Fear and Loathing in Toy Town (part 2)
“Hey, Mr Tambourine Man. Play a song for me”
“Sometime around midnight my Attorney wanted coffee. He had been vomiting fairly regularly as we drove around the Strip, and the right flank of the Whale was badly streaked. We were idling at a stoplight in front of the Silver Slipper beside a big blue Ford with Oklahoma plates…two hoggish looking couples in the car, probably cops from Muskogee using the Drug Conference to give their wives a look at Vegas. They looked like they’d just beaten Caesar’s Palace for about $33 at the blackjack tables, and now they were headed for the Circus-Circus to whoop it up…
but suddenly, they found themselves next to a white Cadillac convertible all covered with vomit and a 300 pound Samoan in a yellow fishnet t-shirt yelling at them: “Hey there! You folks want to buy some heroin?”
Hunter S Thompson (from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”)
“The Hitchhiker and bad craziness in Toy Town” (part 3)
Ironbridge was in full bloom with a surreal like picture book quality so eloquently described by my young companion earlier. She walked, quickly and excitedly, a couple of yards ahead of me, affording me the selfish pleasure of simply watching her free spirited verve and excitement at the continuing surreal world all around her. We paused mid-way along the riverbank as two swans effortlessly and gracefully glided in front of a host of pleasure seekers on makeshift paddle boards, two canoeists gaining ground with every stroke from the rear. She darted across the road as the canoeists slowly edged their way past the swans and entered the first antique shop she could find. I smiled as I rested upon a small wall on the bank of the river, lighting a cigarette as my sunshine baked smiles grew wider as I followed the passage of the swans, the squeals of delight emanating from the children on the paddle boards and I found myself cheering for the second of the canoeists to catch and overtake his friend in their hot pursuit of a supposed winning line, or perhaps my winning line, and the cooling shadows beneath the oldest iron bridge in the known world.
The bells of St Luke’s Church had just chimed three hourly bells as I recall when, in a flowing move of boundless energy, my beautiful auburn haired companion bounced from the pavement onto the wall amid a flurry of garbled verbal nonsense as to how many antiques she wanted to buy, how friendly everyone was, how magnificent the sunshine was and how the swans were so nearly beneath the bridge in the near distance. This was her first sighting of the bridge. The cessation of her excited ramblings was replaced first by a smile that would light up the darkest of rooms, next a huge sigh of what I hoped was sheer contentment before, in one swift movement, lighting a joint, replacing the lighter in the hip pocket of her jeans and releasing a long, curling plume of smoke high into an otherwise cloudless sky above. Raising one knee to her chest and draping the arm holding the joint limply and casually and with what I hoped, and was almost assured of, without a single care in the world, she uttered a phrase all these hours later that still raises a smile inducing memory: “She’s still as beautiful as I remember her in my dreams”. We were two foot apart on the wall and I wanted, at this time, to tell her everything about me, how I got here, why I love this place so. Hopes, dreams, my life, my loves, my mistakes, my regrets and how very fortunate I was a few hours ago to have stumbled into her life, her orbit, and at this moment, the only moment, that we are ever truly alive. I stayed mute, preferring instead to simply watch this beautiful stranger playing thoughtlessly with her hair as she perfected her smoke rings drifting high into the air and across the river below us.
“I saw the cops waiting for me, so I slowed down like maybe I’d changed my mind…but when I saw them relax, I did a quick change of pace and tried to run right over the bastards”. I laughed. “Jesus, it was like running full bore into a closet full of gila monsters. The fuckers almost killed me. All I remember is seeing five or six billyclubs coming down on me at the same time, and a lot of voices screaming “No! No! It’s suicide! Stop the crazy Gringo!”
Hunter S Thompson (from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”)
“The Hitchhiker and bad craziness in Toy Town” (part 4)
All these hours later I recall the afternoon in a blizzard of smiles and laughter, half conversations trailing off into fits of giggles as we joined a huge throng of fellow sun worshippers drinking outside the Hotel and in the glare of some magnificent sunshine. The 110 perilous and precarious steps to St Luke’s Church were next. I finally found my voice to air an old joke comparing these steps to the deathly staircase in “The Exorcist” but it hung awkwardly in the air and many, many steps behind the joyful figure bounding up the stairs ahead of me and who I’d soon find sprawled across the church yard’s only bench when I finally, breathing rather heavily, reached the top of the stairs. “It really is a toy town” she mumbled softly.
“A picture book toy town”.
I smiled as I sat down beside the bench. It was eerily silent up here, my mind scrambled by idle thoughts and wistful dreams. I looked across to my companion to find her now with both knees raised toward her chest sitting almost sideways to the recently christened toy town below her, a freshly lit joint in her right hand but with both hands clasped together as in a prayer. It seemed highly appropriate I mused, among other things, and I smiled once more at the shenanigans I had gotten myself into in this very church yard, and when only the singing owls across the river were awake. I thought instantly of recounting one of these stories, or perhaps even suggesting we visit the town’s “Old Fashioned Sweet Shop” to meet my friend Jeremy and fuss over his beautiful pug-dog. Take some photographs in front of the majestic church building to our right and mere feet away, or continue our stroll in a loop of the river, some three or four miles, and the very same circular route I walked for so many years. The bells of St Luke’s drowned out any suggestions I may have uttered at this point and anyway, by the time the hourly bells had finished she was singing again, and away in her own beautiful world:
“One toke over the line, sweet Jesus. One toke over the line”
She giggled.
I laughed.
