Technicolor Pulp Read online

  We play cards for about an hour, and then the girls go up to bed. Helms falls asleep watching the telly, which gives me a chance to sneak up to his room and make for the bed. I deserve it after my stint on the pea-green vinyl couch. I lay awake and think about my day. Being with Helms makes me think of Ray. I start to wonder what Ray thought about as he climbed to the top of that bottomless mountain pass in the Rockies to string himself up in a tree, waiting quietly to be found blue and lifeless and tragic the next day by people he called his friends in a note. Maybe I didn’t even know Ray anymore by the time Ray ended. Maybe the guy I hung with was long gone. A lot can happen in a year or two. A person changes, and then, I don’t know Ray anymore. I begin to think about the island, and then, of course, it’s about Lindsey and I feel the adrenaline of self-hate burn through my veins. Feelings run through me, pouring out over my chest like hot piss on cuts. Victimized by my past, by my part, swimming in black, and anger, and frustration… I don’t want to feel at all… I want to forget… Forget the lesion that bubbles in the back of my brain… A little tumor swirling inward… I go inward and I drown… Ray is dead and I’m left cursed. Should I be sorry? Was he sorry? Is it worth being sorry? I don’t want to grow from any of this shit. I don’t want to have to feel all this shit! Let me fall asleep! If you love me, let me fall asleep, Jesus, you motherfucker! Staring up at the ceiling, screaming in my head, needing something bigger than me, or Ray, or life, or any of this shit. All of this shit!

  PUIP 15

  Was I sleeping? Or was I hanging off the edge of a cliff for six hours? Either way, it’s over and the sun is up. I shoulda gone jogging for the night. My teeth are stuck to my lips. My throat is raw and cracked like an abandoned concrete shoot. I die a thousand petty deaths at the start of every day. I remember part of a dream, something about standing in a McDonalds and it’s windy and I keep trying to order a Big Mac but I don’t want the Special Sauce. I just want ketchup, and the girl behind the counter keeps saying, “You, Jerk! We don’t serve Big Macs with ketchup. It’s Special Sauce or forget the whole thing!” She’s laughing in my face but I won’t take “NO” for an answer. It’s a stalemate. Everybody’s always laughing at me in my dreams and nobody ever tells me why. I hear a phone ringing in the back of the restaurant. My eyelids roll open and I see that the phone clearly IS ringing. I wait two more rings and then get up to try and answer it. I’m a good three steps away from the phone when I hear the final choke of its bell. I walk back upstairs. Doobe is stretched out on a piece of grey foam next to my nice box spring. He opens a tired eye, spots me, and slams it shut in a sarcastic wink.

  “Thanks for waking me up last night, James. Nice guy… That chair was real cozy at about 4:30 in the morning.”

  It’s the old full name thing—a sure sign of some hurt feelings.

  “Pal, it was so late… I barely even knew what I was doing and besides… To wake you up would’ve all but condemned me to a night on the floor… I just couldn’t do it to myself.”

  “You gotta a big heart, Jimi… I’ll give ya that, but I’m still waitin’ for the day when you use it on somebody other than YOU.”

  “Doobe baby, when the day comes! When my ship comes in, I’m taking you to Rio for Carnivale… I know I owe you. Don’t think I’m not keepin’ track of all you’ve done for me.”

  “Um gonna pray that day never comes. Who knows what else will’ve happened by then,” he says and jumps up off the floor. I catch a short right to the ribs and he’s off towards the bathroom. “I’m leaving for breakfast in a half hour. With or without you!”

  I close my eyes, open them back up again, and Helms is standing over me, showered, shaved, and dressed for the day.

  “Now ya got ten minutes.”

  I get up and take a quick glance into a frightened dresser mirror. I can barely see my island tan through the green. Shower time. I’ve seen better fleshtones on week-old produce. It’s cold in the hallway and, I might add, it’s cold in London. I mean frigid, the hallway’s like a goddam morgue. I can’t believe that people live like this all the time. It’s cold. It’s dank. It’s drafty. No wonder everyone around here always looks like they just got dunked in a sweat bath. I run down the hall in a threadbare towel until I come to the bathroom, which I expect to be steamy and toasty, but of course I’m brutally mistaken. The bathroom has a goddam breeze blowing through it. I could fly a kite in the place if the ceiling was a foot higher!

