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XXX We All Look Alike
Richard and I were both tall blond and pink. Actually, I was sort of a
mottled pink because I liked to lie in the sun and damage my skin--at
least until skin cancer set in about ten years after his death. Richard
avoided the sun like a vampire. In any case, I think that, to the Japanese
who saw us, we may have been a big, hulking American stereotype.
I know that when three Japanese journalists from FM Tokyo and Pioneer
Stereo came to interview Richard for a segment on Montana writers, they
did sort of a double take after they saw us standing together there in his
front yard. In spite of the fact that they were all named Ken, they didn’t
look much alike. Ken Okubo looked like an intellectual. Ken Nagano, looked
like a Hollywood mover and shaker, and Kaneo (I can’t remember his last
name), looked like a techno-geek. Oddly enough, they did what they looked
like. Actually, there was a fourth who wasn’t named Ken, but I can’t
remember what he did.
We all spent a memorable June afternoon wandering around Richard’s place
while he struck noble poses and made sweeping majestic statements about
the West. Kaneo followed him, holding up a microphone attached to a tiny
miraculous device (miraculous for the early ‘80s) that made studio-quality
recordings. After a while, Richard asked them to record me pretending to
arrive at his place then performing one of my songs, so I played “The
Ballad of Billy Montana.” Sometime during the recording, (on Richard’s
back porch) a bee bit me, but I kept on playing. When I finished, I
explained why I’d skipped a beat and Richard went into stitches.
The guys loved this and got it all on tape for their show. Later, Ken
Nagano said, with the ease and flair of a Hollywood mover and shaker, that
there was great demand for songwriters and musicians. (I’ve never found
such a demand, but at the time I’m writing this, March of ‘03, you can
hear MP3s of these recordings at troutball.com. Who knows, maybe if fate
or terrorists or war mongering idiots haven’t ravaged the internet by the
time you read this, you’ll still be able to access the site.)
During a break in the recording, Richard took me aside and taught me a
brief Japanese phrase to repeat for his guests. To the present day, I’ve
never known what it meant, but when I said it, they all started bowing.
After they recorded the Captain shooting cans with his .22 pump action
rifle for a while, he suggested that we go for a ride up to the top of
Trail Creek, so we all piled in my Mazda and headed out.
I was a little nervous because Richard had brought a bottle of Jack
Daniels and kept passing it among them. I think he had somehow convinced
them that if they declined they were violating a native tradition.
At any rate, by the time we pulled over at the pass, they were all pale
and trembling. I thought it must have been the whisky, but Richard later
explained that there were no dirt roads in their part of Japan and the
washboard ride up the mountain had scared the bajeezus out of them.
Back at El Rancho Brautigan, Richard fixed us all pepper steaks, but they
just nibbled the edges of theirs. Richard told me that they would probably
put in for combat pay when they returned to Tokyo.
A year later, another Japanese crew from Pioneer Stereo came to the area
to make commercials. Since Richard was away, they seemed to be grasping at
straws, so they to came my house in Bozeman to interview me about how I
thought their products might function in the Montana wilderness. I, of
course, had no idea, but with a little help from Judy, I came up with a
jingle for them:
My pick up’s stalled, my barn burned down.
My wife left with the horse.
My kids are in San Francisco
And are Moonies now, of course.
My neighbor took my whisky
And drank up my last beer,
But I’ve still got my stereo,
And it’s a Pioneer.
When they seemed tickled with the song and said they’d pass it along to
their boss, Mr. Kato, I felt a little like Richard’s Bozeman body double,
the way they bustled around me with their equipment. (Oh yeah, Mr. Big
Time, a happenin’ kind of guy.) Before they left, they invited me to come
to their motel to be “compensated” for my efforts, so I popped in on them
the next day and was a bit surprised to see Japanese nudie magazines
strewn about the room. “Here, take one home with you,” said an efficient
looking young man in black horn-rimmed glasses with a check for $150 in
one hand and a nudie magazine in the other.
I declined the magazine and probably should have declined the little
check, for, as I left, I somehow felt that I’d tarnished the image of big
blond American doofuses everywhere. When Richard returned and I told him
what I’d done, he did little to discourage this notion.
“They gave you money?”
“Well, uh, yes--but just a hundred dollars or so.”
“Or so?”
“Well, maybe a hundred and fifty.”
“Maybe?”
The way the Captain was grilling me, and by the tone he was taking, I felt
the conversation might just as well have gone something like this:
“They gave you silver?”
“Well, uh, yes--but just twenty-five pieces or so.
“Or so?”
“Well, maybe thirty.”
The next company to contact me was Japanese Jim Beam. Richard was in the
area and they had tried to get ahold of him, but he had been illusive, so
they called me and asked if I’d talk to him. I stupidly agreed and called
him.
“Ah, so now you are my Japanese agent?”
“Well, no, I just....”
“You just were hoping to get your hands on a little money?”
“No, I only....”
“Did you know that they want to use me and my house to make a whisky
commercial?”
“They didn’t tell....”
“Did you know they would pay me a lot of money to make this commercial?”
“I had no....”
“But since you have decided to be my agent, here is what I want you to
tell them.”
“Yes?”
“I want you to tell them to get fucked.”
“I don’t think....”
“That’s right. You don’t think. You just tell them to get fucked.”
Click.
I knew the Captain had been drinking more lately, but I didn’t realize
that he would turn his vitriol on the Japanese as well as his friends. The
next time the Jim Beam guy called, I told him that Richard wasn’t feeling
well and that he didn’t want to involve himself in any projects for quite
a while. The man became distraught and started speaking in a strange
poetic voice saying something about a blue window, or a cold blue wind. I
told him I was sorry but there was nothing I could do. The next time I
talked to Richard, he told me that the guy was hinting at suicide. I
thought that was awful, but Richard only said, “It is his decision.”
A few months later the Captain reconsidered and accused me of losing him a
huge contract and a lot of money. I said, “I’m no agent,” and he said, “No
shit!”
In a less traumatic way, Japanese women also seemed to confuse me with
Richard. Earlier, I’ve mentioned how Masako kept in touch with me, even
after Richard’s death, but another more recent and perhaps more contorted
episode springs to mind. After his triumphant “Fuck Me Like Fried
Potatoes” reading at the M.S.U. Chemistry building, a young Japanese woman
from one of my Freshman writing classes came blushing and bowing to the
podium to meet him and have him sign her copy of Sombrero Fall-Out. When
he finished, she trotted out as fast as her little feet could carry her,
and I thought he was going to trip trying to catch up with her, but she
vanished, having no idea that her idol was in hot lumbering pursuit.
In subsequent writing classes, she would hardly ever look at me and she
blushed when she did. Shortly after the quarter was over, I saw her again
through the front window of my living room where I was wandering around in
my underwear. I was reading some poetry and glanced up just in time to see
her passing in a car. I didn’t think she could see me, but just as I
recognized her, I saw that she was looking at my front window so intensely
that she bumped into the car in front of her. I went to my room to put on
some clothes, and when I came back she was nowhere to be seen.
Richard loved this story and had me repeat it to him several times. Later,
the whole thing culminated in her marrying a big blond Bozeman Police
officer who lived across the street from me. She had obviously found an
available one of us and married it.
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
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