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August 11, 2007

Tour Blog: Sushi Surprise

Written by Girth McDürchstein on August 11, 2007 9:40 AM
Permalink |  Splitcock Tour -- Europe & Japan '07  | Digg It

The short man had a menacing glare that betrayed his dorky Harry Potter rounded spectacles. What made such a vastly inferior specimen of manhood so terrifying to someone as large and powerful (in more ways than one) as Girth McDürchstein? The expensive black suit and matching tie? The greasy, uncombed black hair? The array of blood-encrusted tools he spread on an aluminum table next to me? Yeah, that was probably it.

He came closer, and I spat a mouthful of blood onto the dirty concrete floor. He had inflicted so much pain that I had almost gone numb; I could have spit out some teeth or my entire tongue without noticing. I merely sat in the uncomfortable ergonomic stainless-steel chair, hands wired together behind my back, and waited. The short man carefully selected a new tool for this round of torment—this time, a scratch awl would do the trick. He lifted it like a delicate flower, caressing it with alarming and erotic gentleness, then leaned in and whispered in my ear. “Will you do what we ask?”

I could barely hear him. The stench of his sour-mash breath, combined with the pain and dehydration, made me feel like passing out. I resisted the temptation long enough to whisper, “Yes. Anything.”

“You’re a difficult man to reach, Mr. McDürchstein,” said Shintaro, looking sadly out the window of the limousine.

“Yeah, dude. We were in Europe for, like, a month, and I could barely get any cell reception the whole time—”

“Before that, Mr. McDürchstein. I’ve made several attempts to contact you, in each case either getting the runaround from your intern or being forwarded to your useless publicist.”

“That sucks, man. She never told me—”

“Useless!” Shintaro repeated.

I glanced up at Carl, whose eyes were wide yet amused. He shrugged minutely, so Shintaro wouldn’t notice.

“If I had known,” I continued, “I would have done whatever you wanted. It’s not often you play concerts for heads of state—”

Shintaro chuckled bitterly, then checked his watch and grinned. He looked around the limo, making direct eye contact with each of us and giving us each individualized, mildly disturbing winks.

“What the fuck is with this guy?” Mikey asked me after his wink.

The limo suddenly found itself surrounded by bosozoku—a stealthy group of teenagers, each riding customized, thoroughly bad-ass Japanese motorcycles. The clear leader of the group, who swept in front of the limousine and slowed, forcing us to stop, had a gigantic forest-green banana seat that scooped about five feet in the air. On it, somebody had spray-painted the Japanese characters symbolizing Abysmal Crucifix.

“Fans,” I beamed.

Shintaro nodded to the leader of the bosozoku gang. “That is my son,” he shouted over the noise of the bikes that surrounded us.

“Your son’s in a gang? You’re the governor of—”

Shintaro laughed. “Do you not understand? I am not Shintaro. I am…Hansai!”

It seemed like he wanted us to be awed and impressed by this highly recognizable name, but I had no clue who he was.

“Leader of the Hansai Concern?”

I looked at Margo, who usually kept up with international criminal affairs. She shook her head and shrugged.

“Influential criminal syndicate?”

“I dunno, man,” I said, “but if you are who you say you are, that’s pretty awesome.”

I extended my hand for him to shake. He looked at it with disgust, so I withdrew my handshake offer.

“You can spend your time having babies with your mother—”

This got a sidelong glance from Carl. I rolled my eyes.

“—or you can do as I ask.”

“What the hell are you talking about, man?”

“I made inquiries 17 times over the past two months, each of which fell on deaf ears. You will perform a concert tonight.”

“I’m pretty sure we already agreed to—”

“Not for our government officials,” Hansai explained. “For my daughter’s birthday party.”

“Oh, dude. We’d love to. Is she hot, because—”

“She turns five years today.”

I was trying to play this with a poker face, but that tripped me up. I stared agog. “Five? You want us to play a concert at your five-year-old daughter’s birthday party?”

“Mr. Hansai,” Margo broke in, “I’m not sure our music is suitable for children of that age—”

“It will not be long before she begins dating a man four decades her senior. She must know what to do, and what to say, to make him cum.”

Little Riffs Nicky started to laugh.

“Silence!” Hansai roared.

Riffs stopped.

“Look, dude, I know shit’s different in Japan and stuff, but I feel really weird playing a little girl’s party. Especially since there’ll be, what? Fifty people there? We were booked in a fucking arena, man. Why couldn’t you just take her to our concert?”

“She requires a private audience. In more ways than one,” Hansai laughed.

I felt a wave of nausea unrelated to my recent skydiving experience.

