So this is the plan. I’m going to find Dean Moriarty, going to hook up with him, going to steal a car and drive across America. We’re going to drive through the night, steal petrol, find jazz clubs and romance, smoke a little reefer, and maybe this time hang around for the Acid Tests.
Well, OK. I’m going to do my version. Like Jack Kerouac, I’m a nice middle class Jewish boy and stealing cars isn’t exactly in the DNA, but Dean can and I can hang with him, play rhythm guitar to his lead.
That’s the plan. Find Dean Moriarty. Hang with him a bit. Get inspiration. Write. Play this keyboard like Charlie Parker. Was that the Kerouac quote? Doesn’t sound right. Charlie Parker didn’t play a keyboard. Even if we twist it to make some play on the word “keyboard” it doesn’t sound right. Play this keyboard like Charlie Parker played his horn. No, that just sounds really clunky. Be like Charlie Parker. No, not great either. He died a junkie at 31. I’m already 30 and I’m not what you’d call a junkie. Don’t even like spliff cos it makes me stupid and paranoid. A bit of coke’s OK if you want to spend the night with some jabbering ego twat.
So anyway, I was sitting on the deck of this boat, toying with this idea. It was the middle of the night, dark and empty, just me and the night and the sea, and I was thinking about the story – when the calm was disturbed by this couple. A big English bloke and his possibly Israeli girlfriend. They were going at it big time, tearing into each other. South London. Odds on.
When they saw us they found what they were looking for: an audience.
“Ask them,” the bloke shouted. “Fuckin ask them but they ain’t gonna help.”
Name: Graham
DoB: July 14, 1980
Place of birth: London
Height: 6’3”
Weight: 14 stone
Hair: Brown, long, past his shoulders
I looked up and over at them. That was enough. We were hooked in. The bloke from south London, who was about three miles off his tits, he clocked us, stopped arguing with the girl and launched into reading a poem he’d written as a response to Paradise Lost. I can’t remember exactly now. He was the Devil or he was Milton or he was their mate and… and… Most of the time I didn’t know whether to interrupt or applaud, like I was at a show or something. If I couldn’t think of anyone less like me it was only because I’d not met Graham before.
“You know Paradise Lost? Man, to me it’s like the Bible or something it’s, it just tells you everything you need to know about what’s going on, you know what I mean? It’s got everything, the road, the journey, the way we go about things. What’s going on, you know?” With that, he started dancing, grabbing a decidedly unimpressed possibly Israeli girl, and broke into a version of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” ‘What’s going on… oh yeah, what’s going ooonnnn’.”
I didn’t know it at the time, but he was The One. Maybe he was the Devil. He sure wasn’t God – and if he was God I’m not sure what he was the God of.
“Y’alright? Beautiful night, innit. You sit on the deck of a boat like this, stuck out here in the middle of nowhere and it really bangs it home, don’t it. We’re just specks here, specks on the surface of another speck. It’s beautiful, innit. You look up there and, ah fuck it, I used to know the names of all the stars, all the constellations. Don’t suppose it matters. What are you blokes doing? Fuckin Tokyo, yeah? I’m Graham. You?”
So we were standing on the deck of this boat going to Yokohama and it was the middle of the night. A beautiful night. And there’s this bloke giving us this rant about Milton and Paradise Lost. He could have been 25 or 35. Big build, longish hair, nondescript clothes. Jeans, t-shirt, that kind of thing. He was good-looking, but rough. Like he’d been away too long. He had something about him, but wherever he had, it hadn’t been in the Style guides, it hadn’t been on the ad breaks in some TV show or in the colour sups next to a feature on how to cook salmon with goat’s cheese and pak choi. I’d gone away looking for something different and this, this was something different.
“Fuckin Tokyo”, he said. “You’re going to Tokyo. Fuckin place Tokyo. A zoo. Full of hooligans and fuckin Japs. You got a story going on there or what?”
Who was this bloke? I don’t know. I go away, looking for an adventure and in the first half hour I meet my very own Dean Moriarty, some wild spirit with energy to burn and a soul on fire, all passion and more passion – the sort of bloke I’d be if I wasn’t sharing a body with a middle class, middle aged bloke who drives a Volvo and knows his National Insurance number off by heart. (WN 55 76 35 G – don’t know why I know that, I just do).
