TheOXBOW.com: OXBOW - Trouble That Will Trouble The World

Tour Diary: 2003 > Page 2

WELCOME TO GENEVA.
NOW TAKE YOUR FUCKING HANDS OFFA ME

Niko gets in a few hours after me but of course by the time you add on the

1) time I spent lost in terminals in Newark and Geneva
2) time I spent waiting for the Continental pilots to sober up
3) time I spent waiting for the plane to leave Newark in the middle of a ohmigod I'm going to die snowstorm

...there's only 40 minutes between his flight and mine so I stay.

And things are moving along smoothly until these women start making their way through the crowd toward the three-seater bench where I'm sitting.

No big deal. They're hot. But that's not the issue. The one of them that's sitting next to me is wearing this waist length coat that's like made from polar bear fur and it starts to pulse and glisten and call out to me in a way that only heavy users of LSD will understand.

I mean at first you try to ignore it. Making it absent. But by trying so hard to make it absent you just make it more present and finally I'm just looking at it directly all Rainman-like and then propelled by the forces of idiocy and darkness I say to her.

"That's a, um, great coat."

She smiles and sort of nods confusedly and it dawns on me that fucking of course she doesn't speak ANY English so like Lenny in Of Mice and Men I try to SHOW what I'm talking about and I start stroking her arm (I know, I know, God help me) and OF COURSE not only does it look like Polar Bear but it also feels the way you'd expect Polar Bear to feel and I CAN'T stop stroking it and I'm watching in horror as my body speaks louder of my intentions than any amount of English would and I'm stroking and she's smiling and finally I force myself to stop and the next thing I know Niko is there and I've never been so glad to see him as all of a sudden NORMALCY has returned and it is OK for once.

"I'M GOING TO LOS ANGELES TOMORROW.."

The fuck you are. The speaker is the guy who is driving us from the Geneva airport to the club Usine where we're playing AND staying. He's in a band apparently and has all of that pre-tour, what the hell is that most bands feel? JOY? He's got romantic notions about some of the long drives they have through Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and into California and I know to a foreign ear that sounds soooooo fucking cool, but having made that drive like a million fucking times I know that he's up for misery without measure and this plays on my face and I see his eyes darken.

Good. He knows what's coming.

Karin our promoter shows us around and a la shows in Europe the deli tray is running thick and full. And the club is huge and it's going to be weird playing to the 10 people who are going to show up but I'm sure you know at this point that it doesn't happen that way.

THE WAY IT HAPPENS: Enough people to not feel like a fool, but not enough people to NOT feel like a fool.

The place holds like 200 and we have like 70 there. For what amounts to essentially a jagged and drugged Simon and Garfunkel, this is not bad.

And so we play and after we play we announce that we're going to show Christian Anthony's film MUSIC FOR ADULTS and then AFTER that, if we're still sober and ambulatory, we'll have a question and answer session.

And then everything went BLACK..with the exception of the following three anecdotes I remember nothing.

POSSIBLY MADE UP STORIES TO CONCEAL THE VARIETY OF FELONIES I WAS, IN REALITY, COMMITTING WHILE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF EXTREME SLEEP DEPRIVATION

1) FEAR AND TREMBLING AND A SWISSMAN UNTO DEATH

One of the guys who promoted the show kind of crab-legged up to me and said "do you remember playing at Pez Ner last time you played there?"

"Of course." I say. A skosh tentatively.

"Well I brought this friend of mine. We drove 2 hours to get there and after 2 songs he said 'I can't stand it.' I said, 'what? What do you mean? Where are you going?' and he said 'I don't know...just out..OUT.' And he ran away. It was your music, you see. I later found him out in the gallery talking to this crazy guy."

"And that made him feel better?"

"I think so, yes. But he's coming tonight and I want to bring him over to meet you if that's all right."

I say that it is and so later, during the movie, while I'm manning the Merch table I see him inching toward me and his friend retells the story and the guy starts off slowly at first

"I just..I..couldn't take it. It made me too..nervous. But I made it tonight," and he smiles with the briefest flashes of triumph.

"What do you do for a living--I mean outside of being a trembling Swiss man - that you have such a clearly pronounced nervous condition like you do?"

He sticks out his chest and intones "I AM A BUS DRIVER!"

God help us all.

2) THE MAN WITH THE SILVER KNIFE

I look up from where I'm fraternizing with some of the NATIVES and I see this FELLA standing there with a knife in his right hand down by his thigh and his left hand draped over his eyes like he's about to swoon Isadora Duncan style.

"They...THEY TRIED TO FUCKING ROB ME!!!"

I ask the couple I'm sitting with if they see him.

"Haha. Why yes."

"Do you see his knife?"

"OH. Does he have a knife?"

A nation of people who will never see the knife until it's too late.

I reach for my tour weapon and watch this 50-year old Brit with a knife try to speak French and get some water for his apparently tear-gas-sprayed eyes.

The couple I'm with says " do you think we should help him?"

I don't even dignify this with a response and return to my conversation with them which leads to

3) A DONUT AND TWO SAUSAGES

During the post-film Q & A there's a scream from the back corner.

"Hey." That universal "I've finally had enough to drink and will now proceed to try to suck your cock" cry that's familiar to performers everywhere. Even Yo Yo Ma gets it. I know because someone told me he told them so.

Anyway I say "Yes?"

"We want to ask you..um..in private." Hmmm...I can't see them so I move closer and when I'm in eyeshot I go to sit at their table.

