Jonathan Shaw and Lydia Lunch are reading at Stories Books and Coffee in Echo Park, CA on October 6th!

Tuesday October 6th
8:00 pm
1716 Sunset Blvd LA, CA 90026

As we get closer, we see that the palm trees are more whipping than swaying and the haze is really a constant whir of sand. The realization that we have just arrived at the windiest beach in the world hits us.

“What the fuck!” Jonathan curses the place.

“Let’s just get out and see… Maybe its not that bad.” I try to sound hopeful.

“Not that bad! It’s a fucking sandsorm!” Jonathan yells.

“Yes… But there’s camels…” I say.

Jonathan rolls down his window to ask the man where we can park. As soon as he does a million tiny grains of sand are sucked into the vortex of our car, slapping us mercilessly in the face. Stupid infidels… you are not welcome here. One of the camels leans over into our window, makes a loud “Moooaaaw!” and then “splaaat!” spits a big one right into Jonathan’s face.

“That’s it!” he howls as he rolls up the window. “We’re outta here!”

“You mean we’re not even gonna get out?” I say expecting we’d at least have to give it an obligatory walk around. “Look, the locals don’t seem to mind it…” I joke pointing to the three scraggly looking arabs that sit on the beach smoking their pipes, their turbans violently whipping at their weathered hash colored faces and bloodshot eyes.

“No, we’re not getting out! And we’re leaving this fucking country!”

Finally even he has surrendered. Morocco has won. We will leave now. Back on the road.

We drive the six hours back to Tangiers. Back to the ferry. Back to Spain. We drive up the coast where we finally find a beach. It is on the Mediterranean. There is beautiful dark blue water and there is no sand. Only tiny tiny luxurious little gem-like pebbles that don’t even stick to your feet or get in the bed!

There is only one hotel and it is a good one. And cheap. With the first sip of morning coffee I am finally relieved of my burden on a real toilet. I can finally breathe. We have dinner every night on the sea wall. There is Gaspacho. There is Paella. There is wine. As the sea breeze cools my body, my heart warms again. We both reflect. We can’t stop laughing.

We stand against the wall, looking out into the sea.

“I do like being your sidekick, babe.” I say, the wine suddenly making it easier to betray myself again. “It’s just sometimes easier to see it all in retrospect… sometimes I need to be out of a situation to appreciate it, I guess…” I babble now, loose lips. “I really do like traveling around with you. There’s really only one thing I’d never want to do.”

“What’s that, Peanut?” he asks.

“Well, I guess traveling on the motorcycle…”

“Funny you should say that…” He says.

The End.

“Ok.” I say, knowing he has nothing to say, he just expects to be entertained. “What do you want to talk about?” I say, passing the ball back.

“Well, I don’t know babe…” He sounds frustrated. “Sometimes I feel like I just don’t know you very well.”

Oh god he’s good. This is why alcohol exists.

“What do you mean?” I fake naivety.

“Well… like what are your dreams… what do you want to do with your life?”

Shit. I’d thought his personality was big enough for me to hide in. Did he think that mine was? Point one Jonathan. It is an ambush. I’ve been avoiding this for almost a year already. And he has picked now. Now in the middle of the fucking desert, my shit so backed up I’d soon be a native. I am boiling. I’m so hot my blushing cools me. It isn’t enough he gets a girl less than half his age. Now he wants me to actually be a person?

I thought if you were a kept woman, a plaything, of sorts that that’s all you had to be. I knew I couldn’t play the trophy wife role. I’ve never been good at keeping people entertained. Distracted. That’s why I preferred to be alone. I knew this would happen. I just needed to buy enough time to figure out my next move in life. I never thought I’d have to make one while in it.

Basically he is calling me boring. I am not boring, I just have no idea how to do the things I want to do. He doesn’t know this. He doesn’t know that as I am silently clinging to him on the back of the bike, observing, I am just waiting to seize an opportunity and pounce when it comes my way. He mustn’t know this. Just as he mustn’t know how every night I purposefully stiffen up around ten o’clock, pretend I have nothing to do so that he is forced to suggest we go get drinks. It is always his idea. There are some things he must never know. But I cannot sit here and be called boring.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to make clothes…”

“”Well, I don’t really know anything about that…” He says deadpan. “But I could make a few calls…see if anyone I know can help…”

I knew he would have to get involved. He always thinks he has to fix things.

“Or write…” I say hesitantly. He is more excited about this one.

“Well, what do you want to write about?”

Yuck. The question that inevitably follows. The reason I keep it to myself.

“I don’t know!” I blurt out angrily.

Can’t he be happy I’ve just told him my innermost secret? He has to pick it to pieces.