The motorcycles revved up again, and the limo driver followed them around a corner.

“We are on our way to the Sex Cauldron,” Hansai explained.

“I thought they closed that place,” Margo said.

“They did. I purchased it for a small sum and re-opened it.”

“Awesome,” Margo said, surreptitiously rubbing herself.

“If you do not agree to perform at the party this evening,” Hansai continued, “you will die.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It’s not gonna happen.”

Hansai pounded on the partition between us and the driver, then tossed a gas mask over his head with such fluidity and grace it was clear he had done this many times before. A noxious green gas seeped through vents under our seats. I felt tired suddenly. More than just tired—like I hadn’t slept in months and needed to lie down immediately or I’d die. I tried to resist the temptation, because I wanted to know what the gas would do to me, but I quickly gave in.

I awakened in an uncomfortable ergonomic chair made of stainless steel, hands tied behind my back with something sharp like razor-wire. I was alone in a dank, poorly lit concrete room. Pipes and lines of conduit drifted along the floors, walls, and ceilings. A heavy coat of grime covered everything—

—except the folding aluminum card-table set up next to the chair where I sat. Pristine tools, lined neatly along the table, gleamed in the light of the naked bulb on the other side of the room.

A tiny door, more like a porthole, opened with a drawn-out rusty squawk. A tiny man in a black suit crawled through the hole, then stood erect, brushing himself off. “Mr. McDürchstein,” he said, bowing slightly, “I give much honor in our meeting. You are very famous which I am enjoying.”

“Huh?”

“We shall get to business now,” he said, approaching the row of tools. He selected a narrow scalpel and asked softly, “Would you be playing for five-years children of mixed gender at stripper-club party?”

“I won’t,” I said. “I can’t.”

“But you erotic music will get them in the mood for love.”

“What—?”

“Masako already has many suitors. She might turn five, but she has body of three-year-old.”

“I’m gonna puke,” I sighed.

“You answer no?”

“No.”

“What? So you—”

“No,” I repeated, “my answer is ‘no.’”

“No, you refuse my methods of interrogation and will play at party, or no, you will not play at party despite what will happen to you and each person in band of whom we have captured?”

“I’m not going to play at your fucking party, man!”

The short man smiled, pushed his round spectacles up on his nose, and went to work with the scalpel. I screamed until I was hoarse and could barely make a sound. He’d stop on occasion and repeat his questions about whether or not I’d play the show, change up tools. I don’t know how long it lasted; time stretched and blurred after awhile, until finally I went numb. And then, when he asked for the five hundredth time, I finally broke down and whispered, “Yes. Anything.”

The short man stepped back and nodded. “Excellent.”

He took me back to the limousine and handed me a pack of Fisherman’s Friend lozenges. “Suck on these like so many vaginas and you shall sing tonight.”

“Thanks, man,” I croaked.

Inside the limo sat my friends, all a bit worse for wear but none so beaten or bloodied as me. I sat carefully and whispered, “That kinda sucked.”

“You okay, Girthy?” Margo asked. She took me in her ams and let me lie down in her lap. She stroked my hair, among other things.

“I been better,” I said, taking one of the throat lozenges. It tasted like crap but the effect of the menthol was almost immediate.

“You shoulda just said yes,” she whispered.

“Hindsight’s always 20/20,” I muttered.

It turned out the show wasn’t half bad. A bunch of little girls in cute, American-style party dresses watched us with rapt attention, while the elders of the room leered at them and kept their hands in their pockets for most of the evening. We played one of our legendary six-hour sets, including an unstaged rendition of Girth McDürchstein’s ‘The Hedge’. Afterward, I redressed my wounds, signed autographs, and talked with the kiddies. Many of them spoke only Japanese; the few who knew English kept asking if I had a pony. I didn’t want to disappoint them, so I told them each that I had five ponies and showed them a photograph I’d bought from eBay several years earlier. I kept it in my wallet. It showed an unattractive, doughy Frenchwoman attempting sexual intercourse with a Shetland pony. It was supposedly taken 18 minutes after the camera was invented, but they didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about the slightly overexposed, grainy black-and-white photo. They mainly gaped in awe.

True to his word, Hansai put us up in a hotel, although it was not the Westin Tokyo as promised. We all had to share a suite at Rabu Hoteru in central Tokyo. It was small and had a strange combination of 1940s opulence and 1980s dinginess. It was perfect.

I’d like to apologize to the fans for promising to appear on MTV Japan when, in fact, we played a very private show. Tomorrow, though, I promise we will appear at Messe Makuhari as scheduled!