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July 14, 2007

Tour Blog: Some Shit Is Going Down…

Written by Girth McDürchstein on July 14, 2007 11:54 AM
Permalink |  Splitcock Tour -- Europe & Japan '07  | Digg It

Gently, I caressed my small plastic credit card within my fingers. The Njord brothers didn’t count on the good credit that comes from having all poor investments and financial mismanagement run through a bankrupt company. They didn’t count on my $10,000 monthly spending limit, my $100,000 maximum limit—or Margo’s ability to shop.

We left the boys and Mikey at the hotel and went to a flea market in the city center. Margo got me all dolled up in leather, while she strapped on some fishnets and a purple pleather skirt that left very little to the imagination. The lack of panties left even less to the imagination when she sat down teamster-style and waited for me to pay. But we had our outfits: a filthy Norwegian prostitute and her uptight pimp, the perfect front to hang around outside car thieves’ headquarters.

To the untrained eye, Helgensgate 12 looks like any other abandoned factory in Europe: from dusk to dawn it surges and throbs with endless house music, but during the day it shudders with inactivity. Unless you know where to look…

Margo and I stood across the street, spending equal time making out and pretending I was putting her out on the corner. Unfortunately, at 10 a.m. we only got a half-dozen prospective johns, and most of them were disappointed that Margo wouldn’t leave the sidewalk. She took them into the alley while I kept my eyes on the warehouse.

Just after two o’clock, a garage rumbled open and a silver BMW nosed out of the alley. The two terrifying men pictured in the ad sat inside. They made a right onto Helgensgate and blasted down the street, disappearing around a corner before the garage’s automatically-closing door hit the concrete.

Margo didn’t even check for traffic—she just crossed the street.

“Hey!” I yelped, following. “What’re we gonna do?”

“We gotta case this joint,” Margo said. We walked around the alley to the rear of the warehouse. About halfway up the block it opened into a pseudo-courtyard that was once a docking bay for smaller trucks. A futuristic skyway ran overhead, connecting both sections of the building from the third floor. Margo nodded in the direction of a ramp leading up toward a small, van-sized bay door. I followed. With the swift clamp of the chain-cutter she keeps in her purse, the padlock fell to the ground with a heavy clomp, and Margo rolled the door skyward.

When we saw the inside of the warehouse, our eyes bulged to the size and brilliance of agates. Never before had I seen a sight so spectacular, and I doubt I ever will again: a three-story erotic fun-zone designed with Europeans in mind, it resembled a fantastic, dirty physical challenge from the old Double Dare. Lubricated slides rolled out from all directions, leading onto bouncy castles and moonwalks, hot tubs of bubbling, sticky chocolate sauce, dildos and ass-plugs of every color of the rainbow, gargantuan screens displaying camera feeds that focused on each and every sex cauldron in the warehouse—and that was just what was on the first floor! I couldn’t imagine what frightening pleasure dens, all whips and chains and rotating heart-shaped beds, were hidden in the shadows of the second and third levels.

Perhaps most surreal of all, I heard my own song “Tongue Quest” playing softly on a P.A. system. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. Unlike the U.S., which no longer appreciates or understands my genius, the Scandinavian subcontinent has embraced my scrotum and gently massaged it with success. Other than the soft thrum of my own sexually charged voice and Jam Malone’s expert glockenspiel, the place was deserted.

“Good God,” Margo said. “I guess we know why they need to steal cars for a living.”

“Hmm?”

“It must be some sort of…socialist orgy den.”

She broke into a run, her footsteps echoing as she tore off her hooker-wear. Before I knew it, we were rolling on a faux-sand-dune and naked as egrets. When we finished, we poked around for the truck or any other sign that they stored the vehicles there—no dice.

On the subway ride back to the hotel, I asked Margo what we should do. She said, “Well, they could be running one of two scams, or maybe both if they’re really good—one, they’re stripping the cars for parts and selling them to chop-shops; two, they intentionally target tourists who they know will be forced to buy back rental cars at, which would give them a huge profit return considering they put literally no money into the scam. Looking at their club, I’d guess it’s number two.”

I giggled. Number two.

“So what do we do?” I asked. “Get a cash advance?”

“I have something better in mind.” Margo grinned. I loved it when she got crafty ideas.