“Well, I’m a writer myself, you know… Now that’s something we could do together…travel and write.. nothing to it, just throw your notebook in a suitcase…”

Great more suitcases, more traveling, more not shitting. I cannot breathe. I quickly backtrack.

“I don’t know what I would write about though. I think clothes is what I should really do. That’s why I moved to New York in the first place… I dream in clothes…” I say. “I just don’t know how to go about it.”

“Yeah, well I don’t know either… I can call some people…” he offers halfheartedly, not knowing how to stamp his bootprint on this dream. Can I have nothing to myself?

“Well, I don’t think I could travel all the time…”

It is now his fault I cannot follow my dreams.

“Well, it’s fine with me if you just follow me around… hang out… be my old lady…You don’t have to do anything… you just don’t seem happy…”

How can he do that? Just dismiss me . Doesn’t he know I have more ambition than that? God I need a drink.

“I am happy.” I lie.

Soon the dusty road looks like it is about to end and we see water. There are a few sickly looking palm trees swaying. It looks a little hazy, but finally we have reached the beach. It doesn’t look like much, but at least we can stop and rest our weary bodies. We drive until we cant anymore, ending up at a crumbling stone wall. There is a man sitting on the wall with some camels. Some camels have finally gotten a break.

We make our way back to the tiny blue rent-a-car. The thermostat now reads about 130 degrees. We get back on the road. As long as we are moving it seems o.k. that we don’t talk. The are few signs of life on the dusty narrow trail they call highway besides the 1980-something dusty black Mercedes that I keep imagining pulling up and open firing machine guns at us. There are a few men with staffs who perch themselves under whatever shade they can scrounge up, usually two or three leaves hanging lifelessly from a lone olive tree. I assume they are shepards though I never see any sheep. These Moses guys are the lucky ones. Some of the men have to push carts full of who knows what (maybe that’s what happened to the sheep?) down the dusty road. They go two miles an hour but they are on the highway nonetheless and narrowly escape with their lives whenever a speeding car whizzes by, creating a small duststorm. Jonathan swerves and curses when we have to pass them. Sometimes the carts are pulled by a camel. The camels are useful so they keep them looking pretty good. I feel sorry for them anyway. They look at me pleadingly with their big brown eyes as we pass. They carry the weight not only of the carts they obligingly pull but of all the other barely living animals here where life is cheap. The featherweight kittens and mangy dogs with protruding ribs that we have seen in town lurking from corner to corner searching for shade and scraps that they will never find. I think that I see the camels crying. I have no words for what I am seeing.

I sit in the passengers’ seat silently doing the breathing excersises I remember reading on the back of the smooth moves tea box back at home. What I wouldn’t give. I count the seconds it takes from where I see a mirage up the road till when we actually arrive at that point with the car. I feel my head fall forward as I begin to doze off.

All of a sudden I am jolted awake by the car swerving wildly. “What is it, what is it?” I ask. “Did we hit a shepherd?!”

“No..” Jonathan says, irritated. “You were falling asleep…”

“And….so?”

“You just can’t go to sleep and leave me here!” he proclaims.

Of course I couldn’t.

“Sorry…” I say halfheartedly, remembering the early days in the Death Van when he’d let me lay my sleepy head in his lap and pet me to sleep. He’d been doing this swerving thing the past couple of months though and I know what is coming next. I ready my defenses.

“Well, lets talk…” he says, my father figure treading dangerously close to the ground of my real father.

I am suddenly 8 years old again sitting at the kitchen table and getting prodded by my dad. It is a trap. My ears burn even hotter that they already are. It is so hot even the a/c on high just feels like a hot slobbery sheepdog panting in your face.

Something stops me as I exit the “toilet.” My legs are moving toward the slightly less sewage laden air outside, but I am making no forward progress. I look down. A large grubby hand with long, dirty fingernails has a hold of my arm. What is going on. Is it the water buckets? Did I forget to flush? Or am I finally being captured to be sold into white slavery? Doesn’t sound too bad at this point. I figure they may at least dope ya up a little before running a train on your ass. Maybe that’s what I need. Although who would want me at this point? I haven’t worn makeup or combed my hair for centuries and my stomach is so bloated I can no longer see my toes. Where is Jonathan? Did he go into the men’s shithole?

I look at my dark, bearded captor. “What, what?” I ask trying not to offend him or look directly into his eyes. I know he doesn’t understand me. He doesn’t even acknowledge me. I try to wiggle my arm away and he grabs tighter. Jonathan is nowhere to be seen. The native passersby look at me, noses upturned with satisfaction. The white devil whore is going to get what’s coming to her.

