July 20, 2007
Tour Blog: Persona Non Grata
Written by Girth McDürchstein on July 20, 2007 3:08 PM
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Splitcock Tour -- Europe & Japan '07
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When it was time to leave for Lund, Little Riffs Nicky still wouldn’t leave the bathroom. Through the door, we could hear him moaning and whimpering softly, like a small dog who doesn’t quite understand the permanence of death, but somehow instinctively knows something has changed forever. We tried coaxing him out with Jell-O® Puddin’ Pops, the sensual sounds of “Put It Where It Doesn’t Belong” (his self-confessed favorite Abysmal Crucifix song ever)—we even went so far as to hire one of the millions of prostitutes constantly roaming the streets of Stockholm. The poor guy wouldn’t budge.
For those who haven’t been keeping up to date with the tour blog, we found out recently that my ex-fiancée Sarah Goss has cancer, and the prognosis isn’t very good. When Riffs found out, he ran into the bathroom and hasn’t come out since. Even mine and Margo’s marathon lovemaking sessions haven’t encouraged him to come out and snap photos, which he ordinarily loves. He’s always been a little sensitive, but we all agreed he was taking this too far and much too hard. I couldn’t imagine why; he hardly knew Sarah. Even I was taking things better, and I’ve been accused of committing incredible acts of violence when confronted with difficult situations.
Of course, people who know me better (and aren’t Montana rednecks afeared of anyone different) realize that my usual reaction is to simply run and hide. It’s a pattern I finally broke when I married Margo, and if I didn’t have her I’d still be running. From everything. Remember what happened in Oslo? Never would have happened without Margo, a tough old broad and keen strategist/grifter.
But this isn’t about me: this is the story of Little Riffs Nicky understanding and accepting death. As checkout time approached, we finally got desperate and rang the house detective. He came up to our room, examined the locked door carefully, and asked, “What do you want me to do?”
“Don’t you have a master key or something?” Margo asked.
“I sure do,” he said, then slammed into the door with wild force. It blew right open, tearing off one hinge and hanging askance. Riffs was curled up in the tub, heads over his hand, like we used to do for tornado drills in high school. When the door flew open, he covered his ears and started to scream incoherently.
“He okay?” the dick asked.
“He look okay?” Mikey asked.
The hotel detective took a long, thoughtful look at Riffs. He shrugged and said, “I’ve seen worse,” then headed for the door. Just before he reached it, he stopped and turned back. “What caused these symptoms?” he asked.
“Our friend,” I said. “We just found out she’s dying of cancer.” This prompted more screaming.
“I feel sympathetic,” the detective said. “This bizarre behavior happens often in this region. You, being tourists, are perhaps unfamiliar with the effects of our summers of eternal twilight.”
“Dude,” I said, “that would be an awesome name for a new concept album.”
The detective looked at me with either concern or alarm. Either way, I didn’t like it. He said, “A useful solution to your problem is a cabin. You leave this hotel today, do you not?”
“We do…” I said.
“Wha do you mean by ‘a cabin’?” Margo asked.
He turned up his nose at her, as if she smelled foul. I would usually consider this an act of unfettered hostility, but bear in mind none of us have showered in three days, and Margo and I have—well, let’s just say we’ve worked up a bit of sweat during our many five-minute pleasure bouts. By now, she smelled like a member of L7, and I looked and smelled like a fat Ric Ocasek.
The detective said, “Sweden is a nation filled with cabins for rent. I suggest you rent one and tend to your friend. Since you are checking out today, you will likely find cabin resorts on the road to your next destination. I wish you luck.” With that, he left.
“Cabin resorts?” I muttered incredulously. “I don’t think we can put that on the credit card. We spent a lot on that Oslo thing.”
“Maybe Stockholm has some priceless Nazi art we can steal,” Margo suggested.
“Maybe we can convince the fucking assholes at Arenan to pay us for the gig they canceled,” Mikey said.
“Yeah, that’ll happen.” I rolled my eyes at Carl, but he looked as if he thought that was a good idea. The theoretical democracy of Abysmal Crucifix would be threatened if those two kept agreeing. We might never release Girth McDürchstein’s ‘The Return.’
Margo grinned. “I have a better idea…”
Three hours later, at checkout time, Margo and I went down to the front desk to pay while Mikey and Carl helped Riffs to the truck. Margo flopped a bowling bag on the counter and said, “Excuse me, miss, we found this in our room.”
She unzipped the bag, revealing a severed and bloody human head. In actuality, we bought an authentic human skull (suprisingly easy to find in Stockholm), made a mold of Mikey’s face with ballistics gel, and merged the two.
The front desk clerk did not look surprised. “Another one,” she sighed. “Our policy is to comp your room and give you a coupon for one hundred krona off any purchase at PUB.”
“Fantastic,” I said. “Now, could you recommend to us any rented cabins in Lund?”
“Certainly,” she said, handing me a brochure that said CABINS FOR RENT IN LUND in English.
“You must get a lot of tourists, huh?”
“We’re a hotel, sir.”
“So?”