She's about 36. Dark hair. Pixie cut. Sort of a Swiss Laurie Anderson. He's about 38. Crew cut. Looks like an engineer. Or murderer.

She leans into me "why do you always grab your, um..."

Oh god. It's the cock discussion again. I mean percentage wise I grab my cock a whole lot less than the average guy at the average sporting event in America but that's a red herring (Nice touch: my cock = a smelly fish). The physiognomy of this transaction is usually just to get to the point where I say

"..COCK. Is that what you mean? Is that that hard to say? How do you say it in French?"

They laugh nervously. And call it the fatigue but I just stare, patience expired, my eyes like the backs of nail heads.

"Well, yes. But why do you grab it?"

"I grab it for YOU. For you and for all of those quietly yearning slightly bookish types who want to grab it but who fear it..they fear the COCK...and so it is for them that I grab it in all of it's semi-turgid glory. Grab it and hold it, grab it and stroke it, grab it..."

"Yes, yes..." And he interrupts to change the topic and the conversation ranges afield but I KNOW what's going on here and so I wait for it for like 15 minutes, through the knife-wielding Brit, before I remember that this is still SWITZERLAND: THE OFFICIAL NATION OF PEOPLE THAT FUCK IN THE DARK and so they will NEVER get around to it so I start insinuating in my kind of gentle and sly way..

"So you want me to fuck your woman while you watch?"

"WHAT?!?! Nooooooo..." But while his mouth says Nooooooo, she inches closer to me all warm and smiley and just trills a laugh that's high and clear.

"Hahahahaah..." And he frowns and says referencing the probably-now-blinded Brit, "But you might end up like him."

"I seriously doubt it." This isn't a brag. If you travel for even 5 minutes it becomes clear that the only people on the face of the earth crazier and more violent than Americans are Brits and the SWISS, well let's just say that it's not a mistake that Swiss rhymes with Miss. "I mean I'M not a fighter," I lie, "I'm a lover. Especially of other men's women."

She smiles again. He buys her a CD. And a lifetime of trouble.

I remember nothing else and won't until I find me and Niko and lovely, lovely Karin, our promoter shivering in the cold of the Geneva bus station and I feel like fucking Ratso Rizzo because naturally I only brought one thin coat because, well because I want to die. Obviously.

THE BEST LINE HEARD IN GENEVA..spoken by Niko as he peruses the initially empty club (and in reference to the graffito that we once spotted that said "If you can't draw a crowd, draw a DICK!") while chortling darkly, "I'm going backstage..to draw a dick."

EUGENE? HE'S HAD SOME TROUBLE WITH MURDER BUT HE'S OK NOW.

LYON, FRANCE

So we get to Lyon, we get to the club, no one's there so Niko wanders off in his ever-occurring search for a music store and I sit in front of CAFE MYZIK eating dried mango, beef jerky and glaring at passersby who have to struggle up a long hill to get to where the club is. My head is clearing and I almost feel all right.

Almost.

The promoter shows up (Good sign) and promptly tells me he has a gig tonight so he actually won't be able to stay for the show (Bad sign) but he's a nice enough fella and he cracks open a bottle of local Red and I drink and gobble from the deli tray until, well, you know, the most reasonable thing in the world is to shove all of the ash trays off of one of the bar room tables and go to sleep there, which I do.

Lyons, France: Drinks for all my friends!!! Well actually we don't know ANY of these
people and this is a stolen photo but you know what the hell we mean.

When I'm awaken by a youngish fellow who excitedly and in very good English talks about just about everything, I find myself suddenly swept away by his enthusiasm, so much so that I ask him..

"is there a decent whore house in Lyons?"

Well that's not really what I said. I really said something about liking the cut of his jib, but that's another story. For another time, Oscar Wilde. But, speaking of Oscar, a photographer friend of his shows up and I recognize him right off. He imagines that it will be impossible for me to recognize him. But I do. A guy like me HAS to. It could be all the difference between a knife in the throat and a cock in the ass, but I digress.

"We've met before," he says, smiling slyly.

"Yes. I know. I said. It was in Lille. You came up to me after the show and wanted to know if my song lyrics were about how hard it is to be Black AND Gay and..."

"Yes, yes, yes, well I was wrong about that..." He rushed to shut me up, seeming sort of embarrassed, which is like pulling a pi�ata up a tree in front of me.

"Haha...yeah. I wrote all about that in an old tour diary. Yup. Wrote allllllll about it. But I never caught your name..."

No way is he going to tell me his name and it wouldn't matter anyway as I seem only capable of remembering like ONE name per country. I mean as far as I know or care every guy I met in Switzerland is named GREGOR (the bus driver's name I think). Everybody in France is Patrice. Perfect. It works. But he changes ships quickly and says the cook will be there in a bit and she shows up and the food is served and it's a fucking jolly, cigarette smoking, wine-drinking time to be had by all. Fuck that Freedom Fries shit. That totally stupid, retrograde shit. They're still FRENCH fries to me and I will still stand by their mighty tradition of running away from more fights than they take, proudly surrendering to live to fuck another day, until I DIE, clutching my black beret in arthritic hand. I LOVE FRANCE AND THE FRENCH and I don't give a shit WHO knows it especially if it's the cook. Who I keep sipping wine and watching. Sipping wine. Watching.

Well the show is great. Sixty people in a club that holds 60 people is not bad. And since I'm a Negro I commence to steal things of little or no value, like the photo below, as I was too cheap to bring/buy a camera but I wanted to remember what the club looked like so I took it and here it is.