Technicolor Pulp Read online

  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.”

  PUIP 19

  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?

  PUIP 20

  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!

  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.

  PUIP 21

  “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 t
hing 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.