Authors: Arty Nelson
Diane isn’t home so I leave a message with her mother… But I walk away proud.
I walk into the pub. Helms is sitting at a table, staring out the window, running his hand through his curly locks, stopping
only to occasionally scratch his chin. The table’s got a small green towel on it to soak up the spilled suds—it advertises
one of the local scotches. A pair of frothy pints sit next to each other, swapping foam. I sit down and take a long pull,
like poison coal to a furnace. Washing away thoughts of Lindsey… And Ray… And my parents… Anything I didn’t have a ready-made
answer for. I’m not sure whether seeing Diane would remind me of Lindsey, or help me to forget her. I look out the window
of the pub onto the Strand—one of those famous british streets. I remember one of my college profs telling us a story about
Charles Dickens and he mentioned the Strand. The story
escapes me, as does most of college… A stop in time… A four-year freeze… A reading list… A bag of Ecstasy… A month of therapy.
It starts to rain and rain is just perfect for London, for who I am, and what I’m doing. It works over here. A town like L.A.
looks like a been-around-the-block-too-many-times and won’t-ya-come-home-with-me kind of bleach-blonde, pussy-haired, really…
I’m-not-HIV-positive sort of street-walkin’ whore when it rains, but London wears it well… Its mascara doesn’t run. The people
walk faster and some even run. They all have umbrellas and if they don’t, they buy newspapers. I hear a sad trumpet, or maybe
a lonely cornet. The brick gets cleaner with every drop that hits it and the people keep on running… I think about this and
that. I let Lindsey creep back in even though I don’t want to but it doesn’t hurt that much because I’m here… And she’s there…
And I won’t see her today. I look at Doobe and I’m happy that I wasted four years in college just because I met Doobe. I think
about Ray and I wish he were here. I wish my brother Ray were here… I wish he were here. The rain falls and falls and everyone
hurries for shelter. The bustle. I could watch it forever from a bar, three steps below street level, but I never want to
be a part of it unless I have it my way. I’ll hide and bide. I’m afraid to jump into that big pond. I take a drag of my beer.
They tell me it feels good for them to work. That it fills their days and their minds. I’m happy
sitting here with a pocket full of borrowed money and a head full of rain.
“So tell me what happened to Lindsey.”
“I met Lindsey at the beginning of the summer. We hung for a couple of weeks and then, BOOM… She’s living with me and everything
is perfect. We’re renting a room from the Good Witch and everybody seems happy. I got a case of the herpes that I got left
over from the summer before and I tell Lindsey about it and we vow to be careful. Of course, one morning I wake up and slip
a sleep-eyed bone into her and BAM… She’s got it for life. I get the sinking feeling in my stomach and so does she. Doobe,
the herpes can drop an atomic bomb on passion, lemme tell ya that. The blossoming romance became more of a dying cactus in
the Arctic and that was it. I couldn’t get over it… Even more so than her, I think.”
“Did she leave you then?”
“No, she stayed… I came home one day… It musta been about noon and I was out of my mind. I can’t even remember where I had
been… But wherever it was, there was plenty of bourbon and I was deep into it. I told her I wanted to have sex and
she said OK. We went into our bedroom and the next thing I know… I’m staring at the wall next to my bed with demon eyes, pounding
my fists against the wall as hard as I can and Lindsey’s yelling for me to stop. I stop and I drop back into bed and then
I tell her that I want to make love and she says, ‘We just did… Don’t you remember pounding into me for forty-five minutes
before you passed out?’ I started to hug her. I wanted to cry. I didn’t really know what to do or say though… Yeah… That was
pretty much how it went from there. The best I could do was like… rape her in a blackout.”
It’s late in the afternoon and things are getting blurred and profound after a long day’s drinking. The pints are chilly.
The bartender’s looking at us with pained disgust. He’s one of those postmodern Elvis types with big pork chop sideburns and
a high, high head of hair, curly. It’s more of a late-life Elvis look, circa Rhinestones and White Cape. We’re his nightmare
on this particular day. There’s always somebody. Doobe’s up on his stool calling for whiskey. I’m laughing and telling my
version of my life story. Doobe keeps bumping this tough guy next to him and the tough guy’s getting all frumpy. I start to
think that maybe the tough guy isn’t quite as tough as he’s dressed. Unfortunately for him, Doobe is too swirvy to regard
his store-bought Eastwood. A VICIOUS CYCLE. Doobe bumps the guy… And the guy gets all ruffled… And then Doobe buys him a shot…
They drink it… There’s an apology, and then, it happens all over again—
Doobe’s distraught equilibrium is bigger than his heart.
