Reckless : My Life As a Pretender (9780385540629)

by Hynde, Chrissie

  The James Gang played regularly in JB’s, and I would sit on the floor at the feet of Joe Walsh and bask in our very own world-class guitar hero right there where I could reach over and touch his tennis shoes if I’d wanted to.

  The Numbers Band—15-60-75—played there too. Their singer, Bob Kidney, used to do nights at the Berth in south Akron, another place I used to sneak out to when I lived at home. No more sneaking by this stage, but I was getting jaded.

  I got a job in Jerry’s Diner. It was pretty cool, I guess—converted trolley car, red bar stools all along the Formica luncheon counter—but I was a lousy waitress. My people skills weren’t great. If someone ordered a hamburger I copped an attitude, and someone always ordered a hamburger. It was going to be a long haul, this “hating meat-eaters” road I’d embarked on. I’d never turn back, though. No way. I wasn’t even sure what being a vegetarian was exactly—I was still figuring it out, treading a singular path that few seemed to be on. People asked me if I got special injections! Fools. That would change eventually when I’d start to meet my people—animal-rights activists and Krishna devotees, lifelong vegetarians all. I was making brown rice, George Ohsawa style, pretty regularly, but I had such a backlog of junk food in me that it would take more than that to clean up my garbage can of a system.

  The days were getting shorter and it was getting cold. At school I was still slugging away like a prize-fighter, stunned, going through the motions, all the while knowing I was losing. It was becoming a blur like an endless bout. Was I still going to be trying to figure out what to do by the time I was twenty? When a fighter loses heart it’s all over.

  Our heroes were starting to drop off. The Beatles were breaking up. It was like a nightmare. It seemed like everything was on the brink of collapse.

  It was over for Janis and Jimi. Brian Jones was gone. Jim Morrison was losing it, getting his cock out onstage, a drunken, belligerent mess like the rest of us. He wasn’t long for this life either.

  —

  I saw the poster nailed to a tree: winter course in Mexico, Universidad de las Américas. I read it over a few times. Mexico, they did a course in Mexico? I wondered if it was expensive. Surely my folks would never let me do that.

  My parents were cowed by our breakdown in communication. They’d even taken a course in graphology to try to understand Terry and me better. Sitting down and just talking about things seemed out of the question. But it wasn’t just us; the whole nation was rocked by generational disconnect.

  So how was I going to talk them into it? I’d hardly earned any privileges. Of course, they had no way of knowing what a fuck-up I was becoming. For all they knew, I was going to classes and studying.

  I’d never heard of anyone in Ohio speaking Spanish—hardly something I would need. Nevertheless, I must have offered a convincing argument: “a unique opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime deal.” I never understood why they agreed to it, but they did. Maybe they were just relieved that I wasn’t trying to drop out yet. Using the word “opportunity” was a good move. I’d have to remember that.

  The university was in Cholula, a little town in the state of Puebla. On the bus ride in from the airport I wasn’t chatterboxing away with the rest of the girls in that high-pitched frequency of females in groups. I was more intent on what I could see out the window: dusty roads, rugged terrain, mountains, scattered little towns with adobe buildings and guys in white with straw hats driving pickup trucks, old fifties models.

  As we approached what looked like the university, the first thing I saw was an extensive barbed-wire fence circling it. I didn’t like the look of that. The bus drove in and I already wanted out.

  There were about thirty of us in line to get room assignments in the dormitories. Three rough-looking muchachos were sitting on a bench, watching us. They didn’t look like students to me. I had to think quick because the line was getting shorter and I was in it. I left the queue.

  “Do any of you live near here?”

  They nodded in unison. Of course, they had just come to check out the new crop of girls.

  “Can I stay with one of you?”

  One of them—white, bushy mustache, looked a bit like Lee Marvin—picked up my little case and we made for the exit. It was one of those win-win deals. I got to live off-campus and he got a Midwestern girl who was curious as hell.

