Stalin, Dietrich and the Porn Star - part IV

So anyway, I bit the bullet and turned the bed to face this porn star guy with the unfeasibly huge penis. I figured at the time that, bearing in mind what had happened to Marlene Dietrich, he just might turn into Sharon Stone or Kim Basinger or someone like that. Of course, there was always the danger he’d turn into Margaret Thatcher or maybe Baroness Trumpington - if you’d had given me a choice of anyone, it would have been Buster Keaton. With all this weirdness going on, I really needed a laugh and perhaps a little bit of absurd fantasy.

Well now, I’m staring at this guy with the unfeasibly huge penis. He was standing in a desert landscape that was quite bare, except for, well it looked like a group of camels in the far distance. As I looked intently at the picture, I found myself being drawn into the desert. Then the wind started to howl and I was jerking up and down, up and down and being lashed by the wind and the sand. When I looked down, I found myself dressed in the uniform of an officer in the Afrika Korps, seated on the top of a Tiger tank and leading a column back into a desert hideout. The sky was full of black oily smoke and there were quite a few burnt out vehicles scattered around. There had obviously been an attack while we had been away and our H.Q. had suffered badly. The strange thing was, that the barrel of the gun sticking out the front of the tank resembled a huge ten-foot long penis and it was flopping about all over the place. When I looked round, I saw that all the other tanks were the same, they all had floppy gun barrels.

So, I’m walking into this tent to make a report. There seated on a cane chair, is Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. I knew then that it was El Alamein. Yes, it was 1942 and we were in the North African desert. Because I knew this, I also knew, that I knew the position of Monty’s army and that Rommel didn’t know that I knew because, if he had known that I knew, he would have changed his strategy and this could have altered the course of the war. Well, I had a good look at him and do you know, he was the spitting image of James Mason. And he spoke perfect English; a bit of an accent maybe, but perfect. It was amazing. Now, his adjutant looked just like Curt Jurgens. He actually is German, I grant you, but he does speak perfect English. Well, I suppose I was a little disappointed. I mean, if things had been different and say I’d been riding in a British tank, when we got to H.Q. there would probably have been, let’s see – well, Richard Attenborough, Ralph Richardson, David Hemmings, Dirk Bogarde, John Geilgud, Lawrence Olivier, Alfie Bass, Alec Guiness - there’s so many! I would have been surrounded by familiar faces. As it was, there was Field Marshall Rommel, looking just like James Mason and staring at me with a look of high expectancy on his face.

I’d probably gone to his tent to make a report. I didn’t know what to do, but I had to act quickly. I wanted to tell him that none of all this mattered, because Germany would lose the war and he’d be dead in a couple of years, so everything was pointless. Well, he’d believe that as much as he would believe that Adolf Hitler was president of Amnesty International. Instead, I decided to approach things kind of laterally and tell him about a fantastic Pink Floyd concert I’d been to at Knebworth the previous year. Well Rommel listened to me talking about this stuff; Dark Side Of The Moon, The Wall, Saucerful Of Secrets and all that. I must say, he was a very good listener and seemed quite interested, especially about The Wall and the story of Roger Water’s childhood during the blitz in London and how the Luftwaffe had bombed his and thousands of other families out of their homes. He seemed even more intrigued when I told him about the regular visits of Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra to the Albert Hall during the 70’s and about how well they were received by the press. But his demeanour changed when I got on to the punks in the late 70’s and early 80’s and he appeared to get visibly bored. Well, I guess he was a very cultured man and didn’t like the stuff about spitting and throwing cans of beer and stuff like that. And then… well, then he just nodded. It was one of those nods that says, “yes, very well, you can go now”.

So I did.

