I’m sorry this update is late. It’s been a real bitch finding a computer on this seemingly endless road trip through the backwaters of Myanmar. From roadside bars to underground fight clubs, from school dances to a boomer-ridden festival deep in the heart of the Bago Yuma forest, we’ve been playing the best shows of our lives to throbbing crowds of screaming fans. The locals are throwing money at us like it’s going out of style, and we’ve encountered numerous species of hallucinogenic flora previously unknown to Western society, rock-n-rollers or otherwise.
Despite all the kicks, though, or perhaps because of them, the drag is starting to set in. Our drummer and keyboardist, Vin and Van, are our only connections to the local culture. Though their wisdom and knowledge have constantly prevented us from eating gastronomically suspect things, catching VD, or offending local politicians and celebrities, they cannot prevent the slow destruction of our psyches.
The three of us are beginning to get on each other’s nerves. Cassidy has become critical of my recently acquired addiction to ketamine, and my habit of chewing iboga root before gigs. Warsame became belligerent with us after he caught and ate a giant mosquito, which had apparently recently fed on a victim of one of our acid orgies—he spent the next day in a cruel rage, smashing guitars and beating the owners of noodle shops and bars. I think Cass lost a crucial part of himself in Bangkok, when he saw the woman he had fallen in love with—a hooker with a heart of gold and a penis—die in the midst of a nasty gangbang.
We think it was a heart attack, from the coke we were shooting into her taint. Jesus god, her body was already getting stiff by the time everyone had finished their business on her makeup-caked face, locked for eternity in an epic grimace.
What have we done?
Our girlfriends have been reading this tour diary. We just received messages that they have decided to leave us, when we arrived at the hotel. There was talk of restraining orders…the Vietnamese porn starlet I had with me left for home when my uncontrollable weeping fit reached its second hour.
Indeed, this is a bleak time—I am uncertain of our ability to continue as I write this screed, looking out over downtown Mandalay from my thirteenth-floor suite.
But perhaps our confidence will be bolstered at tomorrow night’s show, when we are set to meet our mysterious benefactor’s next agent, a Russian nicknamed Rasputin who, it is said, was personally responsible for the destruction of an entire French army unit at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Vin and Van tell us he is wise in the ways of magic, an alchemist of great renown who will brew us a tincture of amazing power to restore the purity of our souls.
I pray that this is true—pray to the bizarre Jungle gods we now worship. They have brought us great wealth, artistic satisfaction, and gigantic mounds of insane pussy. Perhaps now, if I perform the right ritual sacrifices upon the pentacle I’ve prepared, they will bring us solace.
I hope I have enough stray dogs.
Part 2
The first few days of our time in the Orient had been going famously—it was all champagne and roses, delicious Pho and horny Thai groupies. We had no idea we would ever rise to this level of fame, even in a small and poor foreign land. We still hadn’t met our benefactor, but he was referred to in hushed voices by the various bureaucratic hangers-on we had acquired—they said he used to be a general in the VC, but they refused to speak his name.
Our drummer and keyboardist were brothers from a town called Battambang, former members of a short-lived group of pop hitmakers called Luc Pha Huy Du’o’ng Vat. Their group had broken up when sudden fame led the lead singer and guitarist to a gruesome suicide involving his pet white tiger and a can of bear mace. They spoke English but didn’t talk much, preferring to sit silently after gigs and drink bottle after bottle of warm Campari.
We had just finished the last of our shows at the Jade Dragon, though, and Trinh was anxious to usher us away to our next destination in sunny Bangkok. He had grown fearful of us after our altercation with the saxophone player in an opening band escalated into a full-on amphetamine-fueled curbstomping. We had also killed and eaten a large python in the living room of the home he shared with his wife and young children.
While I was off discussing the works of Marcel Proust and Jean-Michel Basquiat with a bright and perky college girl visiting from Paris, and plying her with gin and tonics (“quinine, to ward off the malaria”), Cass and Warsame took the opportunity to question our promoter about the obvious absence of any Vietnamese dates on our tour schedule.
Later they told me that he refused to speak of it and made an odd gesture, probably some folk magic to ward off evil spirits. He wouldn’t even make eye contact with us after that.
