Technicolor Pulp by Arty Nelson Read Free Book Online Page B

pissing on my mind. Life is
     a hassle until I find a bathroom, or even better, an alley. I like the wind.
    I find a bathroom and I pull out my rig. “Oh yes! I can smile again!” I look up at the ceiling and I push my hips in towards
     the stall. Happy thoughts! I can go on if I don’t have the pressure welling up inside of me. Life is beautiful again! Just
     a couple of minutes, and I see the world in a different way. A golden stream splashing back off the side of the urinal. I
     wonder how many times I’ll piss in my life. Or how many countries I’ll piss in. The hot steamy back splash occasionally grazes
     my steering hand. It’s nothing I can’t wash off. It’s nothing that isn’t worth the trouble.

PUIP 18
    So Doobe tells me I gotta have a tube pass to get around London.
    “Look, I don’t have the dough for it,” I tell him.
    “I’ll buy it for you… All you gotta do is pose for the picture.”
    “Pose… No problem.” I give it my best pout—distant, melancholy, intense, all while sucking my cheeks in. Brando’d be proud.
     The pass gives me free rein within city limits. We walk out of the station and run smack dab into Westminister Abbey. Its
     tall steeple shooting up into the sky, just short of God. The tall gothic shit and old Ben and all the double-deckers everywhere
     and all the color and the Thames and the bridges and all of it—real heavy tourist stuff. Old movie type, like where’s Rex
     Harrison in all of this shit. I’m overcome. I don’t know whether to beat off, get drunk, eat a candy bar or just be afraid.
     I, me, Jimi Banks, am part of human history! Part of the history of this fucking world. I look around and I feel it. King
     fucking Tut and me! I’m in a place that means something. I wanna celebrate. I want to remember it forever like a big collage
     of lights and sounds and colors and laughter and tearsand fear and never being the way I think it’s gonna be. I hear music—rock and roll but big, like symphonies with flutes and
     drums and violins and summers and candy and all the girls I ever loved. Little pieces. My whole life in little pieces. I never
     get to remember the whole thing at once. I just get little pieces. Trapped in a postcard, inside a cartoon, waving to the
     camera.
    I follow Helms, a few steps behind the whole way. He goes that New York way—running the whole time even when he’s walking.
     We cross the Thames and drop down under a stone bridge to the side of the National Theatre at the South Bank. There’s a pub
     right on the side of the Theatre. These people aren’t afraid. They got pubs everywhere! America! We’re so afraid of everything.
     So afraid of being sued, so afraid of neighbors, so afraid of queers, so afraid of dykes, and drugs, nudity, sex, murder,
     incest, rape, life, our fathers, loving our mothers, and most of all… FEAR. So fucking afraid to be afraid! Ever since that
     one jerk wrote “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” we’ve all been so fucking scared! Me included! I still can’t believe
     those little lame pilgrims cried when he read that stupid sermon in church. Wherever it was, probably Boston—the lamest place
     in America. Liberal town… Yeah, right!
    A pub at the National Theatre, what a beautiful thing. Let’s face it, no one could use a few drinks like all the pretentious
     weasels who roam through museums, pretending to FEEL and KNOW what theartist meant. They analyze and they hypothesize and they intellectualize and they yearn to fuck and wish they knew and want
     to be but don’t have the time because they’re too busy smoking weird, bad-smelling cigarettes and writing long boring papers
     and… Call me fucking Ishmael!
    We go inside the little woody outhouse-like tavern and Helms orders us a few ciders. Nice. Tastes like fine wine-beer. It
     may be the best morning lager known to man. I could easily see myself becoming a cider junky and never being able to go back
     to the U.S.A.
    Back outside, we