“No, no story. No story and no idea,” I said. “I was supposed to be going to Hong Kong. I had a job on a newspaper there, the South Morning Post, but then the boat to Hong Kong stopped two years ago and the only boat now was this one that’s going to Yokohama and…”
Even as I said it, it sounded rubbish. God knows what it sounded like to him, but it was the story.
“Yeah, right. And you?” Graham said to John.
“And me,” said John. “I’m just along for the ride.”
“So what are you saying?” said Graham “You had a job but now you haven’t got a job? Yeah? That, my friends, is not a good look. Sounds to me you’re gonna need some dosh. Tokyo’s no place to be skint”.
The words hung in the air. I was going to hit him with a comeback like “Is anywhere a good place to be skint?”, but he came back first.
“You wanna make a bit of cash? Easy money.”
Me, I was already suspicious. John was more interested.
“Go on,” he said.
Graham smiled at the possibly Israeli girl who didn’t smile back. Then he looked at us, making a big dramatic looking around gesture – like he needed to. It wasn’t Piccadilly Circus. It was the middle of the night and we were alone on the deck of a boat.
He opened his bag and pulled out a pair of shoes about three sizes too big for any normal person – and smiled. The significance was lost on me. I just thought it was odd. If they’d been red and had a big, round sticking up toecap they could have been clown’s shoes. But they just looked like ordinary shoes. Just very big.
I looked at Graham’s feet. Big, yeah big. He was a big bloke. But nothing like these.
“You’re a shoe salesman?”
“Something like that” said Graham and reached down into his bag again. After doing the dramatic looking around bit again – there’s nothing like milking the moment and Graham, a performer at heart, knew how to do that – he produced a shoe’s inner sole which was about an inch thick and covered in thick cling film.
Me and John might have been at the start of the story and about as worldly as a couple of new born seal cubs, but I knew what Graham was holding. Dope. Compressed dope. Graham passed it to me and it was surprisingly dark and heavy and soft – squidgy almost.
“Feels good, don’t it?” said Graham. “Better than that fuckin Moroccan shit you’re used to.”
He was right there. It felt heavier and lighter. I wasn’t an expert – clearly I wasn’t an expert – but I kinda figured this was top notch. Good shit, as they say.
He put the inner sole inside the shoe. “All you’ve got to do is walk. You haven’t got a problem walking, have you?”
Like a couple of new born seal cubs waiting to be clubbed.
No one said anything. I didn’t say anything. John didn’t say anything. The Israeli girl, she didn’t say anything either.
“Look,” said Graham as he pulled out four of these cling-filmed soles, “I wouldn’t ask, but I’ve got four shoes and” – and he pointed down at his feet – “only two feet”.
No one said anything.
“I mean I’ve got four fucking soles. I can put two in my shoes, but I need someone else to go through with the others. Just wear the shoes, walk through and I’ll give you a grand. Easy. Listen” he looked directly at me. “It’ll sort you out in Tokyo, get you started. Otherwise you’re gonna be in right shit, believe me. Fuckin’ place Tokyo.”
He wanted us to walk through Customs with God knows how much dope. Was he mad? Well, clearly he was mad but did he think we were mad? I remember looking at Graham and seeing all these Japanese war films in my head, sadistic guards beating people up – “Ve hav vays of making you tok!” OK, that’s a German war film, but you know what I mean. Melly Chlistmas Mr Rawrence.
The first person I meet, he’s a drug dealer and he’s trying to make me his mule.
John threw me a look. He was into it.
“You said you were looking for a story, mate. Well…”
“What do you mean, looking for a story,” said Graham in a voice that wasn’t looking for fun. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?”
There was no soft in Graham, no “Hey mate, wanna hear my poetry?” There was just suspicion and not a little threat.
And John just saw the threat.
“Nah, nothing mate. It’s just that we said we were looking for an adventure, you know. Something different, something new, something that…”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” I said. “You’re sounding like a twat.”
I turned to Graham.
“Sorry, mate. I just haven’t got the nerve for that sort of thing”.
Still, John was tempted, I could see John was tempted. I could see all sorts of things. Like… John fancied the Israeli girl and was showing off and I was thinking that on the list of bad ideas, flirting with Graham’s woman was off the scale.
