Johnny Cigarini

by John Cigarini

  After I was breathalysed and lost my driving licence for a year, I had to find somewhere to hang out in walking distance of my Notting Hill flat. I used to score my coke from the Portobello Road, near a pub called the Portobello Gold. It was a lively place with that classic London mix of local free spirits and international travellers. The landlord Mike had lived in St. Lucia and because of it, the place had a tropical-themed feeling – the perfect spot to have a drink and a Sunday roast. You’d see all kinds in there, from the grubby through to the famous, like Ian McShane (Lovejoy), who I knew from the King’s Road and Tramp, and who lived locally and would pop in from time to time. I’d like to mention Ian for one reason more than any: he’s the only person I know who becomes more interesting to look at the older he gets. While others seem to disintegrate, he’s just becoming better looking. One Sunday afternoon in the pub, some hippy was telling me how he had just got back from Goa and the hash he smuggled in was still rammed up his arse. Drugs: throughout history, humanity has done everything and anything to find them, transport them and use them. I shook Ian’s hand, left the pub, picked up the drugs and went back to my cave.

  During those ten years, I managed to keep an active social life, somehow, but with a difference. Without coke, I became asexual – a common characteristic of the drug. I had no interest in sex without Henrietta and the cocaine, but I had some wonderful platonic friendships during that decade, and Francesca (Chessy) Thyssen was one such good friend. Chessy’s family owned the Thyssen steel company, which had been essential to the German rearmament between the two world wars. We went out a lot together and I would take her on occasion to dinner with the contemporary art collector Charles Saatchi, but Charles didn’t like her much. It’s hard to know why, but perhaps it was because her father, Baron Thyssen, was also one of the big art collectors of the world and she was an intelligent girl and wanted to talk about art, while Charles was always reclusive about his. She visited L’Hermitage in St. Petersburg while we were friends, on a private visit arranged by her father. She told me she went down to the basement on one occasion with a torch, where she found famous paintings like Matisse’s ‘Dancers’ leaning against the walls in the dark. She was totally and utterly gorgeous and eventually married the heir to the Habsburgs.

  I also hung out a lot with actress Maryam d’Abo. We met on a commercial for a chocolate and became good buddies. We went out a heap and she took me to a party at the Kensington Roof Gardens for the band Queen. Michael Jackson played, or was it Prince? We went together to the after-premiere party for the James Bond film The Living Daylights, in which she played the Czechoslovakian cellist and sniper. Come to think of it, Maryam d’Abo and I went out a huge amount, but again, like with Chessy Thyssen, it was totally platonic. I took her to a roast for Eric Clapton, a roast being an American import, where having all their friends stand up and say rude or embarrassing things about them commemorates someone – a bit like a best man’s speech at a wedding. We sat at a dinner table with Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees, who didn’t say a word the entire night. Maybe, I thought, there were others who were on this downer. George Harrison stood up and announced to the room, “Eric used to be my best friend, but one day he came over to take my wife for a drive, and never brought her back.”

  *

  Yeah, like I said, nothing happened with Maryam either, and she is married now, to Hugh Hudson, who directed Chariots of Fire. She brought Hugh and their friends Malcolm McDowell and his wife to my rented beach house in Santa Barbara. I had loved the film A Clockwork Orange, and Stanley Kubrick was to me nothing less than a unique genius, so I was pleased to meet Malcolm. I miss seeing Maryam; she really enriched my life, but of course… only to a certain degree. As always, after it got to a certain place, I’d make sure it was all over, and that’s not to say I was always the one to end everything. A lot of the time, I was subconsciously making it easy for them to get bored – like with Maryam, like with all of them, but not Patti.

  Another one of the era was Jane Birbeck and I was one of the first people in London to know her. I met her at the Belgrave Ball, which in those days was held once a year in Belgrave Square in Knightsbridge, working on one of the stands. Later, she had big romances with James Hunt, the Formula 1 racing champion, and Daley Thompson, the Olympic decathlon gold medalist. We hung out a lot together including going to Live Aid, and I was starting to realise how needy I was becoming, but not in an awful or typical way. What I needed was what I considered ‘just the right amount’ and it didn’t need to come from a woman specifically. I adore women, so that was always better – I do have red blood, after all – but be it a man or a woman, it was human connection that I needed. I didn’t need too much, though, and I’d freak if I was getting too little. I needed just the right amount, but for single girls who were looking for a man to provide, I wasn’t a safe bet. History would repeat and repeat… and repeat.

  I was also seeing a lot of my “first abortion”, Siobhan Barron. She was now at her prime running Limelight, a very successful music video production company, and she always carried a big entourage of Limelight groupies with her. They would come down to Ridge Farmhouse, my home in Wiltshire, and she would cook Sunday lunch for up to twelve people. I would see much more of her in the nineties, when I was her neighbour in Malibu.

