts of instant reincarnation to an Albanian bladdorwort as being a beautiful thing?" I probed, hoping he could handle it. "Nope," he said simply, staring at the five children's aspirin-sized pellets being crushed into a fine powder by Charlie, as he gleamed at the makeshift mortar and pestle, "it was fun." Get it on. "What's so funny?" Sam asked, taking small, consistent puffs on his cancer stick. "C-c-come get uuuuuuuusss!!" teehheeeehooowwwwwl, "Oh, shit..." I just couldn't quit laughing. Because it was so true, and I had been there before. Sam might have to come get us. The odds were riding around dead even. Anything at all is possible under the influence of LSD: Hop a plane to Belgium on the credit card? Why not? Jump onto a steamer from the bow of a bridge overlooking the Thames, at midnight, clad only in jockey shorts? Who knows? Sam just smiled. "God, you guys are going to be a mess pretty soon." Barry was listening to a mid-pitch electric crackle, coming from a bare, overhead lightbulb. "Hear it?" he said, getting up on top the bed, craning his neck to get a better angle on the irritating noise. Charlie just liked the tits. "Let's get out of here before I break something," I said. "I think my cells are changing shape." I jerked the knob assembly on the TV set, jarring Charlie's preoccupation with two sets of white hanging mammaries, and we jettisoned the Kensbridge for the bitter streets of London. A heavy mist had formed, giving us about fifty feet of visibility, and lending an eerie tint to the atmosphere, which felt something like standing in a very large cardboard box, or a tiny theatre, alone on the stage, after everybody else has gone home. You might not know the feeling. "Just turn right, past the Bentley dealership--there's a cool road," I said, having led many acid tours, with no casualties and of generally great confidence. They did as they were told, like sheep, and turned right, just off Elvaston Place, and onto a cobblestone walk. And off the walk was a mews, or another walk, whose entrance is an ornate, gabled archway. Very Saxon architecture, mysterious, almost medieval...and it was sucking Charlie in. "What the fuck!" he shouted. No. This can't be. But it is. "Charlie, can you make it outouuuout?" I echoed. "What do we do, Barry?" I asked, fearing for Charlie's future. "I guess get a drink," he shrugged. "No, no. About Charlie!" "You motherfuckers," he yelled, the voice beginning to fade, slipping away down the dark, scarey path, "I'll kill you if I ever get out of this...some friends you are..." And then his futile cries ceased. Sqlatch! Teowrp-t-thppp! Violence. Evil Karma! I wanted to run, but my feet had taken root, and, anyway, I was laughing way too hard. "What was that?" I asked Barry, who had started to approach me with caution and general apprehension. "They don't make noises like that...forget it. We've got to get Charlie," I said, pulling my feet out of something thick, taking his arm and running down Elvaston Place, parallel to the pathway. Hard to tell where the mews might end. Maybe in a grungy cellar, full of spiders and English earwigs. Or in somebody's bedroom. Could be it would lead to the cockpit of a 747, or to the Bay of Bengal or...the Harrington, of course! What a great gimmick! A conveyor that pulls you from the street into a bar. What a society. But still, that didn't explain the terrible noises erupting through a silent, distilled air. And the Harrington didn't look like the same warm, friendly bar I had gone to on my first night out in South Kensington. A rapacious strain of suck moth, the size of young cormorant, dove and buzzed the ears of passersby, trying to jab their filthy probosci into somebody's head. Still holding Barry by the elbow, I hurried inside the club to see if Charlie had made it in yet. The band played a loose variation of the Stones, just adequate enough to get paid for. Brnrrnrnrrrnnnnn...eops. "Good God!" I muttered, not accepting what I was seeing: A huge, hideous sore on back wall of the bar. Not some stained-on section of wallpaper, but a sore. A gaping, running, hissing, spitting, live anus, planted right square in the middle of the fucking wall. Barry gave it one look and jabbed his fingernails into a corkboard and turned into an advertisement for Smith's Crisps, leaving me all alone to deal with this weirdness. I kept my distance, ordering a double rum and pineapple and a shot of Ouzo, just to bring my temperature down, trying to somehow adjust my hammer/anvil/stirrups in such a way as to hear the band and filter out the gnashing, angry sounds coming out of the creature. I winced, as the thing started spitting someone out, or tried to, or part of him or her--maybe just a tennis shoe. That's all that came out. The rest was reabsorbed into the lining, as the poor human kicked and shrieked in a sickly, muffled terror. I finally had to look away, concentrating instead on a tight little cocktail waitress. She seemed sweet and personable, and very much the kind of gal I would have liked to become a boyfriend to. But I was leaving in seventeen hours, and she was already being flirted with by a Preppy/Banker type. So I looked around the room to see if maybe there might be some other beauty to take back to the hotel and gruel on until I had to leave. But she was it. I saw sad old men with moist eyes, girls who looked like they were lost, dressed strangely all in black with white face tint. And then there the a table full of junkies--far gone needle freaks--shooting up around circular table, and fighting over the syringe which one guy couldn't hit because he didn't have any veins left. So he stuck it in his neck, and pumped in something like 3.5 cc's of what didn't look like B-12. Burglrurp! A vile belch saw Charlie and a mass of after-birth to the bar floor. He signalled, thumbs up, and sprinted across