Graham, he was talking to us, bouncing around, keeping our gaze. I was stoned. Seriously stoned. If what Graham was smoking was what he was carrying, then it was definitely a grade up from that fuckin Moroccan shit we were used to.
I could feel the paranoia starting to creep in. Who was this bloke? What was this stuff? I’ve never even read Paradise Lost. Was I getting gently kinda stoned on the deck of a slow boat to Japan, all night time calm and looking up at the stars. Or were we actually stuck with this bloke who was clearly a fucking lunatic. Interesting but a lunatic.
Maybe though this was it. Maybe John was right. I was looking for a story, my own Dean Moriarty. Maybe this was it. I’d been on the road barely half an hour, hadn’t even unpacked, and already I’ve found my Dean. A force of nature? Check. Operating outside the law? Check. Unlikely to know his National Insurance number and have the car tax (fully comp) paid up? Check. The only thing… He was a bloody maniac, liable to get us locked up. At best locked up.
What did I think? Dean Moriarty was going to show up, cook us a nice vegetarian meal and go to bed early?
“Look. OK, so you ain’t done anything like this before but that makes it better,” said Graham. “You look normal, not like some fuckin hippie who’s carrying. Anyway, it’s the Japs and they don’t do nothing. All you’ve gotta do is be polite and smile, that’s all. You don’t know what they’re like yet, do you? You haven’t got a clue. You can do anything but as long as you’re polite, it’s OK. Fuckin Japs. And you’ve got to remember, they think we’re some kind of dirty diseased sub-species anyway. They don’t expect anything proper.”
Nothing. No one said anything.
“You sure? Nah, no sweat,” said Graham, “I’ll sort it.”
Did he say that a bit too easily? There was an alarm going off somewhere but I didn’t hear it. This bloke – who I’d already decided was trouble – had taken us into his confidence, shown us his inner sole and made himself really vulnerable. And he’d let it go with “Nah, no sweat. I’ll sort it”. You know naïve? Well, we were on the podium for the Olympics, heading for the World Championships.
We sat up the rest of the night, the four of us, smoking a bit while Graham told us stories about how he’d paid for the trip by blackmailing an MP he’d had a fling with. Fantastic stories, mad stories. The sort of stories normally you’d hear and would think a lot of old bollocks, but somehow from Graham… They were probably true. Stories that were worth the admission for entertainment value.
“I was in a care home and this MP came down, he was making a bit of a name for himself and was making a big deal about giving the poor fuckers another chance. And he did. He gave the poor fuckers another chance to get fucked. He saw me and gave me a job in his office. Took me under his wing. Took me under his desk. Took me any way he could. I was a kid….
“I’m gonna write it all down and make it into a TV film. Those bastards won’t forget about me.”
Graham, his energy. He was sitting down, smoking and talking, but it felt like he was pacing up and down, waving his arms around, shouting. Electric. How could you contain it? I loved this bloke, but I also knew he was dangerous. Where did he come from? You wouldn’t meet anyone like this in London, not in my London anyway.
The light came up, the boat came in. We got to Yokohama. I thought Yokohama would be all Bladerunner or something. Some future century technological marvel, big and shiny and everyone with gadgets that hadn’t been invented yet, flashing neon signs selling things I’d never heard of, images of girls beckoning flashing off the sides of buildings…
The boat port wasn’t like that at all. It was just a boat port and looked more used to fishermen’s boats than anything to do with Harrison Ford or replicants. The boats in the dock looked like the sort of boats you’d find in docks. Just boats. Container boats. Mostly container boats, a few rusting hulks, some passenger boats – or maybe ships, what’s the difference?
There were cranes and lorries, presumably for the container boats. Worker blokes in dark blue overalls milled around. It looked like the sort of working port you’d see anywhere. And it was frankly disappointing. You pull into Tokyo and the first thing you see is blokes in overalls and containers. You want something a bit more Star Trek than that.
We pulled in and got off. It was all a bit rough but very polite. Nice queues, nothing very spectacular.
It looked dark, maybe because it was dark, but maybe because I had my eyes closed. In all senses. The boat, the surprisingly big hulking boat, rocked up to the appointed dock in the harbour and everyone trooped off, down the gangplank – I guess it’s called a gangplank, though that sounds a bit too Pirates of the Caribbean. This really wasn’t that romantic. Most of the other passengers had proper suitcases like proper people. We had backpacks on our backs, like bloody hippies.
