“This whole … episode would have been easier had I religion to prop me up. However, it can’t be helped, can it? Once faith is gone, it’s not coming back. I guess that’s why it’s called the gift of faith.”
I had no idea what to say, clearly having said enough for a lifetime.
“It’s not just the religion, the praying. Hume is right. You have to be dogmatic to be religious. I’m sick of myself.” Before I had the chance to say anything, she started hammering her fist on the bed and murmured in an agonized gasp, “Cathy, if this is it, then I’ve spent all my energy reading, preparing to live, and not living. I always thought I’d live, whatever that means, later. Now I’m going to die with a perfect CV.”
“But, Margaret-Ann, you’re forgetting that you’ve loved your reading.”
“I thought I did at the time, but now I realize that all that religious writing was preventing me from true understanding. Schopenhauer said it best: ‘Religion has always been and always will be in conflict with the noble endeavour after pure truth.’”
“Margaret-Ann, Schopenhauer never had a friend, let alone an attachment. He died alone in his bed — sitting with his poodle.”
“So Christ died on the cross. What’s your point?” She leaned back on my bed and smiled for the first time since coming in to my room. “Well, we did have one good night. Remember when we had those unusual brownies in London and went to see that guy Jeremiah Hendrix in that club downstairs in Soho?”
“They were drugs, and his name was Jimi, and you’re right it was a great night.” I was surprised she’d thought so, since she worried the whole time about getting back for class. There was a long silence and we heard the college bell tower ring the half hour. Usually it sounded so cheerful; however, today it seemed to ring balefully, announcing the marching of time. Margaret-Ann and I looked at each other, both beginning to realize we were being trampled under it. I looked out the window at the glorious Cotswold limestone building that usually took on the glow of the evening light, but now it looked prison grey. I thought of taking her hand, but I figured neither of us would feel comfortable with that.
“There is one thing you can do for me,” she said almost in a whisper.
“Name it.” I was relieved since I had been stupid enough to interfere in her belief in God, right when she needed Him. I owed her some form of salvation. I swore to myself no matter what she wanted, I would just make sure I did it.
“I want to have sex before I die just once … with Jimi Hendrix.”
Sex with Jimi Hendrix. Holy shit.
“Margaret-Ann, that is no problem. None at all.”
After agreeing that I would never tell anyone that she had cancer or that I was the Pandarus in this modern version of Troilus and Cressida, I set to work learning everything about Jimi Hendrix I possibly could. It was before Woodstock made him a superstar. I went to the library to look up all the books on him in the card catalogue. None.
Next I looked up the articles on him in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature. It took me a full three days just to find all of them in the various out-of-the-way holes where they were located and copy them. I was not a reader of DownBeat, Rolling Stone, Good Times, Cheetah or Disc and Music Echo. It wasn’t easy finding the Jimi Hendrix Newsletter or the Groupie Diaries. Although he was everywhere in the underground press, he was just beginning to make forays into the mainstream media. Within the last year, there had been articles about him in Time and Newsweek.
I now understood how groupies found their man. You didn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes. You just had to read the press, know where he was and knock on the door.
An article, in a magazine appropriately titled The Realist, inspired me. It reported how two teenage groupies, one the daughter of a policeman, carrying black attaché cases, followed Jimi Hendrix from his performance in Chicago to his hotel between shows. They met him in the lobby and told him they wanted to take a plaster cast of his “rig.” (The rig I was picturing was a surrey with the fringe on the top as in Oklahoma!; however, I soon figured out it was British slang for penis.)
These groupies had a collection of rock artists’ rigs immortalized in plaster. Apparently Jimi thought this was a fabulous idea and immediately said, “Well, come on up, girls.” The girls explained that he had to be hard before they did it and he assured them that was never a problem. He invited them both up to his room. The major presses picked up the picture of “the plaster casters” and their handiwork. Newsweek reported that it was a nine-inch-long, very thick rig, while other rockers’ plaster rigs looked shrunken. After Jimi Hendrix, no other rocker would ever submit his rig for casting and the girls had to make a graceful retirement.
