THE EGG THAT WOULD BE GOOD

Back in the vanished days of my youthful follies, I knew a very odd bloke -- Trev used to suck glue -- really! A full-north-to-south-urban spaceman. He'd just take the cardboard tube from a loo-roll, stick it in the top of a tin of Evostick, where it fitted perfectly, and suck on the fumes. Then he would sink into faraway dreams his face as calm as a Taoist mask.
Of all drugs, it, he insisted, was his favourite! the best, the cheapest, and, totally legal! But, he could never do it with friends around -- who wouldn't tolerate the outrageous stink. So, it had become his private thing, and a running joke among those who knew him. He used to accuse us of being elitist and snobbish about our drug taking -- imagine!
It was actually his father who had unwittingly introduced him to the pleasures of the sticky stuff. He was in the RAF, so Trev had been brought up on several air-bases around the world, thus always around aeroplanes, which he loved. His father was forever buying him plastic Air-Fix-kits -- models of famous aeroplanes -- Spitfires and Lancaster Bombers, and such. Which always came with these small tubes of glue, which he would get high on in his bedroom while putting the planes together.
Funny thing though, before I knew anything about his vaporous habit, when I had been to his place only a few times, the house sort of looked like a normal pad -- I say 'pad' because I'm talking about the early seventies -- long time ago eh! Well, that's what they used to call that kind of place back in the stone-age.
Some guy would rent a cheap house in slumland, let it be known that he was at home evenings, and open to entertaining. Then it wouldn't take long for it to become a bohemian hangout of outlandish frothy talk, tea smoking and acid dropping freaks of the feather -- nut nirvana -- or a den of iniquity, as my mother would have called it. There would be loud pulsating music, and a constant stream of dropouts and miss-fits coming at narcoleptic hours with all character of chemical jollification.
So there was Trev's little pad throbbing in a sea of lumpenproletariat red brick dock-land-slums. The very same hellish rows of back to back, side by side hovels of my own sad larval stage.
Well, as I was saying, Trev's pad just looked normal; cool lighting, stereo, psychedelic posters on the walls, large cushions thrown around a carpeted living room. But when I'd been there a few times , or maybe it was the first time I saw the place in daylight, but whenever it was, I suddenly noticed these little, brown, disconcerting, abstract stains everywhere on the carpet, on the cushions, and even on Trev's clothes.
It turned out, as he explained in the haughty philosophical way he had of putting things, that: 'every drug has its downside!' and explained further in his very reasonable manner, that, when he sucked on his merry little glue pot he would often fall into a terra incognita, a wonderland of fume induced hallucinogenic sleep. And sometimes; well, quite a lot really, the pot would just tip over! Then, the glue, being a liquid, would seek its own level, and would dribble out to find that level.
He must have been indulging in his gaseous little obsession for rather a long time, because, one night while a whole crowd of us were there, someone opened a cupboard; one of those big ones built in -- a metre high, a metre wide. Someone just happened to open the door for some reason, and what did we all see with our stretched wide open stoned eyes? The whole dam cupboard was full of Evostick tins. It was amazing -- triple stacked on maybe five shelves. It looked like an Andy Warhol piece! Someone asked if he was keeping count of the dead ones. Not at all; it was perfectly simple -- as he told it -- when ever he had no money; not even enough for a new tin -- he would swirl a little spirit around those hardened cans, and hey presto! the genie of the can would appear! ' and he'd be back in action, -- squeezing the last bit of psychedelic life out of it.
I told him I was much impressed by his dedication to the company -- was it the power of branding? But no, 'Just the cheapest!'
'Comedy is tragedy plus time', said the very remarkable Woody Allen, yet, very little time had to pass to make the event I'm about to relate funny! Ah, with our freakish humour we laugh that we may not weep!
One night of ripe idiocy, Trev took his little old Rin-Tin-Tin to bed with him: a dummy right? Right! As he fell under its somnolent influence and into his mad slumber, the whole tin, trying to find its own level, trickled out onto his long frizzy hair and onto his pillowcase. He inhaled the fumes all night, when he awoke the next day, his head was swimming in a gooey sea of chaos. He tried to stand up, but realised his pillow was stuck to his head! The effect of the overdose seemed to have moved his brain furniture around. His head was banging, zigzagging, and he had Rorschach blots appearing before his eyes. Trying to get to his feet he was unsteady, swaying madly like a drunken sailor all at sea!
'O blood, dust, and iron!' He wanted only to lay back down and go to sleep again, but was too afraid; he didn't know what was happening to him. He should try to make it to the house of two lesbian friends just a few minutes away.
He took the pillow out of its solidly stuck pillowcase. He thought about how he could get there without been seen with this stupid looking thing hanging from the side of his head. Being the middle of a sunny Saturday afternoon the streets would be full of people -- neighbours he saw everyday, who didn't control their contempt for him, 'That disgusting hippie weirdo, who has all those strange people coming to his house at all hours!'.
