Adios, Motherfucker

by Michael Ruffino

  I sat at a cafe table but a waiter instantly forced me up and shooed me away, following me up the street, maximum Frog-repugnance. He returned to his post and I saw him wipe down the table and chair where I’d been sitting, but only gesturally, making a point. I was hungry. In Paris you can’t put food out of your mind like you can in Toledo, Ohio, for example. Even New York is a breeze to starve in, comparatively. Everywhere in Paris is the torment of street food, within reach and unattainable. Porn is a sure-fire appetite suppressant, I thought that might be useful—but then something about stumbling around dildo emporium after Parisian dildo emporium in a filthy bathrobe felt like a box best left unchecked. I thought about looking for the bus but there was no way to go about that that I had any energy for. That life was over, I was this person now. I stood chewing the smoke coming off one of the carts that sells the croissant-wrapped sausages.

  Later as I was foundering on a corner watching a Capuchin monkey lick a macaroon into oblivion, one of the Turkish guys cooking chestnuts on a rusty barrel in a shopping cart mimed playing a guitar at me, who knows why. I nodded and he held out a bag of chestnuts and said, “It’s okay no money.” I hung out by the guy’s cart attempting polite conversation but he waved it off—no need to embarrass myself further, he seemed to be saying. I stood there eating the chestnuts sacramentally—Je sui un rock star—when I spotted members of the touring party, Scott and his girlfriend, with retail impediment. I followed them to the club, got a key, and ran (one and a half socks by now) to the bus, flew up the stairs, and back down and out with Winstons, lit two and smoked them concurrently, down to the filter. Then I went and got dressed.

  The club is an old vaudeville theater, as one has here. Sold out, nice-looking crowd. I am certain about only one bit of French I picked up earlier, so I announced during a pause, “My dose of methadone is insufficient.” Apart from that we were well received, especially the AC/DC set closer. Some purists say it’s as if we’ve never heard the song. I say we convey the spirit of it, and fuck you very much.

  An impressive assortment of cheeses was removed from the backstage area to the bus by means of a guitar cable bag.

  We had a day room, a hotel room rented—sometimes at a reduced rate, sometimes not—for washing more properly, since there are no overnight hotel stays and, of course, no shower on the bus. We use the room in paired shifts, a buddy system. One rock star perusing the four channels of simultaneously confusing and enlightening foreign TV while the other performs his basic ablutions, then switch. Then you call down and the next pair is sent up to do the same and so on, until the whole touring party is presentable; last guys to leave drop off the key at the desk, and you’re on to the next city. I was the last man, unpaired, because I was late—I got caught up at a bistro-bar place with some people I met someplace else.

  I tottered into the lobby of the hotel and the night manager would not buzz me past the little half gate to the lobby. Heavy-lidded, downturned mouth, not exactly playing against type. Nor was I. I remember . . . estimating distances and the height of the little half gate, and timing the floor indicators above the elevator bank against the time it took for the elevator door to open and close . . . I chose my moment and launched myself over the gate, intending to sprint, impala-like, through the reception area, and into the elevator just before its doors closed. My knee caught the gate and I hit the floor, taking phones and a plant with me. Miscalculated completely. Metric system over here.

  Well south of Paris we refueled at a truck stop that sold wine. Gladly blew a few days’ per diems on decent Bordeaux as cheap as Thunderbird. After everyone had put themselves in their overnight delivery slots, I went up and rode with Brian. We talked about my unfortunate douching affair at the hotel, which ended with, I felt, an overreaction on Alain’s part. Brian nodded and offered a singularly oblique, piece of moral support through a Word War I anecdote. I’ve already forgotten his story, but war is good for perspective.

  After a few hours, Brian beached the bus in a lot off the highway and got out his whiskey. Good, personal, whiskey for sipping after drives when he has enough time before the next one. Brian’s large; the shot glass looked like a thimble until he put it down in front of me. Outside the window was a McDonald’s with a thirty-foot Ronald looming over it. Circling klieg lights made it look like he was presiding over a labor camp, and couldn’t be more thrilled about it.