But at the time I was too preoccupied to deal with the odd spectre looming at us from the shores of Da Nang—the young girl’s Indonesian boyfriend, a 6’4” beast of a human with a giant silver crucifix hanging around his enormous neck, had caught us necking furiously in a bathroom stall and was preparing to torture me in ways that would make the Khmer Rouge look effete and good-natured.
He was lifting me up against the wall and preparing to pound me, his girl shrieking in the background (Jesus, had a really just given this girl two hits of acid? Her night was headed downhill, and fast), when I whipped out my brand-new seven inch balisong knife and carved a big “E.C.” in his chest. He was sputtering on his hands and knees, so I kicked him in the face. I thought about making off with his lady, but then I realized that after the bad jolt she’d just had, she’d definitely be a screaming loon for the next twelve or so hours, and considering the long drive I had ahead of me (and the fine white DMT powder I had burning a hole in my pocket), I didn’t need that on my hands.
I burst back into the main nerve of the celebration, blood sprayed on my face, white-knuckle gripping my butterfly blade, and rallied my band with a garbled cry for haste and extreme danger. Warsame was wrestling with our drummer’s pet monkey and Cass was foaming at the mouth while he tried to pry more money for dope and hookers out of Trinh’s wallet. I grabbed them both by the collar and dragged them to the parking lot, where our van was already loaded, “Bangkok or Bust” scrawled on the side in wild spraypaint.
“Relax,” I said.
“The monkey’s coming with us, and there will always be more money for fine heroin and Thai ladyboys.
“Always.”
By D. Sykes
Strange Missives…Mysteries of Phnom Penh…A Suitcase Full of Drugs and Money
Our plane touched down in Phnom Penh in the midst of a torrential rainstorm—it was coming down sideways, in great icy dollops the size of cocktail onions. Cassidy Anderson, Warsame Awale, and I, weak from the nineteen hour flight and reeking of scotch from the duty-free store in the airport, stumbled out of the tiny hired plane, a renovated military job leftover from Air America’s last gasp in ‘75. It had been reserved for us by a mysterious investor, intent for some reason on booking us a tour through the jungles and bright cities of Southeast Asia. He had refused to communicate with us through any method other than telegram until the day a private investigator named Phineas Kimball arrived at our practice space, bearing a tape-recorded message and a check for fifteen thousand dollars.
The message informed us that we were to leave by chartered plane immediately. We would be met as soon as we arrived by a local promoter called Trinh.
As we unloaded our gear—we had had no time to pack other necessities like drugs and clothing—he sidled up alongside us, eyes masked by gold-rimmed aviators despite the very late hour. He must’ve been over three hundred pounds despite his 5’4” frame, and his round, scarred face was topped by a greasy Elvis cut. He spoke no English, but he was somehow capable of communicating with us via text message, a disturbing and rare habit that would cost me something like thirty dollars in additional phone bill fees over the next few days.
He brought us to a seedy motel on the edge of town, with a tiny lobby bar full of diminutive prostitutes, traveling businessmen, and giant tropical flowers. Over fishbowl margaritas his furious thumbs described our near future— we would be driven by bus the next day, at precisely noon, to meet our local drummer and keyboardist for a brief rehearsal. Afterwards we would play the first gig of a three-night stint at Cambodia’s largest amphitheater, the Jade Dragon.
“all yr xpenses will b taken care of,” he texted.
“u will not want for nothing.”
Before he left he took a small alligator-skin suitcase and opened it before us. Inside was six thousand dollars worth of Cambodian riel, a map of our tour route through Thailand, Laos, and Burma, and a large glass jar full of blue-and-pink capsules. They appeared to be local pharmaceutical methamphetamines. He stared at us with an odd mixture of distaste and respect for a brief moment, and disappeared into the lonely night.
We drew straws to decide who would get the one hooker who didn’t look like she’d slit our throats or give us some weird and new strain of syphilis. Warsame won, and I spent a sleepless night in my roach-infested room, scraping the juice out of some poppies I found growing in the parking lot under the blazing fluorescent lights.
Now that there are some individual pictures of me on here it might be good for you all to know something more about him.
I am the youngest of three children and as such I am quite the attention whore. I am now living in Minneapolis and am very easy to spot, as you might have learned from the pics of me I posted. So whether you see me on the street in my vw golf, on my shwinn beach cruiser, at a show or you just happen to stop by C37 for a house show or to party, say hi then tell me how cool I am.