Back at the hotel, she got on the phone and dialed the number of the Brothers Njord from the phonebook. She clicked it onto speaker phone and we listened to the series of clicks that Norwegians used as a ring. I asked what she’d do if they weren’t around. “I’m sure this number is for a cell phone,” Margo said, rolling her eyes.

It wasn’t. Soft, stringy synths and a piano introduced the chorus for Eric Carmen’s hit “All by Myself,” and a voice—I believe it was the same fellow I spoke with the night before—belted out in heavily accented English, “All by yourself, don’t wanna leave you, all by yourself anymore. All by yourself, message you leave, all by yourself…” This was followed by a long beep that took me way back to old analog answering machines that needed that long beep to sync up the tape if you had a lot of messages.

“Allo,” Margo said in a thick Moscow accent. “Dis Aglaya Aronowicz. I and my partners wish speak about deal regard sex club. You dial 23-78-93-93 or visit suite 1036 at Hotel Kukost. I be wait. Not wear clothes. You come, no? More ways than one.”

“What do we do now?” Carl asked.

“We wait,” Margo said without the affected accent.

She set a plan in place. Margo assumed correctly that no Norwegian could resist a grudge-fuck with a Russian woman, especially after she had a courier rush several erotic 8x10 glossies from her modeling days to entice them. At the very least, it would divide the brothers. Margo, an expert on reading people (to a fault—trust me!), believed that the two brothers would both go to the hotel. While she kept them busy, we’d only have ignorant thugs and underlings to deal with at the warehouse.

Margo sent Carl and me to an arms dealer she was familiar with in the center. We also had to stop at a costume shop to get everything ready. On the way back, Carl asked, “Why is it that every time you have a problem you put on some kind of elaborate con rather than just owning up to the mistake?”

I chuckled and said, “I guess Margo’s rubbing off on me.”

“Yeah, literally,” Carl said, brushing some sand and love juice off my leather chaps.

Back at the hotel, we all got into costume. I donned a classy plum tuxedo, Carl put on a blinding white Colonel Sanders-esque suit (with a ten-gallon hat to complete the Euro perception of a wealthy Southerner), while Mikey and Riffs got into leather biker outfits that resembled that guy from the Village People (including the mustache).

Ready for action, we left Margo, who was ready for action of her own, lying in bed in a silk teddy.

We arrived at the warehouse just before nine o’clock. Carl, Riffs, and Mikey ran around back while I approached the front door. From inside, I could see a lot of colored lights and hear the bassy moan of Eurotrash techno. I pounded on the door.

“What is password?” a deep voice grumbled from behind the door.

“Huh?” I asked.

“What is password?” he repeated.

“Uh…Njord?”

He pulled open the old wooden door, revealing himself to be a giant standing at least seven feet tall, weighing at least four hundred pounds (and all muscle, from the looks of it), with 80% of his visible body covered in tattoos, hair, and back acne. He chuckled and said, “I spot American from kilometers far.”

He held a hand-stamp out. I let him stamp my hand and said, “I’m here to see the Njord Brothers.”

“They had urgent business in hotel with women, catch my drift, boss?”

“Okay, it’s about a van. Is there somebody I can—”

“You see Alfhild,” the bouncer said. “I show you way.”

He led me through the warehouse, which looked and smelled a lot different with people in it. It was pretty dark aside from the strobe lights, the techno beat was so loud I could feel it more than hear it. I caught occasional glimpses of pale Scandinavian flesh and heard a lot of heavy breathing and grunts. It felt like a nightmare. A really erotic nightmare.

We had to climb a purple, furry rope up one of the lubricated slides to the second floor, then we moved past the mechanical whirring of moving beds and the blooping of waterbeds, all the way to a brightly lit office in the back.

Alfhild sat behind a desk cluttered with invoices, a typical greasy-faced Norwegian middle-manager. He said, “Ah, yankee doodle, you come finally for van.”

“Yes,” I said softly. “Where is it?”

“‘Round back, pard’ner,” he said, trying to sound Texan. He failed.

The bouncer went back to his post as Alfhild got up and led me through a second office door, which came out at the same courtyard Margo and I had seen earlier. We climb down a wrought-iron staircase, and there waited the truck, gleaming white, with LAINATA SINÄ KUORMA-AUTO printed on the side in sky blue.