  He had a cool setup, a room in a hacienda including a shower. Basic. A sink, mattress, everything you needed. I made myself at home like a stray dog trying not to take up too much space.

  He was from Oregon. I’d never met anyone from that far away. He seemed to know his way around. He was an older guy—maybe twenty-two.

  I didn’t smoke any weed in Mexico. I know, that surprised me too—I thought that would be the first thing I’d get into—but I’d never experienced culture shock before. Maybe a little up in Canada, but nothing like this. The disorientation was like tripping in itself. I just wouldn’t be able to handle any more. I never thought that could happen but, well, I was still on a learning curve.

  I went onto the campus once or twice so I would have something to tell my parents. Naturally, I didn’t inform them of my alternative arrangements. We had an unspoken rule that I didn’t tell them anything they wouldn’t want to hear. I think that was by mutual agreement, but I can’t be sure as we never discussed things.

  I tagged along with Jim—the Lee Marvin lookalike—and his Mexican buddy, who talked about soccer a lot. Americans only had baseball and football, and in my experience you either liked music or sports, not both. They were fanatical about soccer there. Bernie, the Mexican, called it football. Everything was different in Mexico.

  I couldn’t really go around on my own very well because I didn’t want to get lost in Cholula. It was just a bunch of dirt roads and haciendas and guys who hissed at me if I was on my own—no street signs or anything.

  All the men sat around in groups when it wasn’t too hot out, drinking a gloopy sort of beer that they ladled up out of big tubs. My impression was that it was the women who ran everything and did the work, while the men drove around in those fifties pickup trucks and drank their beer. As much as I was a smartass in Ohio, in Mexico I was out of my depth all round.

  I’d stand at a primitive little bar with the Lee Marvin guy. Even he drank that gruel, licking it off the corners of his mouth like all guys with mustaches do when they drink. I’d just wait there watching, fascinated by everything, especially the local women buying tortillas from tortilla factories—kiosks just about big enough for the two women who served out of the hatch. The señoras would line up to buy a stack of maybe seven or eight, freshly floured, wrap them in a piece of muslin they’d brought and put them in their basket. You didn’t see that at the Acme.

  One day, when we were out walking, a group of locals hissed at me: “Blondie! Mamacita!” I spun around, flipped them the bird and shouted, “Fuck off!” thinking nothing of it. But it really pissed my compadre from Oregon off. He was furious. “Don’t you ever do that again!” he growled, and took off, leaving me in the dust to catch up. He ignored me for the rest of the day.

  I was beginning to learn some life lessons, rules to take with me. For a start, don’t ever mouth off if you’re with a guy. In any culture you care to mention that’s the rule. (Except in white suburban USA.) Nobody will respond to a skinny little nothing, even if she’s an obnoxious big mouth, when there’s the chance of a punch-up on offer. She doesn’t exist—she only represents the guy she’s with. They’ll go for the dude every time.

  Like a dog on a leash, ferocious and aggressive, you take it off the leash and it soon realizes it’s out of its weight division and behaves itself. He didn’t have to explain it. I figured it out and then he started talking to me again. I liked the way guys could hold their own like that, not talking if they didn’t have to.

  Although I wasn’t smoking the killer weed on offer everywhere or drinking the white beer, I did get a taste for the other local brew, mescal. But it didn’t really
suit me. I didn’t have the personality for it or maybe my chemistry was wrong or something. I would get pretty vicious, demonic even, after a few slugs; I couldn’t stop myself wanting to go crazy before passing out.

  My gracious host threw me into the courtyard naked one night, and I had to hide until he let me back in to get my clothes before he turfed me out for good. So I got a room on the other side of the hacienda.

  I was happy to have my own little place in Mexico. I managed to find some music magazines in Spanish and decorated my room exactly like I did all my places, with pictures of bands taped up on the walls. In one magazine I found the words to a new Dylan song, “Watching the River Flow”; that went up on the wall.

