Authors: Arty Nelson
We arrive at Victoria Station and I gotta piss bad. I can’t think about anything but pissing. I’d blow off Armageddon if I
had to drain my bladder. It drives me crazy and it makes me miserable. I can’t enjoy life with pissing on my mind. Life is
a hassle until I find a bathroom, or even better, an alley. I like the wind.
I find a bathroom and I pull out my rig. “Oh yes! I can smile again!” I look up at the ceiling and I push my hips in towards
the stall. Happy thoughts! I can go on if I don’t have the pressure welling up inside of me. Life is beautiful again! Just
a couple of minutes, and I see the world in a different way. A golden stream splashing back off the side of the urinal. I
wonder how many times I’ll piss in my life. Or how many countries I’ll piss in. The hot steamy back splash occasionally grazes
my steering hand. It’s nothing I can’t wash off. It’s nothing that isn’t worth the trouble.
So Doobe tells me I gotta have a tube pass to get around London.
“Look, I don’t have the dough for it,” I tell him.
“I’ll buy it for you… All you gotta do is pose for the picture.”
“Pose… No problem.” I give it my best pout—distant, melancholy, intense, all while sucking my cheeks in. Brando’d be proud.
The pass gives me free rein within city limits. We walk out of the station and run smack dab into Westminister Abbey. Its
tall steeple shooting up into the sky, just short of God. The tall gothic shit and old Ben and all the double-deckers everywhere
and all the color and the Thames and the bridges and all of it—real heavy tourist stuff. Old movie type, like where’s Rex
Harrison in all of this shit. I’m overcome. I don’t know whether to beat off, get drunk, eat a candy bar or just be afraid.
I, me, Jimi Banks, am part of human history! Part of the history of this fucking world. I look around and I feel it. King
fucking Tut and me! I’m in a place that means something. I wanna celebrate. I want to remember it forever like a big collage
of lights and sounds and colors and laughter and tears
and fear and never being the way I think it’s gonna be. I hear music—rock and roll but big, like symphonies with flutes and
drums and violins and summers and candy and all the girls I ever loved. Little pieces. My whole life in little pieces. I never
get to remember the whole thing at once. I just get little pieces. Trapped in a postcard, inside a cartoon, waving to the
camera.
I follow Helms, a few steps behind the whole way. He goes that New York way—running the whole time even when he’s walking.
We cross the Thames and drop down under a stone bridge to the side of the National Theatre at the South Bank. There’s a pub
right on the side of the Theatre. These people aren’t afraid. They got pubs everywhere! America! We’re so afraid of everything.
So afraid of being sued, so afraid of neighbors, so afraid of queers, so afraid of dykes, and drugs, nudity, sex, murder,
incest, rape, life, our fathers, loving our mothers, and most of all… FEAR. So fucking afraid to be afraid! Ever since that
one jerk wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” we’ve all been so fucking scared! Me included! I still can’t believe
those little lame pilgrims cried when he read that stupid sermon in church. Wherever it was, probably Boston—the lamest place
in America. Liberal town… Yeah, right!
A pub at the National Theatre, what a beautiful thing. Let’s face it, no one could use a few drinks like all the pretentious
weasels who roam through museums, pretending to FEEL and KNOW what the
artist meant. They analyze and they hypothesize and they intellectualize and they yearn to fuck and wish they knew and want
to be but don’t have the time because they’re too busy smoking weird, bad-smelling cigarettes and writing long boring papers
and… Call me fucking Ishmael!
We go inside the little woody outhouse-like tavern and Helms orders us a few ciders. Nice. Tastes like fine wine-beer. It
may be the best morning lager known to man. I could easily see myself becoming a cider junky and never being able to go back
to the U.S.A.
Back outside, we grab seats at a table. I smile and I look over at Doobe. He’s smiling too. Unspoken and True. A Moment of
Communication. The words only ever fill up the holes. Sitting in the Shade of Life. Five minutes of easy, five minutes of
no death, no family, no job, no dick, freedom! Freedom from my dick and all its demands! Big Ben over us and I can feel it
ticking. The Pulse of this Little World.
“Jimi, what did you do while all the shit went down with Ray?”
“I talked a lot of shit about it. AT IT, mostly. It’s like I’m watching a movie of my life and he dies. I think I’m only fucking
PLAYING at it.”
The sun is in and out of the picture and I hear the horns above me on the bridge. I feel like a person on a planet, standing
on the edge of a huge ball of rock and dirt. Sitting and thinking and being in a conversation that takes me away from any
real
connection. Half in a strange place and half in a little white wooden chapel on Long Island with a bunch of people I went
to school with listening to some repressed minister talk about a Ray. Poor bastard, how shitty does it feel to stand in front
of a crowd of people, talking about someone they knew when you didn’t even know him. Trying to console them with your godly
words about how it WAS SOMETHING, when it just WAS. I tried to see him. I tried to see him above the crowd, dancing his silly
dead-head dance. I tried to see him, happy, I wanted to see him happy at that point. I wanted to believe that he had come
to terms with what went down, with his death.