We left a few minutes later and hit the road to Lund. On the way, Margo looked through the brochure and secured a reservation at the cheapest and therefore best available cabin. It was only large enough for two, so I agreed to stay with Riffs in the cabin while Margo, Carl, and Mikey would keep our reservation at the Lund EconoLodge.
The cabin was a total shithole, but we’d been in Scandinavia long enough to recognize “falling apart from the inside out” as a consistent aesthetic theme. From the outside, the roof looked like it was collapsing, but once we got inside we found only one of the six ceiling support beams had collapsed. Mikey and Carl helped prop it up while Margo nailed it back into place. Otherwise, the place was dusty and cramped, with windows only in the two bedrooms, and a kitchen that contained nothing but an old wood-burning stove and a tea kettle. We did find a water well in the backyard that had a cool wet sack in it for cold storage, similar to the luxury hotel in Turku.
When everything looked okay to our eyes, Margo and I got Riffs out of the back of the truck. He had decided to open his suitcase and take a nap in it. We rousted him awake, helped him out of the truck, and carried him along the dirt driveway to the cabin. He hadn’t spoken a word in days. We weren’t sure what to make of it, so we simply carried him into one of the bedrooms and flopped him down on the hard, urine-stained cot. He fell back asleep in an instant.
“Well,” I whispered to Margo, “I guess it’s just him and me.”
She gave me a hug and kissed me goodbye. I nodded in a very masculine way to Carl and Mikey, who still seemed a bit concerned about Riffs. I assured them he’d be fine, and they reluctantly left with Margo.
They left me a copy of several new books from Idle Valley Press, so I read by sunlight (the cabin had no electricity) until the sun set a few hours later.
I went into Riffs’ room and sat beside him. The endless twilight provided some light, not enough to read but enough to see that Riffs was awake and lucid, for the most part. I sat in a rickety chair and said quietly, “I understand.”
Riffs stirred on the cot. He didn’t say anything. Eventually his movement stopped.
“You know,” I said, “when Sarah and I first got involved, I didn’t think it would last. We went out once, about two weeks after I got to L.A. I saw Redstain play at the Faultline, asked her out after the show. It was a pretty awkward date. I was new and not yet accustomed to the Los Angeles way of life, so I couldn’t understand why she brought another man. Well, until later, back at her apartment…”
I trailed off, thinking of the night, then snapped out of it. “Point being, I was tempted to never call her again, but I did and—well, you know the rest.”
Riffs didn’t acknowledge me at all.
“When Owen Autumn first told me about the cancer, my first thought was, ‘I wish I had never called her for a second date.’ I felt guilty immediately, but I can’t deny my gut instinct. It’s fight or flight, man, and I wanted to fly—from the pain. Just like in ‘Thunderbird.’ I don’t know what she’s going through, but Jesus, if this is the effect it has on other people…”
I found myself lost in thought, wondering about the consequences of assisted suicide, when Riffs rolled over suddenly and looked me in the eye. The cabin was very hot and sticky, although the night air drifting through the window was cool. The stare Riffs gave me hurt my soul. It haunted me. It will stay with me for years to come, I am sure.
“I loved her so much,” he whispered.
“You probably only love once.”
“There was one time I won’t forget. You and Sarah had rented a cottage out on Catalina. It was June, and you were all alone. One day, you had to go back to L.A. I called you and asked you back into town. Sarah went to the beach on her own. It was a nice, warm day. There was another girl there. She had come from Orange County because the beach was sunnier and more secluded. They lay there completely naked and sunbathed…dozing off and on, putting sunscreen on. They had silly straw hats on. Sarah’s had a blue ribbon. She lay there…looking out at the landscape, at the sea and the sun. It was kind of funny. Suddenly, she saw me on the rocks above them. I hid and peeped out occasionally.
“‘Two boys are looking at us,’ Sarah said to the girl. Her name was Katie.
“‘Let them look,’ said Katie, and turned over on her back.
“I had a funny feeling…down there.
“Sarah wanted to jump up and put her suit on, but she just lay there on her stomach with her bottom in the air, unembarrassed, totally calm. And Kate was next to her, with her breasts and thunder-thighs. She was just giggling. Sarah noticed me coming closer. I just stood there looking at them. I approached and squatted down next to Katie. I pretended to be busy picking my toes. I felt very strange.
“Suddenly Katie said to me, ‘Hey, you, why don’t you come over here?’
“Then she took my hand and helped me take off my leather pants and shirt. Suddenly I was on top of her. She guided me in and held my butt. Katie whispered in my ear and laugh. I concentrated too hard. I could feel my head turning red and swollen. Both heads.
“Suddenly Sarah turned and said, ‘Aren’t you coming to me, too?’
“And Katie said, ‘Go to her now.’
“I pulled out of her and then fell on top of Sarah, completely hard. I grabbed her breast. She yelped with what I thought was pain, then came almost immediately. Can you believe it?”
I couldn’t.