He sat on the edge of his bed feeling sorry for himself. Poor sod! 'What am I, Gods clown?'
Like a bullet, a crazy thought entered his head: for less than one clock-tick he considered pulling the pillowcase all the way over his head, and cutting two eye-holes out it like a KKK mask. This idea ran around his brain like greased lightening, but thankfully he didn't have the wits to pursue it....
He managed instead, swinging madly about, to make it to the bathroom, and sat before his large, fuzzy, soft expressionless features reflected in the mirror. With shaking hands and squinting eyes, he carefully cut away a lot of the pillowcase that wasn't stuck to his hair. What was left was a large white circle on the side of his head. 'Oh Shit! it looks like a target!. He cursed the fact he had no hat.
Desperate, and longing only to reach help, he staggered and swayed out of the house. He gave a stricken muffled moan as a fat black sun struck him on the head like a cosh. Light entered his eyes like burning golden needles, and turned everything to a painful sulphur-yellow glare. His flesh slackened on his bones, and his legs wobbled under him.
He peered at the terrace, which was full of loudly yelling playing children, and line after line of washing stretched all the way across from house to house. Billowing -- New Ultra-Blue-White-Daz-washed sheets were drying in the sunshine, and a warm blustering rushing wind blowing strong enough to make a dog's tail wag!
Ordinarily, although being a large thick-set guy, Trev would have nimbly, on fleet-foot, ducked and woven his way through these insignificant obstacles. But in this condition! -- with the world rolling and shifting in opposite directions to his head and legs? It seemed a feat of great judgement and courage was called for. It was a quixotic scene, and he was a quixotic figure without a Sancho Panza. For here was not a terrace, but, a great rolling ship deck with masses of crazy flapping sail, manned by a scurrying crew of midget sailors!
Hell! he thought, he must rouse his spirit, choose a straight course through all this swirling surreal confusion. He told himself he could do it!
At this moment our hero spied, and made for a momentary gap betwixt and between the darting and dashing kids, and giant white fluttering wings. But on his approach he did smite a child to the ground. As he quickly bent to help the child, he head-butted another -- a small boy, who gave out a hideous unending falsetto, more from horror at the sight of his mad looking attacker than pain. He suppressed the urge to smother the child's piercing wail. A supporting chorus of Wagnerian shrieks and screeches now went up from all the other terrified kids. Our hero panicked, and turned quickly to continue his run, but was captured, engulfed, and entangled in an undulating wall of yard after yard of New Ultra-Blue-White-Daz-washed sheets!
He fought on; he was a lion -- snap! -- he was free -- wading thigh deep through white sheets as if they were but surf. He tripped, fell forward, and was again immersed in the next billowing flimsy barrier, that wouldn't take his weight -- snap! -- down he went like the collapsing backend of a pantomime horse -- thrashing about to unravel and shed those hideous winding ghostly shrouds.
He heard a sudden nearing and rising crescendo of harsher voices, then felt the first slaps and blows from the mothers of the kiddie shambles he had left behind. They were fierce screeching magpies swooping on this 'Fucking maniac!' who was attacking their children and trampling their New Ultra-Blue-White-Daz-washed sheets in the dirt. In the dirt! These sheets weren't merely sheets to these daughters and wives of men who braved the sea -- but were totems of tribal consciousness! -- flags of decency for all to see!
'Fucking weird hippie bastard!' they raved 'kill the bastard!' He covered his head -- he pleaded -- he was turned turtle -- fists and feet flew, fingernails scratched at his face trying to find his eyes, hands tore at the white target on his head. He frantically, and just in the nick of time, brushed away a claw like hand that had been seeking out his testicles! Then reaching a nemesis, he roared to the universe at the top of his voice -- he raged at this unfair twist of fate that had been slung at him! As if in answer, his roar made his caroming attackers stand back for just one crucial moment, allowing him to scramble quickly to his feet and lunge forward, charging, running bend under the now continuing blows raining down on him, until he had made some distance from them, and finally, beetling his lucky escape to help, to his lady friends, who smoothed him out, and trimmed the pillowcase from his hair.
He was in shock, his face bore bloody wounds, his clothes were torn, but worst of all he was deeply and bitterly offended.
A few days after this he swung by my place pouring out his heart and soul, he told me the whole chemical comedy. Of course, I sympathised with him, but I couldn't help seeing the funny side of his tragedy -- one could hardly resist the begging puns!
He told me how ashamed he was, and how he had been sneaking around -- avoiding the neighbours. He was looking for a new pad, and he swore he would never take glue again. He couldn't bear the idea that people thought he was an idiot, or a bad egg.

Chris Whitley
2004 Berlin
Please let me know what you think.
Chrisnwhitley@yahoo.co.uk