Life during the Global War on Terror was proving to be positively full of terrors. There were so many terrors for me at this time that I left claw marks in the hand holds of the plane. Flying, for me, is cause for quite a bit of terror in and of itself. If I survived the flight I’d have to do the immigrations shake down again. Every time I had to do this I risked detention, deportation, or worst I could find myself in one of those cells I used to guard. Or one like it in some other place. This was mom’s greatest fear. I had been casually blowing it off. Don’t worry mom, it is totally O.K. to disregard Non-Disclosure paperwork with the military because they are all about disregarding paperwork. It is something of a hobby for them and surely they harbor no ill will for other enthusiasts.
The plane managed to not explode the whole way. I found myself standing in the fluorescence of the same room where I’d been detained five months ago. Here we go again.
I’ll make a long story short here because you all know the scene, you understand the automatons that operate this place, you know the terror tinted glasses that they wear that makes everyone deemed unsociable (or normal and white) and you already know how bad I am at situations like these. I’ll skip right to the interrogation this time.
It occurred eight hours after I first walked in. This time the suspicion had arisen over a stamp in my passport that I couldn’t read. It was for official eyes only. It was the mark from my first pass through. I don’t know why it didn’t stop me in Edinburgh before. Lazy people I guess. Anyway, nothing passed these super employees up. These people were on the fucking ball.
They had my file which let them know enough about me to speak to me on familiar terms. They even knew that I’d been picked up on the highway. They knew that I had promised to not do things like walk on the highway very specifically. They were not happy that I was still here and they desperately wanted to know why I had stayed.
I was sure that the jig was up. I cut it to them honest hoping to at least get some sympathy from them. Maybe I could talk myself into a free flight home and then it was just a few apologies to the Drew’s and I was back on my feet in the land of the free where I could get food stamps again. I was kind of hoping that was how this would go. But it turns out they just wanted to waste some more of my time by jerking me around. With little to no excuse they let me wander off into the night well after the last trains had left. I slept in the airport after smoking down a pack of cigarettes while cursing under my breath. I had just about fucking had it with Heathrow Airport. We still had one last little dance though, but that comes later.
The next day I was tubed to London. I checked into the hostel where we were going to stay. I had some monies that Nina had given to me. I bought myself a few nights until D.Bob would be in town. I put my bags out then hit the town. I worked my way out from Piccadilly Circus, which earns its name and then some, asking every shady person I could see if they knew where to open air weed market was. Nobody seemed to know.
Two hours into my search, when it was getting dark, I picked up a pint of whiskey to take the chill out of the air.
The next hour found me in some strange land where everybody looked like a hustler. These streets were obviously seedy in a very Baroque way. There was a fast talking homeless punk who very politely informed me that helping people find the right deal was his job. He took me to a hole in the wall of an abandoned building. He stuck his head in the hole in the concrete and said something like “ey Mista Troll, I gotchyeah a customa, yeah?” like a question. Then there was a grisly mans face in the window and he says “whatchu need boy?” I felt like I was in a David Lynch film. Weed, man. I need weed. “No heroine?” No sir, I’ll just be having the weed thanks. Everyone seemed disappointed that I wasn’t a real drug addict. What a fucking phony, right? It cost too much, but it was good hash.
The punk took to me and he started in with his life story while I rolled in the park. He drank some of my whiskey. Didn’t smoke, he says. Had a hard time with heroine and really ruined his whole life. Now he sleeps in an abandoned industrial neighborhood in town. His home is an old loading dock. He said he’d come to terms with his addiction because he just accepted that he had it and it would never go away and he’d found a way to make his life sustainable. He reinforced that his job really was to help people find drugs, and when he does the dealer gives him a cut. He was an agent that picked up people like me and took them to the right place. I guess I had earned him enough heroin to keep him happy for the night.
It was really cool to have somebody who lived in this underworld explain to me how things worked around here. He told me about the rich kids that come for blow and the poor kids that come for heroin and the college kids that come for pills. Everybody wants to get fucked up, and if you’re looking to get fucked up and you don’t know where to be, you’ll end up here. I was a testament to the reality of this. Maybe it had called out to something in my blood, that addicts twinge that Sputnik, with all of his years of meth addiction, left me. Thanks dad.
We walked from there down to the river. It was a hell of a walk. I don’t know why I felt compelled to keep walking with him. He might very well have robbed me, but he didn’t. He just needed the time to tell his story and it turns out that it was a really long story and it coincided well with the London night so I kept listening.
His mom had been a hooker and he’d been on these streets his whole life. He had moments everywhere we walked by.
We parted ways at the London Bridge. I promptly got lost afterward and ended up in a dicey part of town on the wrong side of the river, pretty drunk and very stoned. It was a bad hour to be in these kinds of circumstances.
I did find my way back and I was not mugged. The Circus was just coming to life under the morning sun when I got back and slept for the rest of the day until the Rescue Chopper got to town that evening.
The Paper Trail 