Last India Overland (33 page)

from Kelly’s diary

Nov. 9

We’re in Silifke, the last campground. Tents & stove have to be cleaned, they’re going into storage, sun is shining, it’s a day off from the road while the tents dry out inside. Strange

breakfast this morning. Pete brought his short-wave out & we listened to “Casey Casern’s Top 40” & the news on US Armed Forces radio. There’s a revolution brewing in Iran, the Shah is shooting down students in the streets. So Iran has supplanted malaria nightmares as the day’s hot topic. While washing clothes, Mary told C. & me about how a friend of hers told her that the Maharishi has sent a letter to all his male siddhas this spring to go to 5 trouble spots in the world this fall & meditate, to lower tension levels, because he received some sort of divine intuition that this fall could hold the trigger point for the Apocalypse. The 5 spots are Korea, Cambodia, El Salvador, Afghanistan & Iran. C. wanted to know why only male siddhas.

Mick

I think it was in Silifke where we all heard about Iran. At least that’s where I heard about it for the first time.

Silifke was where we had to clean out the tents because we were packing them up for good. From Urgup east we stayed in sleazy, run-down hotels. Some of them put the Hotel Santa Sophia to shame as far as the sleazy and run-down goes.

Just before supper, Rockstar comes into the tent. He says he’d just scored some hash off some Turk on the beach. We all noticed that Rockstar got real introverted and didn’t say much whenever he smoked hash. So whenever he wanted to smoke some, I made the supreme sacrifice for the troupe as a whole and had a few hoots too, just so he wouldn’t feel alienated.

After supper, which was more of Suzie’s burnt French toast, Pete and Charole were cleaning out the stove before packing it away and Pete had the radio on some American Armed Forces station that was playing Top 40, a lot of disco shit (disco can disco to hell, that’s what I say). The rest of us were sitting around drinking coffee and talking about our latest malaria nightmares. I’d had a doozy about these four women tying my arms and legs to saddle horns on the saddles of four horses and stretching my ugly into a long thin whip and using it to whip the horses with. They took off in four different directions. Then I woke up, and it was a good hour of listening to

Rockstar’s Li-lo squeak before I was able to get back to sleep.

When the news came on, Pete told us to shut up about our nightmares, and we did, and that was when we heard that the Shah’s army was mowing down demonstrators in Tehran and that the Shah had declared martial law.

Dana was the one who was more concerned about this than anyone.

She said, “We can’t go through there. They’ll think we’re Americans and shoot us too.”

Pete kind of laughed at this and said, “I don’t think it’s that serious.”

Dana said, “Have you ever had a fat despot grinding your face into the mud while he sucked you dry for fifty years?”

“Not that I recall,” said Pete, and he picked up his shortwave and took off to his tent with Charole tagging half a pace behind him.

Dana looked at the rest of us. She looked as if she was about to say something about Pete, or Americans, or both. But she must’ve remembered that Kelly and Charole and Jenkins and Tim and Teach were all Americans and all she said was, “I’m just amazed Iran hasn’t done this before.”

And then she poured herself more coffee.

Dave says that Dana was about as anti-American as you can get, she just didn’t broadcast it, that’s all. It’s what you call style, says Dave. Because basically what the US is, he says, is a conglomerate of companies that dish out enough money to make sure the president they want gets into office, and then they have him make sure that corporation taxes are kept low and that the war machine is kept in high gear. Every once in a while a Nixon gets in the cogs of the machine and a Carter gets into office as a result, but Carter’s humane approach to things is just a temporary anomaly according to Dave. Next election they’ll get some old movie actor to play the role of head honcho and they’ll push his buttons and things will carry on as planned.

In a way it’s a good thing, says Dave. Those guys aren’t going to risk a nuclear war. They’re making too much money.

All the planet has to worry about, says Dave, is a malfunction in the computer circuits that’ll send Exocet missiles racing towards Moscow.

