A Wuxtry Related Experience

In the early days of the Euclid store I lived nearby in a six family flat on West Pine. I lived with a friend named Marge. We were making films, batiks, audio recordings, writing poetry, throwing parties, and growing mushrooms under the tub.

One night two of the seediest guys I’ve ever seen were pounding on a door upstairs. They wanted to buy drugs and their dealer wasn’t home. They knocked on our door. Marge ran out on our porch to hide somehow knowing they were trouble. I opened the door and they asked if they could use our phone. I let them in and one of them said he knew me from Wuxtry. He assumed I was the owner. He then pulled a gun and asked where the store money was. I told him I was just an employee and he hit me on top of the head with the gun’s butt. His friend came in from the porch pulling Marge by the hair.

This reminded me of an incident as a teen-ager hanging out at Marge’s house. I was listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra records with her sister Kay (IF U C Kay, tell her we said hello).

Marge was taking a shower. Her mother flew through the room into the bathroom dragging out a naked, wet Marge who was kicking and screaming. “You’re a whore for taking a shower with a boy in the house”, she yelled. She did mellow quite a bit before she died I must say.

Anyway back to the robbery.

The friend dragging Marge in by the hair made some remark about how pretty she was. “A strange time to be flirtatious”, I thought. “Where’s the dope”? the gunman asked. “I don’t smoke”, I said. He looked at my long hair and hit me on top of the head with the gun again.

(A brief aside here) I’m not going to pretend I’ve never taken drugs. If fact I’ve tried just about every psychotropic substance known. I have never had a tolerance for marijuana though. A couple of hits, a mild buzz, third hit rooms spins- David vomits. One advantage for me is I experience a psychedelic effect. A sense of “standing outside looking in” objectivity. Music’s shapes and textures are incredibly vivid. A deeper understanding of life’s tragedy, that death is certain. Understanding the language of art and all human experience. This on only two and a half hits. Most people I know only use it to get fucked up. It might as well be alcohol or barbiturates.

Anyway back to the robbery.

The gunman’s partner found an ounce Marge had in her purse that I knew nothing about and threw it on our dining room table. “Liar”’ the gunman said. Another blow to the back of the head. The next thing we knew we were being rolled up in two Asian carpets. One of them said, “Count backward from a hundred before you come out, that'll give us time to get to our car”. So that's exactly what we did!

Right about this time St. Louis’ Punk/New Wave scene was beginning to emerge.

More on this next time