Technicolor Pulp Read online

  “Exactly.”

  “Any favorites?”

  “The Scarlet Letter… I sometimes fantasize about Hester Prynne to this day.” She gives me a subtle Marty Feldman look.

  “My name is Karen by the way.”

  “Hi… My name’s Jimi.” Our introduction, more of a good-bye than a hello.

  PUIP 9

  The minute steak and powdered eggs’ve made me drowsy. I put my seat back and turn off the overhead. My dream state takes me back out the window. It’s dark outside and it feels good to be above the clouds. I drift along nursed by the hum of the engines. I see why my cat sleeps on my chest at night—a massage to the soul. I feel quiet… I’m not asleep… I’m in and out… I just don’t feel like having my eyes open….

  “WE ARE APPROXIMATELY TWENTY MINUTES WEST OF LONDON’S HEATHROW AIRPORT. THE FLIGHT ATTENDANT WILL BE COMING AROUND WITH IMMIGRATION CARDS. IF YOU DO NOT HAVE A PEN, PLEASE RAISE YOUR HAND AND WE WILL GET YOU ONE AND… PLEASE… BE PATIENT.”

  It’s gotta be half the problem with this lame world—too easy to travel. It used to be that if someone wanted to go somewhere, they really had to WANT to get there. Nowadays… It’s a matter of making a phone call to the airlines and booking a flight. OK, so every once in awhile a plane drops out of the sky, BIG DEAL. I’m talkin’ cannibals, or hurricanes, or deserts—things that slow down a trip. When’s the last time some poor bastard got buried up to his neck by Apaches and slowly eaten by huge red ants? It just doesn’t happen anymore! Traveling used to be a sign of vision and courage. Now it’s all about leisure and cash.

  I see the United Kingdom off to the left of the plane—a huge galaxy of islands, painted by a string of lights that shoot off in every direction and come back into a thousand circles. I’m landing on another planet. No grids? Every street with a mind of its own, roaming where it pleases—an elegant chaos that busts America for the capitalist graveyard that it is. Here pal, you work at E-23, and sleep on the south corner of L–97, and fuck your old lady at Z–49. When it’s all over, your corpse will reside in T–65—It’s a nice plot. So… Pre… De… Ter… Mined.

  The stewardess passes out immigration cards. I’ve never even heard of the things. I peek over Karen’s shoulder and do whatever she does. I figure that she’s a pro at this kind of thing—probably took a seminar on the shit. It’s crystal clear to me now. No prior knowledge. I’m free. A worm reborn in another land. My only luggage—a muddy conscience and a few cool T-shirts. I didn’t even remember to bring socks or underwear.

  PUIP 10

  The plane touches down and everyone begins to panic in their seats. So terrified that they might be the last ones off the plane. So scared that someone might get in front of them, or just LOOK like they know MORE what they’re doing. I have to hustle myself because I’m trying to follow Karen and she’s moving down the aisle like a hooker in debt. I don’t get it, nothing the chick studies has changed in a couple thousand years! How many archeological breakthroughs can there be on any given day? She’s moving fast. I gotta elbow the simple german girl just so I don’t crush this old lady in front of me wearing a flowerpot-like hat on her head. The hat blinds me for a second and I panic, thinking I’ve lost my way out. The airport’s a blur. My eyes are glued to Karen as she navigates through the crowd. She doesn’t let up the pace until she hits customs. I’m not talking to Karen anymore. I’m simply using her to get from point A to point B.

  The line I’m in is the longest. It reminds me of staggering home drunk, wishing every nextdoor is home. Waiting, with nothing to do but think of the rest of my life. Counter 22 opens up just as I’m about to buy my second house in the suburbs with kids who don’t trust me and a wife who eats for all of us. There’s a very normal-looking, middle-aged, bearded guy at the helm. He’s sporting a sweater of brown and, as I soon find out, reeks of the most putrid tobacco—stale socks treated with cat piss and aged in a sauna. Nothing short of severe childhood trauma could make a man smoke tobacco that smells like he smells as I walk up to him. He takes one look at me: the pompadour, the burnt eyes, the fake Beatle boots, and I know there’ll be questions. His moustache is quivering and stale sweat beads frame his face.

  “So… Lad…” he says, “…‘Ow long do you think yu’ll be in London?”

  “I don’t know… Maybe six months or something like that?”