A group of people walk into the bar, point at Doobe and come towards us, even though he’s completely oblivious to their entrance.
Three of them—two guys and a girl.
“Helms, I almost bloody missed you while I was gone!” says a beanpole with freckles and a firebush coiff.
“Donald,” Helms slurps. “This is my buddy, Jimi, from the States.”
“You’re the bloody Yank who wakes me up at all hours of the morning ringing up Helms. I thought you’d be older the way you
talk so bloody slow… Sound like you’re on your bloody deathbed when you call!”
“It’s he-red-i-tary.”
“Well, if that’s the bloody case, then I hope your parents don’t call while you’re here ‘cause I’m SURE they’ll call in the
middle of the night and I’m sure they’ll talk even SLOWER! I got bloody bags under my eyes from you!”
Everything is a crisis when Donald speaks—Woody Allen, but less anal and more snob. He forgets
me and goes back to his counterparts, hands looping madly, eyebrows aquiver, voice jumping.
“… So I’m up in the bloody tree and I’m hanging by one bloody arm and Mum is under me, picking up the fallen apples. ‘Mum,
I’m bloody about to drop! I can’t hold on any longer!’ and she’s saying, ‘Just a minute, Deary. Let me gather up these last
few.’ I couldn’t bloody believe it! I’m about to fall from God knows how many feet and Mum’s treating me like a bloody wanker!”
Every once in awhile, he breaks from his story, “I’m so BLOODY DRUNK, MY GOD!” and goes on ranting. I get right into the flow
of the story, drawn to the urgency, unaware of the details.
With Donald come Linda and Louis. Linda, also a redhead, has a luscious, bursting pair of raisin-tipped breasts. A little
on the heavy side, but no matter, her person nullified any shortcomings whatsoever. She sat next to me with a warmth that
called my leather onto the back of my chair. If I didn’t need a showpiece arm trophy to feel like a man, I would’ve asked
her to marry me on the spot. My LOVE is mercurial and my LUST paves the way. Linda looks at me and smiles with such honesty
that I’m struck speechless, not knowing which of my personas to assume.
“How ya doin’?” I stutter, in my best city-speak.
“Fine, Jimi,” climbing over my oral shield. “You’re a cute boy, aren’t you.”
That does it! BOY… CUTE BOY! Like a homing pigeon on my Oedipal G-spot! The romance
begins to bloom in my head. Dinner at Her favorite London spot, hand-kissing walks along Henry Moore sculpture-dotted brick
walkways. Inside my head roams a TRUE ROMANTIC. I just coat it with a fallen rock-god shell to fool myself.
Louis stands up at the bar waiting for an ale, occasionally darting Liberace eyes over at my fidgety groin. One glance at
his blood-colored riding suit, complete with leather crop and shaved head, and I feel like a 12-year-old runaway looking for
Huck Finn in Times Square on a Saturday night, his dark chocolate skin only adding to the confusion of my deepest naughty
slave fantasies.
“Well, enough about me and Mum… Whatta ya say we go on outside and smoke this spliff?” Donald whistles, producing a bloated
spliff.
“I wish we had bloody X… That’s what I’d like for work tonight… Wouldn’t you, Helms?” my redhead vixen says.
“I’d love X… I need something to pick me up,” he answers.
“Helms, you didn’t tell me you had to work tonight,” I say.
“I hadn’t thought about it in a coupla hours.”
“Enough bloody talk about it, let’s go and smoke this bloody spliff I got before Linda and Doobe have to go in to work.”
We walk out into the alley behind the bar. Louis follows, sipping a tall ale. “I’m going to get all wet in this rain!” He
shrieks. The sweet smoke umbrellas us from the rain as much as we need it
to. It’s still light out, but the day is in its final desperate encore. The city glows around its edge—a sad window into the
past, a childhood I never let myself have, a first love I can’t remember, parents I ran from, a sister who didn’t like me
because I was spoiled, a perspective I won in a lottery. I give it all back. I throw it away with every hit of hash that dances
in my head. I get no family and all the fleeting support I need in return. When the spliff is gone, Doobe and Linda run off
to wait tables and I return inside with Donald and Louis to have another beer. It’s decided that we’ll go and cop X while
Linda and Doobe toss grub to theatergoers at Joe Allen—dramaland eatery that it is. I’ve never heard of the place, but then
again, you don’t catch me sashaying down Broadway very often either.
