Rock stars like furry English arses

My ex-wife and myself arrived in San Francisco after having driven a high-sided truck, which in turn had our car attached to it, from New Orleans.  The journey had taken us a week because we had decided to stop off and sight-see along the way, spending the nights in ‘Motel 6’s’, having been brain-washed by the ubiquitous radio ads, which had stated “this is Tom Bodet, from Motel 6, and, we’ll leave the light on for ya”, which they did; and then took all our money.

The journey was a drag and seemed to go on forever (like I-10 did, going through Texas) and by the time we rattled into San Francisco marina, we’d had enough.  En route, we had encountered just about every combination of weather that the God’s of nature could muster up; i actually came to the rapid conclusion that they were in fact fucking with us, purely for their own amusement, as they rained hail the size of golf balls, tornadoes, sleet, snow, horizontal rain and baking sunshine at us, all in the space of twenty-four hours.

Within an hour of checking in to a motel, we received a phone call from ‘Jane’s’ mother who needed to tell her that she was battling ovarian cancer and had been for some months; she hadn’t wanted to tell us prior to this as she felt we might not have gone, had we known.

This is still one of the most courageous and selfless acts i have ever witnessed, and throughout my life since then, i have aspired to emulate such qualities within myself, and more often than not, have fallen some way short of the mark.  I’m not sure whether i have ever, even briefly, achieved such lofty goals, but i could think of worse things to aim for.

This new information caused many questions to be asked concerning whether we stayed or whether we returned to New Orleans post haste.  The upshot being that we decided to remain in San Francisco until the time when her mother started to succumb to her illness, then we would return to do what was necessary.

So the point is, we were pretty fucking stressed, pretty fucking soon, after arriving in San Francisco and we needed a night out.

We chose a random weekday night a few weeks later, looked in the ‘SF Weekly’ to see what was going on (as we didn’t know anyone yet and had no idea where to go) and decided to hit a club called ‘The Paradise Lounge’ which was hosting a ‘Lynyrd Skynrd’ night ( a bunch of local musos all guesting with each other playing Lynrd Skynrd tunes); so, with cries of ‘freebird’ (and a few lines of coke) we ventured out into the rain and ever-present sirens.

The evening was going well, we had had a few drinks and a spot of the aforementioned, and were singin’ and dancin’ to Lynyrd Skynrd tunes ( i KNOW this is really cheesy, but it was fun at the time). Everything was rosy in the garden until one of the many guitarists taking part began to piss me off.

He was hanging out onstage, but to the side, and every time he went to get a drink, he chose to walk past ‘Jane’, put his hands on her hips and physically move her aside so he could get to the bar.  I let this slide a few times, as my wife was a tough girl and very independent, but after the third time she told me she was getting pretty uncomfortable with this dickhead mauling her and i figured i was going to have to have a polite word with him.

Within a few minutes, i turned round and there he was again, hands firmly holding my wife’s hips and thighs and his face almost buried in her hair as he passed her from behind.

“Excuse me buddy, is there any chance you could ask the lady to make way the next time you need to get past, i think you may be making her uncomfortable” i politely and reasonably asked,

“Fuck you, you cunt” he offered in return, as he very discreetly flicked me in the face with the back of his hand.

The discussion was now over: i punched him very hard in his left eye, and as he began to stumble backwards i grabbed his greasy, shaggy hair at the back of his head and landed a couple more; he then fell over.

Unfortunately, this flurry from me was all the doormen must have seen as within seconds, i was gripped by either arm, lifted half a foot off the ground and spirited towards the fire exit, which was then opened with my head as i flew through it and unceremoniously landed on the pavement with a crack.

Now the brain stem is a funny little thing; it is responsible for the ‘fight’, ‘flight’ or ‘freeze’ responses and i’d already experienced ‘fight’, and now it seems, it was time for ‘flight’.