  In Wiltshire I was seeing a lot of my friend Joanna Jacobs, who I had known since she was a fifteen-year-old model in Chelsea. Her father was the legendary disc jockey and radio personality David Jacobs. She did a wonderful garden for me at my new farmhouse, but still… nothing. Everything was platonic between us all, although we did discuss moving in together a couple of times… wow, big moves I know. The route of these confessions (as a terrible name-dropper) was beginning to crystallise: this, it, now… it’s all been a product of my wanting to be alone. Wanting to be alone has caused me to spend most of my time alone. Spending most of my time alone has created a situation where I become a master observer and here I find myself telling a load of people I don’t know nor will ever meet about what I have seen… namely a load of great gals who I didn’t develop long-term relationships with.

  *

  I had to leave the country to get away from the psychological addictions to Henrietta and the cocaine, and that’s what happened in ’92. Paul Simon toured South Africa, Mike Tyson was found guilty of rape, the Freddie Mercury tribute concert was televised to over a billion and Clinton was elected forty-second president. I moved to LA. I’ve never seen Henrietta or touched cocaine again. Well, maybe once or twice.

  Chapter 24

  The East

  “If you want to go east, don’t go west.”

  – Ramakrishna

  Throughout the seventies and eighties, I liked to take exotic holidays, travelling alone. I particularly liked the Far East because the people were so nice, the food so delicious, and the Asian girls… so many! I was really attracted to the nubile Thai girls. They were just so delicate and nice natured. They were not really prostitutes; most of them would never ask for money. They just wanted to stay with a Western man for the duration of his holiday and to be well-kept by him, if even for a weekend. Their ultimate dream was that someone would fall in love with them and take them back to live in Europe or America. Some men gave them cash presents when they left, but it was never demanded of them. Okay, I admit it: they were prostitutes, but they were very sweet.

  Bangkok has got to be one of the great cities to go people watching, although in Bangkok it’s more weirdo watching, with everything from the lady-boy to the lady-grandma, the sadist to the masochist, and the place where everyone gets their end away. Even for the healthy-living Muslim, Allah seems to turn a blind eye in Bangkok. People become pervs on a mass scale, from the moment feet touch the ground. With the concoction of bright lights, high heels, bums, beers, a heightened libido and Asian hot hot, Bangkok is, quite frankly, addictive, and unless you’ve the strength of a Thai Buddhist monk, it’ll bring out the worst in you. Or was it just me?

  I met
a couple of pretty girls in a nightclub (not a girly bar) and within minutes of getting a drink in, I had them on my arms. Within hours, I had moved out of my hotel and in with them. What was I doing? We had a lot of fun together and I didn’t pay them a dime. At their place, they both had photographs on their walls of their German boyfriends. They were hoping to marry them some day. They told me they’d add me to the list, though – as backup.

  On one occasion, I went to a rather upmarket brothel called Boom-Boom in a very nice house that we had to take a taxi to get to. I went with two very well-known English people, both of whom are married and shall therefore remain anonymous! One of them had been there before and was friends with the Mama-San (the Madame), so he tipped us off that we should not just take two girls that we fancied, but rather choose one we liked and get her to bring along her choice as the second girl. That way, there would be a better ‘atmosphere’ and more ‘cooperation’ between them. There was no question: they really were prostitutes. But not like anything you’re going to find around Soho, trust me. After I had made my selection, the occasion started with a bubble bath between the three of us, one at the front and one at the back, and went on from there – all afternoon (I’m smiling). All afternoon wasn’t long enough. I think back now and damn it… I want more! Unlike Western hookers, these girls would kiss and make genuine passionate love. They were beautiful creatures from heaven and I adored them.

  *

  There is no girly scene in Bali; it is strictly Hindu. The people practise Balinese Hinduism and it is the only Hindu island in Indonesia; the rest is Muslim. It somehow, as a result, accounts for the more artistic culture of Bali, famous for traditional and modern dance, sculpture, painting and music. I first went there alone in the seventies and I returned again in 1980. The first trip was particularly memorable. I think the first time you see the light bouncing across the rice terraces on the rolling hills is the most magical; the fresh and deep greens, broken with the occasional woman bent over and picking at the grain with her hands, dressed often in the brightest of colours, her skin the healthiest you’ve ever seen.

  I like travelling alone because I believe that local people interact with a single person very differently to how they interact with a couple. It also leaves time to wonder, to daydream, to enter short periods of introspection that seem so necessary when you cross a border and walk through a village or over a hill. Or sit beside a stream. Or ride a bicycle alone, through the towns of Gloucestershire as a child. As an orphan. Many a thing I have come to understand while travelling alone; a sense of empowerment, if nothing else. It teaches one to be confident to live and be in this world alone, to not need to be with another person all of the time. Mostly, I didn’t have the patience to wait for anyone. It was as Henry David Thoreau had told us: “The man who goes alone can start today, but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” I can get quite impatient at times, so travelling alone, just me and the road – there’s nothing better.

  I hired a motorcycle and this required taking the Balinese motorcycle driving test, which consisted of negotiating sticks without your feet touching the ground. If you failed, you paid the fee again, ad infinitum until you passed.

