by Craig Grant
In the afternoon we got stuck in a flood. The water must’ve been running three or four feet deep in some places. Stalled cars everywhere. There was this one Turk not too far from us who stood up on the hood of his car and shook his fist at Allah. After that the rain came down harder or so it seemed.
There was this other car that looked a lot like the ’65 Buick the old man used to drive except it was pink not black. It was a little ways away but the guy behind the wheel even looked a little like my old man and I started thinking, hey, maybe it is my old man. Maybe that guy who got his face blown away in The Olde Salvador Deli wasn’t my old man at all. Maybe it was just a scam he worked out to get away from the loan sharks on his back. I asked Dave about it, and he said sorry, no way, the old man is dead, and reincarnated as the daughter of some crime boss in Chicago and she’s going to be three years old in May.
It was when we were stuck on the bus that Kelly got to talking to Suzie and Tim deLuca about witches and pumpkins and Charole came up with the idea of a Hallowe’en party because Suzie said she’d never been to one, and so they went up and asked Pete if we could go to the Grand Bazaar when
we got out of the flood and he said sure, but first we had to find a hotel.
We got out of the traffic jam about an hour later. By this time it was about three in the afternoon. And Pete drove us to this hotel called the San Sophia. That’s what the sign said. Patrick said something to me about how the T and A were missing from the sign.
“I find this ominous, Mr. McPherson,” he whispered. “Does this mean the hotel prohibits, as the Yanks so succinctly put it, tits and ass? Is this perhaps a homophile environment that Mr. Cohen has delivered us to?”
I guess what Patrick was saying was that the hotel was actually called the Santa Sophia, and yeah, it could’ve been a fag hangout. But it was a hangout for lots of other types too.
It looked a little like that house the Munsters lived in. So it didn’t look much worse than the rest of Istanbul. It was your basic rundown dive. There were some freaks sitting around in the lobby with their eyeballs hanging out. One guy was passed out on the stairs. There were a couple of low-life white women in the chai shop that could’ve been hookers. I saw one of them close-up a little bit later and she had turkey tracks all up and down her arms.
Pete did some talking to the guy at the cashier’s desk, who looked a little bit like a strung-out Iggy Pop, and then he gave us our room numbers. He threw me and Jenkins and Rockstar and Patrick all into one room, which didn’t make Patrick too happy, and seeing what the room looked like didn’t warm the cockles of his heart much either. Right in the middle of the floor was a tin pail almost full of water. The beds looked like they’d been through a couple world wars. One of the windows was broken and even so it smelt like something had died in the room and it was still there. Not exactly the kind of room you want to kick back in, even if it was raining cats and camels outside. We all decided that yeah, sure, let’s go shopping in the Grand Bazaar.
On the way there, Pete told us the girls maybe should stick with the guys when they’re in the Bazaar, unless they liked getting their bums pinched, and that got Suzie in a minor uproar.
What she said in effect was that she could bloody well take care of herself. She said she didn’t need any wanking poofters to watch out for her buns. Rockstar told her that with the buns she had, she wouldn’t need to worry about it anyhow and they spent the next half minute yelling at each other until Pete told them to put a lid on it.
When we did get to the Bazaar I was kind of hoping Kelly would ask me to walk around with her, but her and Charole were talking to Jenkins and somehow I didn’t get asked, which hurt my feelings just a tad. But that was okay. I had some shopping to do. It’s just too bad that Rockstar had the same thing in mind and he leeched onto me like a duck on a pancake. He asked me if I was going looking for a sleeping bag and I couldn’t say no because I planned on coming back with one, and I’d seen enough to know that I wanted to stay on Rockstar’s good side, if he had a good side.
I have to admit the Grand Bazaar was something else. It was one big tent with maybe a couple thousand little shops inside and these shops sold everything from leather jackets to condoms to meerschaum pipes to sheepskin pyjamas. Maybe they even had edible chadris.
