We were standing around a rental car outside of Nick’s apartment near the Circus. The noise was incredible. I took long, hungry drags on my cigarette while D.Cam and I poured over the map of England. This was going to be crazy.
We had to go all the way north to Scotland. North Scotland. Then Glasgow. Then Belfast. The driver’s seat was on the wrong side of the car. The car was too full of shit. D.Bob was too sick to be in an enclosed space with. Too many factors.
Nick finished the last of his worrying and before I knew it London was thinning out into field land as my hand cruised the wind like an airplane out of the window. Off we go.
the UK, from top to bottom, is really only about as large as Michigan, maybe a little bigger. The drive seemed intimidating because we were crossing the whole country in one sitting, but I am an expert navigator and D.Cam is a race car driver. We made good time.
Along the ride D.Bob got a text message on our only phone. He read it out loud. It said “Fuck you. You’re just another whore. Nina” I was pretty confused. I was the only boy with a Nina and yes she did have the number. What had I done? Then in a gas station, after a long joking period, D.Bob reread the message and realized that it was from Ina who was HIS girlfriend. I laughed so hard. D.Bob did too. We’d both been whores, it was true, and we both had it coming, so when it did come for either of us it was only fair to laugh and learn lessons.
Don’t ever trust an artist on the run.
We got to our little town in Scotland, somewhere north of Edinburgh. We got lost trying to find the driveway to our accommodations for the evening. We finally found our place. I was, again, completely unprepared for what I saw.
In the middle of a picturesque forest there was a vast trailer park, all of the trailers new and shiny, and in the middle of this park there was a castle. Not knowing where else to go we headed towards the castle as it was safe to assume that that was where the management of this facility would be found. I was very excited that we’d be staying in a trailer. When we walked into the castle we found a grumpy old butler type who told us that we were very late. He handed us a set of keys and some towels and told us that our room was upstairs. What? We get to stay in the castle? I was too pleased.
I raced up the stairs like a little kid. The room was huge and well equipped. It looked like a very fancy persons home. I sat down and immediately began to type on the typer in the living room which had an archer’s perch for a window. The Drews went down to the bar on the first floor.
I came down a little later to find D.Cam at the center of a small riot while D.Bob shuffled up to bed. I went out to the patio to see what the score was. D.Cam had found a whole gaggle of old people who live here. Their accents were thick and sloppy and there were all kinds of glasses and bottles on the table. D.Cam was drinking whiskey. I was offered a drink. From there things get hazy.
We ended up going to a few of the trailers, drinking something that burned severely in one trailer, only to end up in another which had a five gallon container of vodka with a novelty pump like the kind that dispenses ketchup. There were about ten of us in this trailer and we were being a little rowdy. The owner of the home sat at the pump all night just pumping away. There were vodka drinks of all kinds going around.
Time passed in a blur, we were having a real good time. I was playing the guitar and we were all singing “Dirty Old Town” over and over again when the sun started coming up. D.Cam and I decided to retire to our castle.
We got to the giant wooden double doors and we realized that we didn’t have the keys. Goddamnit. My first and only night to sleep in a castle and I got locked out. I couldn’t believe it. We started throwing rocks at the windows and yelling with whispered voices for D.Bob. I couldn’t stop laughing. D.Cam was just beginning to try to scale the wall while I doubled over at the sight of his drunk ass climbing the side of a castle in Scotland when the doors opened and D.Bob was standing there in his underwear with his arms wrapped around his gaunt body looking at us like we were door to door salesmen.
We were beating up fiber and making paper on like hung over rock stars the next day, bright and early on the sidewalk outside of the local library. Professionalism is key in this industry. We were all wearing our sunglasses. It was a tiny gig and people seemed to be confused by us. Nobody stopped to talk. I found it impossible to even initiate conversation. It seemed like we had just come all the way up here to get drunk and make paper for a day outside.
D.Cam taught me how to bind a book for the first time, so I started putting together a compilation of all of the prints that I had done on the different kinds of paper I had made along the way.
We stayed in the castle one last night and then we were driving off away from the rising sun the next morning.
The Paper Trail 