American on Purpose Page 10

  Although I’d been booted from the band, Robbie and I remained close, and to help me get over the breakup with Jill he got us a few tabs of acid one Saturday night. We dropped the little pink pyramid pills in a pub about half an hour before it closed, eleven p.m. in those days. We were heading home across the gothic expanse of Kelvingrove Park just as the acid began to kick in. It was powerful stuff—I had tripped many times before and never been close to the intensity of this. The Victorian statues in the tree-lined roads followed us with their eyes, the wind in the leaves was whispering vague sinister threats, and mysterious ripples bubbled up from the myriad of dark ornamental ponds. Robbie for some reason kept turning into Adam Ant. I asked him to stop but he said he couldn’t help it. Terror flashed like lightning. Then it passed, then it came back a couple of more times, then quiet again. Then it switched on and stayed on like a fluorescent light. Blinding terror. Robbie felt it, too. We started running but to our horror we found that, even going flat out, we were traveling painfully slowly. Then we heard them. A long way off at first, behind us and getting closer.

  Ducks.

  First one rogue quack. Then another. Closer still. One of us shouted, “Killer ducks!” We were petrified and doubled over with laughter at the same time. Very unhinged. Very bizarre.

  We redoubled our efforts to escape the domain of the man-eating mallards, and just as we reached the park gates it started to pour down rain.

  What fresh hell was this? I felt I would drown. I looked in panic at Robbie, which was a bad idea at the best of times, given how thin and scary-looking he was. The exertion and rain was making his eyeliner run and he appeared, for all the world, like a walking Jolly Roger. I shrieked like a wee girl and ran away from him; he tried following but I threw him off.

  I stumbled, weeping uncontrollably, through rainy cobbled side streets until I found myself wandering Great Western Road, an ancient and wide thoroughfare that leads out of Glasgow to the Highlands. The rain had transformed the streets into black mirrors, which was hugely disconcerting because they reflected the green of the traffic lights, turning my whole world green.

  I have never been that scared, lost in a town I know like the back of my hand, and about to asphyxiate in a color.

  Then things turned from green to orange, then red, then green again, and I ran as fast as I could to God knows where.

  I needed help. I was in a very bad way, so I decided I should call home. I found a phone booth and before dialing I looked at my watch. It was four a.m. I had been in this state for five hours. I listened as the phone rang and rang in my parents’ house. Finally my mother picked up, her voice fuzzy with sleep.

  “Hello?”

  I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. I covered the receiver so that she wouldn’t hear me breathing and think I was some kind of weirdo, which of course I was.

  “Hello?”

  Silence.

  “Craig, is that you?”

  I hung up.

  The storm had passed.

  I think just hearing her voice was enough to pull me back into myself. Years later I finally admitted it had been me on the phone that night, although I suppose she always knew.

  I wandered back to the flat with my head zinging and popping but not quite as bad as before. I was terribly anxious and stayed awake for about three days afterward, watching crappy television or staring at Ken. At last I finally drifted into oblivion and slept for sixteen straight hours.

  I vowed never to take acid again, and I haven’t, but just writing about this experience, twenty-five years later, makes me feel uneasy and afraid, like I could fall back into it.

  Something happened inside my mind that night that should not have happened. Acid gave me a clinical, unblinking look at madness, and I discovered I wasn’t brave enough to be insane.

  17

  Anne

  Given that the threatened onslaught of a thunderous LSD-induced psychosis had introduced me to a whole new level of disquiet, it seemed only logical that I increase my alcohol intake to stay calm. Even at this stage, my drinking was not recreational, it was already medicinal. Alcohol evened me out, until I drank past it, blacked out, and did something crazy, annoying, disgusting, or all of the above. It helped in my next gig, too, because after being sacked from On a Clear Day I was hired as a drummer by a group that was its artistic and philosophical opposite, James King and the Lonewolves. These were the notorious tough-guy rockers I had introduced with my naked shaky knees in front of the heckling cockneys at the ICA gallery show in London. It was arduous being in this band, even though it was by far the most successful group I’d ever played with. The music was relentless and driving, melodic but anarchic, and people actually came to see us in droves. The music press wrote loving articles about us; we even had a deal at London Records, but it was no fun.

