The Portable Henry Rollins

by Henry Rollins

  Waiting for sleep

  Waiting for the brain to pause

  Hours ago I was in another room

  Talking in front of a bunch of people

  Now I’m here

  No one knows

  So what?

  I can stack hundreds of nights like this

  Like bricks

  Build it higher and higher

  It’s what happens anyway

  So what?

  It takes no guts to do that

  I have found it takes a lot of strength

  To endure myself

  It gets harder all the time

  I don’t know

  If I’m getting smarter and stronger

  Or better at fooling myself

  March 8, 1989. Dortmund, Germany: Do I have a mind left? How many cups has it been? Why am I doing this to myself? I staggered into the breakfast room half an hour ago, half a day ago, half an hour, half a day? A while ago the coffee lady gave me a lot of shit because I poured the coffee myself and didn’t let her do it. All I could do was smile, look away, and repress the urge to rip her throat out. The rain is falling in Dortmund. It rained last time I was here.

  Something Selby said to me yesterday about romance made me start thinking. Right now the coffee is on, the black blood of the almighty coffee god is surging through me. I can do nothing but give myself to the storm.

  Romance? Shit, there’s this girl I used to see in LA. She was always giving me shit about my total lack of romantic attitude. One time I told her that love and romance had been beaten out of me. Sure, it was one of the stupidest things I have ever said in my life, but I thought it would have great impact on her, a great foil for one of my typically male hang-ups. She never let me forget that one. She would ask, “Why don’t you send me flowers sometime. Oh wait, it’s been beaten out of you, so sorry.” Well it’s 1989, I am twenty-eight years old, and sex is not a new experience for me. At this point, it’s bio-mekanikal. Perhaps I blew it somewhere along the line.

  I had a brief, fleeting brush with romance a couple of years ago. I had dreams about her, I wrote things about her, to her. I didn’t even know her name. She was working at this place that I used to go into a lot. At that point she was perfect, she could do no wrong. It was great, a total nonreality. ROMANCE. Eventually I got together with her, and for a short while it was great. I went on tour somewhere, wrote her all the time, called her twice from thousands of miles away. Her response was always the same, it was like I was calling her from right down the street. She couldn’t care less. When I got home, she had written me a letter. It said that she didn’t want to be with me anymore. I found more interest in working hard than in following the whims of nonbusiness-related or nonmusical relationships.

  The next song I wrote was about the distance I felt when I thought about that girl. The song centered around the lines, “The closer I get, the farther away I feel.” I was thinking that all the time I was with her, I worked hard to put that out of my mind. Romance passes the time.

  Selby said that he wanted some romance in his life. He said he enjoyed sending flowers and cards to someone. There’s nothing wrong with that I guess, besides that’s Selby talking and he is the man. There’s this girl I know, she sends me flowers and cards and all kinds of shit. Of course I throw them out immediately and think of all the things I could’ve done with the money she spent on all that garbage. After we fuck, she disappears into the bathroom. Minutes later she reappears with a damp washcloth and wipes my cock off. Isn’t that nice? The Hallmark greeting-card company should make a card for that one, with a nice one-liner: You’re so beautiful when you’re wiping the juice off my spent cock.

  Maybe I have become burned out. A typical male, a mean-assed slothful fucker, a real American beauty. It’s a form of blindness, Vaseline on the lens, no problem. I know you’re laughing now, thinking that I am a total bastard. I am the last man, the unromantic one, the one who sees it all as a big-ass biology party. Well okay. Maybe someday I’ll snap out of it, but for right now … make mine schwarz!

  March 10, 1989. Berlin, Germany: What goes best with a cup of coffee? Another cup. This morning’s pot has its own burner, it sits faithfully to my left. A few hours from now I will be on the road to Köln, Germany.

  Today’s sky is gray. I am alone in the breakfast room of a large hotel. I ate with Selby this morning; we have been doing this the last few days. He is such a great man. It’s an honor to be on the road with him, to be around him all the time, to see him work every night. It means a lot to me—everything.

