Geoff Nicholson - Street Sleeper

He thought that was a good line.

They were too separate, like two cars heading towards traffic lights — one car gets a filter arrow, the other car gets stuck at a red light. Their paths diverge, they never meet again. Debby was stuck at the traffic lights.

And another reason why he left her was that she’d never give him a good blow job.

Oh, she’d have a bit of a lick, an affectionate nuzzle even, but Ishmael had heard, had read in magazines and in some of the more salacious volumes in the library, about taut purple members plunging relentlessly into scarlet-painted mouths and before you knew where you were there were torrents of hot semen coursing like molten lava down someone’s moist, eager, yielding throat. That was the sort of thing he’d had in mind. You try suggesting that to Debby.

♦

The M62 between Huddersfield and Manchester: it is a ribbon of fitful dreams that scores through the Pennines like the slash of a Stanley knife.

The M1 at the Tinsley Viaduct: it has always provided a view of Hell. It skirts and looks down on the industrial end of Sheffield. To drive along it in the early seventies was to be a spectator at a nightmare vision of steel furnaces, slow-moving white pollution, doorways that farted flame into the sodium-stained darkness.

Today that particular nightmare is over. There is no fire, no steel, no work. The furnaces are exorcized. They are merely sculpture. To an unemployed steel-worker this is a more potent form of nightmare.

The A13 where Ishmael found himself now: a southern road. If you want to travel from East Ham to Shoe-buryness it’s the road for you. Did Ishmael want to travel from East Ham to Shoeburyness? Well, yes and no. To the Zen motorist all roads are in many ways the same. Yet each road is unique and has its own spirit. Even the A13.

‘Somebody should write a song about it,’ thought Ishmael.

The A13 is neither town nor country. It is built for cars rather than people. As he drove past the gigantic Ford works at Dagenham Ishmael had a sense of ‘this is where it all began’. Henry Ford. History is bunk. The colonization of our fantasies. The production line as dream factory. Henry Ford as Walt Disney.

Ishmael drove past the Circus Tavern and saw that coming attractions included Lulu and Jim Davidson.

He saw people at the roadside selling cut flowers from red plastic buckets. How strange it all seemed.

And then he saw her again — Marilyn. Was it just coincidence? Is there any such thing?

He was getting petrol. He felt suddenly depressed at seeing the ‘Self-Service’ signs. They represented so much that was wrong with the world, people serving their self-interests rather than serving some higher order like ‘Reality’ or ‘Truth’. When will they ever learn?

♦

Karl has three great passions in life — the Volkswagen Beetle, although, being an American he calls it a ‘Bug’, the works of James Joyce, and his girlfriend Cindy.

He loves the Volkswagen in all its many forms — the Kubelwagen, the Schwimmwagen, the Hebmuller; from the Prototype 12 to the historic split-window; from the Reichspost truck to the Karmann-built convertible (one of which he owns). And he even has a soft spot for the Karmann Ghia coupe, sand rails, Volkswagen-based beach buggies, ‘Things’ and Baja Bugs.

James Joyce represents a more reasoned passion. He has studied A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man in High School, read Ulysses with pleasure, and is writing a paper on Joyce for his BA. He often reads Giacomo Joyce just for fun, Finnegans Wake as a kind of intellectual mud-wrestling, and if he has to spend a night in a motel he makes sure he has the letters with him.

♦

Ishmael filled Enlightenment with three star and was just checking his tyre pressures when a Rolls-Royce pulled on to the forecourt. First an extremely well-to-do couple got out. They were middle aged but tanned and healthy and expensively dressed. Then Marilyn got out. Her clothes were the same as she had been wearing two days ago, but he was right, she had been wearing a wig. This was now gone. She was still blonde but less violently so. From Beetle to Rolls-Royce, some would say this was a step-up in the world. Ishmael hoped she wasn’t still tearing her clothes and demanding money.

The couple put petrol in their car and Marilyn went to the Ladies. Ishmael thought about going over and chatting but he didn’t want to intrude. The couple seemed to be watching Marilyn very closely.

Ishmael finished checking his tyres, got into his car and decided to leave Marilyn to her new associates, to let her live in her own space.

In his mirror he saw her returning from the Ladies. She went briskly over to the Rolls-Royce, leaned inside, snatched the car keys and started running. The man made a grab for her but she swerved away from him and flung his keys hard and high into the middle of the A13. The man wasn’t sure whether to pursue the keys or Marilyn. He went for the keys while his wife chased Marilyn. Ishmael wondered whether he should go over to smooth things out. However, Marilyn was now running straight for Enlightenment. She gave one of her screams.

‘Start your car. Get me out of here.’

Instinct took over. Another human being was reaching out to him. He started the engine, revved hard and threw open the passenger door. Marilyn had a ten-yard lead on the woman. She made it easily. They burned off along the A13 with a satisfying squeal of rubber.

The woman was standing on the forecourt yelling in a very cultured voice, ‘Marilyn, Marilyn, come back here. Come back here at once. Your father and I are very upset.’

Ishmael’s suspicions were aroused.

The man was trying to stop the traffic to retrieve his keys. On the A13 this was quite an amibitious project. When Ishmael eventually lost sight of him he was standing in the middle of the road attempting to stop the cars but only succeeding in getting a lot of abuse from drivers as they narrowly missed him.

♦

Karl likes Cindy too. They meet at the University of Santa Barbara at Isla Vista. Cindy is acting in the Jew of Malta . Karl is doing box office. He watches every performance (there are three), and on the last night he falls in love with her. This is convenient. They ‘get together’ at the cast party and never look back.

♦

Marilyn sat in the passenger seat. She was panting.

‘New seats,’ she said.

‘They recline.’

Without the wig she looked different, much younger. She wasn’t wearing much make-up; either. She had a clear complexion. She looked something of an English rose.

‘What was going on back there?’ Ishmael asked. ‘Only if you want to tell me, that is.’

She seemed very hesitant. At last she reached inside her jacket.

‘You ought to have this back,’ she said.

She pulled twenty-five pounds from a very fat roll of notes.

‘You didn’t rob those people, did you?’ Ishmael asked.

‘No, no, they gave it to me.’

Her voice too was different. It was gentler, more refined, posher.

‘Why did they do that?’

‘Just parental affection, I suppose.’

Things were getting tangled.

‘They’re my parents,’ she said. ‘The money, the Rolls-Royce, that’s what my background is really like. I was lying to you. I was just acting. I only told you that story to get money out of you.’

‘But you didn’t need it.’

‘A paradox, eh?’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Ishmael said. ‘It’s the old story — rich parents who give you everything except love. So you ran away. Understandable enough. And they chase after you trying to recapture you and put you back in the padded, opulent cage of their making. That’s it, isn’t it?’