Finally I hear Jonathan’s voice loudly behind me. Oh no, They’ve gotten him too. They allow Americans to exist here because they spend money. They are easy marks. They pay the trick monkey guys. They buy pistachios and mint tea. They buy the overpriced robes and wear them ridiculously around town thinking this makes them fit in. But not us. They somehow know we haven’t bought any ceramic tagines to take home and cook dinner for our friends while telling them about our fabulous trip to exotic northern Africa. They know we haven’t shipped home any expensive rugs, the tiny billions of threads tied together by the tiny fingers of so many breadwinning 5 year olds. They know we have not spent a dime more than absolutely necessary to barely keep us alive and they have finally had enough.

Jonathan’s voice gets closer. He is arguing with another bearded man who is yelling at him in a mixture of French and Arabic, waving one arm wildly in the air while one grabs Jonathan by the shoulder pushing him in our direction. He is obviously in kahoots with my guy and is yelling at him now, gesturing at Jonathan and me. I have never seen another man lay his hands on Jonathan and I can see he is about to lose it. It’s a good thing they confiscated his switchblade at the Swiss border a while back. He is yelling back at the man in French (never wanting to reveal his true country of origin) gesturing wildly himself, seeming perfectly at home in the scene that has unfolded. I cannot understand what he’s saying.

“Take it easy!” he finally yells in English as he takes out a single dollar bill from his wallet and gives it to my captor. Apparently this is what I am worth. The bathroom guard suddenly releases my arm and gives me a slight shove onto the street.

“What the fuck was that?” I ask Jonathan.

“They wanted a dollar to use the fuckin’ bathroom.” He says guiltily.

“A dollar!!!” I yell. “That’s what they wanted? Why didn’t you fucking pay them when we went in?” I demanded, knowing he knew the arrangement full well from the start.

“Because I ain’t no chump… that’s why… you don’t see any of the locals giving them a dollar do ya? And I wouldn’t have either if you hadn’t of been here.”

And there you have it. The constant guilty reminder that if I wasn’t here with my pale skin and red hair, a virtual flashing neon sign of Western decadence, how different things would be for him and his cameleonesque olive complexion.

“You have to be respectful…” he’d said only hours after selling on the black market the last bottle of French red wine that we’d stolen from Johnny house. We’d smuggled a case of it into the country, I’d thought to drink. Before I knew it he’d sold the entire twelve bottles right from under my nose, breaking all kinds of Muslim laws right along with my spirit. Respectful? Because it is so commanding of respect to shit in a hole? I try not to think like this. Like an ignorant American, but in moments of extreme discomfort, it is a mindset that is east to grab hold of.

At least in the hotel room there had been a white, porcelain dish pan type of formation surrounding the shit hole. But today it is just dirt. I stare at my naked toes and pray that the piss and shit laden sand doesn’t ooze over the edge of my flip flops. It is too hot here for real shoes. It is too hot to breathe, not that you’d ever want to.

There are no doors, much less stalls in this particular shit hole and as I look at the foreheads of my fellow pooers I now understand why everyone wears those long robes, so they can cover their business while they’re getting down to it. And now here I am a redheaded white girl. American no doubt, squatting blatently under their noses. Exposed. A mark. Ripe for the picking.

“We all used to shit in holes…” I tell my bowels. “Remember that time you had to go so bad while jogging that you pooed behind the A/C unit of Mr. Bankston, your old shop teacher’s house down the street? You can do it. You hate technology… toilets, shitting inside…”

Nothing works. My bowels aren’t stupid. One peep at the schmegma pool where the exit leads to and they crawl right back up.

I pull down my dress and stand up to leave, careful not to spill any of the buckets of water that sit around the room. I don’t really know what they are for. Are you supposed to splash your ha-ha with them, some type of poor man’s bedet? Do you pour it in the hole? Wash your hands with it? I do not know the proper etiquette, so I ignore them, I’m sure to the thorough disgust of my fellow squatters. Probably exactly what they expect from an infidel.

I make my way towards the light of the exit. There is an Arab man there. I do as I was told and do not make eye contact with him as I worm my way out of that little slice of hell they so loosely call a rest room. I do not know where we are exactly. Only that we are in the Kasbah in the middle of some city in the middle of Morocco heading East.

The quest for a place to relax is always the fuel for our constant geographic. Someone has told us that there is a beach on the east coast and we are desperate to get there. Desperate to get somewhere where we won’t be constantly on the brink of strangling each other, on the brink of heatstroke and dehydration. For me this place is the bottom of a bottle of cheap Bordeaux. For Jonathan, it is the beach.