Stalin, Dietrich and the Porn Star - part III

So, the next morning. Well, there was this little glass of liquid again. This time, there was a slightly pinkish tinge to it. Now, I hadn’t eaten for a couple of days, so you can imagine how hungry I was. As most of you probably know, all these drugs and stuff take away your appetite. Except for marijuana of course, which gives you the munchies. I remember feeling very grateful at the time that they hadn’t put any marijuana out for me. It was very thoughtful of them – caring even. Anyway, I quickly drank this glass of stuff because I didn’t want to feel the unpleasant effects of malnutrition.

About an hour later, I was on the bed looking at Stalin again when I became overwhelmed by this feeling of hatred for him. I lay there, calling him all the names under the sun. Maybe it was just the deep passion and bitterness of unrequited love, I don’t know. Anyway, I was thoroughly fed up with him, so I turned the bed round so I could look at the face of a nearly dead Marlene Dietrich. Call me a necrophiliac if you like, but I was determined to put the affair with Stalin out of my mind completely. So, I settled down in front of Marlene and for a while, I was quite happy counting all the wrinkles and spots and stuff, when the hatch opened again and there was a thud caused by something falling on the floor. I got up to have a look and to my amazement, there was a can of pork cutlets in gravy lying on the floor. No knife and fork, or even a plate. Worse still, there was no can opener, just this can of pork cutlets in gravy. Now, I don’t know if any of you have tried to open a can without an opener, but it’s virtually impossible. I tried jumping up and down on it. I tried throwing it with great force against the wall, but to no avail.

So, I’d given up on the pork cutlets in gravy and was gazing quite intently on the face of this nearly dead Marlene Dietrich, when I became aware of a gradual change in the features. Her nose started to get much larger and quite bulbous, then all this white hair started sprouting from all over the place. Soon, there were these big bushy eyebrows, a large moustache and a generous helping of white wavy hair. After a while, I suddenly realised that I was looking at Albert Einstein, you know, the physicist. I suppose it was this strange drug they’d given me because, when he stepped out of the picture and took my hand, I wasn’t at all surprised. So, he took my hand and we then drifted up and up and up, until we landed on the platform of this very tall minaret. There were a group of musicians there with guitars, amps and drums, all tuning up and ready to go. Now I’m not saying it was ASWAD, but it might have been. Or maybe it was the Asian Dub Foundation, I don’t know. Anyway, I recognized a few friendly faces. Well, the band broke into O Come All Ye Faithful and Albert started singing. He didn’t have a very good voice - he was out of tune and his timing was terrible, but what do you expect from a physicist? But, when I looked down at the landscape surrounding us, I was gob smacked. We were standing on the platform of this huge minaret and all around, as far as the eyes could see, was desert, with the odd oasis here and there. And below us, gathered all around were hundreds, no thousands of animals from Africa; giraffes, lions, zebras, antelopes, cheetahs, you name it. It was like being in a scene out of The Lion King, but directed by Salvador Dali or Luis Bunuel or someone like that.

Well, then there was another thud on the floor. A second can of pork cutlets in gravy had been pushed through the hatch. And it went on like this for some time. Probably once an hour I should say. I stacked them all up in a corner of the room. I’d lost all sense of time, so I remember thinking that if I stacked them in piles of twelve, I’d have a rough idea of the numbers of hours that had passed and how long I’d been there. It saved carving notches on the wall, you know, like they do in films.

