It was a dark and stormy night of clichés! The rain coming down, drowning the shadows, and my motley crew, well, that hotel room just couldn’t hold us. We threw everything into a black sports-bag; cigarettes, hotel stationery, the little shampoo bottles, an expensive bottle of malt whisky and a cassette of Charles Bukowski reading his poetry at UCLA . . . Off we went into the dampness of the streets, looking for a party. It all went pear-shaped though in a cab on George Street . . . We witnessed the filth chasing a black man I knew . . . We ushered him into the cab, only to be surrounded by imposing uniforms as the windows of the vehicle growing foggy, like a ‘greenhouse’ effect; the winter of our discontent . . . Is this how a goldfish views our world?

Anyway,  the cabby ‘hated coppers!’ he said, flew through traffic and a red light . . . And that black-fella, he jumped us all eventually, owing the $20 he pledged to ferry us across the River Styx of our evening . . . How black the night looked when that taxi-driver cut us loose . . . We death-marched backed into town, and with our last few dollars howled vodka, deep throat echoes into shot glasses . . . But the bartender could smell the whisky in the bag . . . We didn’t screw the lid on tight enough?! He quickly asked us to leave; the ol’ 86er!  Whisky leaking all over the Charles Bukowski cassette and drowning his voice forever . . . how ironic? 

I eventually had to crawl home through the soppy train yards and weeds . . . Falling into an open sewer, ripping my shirt on bits of exposed metal shards . . . Stared up at the lights of the city and smiled, thirsty . . . thirsty . . . thirsty!