She blew umpteen consecutive smoke rings, a triumphant flourish to end her joint, before singing once more: “Dreamers, they never learn. They never, learn”. Her hands now free from her own personal prayer were dancing in rhythm to the piano of the song only she was hearing. Gentle beats with her fingers occasionally gave rise to jagged bursts outward, sometimes skyward, presumably in time with the irregular discordant sounds that breached the beauty of the piano solo she wasn’t just enjoying but wrapped up in, enveloped by and singing along to a song I knew only too well.
Clearly the song had ended as she exclaimed excitedly “Is that a chip shop down there?” and before I could even begin to answer she shrieked “Oh we simply must have a bag of chips!”.
She was out and through the gate leading to the church yard and heading down the hill before I could even raise myself from the grass beside the bench.
“I was slumped on my bed in the Flamingo, feeling dangerously out of phase with my surroundings. Something ugly was about to happen. I was sure of it. The room looked like the site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey and gorillas. The ten foot mirror was shattered, but still hanging together — bad evidence of that afternoon when my Attorney ran amok with the coconut hammer, smashing the mirror and all the light bulbs.
We’d replaced the lights with a package of red and blue Christmas lights from Safeway, but there was no hope of replacing the mirror. My Attorney’s bed looked like a burned out rat’s nest. Fire had consumed the top half, and the rest was a mass of wire and charred stuffing. Luckily, the maids hadn’t come near the room since that awful confrontation on Tuesday”
Hunter S Thompson (from “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”)
“The Hitchhiker and bad craziness in Toy Town” (part 5)
We shared a bag of chips in almost total silence save the occasional sigh at the majesty before us. The “Grand Old Lady” was streaked in sunshine as the sun to our right lowered ever so slowly in her nightly retreat. It was still bright, warm and busy with tourists and locals alike. The bells of St Luke’s signalled 6 o’clock or perhaps it was 7, it’s difficult to have a concrete fix on these things all these hours later but it was certainly evening now and heading towards an ending to a quite surreal day indeed. We shared our bench for a while with a couple of Americans from Los Angeles but they came and went in a blur of conversation I now no longer remember.
With the bench now back to ourselves and idly singing song lyrics back and forth between us so many idle thoughts returned. Should I tell her of the significance of the bench we’re sitting on? Would she think me narcissistic or worse, plain mad, if I did? I certainly couldn’t admit to talking to the bridge when I’m alone, or the hours spent on this bench wishing a young son a “goodnight” and for some sweet, sweet dreams. How would she react if I said I’d talked to my Mum for hours from this very spot, how I wished with all my heart I still could, how I’ve swapped one grand old lady for another, how I’ve searched for a home for far too many years after leaving my home and a grand old lady, and someone who would have loved sitting on this bench with me for hours at a time, comfortably silent and silently comfortable. Questions continued to bubble away until I had one last place in mind I wanted to show my beautiful companion. Before the words even left my mouth they had been replaced by hers: “I know an even better spot than this to enjoy looking at the bridge” she smiled. “Remember. I’ve been here many times before”.
As we crossed the bridge I knew exactly where we were heading and although a yard, possibly two behind her, I couldn’t hide my excitement. We snaked our way through the track leading down to the river and right on cue she turned right, descended the rickety steps to the riverside, negotiated the treacherous high wire act of a tiny ledge above the river before settling on the fishing platform, legs now splayed over the side and just inches from the gently flowing current of the river below. I followed suit seconds later but rested at the top of the stairs leading to the platform and immediately noted the almost stillness of the river and the setting sun now to our left affording the most magnificent of reflections on the river and for as far as the eye dared see. On the other side of the river was the toy town of before, our toy town, still busy with the human traffic of life.
The bells of St Luke’s chimed eight hourly bells (or was it seven?). Time, that beast no-one will ever tame was ever present yet non-existent, signifying the lowering of the sun on a beautiful day, the final strains of a sunset above a picture book town in a land time has forgotten. That theme of time again. It had never cropped up let alone crossed my mind today but here I was, in a place of pure bliss and a haven of tranquility here on earth, thinking about time. A single bell now from St Luke’s, it’s a quarter past an hour I can’t remember in a time I can’t forget. A beautiful day I’ll never forget. The best of days.
A day I fell in love with a beautiful stranger.
Gazing down at the beautiful lady before me I could see only her back and the ringlet curls of her auburn hair bouncing in the cool breeze of the shade. She was simply staring at the bridge in the near distance, barely moving.
I lit a joint and stared in wonder at life continuing at its own pace on the other side of the river. “It’s beautiful here isn’t it?” I said, but my words barely registered above a whisper. I tried again but the question seemed even lower in tone this time, barely audible at all. “I could sit here all night” I tried, and this time I heard my own words, perhaps for the first time all day, as clear as the bells from the nearby church. She turned her head slightly towards me and eagerly I continued “We could return here later if you wish but shall we go for a walk along the riverbank first?”. She turned toward me fully now and for the first time all day I looked into her eyes, her beautiful light brown eyes so warm and full of life, so full of fun. I was already aware of how beautiful she was but now here, fully facing each other for the first time all day she had that ethereal glow of earlier, and when I first tumbled into her life.
“I love it here” she replied with a smile. “Let’s stay a little while longer”.
The bells of St Luke’s chimed beautifully in the distance.
Thanks for reading. For more well meaning if rambling bunkum and balderdash, here’s one I prepared in early March of this year:
"Tales I Tell Myself" - link to Amazon
Thanks for reading. I hope this message in a bottle in The Matrix finds you well, prospering, and the right way up in an upside down world.