Incident @ Entebbe by R.J. Cardy
After the gig we moved the gear. I took the drumstool and a guitar from beside the stage and carried them outside where a couple of security guys were leaning against a waisthigh wall smoking cigarettes. We were on a concrete landing between the stagedoor entrance and a small flight of stairs leading to the carpark below. It had rained during the show. In their wetness the leaves on the trees to my left reflected the orange light of the streetlamps and a lone skinny alsatian rooted hopefully amongst some busted kleensaks discarded in a heap beneath the stairs. As I reached the ground I breathed in the cool night air and suddenly a young woman's voice swore angrily from the darkness. I peered through the spaces between the stairs to my right and there was a teenage girl standing over by the bags of rubbish wearing only a t-shirt and underpants. She looked toward me, kneeling and pulling her t-shirt down around her legs, repeating "Oh s***, oh f***" and wiping her hair from her face. I started to ask what the matter was when one of the security guys ran down the stairs and shone a powerful longhandled torch in the girl's direction. Her t-shirt was white with an iron-on design showing ET - The Extraterrestrial. She moaned and said, "I was just going for a piss and some stupid dog spewed all over my pants." From the way she spoke I could tell she had been drinking.
The second security guy arrived and asked the first guy to switch off his torch then pushed both hands together in a praying shape and casually bit his bottom lip. The first security guy asked me, "Who's she?" I told him I didn't know. The second guy said to the space beneath the stairs, "Show's over miss, time to go home." The girl in the darkness stayed where she was, mumbling f*** and s*** quietly to herself.
I mentioned to the second security guy, who had taken a big silver ring with about twenty keys on it out of his pocket and was passing it back and forth between his hands, that the girl had taken off her pants to pee and something about a dog spewing. He looked at the first security guy, said "Torch" and tossed the keys in the air. The first guy tossed the torch at the second guy with his right hand and caught the keys with his left. At the same time the second guy caught the torch with his right hand and switched it on not with any finger but by smacking it against his right leg. Both security guys clicked their tongues and went "Swee-eet" at the end of this exchange.
"Excuse me, miss," said the guy with the torch, shining it at the ground beneath the stairs until the circle of light's outermost arc came to a stop at the girl's feet: "If those're your pants I suggest you put them back on." He referred to a crumpled pair of jeans draped over a ripped-open kleensak at the centre of the lighted area. I could see steam rising from the pool of greyish brown dogsick which covered most of the upper half of the pair of jeans so I protested, "She can't put them back on - just look at all that vomit."
By this time Rich and one of the Americans had reached the bottom of the stairs. They stood to the left of me and the security guys, holding an amp between them. Neither of them seemed to be interested in what was going on though the American chuckled and raised his eyebrows when he heard me say vomit. Rich asked after the van keys and I reached into one of my trouser pockets. They weren't there. I noticed both security guys observing me closely as I went through each of my pockets in search of the keys. I pulled out a few coins, some five-dollar bills, guitar picks, scraps of paper, a swiss army knife, a ballpoint pen, a house key, a practiseroom key, a drum key, a backstage pass, a broken lens from an old pair of sunglasses, a piece of green elastic and a condom before coming to the van keys. Rich briefly let go of his end of the amp with one hand to catch the keys but in my effort to maintain hold of the various other bits and pieces still in my hands I lamely misthrew and the van keys disappeared into a grate set into the floor of the carpark. The guards laughed. "F*** Bob," muttered Rich, bending his legs in time with the American to put down their load. He stared futilely at the grate for a few seconds then sat down on the amp. "We need those keys man."
"Look, I'll think of something," I said. "Do you know there's a girl under the stairs here and a dog's chucked on her jeans and I think she's drunk -"
"I'm not drunk," shouted the girl drunkenly. "What happened to the Americans?"
By now the two security guys were standing with their arms crossed looking amused. Another American was coming down the stairs with a p.a. speaker and a can of beer. Behind him Pants and Z Bob were bringing down the bass bin. I ran up the stairs and passed Matt and the other Americans with the rest of the gear on the landing. One of them said "That's everything" but I could see my cotton bag on the floor inside the glass doors of the stage-entrance. I grabbed it and raced back down the stairs. The security guys were on their way up, whistling and jangling their oversized keyrings. "We have to lock up now," one of them announced. "Your mates are taking care of your girlfriend." I'd been about to thank them for their help but I was miffed by that girlfriend remark and I remembered how they'd both sniggered when I threw away the van keys so instead I said to nobody in particular, "It's gonna be one of those nights."
