Last India Overland (25 page)

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.

He was Greta Garbo, travelling incognito through Iran in 1946.

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.

Nope.

I said he was the Tasmanian descendant of the Marquis de Sade.

Nope.

No one else had any guesses.

What he was, he said, was a fag flicker. Or is that fag flickerer?

Real hilarious, Pete.

Nobody had any guesses for what Rockstar was. Except me. And I guessed him right. A six-pack to go.

Kelly was a hard one to guess. All she was wearing was a black silk camisole, black silk panties, black tights. Everything just a little loose. All of it belonged to Dana, as we found out at the Iranian border. She had a white furry tail stuck to the bottom of her spine. She got on the floor, rolled over and played dead. Dana guessed her. “You’re my rabbit test,” she said. And laughed.

Dana had a weird sense of humour. But so did Kelly.

I like that in a woman.

Tim deLuca was wearing a brown cloak and hood. In one hand he had a ring of keys. The bus keys. In the other a banana and a tube of Brylcreem. Charole guessed him. He was a grease monkey.

I didn’t really notice it at the time but when Tim deLuca sat down he must’ve put those keys near Suzie. Pete definitely didn’t have any place to put them in that outfit of his.

Teach must’ve gone into that same store in the Grand Bazaar where I bought the Sheik condoms and the pipe. She had a small silver plate and on it was a paperweight in the shape of a sheik’s head. She was easy. Anybody who’d seen
Jesus Christ Superstar
could have guessed her. I just forgot the name, that’s all, so I let Patrick guess her. He didn’t wait a single beat. Herod, he said, carrying the head of John the Baptist. Then it was my turn.

I stood up and strummed a few chords on Lucille and lit up a joint and then I put on the shades.

“You’re simply your basic lovable self,” said Patrick in a tired voice.

“Nope,” I said.

“You’re stoned,” said Suzie.

“Close,” I said.

“You’re a hopeless case,” she said.

“Not completely,” I said.

And there were a few other guesses, none of which were very funny, and so finally I hit a C chord and let go with a song off the top of my head, and it went something like this:

I’m just a doper on an overland bus

I was stoned at Stonehenge and I’ll be stoned at Ephesus

but I must be sailin’ on angel dust

because things are dark and kind of murky

and it’s Hallowe’en, and here I am in southern Turkey,

and then I let go with the chorus, which was basically just, “I got the doped-up doper blues, I got the doped-up doper blues,” repeated six or seven times, and then I sang another verse, which went something like,

Oh, yeah, it’s Hallowe’en in Istanbul and I couldn ’t think of anything to wear so I rolled a joint and copped some shades it was either that or run around bare,

and then I did a couple John Lee Hooker blues riffs, and then I sang the chorus again and then another verse that went something like,

Now they say it’s getting chilly back in ol’ Montana

the snow is flying down on Franky’s farm

but here in southern Turkey, things are warm

but that don’t matter

when you got the doped-up doper blues

and you ain ’t got no blue suede shoes,

and then more chorus, more riffs, and then something more came off the top of my head and I sang,

Yeah, it sure is Hallowe’en in southern Turkey a time when everyone goes trick or treat; some of us might even get some nookie but most of us will have to beat our meat.

The little ditty got a hoot from Rockstar but I don’t think it went over real well with the rest. Suzie said something along the lines of, you got that right, mate, and Teach’s face turned as white as Dana’s feather.

This is the bad thing about being stoned. Sometimes the wrong things come out.

Kelly just shook her head, but there was kind of a smile around the corners of her lips. Later she came up to me and said, “You just have to be naughty, don’t you?”

I like the way she said that word. Naughty. I told her I’d be naughty with her any time of day, all she had to do was name it.

That’s another thing about being stoned. It lowers your inhibitions. Which isn’t always a good thing.

Kelly said, “I was kind of hoping we’d do this while on a similar level of consciousness.”

“No problem,” I said, and I took out the last joint I’d rolled.

Kelly said, “I’ve had one or two bad experiences with dope.”

“Ever have any good experiences?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Once. I was on acid, listening to “Cathedral” by Crosby, Stills and Nash. That was almost a spiritual experience.”

Anyway, Kelly had a few tokes and we were talking about Dylan, kind of wondering what he spent his time doing after his motorbike accident, and Gregory Peck and the great job he did in
The Omen,
one of my favourite all-time horror flicks, and we were talking about this movie Kelly and Charole had seen in London called
The Midnight Express,
all about a guy who gets busted with hash and thrown into a Turkish jail, when there’s a knock on the door.

Narcs, I thought. I twisted the top off the joint, dropped it on the floor, ground it down, because you never ever want a glowing ember to make the joint easy for the narcs to find, and went over to the window, tossed the joint out.

While Pete opens up the door, I’m thinking, fifty-nine years of getting gang-raped by a bunch of bull-Turks six times a day.

But it wasn’t the friendly neighbourhood drug squad. Nope. It was just a juiced-up druggie. Tall and blond and skinny as a carrot, with zits that’d put the moon to shame. Had eyes that looked like dead guppies on a Turkish road map.

I don’t know what kind of trip he was on but he took one look at all of us and his eyes bugged out and his jaw dropped. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if it occurred to him to maybe go cold turkey for a while.