I went for a box of Sheik condoms and a pipe, one that had a bowl shaped like a sheik’s head, in this other shop where everything was shaped like a sheik’s head. There was even something that could’ve been a toilet that was shaped like a sheik’s head.
It was Rockstar who spotted the Turk selling sleeping bags, thousands of them. They were all second-hand and most of them either smelled sour or smelled like they’d been sprayed with Florient.
It seemed like an hour but finally I found one that didn’t churn my stomach too much, and I asked the ugly, hunchbacked Turk how much he wanted, and he said something like three hundred lire, special price for me. I just laughed and pulled out five American bucks and waved them in front of his nose.
“How about five Yankee dollars, Pedro?” I said.
He shook his head and no, two hundred lire, special price for me.
I pointed at a couple suspicious looking stains on the sleeping bag and said, “Look, somebody’s had an orgy on this thing, I’ll make it four Yankee bucks, my last offer.”
He gave his head a sad shake. One hundred lire. Good sleeping bag. Special for me.
I said, “Let’s go, Rockstar, this dude thinks I was born yesterday,” but Rockstar was still sniffing through the bags.
The Turk said, “Okay, five American dollars. Special.”
I said, “Nope, four.”
It took about five minutes more but I finally got the bag for four, and as for Rockstar, he only haggled for a minute or two. He had lots of cash in that money belt of his. I hardly saw him haggle at all on the trip, thanks to all the money he made from selling off Charlie Putrid’s coke stash, mostly in Soho bars, so Dave says.
As for the bags, though, as it turned out I got the best deal, because I got something thrown in for free.
I’ll get to that later.
Pete had told us to get back to the bus by five and we figured it must’ve been getting close to that so we started heading back, but we got lost, and we must’ve looked lost,
because this blond Swede came up to us and asked us if he
could help us, and we said yeah, we’re looking for our bus, and he said, oh, he thought maybe we were looking for some good hashish, and Rockstar said yeah, we’re looking for some good hashish too.
This guy led us outside and gave us a test hoot. It was okay. Rockstar bought about twenty grams of it, and I bought a few myself, at something like a buck a gram, and the guy was nice enough to drive us around the Bazaar in his little Toyota, but the bus was gone, so he gave us a ride to the Santa Sophia.
On the way there, he told us that he was just selling drugs on the side. He was mainly in Istanbul to buy carpets. He said he’d take a whole bunch back to Stockholm and sell them for a nice little profit. It seemed to me like a decent enough way to make a living. Maybe that’s what I’ll do if I ever get out of the Ko Samui General.
I gave him a couple bucks for the ride. He said thanks.
Inside the hotel, Kelly and Jenkins and Charole were sitting in the chai shop, sipping chai.
“The lost lambs return,” said Kelly when she caught sight of us.
“That’s us,” I said.
We sat down and we ordered a couple Trova beers, and
Charole asked us if we’d bought any costumes for the Hallowe’en party, and I thought about it for a minute, and then said oh, yeah, sure, of course, and Rockstar looked a little surprised.
Kelly looked at my sleeping bag on the floor. “You can’t come as a sleeping bag. You’ve got to be more creative than that.”
“Of course,” I said.
Then we did some talking about the Grand Bazaar, and the funniest thing that happened was that Suzie was walking back
to the bus when a Turk on a bike rode past her and bent down and pinched her ass, and apparently Suzie had quick enough reflexes that she was able to twirl around and hit the guy with her handbag and send the guy flying off his bike. Kelly said she’d had a bottle of raki in her handbag for the Hallowe’en party. She hit the Turk on the head with it and almost knocked him out.
I wish I’d seen that.
Rockstar laughed. “That Suzie, she’s something else. She’s a bloody spoiler, that’s what she is.” Like he was some executive at a party, bragging about his wife.
“Yeah, you got a prize one there, Rockstar,” I said, and I could tell that my little comment made him feel good about himself.
He said, “Anyone want to smoke some hash?”
Kelly said sorry, no thanks. Which kind of disappointed me. I was hoping Kelly was into smoke.
“I don’t think I want to spend much time in a Turkish jail,” said Kelly.
