Guns, heroes and villains — a snapshot of Reagan’s US
A 1987 road trip across America revealed a country riven by fault lines — the same ones that today mark out Trumpland, writes Eugene O’Brien
THIRTY years ago, in the summer of 1987, a friend and I journeyed across Reagan’s America. In many ways, the country then was as divided as Trumpland is today.
At the time, Colonel Oliver North was on the stand over the Iran/Contra affair. To the right-wingers, he was a true American hero — “the nearest thing to John Wayne on this earth”. To the left, he was a liar, diverting arms sales to a fascist army in Nicaragua. We shot magnum 44s with middle-aged right-wingers in the hills of California, who swore that Russia was the empire of evil. America was a very restrained country, helping other smaller countries develop.
Ronald Reagan was not a clever man — he was rather stupid — but he had set a great mood throughout the country. He was a people’s president. Everyone knew he was dumb, but accepted it. They liked the fact that he looked after the rich, as why should they give poor people money?
They also claimed that black people were inferior and this was medically proven — like breeds of dogs, one breed was more developed than another. They were good at sports and things physical, but not mental things, they said.
Another young man claimed that they should put all the “fags” and all the junkies in San Francisco and blow them up.
In San Francisco, we heard the liberal opposing view, all cam- paigning for Democrat Michael Dukakis. We hung out in an anarchist book shop with lesbian heroin addicts who talked a stream of bullshit about America and all its ills. They worshipped Bobby Sands and invited us back to talk to their collective about the North, but we declined.
No, we had a Greyhound bus to catch. A four-day odyssey across the country. We had a dream. A quest. We intended to stop in Lawrence, Kansas to try to meet our hero, cult writer William Burroughs. One of the beat generation, author of Naked Lunch, he shot his wife in Mexico and was a heroin addict and grandson of the man who invented the adding machine.
So we settled into our journey. In the smoking section of the bus, the last three rows, a little community formed. An ever-changing community: people got off, people got on. A well-dressed millionaire who confessed to us that he was scared of flying. A black family who were moving from Ohio to LA. Two fast-talking dudes, riffing like Eddie Murphy, teased the father.
“When you get to LA, man, you are f**ked, it’s a rough city, the cops gonna come, man, point their big gun at your family, tell you to move f **kin’ on, nigga!”
A man beside us urged the guys to shut up and leave the family alone. This man was called Al, a US marine with intense eyes, who was returning home to LA. The father sat in beside me and asked if we got high in Ireland and that he had gone to jail with an Irish guy called Murphy.
He was anxious about nuclear war, but felt better as he’d heard of Reagan’s Star Wars project, but thought it meant that America had a giant dome erected over itself and that when the Russians fired their nuclear warheads, they would just bounce off this protective shield and explode harmlessly in, say, Europe or Asia.
Another man got on, clutching a ghetto blaster to his ears, listening to Iron Maiden music. He lit his smoke and told us that he’d been 11 years in Vietnam crawling around tunnels searching for hidden mines, and only 12 of his 42-man unit had survived.
While at war, he had sent many letters home containing small parts of guns. When he returned, he put the guns back together so now he claimed to have three to four automatic rifles. He wished that America would stop kickin’ ass, stop gettin’ involved, or one day, they’d get their ass kicked.
Al, meanwhile, had invited us to change our plans and get out in LA to come stay with him and his fiancee Mary. We say okay. Mary met us at LA bus station.
Al showed us around Hollywood. I put my hand where Groucho Marx once had his. We filmed Al at the observatory where Rebel Without A Cause was filmed.
“Say a few words for the folks back home, Al.” “No way, guys.” We went drinking that evening in a bar full of marines and cops. Mary joined us. We started to do very well at pool, the pockets were huge, we felt like Fast Eddie, Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, whatever... We were in Hollywood, for God’s sake. But Al seemed to be getting a little tense. He kept buying us beer. The more we won, the more he kept buying us beer. We were well able to drink it.
He challenged us to a game of darts. He began to get a little aggressive. We won that, too. He went very quiet. He then disappeared and left us with Mary. She had tried to get into the film business, but had now built her whole life around Al — “I just love Al. I just love... Al.”
Al returned in great form again and they insisted we stay another night. We were too drunk to catch any Greyhound so we agreed. Back A LONG, STRANGE TRIP: William S Burroughs with two of his shotgun artworks. Above, Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the USA at the apartment, we saw evidence of why Al had left the bar. There were cracks on the counter. The telephone line had been torn out of the wall. He’d basically wrecked the place. Mary pretended not to notice. Al was full of a rage, a frustration, nurtured by his marine training, which he said resembled that seen in the Kubrick movie, Full Metal Jacket.