Or some madman filling the vacuum of power that’s being created in Iran right now, according to the
Bangkok Posts
that Soon brings me every afternoon around two.

I’m actually lifting some of this from a conversation Dave and Dana had in Varanasi, but Dave says it’s okay to throw it in now.

I had Lucille under my arm, right where she belonged, and so I strummed a few chords from “Street-fighting Man,” since it sounded like there were a few of those in Tehran’s streets from what the broadcast said.

“I had a feeling this was going to happen while I was packing my bags,” said Teach. “Honest I did.”

She was looking at Tim.

“I know, dear,” said Tim, in that world-weary voice of his.

“Your mother wrote you that birthday card,” said Tim in a quiet voice, and he went over and sat beside her. “She said some things.”

Teach’s face was white and her chin was trembling just a tad.

“You thought she was exaggerating,” said Tim, in a voice so low I could hardly hear it. “She’s exaggerated things before.”

Then Teach began crying and all of us heard it. I think even Tim was surprised.

He looked at us and smiled a smile as thin as smoke. “My wife’s been under a great deal of stress lately, you must forgive her.”

Then he took her by the arm and led her away.

We watched them go. Sad sight, that.

Then Patrick and Dana got into a heavy discussion about geopolitical bullshit. I’ve always been bored with politics, but Dave says I should put down the conversation anyway. Too bad. I think it’s more important to talk about what I was thinking about, so fuck you, Dave.

Teach’s tears brought back a whole flood of memories, I remember. Tears always do that. Dad dying. Mom. How they did try to get something across to me, every once in a while. But Peggy dil-Schmidt. When she broke up with me it was the first week of August. There was summer sun in the sky. The Buffalo Days exhibition was on in Regina. After she met me at the Kentucky Fried Chicken store on Elphinstone and

Dewdney and gave me back my ring and gave me the letter and then took off, I walked over to the exhibition. Walked through all those smells and lights and barkers and couples eating hot dogs and corn on the cob until I got to the ferris wheel and then I bought a string of tickets and gave them to the guy and told him to please just let me ride until they shut things down and he saw the look in my eye, he said sure, man, be glad to, and he let me ride all night long on that ferris wheel while I cried my heart out.

So yeah, I knew what Kelly was talking about when she talked about leaving yourself wide open.

When I came back to reality, Dana and Patrick were still going at it hot and heavy. And I got the feeling that Patrick didn’t like the Americans too much either.

I could tell Kelly could care less, she was off in her own little dream world, looking up at the skies, looking for falling stars, wondering what life might be like somewhere just to the left of the moon and the right of Venus and Mars. But Jenkins was this guy who felt, well, you’ve got to stand up for your country when they’re shitting on the flag or something, we all have flaws in our character, and I guess he’d finally had enough and said, “Well, the rest of Iran would’ve stayed sunk in poverty anyhow even if the oil companies hadn’t moved in and at least now more people have fridges and TVs, thanks to the oil profits.”

Dana looked at him. Patrick laughed. “Television?” said Dana, with this look of disbelief on her face.

“Yeah,” said Jenkins. “The thing that has pictures in it. ‘I Love Lucy’ reruns. ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ ”

He smiled at her. He knew he’d somehow put his foot in his mouth and he was trying to get it out.

Dana just shook her head, and then she said, “All I know is that we’d have to be crazy to go through there. We can’t go through a civil war.”

Well it sounded like fun to me. The trip needed a little excitement. I’d had enough of lazing around on beaches in the sunshine to last me a while. But I didn’t say anything.

Rockstar did, though. He says, “Well, I think we should go through, it’s about time we had some bloody action on this trip, it’s getting bloody boring,” and then he lets out a stoned

giggle·

Suzie gives him a cross-eyed look and says, “You been smoking that bloody boo again, have ya?”

Rockstar looks just a tad sheepish. I couldn’t believe it. Like Suzie was his mother or something. I knew there was something kinky about those two but I didn’t think it was anything like that.