  “Quite a holiday? ‘Ow much money do you have with you?”

  He’s baiting me. Trying to make me pay taxes. I know it! I’m pissed Helms never told me about this! I hate to NOT KNOW when I’m fucking myself up!

  “… About three hundred dollars.”

  “Three hundred dollars?” he snaps, all jolly and arrogant. “That isn’t quite a lot of money now, is it?”

  “No, but I think I’ll probably get more from home when I get settled in.”

  All the other lines are moving along, as I sink deeper and deeper into the immigratory quicksand. What are they gonna do, make me go home for being broke?

  Things go from bad to worse and within minutes, I’m in a small blank neon-scorched room with two very similar gents who are making it their business to know my business. I’d say from the way the one guy is cupping my ballsack, that the gang all got together and decided that I’m a smuggler. It’s an offhanded compliment for any loser to be considered dangerous, and I stand proud as they gauge the weight of my testes and rifle through my journal. This goes on for ten minutes until they’re satisfied that I’m just lost and not really a threat at all. They tell me, snickering, to have a nice stay in London and stamp my passport.

  The violation of my person puts a bounce in my stride. A Reader’s Digest version of Midnight Express, I think, and so like me to be overestimated. I shoot through the gates and eye up a row of tellys along the wall.

  I don’t know what happened to Karen. I imagine she made it through customs and is already off in the corner of some library, unearthing ancient trivia.The thought that I may never see someone again, even a total stranger, depresses me. I didn’t really want to thank her, it’s just that I’m afraid I only get to meet so many people in my life and I always wonder if I’ll know when I reach the halfway mark. When I’m not contemplating suicide, I’m praying I’ll never die. I need a lot of time to come up with a good idea, or at least, a rap that everyone thinks is cool. I need to see the world and I need to find home. I need to sleep with a million women and I need to find THE ONE, all while deciding whether or not I even like women. I wanna be a starving artiste and I wanna be a rich pig-man. I wanna be real and I wanna just sell out for the irony of it all. I wanna be the priest who marries Woody Allen and Axl Rose. I wanna be Madonna’s flower girl when she finally marries… Herself.

  PUIP 11

  Crafty me, with my Beatle boots and my Kool-Aid smile, realizes while standing in front of the telephones, that I don’t even know what kind of cash the british use—something about “quid.” My deliberate naivete is beginning to be a pain in the ass, already. Mister Open-Road can’t even make a phone call. The Crisis of Everyday Life. The thud of concrete anxiety circling over me with its vulture wings, when an oasis appears before me in the shape of a currency exchange booth. I look up at the charts and know that money, in my life, is a dying, howling beast. My first of six twenties is snatched up in return for eleven pounds. I tell the nice lady that I need to make a phone call. She takes back a single pound and gives me smaller coins. I thank her and she says, “Cheers.”

  Each phone booth is a tiny hut, painted red with yellow trim. They invite me inside. A long ways from the grafitti-stained piss-reeking cubes back home. This world is not real to me. The sounds, the smells, all different. My pulse quickens, things to figure out. I call Doobe’s number, after three rings a female voice says, “Hello?” and I ask for Doobe.

  “He’s on his way to get you,” it says, without offering a name. I thank the voice and hang up. I find a warm corner and strike a pose—try to look pensive. I hate to wait.

  Time passes, not mu
ch, and I see yellow bell-bottoms, a pillbox hat, a suede fringe vest, and big black bubble-top shoes—Helms. I’m happy to see the guy, walking feet out like a proud duck with arms swinging high above his head. Not loving Helms is like hating cartoons.

  “Jimi!!!”

  PUIP 12

  We jump on a train, Helms and I, sit down and start swilling on a pint of cheap scotch. My friends are my heroes, fuck Peter the Great.

  “I don’t know what I like more… This scotch, or those yellow bell-bottoms, Helms… They both remind me so much of how low I’ve sunk.”

  “It gets a lot worse, Jimi… You might remember this scotch like it’s CHAMPAGNE some day.”

  The scotch is bad. I taste broken dreams in every sip. I can only hope it gets better as the night goes on—the saving grace of all shitty booze. The train does a strung-out hula down the track, forcing caution on every futile gulp. Everything happening to me is grounds to stop drinking, I think, as a missed shot rolls down my chin. I look at Helms with his silent-movie smile, feel good about my childhood and think logic is as useless as denial.

