MangoZeen

DARK SIDE OF THE MOON had sold over 15 million LPs, cassettes, and CDs. Pink Floyd soared to even greater heights with THE WALL. 22 million units, yet I have never heard a song from either effort in a Pattaya Go-Go. Pink Floyd does better in Soi 8 beer bars.

“We don’t need no education.”

Dinosaur Rock rules Pattaya. It’s what farangs hear on the radio driving back and forth from their meaningless jobs. Me, I’m into garage rock. LOUIE LOUIE is a fantastic go-go bump-n-grind song and the Kingsmen hit evokes memories of Boston’s Combat Zone. The sax-organ-drums trio playing covers for leggy blonde runaways of 1971. Hilde. She was 16. I was 18. Together we were trouble. Even more trouble when he boyfriend got out of reform school. The 19 year-old car thief and I had a fistfight over her. He won.That was 37 years ago.

I was old way before today.

Back in 1986 I was working at the Milk Bar in New York. Our crowd favored cokeheads and models. I took a 19 year-old mulatto to my apartment. She was a singer. I wish I could remember her name. That shard of memory loss isn’t the first sign of my old-timers’ disease.

Upon entering my apartment on East 10th Street she said, “I’ve been here before.”

With my subleasee. A Swedish male nurse. He liked black chicks.

“When I came here the first time, I wondered who lived here.”

“Really?” My flat was a classic homage to the 1920s.

“Yeah, looking at the records I figured the guy had to be a hippie.”

“Hippie?” I had hitchhiked to San Francisco in 1970 three years too late for the summer of love. I had worn bell-bottom and a tie-dye shirt. My girlfriends didn’t shave their armpits.

What was wrong with liking Quicksilver Messenger Service?

Love.

All we need is love.

What was wrong was being a hippie dated my age like a ring on a redwood tree.

1971.

Ancient.

I was, am, and will be an old hippie.

A punk too.

1977.

“I wanna be sedated.”

This afternoon on Soi 6 the fountain of youth was flowing with the unabashed compliments of working girls. “You very sexy.”

“Do you know DARK SIDE OF THE MOON?” I have the CD in my pocket.