“Yeah… I was over here in the land of civilized chill. I told a few people about it, but it just seemed so far away… It was
good to go back and see the people who knew him… It’s good to see you, Jimi.” He takes a sip of his cider.
“Yeah, well I wasn’t doin’ anything anyways. Jimi, I kinda wonder, you know… What the fuck ever happened to the dude?”
“I don’t know… I think sometimes it’s a jump and a skip away from all of us. A simple fucking hopscotch.”
“You think?”
“I think. I guess. I know. His blue neck might’ve saved mine.” I look up and I see a few Sid Vicious look-alikes walking in
front of us. One of them has a pet rat on his shoulder. “Doobe, don’t you ever just wanna say FUCK IT and jump?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t really ever thought it through.”
“He did.”
I’ve never been a nightclub Mozart. If a woman likes me and she isn’t a total pig and she makes the slightest effort to lasso
me… Bingo… She’s got me. The only problem might be that I won’t get the hint. I’m easy and I’m lonely. I need to make a phone
call, but first I need to jump back three months and remember something out loud from the Suburban Peep Show Getto that is
my mind.
It all starts back on the island with me tending bar by the beach with black shorts on and my hair slicked back in a high-sheen
pompadour. I meet this british dude, Rolland. Now, Rolland is a Gin Freak and it’s my job to give him drinks for his tables
‘cause he’s a walters. Walters have to be drunk to be good. It’s the only way to tend to nightmarish people all night long
and still maintain a good sense of humor. It takes a certain ego not to feel insulted by the demands of the average customer:
the water, the napkins, the raw steak that isn’t rare enough, the burnt pork chop that still may harbor disease. I get tipped
out by him and I find out that
he’s a gin lush so I start feeding him drinks while he works. All over the place, he can’t get enough by the end of the night.
I gotta remind him to give his tables checks because he’s so into his own martinis. Rolland has a friend named Diane who comes
to see him one night. Fate is on my side as I see a pair of long ivory tusks that have found their way onto the bottom half
of a woman. Diane digs me from the get-go, she starts coming up every night to visit Rolland and we do the eye thing. Rolland
comes over to me with his drunken british giggle and puts in the word.
“Jimiiiii… Oh Jimiiii… My friend Diane has quite a crush on you!” But I’m scared because I love Lindsey. I’m scared because
I’m falling prey to Diane. My penis is telling me that love is not an issue. It’s straining my tighty whiteys and telling
me that opportunity’s knocking and deep down in my flesh-loving heart… I just can’t pass it up. I’m a slave. I could be giving
Marilyn Monroe’s fleshy ghost the bone and I woulda still had to give it to Diane.
ENTER THE ULTERIOR MOTIVE.
Blond and tan with a short pixie-type hairdo and those legs I mentioned and little pert titties and cute teeth and lips that
purr and freckles and the british accent. I think her hands were even beautiful. I don’t think she had a flaw other than the
fact she liked to fuck other girls’ guys, but doesn’t everybody? A Divine Form of Rape. The oldest form of human
sport, maybe animal even? Lord of the Flies Meets the Devil in Miss Jones.
So finally, one night, I can’t take it anymore. I can’t bear to think that there’s a totally hot chick within arm’s reach
who wants me and I’m not doing anything about it. I have to make my move. It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m in love. I
have to take my chance and try to hang with this woman. I’m in the bathroom of the bar, washing my hands and staring at my
face in the mirror. I flash a quick-copied smile and wink with sure-bet confidence. Diane’s sipping on a white wine spritzer
or something and I lay down my rap. I mean, of course I’m confident, the girl has all but demanded that I ask her out.
“Diane, would you like to take a trip up island tomorrow?”
“Jimi?… Are you SURE you can make the time for me?”
“Of course I can… I do what I want,” I roar with a hand through my hair.
“Oh I forgot,” she laughs. “… Your own man.”
I’m even as bold as to tell Lindsey what I’m gonna do, “Yeah. Hey don’t worry, baby, we’re just friends and I want to show
her the island. I love you, you know that, don’t worry… I’ll be back for dinner.”
I want to be honest and give my conscience a break. It’s noble and besides… Lindsey knows Diane has the hots for me. Diane’s
my ace in the hole. What I don’t realize at the time is that aces in the hole are only good as long as they’re kept in the
HOLE. I’ve heard that it’s better to have loved and
lost but I always seem to lose FIRST and then LOVE.
I meet Diane on the other side of the island and we grab a quick bite at a skeasy fishing bar—half off on drinks for every
green tooth you flash. Clam chowder and fat greasy burgers. We wash it down with nice scotch on the rocks. Diane is a woman
of breeding. Her father’s an ambassador on some obscure island that the british still consider part of their empire. I can’t
be anything more than her ugly american fling—her polished peasant. She hangs out with like composers and watercolorists and
other really sensitive skeeks who wear cufflinks and cologne and have houses on the water, and all I have is a pretty nice
pair of Ray•Bans and a few funny lines.