  “Jimi, we ride this train for ten more minutes or so and then we gotta hurry to catch Last Call over by my place.”

  “Whattaya mean, Doober, ‘Last Call’… It’s early?”

  “Last Call’s at eleven o’clock.”

  The number “11” strikes me deaf with a dumb look on my face. I’m devastated. My european fantasy trip spills out of the gutter and into a suburban hell before my shocked eyes. What has life come to? What was I thinking and why didn’t I ask such a vital question? More importantly… Why didn’t Doobe warn me? My liver begins to sweat.

  “Doober… What am I gonna do here? All I WANT to do is sit around brassy woody pubs and mooch drinks off newfound friends.”

  “I thought you knew… And anyways, what does’t matter now?” he says with a slap to my insecure and manly cheek. “You might have to actually DO something here other than sit around and get fucked up,” he chuckles.

  “Helms, I LIKE to kill large chunks of time with a cool elixir in my hand. I have fun when I do that. If I wanted to go sight-seeing, I would’ve stayed home and looked at fucking books! I didn’t come over here to get Zen-like, 11 o’clock, no wonder this fuckin’ EMPIRE fell!”

  PUIP 13

  So now I get to the part about being in London for the first time. London, to me, was always just a big collage of bad plays I saw on public TV growing up—Channel 13, I think. A lot of capes and top hats, and people being witty in ballrooms. MANNERS. Dickens and poor people. Little awnings on the houses. 200-year-old-looking signs on all the buildings. All that corny old nostalgic shit. Old men with rotting teeth and their women with the heavy bottoms.

  We jump off the train, cut through the station and hit the neighborhood drag—a small strip of shops, taverns and steps, a lot of steps. It’s quaint, visions of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Rows and rows of town houses with funny little cars parked outside of them—turn-of-the-century cutting-edge go-carts with windshield wipers. Street lamps, all glowy every which way, perfect landmarks for my blurry eyes. Every house has odd-shaped windows, all made to NO order.

  “Jimi, there’s a pub here for every different brand of ale. The breweries own the pubs.”

  “I fuckin’ love it! Um gonna roam these streets like a human camera—my heart in one hand and my cock in the other. Nothin’ but…”

  “I’m not sure how the locals will feel about that camera stuff, but they’ll appreciate your enthusiasm I’m sure. Let’s just take a second here, Jimi, and relax before we go in the door.”

  We’re outside a pub at the top of Doobe’s street, which is now my street. Right in the center of town, there’s a bus stop and benches and a little monument of a guy on a horse looking brave. I peek in the window. Even the pets hang together in the pub. Homey, all wood and brass, just like I thought. There’s even a fireplace. A great place to spend a life, or a day, or maybe just the better part of my twenties.

  “Perfect, Helms. I couldn’t be happier. The whole fuckin’ trip was worth it for this moment! Something in this world is just how I thought it would be!”

  “Jimi… I’ll do the ordering when we get inside,” he says, with what really sublime and sophisticated writers would call HUSHED TONES.

  “Helms, you don’t understand, you Tom Cruise motherfucker with Dudley Moore hair and teeth! I love pubs! I’m not a club guy!”

  “Easy boy, I know you do. Let’s just save the THAT’S JUST WHO I AM speech scene for a little later on.”

  Maybe Helms is right, maybe the scotch’s hit me harder than I realize, maybe a nice beer would be in order. I follow Doobe into the bar. We sit down, the pub’s noisy and I get the feeling that it’s almost over. The 11 o’clock thing is already fucking with my life.

  “Doobe, maybe Spain is the answer… Maybe we gotta go to Spain and chase bulls with big glasses of rum in our hands?”

  “Let’s just celebrate your safe arrival, Jimi, cheers,” and we ching mugs. I sit back and let the room-temp suds swish around in my stale mouth.

  Families, laughing and drinking together, and I’m so far away from any kind of home. I hear all the children laughing, and it makes me think that I was once a child, that I am still a child… I need to get out of this rut… I need to get out of me… All the families, from Grandpa to the tiniest babes, and I don’t want to do anything but sit or run, sit on a barstool or run away. I’m in a rut and I can’t see it any other way… I only see the end… I’m blind to the beginning… I’m tired out when I need to be fresh… It all just started and I’m already looking back on it.