  OCTOBER 26

  Woke late and collectively, 4:30 P.M. The door of the bus opened onto a crowded seaside boardwalk high above a beach. People walking. Spanish people. Immediately to the right a cafe. On a mountaintop to the left a towering statue of the Mother of Christ, watchful. Everyone piled out of the bus to the cafe for drinks, except Steve, who was taking a personal day to prevent him “murdering everyone and chopping them up into little pieces,” quoth. Responsible for getting our own per diems, we hunt down an ATM and spot some sort of primitive one. It right away sucks the card in and keeps it.

  I have another bank card, balance unknown, from an old Northampton Savings account. More likely to be associated with a case number than an account number at this point, but knowing the level of tech savvy at your average Western Mass institution you have to figure it’d be a snipe hunt tracing anything to this card, ping-ponging around Western Europe. Rolled the dice in a basement restaurant and ordered half the menu and all the sangria. When the bill came (the tension in the air thick as flán) the card had gone through and we celebrated with a round of armagnacs and took photos of ourselves with the bemused staff. We noticed as we left that the restaurant’s posted hours indicated it had been closed for the last two of three hours we were there, which may or may not explain why the staff was so drunk.

  We bought a couple of bottles of generously discounted Spanish moonshine from the bartender and went down to the beach. Steve, rejuvenated by his personal day, ran around in the surf, screaming nonsense with one of the bottles. We sat down in the sand and drank the bottles there and watched him go.

  Had one of our card games later. Brian and Alain woke up; Brian amused, Alain not. Not too sure about Alain’s level of amusement with us on the whole. Whenever he sees us he becomes mute, and squints murderously.

  OCTOBER 28 / BARCELONA

  Soundcheck, eat some cheese. The promoter had an area of a small family restaurant near the club reserved. Fu declined; we went and consumed tureens of good Spanish wine and heaps of fish. Wandered around a tourist area for a while afterward. Uniformed Spanish grade schoolers were massed on the sidewalk outside a Catholic school, gamboling. Speaking Spanish, as they are Spanish, and in Spain, where Spanish is the official, and by far the most popular, language. A pair of American women walked by and one said to the other, “Isn’t it amazing! They learn to speak a foreign language at such a young age, and they’re practically fluent.”

  The Spanish rock crowds are ferocious. I spent as much time as I could down in the audience; it was quality time. Joyful faces, shoulder-clapping; I was force-fed joints, bumps, drinks . . . then I was lifted back onto the stage, only to be beaned with a sack of pot. Another sack arced from the back of the hall and landed on the drum riser. Joints—several per minute—dropped onto the stage, caromed off our guitars . . . Nothing compared to the absolutely relentless barrage of drugs that hit Fu Manchu the instant they started playing. Like a siege, by allies.

  Up in the lounge until around dawn. At least a couple of hours of that we spent contorted with laughter. Bob and Brad [lead guitar and bass for Fu Manchu, respectively], a merciless comedy team. We drank bottle after bottle of wine and roared at the Comic Prowess of Fu Manchu.

  OCTOBER 29 / THE CAMARGUE

  Day off. Itinerary and map aside, a good percentage of the time I don’t know where we are until I open the door of the bus. Like unwrapping a gift.

  However it came up, talking to Brian a few nights ago over whiskeys I had gone on for some time about the south of France, devolving into a fantasy where I lived there with no phone and a horse to ride on
the beach, plus a few other things according to a more general idea that it would have been good to be Keith Richards in 1972. The conversation came back to me on a rush of sea air as soon as I opened the door. We were on a salt marsh next to a sign that read:

  CHEVRES ---->

  The arrow went toward the sea.

  Checked the map, and that we are in the Camargue (I know now we’re in Les Saintes Maries de La Mer) means Brian went out of his way. He’ll have to make up time at the expense of his own sleep. This is a major gift.

  I went over to the stables with Tiggy (front of house for Fu, and she’s agreed to do our sound as well, rather than our relying on the house guys) to see about riding. The guardian was passed out drunk on a stool. We woke him up. Tiggy inquired in French about the horses; he said nothing and seemed to be waiting for us to leave. When we didn’t leave he got up and led us out back to the horses.