The thing I do got goin’ for me is the eyes. She really digs the eyes and believe me, I work it hard. She told me once that
I had “deep piercing eyes,” so every time I see her now, I give her these wild intense stares and pretend I don’t even know
I’m doing it. Like I’m looking deep into her soul, like my eyes are tiny cameras. Yeah… She really seems to go for that.
After lunch, we jump into my jeep and head up island. At the head of the island, there are these huge cliffs with mud baths
at the bottom, where couples can frolic naked and paint each other with mud.
We climb down the cliffs and go for a quick swim. I don’t have anything on and all Diane has
on is a skimpy pair of bikini bottoms. It’s hard to keep my dick from being anything other than ice-cicular, but I’m not sure
where I stand at this point and it’s never really too suave to run around a nude beach with a hard-on. So instead, I conjure
up what I think is a negative fantasy about the pervert janitor that used to watch us boys shower in high school. Remembering
his fat, sweating, pimply mug drooling over us while we toweled off after hockey practice was enough to hold my genitalia
at bay while Diane and I casually floated out past the waves. Diane has the classic pert little titties. Her nipples look
like tiny pink periscopes surfacing after each wave rolls by. I start to swim under her… Testing… I’m met with no resistance.
Most guys would know by now that everything is A-OK, but not me… Somehow I never know where I’m at with the women.
Ten minutes later, in spite of it all, we’re kissing, covered head to toe in mud… Then we’re down in the water… Then we’re
back up in the mud… On the beach… Back into the water… Up in the mud—for what seems like hours… Or seconds. Until finally,
we climb high above the water, above the mighty Atlantic and I sandwich Diane between a huge jagged rock and the side of the
cliff, and we commence to fucking.
Power rushes through our bodies… Trembling… Sweating… Straining to keep upright on the cliffside. We must be a 100 feet above
the water… No, I take that back… 200 and that’s
when it all hits me! The sun beating down on us, Diane’s pussy all warm and wet like a bowl of velvet oatmeal, I think to
myself, “Could this be it? I got Lindsey at home—the girl is like some buxom 1950s Playboy Bunny and I got this lanky british
girl riding me into total oblivion 1000 feet above the ocean… I pour booze for top dollar on Paradise Island… What else could
there be?” I close my eyes and I pray. I pray to God to strike me dead with preferably a golden lightning bolt… I don’t wanna
go on… How many moments like this does a guy get in a lifetime? Maybe the next fifty years is all about bad jobs… And fat
chicks… And debt… And broken dreams… And tough breaks? How much better could it be?
So like I was sayin’, off to the phone booth. Lindsey, by the way, did find out about Diane… Really. There’s a broken phone
outside the pub where everyone calls everyone they’ve ever known from all over the world. I get in line. The line to use the
phone is long and, after a little while, I decide that I can’t wait any longer, even though the phone is free. When people
have a chance to call anywhere in the world for as long as they want, for free, they talk for a long time. I got four people
in front of me and
I figure it’s gonna be months before I get to touch that clammy receiver. The guy on the phone doesn’t look like he’s going
anywhere in the next hour or so, so I fish out a few pieces of change and I go over to the other phone. Diane has a house
in “the country” and I figure I got enough change to cover the fare. I take a gamble and I dial. Diane said she’d be at “Mum’s”
and if she isn’t, then she’ll get the message. I fire a coin into the phone and I’m met with jeers from the others waiting
in line. They’re offended… Like I don’t have the balls to wait it out with them! My rationale howls a different tune. I figure
it’s so completely inevitable that I’m gonna run out of cash, why get bogged down by a few lousy coins. The only people who
worry about money are the people who work for it, need it, or don’t have any friends who’ll lend it to them. I don’t fit into
any of those categories. I got a list, etched into the last few cells of my brain, of all the people left who’ll lend me a
few shekels. I can throw away some change. Yeah… I can blow money. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel free, like I’m
winning the game in my own small way. The only way I can change The Game is to be out of the game. I can’t care too much about
the little piece I cling to. I don’t have much and I’m losing small parts of that “much” all the time. As long as things are
working out, as long as life is good… I won’t take too many gambles. Conventional success’ll kill my soul. If the women are
throwing themselves at me, and there’s money in the bank, and people are
digging my scene and the hair looks good… There’s nowhere to go but down. Who wants to lose the condo and the BMW because
of a new wrong haircut or bad, bad shoes? The fear’ll keep me on the treadmill. The inspiration hides out in the head, bouncing,
careening like any other ping-pong ball. I got a few more loans left in the cosmic bank and they… they’re all that’s holding
me back from yet another reinvention, yet another comeback for Jimi! The sooner I give away my last few pennies and burn my
last bridge, the better off I’ll be. So really… I’m not putting change into a phone… I’M MAKING ROOM FOR MY FUTURE!