“She told me to be careful and not make her pregnant…when I came. She felt something she’d never felt in her life…how my sperm was shooting in her. I held her shoulders and bent backwards. She came over and over. Katie lay there watching and held me from behind. After I came, Katie took me in her arms and used my hand to make herself come. When she came, she screamed like a banshee. The three of us started laughing.
“Then we had a swim and went our separate ways. When Sarah came home, you were already back from town. You had dinner and some red wine. Then you had sex. It had never been that good, before or after. Can you understand that?”
I couldn’t. Rather than following my initial instinct to beat him to death with a hammer—easily abated by the simple fact that Margo had taken the hammer with her—I sat there for a moment, considering what Little Riffs Nicky had just told me. Somehow, I felt as if I’d been there with Sarah Goss, performed the act myself, and that Riffs was the one she came home to at that cabin. But that could not be—Sarah and I were engaged, not Sarah and Riffs.
We watched each other in silence until he drifted into slumber. Then I went into my room and slept. I had a strange night’s sleep, filled with nightmares and yet it never felt like I was truly asleep. Even in the horrors of night, I could feel myself tossing and turning on the rock-hard cot.
I awoke to the soft buzz of insects and the light twanging of an unplugged electric guitar. I went into the main room and saw Riffs sitting on the floor, wearing my bandanna on his curly head, playing my guitar. Playing the lovingly crafted guitar solo from “Tongue Quest.”
“Come on, Girth,” I chuckled. “You know you don’t play lead.”
Had I just called him “Girth”? I couldn’t be certain. I moved to the stove and tossed in some twisted newspaper for kindling, then sent in a match after them. Flames sputtered, and I filled the kettle with brown water and set it to boil.
“I lead this band,” Riffs growled very clearly. “I do only as I say.”
“Bullshit,” I tried to say, but instead found myself muttering a stream of disjointed ideas, as if I had begun to suffer from the same schizoaffective disorder that causes Riffs to talk like that piano genius from Shine.
Just then, the kettle began to squeal. I tore it from the stove and could barely hear Riffs squeal “No, don’t!” over the sound of rushing steam as I hurled the bubbling water in his face. He screamed like a woman, and I came to my senses and dropped the kettle and ran to the guitar to dry it off as quickly as possible. The cabin lacked any towels, so I tore off my shirt and Riffs’ bandanna and sopped up the water before it completely destroyed the wood.
Later, I asked Riffs if he was okay. Whimpering in pain, he finally uncovered his face, revealing a blister-covered, pink mass of flesh barely recognizable as his own face. Who was this man, this Little Riffs Nicky, the greatest rhythm guitarist I had ever known?
“Gee Girth what you did see what you have to do is the way I felt it is to be you and I felt it, could you ever understand the way you spoke like me did you also think like me did you feel my feelings and—”
He seemed revitalized—normal, inasmuch as Riffs is ever normal.
“No!” I screamed. “I am not you!”
“Who said you were chap who said you were certainly not me—say let’s go to the EconoLodge and hook up with the friends.”
“We have a show tonight, Riffs,” I said.
“All right all right then let’s go meet the boys and Margo and Mikey ha ha ha ha”—he literally did just say the syllable “ha” repeatedly, as Riffs always does when he laughs—“and rehearse.”
I threw an arm around his shoulder, grabbed my guitar with the free hand. “Sure thing, old sport.”
We got together and rehearsed, and I think by that night we were all feeling great. We drove the truck up to Mejeriet, and as soon as I saw the marquee I felt devastated:
Seven nights of Lionel Richie? The sons of bitches! THE SONS OF BITCHES!
I leaped from the truck, ran inside, and demanded to speak to Karl-Henrik, the man who had originally booked us. There he sat, blond and approximately nine feet tall, a thick wall of muscle, reading tarot cards.
I roared, “LIONEL FUCKING RICHIE?!!”
“You want tickets?” he asked.
“No, goddammit! I am legendary rock star Girth McDürchstein, and I’m supposed to be playing here tonight.”
“I do apologize,” I said. “We left an urgent message with your representative, a Mr. Jason Fields. Did he not pass it along?”
“I don’t even know,” I said. “I’ve been in a cabin all night with my rhythm guitarist.”
Karl-Henrik raised his eyebrows.
“No gay stuff,” I said. “Well…not much.”
“I apologize, Mr. McDürchstein.” He stood up and shook my hand. I’m pretty sure a few of my bones broke. “We were so looking forward to your performance, but when Lionel Richie asks to stay an extra week—well, you do not turn him down. But tell me, if you are free after the 25th, we would enjoy to rescheduling you.”
“Well,” I said, knowing full well that after the 22nd we didn’t have a gig until mid-August, “we’re booked solid.”
“That is a shame,” he said.
“Fuck you.” I walked out of the club.
I wouldn’t have lied to him, but I hate this fucking continent! I’m tired of being here, and anything that would prolong the stay is just unacceptable. Too bad we have one more night here. We’ll be driving up to Reykjavík in the morning, and then we’ll finally get some rest before flying to Japan.
I’d like to apologize to any fans who came to Mejeriet thinking they’d see us. We didn’t get this blog entry finished until long after Lionel Richie took the stage.
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