Well, it didn’t sound much worse than the Santa Sophia, as far as I was concerned, and so I was up for a toot. We got up to leave, and Kelly said, “Party starts at nine in our room.”
I said fine, and asked Jenkins if he wanted to come along. He just shook his head.
Rockstar stopped at the bar and bought a case of cold Trovas. I figured that was a good idea and bought one too.
“We gonna get good and blitzed tonight, huh, Muckle?” he said to me, on the way to our room.
“Sure thing, Rockstar,” I said, stepping over a passed-out doper on the stairs.
from Kelly’s diary
Oct. 31
It’s the dark of the moon. On the 7th degree of Scorpio, almost trine my descendant. Μ & I have a date near midnight, though
C. & S. might’ve thrown a hitch into our plans. Right now we’re in a dilapidated old hotel called the Santa Sophia. Rain keeps falling. I should be feeling expectant. My hormones should be plucking roses & dabbing on perfume. But all I can do is worry.
Mick
Up in our room, Rockstar scraped off a chunk of hash and dumped it into the bowl of my sheik’s head pipe. He lit it and sucked in a lungful, let his cheeks balloon out, and passed the pipe to me. Rockstar held the smoke too long, though. He let the smoke go with a hacking cough that must’ve felt like razors in his lungs.
The hash was kind of moist, it kept going out, but we managed to get stoned, and Rockstar’s dropping another piece of hash in the pipe when Patrick comes in and makes a big production out of whipping a sheet off a bed. I asked him if he wanted a toke but he said no thanks. Then Jenkins came in and got out of his clothes and got into a slinky red and blue chadris. He wrapped a black lace veil around his face. That got a whistle out of Rockstar.
He said, “At least the poofters on this trip are getting better looking.”
This was Rockstar at his funniest and most mellowed out.
I was thinking, hey, if this is the way that hash mellows out Rockstar and if there’s lots of hash between Istanbul and Kathmandu, maybe the rest of the trip won’t be so bad.
Jenkins did look kind of sexy in that get-up. He had good looks, and there was something about the way his baby face looked, behind the veil. I could understand why Rockstar kept staring at him.
“Exactly what are you, Jenkins?” I asked him.
“If I told you that,” he said, “then you wouldn’t be
guessing at the party, right?”
I was stoned. It took me a second to follow that logic.
It did make me realize that I had to start thinking about my own costume.
Patrick was wrapping the bed sheet around himself to make it look like a toga. I had another toke, then passed it to Rockstar. He was opening up a bottle of Trovas. He passed me one and passed one to Jenkins and then he asked Patrick, in his sweetest voice, “Dr. Livingstone, would you like a brown?” He was really doing his best to be nice to Patrick.
Patrick didn’t look at him, just said no thanks.
Rockstar just shrugged and said okay and then he dumped out the rest of the beer onto a bed and punched a couple holes in the box and stuck it on his head.
His voice was muffled but I heard what he said. He said, “Nobody’s going to guess who I am, huh, Muckle?”
I said, “No way, Rockstar.”
Hell. Everybody’s wearing blood-stained T-shirts these days.
Me and Rockstar had a few more hoots and Patrick asked me if I was going to go in a costume. “The idea,” he reminds me, “is to make it a guessing game, you know.”
“I know,” I said.
I did manage to come up with something. I borrowed Patrick’s hat. Its left brim was kind of flattened down, probably because he slept wearing it to keep his head off the chilly Li-lo. And I grabbed some shades Jenkins had bought in Venice and I rolled up three hash and tobacco joints, complete with Marlboro filter-tips, and then I grabbed Lucille and said, yeah, sure, I’m ready.
Patrick gave me a disappointed look.
“I gave you credit for more imagination than that, Mr. McPherson,” he said.
Well, fuck you, Dr. Livingstone, I said to myself.
