Room Service (7 page)

The Barman Who Loved Books

The barman who loved books worked in a New Orleans bar called Coeds. He told me he'd been to Mark Twain's house in Hartford, Connecticut, and marvelled that Twain had built side chimneys on his open fireplace and put a window above the fireplace so that he could ‘see the flames and watch the snowflakes falling at the same time'. The barman, named Joey, about 25, had a sort of barman-Twain wisdom which he would work up and then come over from the cash register or the glass washer to present to me. The reason, he said, that he liked bus travel was that, ‘You know you've travelled, I like to know that I've come some. Airplanes make you feel you've just gone next door except that you've got a headache. I like to know that I've made a journey.'

He'd met a student from Japan on a Greyhound bus when he'd been on his way to Hollywood to get into movies. Joey said this was before he'd discovered books. The Japanese student was on his way to Texas to ‘see the cowboys'. To see the cowboys! Joey exclaimed, ‘I thought, how crazy can you get.' But then later I saw myself. ‘Here I am, going to Hollywood to get into movies.' So I thought, ‘Which of us is crazy? We both had these crazy American ideas.'

He Also Loved Pinball Machines

From time to time a patron of the bar would come over to Joey with a pinball problem. They would exchange stories of near ultimates and ornery balls. A student (it was a student bar) would get his two dollars worth of quarters and dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat-dat on the Balmy Bahama or the Shooting Sherrif ‘fuckermotherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker', lifting the corner of the machine and dropping it, bumping it with his hip, slapping it with his hand, ‘motherfuckermotherfuckermotherfucker'.

‘Relax, Harry,' Joey would call, ‘time to relax.'

‘Gimme two dollars quarters.'

I said, ‘You're a real expert on the pinball machines, Joey,' after hearing him give advice and tell his pinball stories.

He blushed. ‘I spend a lot of time on the machines.'

But he wanted to talk about books.

‘I don't want to write,' Joey said, ‘I'm not ambitious, I just want to read, but gee, it's hard to get the time to read. You spend so much time getting to just eat.' With a fervour he talked of his reading hunger. ‘And to think,' he said, ‘I haven't even read all the Greats yet.' He stood leaning on the bar, both hands on the bar, shaking his head, ‘I haven't read all Twain yet.'

‘Jesus, so much to read. My chick and me, we heading for a crisis – she's in school, she gets home and she just wants to sit around watching teevee or reading comic books. And that's what she wants me to do.'

‘Does she feel excluded if you read? Why does she object?'

‘Yeah, I don't want to end up sitting around for the rest of my life watching teevee and eating teevee dinners.'

‘Have you told her what you want?'

‘Only a thousand times. She says she understands, but she has a way of forgetting, you know?'

He washed glasses, advised agitated pinball players to cool it, and sympathised with pinball players with near misses.

He cross-questioned me about what I did.

‘Mr Blase, you shouldn't say that you're a writer,' he told me.

‘Why not? That's how I try to earn a living.'

‘It always sounds like you're out collecting material.' Which you are, but which you're not aware of at the time, or probing the human condition rather than, say, just getting drunk. Joey was right. But at least I'd burned my corduroy coat a year ago.

‘It sets you apart,' Joey said, becoming Mark Twain.

‘Now if Faulkner was to come in here,' Joey said, ‘he wouldn't call himself a writer. He'd call himself a farmer.'

He went over to the cash register to think, and then came back.

‘And you shouldn't be in here.' He gestured at the students in Coeds. ‘You should get out and meet the people.'

‘Who are the people?'

Joey smiled appreciatively, he knew that had a good, literary sound to it.

The Man Who Loved Movies

Joey introduced me to the man who loved movies.

‘Now, meet Cliff here. Where I like reading, Cliff he loves movies.'

‘All I do,' said Cliff, ‘is this: I study law; play poker; I go to the movies.'

He was about thirty. I have, by coincidence, the novel
The Movie Goer
by New Orleans writer Walker Percy. I hold it up.

‘Have you read it?' I said, more to Joey. ‘No – gee, I haven't read all the Greats yet.'

Cliff, the movie-goer, loved Lee Marvin. I said, ‘Did you see
Point Blank
?'

‘You've seen
Point Blank
!' He made an act of falling off his stool. ‘We're the only two people in the world who've seen
Point Blank.
You've actually seen
Point Blank
?'

I said I'd seen it a number of times. (My mind flashing back to the Kogarah New Victory.)

‘You saw it in Australia!'

‘Yes.'

‘Remember where Lee Marvin says to his buddy that you should never ask questions about a contract, and this time he breaks the rule and asks questions, and they both end up being shot?'

‘Wasn't that
The Killers
?'

‘Good God yes. Now let me get this straight. Let me
tell you both stories so I can sort it out. You're right, that was
The Killers.
' Then he told the storylines of both movies, and when he reached a point of violence he would act it out with gestures and sound effects, graphically recreating it. Blam blam.