  Even though I pissed him off, the Lee Marvin guy still let me hang out with him. Well, there weren’t that many chicks around, only those college girls. But I was more fun than those girls—c’mon!—and always game. Yeah, guys liked me. I think I was more like a guy than a girl. Guys never felt like they had to look after me. So long as I could keep my mouth shut.

  I was definitely getting an education, “going to school” in Mexico. Like what to do if you encounter a pack of wild dogs and they take an interest in you. You bend down, pick up a handful of stones, look like you mean business and lunge towards them. If there are no stones around, do it anyway. The dogs will take off.

  That’s kind of a good one to know metaphorically too. It’s like looking confident onstage. Nobody needs to know how you shat your pants ten minutes before going on. No. No. No. That is not the ticket they paid for. Confidence is usually a bluff—if you’re lucky you might have it, but frankly nobody will know the difference. There’s enough fear in this world and people want to see the courage of conviction. That’s showbiz. Mexico was a good primer.

  Another handy tip I got living in Cholula was to always carry an empty Coke bottle, one in each hand, when going out alone at night. Nobody wants to get smashed in the head with a bottle.

  There was this dusty little club halfway to the university, where Lee Marvin and the Mexican used to drink. One night, after a few myself, I borrowed someone’s guitar and sang a song or two. That was my only public appearance so far. Oh yeah, apart from the one night I got onstage with Sat Sun Mat in Cuyahoga Falls.

  I didn’t think I had enough experience yet to write songs, but I wasn’t really worried about it. By now I was getting too old to be in a band anyway, it looked like the moment had passed. I only got up and played in the bar that night because I was drunk, but it did remind me of certain aspirations. How could anything be better than singing and playing guitar? I must have written a couple of songs by then to play that audience of three, but I don’t remember.

  Mostly, I was taking second-class buses that only cost a few centavos (see, I was learning Spanish), and I didn’t care where they were heading. I was seeing a new world and felt more relaxed when I was moving.

  I was totally at ease sitting among farmers with their cages of chickens and sacks of grain and babies. I’d sit quietly at the back and copy the women with their arms folded tightly around their ribs to stop their tits getting trashed by the painful, violent jerking and bouncing of bus over rock and gravel. Even with my flat chest it hurt like hell if I didn’t hold tight. Those ladies knew. I was with people I had nothing in common with other than basic human elements like pain and hunger, but I felt, for the first time maybe, at home. I think it just felt right to be moving.

  The school term was almost over. I’d been in Mexico for six weeks and didn’t want to go back to Ohio, not just yet. Brrrrrr. Wait for spring. I told my parents some bullshit about private Spanish tuition if I stayed on a bit. I still don’t know why they went along with such an obvious lie. Maybe I was more convincing than I remember, or maybe they really believed I was learning Spanish like I said. I got a reprieve and managed to stay on after the silly girls I’d come out with were long gone.

  I had a couple of friends now. One was named Julie, who got a room in the same hacienda and had a little black bottle of expensive perfume—“Joy.” I used to have one by Yardley called “Oh! de London” back in high school, which I loved, but this was more, you know, like real perfume. She let me wear some. I was getting sophisticated.

  And I met another girl named Kaththee. I think she made up that spelling. They did stuff like that in California. She had a camera and took pictures all the time, including some of me naked in the rain in a paddock next to a horse. She told me to scream as loud as I could. I didn’t want to scare the horse but she was the photographer, so I did it. The pictures were shit. Some good ones of the horse, though. I already didn’t like having my picture taken.

  I did like being with these new friends from far-reaching places. One thing that surprised me (apart from still not smoking pot) was how much more I knew about music than most of the people I met. I even met someone from California who hadn’t heard of the Velvet Undergound. Imagine that! Ohio radio, the best.

  Now that I didn’t have to pretend to be in Cholula for school, it was time to see more of Mexico. I went to Cuernavaca. That’s where Kaththee had a swanky apartment—a penthouse with lots of potted plants in it.

