by (epub)
“Really?” I was suddenly very interested.
“Listen,” he said, “I have friends in Phoenix who may be able to put you up. A little French kid like you, locked up here with all these motherfuckers, it’s ridiculous. Write down your name. I’m getting transferred out of here tomorrow to do ten years in Tucson. Friends of mine are coming to say goodbye. I’ll ask them if they can do it.”
That evening, he was taken somewhere else, and I never saw him again. It was a shame, and I wish I could have thanked him, because a week later I was called: “419031!” Then I was taken into a room where two bearded freaks with pretty hardcore looks greeted me. “You must be the French kid Carlos told us about. We’re here to free you, brother.”
They’d already paid my bail.
I couldn’t believe it. That young Mexican who was gonna do ten years in jail had indeed taken care of it, and his friends—who didn’t know me at all—were willing to put me up.
You got to admit, you meet some wonderful people in the penitentiary.
Fully expecting to do at least five years in there, I had prayed to God, “If you get me out of this mess, I’ll never smoke a joint again for the rest of my life.”
And now, after signing a few papers, my clothes were handed back to me and I was climbing into a beat-up old black Cadillac. Immediately, someone passed me a huge joint. Through a cloud of white smoke, I could see the jail shrinking in the rearview mirror.
“Thanks, guys,” I said. “Listen, I’ve got a friend who’s stuck in there for the same crime. Could you free him too?”
So that’s how Bruce and I ended up spending two months awaiting trial in a house with about a dozen activists/leftists/anarchists/pot dealers/car thieves, with knives and guns at the hip!
They were revolutionaries. Or at the very least, complete nutjobs.
They strongly suspected the FBI was watching them, and they expected they’d all be arrested any day now, and when that happened they were going to fight, guns in hand.
There were at least ten pounds of pot in the fridge and three stolen cars in the backyard—not even mentioning about a dozen guns of all types: revolvers, rifles, etc. One of them even showed us a hand grenade. This was definitely more fun than jail! The best thing was that these tanned outlaws not only lodged us, fed us, and gave us all the grass we could smoke for free, but they also lent us an old white Coupe de Ville convertible (probably stolen too) in which we spent our afternoons off-roading in the Arizona desert. What a fucking gas, skidding around in clouds of dust. We took full advantage of our temporary freedom, as we waited to either be thrown back in jail or massacred in our sleep by the FBI.
The lawyer who was going to defend us got in touch, and we went to meet him to discuss our trial. He was a public defender—a lawyer appointed by the state for those who could not afford to hire their own. He seemed very young to me. He started by telling us this was his first trial.
Why us?! we wanted to know. Now it seemed like we really were screwed. …
Actually, this turned out to be a genuine boon. Since ours was this young lawyer’s first trial, he wanted to win at all costs and hopefully launch his career. At the time, every lawyer in the United States was required to do one free case a year for broke losers like us, and if we’d been appointed a big pro, all busy with his career, he might not have had the time or the interest in bothering with us. But ours, on the contrary, had everything to gain from winning our case.
He spent weeks working nonstop, actually driving from Phoenix to the Grand Canyon—an eight-hour round trip—to interview witnesses! Once he’d completed his huge case file, he’d managed to turn everything around: the cops were the ones that should have been sent to jail for having tried, unscrupulously, to implicate two obviously innocent hippie kids (us) simply because we had long hair. Throwing a French boy my age in a federal penitentiary was a scandal! And where was the hashish they were talking about?
Finally, after two months of waiting with Charles Manson, Che Guevara, and co., the big day came. In the end, the judge didn’t believe a word of our noble defender’s story, but lacking proof and especially lacking hash, they weren’t able to convict us. Verdict: Not Guilty.
We left Phoenix that very evening.
That hash might still be in the Grand Canyon.
Phil, Amsterdam, 1973
GOING MOBILE
Phoenix, January 1973
WE WENT STRAIGHT FROM PHOENIX TO Los Angeles … by hitchhiking!
Since they couldn’t lock us up, the cops had kept our van as revenge. It would take several months before we’d be able to get it back.
Now, not only did we have no van, but I had no visa either. To make matters even worse, I was now more or less wanted by the French police for failing to show up for my army obligations, as the draft was still mandatory there back in ’73. I only found that out when I called my parents to let them know that my trip to the States was going great! The cops had shown up at my parents’ house and even went ’round to my grandparents to see if I was hiding out there. In other words, I had to hurry back home to be a soldier or else I was going to be thrown in jail again—a French one, this time.
I already had my return ticket and my flight was scheduled to leave from Kennedy Airport four days later, which was probably the only reason why the Grand Canyon cops hadn’t deported me.
Los Angeles wasn’t exactly in the right direction. On top of that, we didn’t actually know anyone in Los Angeles, but since it had been our original destination when we first set out on this trip—before we were so rudely interrupted by the narcs—we decided we had to go to the end, if only for the principle of the thing.
We got lucky and were quickly picked up by a trucker, who took us the whole way—all the while, listening to country music in the ultra-high cab of his magnificent solid-chrome eighteen-wheeler. We got to Los Angeles in the pouring rain, exhausted and soaked, but still happy to have made it to the end of our journey—even if along the way we had lost a few pounds, a few teeth, our wallets, our hash, and our van. Now there was only one thing left to do: turn around and head back the other way!