  The guys in the band reminded me of the kids I had grown up with, harsh and angry and sectarian. This was nothing like the gentle drunken bohemia of the Dreamboys. It was more like running the gauntlet. The lead singer, James King, wrote the songs and was undoubtedly some kind of rock-and-roll genius, but offstage he was so drunken, twisted, and profane he made me look like a fucking Mormon. It was embarrassing to be in his company, he’d spit and drool and mumble and cuss in front of the most attractive girls—he was way ahead of me on the alcoholic timeline. Jake, the lead guitarist, while extremely talented and prodigiously handsome in a James Dean kind of way, was always going to jail for real crimes, creating the need for stand-in musicians who would play along nervously for one or two gigs but never last longer than that. On numerous occasions I had to leap from the stage to break up fights that Colin, the bass player, had started with an audience member he didn’t like the look of. It was like high school all over again, and even though we were playing the cool gigs like the Clarenden Ballroom, and the Rock Garden in London, and the Hacienda in Manchester, I wanted out.

  The last straw was night the pope visited Glasgow. Colin and I had been drinking all day and when we left the pub he told me that every policeman in the city had been drafted to protect the Holy Father and they were all out at Hampden Stadium, where he had been saying mass. Colin suggested that we take advantage of this by stealing something and I agreed readily, but what to steal?

  Pointing out a parked car, he stated that, in all likelihood, there would be some kind of swag in the backseat for us to plunder. So we approached the car and were pulling on the door handles just as a patrol car came around the corner. We were arrested quickly, without a fuss, handcuffed, and taken to the notorious Stuart Street police station. In Scotland even the jails and roads are called Stuart. They processed us, confiscated our shoes and belts, and threw us into a filthy cell with another unfortunate soul who, the turnkey assured us, had mugged an old lady and was a right little shit.

  “If this prick got his fuckin’ heid caved in during the night I don’t think there’d be any complaints,” the cop told us.

  Thankfully neither Colin nor I was interested in dispensing jailhouse justice, and there was no way of knowing if the copper was telling the truth, anyway. We just sat, miserable in the windowless, urine-smelling chamber, until they let us go the following day.

  I knew that if I continued hanging with these guys there’d be more jail in the future, and I was not enthusiastic at the prospect. Maybe next time I would be the prick the cop thought needed a beating and maybe my cellmates wouldn’t be as apathetic as Colin and I had been.

  I was scared to tell them; getting out of the Lonewolves was like getting out of the Crips—no mean feat. I waited until Jake, the one most likely to actually kill me for leaving, got sentenced to jail for another six months, and I used the band’s enforced downtime as an excuse to get a job in a bar. I said I needed the money and was giving up the music business. I didn’t mean it at the time, but it turned out to be true.

  The Chip Bar, my escape hatch from the Lonewolves, is something of an institution in Glasgow. It is situated above, and affiliated with, a g
ourmet restaurant called the Ubiquitous Chip, a hippy, dippy, and pretentious, but also fantastic, restaurant which for a long time was the only place in Glasgow where you could get a decent meal that wasn’t Italian, Chinese, or Indian. It still attracts an artsy, if sometimes pedantic, clientele from the local university and from the BBC station located nearby. The bar itself is known for its Furstenberg Lager on tap (thanks especially to the beer’s titanic alcohol content) and for its cool, young, and good-looking staff, which I suppose I fit into enough at the time to warrant employment.

  I loved working there. No one swings harder than bombed intellectuals. People in the bar business were even more forgiving of drunken behavior than those in the music business. One night I was walking to work with Robbie, who was headed to his shift at the Spaghetti Factory. We were discussing what would happen now that the lease was up on our flat. I was a bit put out because Robbie had just announced that he no longer wanted us to be roommates. Not that there was any cooling of his affection for me he explained, but because Colin, the tattooed love monster who had burst open Robbie’s closet door, was returning from the North Sea oil rigs and he and Robbie wanted to try living together. This was a considerable hassle for me, having relied heavily on Robbie’s maternal instincts (he’d even fixed me up with the job at the Chip), but now it sounded as if I would actually have to do something for myself.

