Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

‘In my heart of hearts I know you’re right,’ he said. ‘But do you really expect me to love those two after they smash my car and steal my girl?’

‘Well, I’m an idealist,’ the hippy said. ‘No one ever said it was going to be easy. And you know, ‘ my car’, ‘ my girl’—dubious concepts. Look, I’m just finishing my shift. I don’t know if you’re heading my way, but maybe you could give me a lift to where I live. It’s just up the road at Fox’s Farm. It’s sort of a commune. You could come over and I could roll us a fat number.’

His simple philosophy had touched Ishmael deeply.

‘I’d love to come,’ he said, ‘but just at the moment I’m on a quest.’

‘That sounds great, but you know it’s getting late, and it’s getting dark, and it doesn’t look as though you’ve got any headlights.’

All this was true.

‘My name’s John.’

‘Call me Ishmael.’

‘You’ll like Fox’s Farm. It’s very mellow. We can have some free-range eggs.’

Ishmael thought. Now admittedly he had already paid for a night at the motel, admittedly the most noble thing would have been to pursue Marilyn and her mother and father immediately and to the end of the earth. On the other hand, motels are soulless places and in any case he doubted whether he was all that welcome following the brawl; equally he had Marilyn’s address, and her parents weren’t going to move house before tomorrow; and it was getting late and dark and he didn’t have any headlights.

‘If you don’t like eggs there are always frozen pizzas in the freezer.’

Ah well, Ishmael thought, another adventure. That’s what I’m here for. Isn’t that what we’re all here for?

‘Take me to your commune,’ he quipped.

♦

Ishmael used to say to Debby, ‘Mark but this pig, and mark in this, how little that which thou denies me is.’ Since this was obscure he would then say, ‘Look, Debby, there are women in this world who are prepared to put their tongues up horses’ anuses, who get penetrated by mastiffs, who get their faces doused in pig semen. So frankly, my love, I don’t think I’m being entirely unreasonable merely by asking, and very politely at that, if I might gently come in your mouth.’

Frankly, Debby thought he was being entirely unreasonable.

‘Go find yourself a pig!’ she’d say. ‘Let your pig do your laundry. You men are all the same.’

Ishmael had never thought that Debby was sufficiently worldly-wise to make that kind of generalization.

‘You’d put your penis in my mouth,’ she’d continue. ‘You’d put it in a pig, you’d put it in half a pound of pork dripping if it didn’t answer back.’

Enthusiastic though she was, Marilyn hadn’t proved to be an enthusiast for the kind of thing he had in mind, either.

She had sprawled, provocatively enough, on the motel bed and inquired, ‘What do you like having done?’

Ishmael replied, ‘I like to see torrents of hot semen coursing like molten lava down your moist, eager, yielding throat.’

He laughed coyly.

‘Sorry’, Marilyn said. ‘I’d really have to quite like you before I did that.’

Ishmael thought it best to let the matter drop. But a commune? Surely this was a good location for the aspiring oralist, with its understood promises of self-sufficiency, casual drug-abuse and free love. It might be all slightly old-fashioned, but Ishmael didn’t want to knock it until he’d tried it.

He and John the Hippy drove ten miles or so in the gathering dusk. On the way Ishmael told his story. John the Hippy seemed impressed. They drove down ever more minor roads until they came to a track that ran through a scrubby bit of woodland. A building was visible. It was a modern, sprawling bungalow with a distinct touch of the commuter-belt about it. Doors and windowframes had, however, been painted in what might still be called psychedelic colours. There was a number of outbuildings — a double garage, a couple of sheds, a disused stable — and scattered among them were the wrecks of old cars, motorcycles, minibuses and caravanettes. Ishmael didn’t take to the place.

♦

The little girl who peered through the Benz showroom window with Peter, who had her ears boxed by Adolf Hitler, is called Nina. Half Austrian, half Swiss she grows up with ambitions to become an actress. She cannot decide whether she would be happier as a serious Brechtian ensemble player or as a Hollywood sex symbol, Hollywood having been forced to develop a taste for things and people European these recent years.

She practises giving interviews. The Hollywood option seems to trip more easily from her tongue. ‘I have a love affair with the camera,’ she explains, ‘and my career would always come before any man.’

August 1938 finds her still in Berlin. Bertolt Brecht is long gone and Nina is singing French, English and German songs in a Troika just off the Tauentzienstrasse, and supplementing her income with a little light-weight prostitution. It is the old story. It’s a living.

After her act she mixes with the spare audience. Favours to none, to all she smiles extends, and at the end of the evening she is sharing a table with Richard Huntingdon, an Englishman, sometime journalist, sometime poet, sometime luster after a man in a uniform.

‘We have special cause for celebration tonight,’ Nina says.

‘Why is that?’

She shows him her Kunst-der-Freude-Wagen-Sparkarte — her Volkswagen saver’s card.

♦

‘Nice place you have here,’ Ishmael lied. ‘We like it,’ said John the Hippy.

Ishmael parked the car. They got out.

‘No need to lock the car,’ Ishmael said brightly, thinking that a commune would surely be the one place guaranteed not to rip-off a traveller.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said John the Hippy. ‘You can’t be too careful these days.’

Yes, thought Ishmael, the sixties ended a long time ago.

Nudity, wholefood, group sex, arts and crafts, lots of very small children with names like Mothership, loud rock music, a lot of personal and political commitment, and a general refusal to work on Maggie’s Farm — these were the things that Ishmael had expected from your standard commune.

The reality was somewhat different. Ishmael discovered with horror that several of the men were wearing ties. They had day-jobs where they had to dress up like ‘straights’ but even when they got back to the commune they kept the ‘straight’ clothes on. OK, so the girl who was cooking supper for everybody had a gold stud through her nose, but when the meal was served there didn’t appear to be anything very, say, macrobiotic about it. It was pie and chips. No slap in the face for the bourgeoisie there.

♦

Richard takes the saver’s card and examines it carefully. He sees the Gothic print and seemingly endless spaces for the sticking of savings stamps.

‘I am to be the owner of one of Herr Hitler’s Strength-Through-Joy cars,’ she says giggling. ‘The people’s car.’

‘Smashing,’ says Richard. ‘Congratulations. When are you taking me for a ride in it?’

‘Oh, the moment it’s delivered, I promise you.’

‘Is there much of a wait? A few weeks? A month?’

‘Richard,’ she says in mock anger, ‘don’t be so naive. Obviously the car isn’t delivered until it’s paid for.’

‘I’m not sure I follow.’

‘It’s very simple. I save five Marks each week…’

‘How much does this car cost?’

‘Nine hundred and ninety Marks.’

Richard winces.

‘I simply save five Marks every week, a stamp is put on the card, and when the card is full, and when the cars are in full production, I shall have one.’

♦

The only stereotype about communes that Fox’s Farm helped to reinforce was that everyone seemed drugged, positively sedated. He saw perhaps a dozen inmates, there was no way of telling what relationship anyone had with anyone else, no way of telling what they were, what they felt, not even what their names were. And the main reason for this was that nobody ever said anything. Nobody asked him to sit down, nobody introduced themselves. They didn’t seem to notice him. They just sat around eating, drinking and being sullen.