“John” I said. “We’ve got backpacks on our backs, we look like bloody hippies”.
“No, not yet we don’t. They’re backpacks, but they’re smart backpacks. About as expensive as backpacks get.”
It’s true. We paid a bloody fortune for these things. Backpacks that turned into suitcases that turned into backpacks. A clever design, smart lightweight material, no schmutter.
“Listen, we’re still smart, we’re still from London. It’s all in the way you walk, the way you carry yourself. Anyway,”
“Let’s not talk about what’s being carried, OK?”
I should have been more nervous than I was. Nerves killed by stupidity, I guess. Still, I tried to walk ahead and put some distance between me and John and Bonnie and Clyde who’d somehow become our best mates. Problem was, John was still loitering round the Israeli girl – what was her name? – and Graham was talking to me. Well, at me. Whatever.
I should have been terrified. I knew what the story was, I was with this bloke carrying all this dope but I just wasn’t. Like I say, that business of dropping the dope in someone else’s backpack hadn’t occurred to me at all – that kind of thinking just wasn’t on my radar. John seemed fine. Graham didn’t seem to give a toss. Looking back, I don’t know why I wasn’t at least a bit worried. Maybe it was some instinct thing. Whatever.
We queued up with the rest of the passengers, got in line, and just walked through. We just walked through.
It was so low key, so… unofficial looking. No wonder Graham chose this route.
“Ohio” said the little Japanese bloke behind he desk, all crisp white shirt and dark blue tie.
“Ohio” said the Japanese bloke a few people in front of me.
As each said “Ohio” they gave a little bow. A little downward nod from the shoulders. The bloke in the queue showed the official his passport.
“Domo arigato” said the official as he handed the bloke his passport back.
They both bowed again, the same little downward nod.
Each bloke in the queue in front of me went through the same routine. Same words. Same bows. Same everything. No one checked any bags, no one asked any questions. There were no sniffer dogs, no x-ray machines, no police or security. Well, none I could see anyway.
Graham’s turn next. That would be interesting.
Ohio…. bow…. Domo arigato… bow…. I smiled to myself. He’d done this one before. He knew when to bow, when to say “Ohio”, all that. And – kinda impressive, this – he looked like a normal bloke. No manic energy, no electricity, no mad poetry. Just a white bloke coming into Japan.
After the last bow, he turned round and smiled at me. Great. Just what I needed. I really needed me and John to be seen to be associated with this bloke.
Wait.
“Ohio,” I said in an English accent that made me sound like Little Lord Fauntleroy. Ohio, my good man.
I bowed like I’d just met the Queen. I tried to say “Domo arigato” but someone had just put the Sahara Desert in my mouth and all that came out was “Doh”.
You know how when you’re nervous, people say you’re shitting yourself? Well, now I knew where that saying came from. Maybe not the whole hog – definitely not the whole hog – but there was definitely a little twitch. But that was it. One jerked head bow later and that was it.
That’s all we did. We just walked through. Showed our passports. Carried our bags. Just walked through. A few smiles. A wave of the passport and follow the green signs to “Exit” and the Japanese words that went with it. Who knows what it said in Japanese. “Exit,” I guess.
The whole thing, getting off the boat, passport control, going through what passed for a customs hall took about half an hour.
The Japanese were pretty much like he said – they looked at us like they just hoped we’d go away. Graham laughed and nudged me in the ribs. I laughed back. It all seemed really natural. A group of mates heading off on an adventure.
We got through and before I knew what was what, we were on a train heading for Tokyo. If I was telling this story with more of a dramatic sweep, I’d conjure up a picture of that scene in Midnight Express where Billy Hayes is caught on the bus with all the dope strapped to his stomach. I’d say that was going through my mind. But it wasn’t. I didn’t feel anything. We found a couple of bench seats and sat down. Graham smiled at me and looked down. He rolled up his trousers and there, gaffer taped to each leg, were the other two inner soles.
Later, someone – Brad the Canadian, I think – told me Graham’s usual trick was to hide the dope in some poor unsuspecting bastard’s back pack, let them take it through customs. If they got through, he’d steal the bag from them on the other side. If they got caught… Never mind. There’ll be another one along in a minute. Why he didn’t do anything like that with us, who knows. Maybe he liked us.