  We rounded a corner and bumped into a cute, ever so slightly chubby, blond girl with blue eyes and a terminally hip look. Of course she knew Robbie, they said hi, and then he introduced me as his roommate. “Not for long,” I told her, as he was leaving me for a man with larger muscles and more tattoos.

  “And a bigger cock,” added Robbie with a grin.

  The cute blond girl, whose name was Anne, said that this was a remarkable coincidence since she was looking for someone to replace one of her two flatmates who was leaving to get married. I could come and see the room if I wanted.

  I did want, so we made arrangements for me to see the place the next day.

  After Anne had walked away I told Robbie I thought she was sexy. He said she was crazy, and anyway she had a boyfriend, and if she was going to be my landlady I had better forget about any funny business.

  I nodded. He was right, of course.

  The flat was on the top floor of a four-level Victorian sandstone building—you could get in shape just staggering up the stairwell. It was ideal, a small bedroom off of a large hallway, living room, and kitchen that was shared with the two other occupants, Anne—whose father actually owned the place—and John Corrigan, a delightful and earnest hippie who put me in mind of a bearded, diminutive version of my Gunka James.

  Over dark tea and sweet oranges in the kitchen I told Anne I’d like to take the place, and she agreed. We fixed a price on the rent and then got to talking about other things. Anne was and is a great talker, she’s funny and interested in people. She told me about her work with a group of young Glasgow artists who called themselves “The Intolerants.” They had caused something of a stir when they built a shed out of trash from Dumpsters in the main lobby of the art school. Every day at three p.m., six Intolerants would sit in it and have a tea party in dinner jackets and ball gowns. For their next project they were planning to build a man made of rubble in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery. It all sounded very appealing and cool to me.

  Anne asked what I really wanted to do with my life and for some reason I told her my guilty secret. That I had been to America as a kid and wanted to go back and live there and make movies or some such ridiculous nonsense. She didn’t laugh, didn’t think it was ridiculous at all. She seemed almost impressed that I had such lofty ambitions. She herself was a movie nut, even working part-time as an usher in the Glasgow Film Theatre in order to see the obscure pieces of European and American cinema screened there.

  She told me that she was a Highlander, one of that strange ancient northern breed viewed with some suspicion by my scrappy, less noble, lowland type. She was from Campbeltown, on the Mull of Kyntyre, where her family still lived, and was a former student at the Glasgow School of Art but was now seeking work as a graphic designer at the BBC. She told me she would cut my hair if I wanted. She was pretty good at it, she told me. In fact, she had given the groovy floppy haircuts to the band Orange Juice that had become all the rage amongst the indie rocker set. She told me she had friends in Manhattan, loved the Gotham art scene, and really wanted to go and live there, which, as you can imagine, really caught my attention.

  I liked her but I remembered Robbie’s warning. We could be friends and nothing more.

  I moved in on a Friday morning, we had a cup of tea together at lunchtime, and that night I bumped into her at Maestros. She was wearing a fifties-style yellow dress with little blue flowers on it. Her breasts looked huge. We were both pretty drunk when we got back to the apartment. In the hallway I held up my hand to wave her goodnight but she walked over to me, looked me in the eye, and then took my fingers and put them in her mouth.

  “What about your boyfriend?” I said.

  She kept kissing and licking my fingers like they had chocolate on them.

  “I broke up with him,” she said.

  “When?” I said.

  “Right now,” she said

  Six months later we were married and living in New York City.

  18

  New York

  I was twenty-one when I married Anne. She was twenty-six and had been warned, by her family and mine, that I was too young and crazy to be anyone’s husband. I had also been warned, by my family and hers, that I was too young and crazy to think I could be anybody’s husband. Basically everyone said that it was a terrible idea and that I should not go through with it. So, as is my wont, I resolved to do just that.