“Just a little toke or two,” says Rockstar.

“Bloody doper,” says Suzie. “Got nothing better to do than fry your brains?”

“One man’s ceiling,” says Kelly, “is another man’s floor.” “What does that mean?” says Suzie.

Kelly says, seeming just a bit peeved about something, maybe the post-breakfast conversation, “I think it means different strokes for different folks. Something like that. You figure it out.”

Then she gets up and leaves.

Suzie gave us all a disgusted look and lit up a cigarette and then she asked me, “Aren’t you ever going to write in the daybook?”

I thought about that for a minute and then I said, “Guess what, Suzie, you caught me at exactly the right moment. If you go get me the daybook, I’ll write in it. Right now. Right here. Scout’s honour. Cross my heart, spit to die.”

“Go get it yourself,” says Suzie. “Who was your slave last year?”

“I can’t tell that story here,” I said.

But she finally went and got it, as I knew she would. Suzie probably had all her school yearbooks wrapped in plastic and tucked away some place.

I borrowed a pen from Patrick and wrote a daybook entry while everyone watched.

“This should be interesting,” said Dana, which bugged me. I hate pressure.

When it was finished, Suzie said, “Read it out loud.”

I said, “Nah.”

Dana said please.

And so I did.

Some little beach town in Turkey, Wednesday or Thursday

Dear Cocaine Katie,

Well, Katie, you haven’t missed much by staying home and pruning the home-grown. Just some dysentery and burnt French toast and more rain than Vancouver sees in an average December. I’ve been eating food that knocks your fillings out and sleeping in sleeping bags infested with more lice than you’d find in the hair of a lobotomized chimp. And of course everyone on the bus has a runny nose which only makes me miss you more. I’m just hoping that when I get to India I’ll meet the guru of my dreams and she’ll tell me the secret of life and this will all make sense. But we might not even get to India. Don’t know if I should tell you this, Katie, but the Shah has pissed off the friendly neighborhood zealots in Iran by bringing in Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, old Raquel Welch movies and Barry Manilow records and so they’ve taken to the streets and they’re burning Gulf and Exxon stations right and left. Some of the people are all for kicking back on the local beach and soaking up rays until this thing blows over, which means I might not make it back to your sweet boobs and soggy Kleenexes until 1992 and that just won’t do so I’ll put a fire under a certain butt or two and tell them when the going gets tough, the tough get hammered. All we need is a couple bottles of raki and we can truck.

snorts and kisses, yer lovin’ Mickers
Mick

Nobody was too impressed by what I wrote. What I wrote was, well, Dave says not to worry about saying what I wrote. He says that the daybook will be published along with what I’m writing. I don’t know how that’s going to happen but he tells me not to worry about that either. Anyway. Suzie was ticked off about this line I wrote concerning her burnt French toast. Well, maybe it wasn’t burnt. Just crisp, but it was just a joke. People are so damn sensitive.

But some people can’t take a joke, this is the one thing I’ve discovered in life. They’re so hung up on how other people perceive them that they get uptight and lose their sense of humour and their perspective on things. They don’t know how to laugh at themselves. Which makes it tough for guys like me. I think people are just hilarious. Even Rockstar. Here’s this guy who’s only got one testicle and he’s trying to make it through life the best he can, which means being stoned out of his gourd day in and day out, and he doesn’t have a due where he’s going or why. All he knows is that he’s leaving a murder rap behind him as fast as he can and he’s heading back home to a mother who used to stick his butt on a hot burner when he was being toilet trained and didn’t do it according to Hoyle. But just to break the ice, after I read my daybook entry, he says, “Hey, is today Malaria Monday?”

Suzie says, “No, it’s Malaria Wednesday.”

So Rockstar takes out his malaria tablets and a bottle of raki and knocks back about ten tablets with three or four gulps. Then he licks his chops and grins around at all of us. “I knew it was bloody Malaria something-or-other, ” he says.