We hitchhiked from Los Angeles to New York in less than three days, which must be some kind of record. We slept in the moving cars, and as soon as we got dropped off, we kept going, nonstop from one end of Route 66 to the other. First we were picked up by some California hippies, who gave us a paper bag full of pot for the rest of our trip before dropping us off a few miles from Phoenix, Arizona. There, we were picked up by a young couple in a camper, who asked if we had a joint. We pulled out our new paper bag and started rolling it up. They were going far, these two, all the way to Oklahoma—almost half our trip—but they wanted us to finish or dispose of our grass before crossing into Texas, where the laws were harsh. This meant we were trying to consume about thirty joints while crossing Arizona and New Mexico. They took on a few more hitchhikers to help us out, but we still weren’t able to smoke the whole bag, and finally we just had to throw the two or three joints we had left out the window as we came up on the big sign that read: WELCOME TO TEXAS, THE LONE STAR STATE.
They dropped us off in Oklahoma City, where we were taken on by two girls in a Corvette going much faster than the speed limit. They looked incredible, one with red hair teased way up in a beehive and ultra-severe looking rectangular glasses, and the other with greased-up shiny black hair, in a DA, or Duck’s Ass, like Elvis. They must have been lesbians. The one who was driving had a tiger head tattooed on her shoulder. She also had a gun between her thighs. They took us to Tulsa, where we were picked up by a trucker who took us to Nashville, then by another to Baltimore, and finally by radical hippies on their way to protest against the inauguration of Richard Nixon in Washington, DC, where we made a stop to participate in the riot, surrounded by a few thousand students. There, we found some other hairy leftists, who took us all the way to New York. They dropped us off in Manhattan, in front of Gr
and Central. We had just enough time to say goodbye on 42nd Street, smoking the last joint I had hidden in my sock, and I jumped in a cab to Kennedy Airport. Destination: Paris, but my charter flight was going to leave me in Amsterdam, where I would catch a train. This was cheaper than a direct flight from New York to Paris.
When I arrived in Amsterdam, I went straight from the airport to the station to catch the next train to Paris, but it turned out I had two hours to wait. I decided to take a stroll.
Already familiar with the city, I nonchalantly made my way to Vondelpark, where I crossed paths with a very pretty girl holding a baby. She was dressed only in white, pink, and baby-blue see-through fabric, and she and the baby—the same golden star drawn around their left eyes. I smiled at her and she started to talk to me, first in Dutch, then in English. She invited me for a cup of tea on her boat.
I missed my train. I stayed there for three months.
Janna and her son, Para, lived in a white, pink, and baby-blue barge parked on Keizersgracht, one of the city’s many canals. She was a passionate Brian Jones fan, and a few pictures of him decorated the inside of the boat. There was an old cast-iron wooden stove at one end, and on a platform, a large bed covered with white, pink, and baby-blue furs. Para was a year old; Janna was twenty. I was eighteen and supposed to be in the army, but Janna—who had now dyed my hair orange—was hard to leave.
Finally, after three months, I was impatient to see my family again and now an actual fugitive from the law, so I went back to France to surrender. After warm greetings from my whole family, I went to the army reserve—my only goal being to get back out of there as quickly as possible. What a drag.
By showing up late, I was “apte d’office” (“not to be let out”), and they were going to send me directly to a disciplinary camp in Germany—a boot camp for hoods who, like me, had the nerve to show up late. Worst of all, they were going to shave my hair, which they hadn’t even done at the penitentiary. Tough.
I really had to get out of this mess. My only chance was to get discharged.
I considered two possibilities: either as a hunchback (since I didn’t stand too straight in the first place, I could exaggerate things until I looked like Quasimodo picking daisies and hope they found me too messed up to go), or, if that didn’t work I could try to convince the shrink that I was insane, but that was probably going to be harder to do. I told myself that it would be better to show up hunchbacked and crazy, so that I wouldn’t have to switch from one to the other in front of everybody.
The hunchback idea didn’t go over too well. The little corporal looked at my hump, then stuck his knee behind my back and his hands under my arms. Vigorously, he pulled my shoulders back, straightening me up completely.
“Ah, you look much better like that, kiddo,” he said. “The army’s gonna do you some good!”
Okay … plan two. I made sure to do things like constantly pulling on the sleeves of my sweater and walking backward with my head down whenever anyone approached me, and I stood alone in the middle of the courtyard in the pouring rain. They sent me to the shrink.
It was obvious he was gonna be harder to fool and that rolling on the floor or repeating “caca-peepee-caca-peepee” and drooling wasn’t going to cut it. It had to be something a little bit more subtle. I decided to improvise on the theme of a messed-up suicidal moron completely obsessed with his mother.
“So,” he asked me, “what’s the matter, son?”
“It’s my mother. She told me I shouldn’t go to the army.”
“Really, why?”
“She told me that the other boys were going to do the same things to me that they did in school.”
“What did the boys do to you in school?”
