Melly toyed with the idea of shipping his car over to France and then
selecting a location on a line anywhere between Dieppe and Belgrade. He enjoyed driving; he enjoyed going to new places; he
could cope with sleeping in the car. Every so often, he’d pack a toothbrush, a quarter ounce of smoke and a change of
underwear, put on his combat jacket, get behind the wheel with guitar in hand and hit the highway; he’d claim the open
road.
Such a romantic, Melly, he’d grown
up playing the blues and, now, the refrains of countless broken-hearted hobos gave him all the justification he needed to
head anywhere away from home. He’d go farther a-field each time, as if he wanted to get lost, as if he was looking for
something. He didn’t know what that something was but he was sure he hadn’t found it. Every time he ventured
out he’d return despondent, disillusioned, and unfulfilled. He needed a challenge, like being dumped in the middle of
nowhere, penniless, and having to find his way home. He needed a direction; he needed a purpose.
*****
And, then, this man who oozed sex and the promise of sex noticed her
at the Ball; as soon as their eyes met, both were lost; mesmerized, captivated, helpless and unhooked. Thirty-seven minutes
later, they were making their way to an empty Union office; thirty-nine minutes later their hips were grinding in time to
the distant thud of the Strawbs beating out Part of the Union. The question of which one of them climaxed first was
immaterial because the grind continued for some considerable time; each, in turn, soared to new heights of ecstasy, and for
several hours. Neither Melly nor Jean closed their eyes to fantasize about a perfect, unattainable lover; their desires were
fulfilled in the here and the now.
And, in
the afterglow of their passion, Melly wished for no future without her while Jean cared for no future without him. They were
perfectly matched and needed to look no further for sexual satisfaction. She was to be his intellectual guide who made him
consider his emotions rationally. They lived a compassionate life through those initial university days – she gave him
the positive strokes that allowed him to blossom and finally make sense of Divinity; he gave her the freedom to be both stupid
and clever within the same hour and within the same sentence. Her seniority was valued and nurtured so that, within a short
time, she had made of Melly a stronger and more resolute man. He, in turn, had influenced and corrupted her magnificently
and brought her out of herself to become the kind of woman she’d always hoped to become.
Within a month of their meeting, she was a divorcee; uncontested, some would
argue she was discarded, but free.
*****
He got it wrong with Katryn, too. Perfect, petite and private, she sat on a stool outside a bar on the street along
from the hostel, gazing at passers-by, one of whom greeted her by name. Melly, who was out exploring, wondered about finding
an excuse to talk to a prostitute. He fancied having her give him the come-on. He felt challenged to handle a hooker’s
proposition. Wow, what a laugh that would be!
“You
want a drink?” she purred unexpectedly, sounding Californian.
“Yeah,” he replied, taken by surprise. It was all too sudden; he’d said the wrong thing,
and too quickly. Embarrassed, he walked straight past her and into the bar.
“Small beer,” he called as he entered. He didn’t want to buy her a drink
just yet, and he panicked at the idea he’d be thought of as a punter. A glass of beer was ready by the time he reached
the bar. After paying just enough, that is, with no tip, Melly carried his effete tipple outside and chose to sit directly
across the street and opposite the woman, just a girl, really, to observe how she conducted her business.
And so he sat, and she sat; they faced one another; he curiously and
coarsely, she cautiously. Katryn continued to gaze at passers-by and, every so often, would stop herself from looking in his
direction. She was such a fine shape; her curves accentuated by the clinging black top and tight jeans she wore. A shock of
blonde curls tumbled from her head; Melly could quite imagine losing himself with her, and in her. After a while, she rose
to buy a sandwich from a deli a few doors away and returned to sit inside the bar, in a large picture window. Piquantly, large
letters both obscured her and gave her refuge from Melly’s undressing eyes. Still he gazed. He would ask her when she
came out; he would ask all the questions he ever wanted to ask.
*****
There was little to separate the color of the dark trousers and the ragged sneakers the girl wore to that
of the pavement on which she stood in the five o’clock morning while Melly sat on a stone step, skinning up. Her head
lowered, she looked intently at the dirty nails that poked out of her torn, black cocktail gloves.
