1999

A little story from my past

“Nelson Prince”

He says, or rather, slurs, as he swings his near empty bottle of lord knows what.

I usually switch off with these kind of guys, the staggering drunks that zombie from pavements to accompany you as needy, stray dogs or sometimes, more sinister prowling wolves. But something about the way he said Prince’s name backwards makes me prick my ears up, that evening in 1999.

“Prince, hey?”

His bulging brown eyes brighten, riddling me with the astonishment of an overlooked child suddenly acknowledged. Someone’s listening they seem to say. He’s African-American, maybe 50, but his drunken manner ages him.  Wiry, charcoal hair sprouts from an orange ribbed beanie like ashes of a dying fire. His lean frame is stooping and fragile.

“Nelson Prince, Richie Lionel…”

Does he say everyone’s name backwards, I wonder.

“Worked with them all, I did. Session musician, see….”

His voice has depth and crackle and my ears sprawl as cats to its storyteller hearth.

They call it ‘Downtown’. This part of the city.

“When you're alone, and life is making you lonely, you can always go Downtown.”

I hear the song playing in my head, but this is not the place Petula Clark sang about. That place sounds like London. A seamless throb and strobe of neon dreams, bustle and billboards. This place? Well, I’ve decided that this small city in the Mid West is the dullest place in America, possibly the world.

I’ve only been here a couple of months but the people lack the warmth of Texans, there is no astounding beauty as per Hawaii, no carnival atmosphere of New Orleans…..

The guy stood before me, looks as though he might hate the place as much as I do.

Or maybe he just hates his life.

Although we carry little physically - me a purse and he a bottle, for a second or two, our psychic baggage is achingly visible, the ghostly rucksacks weighing heavy on our earthly shoulders. In the hollows of the other’s demeanour, we sense a holding place to briefly put it down.

“I’m Ray. Like Ray Charles. You heard of Ray Charles?”

He says, extending a trembling hand to me. I take it, as I would for any drowning man.

“Yeah. I know him. I’m Julie.”

I smile, and feel instantly conscious that my teeth mock his, a harbour of mottling battleships.

Not sure why I’m out, really. Walking. No one ventures out here without a car, day or night.

When they leave home here, it’s usually with specific intention - to buy groceries, work, go the the gym, for dinner or to a bar……Good, solid reasons to be out. To get from A to B.

I have no such reason to be out, other than to escape the suffocation I feel in that house.

His house.

That god awful basement.

“I’ll drive you.”

He’d said.

“No. I want to go out alone.”

I’d said firmly.

I’d wanted to be of the city, not ferried around it. To immerse myself, surrender to it. But to say that, would have probably sounded a bit stupid. So, I hadn’t. I’d said something equally silly about being British, the tradition of the ‘evening constitutional’. The art of strolling.

“What you up to then, hey, Julie? Here. Downtown at night?”

Ray asks me. He splits like a bursting seed and I see his heart rise up through the twisted stem of his gangly brown body.

“Just having a little walk”

He laughs, his chest wheezes, merging with the whistling wind as we wander.

“A little walk, huh? Me too. You’re not from round here are ya?”

“England”

I say.

“I don’t think you’re from round here either.”

I say, detecting a different twang in his accent.

“I was a musician. I travelled around.”

“Was?”

“Yeah…..was”

He says.

“Not anymore….”

I’m not sure how it happens, but the scene opens up like a film set. Suddenly, before us, there’s a streetlight and a bench. Without words, it seems natural, unscripted for us to sit down together.

“Tell me about Prince then. Did you ever visit Paisley Park?”

I say, me being a huge fan.

“Uh uh. It was way back, way back. Before he was a star. He was just one of the guys.  A friend. We were both real young. Played in bands.”

He says.

“You’re gonna do it all, aintcha? When you’re young. Have all these big dreams, and one day you wake up and your time, it just gone. Vanished, just like that.”

