Autumn Leaves & Dry Heaves: Chapter 9

It wasn't the first time I'd been to Paris. I spent a lot of time in that city back around 1971. I had gone there to escape from all the legal bullshit - alimony, child support, income taxes - that a modern man must contend with. Just a few hundred years ago it could have all been settled with some form of violence. Not today.

No, today we're all so freakin' progressive, so responsible, so 'feminine'. You know what my theory is? Progress is inherently feminine: it makes things fresher, softer, quieter, gentler, safer. There's no room for a man to move in that space - you feel claustrophobic. Do you realize it would take just a few battalions of Roman soldiers to kick our asses off this continent? We would be too freakin' busy forming support groups and child trauma clinics and building special ramps for the handicapped that the Romans would walk into Manhattan and just start chopping our balls off. And we'd deserve it!

I digress. So Paris in 1971 was much like today, much like it was in 1979. That place never changes - same tourists, same stores, same chronically pissed-off citizens, same incredibly arrogant sales people. I can't freakin' stand it sometimes, just thinking about that place!

Anyway, when I consider Paris back then, I mostly think of Jim Morrison. I'd never enjoyed the Doors' music, at least while I was sober. I think it had something to do with that dopey organ always pumping away in the background, sounding like the howls from a demented Bar mitzvah party. But when I got into Paris in early 1970, I didn't want to hang with the French, so I sought out Americans. And that's how Morrison came into play.

I knew The Doors from their Whiskey A Go-Go run in L.A. back in the mid 60's. They were perfect for that scene - druggy, spacey, intellectual. Jim became an occasional drinking buddy of mine, but he was a terrible drunk, couldn't hold his booze and got belligerent and sloppy.

Anyway, in Paris I met Morrison in a roundabout way. Early in June, after a few nights in the City of Lights, during which I slept in a friend's apartment (who happened to be a hooker so it was a noisy place), I found myself at some party talking to a Count Jean DeBreteuil. He told me all about some great sex he was having with an American hippy named Pam. So eventually I found out that he was referring to Pamela Courson, Jim's so-called wife. Adultery irritates me because I hate it when people break promises. Don't make the fucking promise in the first place! In fact, never make more than two or three promises in your entire lifetime! Anyway, that's how I knew Morrison was in Paris.

So I tracked him down to an apartment on Rue Beautreillis. He wasn't surprised to see me because he was drunk, and when you're drunk, there's no such thing as a surprise. This apartment had a few empty rooms, so I crashed in one for a few days.

I could tell Pam Courson didn't like me, and I didn't give a shit. She was a whimpering, untalented little hat rack who had a bizarre hold over Morrison. I could never figure it out. It's like he felt really sorry for her. Who knows. If he had of dusted her off, he'd still be alive today - because oh man, she was one bad influence.

During the day Morrison and I would talk about music and America and Vietnam and women - usually in that order. We used to go to a restaurant called Le Beautreillis. Jim would tip big, so the waiters didn't mind cleaning up the dribbles of vomit that inevitably ran from his mouth toward the end of an evening. You see, Morrison was sick. Physically, he wasn't a strong guy. He had asthma and he smoked. He had liver problems and he drank. He was fat and going bald. I mean, it wasn't a good scene, but it didn't have to end in such a stupid way.

After a few days I couldn't stand that apartment anymore - the constant Pam/Jim bickering - so I split and went back to the hooker's place. I used to slum around the streets at night. I remember once I got into a fight with jazzman Charles Mingus, and he cut up the side of his hand. He was an angry dude and picked on the wrong man. Another time I had a drink with author William Burroughs, who I thought was a goof. He told me that he'd killed his wife, shot her, and that everyone thought it was an accident. Then he told me the truth. Burroughs was what you may call an aggressive homosexual, which was weird because he didn't seem at all feminine. It was like he was in disguise.

Sometime in April, I bumped into Morrison again; rather, I stumbled over him in the Rock and Roll Circus Club, on the Rue de Seine. He was rolling around the floor, moaning that nobody understood his genius, that he was some kind of amazing poet. I felt like giving him the boots. I hate people to be pathetic in public. But on account of our past friendship, I dragged him over to a chair and slapped him sober.

There was a poetry reading in the Club, and a few grubby looking people were jabbering in microphones. Morrison said it was all shit, and for once I agreed with him. Then he started to bellow that I had no talent, that I was just a Vegas fuck up. That was too much. I told him that in terms of music, I had forgotten more than he would ever know. In fact, I said, why not take it to the streets, let the public decide. That's how the infamous Carr-Morrison poetry reading got started.

A few nights later we got up on that stage and I just hammered him. My poems against his poems. He began yapping about moonlight swims and bleeding highways. I just gave the people what they wanted.

Anyway, a few weeks later I met some guy who used to party in Paris with Ernest Hemingway, and he said the tenth anniversary of Hemingway's death was coming up, on July 2, and as an American I should do something to mark it. I had met Hemingway once, in Cuba in the late 1950s, and I thought he was okay, a little too tense, but okay. So I said that was a good idea and that maybe I'd contact Jim Morrison, a fellow American, and we could find an excuse to drink even more.

So about a week later I called Morrison and he said we should meet at some cinema that was playing a Robert Mitchum picture, and that we could hit the town after that.

I met him and Pam at the cinema and we sat in the back row, guzzling Wild Turkey. The film was called 'Death Valley', and it stunk. In fact, everybody in the movie house stank - they were all stinky little hippies and students with no money. I had bad digestion and was in a pretty sour mood and I just kept thinking about all of these bugs and diseases climbing all over the place. Anyway, afterwards the three of us went back to their place and began to enjoy some sparkling refreshments.

