Aug Stone - Nick Caves Bar

Nick Caves Bar

by Aug Stone

Copyright 2020 by Aug Stone

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

First printing: 2020

Ebook ISBN 978-1-0879-3080-0

www.augstone.com

Cover design by Christine Navin

Lyrics from Straight To You, From Her To Eternity, Red Right Hand, I Let Love In, Nobodys Baby Now, Hallelujah, and Papa Wont Leave You, Henry by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds are reprinted by kind permission from the author

Lyrics from Strasbourg by Julian Cope are reprinted by kind permission from the author

Lyrics from The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side by The Magnetic Fields are reprinted by kind permission from the author

Excerpts from Vladimir Nabokovs Transparent Things and The Eye are reprinted with kind permission from Penguin Random House

for Andy

Table of Contents

Introduction The Days Of Rainbows

In June 1999, my best friend and I flew to Germany to find the bar Id heard Nick Cave owned in Berlin. In our heads wed get off the plane, ask which way to Nick Caves bar?, and then spend the rest of our time living it up amidst the wild world of its confines. Instead what followed were nine days of confusion, thwarted plans, and perpetual drunken misery. Nevertheless, I look back on it all with great fondness. 2019 marked the 20 th anniversary of our trip. To this day, Im not sure Nick Cave ever owned a bar in Berlin.

I I Wanna Tell Ya About A Girl

It all started with a woman named Kate. No, not that one. Or that one. See, women named Kate have always had a big effect on my life the red-haired high school crush who one night asked me to come out with her and her friends and oh how I couldnt believe it when the words materializing from my mouth somehow declined the offer, making for much regret, or my teenage torch who I never got the chance to tell how I truly felt, causing years of the same. And then theres my partner-in-Pop over in London, with whom Ive had many a musical adventure. Expand this to Katherine, Kathryn, and Catherine, and the effects go on and on. Now that I think about it, that first woman I mentioned was Katie. An i in there, a 1 if you will, for our paths only ever intersected on that single occasion. But, oh, what an impact her words were to have on my life.

I met Katie at a hostel in Barcelona where she was working. She was friends with a guy named Paul with whom I had spent the day playing chess. I think they may have dated when they lived in Berlin. Their story was never entirely clear, but they had recently moved to Spain, if not together, then at the same time, and seemed to get along fine. Paul was from Arizona, Katie Australia. I lost most of the chess matches, which is no real surprise. My approach to the game was much like my approach to living at that time adopt no real strategy and just see what happens. At some point, though, youve got to have a plan, or else youll be down to your solitary king, scrambling for your life as the ravens and rooks take wing. Youll see. That evening, after play had exhausted and the pieces were packed away, we all went to the beach with a bottle of red. Strolling through a public square, I turned to Katie and asked, Do you like Nick Cave?

Man, Im Australian. I love Nick Cave. He owns a bar in Berlin, you know. I always meant to go when I lived there.

But this all really starts with a girl named Terri. One of those girls everyone falls in love with. And Id been for two years at that point. Shortly after I first met her, I hesitated one night when I should have kissed her and she quickly became one of my best friends. Tough thing being in love with one of your best friends. Even tougher to have a close friend be in love with you. But I valued our friendship enormously. For in those dark times of your late teens and early twenties, when youre just trying to exist and find out who you are, and the world doesnt seem to much care about either, often appearing to insist on the former while stripping you of the latter, I felt that Terri actually did care. If ever I was sad, which I often was, Terri would take me out on her front porch and wed sit and smoke cigarettes and talk. I have a feeling this kind of stuff is normal for most people. But for me, intensely shy by nature, who lives so much in his own head and almost entirely so in those days, I found this both wonderful and scary. And most of all rare.

I say intensely shy by nature, but thats only part of it. Ive delved deep into Chinese metaphysics the past five years and this is one of the characteristics of the Fire Dragon, the year I was born. But the day I was born was the day of the Fire Horse, which being doubly Yang Fire, is the most extroverted of all the animals in the Zodiac. It is the pull between these two energies that symbolizes what I am. A metaphysics teacher summed it up best with You have a great desire to be seen, and also a terrible fear of it. That could be why I write to be out there but from a safe middle distance. This is all relevant to whats coming, trust me. Also of note on the Chinese Astrology tip is that all this Fire, and a constant seeking to cool it down with, what else, Water, may very well be why I drank so much. I have noticed that like me, the star charts of my friends with Horse and Dragon in their make-ups all seem to be able to drink astronomical amounts of alcohol. My future traveling companion also has Dragon and Horse in his chart. Youll meet him soon.

Back to Terri. After graduating Boston University in 1998, we decided to backpack around Europe together. She was going for three months or so and I would join her for the first leg of her journey, a month and a half from Amsterdam to Rome, counter-clockwise. From the get-go, we had wildly different ideas of what we wanted from the trip and she mustve thought I was joking when I told her I planned on being drunk the whole time, keen to see what European nightlife had to offer. The final straw came only a week into it, when I left Notre-Dame cathedral after only five minutes to go to the Paris Rough Trade record shop. I have no regrets about this. I fondly recall holding The Springfields Wonder 7 single, Sarah Records SARAH40, in my hands and weighing up the chances of the vinyl not breaking in my rucksack. Sarah is another huge name in my life, but thats a whole other story, probably many more. Ultimately I put the record back on the shelf, the risk being too great, but I would think of this often until I finally found the single again at the Notting Hill Music Exchange in London some years later. Rough Trade Paris isnt there anymore and I can find little information about it on the internet. Im so glad I went. Ascending up that tiny back staircase, to the angelic sounds of the records above. Notre-Dame, I have always reasoned, will be there forever should I ever feel I need more time in it. In twenty years I havent. Though I was a little shaken while working on an early draft of this story, when the news came that the cathedral had caught fire. So much for assumptions...

Ill freely admit Im not the easiest travelling companion. It often takes me days to adjust to jetlag, and staying true to my m.o. of being all about the nightlife, sleeping all day in Amsterdam and Brussels seemed simply a necessary prerequisite. Arising at 4 PM local Belgian time, I felt refreshed and ready. In my youthful idiocy I was genuinely surprised to find that Terri, who had spent the day sightseeing alone, was not pleased with my behavior, and her admonishment that youll never get to sleep at night if you sleep all day I felt missed the point. Remember my awesome m.o.?

Sensing something was off, I decided not to head to the nearest bar and instead opted to look for something cultural to do in these environs. With my childhood love for Asterix and Tintin springing back to life from being around so much