Not only was he perfectly equipped for the job, it was clear that groupies had no problem getting into his room. In fact, he welcomed them in groups or singly. His security wasn’t anything special once he was away from the performance venue because no one ever knew exactly where he was staying. He had about nine different places where he flopped in London. I mapped them all out.
As far as I could figure, we had two shots at making this happen. He was appearing in London at Royal Albert Hall, and if we missed him there, we could go catch him on the Isle of Wight, where he would be performing at a music festival. I needed all the ammunition I could get because this man was unpredictable and always on the move.
The concert was in a few weeks and I had to get Margaret-Ann in psychedelic shape by then. I dragged her into London for clothes and makeup. I got her outfitted in a pair of wide, hip-hugging bell-bottoms made of carpetbag material and black patent-leather boots. I talked her into buying a tie-dye T-shirt and a buckskin vest edged in long flowing fringe. I got her hair cut all one length with fringed bangs and tied a large Indian scarf dabbed in patchouli oil around her head as a hairband. It tied on the side of her head and flowed down her back to her waist. She looked totally mod, but with enough hippie Indian to appeal to Hendrix. She was a little reluctant to go braless, but I told her that men didn’t wear a device holding their testicles in the air, so why should we wear bras? We compromised by going braless but putting Band-Aids on her nipples. When she was all done up, I thought she looked pretty damn happening. Besides, judging by the pictures of the groupies I’d seen in the Groupie Diaries, Jimi didn’t seem all that fussy.
I realized I had to get her used to her new look before we got to the concert, which only gave me a few short weeks for an identity change. Thus far it had been amazingly easy. I bought liquid eyeliner, mascara and lipstick combinations of Swinging Pink and Blasé Apricot topped off with a white lipstick called Pearl.
I got her all dolled up for our dry run, which was the wine and cheese before a high table dinner. Fortunately our stairwell was not at the high table. She had a little trouble with her high heels and couldn’t make it across the Trinity quad without slithering along the brick wall and then collapsing when she hit open air. She couldn’t grasp that she had to push out her rear end in order to balance. (That’s why high heels were invented: they made women stick their rear ends out. Once the bustle went out, high heels came in.) After three tumbles where she was splattered across the cobblestones, I gave up. I substituted leather strapped sandals made by some man with a waist-length beard in a Carnaby Street basement. The sandals, which laced up her leg, looked like ones Christ would wear for the Wedding at Cana.
We walked into the party and perused the room full of fifteenth-century religious poetry scholars and I was immediately hit by a tsunami of asexuality. However, Margaret-Ann thought it was dandy. A divinity student rushed over and plied her with sacramental wine and then asked her to go to a reading of minor seventeenth-century religious poetry at St. Regis on the weekend. This was all accomplished within ten minutes of our arrival.
It worked.
After a few glasses of sherry at the wine and cheese party, we bounced home for dinner. We were a bit late and
Marcus, Clive and Peter were already on their dessert or, as they called it in truly infantile English fashion, “their pudding.” As we sat down, Marcus looked over for the first time at the revamped Margaret-Ann and, in shock, uttered the first genuine remark I’d ever heard him make in what must have been his original Manchester accent. “Have ya gone mad as a box of frogs, woman?” He looked over at Peter and Clive for confirmation, but they were stunned into silence.
>> <<
Finally the day of the big concert arrived and Margaret-Ann was fairly comfortable in her own skin. She was never really comfortable in her old drop-pleated skirts and cardigans either, so it really wasn’t that hard to make a switch. I was surprised by how little she complained and sermonized. She seemed to fully concentrate on what I said had to be done. I guess Johnson was right when he said nothing concentrates the mind like facing death. She now had three new outfits and had even managed to mix and match on her own. She could apply her own eye makeup without looking like a raccoon and she could walk in small heels without looking as though she were in The Mikado.