the room, yelling for the bartender to get the fuck out of the way, and vaulted off somebody's back, hitting an incredible two and one-half reverse gainer and into an open-necked jug of cider. The barflies applauded and gathered around the jug to see how long he could hold his breath. Charlie stepped and shuffled playfully on the sediment bottom, in no hurry, then started twisting and spinning, slowly at first, gaining speed, and whirling about with incredible force, causing a layer of bubbles to begin rising toward the lip of the jug. The bartender yelled, "Get back!" He'd seen the trick before. Underestimating the ceiling height would result in a gimpy neck. Pppop!! Charlie missed the ceiling by three inches, not bad for a bleedin' Yank, and landed on the bar, pressed, starched and donning a Savile Row banker's stripe, orange polka-dot tie dangling. I tried to correct him on basic color coordination, but he would not hear of it. "Whimsy is in," he smiled, fetching a cane, and started in on soft-shoe, as the band began to play something by Tommy Dorsey. The addict in the corner had had enough. Hang it up: Miller Time. Bleeding profusely about the main artery under his chin, he chose to die with dignity, rather than on the floor of the Harrington, without a proper burial...just left to be looted and chewed on by twelve-pound black rats. Eyystridyee. Eestridlishke!! The cancer knew, and secreted a grateful cry. Stripping down to the nude, the junkie bowed out, and stuck his head into the ugly vacuum, as his friends dove for a measly modicum of heroin and divvied up his clothes amongst each other. "Hey, Todd," Charlie called from across the bar, carrying a gorgeous redhead on either arm, "let's split and go to the Hippodrome!" "Sorry, Charlie," I said, "I can't handle the mohawks and nose-rings...it's just too bizarre. I'd better hang here." And waved him on. The sore then began chewing on an ankle bracelet worn by the friendly waitress. She slapped it, politely. "You know better than that." It grinned and ceased sucking on her lower leg. "Come on, sweetie," the Upwardly-rep crooned, making me even more nauseous. If that human turd can score on her, I reasoned, they all deserve what they get. "I'm really a gent, we'll have a bollocks time." "Who says I want a gent?" she smiled slyly, cocking her hips. Reorn. Its displeasure was apparent. But she sat down with the young man, anyway. Grentchkicht. "Here's a drink on the house...I didn't mean to be so cold," the waitress said, laying down a Scotch and soda, then circling around the table to throw the rotting circle some scraps. Plschnnnnn... "No!!" she shrieked, "not me. I'm your friend!" TELL HIM TO LEAVE. "Okay! Okay, look, you've got to leave, it likes me, please go, I'll call you tomorrow..." Sssllrrrp. Bock! A current filled the room, killing off those of weak constitution--booze-hounds first, then the addicts...a couple of street urchins. Drinks began overflowing, and the room became very warm. I hurtled around, jumping out of my seat, and walked slowly backwards, toward the door, keeping my sight locked on the sucking gap in the wall. Pure, unrequited Evil. I stared through some vortex, and into the Void, hearing a trip-hammer sound somewhere in the bowel, summoning up a 400-ohm electroid heart attack. The blister eyed me curiously, sensing perhaps that I had bargained from strength. GO NOW, it said. AND TAKE ALL YOU LOVE. I knocked over three tables and pulled a black thumbtack from the bulletin board, and placed the Smith's Crisps ad in my notebook, carefully, so as not to injure Barry. He would be safe until I could slide him underneath his door. And I ran like Ted Bundy down Gloucester Road, toward the Kensbridge, hearing the wailing and crunching and all the carnage. Suppressing some vomit in the upper portion of my esophagus, stumbling dazed, I bumped into a puffy old man with a stupid grin on his face. He could barely speak. Both knees were bleeding from countless falls up and down the road. I could see patches of blood on the sidewalk. "A stranger asked, `do you know me?' His cloudy eyes reflected not a lucid thought; I was now given to a sobbing fit, and aimed my wretched husk for the hotel. I had needed to let loose various body fluids and wastes for the last hour, or day--my sense of time was gone--and was afraid that my pants were soiled. The rain fell steadily, and it was impossible to tell. The potato chip ad had fallen out of my notebook. Probably Barry would awaken in a mud puddle somewhere.
By the grace of something much stronger than myself, I wound up staring at my face in the bathroom mirror. My irises had gone from jet brown to amber and green, but I was stain-free. And so I worked my penis--shrivelled from Fear, or maybe some strychnine in the LSD--through my fly and collapsed against the wall, ecstatic from the release, and was gripped at the same time with a vicious, clenching chest ache at my sternum. This is it. I could hear the coroner and my parents talking: Mr. and Mrs. Fahey, your son has died...I'm very sorry." "Oh, dear God. He burned the candle at nine ends for too long." "No, sir. It was by his own hand." "How, doctor? Did he suffer?" "Well, no one knows exactly what might have gone through his mind. LSD is a very unusual substance." "Ahhhh!!!" ....the anguish, the heartache--the foul, black cloud of overdose; huddled up in this hotel room like a common cat. These thoughts mired on and on until the first ray of sun shone through the curtains, and the panic subsided, and I focused on the clock and saw that I had to leave. Dawn was upon me, the blackness given way to sorrow. And all that I had seen and heard, felt, fathomed, and somehow grasped, for one fragmented moment, simply dissolved into the cool, London morning haze. *** |
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