The Man Who Loved Movies Also Loved Violence

Joey said to Cliff, ‘You're really sick, you're sick about violence.'

‘I like violence. I like grim realism,' Cliff said, matter-of-factly, not defensively. ‘I took my nephews to see
The Cowboys.
I thought it was going to be strictly kids' matinee stuff, but I was pleasantly surprised.

‘There was a lot of grim realism in it. A kid trampled to death by a herd of steer. Are you going to see it?' he asked me, stopping the story.

I said no, I didn't like Westerns with kids in them.

He went on, ‘… the kids kill off the baddies one by one. One baddy has his leg broken and his foot caught in the stirrup and you know what the kids do? They don't free him. They fire a shot into the air to set the horse running so that it drags this guy along by his broken leg, his foot in the stirrup.'

Joey said, ‘Now that's what I call really sick.'

‘I like grim realism,' Cliff said, ‘there wasn't any sex in it, but it was a good film for grim realism.'

Joey said, ‘I know all about violence. I was in the boxing team at college. I never lost a fight. I go down the Quarter and guys try to pick me. I won't fight. I'm not frightened, but I don't want to be bothered
any more. It's not that I'm scared. I don't have the time, it spoils the evening. I don't want to be bothered.'

Cliff mentioned
Little Big Man
and said to Joey, ‘Now if you've got a feeling for the Indian situation you'd like it.'

‘Cliff,' Joey said, ‘I have a feeling for the Indian situation, but the Indians don't get the dollar I pay to see
Little Big Man.
I see myself as a patron of the arts,' he said, turning to me, ‘if someone lends me a book and I read it and I like it – I buy it. I buy the hardback so that the writer gets something for his work. If a writer has done a nice thing for me, I do something for him. Take a book like Mark Twain's
Puddenhead Wilson –
what a nice thing to have done for the world.'

Joey's Movie

‘Before I discovered reading,' Joey said, ‘– and I didn't discover reading at college – I wanted to go into films. I got this stake together and decided I'd go to Hollywood and get into movies. I bought a Greyhound bus ticket and we go across Texas and we get to the Pecos. Now everything's supposed to happen West of the Pecos. That's supposed to be the turning point. West of the Pecos. Well, there are ten guys on the bus all stretched out on the seats. Everyone is in a bad mood. We're probably all going to Hollywood to get into the movies. They don't even make them there any more. But what happens at the Pecos. A luscious broad gets in. Really magnificent and she gets in right at Pecos – right on midnight. Where does she sit?

‘She sits right opposite me. She takes out a cigarette. I out with my matches, working up a quick line about, “Where are you going” and so on. I lean across to light her cigarette and before I can speak she says, “Come and sit by me.” She asked me! Next thing she pulls out this marihuana and we smoke and she gets really friendly to me and we end up doing everything you can on a Greyhound bus, which is everything. It was as if everything was happening West of the Pecos; it was everything I wanted. Everything I dreamed about. Like a movie. We get to El Paso, and she says well, this is where I get off, lover, this is where we part. I said, “But this can't be – no way – this can't be.” She agreed to have breakfast with me.

‘I bought it with change, all I had, out of the machines at the Greyhound station. I kept saying, “This can't be – you can't just go.” But she says, “This is the way it's got to be” and just goes off. The most beautiful woman I've ever seen.'

‘There was sex in
The Cowboys
,' Cliff said, ‘I remember now. There was a wagon load of whores.' He gives us the dialogue and re-enacts the scene for us, completely ignoring Joey's story. ‘They agree, see, that the first time for a boy should be in the back of a wagon with a girl he thinks he loves.'

‘Or in the back of a Greyhound bus,' I said irresistibly.

Coed's Bar

Coed's has four pinball machines, trays of coloured lights and electrified movement in a dark bar.

The barman has to give customers a torch so that they can see to write cheques. It is an undergraduate bar. No one can see your acne in Coed's Bar. There are T-shirts for sale, with ‘Coed's Bar' stencilled on them. An ornamental football with ‘Tulane' on it. A poster saying ‘Let's get together'. Juke box, tables and chairs, and stools at the bar.

The Air-Conditioning Man

It wasn't his bar any more than it was mine. He was in air-conditioning from New York. He was a conservative and a bigot. He liked Australia because we had a small population and no blacks. He thought about moving to Australia after he retired. He thought that Australia was an anti-welfare state. I told him, not really. He bemoaned the state of the American nation. I told him that it had to do with air-conditioning.

I said that air-conditioning had made the people soft.

I said that there wasn't much air-conditioning in Australia. We were a tougher nation. Survivors. I said I grew up without glass in the windows, let alone air-conditioning.

He became unsettled. ‘By god, you know I think you're on to something.' He decided that air-conditioning, in which he'd worked for a lifetime, could seriously have contributed to the weakening of the morale and fibre of the United States. He was seriously unsettled.