Lying there on the pavement in the rain, i did a quick calculation and came up with the following equation:

1 dickhead + 3 hard punches x bruised ego x much alcohol + 10 mates/me in a strange city = 1 battered Englishman

So, ‘flight’ seemed the appropriate response at the time and i sprung up of the floor, picked a direction at random and ran like fuck.

…Straight into ‘Dukes’ bar, which if described in haste, WAS the ‘Blue Oyster’ bar from the ‘Police Academy’ films; wall to wall leather, thick moustaches and lithps: I felt safe there and called a cab from the pay phone, which came quickly (as did most of the clientelle, gathered in the toilets).

I asked the cab driver to circle the ‘Paradise Lounge’, the scene of my earlier ejection, to see if i could see Jane, and we drove around and around with me all hunched down in the back of the cab passing my frustrated pursuers (all armed with bottles) on several occasions until we came upon Jane peering down the street trying to locate me.

“quick baby, get in”, i hissed from the back window as we pulled up next to her.

“where the fuck have you been?” she exclaimed

“trying to not get my head jumped on”, i replied “well, are you getting in the bastard or not?”

and with that, we shot off to find our car, and with a loooong sigh of relief, headed off in the direction of home.

Jane had already found a job at the ‘Hard Rock Cafe’ on Van Ness Ave and whilst working a couple of days later she found herself waiting on the table of the tour manager of a well known Southern American rock band (fronted by two bell-bottom wearing brothers).  One thing led to another, and ‘Mike’ invited her (and guest) to come and see the band, who were playing a tour warm-up gig under the name ‘The O.D. Jubilee Band’ at Boz Scaggs’ club ‘Slim’s’ that night, just down the street from the ‘Paradise lounge’.

“by the way”, he said, “do you know where i might get a couple ounces of coke for the guys?”.

Enter me; running around like a fucking madman for a day trying to locate loads of drugs.

The drugs were located, the band sounded superb in such a small venue, the band were duly met by us (via the tour manager), drugs were shoveled up beaks, the conversation degenerated, the bus was mounted (unfortunately not by Jane, for some reason) and L.A. beckoned with me on board hooting and roaring and sweating like a bear.

Enter me in fucking Los Angeles: No money, one phone call (collect), much contrition and humility, one ‘Western Union’ money transfer, one Greyhound bus BACK to San Francisco two days later and a whole lot of ‘splainin’ to do.

Fuckin’ riot it was though…ooooh yeeeaaah!!

Epilogue

Through our shenanigan’s with ‘Rock Band A’, we were put on the guest list of a festival they were playing in Mountainview the following weekend, guesting for another (even bigger) Southern American rock band (originally formed by two brothers but now contained only one due to an incident involving a motorcycle and a truck in 1971), whom i shall call ‘Rock Band B’.

As soon as we got there i nipped for a piss.  As i was leaving the toilet, i happened to glance up and on his way in walking past me was ‘cunty-bollocks’ from the ‘Paradise Lounge’ with a left eye made up of all the colours of the rainbow; positively iridescent it was, like the inside of an oyster shell: magnificent!

I walked outside where several of his friends were waiting for him, grabbed Jane and marched swiftly to the backstage entrance, with the merry throng following close behind.

They had almost caught us up as we flashed our passes and walked past security to the other side of the chain link fence which now separated us.  The abuse and threats began to rain down as they rattled the fence and howled like baying dogs.

Almost immediately, we bumped into ‘Rock Star A’ and stopped to say hi.  Now, i hadn’t known him long enough to say we were ‘friends’ exactly, but i did know him well enough to know that he WAS a cheeky monkey, so explained the situation to him and asked him what probably seemed like an odd question;

“sure man, sounds like fun!” he answered, as i begun to unbuckle my trousers and lower them to my knees.

“nice aaaassss dude!” exclaimed ‘Rock Star B’ who just happened to be wandering past as i seductively raised my shirt and exposed the furry little chap.

“Asshole!” the ‘purple-eyed wonder’ screamed through the fence, which i felt was jolly observant of him, as Jane smiled her beautiful smile at him, extended her middle finger,

and raised it skyward.