  The morning shower is sacred to me—one ritual that knows no prejudice. 8 to 80, blind, crippled, or crazy, doesn’t everyone get a couple minutes of steamy solitude? Silky beads of water rolling down the old back. Comfort. A few minutes of peace before it’s time to go out into the day and realize that those days of yesteryear, doing the Huck Finn thing down at the local sewer-steam, were the best days. I mean shower—the point at which life falls into a coma. My head says, “Womb, asshole! Say WOMB!” But I’m not gonna pretend to remember what it was like in the womb. I might still FEEL it, but it isn’t a thing I can TELL you about. The shower is quiet compared to the sounds I hear every day, like logs on the fire that burns inside my head, raging, sometimes a whisper, but always burning. Sometimes I think if I had an X ray of my brain, all it would show is a few goldfish flopping around on a cold, cold floor, yelling something about fast food, saying something about swimming again. I just want to know what cartoon did it to me. I mean how did it happen? Was it something I ate as a kid, or what? Too many Lucky Charms, with all those marshmallows making me restless? I’m not bitter about it. I just wanna know. It’s the age-old and completely laughable question, “What’s it all about?” that I seem to be dancing around. Or was I dancing around a windy bathroom in London? Is it all about my dick? Does everything have to make me feel nervous, stupid, or horny? I had a boss who used to say, “It’s all about your dick, Jimi. Unless you’re a queer, and then, it’s all about my dick.” The shower is just so crucial to all of this. To all of these things that amaze and paralyze THE ME.

  The bathroom, meanwhile, is a mess. I think basically somebody got so cold that they tried to start a fire and now all that’s left is a huge black hole with a ring around it. There isn’t even a tub left, it’s just a ring. And the worst part? The worst part is that there isn’t even a standard shower. Just this thing Londoners call a “Sha-bath,” or maybe it’s that the process is called “Sha-bathing.” I don’t know. I don’t think the thing even deserves its own name. Let’s face it, it’s a nozzle with a hose at the end of it, and that’s it! A cheap rubber hose with a fuckin’ lousy little nozzle at the end of it. No one should feel like they’re doing something that merits its own term when they hold this hose and beg for a decent spray from its puny prudish mouth. I don’t think the Limeys have the guts to come clean on this one! They can’t admit that, even though they’ve had a country for centuries, they never managed to come up with a decent shower. It’s not even usable! How’s a guy supposed to rinse, and lather, and relax, and benefit from the pulsating stream, and masturbate, all at the same time? It’s too much work! I can’t be bothered with all this HAND-HELD stuff! I’m trying to get a little relief, a little bit of a rush before I go out to face the sharks, and I gotta hold my own shower head. It just doesn’t make sense. It might sound primitive, even ridiculous, but it’s me and the facts are the facts! It’s just too much to do at once! I need that thing up on a hook. Christ, they figured out how to make lamps, what’s so difficult about a shower? Imagine trying to spank the old monkey under the covers, while flipping through a porn holding a lightbulb. That shit’d be dangerous! Why’s the shower so different?

  Anyways, so I’m laying in this filthy bathtub. I got this stupid nozzle in my hand, which is starting to cramp up on me, and I’m pulling hard ‘cause I got a strong wind at my back. The ambiance alone has my cock purple and huffing, not to mention the watering it’s getting. Like it’s a posy I’m wishing over. Coaxing it to grow, begging it to become something it isn’t. I almost wish one of my new feline housema
tes would walk in on me. I must look kind of stud-like with my Popeye forearm and my flared nostrils. I could ask her to light me up a cigarette or something. If she really cared about me, she could hold the nozzle. My arm’s so cramped, I’m gonna need occupational therapy when it’s all over. It’s all just a little bit too weird for me, and it makes me think that either I overemphasize the importance of my morning shower, or I just don’t know where to beat off on THIS side of the Atlantic. It shouldn’t be so much work. I pulled a lot of muscles. I’m no Houdini! It’s finally over. I let out a raging whimper, jump up, grab my towel, make a quick sign of the cross, and take my chances in a dead run back down the hall.

  I look in Doobe’s drawer and find a nice stash of boxer shorts. The sock pickings are slim but they’ll do. I haven’t told Doobe that I forgot socks and underwear. It’s my little secret and the longer it stays that way the better. I brought two pairs of jeans: a black pair and my favorite old blues, like soft baby flannel. I put the blues on. My ass definitely looks better in the blues. I reach into my duffel and fish out a T-shirt. Black, perfect, always maintain the Johnny Cash color code, my sister says. I fell in love with a girl who worked for Chanel when I was 19, and I’ve been lookin’ like a lost episode of Dark Shadows ever since. I give myself a good dose of Vaseline on the hair and carve out a fresh pompadour. Yeah, I might look a touch green but it’s been working for Keith Richards for years. One last glance in the mirror, just long enough to catch the essence—a quick cut. Zip up the fake Beatle boots and I’m out the bedroom door.

  PUIP 16

  “I was beginning to worry about you… Thought maybe you had extensive WRINKLE damage from the shower.”

  “From that shower? It was all I could do to hang in long enough for a little spank. No wonder everyone looks so greasy and tense around here.”

  “I don’t think they carry the guilt the way we do, Jimi.”