  Ah yes, we drink the coffee and we feel the isolation settle in. Picture yourself at the table, staring absently at a crack in its surface. Your eyes a vacant lot for all the garbage and all that is lost and thrown away. All the people you knew, past experiences, ten lifetimes of gray skies, a planet of rainstorms fill you. You are totally alone. You take a long walk through yourself without moving. You don’t remember when you sat down. Time doesn’t exist for a little while. The isolation, the isolation that we all feel. Sometimes it’s so clearly defined that it becomes another entity altogether. It sits across from you and shares the empty space of shattered time. Freedom can be a vacant lot. It fills you with nothing and then leaves you to figure it out. Isolation keeps me together. All the hours spent in the van staring at the passing road. I wrap myself around myself. Isolated parts starving for isolated parts that are starving. We can only get so close. In this truth there is a rough, lean beauty, a pure line. Even when together, we are apart. I think that there are moments, instances of power, of time outside of time. Moments that are truly larger than life.

  At first I had problems with the isolation. I didn’t understand it as truth. I fought it within myself and I tore myself up inside. Once I saw and understood the isolation, new doors immediately opened for me.

  The end of the line defines the line. At the end of the line, there you are alone. Life was a flash, a handshake in the dark. In the lonely room packed with people, there they are, there you are. Truth screaming in your face. Sometimes the night is a sharp punch in the guts.

  March 20, 1989. Amsterdam, Holland: Tonight is crawling by like a well-fed roach. Alone in my hotel room. Cheap town Amsterdam is. Hash-dealing freaks staggering, their sales pitches mixed with coughs that rattle. One guy followed me into a bank. I contemplated a shot to the head, but you can’t be doing that in a public place. Don’t want to get into it with pigs in a place like this. That would be something though, to dump a Dutch cop. The hotel here serves up awesome coffee. I’m seeing the light. I am feeling the great weight. I have been coming to this hotel since November 1985, when I was speaking at the One World Poetry Festival. A lot of cool people were there. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, LKJ, Z’ev. They were so great. One morning I came into the lobby and there was Mufti from Einsturzende Neubauten asleep on the floor, waiting for a room to be opened for him.

  Tonight is a night off. It’s getting on near midnight. The moon is full and shining down on the canal in front of the hotel. Good to be alone. Sometimes I wish the night would last forever. Daylight brings the static human confusion overload. Been having a hard time keeping from caving in on myself. I feel so hollow. I don’t want to be with someone else. That’s just another nowhere, another gesture, a lie. Sometimes life is such an old joke. Another night in some hotel room in some city in some country somewhere. I chain-smoke nights like these. Small lit cubes these rooms. The nights are the stitches that hold me together. All the faces have fallen away, I see no one in this dream. Isaac Hayes on the tape deck singing “Walk on By.” I used to play that when I felt lonely. Now when I play it, I hear it differently. It’s not as good. I have to get out of this room and get some air.

  March 21, 1989. Amsterdam, Holland: Walking from your hotel to the city center without getting hit by a car, bike, or streetcar is something of a triumph. I wonder how many tourists have been done in by the flying Dutchmen of Amsterdam.

  I bet the residents of Amsterdam have a lov
e/hate relationship with tourists. They love the money that they bring into the town, and they hate their rudeness just as much.

  This morning when I was walking to the record store, I heard a group of young men speaking English. They had surrounded a large group of pigeons and were kicking them to death. One said, “Look at them there eagles!” Another said, “I wish I had my twenty-two, I would blow them all away!” I tried to look as Dutch as possible as I walked away.

  Tourists buying blocks of dried dogshit thinking it’s hash. Running back to their hotel rooms and smoking it up, thinking that this city is so cool to be able to buy this stuff right there in the street. Some Dutch guy with a pocket full of guilders laughing his ass off, thanking the USA. He sees a dog taking a shit at an intersection and says in his best Southern Californian accent, “Hash dude, awesome!”

  The Dutch have mastered the deadpan reply. That’s the one where they make you feel like an incredible asshole. No matter what you ask, you will be answered as if someone is reading to you from a book on Russian history. The more energy you put into a question or a greeting, the more you will be halted by slow, measured speech, which often contains better grammar than you will ever possess. If you make a joke, the Dutchman will retreat ten big steps down the hallway of ultra-infinite cool.