Back at the bottom of the stairs the girl in the underpants was sitting on the bass bin smoking a cigarette and chatting to the Americans. I reached into my cotton bag and pulled out my brown starspangled slacks. "Here's some pants," I offered, "How far do you live from here?" She held up the slacks and made a highpitched noise like a squeal and a laugh. "These are nice, " she added, "Can I keep them?" "No," I said, "I'm sorry, really, I need them. Just so you get home safe." She gave me an awful look and threw the trousers on the ground. I picked them up and she jabbed in my direction with her cigarette and complained to the Americans, "I don't want his help, I want an American." The Americans looked embarrassed and tried to reason with the girl. They were tired, they needed to drive back to Auckland, it simply wasn't safe for a young woman to be wandering around drunk wearing only a t-shirt and underpants. The girl repeated her "I'm not drunk" line and stamped her foot for emphasis, but because she was sitting on the bass bin at the time and because she plainly was indeed drunk, the act of stamping her foot, instead of adding force to her words, merely pulled the rest of her body suddenly forward so that she fell off the bass bin and collapsed in a heap on the ground. The Americans picked her up and sat her down on the stairs where she came to, wriggling with discomfort and complaining about the rain soaking through her knickers. They pleaded with her once more, it's late, it's a s****y night, for Pete's sake put on these pants. This time she nodded and took my pants and started to put them on. She even said Which one's Pete to the Americans. One of them pointed to the van and told her he's sleeping in there with his monkey. Then the girl stood up in my pants and looked pissed off with the wisecracking Americans. She made as if to shake them off despite the fact they remained seated on the stairs. She took three steps forward pointing vaguely toward the end of the driveway out of the carpark then fell over once again.
During all this kerfuffle the others had loaded as much gear as they could into the boot of Matt's car. He and Z Bob were about to drive to a service station to call the AA to get a replacement key for the van. Meanwhile we were to pile up the rest of the gear beside the van and wait for their return. I pointed to the Americans, who once more were propping the girl up between them on the stairs, and said, "I don't know about this situation over here, I think we ought to give this girl a lift home before she starts throwing up." I noticed Matt wasn't too enthusiastic about the prospect of somebody regurgitating inside his automobile and quickly added that I didn't think she'd gotten to that stage just yet and that I'd stick my duvet on the backseat and ride in there with her. I actually promised the girl would not be sick. Matt nodded okay and opened the door and I leaned into the backseat and spread out my crumby duvet. I called out to the Americans to bring our guest to the car and climbed in myself, watching the following sequence of events from the rear window: the girl getting up, weaving forward, falling, caught by the helpful Americans; the girl thanking them, clinging to their waists; the Americans leading the girl to the car; the girl worming out of the arms of the Americans and waving a hand back at the stairs shouting "My jeans, my shoes." I shut my eyes and hugged my legs, banging my forehead against my knees in backseat exasperation.
When at last the Americans succeeded in bringing the girl, who was wet and dirty from falling over in the carpark, she squinted into the backseat from outside Matt's door and suddenly lurched backwards with a sour grimace. Pants, who was holding the girl's shoes in one hand and gingerly folding her soiled jeans on the bonnet of the car with the other, bent forward grabbing his crotch and going "Oof!" A wad of chewing gum flew from his mouth and landed in the middle of the windscreen. The girl had inadvertently elbowed him in the nuts. He howled and tears streamed from his eyes. The girl turned to discover the reason for this new calamity, unaware of her part in it, complaining once more that what she wanted was an American. She would not get into the car, she explained, unless she could sit beside a real American. I heard one of them yell at her heatedly, "Will you just shut up and get in the car," while from over at the van somebody colly uttered "Let her walk." I could feel the situation worsening. I climbed out from the backseat and said to the girl, pointing at Matt, "Please, tell him where you live, get in the car; these guys, these real live American guys, will get in beside you and in two minutes you'll be home. Get cleaned up and make sure you return my pants." I was literally whispering but I could feel little flecks of spit bouncing off my lips as I spoke, a sure sign of anger. "Please, we all just wanna go home." The girl shrugged and climbed into the car. I winced as she caught the cuff of my brown starspangled slacks on a protruding seat-lever and the fabric ripped sending a tin star spinning to the ground. Get in, get in, I motioned to the Americans, "And don't come back without my pants, you hear, they're very special to me, they were a gift, I'm not going back to Auckland without them." Matt and Z Bob got into the front seat and I shut Matt's door. He wound down his window and gave me the thumbs up with his left hand, starting the engine with his right. Z Bob slid a cassette into the dashboard deck and the car rumbled forward. I could see the pained expressions on the faces of the Americans through one of the back windows while an ACDC song blasted out from the front. The song was 'Highway To Hell.'