  Doobe hands me a nice, fat, burning, hash spliff. Its smokey plume is waltzing throughout the entire room. The smell is user-friendly and the feeling is ancient. Each taste of the sweet smoke washes away a little piece of my morning travails. The apartment has high, high ceilings. I hadn’t imagined the place would be so big. Most of the rooms have a vacant feel, except for the kitchen. A space filled with travelers. No one’s going out to buy curtains or a new couch. The kitchen has some nice italian crockery and a spice rack, all filled, but that’s about as homey as it gets. The rest of the pad is done in Mid-Eighties Crack Den.

  We sit in the kitchen smoking the spliff while Doobe makes tea. No better way to start the day. High. It makes the day, the world, glow with a lost promise. Something could happen that’s never happened before. A roller-coaster ride in the mind in exchange for a small chunk of the soul. We throw down our tea and Doobe puts out the spliff. “We’ll save it for late night. Let’s get outta here.”

  PUIP 17

  We walk up to the Leland cafe—a generic little hole that somehow reeks of character, in spite of the fact that it looks like it coulda been decorated by monkeys on tranquilizers. This place gives new meaning to the word, “cardboard.” There’s a fat old lady named Lou who takes the orders and yells them through a window that looks into the kitchen. A table of locals drink tea, yell and eat. I don’t see ten teeth between the four of them. Pale as ghosts, with no saving grace other than cool flannel shirts.

  “Bloody Lane, I got the tab yesterday and I won’t have it again!”

  “You’re a bloody liar, Johnny… Come on now and pull out your end of the bill!”

  “Lou darling, could we settle up with you another day?”

  “You boys’ve been settling up tomorrow since you were ten, now come on with it.”

  Helms orders the special and I follow suit. An egg, toast, beans, a rasher of bacon, chips and tea. Helms gets a side of black pudding—butcher scraps and blood all fried up together. I pass on the pudding but agree to taste Doobe’s and I’ve got to admit that the shit isn’t all that bad as long as I don’t think too specifically about its origins. We bury our faces in our plates, stopping only occasionally to ask for salt or pepper. The “special” is thrown on the plate with no concern for esthetics. The beans are everywhere but the quality is there and the hash’s got me hungry. I’m eating so fast that I’m out of breath and I feel destined for a bad case of the hiccups. Breakfast at the Leland is good.

  Before I know it, we’re outside the pub again—Lally’s, where we finished off last night. Sitting next to a couple of young skate-nazis and their pit bull, swilling on a rich dark beer. With every gulp, I think less of the vicious dog next to me. My throat is desperate for long sips of beer. English ale is full—chocolate cake with opium icing. A big red double-decker comes chugging up the street.

  “Down with it, Jimi boy… We can’t waste this good ale.”

  I’ve never been much of a beer chugger, even though I was a fraternity boy, but the prospect of leaving behind this good ale inspires me. It’d be like pissing on the Bible. So down the hatch and off on the double-decker. My life is becoming more of a middle-class postcard every minute.

  We wind through the streets of South London. I’m knee-deep in history I never read and I’m filled with good beer, black hash and the Leland Special. The streets are jagged and the bus has to snake its way through every turn, inching along, taking its time. The bus has a certain respect for the streets. I don’t mind at all. It gives me time to see the world outside. Doobe’s quiet and I just watch. It’s a working-class neighborhood. Nothing to get too excited about. It’s the part I love. It’s not that I’m all down-home, or that I relate all that much to my fellow man. I just like to see what the nowheres look like. I give little imaginary histories to it all, mostly the people. Who they love and where they work and how they sleep and what kind of face they make when they fart or come or cry, or die. I LOOK at the people. I look into their eyes. I try to see their pain and their joy. I want to FEEL them. It always makes me sad but I do it anyway. I wanna taste the ham they ate last night. I wanna read the mail that comes everyday in all the colorful little mailboxes. I wanna see the schools. I wanna see the hottest girl in the neighborhood, the toughest guy in the neighborhood. It’s my fantasy. I wanna see the houses of the rich and I wanna see the street corners that the hoods and dealers hang out on. All the things that don’t change. All the things that make up the world. It’s alright seeing the famous places, but it’s the non-points of interest that interest me the most. I like them the best.

  The houses are all brick. Everything in London is so fucking bricky, with wood trim painted all different colors, just like the mailboxes, and none of the windows are the same shape. Some window guy probably made a fortune in this town. I look at each and every house, and I think there’s a world hidden inside them all—an epic. I wanna pair of X-ray glasses so I can watch them all unfold. I could look at all the naked ladies: their curves, their smiles, their hips, as they look at themselves alone in the mirror, beautiful. Every house is a stage, and on it is a comedy, and a tragedy, and a romance, and a lot of in-between stuff. Yeah, a lot of in-between stuff.

  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.

  PUIP 18


  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!