  Back to the subject of the homicidal tendencies of the Dutch roadways. One thing I have noticed about the drivers. They have their eyes keenly and intensely focused on everything except what is directly in front of them. Today I heard a lot of beeping, resulting in bellows and shouts in French, German, English, and Spanish, but none in Dutch. Yup, tourists all. Be careful carefree travelers, it would be such a shame to send you home to Carbondale, Illinois, in an American Express Euro-Fun body bag.

  March 22, 1989. Nijmegen, Holland: Powering some B-grade coffee in a graffiti-covered backstage room. Cold in here, raining and dark outside. This place reminds me of this place I played in Australia a few months ago. There was this dressing room with all these dead cockroaches on the floor, their little wings scattered all over. Tonight the roach wings flap in my ear—crunchy brittle, flying low, writing blues songs effortlessly. In the other room, the club is showing a live video of Black Flag. I hear the song “Slip It In” pound through the wall. Life pushes you around, gets you all caught up, confuses and trips you. Nights like these, passing the time, waiting to get onstage and bleed in front of strangers. That’s what I do.

  When I go on tours outside of the USA, the term “back to the world” keeps coming up in my thoughts. When I come off a tour and have to deal with people I haven’t spoken to in months, it becomes clear that I have nothing in common with them at all. It’s as if I have stepped off a spaceship and the world outside of the tour is some alien planet. All I can do is be as cool as possible for as long as possible and get away as quickly as I can. I have nothing to do with them and the world they live in. The only place to go is back on tour, back to rooms like these. Here is better, just getting on with it. What else is there? Nothing. Nothing for me at least.

  April 1989. Montreal, Canada: I can’t find her. I keep looking. I’m tired of feeling above it all. I want to be taught a lesson. I want to know if my heart can be broken. Is it hard as iron or am I a gutless wonder? I want to meet a woman who will make me stop and listen to what she has to say. I want a woman who will make my jaw drop in awe. A woman who has little time for me. One who does not throw herself at me. One who respects herself, who has a sense of herself. Where is she? I wish she were here right now. I am in a hotel that also serves as a place for whores to take their trade. When I came in, I saw this young man being led in by a whore; he looked a bit scared. The man at the desk looked at the young man like he was just another sucker. What a fucked-up room this is. Have a long way to go before this thing is over. Should try to get some sleep. There’s a woman screaming in the room next to mine.

  October 10, 1989. Toronto, Canada: After shows I sit on the floor sweating. Sometimes there’s steam coming off me. People come up and talk to me. I’m not much good at this point. All I can do is pretend to hear what they are saying to me. The last thing I want to do is talk. I have nothing to say to anyone. I figure I said it already. The people who want to talk to me are usually friendly and really cool. Hell, they came to the show and they thought enough of what was done to come back and talk about it. That is something that I respect. Sometimes there are too many people, like last night. It’s easy to lose your temper. After playing hard, you might want a minute to rest. I sit still, arms wrapped around myself. There is no time when I feel more like the total embodiment of all that I do this for, to be total and to embody the number one. At this time, I see clearly. All things have been stripped away. My body is full of pain, and it feels good. It is the reward for having reached beyond myself. I learn the lesson. I stare perspective in the face, and it stares back. We lock in total agreement. Sometimes after a show I can barely get up to change, but I know that I am stronger than I was a few hours before.

  November 4, 1989. Leeds, England: Walking the wet Streets in Leeds. Goth-rockers, dipped in black leather. Sad, sexless, miserable. They walk bandy-legged across the park. This city has been slapped in the face with a coat of gray poison.

  Last night a kid came up to me and told me that he’ll have to walk twenty-five miles to get home because his ride left him behind. He said he didn’t mind and told me to keep coming back.

  Walked for hours, got a haircut, lied to the lady when she asked me about the tattoos. Had tea in this shopping mall. Old women, fat legs and folded faces. Fried-food diet for five decades, lard in the blood, silt at the bottom of the brain. Chew the water and don’t breathe the air.