Stalin, Dietrich and the Porn Star - part II

Well, I think it was this festival in Romania in about 1977 when we were arrested by the Romanian secret police. I’d gone back to Bucharest with Konrad Klebb and we were due to fly to Sofia in Bulgaria a couple of days later. Konrad told me he had some business to conclude first, something to do with knickers I think. Or it might have been shoes, I can’t remember. I do know that the Romanian President at that time – he went by the name of Ceaucescu as some of you will no doubt remember - well, his wife, I can’t remember her first name, but apparently she was a bit like Imelda Marcos, you know, the wife of the president of the Philippines. One had about 5000 pairs of shoes and the other had about 20,000 pairs of knickers. I forget who collected what now. No, I tell a lie – it was definitely knickers. That’s right, I remember this guy telling me that Ceaucescu’s wife was turned on by the execution of political prisoners. She bought a new pair every time a dissident was shot or beheaded, or whatever they did in those days. It sounds a bit far-fetched I know, but I could relate stranger stories – I once met a one-legged tap dancer called Zbgniew Szprnad who came from a remote village in Moravia, or was it Bohemia and he… but I digress. Anyway, I don’t know what happened to the knickers after the revolution. They were probably very expensive ones from Paris or New York. Maybe they found their way to England. They’d have probably gone down well in Chelsea or somewhere like that. Of course, there’s the possibility, remote I grant you, that one or two of the ladies reading this blog are actually wearing a pair. Maybe, the odd chap too, you never know - it’s a strange world.

Anyway, we had dinner at the Athene Palace Hotel and were walking down this narrow alleyway that runs off the main square, you probably know it, when these guys in leather coats came up and bundled us into a car at gunpoint. Well, I spent goodness knows how long locked up in this cell. Not a cell exactly. It was a small windowless room with a barred window on the door, with a tiny hatch located underneath. The only furniture was a rather comfortable single bed, which was on wheels. But here’s the strange thing. On each wall was a huge poster. The one opposite the door was a drawing of Stalin gazing up at a hammer and sickle, with the Red Army marching behind him. On the left wall, there was a huge photograph of Marlene Dietrich taken, I should guess, just before she died, perhaps only seconds before she died, and on the right wall there was another photo, this time of some gay porno star with an erect, unfeasibly enormous penis.

It was puzzling. A room that was bare except for three large posters and a bed on wheels. They were obviously trying some kind of psychological trick, but to what end? I have to say that they actually treated me reasonably well. I was expecting to be slapped about, maybe a bit of brutality, you know the sort of thing, but nothing like that happened. I spent the first night quite comfortably in fact. The following morning, the hatch opened and someone placed a small glass on the shelf. It looked like water, but was kind of thick and syrupy. Well, I’d had nothing for quite a few hours, so of course, I downed it in one gulp. About 30 or 40 minutes later, I started to feel very strange and after an hour, I realised that they’d spiked the drink with acid. Yes, LSD. Now this may not come as a surprise to many of you and I expect that quite a number of readers will have experienced this extraordinary substance; maybe ecstasy, cocaine and other stuff too. And it’s possible that some of you are tripping at this moment. In fact, what follows may not seem out of the ordinary at all – but I’ll continue anyway.

So there I was, all alone in this room; in complete silence and tripping off my head with nothing but Stalin, a nearly dead Marlene Dietrich and a gay porn star for company. I got tired of pacing up and down, so I lay on the bed for quite a while. I’d positioned it so I was facing Stalin. I knew they were playing games with me, so I tried to make them think I was, kind of, sympathetic to the cause. As I didn’t know any Russian songs, I tried humming the French horn theme from Tchaikovsky’s 5th symphony, but stopped half way through when I vaguely remembered stories about him being apparently gay; this seemed a little risqué. So I tried whistling softly to myself, but after a while I realised that not only was I whistling very loudly, but that it was the waltz music from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. As most of you will know, this was the first ballet Rudolf Nureyev performed immediately after he defected from the U.S.S.R. to the West, so I was in great danger of being perceived, not only as risqué, but extremely rude as well. To make myself appear more normal, I broke into a lusty and extremely loud rendition of the Beatles’ All You Need Is Love. It occurred to me that this was a song that would meet with Stalin’s wholehearted approval.

A little later, I realised that I’d been staring at this picture of Stalin for quite some time and that he was now becoming more and more attractive. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s true. In a short space of time, he’d become one of the most sexy, romantic human beings I’d ever clapped eyes on. I suppose I must have known it had something to do with the stuff they’d given me, but it was very powerful. I remember crying because the guy wasn’t around anymore. He was dead and in my dreams, I knew I’d never see him again.