“Nothing!” I snapped back, looking terrified, pulling on the sleeves of my sweater.
“What do you like to do in life?”
“Uhhmm … I did a drawing for my mother, uhhmm … a drawing of my mother, a drawing … of my mother, it’s to put in her room. …” I said, still tugging on my sweater.
This went on for about half an hour before he got tired of me and my mother. “Listen, son, keep drawing your mother,” he said. “The army is not really the right place for you.” He hit my file with a rubber stamp: DISCHARGED.
I stayed in character, keeping myself from leaping out of my chair and giving myself away. I’d heard about the guy who pretended he was deaf, then stood up with a big smile when the doctor, who was standing behind him, told him he could go home. You had to be careful not to blow it all at the last minute. A friend even warned me that they would sometimes follow you out of the place to make sure you weren’t about to meet up with your pals at the corner bar to celebrate and brag. Knowing this, I pulled on my sleeves and acted like a moron all the way home, just in case they were watching. But in my mind, I was ecstatic! I was free!
I could pursue my artist’s life!
After the performance I gave the shrink, I should have won an Oscar. I imagined the host saying to the three thousand people in the room: “… and for his breathtaking impersonation of a moron obsessed with his mother, Philippe Marcade takes it all.”
On the other hand, it was a bit of a hit to my ego that I could pass for an idiot so easily, but still. I came out of that mess pretty much unscathed, except for my sleeves, which were hanging down to my knees.
After spending a little time with my family, I went back to Amsterdam to see Janna and Para on their boat. She was glad to see me, because she was about to leave on a tour with the experimental theater troupe she belonged to, and badly needed a babysitter for Para. I was right on time. In the blink of an eye, I found myself holding Para and the keys to the barge. Janna would be gone for three months!
Those might have been the happiest three months of my life.
I had no experience whatsoever taking care of babies, but that didn’t seem to bother him in the slightest. On the contrary, I made him laugh.
Janna was well-known in Amsterdam, and being Para’s nanny opened a surprising number of doors.
At the Melkweg, we were welcomed like kings. We arrived every evening at around eight and were instantly served a fancy vegetarian dinner with orange juice and hot milk. Para was really cute and everyone adored him. Although most people were pretty cool, I never let them hold him. There was one time when a guy with crazy eyes tried to feed Para a sugar cube, and I had to snatch it from his mouth. You had to be quick. “Please don’t give acid to the baby, sir. Thank you.”
At night, it was insanely cold on the boat, and Para slept with me in the big bed covered with white, pink, and baby-blue furs.
Life was serene in Amsterdam, alone on the boat with the baby. That was about to change: Bruce was coming.
Always a few steps ahead of everyone else, Bruce was now punk when he burst onto the barge in 1973. He’d cut his hair short and spiked it, and was wearing a black leather jacket with a skinny tie and black sneakers. He stood out like a fish out of water in the white, pink, and baby-blue boat, and when Janna came back a few days later she immediately couldn’t stand him. The fact that he knocked over a candle and nearly set the barge on fire didn’t help much, of course. … Still, she dyed his hair orange too.
Bruce and I were getting a bit bored of the hippies of Amsterdam, so we started hanging out a lot in OZ Achterburgwal, the red-light district. Here we discovered a small bar patronized by a bunch of young Vietnamese kids, who were quite generous with their super-hash.
One night, while we were smoking one of the joints they passed us, we noticed a strange taste. They’d mixed heroin with the hash and tobacco.
I remember that we seemed to be wonderfully floating on our way home, as we ate our “tartar hamburgers met mayonnaise.” We had no clue what a mess this shit was going to get us into in just a few years. As he walked onto the boat, Bruce threw up everywhere—raising his ratings with Janna.
After a month of constant he
ll-raising, realizing that Para and I were more appreciative of his tasteless jokes than Janna, Bruce made up his mind to return to Boston.
By now, half of her theater troupe had started regularly hanging out on the boat, which was way less cool than being alone with Para and Janna. Honestly, they were starting to get on my nerves with their white, pink, and baby-blue stuff anyway, so I went home to France. With the help of my parents, I was able to get another month-long visa, and I went back to the States to meet up with Bruce.
Thirty-five years later, I’m still living here.
Bruce, Amsterdam, 1973
I LOVE THAT DIRTY WATER
Boston, February 1974
IT TOOK ME A WHILE TO get to know all the friends of the three nuts Bruce was sharing an apartment with on St. Botolph Street, in the heart of Boston. One morning, not long after I moved in, I was walking down the hall to the toilet, when I came face to face with yet another person I hadn’t met—a young black kid this time.
I shook his hand, saying, “Hi, I’m Philippe,” before casually continuing on my way to the bathroom. I was in the middle of peeing when I heard Bruce scream, “Motherfucker!” Then came a whole lot of racket, as if there was a big fight going on in the hall. I ran out to see what was happening, and found Bruce, in his underwear, holding the kid by the throat and punching his lights out. I’d introduced myself to a burglar! No wonder he’d seemed surprised.
The kid had grabbed one of the two medieval swords that decorated the wall of the hallway, and after meeting me, walked into Bruce’s room, where he’d started filling his pockets with the change left on the night table.