  Walked by Chris’s old house, 52 Harold Mount. The place where we wrote all the stuff for the Hot Animal Machine album in October 1986. There was a beautiful blond-haired girl sitting in the kitchen where I used to sit at six in the morning, desperately trying to write songs.

  Damn these days off. Give me work so I don’t have to constantly consume myself. I turn corners, I keep seeing myself mirrored in the bricks. This city fills me with an alien strain of stagnating, suffocating sadness and regret. A pinpoint on the map, mental quicksand. Trudge through the park, cold wind mixed with tiny rain, like getting coughed on by a corpse. Sure I’m good, good at fooling myself so I can sidestep despair with the grace of a matador. I can wear a weary smile and carry it off quite well. Like all human insulation, it’s cowardly and sometimes downright mandatory to get through some of the shit that gets thrown your way. To be able to pull away from a night that’s reminding you of all the things that trip you up. I know you know what I mean.

  November 6, 1989. Brighton, England: Brighton beach full of peoplelike organisms. Sitting in a food shop waiting for the tea and veggie burger atomic greaseball dinner to hit the table. Cold outside, Clash tape playing over the sound system, tape is full of dropouts. Sounds like Joe Strummer is going through a phase shifter. The others ran into Paul Simonon the other night in some curry place near our hotel in London. The PA in the club where we are playing tonight is a toy. The stage is tiny and the backstage area is small and cold. Welcome to England. It could be worse. I could have to stay here another day. With any luck I’ll be out of the UK soon. It’s funny, every time I come here I swear that I will never play here again, and then we get the offer to play and I always say yes. What the fuck, a gig is a gig.

  November 14, 1989. Somewhere in Germany: Walked the streets today. Day off. Day off from what? Posters for Last Exit to Brooklyn are up. They look great, way to go Selby. Sat in a café tonight, breathed in secondhand smoke, listened to the talk I didn’t understand. Wrote a song called “Loneliness Is a Crushing Wheel.” Now I’m in a hotel room alone. Roy Orbison burning cold blue on the tape deck. Tried to write a postcard to someone. Gave up after three lines, have nothing to say. I hope I don’t dream tonight. Sometimes you can get so far in yourself that you don’t know who you are. I try to shake it off by walking. The sound of
my feet and the sound of the cars passing brings me back to life. In these rooms, it all closes in on me. Lonely as hell, makes me swallow all the good and the bad at once. I face myself, endlessly analyze, rip apart, and mutate. No dreams please.

  November 16, 1989. Geneva, Switzerland: The DJ is playing Bad Brains over the PA. The song “At the Movies” comes on. I remember when I sat in Paul Geary’s car and Darryl played me a demo version. That was 1980, I think. The song “I” rolls by and I remember watching them work on that in Nathan’s basement. What do you do with your past? When I sit in the van for hours at a time, I walk backward through myself and think about the things that have happened. A word that I despise comes into my thoughts, that word is regret. I hate that one. Regret is an ugly and destructive luxury and it must be avoided at all costs. Today I thought about all the years on the road with Black Flag. The road has a way of turning me on myself. The road keeps coming back in my face. Confusion, comparison, they trip. I find it hard to deal with my past. Sometimes I feel like locking myself away so I won’t have to see faces and places that remind me of faces and places. It plagues me, like playing someplace for the fifth time. On this tour, I played a place in Amsterdam where I turned twenty-two onstage. Sometimes it’s hard to convince yourself that you’re not an idiot.

  November 20, 1989. Frankfurt, Germany: Bitterness—when everything seems like it wants to see you die. You bump your head on self-doubt. Despair runs circles around you, flashing its teeth. You recoil with bitterness, you feel dizzy and sick. You feel the sickness of the entire world coursing through your body. You become filled with pure hatred for all that is. You find all things poisonous. You reel like an ocean of nausea. What brings this bitterness?

  I find much bitterness in myself. My desire for great heights brings me crashing down to the terra firma of reality. Expectations I had for myself, thinking that bullshit was real, expecting more out of people. Our shortcomings leave me splintered and alienated. Entertaining my archenemy, hope. Judging others, making them adhere to my strict value system so that I can accept them instead of letting them be themselves. These things have sent me staggering into the darkness, lungs full of bitterness.