I wish we could have gone into London a day ahead and stayed overnight for a dry run of the plan, but neither of us could afford it. I carried a folder with all of the information we needed. I was amazed at how calm she was on the day of the concert. It was clear that Margaret-Ann had complete faith in me, and I didn’t even let myself think that the plan could fall through.
As we sat at lunch at a King’s Road café in Chelsea, sharing an appetizer and filling up on bread because we couldn’t afford a real meal, I went over all the logistics with her one last time. Then she wanted to know what to do when she got into the room with Jimi. I wasn’t going to get into that. Jimi could take over from there.
I had gone over the plan a thousand times. We knew that he was staying at the Cumberland Hotel. I had ascertained this by calling each hotel in the area of the Royal Albert, saying I was part of the Jimi Hendrix entourage and Dick Katz, Jimi’s agent, told me to drop off his Stratocaster guitar in person in the afternoon. (I’d read it never went by air freight.) The first four desk clerks said he wasn’t registered and the fifth, at the Cumberland Hotel, said he was registered to arrive on the day of the concert and be in by 3:00 p.m. So now we knew he was staying at the Cumberland Hotel, only a few short blocks from the Royal Albert Hall. There were two concerts scheduled: one at 8:00 and the other for midnight. He would have to come back between sets and toke up or lie down, shower and change clothes for the last set, or do whatever guys do. I read he always returned to his room between sets to avoid the crowds. That’s how the rig cast girls got him — in the lobby, between shows. Why reinvent the wheel? If we missed him between shows, we could catch him after the last show. However, that was more risky because he might go out straight after the show and not return, sleeping in any number of places. These hotels have detectives, so I knew she couldn’t camp out all night waiting. There wouldn’t be a crowd at the hotel. If someone had truly cold-called, the hotel would have guarded his privacy by saying he wasn’t registered. All the uninventive groupies would be waiting for the limo out in front of the stage entrance of the hall or rushing backstage.
I’d carefully studied the map and surmised that he would be taken by limo back to the Cumberland along the edge of the park and then up Park Lane and dropped. We could get there much faster because the vehicles had to go around Hyde Park but we could cut through it on foot. If we left before the encore and ran, we could get to the hotel first. If we walked fast, we could do it in less than a half hour.
As soon as we entered the concert rotunda, Margaret-Ann said she felt like she had been there in a previous life. I said, “You’ve seen it in Hitchcock’s film The Man Who Knew Too Much.”
“Oh right! That was another life,” she said.
The concert was amazing. All the Brits stood up when Jimi played his freaked-out version of “God Save the Queen.” A joint had been passed our way and Margaret-Ann toked with the best of them. We were stoned — what else would you do at a Hendrix concert? The smoke was so thick you could get a contact high. When he played “The Star-Spangled Banner” with true Hendrix intonation, we stood up and cheered, “Hey, Jimi, we’re Americans, man. Don’t worry, buddy! You’re not alone.” He actually looked our way and smiled, probably because we were screaming and jumping up and down with imaginary Stratocasters like the Cheech and Chong Oxford roadshow.
Getting stoned really buggered up the plans, which counted on timing. During the encore, I said, “Let’s go.”
“Why not go backstage?” Margaret-Ann asked in bewilderment. I could tell that the dope was like catnip and we really had to hold onto each tiny thought before it slid away.
“Margaret-Ann, listen! Just follow the original plan. We aren’t in any shape to make updates.”
We pushed our way out of the rotunda and darted across the street to Hyde Park. As we neared Longwater Pond, Margaret-Ann said, “Oh, let’s take a minute and look at the Peter Pan statue. It’s just over there.”
“Grow up. We’re in a hurry. Move it.”
As she stepped up her pace to a canter to keep up with me, she said, “Did you know that J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, lived very near Kensington Gardens and paid for the statue to be erected? He used to walk here regularly and was inspired to write Peter Pan from what he saw here. All of the terrain we are now walking through is described in the book.”
