CHAPTER SEVEN 

No Rest in the Restroom 

   Back in the Shrine, with the world whirling all around them, the two friends powered past the climax of their highs. 

   The pot, geez, it was good stuff... and the event… was it an event? Liza Beth Nequee of Valley Village, California, would have thought so. Of course she would. She was the rosycheeked podiatrist at the convention center who deemed the “Hammertoe & Bunion Wine and Cheese Party” the event of the year. ‘Hey, isn’t this the cat’s pajamas,’ she shouted, gleefully, swaying to the polka beat while gobbling down on the wet, runny camembert from Kazakhstan. 

   Maybe the dazed turmoil in the Shrine wasn’t an event, but to Connor it sure felt like something. A happening? No, that’s a sucky word – at least for an event, or as established, nonevent. 

   Incident? 

   Yes, it took on all the dimensions of an incident. After all, Connor was holding onto his precious broken John Lennon doll as if his life depended on it. 

   Incident it is, Connor agreed if only to himself. There was still an infinitesimal region of his brain clutching onto reality by its neuronal fingertips. For some arcane reason, several desperate brain cells tried their best to concentrate on a piece of paper that glared up at him like a neon light. “I Buried Paul,” it read. 

   What the hell did it mean? Could it actually be a clue to the silly hoax of Paul McCartney’s premature death? Connor couldn’t be sure of anything, at least not at that moment – other than he really hankered for a nice slice of Gouda. A rather substantial part of his brain – let’s call it the party center, or the part that loves passing wind in a Jacuzzi – continued gyrating about like a Chinese made Jewish dreidel. Or was the room spinning? Perhaps it was Wes? Yes, Wes, the bastard, the betrayer, and Connor’s best 420-friend-slash-asshole who broke the doll in the first place. Talk about being sozzled, was Wes, making no sense, babbling on and on about the Paul doll and some kind of rattle inside it. 

   Pinching the bridge of his nose seemed like the best play; Connor had used this very trick in the past, and just like before, it had no effect. Of course it didn’t work. His brain skipped past pickled long ago, and his consciousness – his consciousness tip-toed rapidly back inside the nested bubble where the other side of comprehension lived. 

   The desperate need to race back to that Sunday Fab-4 concert felt palpable. In a sense, it felt like fleeing the scene of a crime, and yet, in a sense – if one was a connoisseur of great spy novels and a descendent of hairy ape-like primates, which Connor was at least a member of one – it also felt like heading towards it. In the sober world it made no sense at all, but he knew when stoned, the rule of thumb is never to fight your innate sensation, especially if a free back massage is involved. 

   There must be something left behind on that Sunday, something important, something vital that will give me a clue on the meaning of “I Buried Paul.” 

   No sooner did he accept the premise of the possibility of the situation of the moment that he saw himself stepping inside the Starlight Bowl’s narrow public bathroom, though he grew two inches taller, became two hands thinner, had whiter teeth, more hair, and looked supremely confident. Fuck it, he thought, if I have to retrace my steps, why can’t I look better doing it? What he couldn’t change, unfortunately, was remembering the sharp asparagus-like urine smell that accosted him like a brick to the head the second he strode into the room. 

   Bugger. Why God, why – be it a sports stadium, night club, movie theatre, or Starbucks coffee shop – does the bathroom always have to be a pigsty? 

   Moments like this, for some unknown reason, reminded him of his early teens, standing wide-eyed in front of his bushy-browed, Trotsky-looking cantor and Bar Mitzvah tutor Ednard Kurtzman, a pious man, well respected in the Jewish community, and a total complete fucking loon. Ednard loved to expand on his beliefs whether you wanted to listen or not. One of Kurtzman’s doozy of a theory was the belief that the ubiquitous dungy male public bathroom was an evolutionary offshoot acting like the world’s appendix – a reservoir, sort of speak, developed over the millennia to hold bacteria in reserve for that inevitable future grand battle mankind was destined to fight against eight-legged space aliens. Talk about your events. When quizzed if God would not ultimately save the human race, the Cantor conveyed very little faith in the supreme father prevailing in such a brawl. It was around this time Connor seriously began looking towards atheism for answers, not to mention ignoring his Haftorah studies. 

   Connor let out his breath. With the half-dozen stalls occupied by guys lined up one or two deep, he turned to the prospect of using the horribly humiliating and absolutely debasing long aluminum trough-like urinal. His annoyed eyes rolled back. Who, he thought, who in this glorious world was the engineering genius that came up with this psychological micturating nightmare? Seriously, was this piss-pot contraption supposed to speed things up? Could there actually be a time-to-pee ratio chart out there in engineering land? Didn’t this joker consider that the vast majority of men had no desire of bumping shoulders with other dudes when holding their penis – and in this case we’re not talking the “collective” phallus. 