  Like me, the Camargue horse is small, white, insubordinate, and smells like shit. The withers on the tallest one are about eye-level but it would be a mistake to think of any of them as a pony, or look at them wrong, as they’re practically wild. The guardian looked like he’d taken a few kicks, undoubtedly deserved. He saddled two horses with not much of a saddle, and showed us to hold the reins with one hand and said that we should hold the mane instead “if the horse decides to swim or run.” We ambled on the beach for a while, through the surf (the guardian twisting around to warn us of snapping crabs, or leaping sharks, not sure which). We said faster, and he picked up the pace. My horse sped up in kind, then bolted and took me on a full testicle-mashing gallop, a crazed zigzag up and down the marshy beach, the rope rein threatening to saw my hand off—yes, grab the mane. I turned aroud to see where the others were and saw them shrinking in the distance—turning reminded me how easy it would be for me to come out of this with a broken back, or worse. I held on tighter, nothing to do but stay alive. About as free as it gets.

  OCTOBER 20 / BIELLA, ITALY

  Cessation of movement woke me, as it does now. I slid open the window on the stairs, pitch-black and not more than a few inches from a damp stone wall. Wherever we were, Brian had cut it unbelievably close. Opened a bottle of Calvados and poured. I’d had a couple and was deciphering cartoons in a French magazine when Steve came down the stairs and sat. He looks more like Leon Russell every day, especially over here. I asked what sort of structure we were in, Steve said that he’d been up when we stopped, we weren’t inside anything, we’re in the middle of a field. Impossible, I said. But he was right. I opened the door. The wall was a fog so thick I took it for wet stone. We drunkenly put on shoes and things and went out in it, with one of the prerolled hash cigarettes from the tin.

  To move through the mud you had to grab your knees and yank, and you couldn’t see past your nose, but we kept on, smoking the hash until we were completely lost and thought we heard wolves. My boot was sucked off and missing for a while (hopped around, gave up, lost the sock, found the boot) and we had to wait for the fog to lift some to find the bus again. When we did finally make it back I had a large stone in my boot and when I applied the necessary violence to remove my boot to get at it, heavy muck flew everywhere, spattering the entire lower seating area, and I knocked the table, sending a ball of hashish flying. It pinged off the microwave and landed out of sight. Steve said find it tomorrow and went to pass out in his bunk. But I thought, No, I’d better get it now, and commenced what I thought was a stealthy and systematic effort to find the hash that Brian told me later sounded like orangutans wrestling all over the lower deck). I took a break and went out for a smoke, not into that mud, of course. I climbed the rear ladder to the roof. I knew this shook the bus some, so I tried to be careful.

  It was just dawn, a pinkish sliver of light slicing through a sweeping, high-Renaissance landscape at the foot of some mountains. When the sun was securely up, rather than jostle the bus by using the ladder, I pried open the plastic cover over the blowhole—dislodging safety features in the process—and tried to slip quietly through the opening, instead deadfalling several feet into the lounge and landing hard on the table, scattering empty beer bottles and half cups of wine, and whatever else. I gave up trying to sort all that out, pretty much on impact. Later Brian woke me up. “Yu’ve git sum werk ta do this merning, Mikey,” he said. I was caked in crud and manure, gripping an apple with a piece of charred foil jammed into it. Evidently I’d found the hash.

  “Oh, no. It’s okay,” I said. “I found it.” Not what he meant.

  Brian instructed I get the vacuum from the boot and get started. Cleaning, he meant. He watched me open every storage area in the bus, unable to find the vacuum. “Ye don’t know what a bewt is, do you?” Then he beckoned me to follow him outside, around the back of the bus, and pointed. “That’s the bewt.” The trunk. I pulled out the wet-vac and dragged it inside and cleaned the bejeezus out of the bus with the help of some of that Barcelona speed that makes you go deaf.

  Pezzos di Stonatos

  (“Riffs of the stoned ones”)

  —from Italian Fu Manchu/The Unband promotional flyer

  The venue is even more isolated in the campagna than envisioned in the fog last night. Strange because where you might expect a repurposed old agricultural building, this place was built not too long ago, to be exactly what it is. The poster by the entrance read: “Not unlike Kyuss. Rock made by American Stoners.” This—as my grandmother used to say and my father still says—sounds much better in the Italian.

  Our host, Babbo, goes around the room extending two-handed shakes, thrilled to receive us. He gives us a lively tour of the place, top to bottom, including detailed pedigrees of each meat and cheese and pepper on the endless dressing room antipasto, the origins of the wines. He introduces us to his sons. Then he claps his hands and rubs them briskly a few times, asking if there’s anything more we need before he leaves us to our privacy, adding that his sons will be glad to take us to town, or anywhere else we like.