He snaps his fingers as he says ‘that’ and the noise is not disimular to the clack of castanet.

“What do you know though? Hell! You’re still a baby! How old are you, Julie?”

“24”

“Of course it was different for him….. Nelson Prince. Everyone knew he’d be a star. He knew it. Quietly. Some people just have it don’t they? That magic.”

“They do”

“S’pose I could look him up. But something tells me he wouldn’t remember his old buddy these days. I wasn’t always like this, you see. A bum. You think he’d remember me, Julie? If I go turn up at his place. Like this?”

He points to himself. Prods himself viciously. Angrily.

“Think I’d be able to jam with Prince now? Way I am now? This going on?”

His hand is shaking, and I realise at this point his trembling is not a reaction to the chill of the air, nor the drink. It’s a medical condition.

“Doctors say it just gonna get worse. Can’t play a goddamn note any more. And who gonna care? Huh? Who’s gonna care bout old Ray?”

“You’re not old!”

I say, not really knowing what to say.

“The music was my life, see…….Never wanted a regular job, never married, anything like that, the road is all I know……”

“They can’t do anything for it? That’s shit.”

I offer.

“I’m done.”

He says.

“Done. But I’m alright with that. I’ve made my peace with that. I’ve lived. My way. My terms. So how you ‘bout you, Julie? How you end up here in Wisconsin?”

“Adventure brought me here. Following my heart.”

I say. And I consider my tale.

Like a child chasing a balloon, I’d been lured here, to this soulless, nondescript place.

‘Near Chicago’. He’d said when we’d talked on the internet in Hawaii. I’d liked the sound of that.

I’d liked the sound of him.

And the nearest airport had indeed, been Chicago. That’s where the connection had ended.

I’d arrived from my tropical paradise, to a gridded urban hell. A flat, board game of Walgreens, Walmarts and Wendys. It was functional, practical but utterly lacking of personality. Devoid of the adventure I craved.

He’s a comic book geek, goes to the conventions. We sleep in the basement.

It’s dark and ugly there. No light, no windows. Sometimes I get sleep paralysis and could swear something evil is trying to possess me. Stupid maybe, hey?

He fucks with my head. Starts small.

“Your nose is bent, isn’t it?”

He says one day.

Shakes his head, laughs, tried to make light.

“Most people probably wouldn’t even notice…… you could get it fixed…..if it bothered you.”

Another day, I’m lying on the bed, he scans me up and down then says;

“I was just thinking how you’re not really what most guys would want, are you? What most guys go for, find attractive …….but I still love you…..”

These put downs become ever more frequent.

He has more porn than I have ever seen in my life in that cold, dark basement. Women are contorted into crude poses that dehumanise, demean. They are reduced to a buffet of holes. Most of the magazines and videos, I find silly, ridiculous. Others truly disturb me.

Yet still, I stay.

I stay because he is intelligent, funny and we like the same music.

I stay because he has a golden voice that makes clocks stop.

I stay because the only alternative I can conceive of - going home - feels like failure. I am free spirited adventurer, and as such, family lore permits me only to have highs. I am the sunny sender of postcards. Bringer of joy.

Do I relay all of this to Ray on the bench?

I don’t, because it’s only in retrospect I will see and understand it all for what it truly is.

So I mumble stuff about feeling lonely, being new in town. About the way life can seduce and deceive you with its pseudo glamour sometimes. That silver sheen can turn out to be cheap aluminium foil.

We go back to talking about music. He talks with fondness of packed out blues clubs that coughed crowds as exhaled smoke into banjo alleys. The chemical violet scent of newly inked flyers, the joy of finding a fifty dollar bill down the back of a bottle green velvet sofa…….

And some point, we rise, refit and adjust our psychic rucksacks to our rested frames.

Feels a little lighter.

I smile as I realise we are now living in the song Prince released back in 1982.

Was this really the dream any of us had at the time, of this……..

1999.