“You got any change?” she asked. She didn’t go as far
as to propose a trick – she could see Melly didn’t have much money. “I’m so tired,” she said,
blinking hard.
Melly shook his head. “What’s
your name?” There were only the two of them in the chilly pre-dawn mist. He felt he had the right to ask. He hoped she
would answer.
“Talish,” she said,
dropping her shoulders. Melly sensed she had unburdened herself at that moment and shared something of herself that few knew
or cared to know. He cared; it mattered to him, a bit. Perhaps he might come to understand what she was doing there and if
she was there by choice.
“Want a pull
on this?” He offered her the spliff.
“Oh,
uh no.” she replied, “I gotta keep my head together. I’d fall asleep.”
“You got work to do?” suggested Melly, not quite sure what he
meant.
“Yeah…” her voice
trailed off round the corner as she continued on her beat.
*****
Melly looked around to see there were no signs of an ongoing
revolution in Amsterdam. There was no counter-culture that he could see and, in any case, Melly had never quite known how
to deal with that. He was too suspicious of people’s motives; he was far too cynical. He had never really understood
it, anyway. Now, he took to comparing London with this place. Amsterdam, too, was a city full of young people, but not everyone
carried a cell phone at their ear. Amsterdam was a city full of blacks but he heard no gangsta rap and saw no attitude.
These were Tunisians, Somalis, and Lebanese Africans; their agenda was completely different to that of London’s Afro-Caribbean
population. Amsterdam was a city that remained full of smoke and hallucinogens but no flowers or paisley motifs were to be
seen anywhere. Those badges of the Sixties had no place in this place. There were plenty of soccer strips, though; this was
the true mark of the Nineties and Melly was severely out of step. Never one to enjoy playing the game, never picked to join
in a playground kick-about, he was the geek who rolled his eyes upward whenever the other guys in class wasted everyone’s
time chanting “Come on you Spurs” and “Arse-n-all”, and slamming their hinged desk-lids in unison
during double-French. He steered clear of aligning himself with any teams and, so, never tasted life in a gang; never experienced
the rites of passage into adulthood in the company of men’s men. He had done it all alone and, perhaps, missed out on
something. But, at least this way, he didn’t need to justify himself or his loyalties to others. This way allowed him
to watch, critically and dispassionately. Anything, but anything, to steer clear of the mob; any excuse to rise above it all.
Oh yes, he thought he was a better man for it; he was, after all, independent and freethinking.
*****
Melly could feel now it in his bones. The desire was in him to stop.
He could come down from orbit after a flight that had lasted thirty years. Clearly, he was now unaffected by it all. Being
stoned was no longer a thrill. The argument over whether cannabis was addictive or not had raged at home for several years.
A user since his college days, he had sampled and favored amphetamines, LSD, ecstasy, mushrooms and cocaine. What he enjoyed
most of all was Bahamian grass and opiated cannabis resin - it could get him so terribly mashed! He once spent the night locked
out of the house. He’d lain down on the concrete floor of an outhouse and imagined his nineteen-year-old head as a bag
of blood. The more he moved his head, the more the blood sloshed around; it quite wore him out. In the morning, his mother
found him in a sorry state and chilled to the bone, blabbing incoherently. She made him promise to her never to do it again.
Melly had actually enjoyed the trip and continued to indulge; only now he kept getting panic attacks about her uncovering
the deception.
*****
What was it about the smell
of down-and-outs? The smell of the unwashed is not the smell of urine and faeces. It is the smell of very old sweat; navvy
sweat and more. He had not touched Talish but merely sat in close proximity. Now, alone in the bar, he could smell her all
about him; a lingering presence. It was the kind of smell that clung, like a bad fart. Was it that, having sat out for some
time in the rain in only his tee shirt, he had now come to smell like her? That’s what the homeless do; they acquire
the smell of the street.
It was to be a while
before he reached a bath. This thought gnawed at Melly’s subconscious mind as he drifted into a haze of fantasy. His
mind scrambled; he took out a pen and began to scribble in a notebook. He turned pages rapidly and wrote eloquently.
*****
(c) 2008