  We genuinely cared for each other, too, and I think we were both excited at the prospect of escape and adventure. Our families met, our friends met, and everyone accepted the inevitable. So we hired a preacher, and on October 20, 1983, we took our vows in a small suite of the cheesy downbeat Grosvenor House Hotel in Glasgow’s West End. The Fergusons of Cumbernauld were all grumpy and pissed off because they felt I was being impetuous; the Hogarths of Campbeltown, Anne’s family, were all gloomy and afraid because they believed she was embarking on a doomed marriage. Anne’s father, Archie, was a kind, thoughtful fellow who actually said to my dad at the wedding, “Craig and Anne won’t stay together, he’s got other places to go in his life.”

  He didn’t speak in an angry tone, rather with a sadness that I understand now that I am a parent. There are some mistakes you just have to let your kids make.

  The great Scottish denial system, fueled by alcohol and the national attitude of stoic bitterness, won the day, and everyone, including in-laws, punk rockers, and gays, all had a fine time and wished us well. My brother Scott was best man and Robbie was a sort of maid of honor. He was the one who pressed play on the cassette player so that Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie no. 3 could accompany Anne’s walk down the ten-foot aisle between the plastic chairs. Word got around there was an open bar and most of the hotel guests and staff found their way to our reception, too. It got kind of wild. I don’t remember much after the first hour or two.

  We left the following day for a two-week honeymoon in Amsterdam. Anne really loved hashish and van Gogh, so she felt she would enjoy it there. The night we arrived she still had a terrible hangover from the wedding, so that night she smoked a giant reefer, putting me in a huff because I had stopped smoking hash after my acid scare and felt everyone else should, too. We fought, she went to bed, and I wandered around the red-light district, getting hammered with some sleazy German dude I met in the hotel bar. That was the first night of our honeymoon—Anne passed out, alone, in the hotel as I drunkenly ogled the hookers who display their wares in the brothel windows.

  Things did pick up after that, though. We made up and spent the rest of our honeymoon getting wasted together around Amsterdam. A high point for me—in a very high two weeks—w
as the french onion soup served in the grand, ornate dining room of the American Hotel, in the city center. It remains one of the top-ten soups of my life.

  Back in Scotland, we packed up the stuff we were taking with us to the U.S. and put the rest in storage. Anne’s father decided to sell the flat, leaving us no place to come back to should the whole thing go pear-shaped. I made a brief court appearance concerning my alleged thievery during the papal visit. The judge declared me a drunk, not a crook, and threw the case out. I was lucky.

  Anne and I breathed a sigh of relief and headed off to our new lives in America. We had saved a little money from our jobs and had been given some as wedding presents, so we could get by for a month or two. We had a plan; it wasn’t good, or even lawful, but it was a plan. It was pretty simple. Though we both had tourist visas, we would work illegally until we could afford an immigration lawyer, and, at least for a short time, my Uncle James and Aunt Susan had agreed to let us stay with them, so we wouldn’t have to pay rent right away. By then they had moved to the Westchester County town of Rye, less than an hour by train from Manhattan.

  Susan and James didn’t have a lot of room in the new place, but they fixed us up with a makeshift bedroom in the garage and made us very comfortable. All their Scottish expat friends came to see the new arrivals from the old country. Whiskey was drunk and the usual tall tales were told. I rekindled my friendships with my American cousins, who adored Anne from the moment they met her. Karen and Leslie were much as I remembered them, only taller and better-looking. Stephen wasn’t there. He had butted heads with his father and left to join the army, but young Jamie had grown into a long, thin dude, making a brave attempt at a mustache. He drove a silver Camaro and considered himself very urbane.

  I worked with my uncle for a little while, helping out with caretaking duties around the estate he now looked after, but I was keen to get into the city. Anne and I took a train in one day to meet Jamesy Black, a guy she had known in Glasgow. He was a fellow student of hers at the art school and had married an impossibly glamorous American fashion model named Lucy. They lived on Avenue B between Ninth and Tenth streets, which, during the early and mid-1980s, was one of the more dangerous neighborhoods in New York City.