A journal entry from 1983
My 31st birthday party at Jurgen's house on Rue de la Tour with Bridget, Tony, Tracy, Alfredo, Karine, Diana, Olivier, T, Rufus,David, Philip Brook, everyone absolutely smacked out on Persian brown. Julie Cole was the only straight person. The less about this evening the better.
Tony later said, "Anyone who can survive a birthday like yours deserves to be at the next one."
The next entry is about hanging with Willie DeVille and Countess Gudmilla von Bismarck morning Jurgen, Willie, and I retreated to Willie's room on the Grand Boulevard. Willie shot up in the bathroom not wanting to show the damage to his arms. I had seen them the previous night. Bad. Real bad.
Jurgen nodded out and we spoke about East Village junkies, his feud with the Rolling Stones, the betting odds on Johnny Thunders OD, vomiting on stage, my battles in the night, and his many attempts to stop heroin. We crashed without a care for nothing but more.
Thankfully Jurgen had more.
Jurgen, a German telex criminal, was a good friend with Kalle Swensen. The Black King ruling the biggest brothel in Hamburg. The Eros Center.
I worked for them at BSir's.
Good money until in December SS Tommy presented a bill of 20K Deustchmarks for sleeping with a blonde lingerie American model.
Stephanie.
"I didn't know she was working. She had been Jurgen's girlfriend.
"Everyone in Hamburg is working for someone."
SS Tommy was a murderer and I gave the keys to my orange VW which two weeks before I had driven into the forest with Philippe Kroechey, a Paris DJ screaming we were being chased by zombies.
The car was still in the forest. Prisoner of a tree trunk. I handed over the keys to the VW, promising to settle the rest of the debt in the morning. I went to my apartment in Mittelweg, and called Stephanie.
No answer.
I packed a single bag with books, clothes, a world band radio and taxied to the Hamburg Bahnhof to flee on the midnight train to Paris like an anarchist escaping from the Nazis.
I didn't breathe easy until we crossed the Belgian border at dawn.
A month later I met with Stephanie for a weekend at the Hotel Lutece in Paris. Neither of us mentioned Hamburg.
It was better that way.
Clean sheets, soft skin, a woman's breath on my skin and dreaming this could last forever.
Nothing like rewriting.
Chai-yo
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