   No matter, Connor had few options. He had to go, and he had to go now. So, he nestled up to the trough, unzipped, and tried his best to overcome his shy bladder. To help, he recited ‘Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, brother,’ a mantra he used every time he needed to kick start his mind to follow his body into uncomfortable situations like Aunt Sadie’s funeral, or when he lost his virginity to Gladys Knight and the Pips. You understand, he didn’t literally lose his virginity to Gladys Knight or any of the Pips – either collectively as a group or individually as a single Pip. Just that his first time was with Maureen Doer – an unfortunate name – who demanded, “When a Child is Born,” – (sung by said aforementioned Gladys and her Pips) – to play throughout the entire sexual encounter. It helped her to relax, she claimed. After all, it was only her second time doing it, she claimed. She also claimed the event – which she described as more of a happening – was absolutely precious and Connor was a wonderful lover. She lied. It was thirty seconds of flop-sweat over some ham-fisted, podiatrist-like hip thrusting and pretty much done. And as Connor coldly found out a few queasy weeks later, it was more like her twenty-second time. Cocky heartbreaker – with her rosy, rouge-colored cheeks. 

   ‘Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, brother…’ Connor repeated to himself over and over. The mantra helped as a wave of relaxation wrapped around his body. Good song too, he thought. Primarily written by Paul McCartney in India, who had taken the expression, “Ob-la-di, ob-la-da, life goes on, bra,” from his close friend, Nigerian conga player Jimmy Scott-Emuakpor, and crafted together one of pop’s first reggae successes with the fun lyrics… 

  “In a couple of years... 

   They have built a home, sweet home

   With a couple of kids running 

   in the yard of Desmond and Molly Jones.”

 Quite a lovely song – fast, joyous, upbeat – though, fatefully, it did present to the world the first small disruptive cracks into the Beatles brotherhood. Seems the White album recording sessions grew contentious when John, George, and Ringo became agitated with Paul’s perfectionism. Having worked on the song for multiple days and over a myriad of takes, trying different tempos and styles, John finally had enough and left the studio in a huff. He went out, so the story goes, smoked a doobie, came back pie-eyed, went around to the piano, and banged out the opening of the song louder and faster than had previously been played, telling everyone that this was how the song should go, and that was the version they ended up using. 

“Happy ever after in the marketplace, 

Desmond lets the children lend a hand. 

Molly stays at home and does her pretty face, 

and in the evening she still sings it with the band.” 

   ‘Ahhhh…’ Relief rolled across Connor’s eyes. 

   He was in business. The flowing urine melted away any tension. More relaxed, he reached deep into his skinny jeans and removed a two-inch joint from his pocket. His eyes traced over the contours of the bammer and its perfect wrapping. Like a tight burrito, it exposed none of the goodness to the air. Lifting the blunt to his nose, he breathed in the pungent scent, thinking he could easily picture himself as Desmond Jones with two happy kids playing in the yard, married to a wife in a band, but not just any wife – Alyson – the love of his life. But this could never be, not if he was being honest. She loved Zeke, the frontman and lead guitarist of “The Kreb Cycle,” the cover band Connor managed. It was a job he took on roughly two years back. Not the greatest of jobs, but it did earn him enough money for rent, and food, utilities, car insurance, gas money, and very little else. 

   Just then, an embarrassed father stepped through the entrance holding the tiny hand of his four-year-old daughter. ‘Sorry. Sorry, guys…’ 

   A soft groan echoed across the room. 

   The harried father tried his best with the situation. ‘Girl coming through. Sorry. Sorry, guys. Wife’s at work.’ 

   Like a domino effect, each man slouched forward to cover his genitals as dad and fairhaired daughter quick-stepped it towards the stalls. This certainly put the new world order front and center, one that Connor’s father or father’s father never had to cope with, where moms worked, men changed diapers, and little girls were allowed into the innermost of the male sanctum. Out of reflex, Connor too rounded his shoulders and leaned closer to the trough. Consequently, his hand relaxed just enough for the joint to slip from his fingers. His eyes widened in despair watching his beloved shwag tumble end-over-end in slow motion towards the aluminum trench creating a tiny halo-splash of urine upon touch down. Though it made no real tangible sound, a roar like no other went off in Connor’s cerebral cortex as every pore in his body opened up like trumpets, blasting out lament and misery – the cornerstones of every good religious holiday – and coincidently the names of Connor’s kids if his mother got her way and he married young – (‘Hi, this is my daughter, Lament, and her younger brother, Misery). 

   The poor sap. His stare… his aura… pathetic and fragmented… and his pot, his precious pot completely awash in the golden liquid of ruin. Or was it? 

   If I just…. his left brain began to calculate. 