Patrick locked the door and we went on over to the girls’ room, room 203. All the girls were in costume. The only people not there were Tim and Teach and Pete, and they all showed up in a few minutes. Then Suzie stood up and said, “Okay, just in case some of you nerdballs didn’t get the message this afternoon, this is the idea. Everybody has twenty seconds to give us a hint of what they are. Don’t be nerdballs and make it too bloody obvious. If you aren’t already obvious.” She was looking at Rockstar and me. “And we have to guess it. I’ll go first. What am I?”
All Suzie was wearing was her usual garb. Except she had a little belt tied around her waist and she had stones dangling from it. She struck a pose with her hand on a hip, the other one in the air.
“You’re stoned,” I said.
She said, “Nope.”
Nobody else had any guesses.
Suzie was a little bit disappointed in that. She said, “I’m a pile of ruins, nerdballs, I don’t do much but you can take my picture for fifty lire.”
Rockstar has his SX-70 with him. He takes her picture and gives her fifty lire. Suzie gives him a funny look. Like she’s trying to peek into the holes in the beer box and see what his eyes look like.
Suzie looks at me. “You guys are all really stoned, aren’t you? You’re all dope addicts, aren’t you?”
“Is that your guess?” I said.
I lost her there for a minute. Suzie wasn’t too swift at the best of times. Finally she got my drift, and she said no, and she looked at Charole and said, “Okay, your turn, these guys are all stoned, aren’t they?”
Charole looked at us. “If they are, it’s a marked improvement.”
Charole didn’t have much of a costume either. All she wore was her yellow rain slicker. She got down in a crouch and hopped around and made a few farting sounds. I guessed she was a frog with hepatitis. Patrick guessed she was a sex goddess in bloom, trying to make brownie points. Patrick, I mean.
“No MENSA people here,” Charole says. “Okay. I’m a pile of diarrhoea. Or a case of the Turkey Trots, as it might be called here. From what I hear, you’ll get to know me well before we get to India,” and she looks at Pete.
Those were the two best ones, I think. Patrick had some leaves of lettuce on his head and he sprinkled some salad dressing on his toga. Kelly guessed what he was, a Caesar salad. Dana had a feather in her hair and a pillow under her blouse. Leda, after the swan flew off.
Jenkins was next. He did a little sashay and hip twist, and
said, in this perfect high and girlish falsetto, “I really have no idea what these oily, luscious Eastern men expect of a girl travelling all alone.”
Rockstar, all cocky, said, “He’s a fag. He’s a poofter. I knew it.”
Jenkins ignored that and did another sashay.
Kelly was closest. Marilyn Monroe, looking for a subway vent on Taksim Square. But no cigar.
Everyone clapped for that one.
Jenkins really did look kind of cute in that get-up.
Then it was Pete’s turn.
He was wearing tight satin slacks and this frilly white blouse and one of those black berets you see highland pipers wear. In his hand he had a small black bullwhip. Maybe not a bullwhip. Maybe a calf whip. It was five feet long tops.
Rockstar wagged his head, disgusted.
“Another poofter,” he said. “One of them poofters into handing out pain.”
“You’re real close, mate,” said Pete and then he looked at me. “Mind helping me out on this one?”
I wanted to say no. But you can’t be macho and say no.
“Sure, Pete,” I said, “anything you say.”
He had me stand in a certain way, my left side towards him.
“Why don’t you have another one of those Marlboros, mate?” he said.
Real friendly smile.
I didn’t like it at all.
But I went along with it. Lit up a Marley.
Pete took five steps back.
“Now whatever you do, mate,” he said, “don’t move.”
But everyone saw it. The way that cigarette trembled ever so slightly in my mouth.
Wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
His first try got me on the cheek.
I let the Marley fall anyhow.
“No, no,” he said. “I missed it.”
He had me put the cigarette back in my mouth.
Even though I said, “Nah, Pete, no way, you blew it.” “Just one more,” he said. “I’ll get it this time.”
Damn good thing he did. Otherwise I might’ve lost my sense of humour. That little flick to the cheek stung.
Dana guessed he was a matador without all the bullshit, but Pete said nope.
Teach said he was an anti-smoking extremist.