“I’ll get you a pint, Honey!” giggles Louis when I cry a fake poor. I’m tempted to ask “of what,” but refrain, seeing potential
in the relationship. Donald and I grab a new table while Louis grabs the pints and Donald resumes telling me about his stay
with Mum. The crowd has begun to thin out in the pub.
“We’ll drink these down quick and go over to Robyn’s house. She’s got good bloody X and if you catch her in a decent mood,
she’ll bloody give it to you!” Donald confides. Louis returns with fresh pints from the bar and I turn the head back on autopilot.
The rain’s gone home for the evening, leaving behind a chill. We walk through the streets. I feel at ease in these anonymous
streets watching and listening to Louis and Donald. The lamplight’s warm. Faces hurry past, flickering out of the shadows
only for an instant.
“Hurry up now, Honey! He walks just like he talks… Slow, heeheehee,” Louis says to Donald, up in front of me. They turn the
corner, I speed up, following their chatty heads as we cut through Leicester Square.
“Robyn’s flat’s just on the other side of the square,” Donald says, with a long arm pointing at a small building. There’s
a fortune-teller’s half-mooned shop on the ground level and a man holding a baby while talking on the phone in the window
up above the flower boxes, in between white wooden shutters.
“Christian… Oh Christian, my love…” Louis yells up at the window. “… He’s almost as cute as you, Jimi.”
“He IS a real looker isn’t he,” I squirm, half sarcastically, half jealous. The door next to the shop
buzzes open. We wind up a tight staircase and into the flat.
The flat’s painted gold with a dull black ceiling and there’s industrial music playing loud. Christian holds the baby in his
arms while he argues on the phone and circles the entire flat. We sit down in the living room and Donald pulls out another
spliff. The beat of the music cuts through the room—a mix of power tools, synthesizers and chemical anger. Mannequins, painted
all different colors, hang from the ceiling—black ones, blue ones, ones with glitter. The walls are filled with paintings
and sketches all of the same model.
“Oh that’s Robyn… She’s a real Madonna fan, heeheehee!” Louis says, noticing that I’m drawn in by the similarity of all the
pictures. Robyn has a sexuality about her. I don’t know if it’s the artwork or the premise but the point gets across. I sit
back, take a hit of the passed spliff while she watches me from all over the room… Purring… Secrets from another lifetime.
She’s OF some other century… I guess would be the best way to imprison her in the written word. More a damsel than a woman.
It would be alright to tell her what I really thought and felt. She would know it anyways. The old man once told me that french
women were as old as their country, not as their cunts, and I can see the story of England etched into Robyn’s oil-base eyes.
Not brash and new, like American bitches, all attitude and no wisdom. But pools of sin, deep and warm, her eyes tell me. The
kind of
sin that stands above judgment, quietly commanding respect.
“This Robyn chick already HAS everything Madonna’s got.”
“… And more, heeheehee!” Louis and Donald both sing.
Christian and the baby now stand in front of us.
“Robyn’s due back any minute.” He walks back out of the room into the hallway. The baby looks at us over Christian’s shoulder
with silent eyes. Christian’s striking, with hard angles and olive skin like some Apache or something. One of those weird
postmodern model types. The baby looks like it could be his. Donald gets up and walks into the kitchen, returning with 3 pints
of ale. We all take swigs and sit drowning in the pulse and bang of the technogrunge muzak. The flat spooks me… Drug vibe…
I can taste the bad energy in the beer. This place’s got a black soul. I’m uneasy and restless even though I’m drawn to all
the Robyns.
“Robyn broke that bed buggering Christian with a bloody strap-on,” Donald says, pointing to a broken-down bed in the corner
of the room.
“Didn’t you, Christian?” Louis chirps.
“What?” He looks up from the phone, irritated, the child ducking behind his shoulder.
“I said didn’t YOU and Robyn break THAT bed with nasty toys?” Louis repeats, pulling a huge black strap-on dildo out of a
table drawer. “Have this tagged and marked as a divine weapon, heeheehee!” he titters.
“Put that bloody thing away, would you, Louis! I got a sore backside just looking at it!” Donald says. Christian is out of
sight by now, off in the kitchen. I sit with this twisted Laverne and Shirley and wait for the X-Damsel. The music marches
on with the clang of hammers, the shrieks of tortured keyboard, and every once in awhile, a vocal comes on and says something
like, “… You are not alone… I cry… We fuck!” I love industrial music. It captures something in me that I can’t quite grasp
alone in a bathtub… It really does. Sitting in this apartment listening to the theme song of the death row chain gang moving
through a toxic jungle after an acid rain, banging and building a road to hip-hop nowhere, running alongside a pair of tittery
London Paul Lynne sound-alikes.