I left him, to have some Dandy Fried Chicken, and clams.

Pass the Stillsons. They are not the Stillsons. I told you what the Stillsons were last time. These are the Stillsons. Now stand out of the way. Do you always have to stand in the light. No, that's not the one. I wanted the small one. Do I have to do everything myself? Now you're spilling it everywhere. Well, be more careful in future. In future use your head. Just take it slowly, you're spilling it, you're spilling it on my boots. Wake up Australia. Your mind's a thousand miles away. You've put that on the wrong way around. It's screwed on back to front. How did you manage to do that? You can't find it. How can you not find it? If it were a snake it would bite you. How do you mean ‘it just came off'? How could it ‘just come off'? Why do these things happen to you and to no one else? Now stand out of the light. Now look what you've done. Your wouldn't know it from a bar of soap. You wouldn't know if it was up you. If it was any nearer it would bite you. Look where you're going, for godsake. Two left feet. Not that way, do it the way I showed you. All thumbs. How did it take so long? Where the hell did you get to? The lavatory – how many times a day do you have to go to the lavatory? Now pass that piece up to me. Not that piece – the
other piece. How many times do I have to tell you? You don't listen. Here, give it to me, I'll do it myself. Not that way, the other way. It's self-explanatory. Well, no one asked your opinion. Well, it's not up to you. What, precisely, do you think you're doing now? Well, your best isn't good enough. Watch out behind you. Watch out, you'll break that window. Take that smirk off your face – it's no laughing matter. I wouldn't want to have my life depending on it. I wouldn't want to be holding my breath. So's Christmas. Don't waste it. It's not hot enough. You've let it go cold. How did that get chipped? Look at that mess. You call that tidy! What about in the corners? Don't force it. Hey dreamy, wake up – Australia needs you. You wouldn't know if it was up you. I'll explain it all once more, I'm not going to tell you again. Look where you're going for Christsake. Is that what you call sharp? Can't you tell just by looking at it. Where do you think you're going now? Looking isn't going to fix it. What time do you think it is? It screws out, it doesn't pull out. Watch out for that wall. Come here and watch so that you'll know next time. Don't stand in the light. Just stay out of the road. What do you think this is – a picnic? What do you think this is – bush week? Well, there may not be a next time. Now look what you've done. It's no laughing matter. How long's a piece of string. If brains were dynamite you'd be safe. Where were you when the brains were handed out. Take the other end. This end, not that end. Not that way. Now get a proper grip of it. You're holding it like a girl. You take as long as an old
woman. Left to right, not right to left. Clockwise, not anti-clockwise. No, the other way, dummy. Measure it again. Use a little elbow grease. Use a little nous. Use a little brain power. Use a little brawn. Fellows of Australia, blokes and coves and coots, get a bloody move on, have some bloody sense. Measure it before you cut it. Hold it straight. It's as crooked as a dog's hind leg. That's not how I showed you. Now do it again, and get it right this time. That's not very smart. Don't they teach you anything at school. And you're supposed to be bright. Now look what you've gone and done. Start over again. Holy cow – how did you manage to do that? It's in the bottom compartment of the tool box at the back of the truck under the coils of wire, the black-handled one, not the other one, and the tinsnips and a five-eights coach-head screw. What do you mean, you can't see it? Use your eyes. I told you to check it before you did it. And put things back where you found them. What sort of knot do you call that? That nut doesn't go with that bolt. Can't you just tell. That's not mixed enough. That's not hard enough. That's not long enough. It won't bite you. Take hold of it. It's not going to eat you. Easy does it. You're worse than a girl. Get a move on, we haven't got all day. Shine the torch where I'm working. No not there, over here. Hold it steady. Now pull. Pull harder. That's enough, for godsake. Now look what you've gone and done. In future, stop when I say stop. Don't jerk it. You'll strip the thread. Can't you get it tighter than that? Now I'll tell you once more: this is the nosing,
this is the waist, and this is the riser, and this is the thread, and this is called the going, and this is called the going of the flight, and we call this the raking rise. Got it? Frightened to get your hands dirty? Frightened of a few blisters? Short of puff? Put your hand in and get it out. It won't bite you. Don't just stand there, do something. What are you – an old woman? No one asked your opinion. Get your finger out. Get a move on. What did I tell you? What do you mean you can't see it? What do you mean you can't find it? What do you mean you didn't bring it? What do you mean you left it behind? What do you mean you thought we wouldn't need it? What do you mean you didn't think it mattered. Watch out for the wall, for godsake. Do it once and do it right. You can't possibly see from over there. Don't throw it, hand it to me. Do I have to do everything myself? Now look what you've gone and done. Frightened to get your hands dirty. It won't eat you. You're worse than a girl. What do you mean, you didn't think it mattered? And what, precisely, do you think you're doing now?