   No, no, no... countered the small, very small, tiny part of his cerebrum that not only controlled rationality, but really believed in the joy of a nice piece of cheese. If there was ever a time for self-reflection, it begged, a time to turn one’s mind inward, to “suss” out what is really important in a life, then this would be a good time as ever to do so. Seriously, dude, his rational brain pleaded, if one was ever to have a mature conversation with oneself, it could start like this: “It’s gone. Leave it alone. The grown-up thing here is to walk away.” 

   Of course, the counter argument would probably go like this: “Naaaaa.” 

   Fuck rationality. This was a time for action. No longer am I going to be an “Oh, well, what can I do” person. Time to abandon any notion of the “shrug off.” Besides, that fucker cost like fifty bucks. 

   So, he lowered his hand towards the yellow river of disfavor. Evidently, the Group of Seven’s motto, “Leave no joint unloved,” had won the day. His trembling fingers reached further down, stretching out in front of him until they were in the trough. Delicately, oh, so delicately, he grasped the tip of his anointed joint as the guy beside him, a scraggily man with a long chin and an even longer van Dyke beard stared on, aghast, his eyes saying, “What the fuck, dude?” though his yawning jaw line basically reading, “I wouldn’t mind a toke of that.” 

* * * * * * * 

   With his arms overloaded with food and drink, Wes stepped away from the concession stand like a man on a mission if that mission was acquiring Type II diabetes. His stomach let out a mellow grunt of apathy as he sipped on his soda. He had heard through the grapevine that sugar topped the list of worst poisons on the planet. Shame, he thought, flippantly, how sweet it is to be slowly killing himself. 

   As the Sun bid its last farewell for the day, he strolled across the Starlight outer grounds enjoying the drop in temperature. Arriving at the rendezvous site, an open area away from prying eyes, he stood straight and happy spying on the eclectic crowd of equally happy people entering the amphitheater. Though a rock show, the concert goers were anything but a motley crew of long-haired, strung-out hippies. Sure, they were there too, but this crowd included a cornucopia of young people: ten, eleven, twelve-year-olds laughing, smiling, there because it was their idea not their parents. Also in attendance, from the other side of the timetable, were silver-haired septuagenarians as well as blue collar folk, upscale types, men and women in equal proportion, and of course people of all races and colors. If anything, this provided solid proof that the Beatles transcended cultural barriers like no other music ever invented. 

   ‘Hey,’ Connor called out while approaching his friend, adding sarcastically, ‘Got enough?’ He motioned at the food gathered in Wes’ arms.

   ‘Munchies, dude. You said this shit was strong.’ 

   ‘Blow your lovely mind strong. They call it “EMO.” A few puffs of this, dude, and every natural emotion you have will well up and grab you by the balls.’ 

   ‘What if I don’t have any?’ 

   ‘Any what?’ 

   ‘Emotions.’ 

   ‘Not to worry,’ reassured Connor with a pretentious head nod. 

   After looking around to make sure the coast was clear, Connor opened his fingers. In his palm lay the coveted baby-wrapped blunt, the vitae delecti, the crime of life, which he handed over to his best friend. 

   ‘It’s wet.’ 

   ‘That one’s yours.” 

   ‘And smells like urine—’ 

   ‘Two puffs, dude. That’s all you’ll need with this E-bomb.’ 

   Wes threw up a fairly lame inconsequential stare before slipping the joint between his lips. Connor ignited his lighter and fired up the nasty fatty-boom-batty. The trick was to hold his breath as long as possible, sucking in a nice, long heavyweight drag. Two seconds… Three seconds... Four seconds… 

   The dense arid smoke filled the short man’s lungs. 

   Oh, my God. This mofo is rad. 

   Indeed, it was rad, so much so, it felt like a blowtorch charring a hole in the back of his head. Now desperate for oxygen, he let go, spewing a tsunami cloud of murky-gray smoke out of his mouth and nose. A vomiting of coughs followed… then hacks… and then waves and clusters of spitting and retching. His face turned red, his fingers puffy… a surge of adrenaline rushed up and down his body surfing on the edges of his neurons. His ears swelled. His senses tingled. And he prayed, he prayed like a dying man hoping someone would pop his bulky frame like a piñata. But then, suddenly, as if someone hit a shut-off valve, the bodily abuse ended, and a sense of control returned. Slowly, Wes blew air across his parched, dry lips as he took stock of his limbs: two legs, two arms – everything seemed to be in good working order. Truth be told, he felt like a hollowed-out shell of himself, nevertheless, he couldn’t help but to turn to Connor and proclaim, with child-like, wide-eyed innocence, ‘Smooth, dude.’ 

   Connor smiled. He pictured Desmond and Molly Jones playing in the yard, and he knew exactly what Paul’s wink-wink, nudge-nudge song lyrics were getting at when he wrote: “And if you want some fun, take ob-la-di, bla-da.”