As the Marble Arch appeared, Margaret-Ann said, “You know that used to be called Tyburn Gallows, the city’s main execution spot until 1783.”
“Margaret-Ann, shut up and concentrate. When I want a guided tour, I’ll get on a double-decker bus. ”
Once I saw the hotel in the distance, I calmed down. We’d made it. We started chuckling about the concert and how we had made our elaborate plans. We laughed about our maps and clandestine phone calls to the hotel. Either we were totally stoned or it was nervous giggles, but we started to guffaw so hard our eyeliner was running. I tried to stop howling as we hit the steps of the Cumberland, which was clearly a posh hotel. We were moving at such a clip that as we entered the revolving door we went so fast we found ourselves on the outside again.
“Oops,” she said, annoying the doorman who was dressed like Jiminy Cricket.
Out of breath, we finally made it in and sat on a liberty-printed bench located between the elevators. This way we couldn’t miss him.
I gave her the final pep talk. “Remember, you’re here to have fun. If it’s not fun, just leave. You have your ticket and it’s open ended.”
Margaret-Ann laughed and nearly fell over as she said, “I’ll be open ended.”
Yikes. She was really stoned. I went to get her some water. When I approached her with the glass, she looked at me with a furrowed brow and asked, “Well, should I tell him I haven’t done this kind of thing before?”
“It’s up to you. Just play it as it lays.” The strange thing about this entire venture was I was really nervous that he wouldn’t show up and I was terrified he would show up.
About five minutes later, Jimi Hendrix came ambling through the lobby. He wore a purple shirt, maroon leather tight pants and an electric blue scarf on his head. As he headed toward us, Margaret-Ann said the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. “Hi, Mr. Hendrix. Long time no see. We’re journalists.” He waved as he went by, hoping to get on the elevator before we interrogated him.
In a panic, using the groupie voice that I had no idea lived inside of me, I said, “Yeah, Jimi. Like, we used to work for DownBeat magazine, but we were, like, too upbeat so we were fired.” He started laughing and kind of twirled around.
Margaret-Ann realized her error and made a quick recovery. “Yeah, now we’re just party girls.”
“Well, come on up and party then,” he said smiling and holding the elevator with his foot.
As Margaret-Ann got in the elevator, I said, �
�I’ll order drinks from the bar.”
The elevator door closed and I didn’t see her again for two days.
>> <<
She came sauntering into the Trinity dining hall after a very long weekend, looking absolutely radiant.
She virtually bounced up to our table and sat down. Marcus, the perpetual black cloud, said, “You are aware, I assume, that the world’s authority on John Donne was here giving a guest lecture and you missed it.”
“I was having sex with Jimi Hendrix and you missed it,” she said in the same tone she used to describe an excellent book she’d just read.
“Margaret-Ann, seriously, where were you?” Peter asked. “We were a bit worried about you.”
She spoke completely nonchalantly. “No, seriously, I was having sex with Jimi Hendrix in London.”
“What exactly do you mean by sex?” Marcus thundered.
“Marcus, you need to get out more,” she said, buttering a dinner roll.
“The deflowered prodigal returns? Fine. Have it your way,” Marcus said.
No one, except me, actually believed her — so we all simply changed the subject.
As it turned out, Jimi Hendrix died within the year from an overdose while Margaret-Ann is still plugging along over forty years later. Marcus heard about the cancer and contacted his brother who was head of Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Margaret-Ann was one of the first people to have a radical double mastectomy. She had massive dosages of radiation and ongoing chemotherapy. At one point, she looked more dead than alive. However, she made it.
Both Marcus and Margaret-Ann became academics in the same American city. They remained lifelong platonic friends. Neither married nor had children. Every once in a while I see one of her articles in the New York Review of Books.
CHAPTER 10
cherry run
Thou art thy mother’s glass, and she in thee
Calls back the lovely April of her prime.
Coming Ashore Page 12