vincent galo // canavarlar

brown bunny

EĞLENCELİ BİR VİNCENT GALLO SÖYLEŞİSİ

BİR ZAMANLAR UÇAKLARDA SİGARA İÇİLEBİLDİĞİNDEN BAHSETMİŞ
BİZİM DE OTOBÜSLER VARDI

The Big Schlep
(Essay for Dutch Magazine, August 2000)
By Vincent Gallo

My family didn't travel much. Biggest trips of my childhood were before I
started school. My mother worked everyday in her beauty parlor that was
in the storefront of our house. My father, who didn't want a job, was stuck
with me and dragged me seven days a week to various racetracks within
driving distance of Buffalo. Lots of traveling. And boy, was it fun. I got to
starve all day long, and finally maybe get a hot dog and a cup of warm
water, while watching my father lose my mother's hard-earned pay.

I took a trip alone on my bicycle once - as far as I could go - real real far,
five neighborhoods away, to a part of Buffalo called the Fruit Belt. The
street names had fruit names, you know? Like Banana Street. Let's just
say, in this neighborhood there were more than a handful of blacks.
Actually, I think I was the only whitey there that day. Soon I was mugged,
beaten down and robbed of the only nickel in my pocket by three
seventeen-year-old black kids. I was six. When I got home, my father beat
me up and told me I was a pussy-fagot. He said why didn't I bring them
home to rob the whole house? That was my first trip. I guess you could
say travellin's in my blood.

As a kid, I had only seen airplanes on TV. I was from boat-people. I didn't
know anybody who actually went on a plane until I was sixteen and living
in New York City. I had to hitchhike there from Buffalo. One fag who gave
me a ride tried to blow me so I made him let me out. I didn't get another
lift for seven hours. It was cold that day.

My first airplane ride was to Europe. I went through one of those
messenger services where you get to go for free if you carry a package on
the plane. I was seventeen then. It was real easy. All I had to do was
sleep at the airport for four or five days waiting for a package that needed
to be carried to somewhere in Europe. When I got there all I had to do
was find some free food and a place to stay and figure out a way back.
Why the hell would poor people travel by plane? Why would anyone? It's
such a schlep. A big nasty, schlep. Why would anybody get on a plane
unless they were making millions to travel? I really don't get it. People are
stinky and planes are stinky too, they're filled with disease. They're so
mean at the airport and it's expensive and dirty, it's a hassle. A pure
hassle and a pure schlep. Who the fuck would fly on a plane in coach? It's
so creepy. A vacation should be sitting in bed eating chips and dips,
watching TV, and being massaged and blown by a robot - that's a
vacation. That's travelling. Schlepping overseas makes no sense, it's dumb,
especially to France, which was the first place I went. How much cheese,
tobacco, caffeine, wine and sugar can one filthy, French person shove into
their bodies in one day? Not even the filthy polluted air of Paris could cut
down the stench off those fermented French assholes.

I smoked pot twice in my life. Pot is bad. I don't like it. I don't like pot
people. It's evil, and so are all the people who smoke it. When I take over
the world, the first thing I do is to put pot-smokers in a room and tape
them together. Anyway, because I was a little afraid of flying, some
asshole suggested I smoke a joint on the plane and he gave me one. He
must have been a pusher. Remember when people could smoke cigarettes
on a plane? They'd smoke the whole flight like pigs. Filthy pigs. Thank God
they stopped that. Anyway, I went into the bathroom of the plane and lit
up the joint. Soon a Beetle song got stuck in my head and in minutes I was
freaking out. I guess it was a month later that I was almost myself again.
That was the worst flight of my miserable life. Imagine - pot and people
and airplanes, all going to France - four wrongs don't make a right. Right?

Anyway, from France by train I wound up in Italy to fly back to New York
from Rome. Just because my last name is Gallo and my parents are from
Sicily, don't think I relate to those monkeys either. Real Italians are from
Buffalo. At one point on the train ride from France to Italy Italian soldiers
filled it up so there was standing room only. I was pressed up against the
wall near a window and something blew into my eye and blinded me. By
the time I got to Rome my eye was swelled up shut. I stayed at the airport
half blind and very hungry, making sad faces 'till someone offered me food.
It was old bread and boy was it good, except for the green parts.

My flight home was on 'Alitalia'. All right. I fucked myself up with pot going
to France, so I'm already a little edgy about flying, I'm just edgy, you
know? I'm having flashbacks, whatever... I'm scared, OK? I'm not chicken
of the plane crashing, kill me please, go ahead, do me a favor - no, I'm just
afraid of my own sick mind locked in a plane. Anyway the flight is
overbooked by hundreds. Somehow a hundred people had the same ticket
as another hundred people, so they start trying to get people off the
plane. I wouldn't budge. After about three fuckin' hours of this shit, they
bribe enough dumb travelers off the plane to take off.

Sitting on my right is a fat Italian woman dressed in all black, with her face
buried in a black handkerchief, bent over, rocking back and forth, crying for
somebody who died. Who knows who. If it were me, I'd be left in my
house for six months before anybody noticed I was dead. Somebody
would come over to borrow money and they'd find me. They be torn. Torn
between whether they should just empty my pockets and leave, or report
me dead. Anyway, this old fatass, lady greaseball makes me real nervous
with her rocking back and forth and crying. I hate it when chicks cry. They
always cry. I didn't do nothin'. Seated to my left was another old bastard,
an old Italian man greaseball. There's a lot of old people in Italy, I
guess 'cause they never work. All they do is eat. God forbid they should
work.

Anyway, halfway through this miserable flight, the Old Italian man
greaseball to my left starts choking and gasping for air. He's convulsing.
Some slut stewardesses come over and eventually one of the monkey
pilots comes with a medical bag. They clear about six of us away while
they work on him. I see needles go into his chest, the whole thing is clear,
I have a bad feeling. Now there's not one extra fucking seat on this plane
so they prop the old bastard in his chair facing out the window with some
blankets all over him and they force me to sit back down next to him. I
know the guy's dead. He's cold and he's stiff. He's dead, OK? Dead. Dead,
dead, dead. They tell me he's just sleeping and he's going to be fine. I fly
four more hours next to a dead guy and a crying woman. Both stinky. The
Italian man greaseball still with some drool hanging from his mouth.
Hanging there uninvited like a rubberized, lazy icicle.

You know, when I negotiate a contract for an acting job if I have to fly my
whole salary for the job is based on the pain of the flight. If I have to be in
Europe, the price is double. If I have to go to South America or other
primitive places, it's triple. You couldn't pay me enough to go to a place like
Israel, or Morocco, or Korea, or Albania, or Spain. For a million bucks I
wouldn't even go to Harlem. However, I would consider parts of Austria
and Germany.

My beautiful home is in New York City. I used to love coming home to New
York City from some horrible travelling. It's sad though, when I go back to
New York now, it's not the same. How could it be exciting to go back home
to a city where a born rich kid like that mini-dwarf, faggot, date-raper
Harmony Korine lives. What happened to New York? Remember the old
days when a girl like Connecticut Chloe Sevigny would be lucky to blow for
a living? David LaChapelle was just an average, purse-snatching, faggot
busboy, coke-whore, cleaning up Studio 54? I'm so happy I have a
mansion in LA. If that sephartic Guy Osery didn't live in LA, it really would
be a perfect city.

I like driving. I'm in my car, and I'm all alone, or I'm in my car and I'm being
blown, driving alone or being blown. I get some gas, I get some ass, and
no one with me is smoking grass, and if I want to I sure can pass. Drivin'
drivin' all alone, with no one no one on my back. Just me alone me alone,
in my big black Cadillac.