The next day, we were back on the bus, at last moving east. Through Salt Lake City, on to Reno. The pair of us were now veterans of the smoking section. Our bus community was very surprised when we said we were getting off at Lawrence, Kansas. Burroughs split his time between Lawrence and New York. We were hoping to get lucky.
Now, Lawrence was a very hip college town. We asked around about Burroughs.
Someone told us that they thought he was in New York. Our hopes dwindled, but we managed to meet Chuck Berg, a film lecturer up at the college. He was like Martin Scorsese on speed... rapid-fire talk about movies, and of course, Oliver North, but at the end of his spiel, he gave us a number for Burroughs.
My mate called it and informed the voice on the other end that we were two guys from Ireland who would love to meet William. The voice paused and then said: “You guys know the Woodchuck Bar? Just wait outside. I’ll pick you up in 20 minutes.”
We were stunned. Was this a joke? We waited outside the bar. We couldn’t speak. A fantasy we’d talked about in Slattery’s Bar in Rathmines could just be about to come through.
No sign of a car. They were not coming. It was all a wind-up. Then just as we were about to give up, a car pulled in. A young guy, oozing charisma and life, definitely camp. “Hi, I’m Michael. Hop in and I’ll take you to meet William!”
We got in. We were in a trance. We pulled up outside a small one-storey house. We entered. Burroughs was sitting on his couch, sun streaming in the windows. It was like a dream. We shook hands and were given vodka and Coke.
William was dousing his many kittens with flea powder — “Come here, my little beast”... I can’t quite recall what we talked about. We drank and smoked his dope and he mentioned how Cronenberg was going to make a film of Naked Lunch. How lying was as natural as breathing to politicians and just as necessary. He showed us his shotgun art and his giant tomatoes. He came into the room with a gun, which considering his history, gave us a small start. He spoke with his trademark low gravel.
He didn’t seem quite of this world. I have never been in the presence of anyone quite like him. After two or three hours, he asked us: “Could you boys use some more vodka? Michael — go to the store.”
Then he was on the phone apologising for missing an appointment: “Sorry, but I’m with two Irish boys.” But it was time to go. He came out onto his porch to wave goodbye. Michael gave us a whistle-stop stoned-anddrunk tour of Lawrence. He was great fun and full of crazy energy and talk. He was Burroughs’ editor’s boyfriend and looked after him day to day.
We arranged to hook up with Michael in New York. Then, suddenly, he announced that he had to be somewhere and kind of dumped us out into the road and drove off.
We were lost. We had 10 minutes to get to our bus. On cue, straight out of a David Lynch movie, a long, gigantic car pulled up, driven by a tiny old woman.
“You boys lost?” she asked. “Hop in, I’ll give you a ride.”
She dropped us to the station. The bus man greeted us as we stepped on to the empty bus. “Well, I guess you got the bus to yourselves, guys.” We sat into our seats in a daze, high as kites and knowing we would never forget this day as long as we lived.
We made it to New York two days later and did catch up with Michael again, and we hung out with his friend Vicky who worked at Grove Press and could have gotten us meetings with other heroes like Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson — except they were all out of town defending Jello Biafra, lead singer of the Dead Kennedys, who had been taken to court by ‘the concerned parents against rock music’, who had objected in most strenuous terms to his Penis Landscape LP cover.
Still, we now felt like the coolest kids on the block, hanging out in the East Village. We went to some awful performance art show which culminated in a man in a duck mask squirting himself with red liquid and repeating “Oliver North, Oliver North, Oliver North”.
The audience nodded approval. We barely contained our laughter.
Afterwards, Michael hinted to Vicky that he might have been a bit naughty lately as he had started to dabble in heroin. She was not impressed: “Jesus, Michael those guys could sell you anything.”
We flew home a week later. I went on to London for a month before the final year in college. I worked on a building site and encountered a host of characters... but that’s another story. I have never forgotten that summer of ’87.
Things were never the same again. Oliver North was convicted, but later cleared on appeal and became an author, radio host and military consultant for the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops. Michael shot himself in November 1992. Burroughs passed away, aged 83, in August 1997.
America remains a giant contradiction. Both wonderful and terrifying.
‘We now felt like the coolest kids on the block — hanging out in the East Village’