  I took the bike to the remote eastern part of Bali, an area where few tourists go. A young man who spoke some English adopted me and the reason he befriended me was obvious: he liked riding around on my motorbike and showing off to the villagers. I didn’t get a single go on the blasted thing. It was always him riding it, with me on the back. He invited me to stay with his family and I lovingly accepted, and what a wonderful experience indeed to live with a Balinese family in a village. One thing to note: I couldn’t believe how spicy the food was – even for breakfast. Goodness me, spicy food in England was something you’d get on at the end of a piss up, not on a weekday morning for brekky.

  One evening, he (my friend who I’m going to have to continue referring to as ‘he’) took me to a remote village in the middle of God knows where, where there was a dance, accompanied by wonderful gamelan music. The girls were, of course, exquisite, and dressed in their traditional costumes with heavily made-up white faces. The men drew lots for the privilege of dancing with them and this was considered a great honour. I had never seen such effort by a man to dance; it was a form of courtship, in fact. From what I learnt, there had never been a foreigner at this village dance, and I attracted as much attention from the children as those extravagant and highly skilled dancers did. I didn’t have my camera, but I didn’t need it. I remember the colours and the smells and the heat and the sounds as if it were a moment ago. The senses intensify on foreign soil, “Travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living.”

  I took the motorcycle to Ubud in the centre of the island. I love travelling by an open vehicle like a motorbike; you are in much closer contact with the environment and the people, too. On a bike, it is easier to stop and exchange greetings, take a photograph or turn around and have another look. The children in Bali are hysterical; when they see a foreigner, they run out and wave with both hands, running and waving. The light in their eyes – it was exactly as it should be. As Oscar Wilde wrote in one of my favourite books, when Dorian is being told of his youth: no frowns, just youth and passion, sunlight and springtime, youth. “Realise your youth while you have it… Be afraid of nothing… live… like this forever…”

  Ubud is a beautiful town. It is the centre of the Balinese art movement and I bought lots of paintings to take back to England with me. I went to Mount Batur, Bali’s most active volcano. There is a small guesthouse nearby, where at night you can watch the explosions of lava. In the morning, I climbed up to the rim in my sandals like tourists are meant to – in the wrong footwear and moving in the wrong direction. I didn’t mind, though; at this stage, I had got used to sticking out like a sore thumb. I guess Africa really had toughened me up all those years ago. Usually in Bali, I stayed in a losman, which is a bed and breakfast with a local host family, at one dollar a night. I loved staying with the Balinese people because I knew I was always safe. I washed from a barrel of water with a small saucepan and listened each morning to the sounds of the birds, the wind and the wild. The cockerels would wake me up, and at night I would hear the wonderful gamelan music being played by the villagers. Bali is a magical place and the smiles on the faces of all the people are surely proof of that.

  I had another interesting and rather frightening experience. I was staying in Kuta Beach, a surfer’s paradise. I befriended a group of young Australians and they encouraged me to have a blue meanie omelette at the local café. These contain psilocybin mushrooms, which give a mild acid trip. I do have to say that the effect was very nice. The seashells on the shore seemed to sparkle like a million diamond chips and the sunset was extraordinary: an orange god in the sky, plunging into a deep purple and violet bed of paint. The night was magic, too. It was as if all the world was speaking to me with its wind and reshaping clouds, and I could understand the croaking frogs talking with each other in a nearby bed of trees. The wind that blew was like a voice. I felt that bliss, that connectedness that my friend Isaac used to talk about.

  A couple of days later, I met a young American girl on the beach. She was staying in the hotel next to mine and I, now the professional, encouraged her to try the blue meanie. This took quite a lot of persuasion, as she had never taken any kind of drugs before, ever. I assured her they were very mild and a nice experience, that the ocean would seem more green and the feel of the wind would be like silk on her skin. She agreed. We went to the café and shared an omelette, so we only had half each. Then we went to sit on the sand, but after a while I started to feel a little strange, so I decided to go in the water – but the walk to the sea seemed to take an eternity, as if it was being pulled from me while I was walking to it. I got back to the girl, who told me she was feeling strange as well. At the same time, a beach hawker came by with wooden carvings of garudas. Th
ese mythical bird creatures are horrific at the best of times, but on my bad trip were terrifying, and I thought we were under attack from the beasts! It was the beginning of a bad trip.

  I told the girl we should each go back to our rooms and I would fetch some Valium, which I carried for sleeping on the long-haul flights. I went to my room and she to hers. As I walked along the road heading back to her, I was behind a Balinese man, who I realised I could very easily kill with just my hands. The omelette, I knew then, was certainly a nasty. I got to the girl’s cottage, but on approach, I sensed danger. I could hear her cries of anguish from yards away and on the bad trip the high-pitched cries were to me like a team of invading giant vampire bats, mixed with thunder, ringing church bells and the squawk of the garuda. I opened the door and I saw her standing in front of her mirror, tearing out her hair and looking at herself in the glass – the worst thing you can do when you are having a bad trip. Feeling responsible for her and being guilty of persuading her to take the drug made me get myself together. The tranquillising effect of the Valium I had taken kicked in and I was feeling cool again, thank God. I was able to calm her and reassure her with the help of the Valium. Thank Jesus for the Valium. I have never risked a hallucinatory drug since. If you have a bad dose, the trip is horrendous and very dangerous. Don’t do it people (my message to the world).