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SUNDAY, 13 AUGUST, 2000, PHILADELPHIA |
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So far I have experienced nothing but gleeful anticipation for my trip to England and Scotland, for which I leave on Tuesday. After playing host to Badjuju last month in Philadelphia, and after having discovered that, hey, I like sharp Scottish strippers!— I have been salivating at the opportunity to see her again, this time on her turf in a well-appointed, pink-walled flat backed up against that dang castle they got goin’ on over there. On 1/27/2000, Badjuju wrote: > There is a chinese expression about a touch of pink > in a room being like a smile, or something. My living room > throws its head back and laughs maniacally. So that’s all well n’ good. But to get to Edinburgh, I must traipse through London first. And I’ve always been rather viscerally attached to London. Picture this: A 19 year old Marquis (years before this semi-fictional character of “Marquis” was conceived), green as Kermit and naïve as the giddy schoolgirl that he was, getting ready to depart his safe, plasticine homeland of the west coast of America for college. Bang! The spotty, innocent little Marquis is plunked onto another continent, homeless and wandering the streets for a flat, wide-eyed with culture shock and worried, wondering if he made the right decision. …and thus began, my life, quite frankly, at 19, playing grown-up in London, sniffing out an identity amidst English cobblestones and pints of stuff called “lager”, madly eschewing everything about the place where I grew up with all the fervour of … well, a randy little 19 year old yankee wanker. I quickly came to the realisation that I did not like what I was bred to be, and thus went about deconstructing everything from the toes up, and it was in London that I began to put the pieces back together after a fashion more becoming to what what I wished to become. London was only the beginning of my long list of home cities, but it set a precident, and, as with all the places I have called home, it continues to live within my muddled little psyche daily. It is perhaps for that reason that I have stuck with writing English using English spelling (I am ‘realising’ now as I write this) as a constant reminder of the path which I have chosen — one of voluntary homelessness and displacement, but terribly, terribly rich and always stimulating and new. This was in the late 80’s. I left England in 1989 and have never been back. Tuesday, I go back. Have you ever returned to a place where you once lived, and have you ever been bowled over by the smells, memories, emotions and recollections of your daily life there? Things that you could never recall when out of the environment, but that come back to haunt you like an old song when you hear it again? Every city has its own heartbeat, and within every city you become another person in imperceptible ways that take distance and a return trip to fathom, or even recognise. Many parts of this person will stick, but so many details will be lost. Stepping back into the old shoes, you find that those parts have not been “lost”, merely “misplaced.” I am nervous about seeing London again. I understand it has changed dramatically in the last twelve years, but if there are still a Fulham Road, a Harrod’s, a Hyde Park and the tube, then I’m a little nervous about what might be woken up within my sleeping historical make-up. I can only faintly taste the taste of English cider, real Guinness, Jammie Dodgers and Jaffa Cakes. I vaguely recall differing smells on the yellow Circle Line which I rode to school, and the deep, dark Northern Line which took me to Camdem Market. What will the reintroduction of these things inspire? It’s fucking unnerving. If, when I step off a plane in New Orleans, grab my luggage and go out the doors from the generic airport-smelling air conditioning into hot, swampy, wet Louisiana, and if at that time I am behooved to drop my bags and take a deep, appreciative breath as a past life floods over me, and if I have only been away from New Orleans for two years … then just what the hell is going to happen when I get into Heathrow? I may combust. I just talked to Patrick on the phone, who lives here in Philly, but has, by a random series of coincidences, lived in many of my home towns, the first being London in 1988. “When do you leave again?” “Tuesday.” “Oh. I’m out of town until then. Guess I won’t see you till you get back.” “I’ll bring you a belated birthday present of British snack food items. What would you like?” Patrick fell silent. I could hear the gears whirring back a dozen years, indulging in a little archæological dig — something neither of us do with any frequency. “Toffee Pops,” he said, zombie-like, “and some real fuckin’ Guinness, ha ha. And a bottle of HP sauce — blue label. Oh … god …” Apparently, I’m not the only one. The title of this column is “The Marquis’ Intimate Diary” which, if you have been reading for any amount of time, you will realise is classic employment of a tongue-in-cheek adjective. You will forgive me if I let this façade slip for a moment and peek out from behind the semi-fictional mask of the Marquis. It won’t happen again, dollinks. Well, unless my memory lobes get so excited on Wednesday morning that my head simply explodes from the internal friction. In which case, you will certainly be audience to some weird shit on these pages. 
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