  Somewhere or other I got sick and had to go into a little clinic for a few days. I don’t remember what I came down with, just the cool white sheets on the cot and nurses in uniform who I couldn’t understand.

  It’s amazing how much can happen in a few weeks on the road. This was going to become a habit to me; seeing new places would become like a drug. Better than drugs. And there was a whole world still to discover. I was as optimistic as a junkie in a poppy field.

  Some travelers I met were going on an overnight bus ride to Acapulco and asked if I wanted to join them. Every hippie in America dreamed of going to Acapulco because of the famous Acapulco gold but when we arrived there in the middle of the night I wasn’t feeling it, so I stayed on the bus and climbed out in the morning in a place called Zihuatanejo.

  It was a paradisiacal beach town, unspoiled and primitive. I wandered along the pristine beach and met a Canadian guy, a nature boy from way up north in Ottawa. He went barefoot even on the scorching sand. He had Steve McQueenish blue eyes, hair bleached white from the sun and his body was burnt a reddish-brown color. Yes, like McQueen at the end of Papillon, the “Hey, you bastards, I’m still here” scene, but younger. He spoke quietly and slowly, with a peculiar accent. He told me how he used to ice skate for hundreds of miles on the lakes and rivers back home.

  When you’re alone and don’t know anybody it’s easy to meet people.

  We found a shelter of some kind, a palapa, but it was so warm at night that we slept under the stars on the beach down by the rocks. He would steal food from the one tiny shop nearby and we would hang out in the palapa all day, drinking wine. He had real technique and could steal a bottle of wine like a magic trick.

  Every morning we dove into a cove enclosed by perfectly formed round white rocks too big to get a grip on, too slippery and smooth. I couldn’t get out once I was in, so he’d have to pull me out. Someone said there were sharks around there. “What about sharks?” I asked as he was leaning over, about to dive. He shrugged and smiled, so I jumped in after him. My time with him was a lovely way to round off my curriculum—I even got a suntan.

  But I had to go back. My parents had been paying my “school” fees and I was beholden to them.

  Every time I returned to my folks’ place it was that little bit more weird. With me and Terry gone they’d moved from the house on Stabler Road to a new one on Olentangy Drive my friends and I referred to as the “Clockwork Orange house”—it was so angular and modern. I just sat in “my” room.

  One day, a couple weeks after I got back, a telegram arrived. It was from the Canadian. Telegrams were usually only a couple of lines, but this was a three-page rambling monologue that I couldn’t understand. I think it was meant to be a poem. All I could make out was that he wanted me to meet him in Toronto. T.O! I was happy to go back up there.
/>   When I saw him again something had changed. Civilization did not suit him. He looked even more bedraggled in a city. He had shoes on now but they were beaten up and a few sizes too big. No socks. Clothes didn’t fit. It looked as if it pained him to wear anything. He told me he’d been sleeping under the street in the sewer, on a hammock he’d strung up down there, or sometimes under parked cars.

  We walked around Toronto all day. It was summer so it wasn’t cold—not hot like Zihuatanejo, though. Being with him on the city streets felt all wrong, like salamanders dodging buses. When it started to get dark he led me up the side of a building—we climbed the fire escape to the roof—and then he sat down in a corner on the gravel, wrapped his arms around his knees and went to sleep. The cold wind off Lake Ontario whipped around the roof as the sun disappeared. I didn’t think I was going to get to sleep up there, so I woke him up and persuaded him to climb back down, and we crashed out under some bushes on the lawn of an apartment building.

  I had just about decided to stop thinking about rock music when I got back from Mexico, but then I heard Bowie. Hunky Dory. I tried to tell the Canadian about it, this great new music, but he just looked at me like he couldn’t understand what I was talking about.

  I wanted a wash so I climbed in through a window at what appeared to be some kind of college and found the locker room and showers. When I came out he looked at me with sad eyes and said, “Now I’m going to walk with you for one block and then I’m going to leave you.” We walked for one block, me waiting for him to say something, but he didn’t. Then he turned around and walked away.