I remember sitting in a chair, kind of looking out a window, and Morrison was walking around in his shit-stained underwear, scratching himself. It looked like he had fleas. So I started talking about the bags of head lice that must infest the skulls of the hippies, and the fact that they thought soap was a corporate conspiracy or something. Morrison started getting mad and stomped off into the bathroom. He said he was going to take a crap and a bath.

So Pam and I were sitting there cleaning out a bong. We heard Morrison groaning away, yelling that he needed more vegetables in his diet. It was quiet for a while, then suddenly we heard this loud crash. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time. I mean, Morrison was always crashing into things - that was part of his appeal. Maybe an hour passed, and I finally had to drain my pipes, so I knocked on the bathroom door. No answer. I opened the door and there he was. It looked like he had slipped on a bar of soap, smacked his head, slid into the bath and, like, expired. He was gone.

When someone croaks that quickly, it's hard to know what to do. I mean, a guy leaves the room to take a dump, and the next thing you know he's worm food. Pam was too shocked to even talk. She just sat on the floor, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth. At that moment, I really hated her.

I went back into bathroom to check on Morrison. He was toast. No pulse, white as a sheet.

I spent about ten minutes cleaning all the drugs out of the apartment. There was no reason I had to be involved in this squalid little hippy disaster. It was just a fluke that I had been in Morrison's place. There's nothing I could have added to a police report. So I sat Pam down in front of me and told her to listen very carefully. I said that all she had to do was say that she and Jim were alone, he went off to take a bath, she had gone to sleep, and woke up to find a corpse. That's it. No drugs, no Dusty, no nothing. Morrison was in such awful shape, that any physical examination would lead to a rubber-stamped death certificate.

She nodded like she understood, which I doubted. I picked up the phone, dialled the operator, and told Pam what to say. That done, I had a fast drink of scotch and headed for the door. On my way down the stairs, I passed the Brit singer Marianne Faithful heading up. She squinted at me, as if trying to recall my face. I just kept going. She'd soon get a wake up call.

Anyway, no need to elaborate on that whole scene. The big problem with the hippies was that they treated drugs as if there were friends. They're not necessarily enemies, but they're certainly not friends.

Okay, let's go up to 1979.

Chas Walker, true to his word, had booked me into a hotel and assembled a four-piece band. They were all local guys who treated me like a fallen angel. In fact, they had all played in a Dusty Carr tribute band, believe it or not, called 'The Fallen Angels'. The French are creepy that way.

So we rehearsed for a few days and got scheduled to do a week at 'Le Club Pari'. About halfway through the first night, I started to get a weird vibe from the crowd. I could tell they were more interested in me than my music. And that had never happened before. It was always the song, not the singer. So I went with it, and rapped about my life, my loves, and my own private hell. They were screaming for more, the stranger the better. My performance got into the newspapers. They started calling me a 'raconteur'. The Club began to sell out.

The pressure of having to come up with material was stressing me, so I commenced to drink very heavily - and this served to improve my performance. The gig stretched into a few months, by the end of which I was in terrible condition, but for once I had a lot of money, just wads of cash.

I knew in my heart that it had to end or they'd be burying me in Pere Lachaise beside poor old Jim. I told Chas Walker it was time for a wrap. You see, that's why I'm still alive today and so many of my contemporaries are six feet under. You must have a higher calling, something that you need to serve. In my case, it's always been music - and you can't serve it when you're dead. So in effect the music made me stop - and go on.

That's the difference between a celebrity and an artist. A celebrity is just a famous person whereas an artist doesn't need fame. A lot of celebrities know how to shine in the sun, but when that light goes out, they wilt like flowers.

Enough said.

I was tired of Paris anyway. Too much of everything - food, sex, drugs, booze. Time to move on.

The day before I left Paris, I went out to Pere Lachaise to visit Morrison. I'm not sentimental that way. I just felt sorry for him. It's important to show respect - because the Big Man might be watching and I need all the points I can get. Anyway, his grave was surrounded by a bunch of chirping little hippy-wannabees, and this really turned me off.

You've got to live in your own time baby. They recognized me and started screeching. So I moved on. I found myself by the grave of Oscar Wilde, a famous playwright from long ago. And there was this really old lady kind of leaning against his grave. She smiled at me and called me over. I thought maybe she was going to croak. But she wanted to talk to me, to anyone.

Her English was okay. She told me that she was ninety years old, and that she had known Oscar Wilde when she was a little girl. She said that he had been very kind to her and that she'd never forgotten it. I didn't know who the hell Oscar Wilde was (I do now) so I just mumbled something and left. As I was walking away, I looked over my shoulder to wave goodbye to the old broad, but she had vanished. A weird feeling came over me - with the old lady and the Morrison groupies all together - like Time got screwed up. I like to live for the moment. You can look back, but never stare.

The next night I was in New York City. Amid the noise, filth, hamburgers, neon and sleaze, I felt my body slowing returning to life. On the spur of the moment I decided to take a cross-country train to Los Angeles. I spent most of that trip in my private captain with a twenty-two year old Egyptian lady who told me she was a princess. I doubt that. No princess could ever mix a drink like that broad.

My next step? I thought maybe I could leverage my Paris gig as a raconteur. But no, Americans hate that stuff. It had to be music. But that's not what happened. Instead, within two weeks, I found myself mud wrestling with Marlon Brando in his backyard in L.A. And Brando is a very big man. In fact, I passed the next year with Marlon and can tell you the true, sick story behind the exploding wart hog.

You want to hear about that?

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