“Everything’s inside?” I asked.

“Look yourself, chief,” said Alfhild. He took me around to the back of the truck and rolled it open. Our instruments and belongings were all accounted for.

“Thank you,” I said. “How much is this going to cost me?”

“Eight G.” Alfhild wrapped his hand around my neck and gave my shoulder a gentle, almost sensual squeeze. Fucking wastelanders.

“Well, gee,” I began, “I only have—”

“You tryin’a steal my motherfuckin’ truck?!” a voice screamed from the shadows.

Alfhild and I turned as Carl stepped into the dim light over the docking bay. Mikey and Riffs flanked him. Mikey pounded his fist into the other hand in a vain attempt to look menacing.

“Who is you, then?” Alfhild asked.

“This shitface falluhed us alla way from Finland,” Carl said, trying to “hick it up” as we used to say in Iowa. See, the funny thing about Iowa is most of us have what Americans consider a “normal” accent—the normal of the norm. Another thing about Iowans: we hate all tourists, so we do a thing called “hicking it up” to make them go away. Carl did a pretty good job—much better than Alfhild’s pitiful, eternally foreign effort. “Then stoled our truck. But I guess you stoled it from him, now he tryin’a buy it back.”

“I do not understand,” Alfhild said.

I ripped my .45 from the back of my leather pants and fired twice at Riffs, who screamed wildly and dropped to the ground.

Carl and Mikey both pulled out .45s of their own—I hoped Alfhild wouldn’t recognize they were even from the same manufacturer—and aimed at either of us.

“Oh shit, boss, I don’t want no trouble,” Alfhild said.

“Well you gonna get some you give him that truck,” Carl said, clicking the safety off.

“Dritt! Dritt!” Alfhild shouted. “I don’t do nothing but—”

“Just gimme the truck,” Carl demanded.

“S’all yours, pard’ner,” Alfhild said, tossing the keys to Carl, who let them bounce off his chest onto the pavement.

“Not if I have anything to say about it!” I lunged toward Carl, who fired his gun. It got me in the gut, and I made sure the gut-squib went off at the exact right time. I fell forward, a pool of fake blood drizzling out from underneath my body.

“Ay, ay…Jeg skal dogge moradi i rompa så hardt at hun blør,” Alfhild said, literally peeing in his pants.

“This is all settled up, here,” said Carl, slipping the gun into his pants. “We’ll dispose of the bodies, but you ought to have this bloodstain cleaned up before garbage day.”

“Garbage day?” Alfhild asked, baffled.

Carl rolled his eyes and hopped into the cab of the truck. He started it up and helped Mikey shoved both me and Riffs into the truck. Alfhild stared agog. I made sure to “die” with my eyes open so I could watch his reaction.

They tossed me carelessly into the truck, then Riffs, then they slammed the door shut. Riffs opened his eyes and grinned at me. I pressed my forefinger in front of my lips: shhh. When I felt Carl turn out onto the street, I said, “You went a little overboard with those ‘slowly dying’ twitches.”

Riffs explained that he saw a documentary on Vlad the Impaler that said the ruler had an obsession with watching death twitches, and he assumed all Europeans felt this way. He’s probably right.

About halfway back to the hotel, the truck stopped. Carl tore open the back door and said, “Girth, come on. You gotta see this…”

Riffs and I leaped out onto the street and went around to the front—

Where we saw Margo, in her teddy, drenched in fake blood. I ran over to her, wiped her mouth off, and kissed her. When she finally shoved me off of her, Margo said, “We need to leave the country. Now.”

“Wait—what?! What about the gig tomorrow?”

“Cancel it,” Margo said. “We…”

“That’s…not fake blood, is it?”

“Not exactly.”

We got into the back of the truck and let Carl drive. He used to be a short-hauler from the greater Waterloo-Cedar Rapids-Iowa City area to the Quad Cities, so if anybody could haul our ass out of Norway, he’d get us out alive and unscathed.

I need to apologize to our Scandinavian fans for being forced to cancel yet another tour date. Please visit us on the 18th in Stockholm if you can. And if you’re in Oslo and hear any nasty, don’t believe any of their lies. Remember the lessons of Girth McDürchstein Presents ‘If I Did It…’.