Golden Brown
Texture like sun
Lays me down
With my mind she runs
Throughout the night
No need to fight
Never a frown
With Golden Brown
Every time
Just like the last
On her ship
Tied to the mast
To distant lands
Takes both my hands
Never a frown
With Golden Brown
Golden Brown
Finer temptress
Through the ages
She’s heading west
From far away
Stays for a day
Never a frown
With Golden Brown
Never a frown
With Golden Brown
Never a frown
With Golden Brown
Never a frown
With Golden Brown
Never a frown
With Golden Brown
The Stranglers Golden Brown La Folie (1981)
I wish I could tell you I fell in with a ‘bad crowd,’ or something, but in this case I was the ‘bad crowd,’ and I instigated all sorts of weird shit and thoughtlessly got my friends involved. My friends, although I didn’t realize it so much at the time, actually looked up to me. That is to say, I knew I was popular, and I’ve always known I was attractive (I mean, I get told that often enough; it’s enough to turn anyone’s head), but all my friends were popular and attractive, too, and I just thought we were like ‘birds of a feather,’ hanging together, nothing more than that, but I was wrong. Man, was I ever wrong!
Some of my friends still look up to me, surprisingly enough after all the shit I put them through, and for some reason, even though they now go to twelve-step ‘meetings,’ they don’t blame me for anything. I’m lucky to have had… to have such good friends. I really didn’t do anything to deserve them.
What I started getting them involved in, first, was drinking. That may seem surprising to some because we all played sports and were good athletes who practiced a lot and played hard. But we also partied ‘hearty,’ and whenever we had some time off, we would all get together, usually at my house, and drink.
We drank anything and everything, but because it was my house, my rules, I made us experiment with making classic cocktails from recipe books by Mr Boston and Trader Vic and other esteemed ‘mixologists.’ They were like warped science experiments with beakers and flasks that would get you high! And like good scientists, we made sure we had all the right ingredients and measured and mixed everything by the book.
It was totally wild! I know I don’t sound too contrite, saying that, but we got really good at it! We made Planter’s Punches and Mai Tais and Zombies and Samoan Fogcutters, all these Trader Vic’s specialty drinks, with three kinds of rum, including Myer’s from Jamaica, Mount Gay from Barbados and Lemon Hart 151° Demarara Rum from Guyana.
The tropical drinks also usually contained Cointreau, Grand Marnier or Triple Sec (one kind, blue Curaçao, was interesting, but you couldn’t mix it with yellow or orange ingredients, or it would turn the drink a murky green); fresh lime, orange, pineapple and mango juices (but canned coconut milk, whenever that was called for); and flavoured sweeteners like Barbados Falernum and Orgeat. We agreed, if all else fails in our lives, we could move to some tropical island and become professional bartenders.
Later, however, as I began to go more off course over my brother’s death, I started ‘self medicating,’ as my shrink at the time put it, doing some pretty hard drugs: Percodan and Vicodin at first, but ultimately Demerol, Dilaudid and heroin. It may seem like a rationalisation to some, but it really was self medication. I took all those drugs, and later showed my friends how to take them, as a doctor would; no dangerous, junkie bullshit ‘boosting,’ ‘mainlining,’ injecting into the bloodstream for us, but smart, subcutaneous and intramuscular injections with scrupulously new needles.
Because my friends all noticed how much more chill than usual I was, and being the nice guy I am, I happily shared my drugs with them (all, by the way, except for the heroin obviously, obtained legally by prescription). When I finally came down enough to take stock of what I had done not only to me and my friends, but to everyone else, including my family and my friends’ families, I felt ashamed. But it took me a long time to get to that point. And what finally did it was my being hospitalised for four months.
The doctors said regardless of whatever was the underlying cause that drove me to ‘self-medicate’ in the first place (that is to say, the drug taking that thus became the symptoms of my disease), my former ‘symptoms’ now had become the disease itself. They gave me a ‘choice:’ either admit myself to the hospital voluntarily; or they would have me committed involuntarily. For better or worse, I felt too shitty to argue with them at the time, so off I went to an internationally renowned mental hospital that just so happened to be located in my very own hometown (a veritable elephant’s graveyard of hospitals, by the way, some of the best, or at least most highly rated, in the country; it’s a good place to come to die if dying is on your mind).
Fortunately, the hospital also had a residential high school, run by Quakers, so I didn’t have to fall behind too much at school. Ironically, I stayed ‘institutionalised’ as long as I did in part because I didn’t want to leave the school before the end of the semester. Though the classes were small, it really wasn’t all that much of a school due to the shape my fellow students were in, but, I’m legally not allowed to speak about that, or them.
As my sources for the prescription drugs dried up, my friends and I gradually turned to the streets. I know we attracted attention in certain neighbourhoods, but the attention was surprisingly benign for the most part. Maybe we were charmed, or simply charmed others with our wholesome good looks and good manners, but someone evidently liked us, and in due course, our connections for heroin became more high up, and the quality improved dramatically.
We also became more sophisticated about the best way to take it and, as the heroin got purer, soon learned we only needed to snort it. Like budding connoisseurs, we learned to appreciate the finer points of the subtle flavour and aroma of the different brands. Brown heroin, which was not so easy to inject anyway (like some of our cocktails, it required fresh lemon juice), more closely resembled the raw opium from which it was derived, and it soon became our favourite, along with the brown lagers and black ales, which we also discovered around the same time, and which nicely complemented the taste of the drug with their own earthy flavours.
Oops, another cliffhanger: will our boy get out alive? Stay tuned. If he survives two weeks in Ibiza, he’ll be back to carry on his sordid tale. As usual, the Stranglers have the last word. Cheers! ¡Hasta Luego, mis amigos!
Big girl in the red dress
She’s just trying to impress us
And she’s got the barley fever
But she doesn’t make a sound
She’s just hanging around
She’s just hanging around
Down the Court Road early
With the hustlers, big and burly
There’s a million of ‘em selling
And the buyers can be found
They’re just hanging around
They’re just hanging around
Christ, he told his mother
Christ, he told her not to bother
Cos he’s all right in the city
Cos he’s high above the ground
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
One of ‘em comes over
Got a monkey on his shoulder
And the monkey’s getting grimmer
But his eyes are on the ground
He’s just hanging around
He’s just hanging around
I’m moving to old Coleheme
With the leather all around me
And the sweat is getting steamy
But their eyes are on the ground
They’re just hanging around
They’re just hanging around
Christ, he told his mother
Christ, he told her not to bother
Cos he’s all right in the city
Cos he’s high above the ground
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around (hanging around)
He’s just hanging around
The Stranglers Hanging Around Rattus Norvegicus (1977)