  “It’s good to see you, Jimi.” I peer at Helms through the cool amber of his glass. He looks so pretty. The bartender is shooing us out the door, telling us to finish up. I see Helms and I see the children. I’m snapping pictures, sitting safe behind some lonely filter, prisoner in my own TV. What would Jim Carroll do? I am not anything… I’m a bloated potpourri of other men’s actions… I don’t do anything unless I think someone cool did it before me… I’m a follower trapped in a unique mouth… I’ve never done any of this. I look around. They want me to leave. I should leave. I see Helms, all safe, drowning in amber. A looking glass… I hide behind a looking glass… I’m a being, crucified on an antenna. Fuck You Jesus! I thought you did this for me! I thought you did this already! My blood is your blood. I thought my blood was your blood. Looking through the cool amber, all the voices once removed, talking to me, shooing me out the door. Telling me to leave, I’m hearing that I’m welcome.

  PUIP 14

  We order a pizza from across the street and roll home. The “flat” is really a two-story town house with no furniture. Naked lightbulbs dangle down, coloring each room. I meet Sonja and Loren. Donald, the last of the roomies, is off at “Mum’s” in the country. They’re playing cards, and we sit down. There’s hash on a small tray—good black hash, and Helms lights a pipe. I’m on the floor. I take a drag, and the pizza arrives with a bottle of white wine. I twist off the cap, take a swig and hope for a sense of humor. Helms opens up the pie, which looks good except for one small but large detail. There’s an egg in the middle of it. A beautiful big fat pizza, dripping with cheese and so much spinach, and there it is, smack dab in the middle—one close-but-no-cigar chicken!

  “What the fuck is THIS thing?”

  “It’s an egg… Wha’does’t look like from where you’re sitting?”

  “I mean… Yeah… It looks like a fucking egg, but what’s it doin’ in the middle of this pie?”

  “Is this ANOTHER thing I should’ve warned you about, Jimi?… Well… I’ll tell ya now. You’re in London and they put eggs on a lot of things.”

  The girls are laughing, finding humor in my small-time dilemma. I look down at the egg, all yokey and drippy, polluting my cheese. The cheap scotch gurgles in my stomach. More hash, it’ll take more hash before everything mixes up alright.

  “You just toss that egg over my way whe
n you run into it. I’ll eat it.”

  “You’ll eat anything, ya fuckin’ vulture!”

  “I don’t like to waste food, Jimi.”

  “No, you’re a pig! That’s what it is! It’s got nothing to do with waste!”

  I bicker helplessly for another minute, taunted by the girls’ laughter. I can’t take it when girls laugh at me. I got no choice but to take a taste. Embryo on my nice pizza! Some things just shouldn’t BE in some places.

  The girls are playing gin rummy, and we join for a couple of games. I don’t know how to play, so the game slows down. Doobe’s trying to cheat and Sonja’s all over him. Off the face-up pile, over and over again he tries, and she never misses it. I don’t either but I don’t care. Doobe always cheats. It’s part of his game and I can respect that.

  “Bloody Helms! Put it back in the pile! You’re a damned cheat.”

  “I got it from the pile,” he says, mouth agape, “you’re all watching, what could I’ve done?”

  “You could’ve done just what you bloody did! Which is cheat!”

  Sonja’s sharp, too sharp to be happy, and the hash doesn’t slow her down a bit. I’m beginning to think I love her. Could she be the answer? Could her foreign loins be the launching pad of my tranquillity? Maybe I need an-other woman? Her bored look, her strong calves, hips lost back in the fifties, all Marilyn-ish. She could be the answer. I start to fantasize about a life with Sonja, my head wrapped in her cynical thighs. Every once in awhile my dream is interrupted by the missus catching Helms in the act of cheating once again. He always argues his case before he replaces the misdrawn card. And then, he’s always good for one more shady move. I float over to Loren. Dark-skinned with teeth of pearl—what a combo. Sparkling pearls on a string running through cocoa skin and golden brown tresses. Hair pulled back to reveal a flawless face wrapped in a constant smile. What a pair of women I now live with! Sonja, blasé, knowing and indifferent, taught by life not to care, heart polluted by the sum total of her experience. Loren, laughing and smooth, nice enough to make me act like me. Didn’t I just meet these girls? Is it the hash or am I seeing?