THE BELGIAN GIRL AT THE OLDE VILLAGE CAFE

55. THE BELGIAN GIRL AT THE OLDE VILLAGE CAFE:

"That's what you get for sleeping in your clothes but you know it's been said new clothes make a new man but whoever said that was never I don't think heard from again and so if any disposition is to come of such a posture it would have to be like ME at Hamlet's Castle or something smoking a twisted out-of-shape cigarette of some long langorous shape the kind the drugstore does not make - but anyway one time we were up for three days straight playing around with stuff and we ended up somehow there exiting from a long black limousine driven by a guy named Ferdie from Macantire Mews whose father was a constable in Terflie-Shire Way or something and who never really spoke but just drove us to wherever we wished to go - and somehow it seemed he knew - except that maybe I myself wasn't really in control and someone else was actually doing all the decision-making but be that as it may that was like so far long ago as to be silly - like 1966 - I think and we all were part of a traveling troupe of jerky-cat musicians playing guild halls and merchant palaces for whoever would come out or show up but as it turned out so many people right then were on vacations or holidays that all we got really were the unemployed the down-and-out or the 'redundant' as they were being called in England at that time - tweedy miserable ho-hum and just actually on the cusp of coming alive - Carnaby Street and all that having just recently blown London wide open - Mary Quant Twiggy The Kinks and all everyone else and all we really had meant to do was ride into town on some of that and make some English money in American clothes or the other way around I don't know any more - and it was mostly the twisted black nightmare of a drugfest-bested mind that I came away with as night after night we jelly-rolled and smoked and popped pills with whoever was around or giving them to us and everyone it seemed had some connection to film or music and all that - no one really mindful or intelligent of anything mind you - but the girls and the sex were good ILLOGICAL but good and they'd gladly throw that goo around and let you slip it in whenever because to them all NOTHING really mattered (which was considered good and high philosophy though a bit 'easy' and French for that day) and then they'd happily roll right over and let you do it again with no mind - as long as so long as the music blared the drugs were there the booze prospered and they were treated IN THE LEAST at least as someone or someone special and I guess they've by now all disappeared and grown into old Mums with grandkids all their own or whatever and some are dead and some are living ('in my-ey-y life I've known them all') and the way I ever saw it was if that's what it took to make them happy then so be it and I love them still as special as they are and wish to be forever and ever amen! I say" - the fellow was toasted for sure and his fierce marmalade smile was making me scared and I only knew him as Old Johnny but he dated back from the ancient of days which SOMEHOW had now come to be seen as the mid-1960's if you can figure that out but whatever the concotions were that he was still taking they were working for him and his stories and he just never shut up ever but I sat down next to him in Henetty's WigWam House where they served ale and lamb stew and they let people linger ESPECIALLY people with the British accent of Coral-land or something like that - some place I never got - but I was never sure of this guy's game anyway and the American in Paris type stories were really wearing thin and everything sometimes seemed all mixed up too but WHENEVER something untoward occurred he went running for the exit until they brought him back.
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And all he wanted to keep taking about was Scottish folklore and the aforementioned castles and battlements - he said he'd gotten a 'particular' interest in such things by reading 'Jane's' annuals - which covered such things as ships helicopters and the weaponry of war worldwide and then he brought up a guy in film he knew named Haskell Wexler - which name sounded at least familiar enough - but I didn't follow his logic and wound up actually daydreaming as he was talking and I watched the waitress nearby instead as she worked the counter and I could swear she was Belgian but I didn't know why or what was key to me thinking that - no evidence or knowledge to think of - and I started wondering then if something in one's mind or 'bigger' self could take over and know these things and intuit them while sending the impulse to the brain which would account for the sudden glint I'd get that she was Belgian (something I'd not normally think of) and I supposed I really could ask her but I didn't wish to - not knowing what even would begin such a conversation - and if she was Belgian so what ? never seen one before and it made no difference but she was curious to look at and attractive to me too but for reasons I couldn't place - existential European reasons short stumpy powerful reasons facial construct reasons and SOMETHING and something more revealing to me anyway than was this guy's rant and I never knew if he was saying HE was in this English group touring the land or if he'd simply been PARTY to hearing of the party - on and on - and I let it drop but then I started wondering if maybe I'd mixed up Bulgaria with Belgium because - Bulgaria - that was the place all the girls were coming from nowadays and they sort of looked the same too but I decided it had to be Belgium because that's where the exoticism was for me (the idea of 'Old Europe' be damned) but when you cut the cake open and see what's inside sometimes the filling is more a surprise than the icing outside so I let it go while listening to the underground roar beneath us of the subway running by (and I imagined the people bunched up and riding in silence - conversations short words cut suspicions a'foul and everywhere somewhere worrying about something).