TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 10) CLIVE'S PLACE
A Throwback Thursday Serial About Living in London in the 1970s
I returned to Tricky Dick's for Christmas 1975 to find my authority eroded. Perfectly natural, I guess, since I had turned my back on the place not once but twice.
Mike had enrolled in a law course at City of London Polytechnic, and he’d put Clive, a school buddy, in charge, vaguely promising him more than just an allowance for running the place. Mike liked to delegate.
Clive saw me as a threat to his arrangement.
I found Clive grubby and, by extension, Tricky Dick's had become grubby.
I, conversely, was extremely fastidious, always wanting everything in its place, neat and clean. I had a touch of OCD and ADHD as a kid, fortunately undiagnosed at the time and untreated with Ritalin and all the other crap they now pump into kids. I just needed good teachers, of which there were (and still are) very few and far between. You can probably count on one hand all the teachers that actually taught you anything worthwhile—and half of them were extracurricular.
When I first walked in, I set about tidying up; Clive bristled, but said nothing. I was ready for him. It had been my place. It was still my place (in my mind), and I wasn't shy about making my authority known.
A confrontation, however, was not imminent; wrong timing for us both. I knew I had to return to American University and leave TD's in Clive's hands; he knew I'd be gone in four weeks, so he bit his tongue and let me strut around.
The place had grown funkier in my absence. To their credit, Clive and his cadre of chums had constructed a small stage near the window, and a single spotlight had been fitted to the ceiling for illumination. The old regulars were still coming in, plus a new crowd, Clive's crowd, and the two danced comfortably with one another.
Mike was excited because Tim Hardin, a faded (if still very talented) pop star, had become a fixture, jamming every couple of weeks.
Tim squatted with a few friends in a derelict row house around the corner. Squatting is an English term for moving into an empty, un-used house and setting up home, which used to be quasi-legal in England.
Tim should have been a multimillionaire from the royalties of one song alone: If I Were a Carpenter. But he'd been milked and trodden on by a couple ex-wives (alimony) and music publishers (who'd paid him a paltry sum for his catalog when he needed money for a decade-long heroin habit).
He knew how to make music; he knew nothing about money, except how to shoot it into his veins.
Tim came in while I was there, still a big star in his own mind, and we gave him deferential treatment.
He'd get up and stage and go, "Now, when I count One-two-three-four, I want everybody to yell, Tim Hardin's in town!"
Tim would count to four and nothing would happen
And, slightly, irritated, he'd yell: "I said, when I count one-two-three-four, I want everybody to yell, Tim Hardin's in town!"
He'd count again. And nothing happened.
And Mike would say, "C'mon Tim, get on with it."
And Tim would say, "Yeah, it's fuckers like you—agents, managers, owners, that made me poor!" And he wouldn't perform that night.
There was live music most nights of the week, and I'd play a tune or two myself if I'd had enough to drink. Neil Young's Southern Man or Rocky Raccoon from the White Album.
Mike had followed through with his ambitious menu plans: hamburgers and pizza.
The kitchen, which I only ever used for washing dishes, had become fully operational and the chef was a maniac from New Zealand named Dean, one of Clive's seedy friends (they shared a squat in Islington).
Dean rarely wore a shirt beneath his apron; all armpits and long hair half tied behind his head.
The waitresses, too, were earthy and funky. Jude, an American student, and Jolie, from Wales, neither older than seventeen, always ready to party.
Pat R did not return to American University after Christmas. He pulled what I'd pulled a year before in Cape Cod, and his roommate Wes had split too.
With my Tavern partners gone, I spent more time with others on Leonard's "Fighting Fifth," as it was dubbed, because of our antics. My new roommate Dave S caught mono and went home to New York, so I had a room to myself with his fridge, TV and electric typewriter.
At spring break, Jim invited me to California on impulse, and I packed my duffel and ran to a plane. He lived in a small apartment in Sherman Oaks, near Sunkist Orange headquarters, where he worked.
I caroused around Beverly Hills, looked up old friends, fell in love with Kate H. I also saw Kate's brother Greg, and in a couple of days we became great pals. I put together groupings of friends, from different eras of my life, in Westwood Village bars, the whole time broke and dependent on Jim for food and beer money. He was good to me.
Then back to AU. Without Bilderberg or something like it to motivate me, I didn't study much, didn't care. I cannot recall the name of one professor from that semester; they all sucked.
Instead, I'd visit Professor Quigley every month and he'd send me away with a book, making sure I carried it out in brown paper so the other professors wouldn't see me coming from his office with a book called Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution or some such title. The real un-mainstream narration of history.
I asked him again the meaning of his title Tragedy and Hope.
Quigley said (this time, his exact words): "I saw the tragedy of history, and when I wrote my book I still had hope for the future, that the trend of history could be turned around. But I don't think that's true any more."
Quigley retired from Georgetown U that semester and, significantly (to me, anyway), he invited me to sit in on his very last Western Civilization class.
Aside from a couple teachers at the American School in London and the crew at 4Cs in Cape Cod, the best teachers in my life have always been extra-curricular.
(In the mid-1990s, Quigley was hailed as the GU professor with the most influence on a student who would become president of the USA, Bill Clinton.)
Michael had been sending letters, distracting me with tales about characters and pretty girls and all the fun going on at Tricky Dick's. AU seemed to be about robotoids-in-training, little else.
So, with exam time creeping up (late April) I bolted, rationalizing it as leaving early.
One thing was certain in my mind: I would not be going back to AU or any other educational institution in the United States come September.
Back in London, to stay.
And I was ready for the inevitable face-off with Clive: The Battle for Tricky Dick's.