  We loll around the dressing room with prosciutto and Stellas for a while, then one of the sons, Luca, knocks on the door to see if anyone would like to go for a spin around town. Yes, we do. Luca, in tailored everything and nice shoes, ushers us out to his Alfa Romeo. We’re bunched into the backseat and Luca peels out onto the tree-lined straightaway, flooring it. The nothern Italian countryside is just an impressionistic smear as Luca tells us in very respectable English about the local women. He wants to hear which kinds of women we encountered touring, also how many, and what they did, how they did it, and for how long and the rest of it. We oblige as best we can, none of us given to promiscuity. “And thees women,” he says, intrigued. “You do not see them again maybe for a long time. Maybe never, you say.” We say, Yes, sometimes never. He smacks the wheel. “Which is the easiest instrument to learn?”

  We get to the strada principale in Biella a half an hour later and Luca parks in a way not legal anywhere in the Western world. Biella isn’t on any of our maps but it’s hopping—the streets are crowded, trattorias and cafes happening, full Euro-mini-city swing. We met up with the promoter at a bar. British chap, his two sons with him, a four- and a five-year-old. Cool and collected, budding assassins; you could tell their mother was Italian.

  The promoter was talking. “Came over here on holiday, in town for a night, met a nice Italian girl, one thing led to another.” He jerked a thumb at the five-year-old. “Did the right thing, been here ever since. Can’t beat it, man. Can’t beat it. Weather, food. Italian women. Fuckin’ incredible the Italians. You’ve got the Church here, juggernaut you ask me, but it’s not repressed like England. This country’s all id, man. All id. Just a giant, throbbing libido. Fucking fantastic place to raise a brood, though. Bilingual household, exposure to the culture and all that. I mean, look around, it’s—Jeezus! Oi!” He pulled away the beer glass his five-year-old was in the process of draining, then spun around and snatched a lit cigarette out of the four-year-old’s mouth. “Bloody hell! What did I tell you?” He cr
ushed out the smoke. “Every time with this! Every bloody time.”

  Back at the club, Babbo’s staff had multiplied in our absence, and was diligently occupied around the stage with hammers and ropes and pulleys as if it’s opening night of a major opera. Babbo was supervising the construction of a new drum riser, after deciding the one his people had built earlier in the day was no good and ordering it destroyed. He introduced us to his carpenter and asked if we need anything built; his man can build anything. The carpenter looks tired, and like he can build anything.

  After-show bit took place in a huge nightclub playing mostly American rock. Some crossover with the current American charts—Madonna, Lou Bega’s “Mambo Number 5” (inescapable), Britney Spears (not the U.S. hit, something else), the power-punk-pop-crap—and metal. Normal to hear metal on the radio here; not just the bullshit Metallica stuff but fairly serious thrash. Followed by some Italian pseudo-grunge, which is generally terrible.

  What goes over overseas is often heartening, though—the Doors, Pink Floyd, AC/DC, Thin Lizzy . . . The Doors: A minuscule, centuries-old butcher shop in town where you had to duck and twist around preserved animal parts hanging from the antique rafters, was shoulder-to-shoulder with customers, no one speaking, a strict rule of the place—the only sounds were meat being sliced, and “Riders on the Storm.”

  A section of the dance floor cleared and an Italian rock band played their interpretation of American alternative rock—it was good. As when something misheard is better than what was actually said. Judging by the covers this band was trying to do Bush, and similar, but it came out halfway to seventies Italian prog. After their set Luca enthusiastically brought us over to meet them, adding a Masonic nod to me when he introduced the manager. A few minutes later, I’m in the passenger seat of the manager’s loaded Maserati, which he did not earn managing amateur Umbrian rock bands. He floored it, showing off the acceleration, and was pleased when I said yes, I do like classical music—he punched the stereo and “The Flight of the Valkyries” blasted from about a dozen speakers, and subwoofers, while he careened through narrow, pedestrian-dense streets. People had to leap clear of the hood each time he glanced down to count out the little glassine bags from his pocket. He jumped a curb, almost taking out a food cart. “Don waree,” he says. “Ees okay I drive like this always.” He explains the social position of each local he nearly mows down, and when we lightly clip a guy who smacks the hood—“That was my cousin,” he says. “Fugk heem.”