Every Saturday, we’ll be posting a new illustration by David Lester. The Mecca Normal guitarist is visually documenting people, places and events from his band’s 27-year run, with text by vocalist Jean Smith.
On a Valentine’s Day long ago, I dressed up all sexy for the guy I was seeing. He refused to look at me. I made him dinner, and he didn’t say one word. We ate in total silence. His awkwardly averted eyes scoured the ceiling, the walls. He left, and I sat there crying, feeling like the biggest fucking idiot in the world. So much for trying to be sexy.
Of course it was different in the beginning, back before he needed to “prepare” before he got here, back when he raced over here without putting on his socks to get his hands on me. Somewhere along the way, there was a little transition. The wanting to get his hands on me as soon as he got in the door seemed different. He needed to “prepare” before he got here. I didn’t ask how, but when he arrived he was in a rush to jump into bed, me saying, “I wouldn’t mind talking for a few minutes, wouldn’t you like a coffee? And a little bit of foreplay wouldn’t go amiss.” But he was ready. Already ready. It felt like being with me any length of time was a big turn off. Any amount of time spent in my presence was going to diminish his interest. I was the thing that was destructive to his state of arousal. I pictured him sitting in his leaky car outside my apartment building flipping through the pages of girlie magazines. Preparing. OK. Ready. Going in. Get to the buzzer. Get upstairs. Yikes, there she is. Avert eyes. Think of the magazine, think of the girlies. Decline coffee. Move toward bedroom. Close eyes. Think of the girlies. Phew. Mission accomplished. And now for that coffee.
“Orange Sunset”
This sunset spreads orange
Across the sky
A lid pressing down
In Grand Central Station
Pickpockets look for tourist eyes
I am more obvious
White female
Ambassador of lust
He said,
“Come with me.
I know, you like to suck and fuck.”
I wrote this song after a two-month trip alone to India in 1985. I stopped in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on the way, thinking I’d take a boat to Madras, but there was a war, skirmishes off and on, and the boats between Sri Lanka and India were occasionally attacked, so I flew over to India. While in Sri Lanka, I stayed in an army barracks converted into a hostel, but because of the war, there was hardly anyone staying there. Somewhere, many corridors away, a guy coughing all night echoed through the nearly empty building. I was only there a day or so. I took a look around the city and was pestered by people wanting me to pay them for a tour. I actually didn’t have any Sri Lankan currency on me since I wasn’t planning on being there long, but this one guy was determined to show me a temple. I told him I had abso-fucking-lutely zero cash, but he wanted to take me there anyway. This wasn’t a calm, svengali, moustache-twisting, eyebrow-wriggling sort of proposal; this guy had bloody bandages on his feet, he was hobbling past things burning in the middle of the road, turning back to me, waving emphatically for me to follow him. And I did. There was an actual war going on, and for some stupid reason I’d flown to Colombo from Bangkok, lured by some cheap flight and a romantic notion of crossing the ocean in a fucking boat. I was 25 or so, but I still had another 15 years left of adolescent behavior in me. I kept wondering what the scam was, how was he going to get money out of me. At the temple he told me to take off my boots and leave them out-fucking-side, on the steps of the temple. On the street, basically. I was extremely reluctant to leave them there, and I probably shouldn’t have, but they were there when I returned, eyes adjusting to the overly bright sunlight after the dark of the temple, a small crowd standing around looking at the boots.
Someone in Colombo told me if I took the maximum allowable amount of cigarettes and booze to Madras, I could make a swell profit selling them to taxi drivers at the airport, so I bought a 26er of whiskey and a carton of Marlboros. The whiskey sold right away, but I guess the men of Madras weren’t Marlboro men. Now that I think about it, maybe the cowboy thing just didn’t connect with these skinny guys wearing lungis. I was stuck with this stupid carton of cigarettes strapped to the outside of my completely full packsack for three weeks, until someone finally wanted to buy them.
Back to the song. I was walking on a beautiful city beach in Colombo at sunset—families and couples strolling along—and this guy walked right up to me and said, “Come with me. I know you like to suck and fuck.”
