TRICKY DICK'S COFFEE HOUSE: 18) "COUGHING" ABDULLAH & "BURNED OUT" PAUL
A Throwback Thursday Memoir of Life in London in the mid-1970s
Autumn 1977
"Burned-out" Paul was an early evening fixture.
Possessed of Van Gogh eyes that glowed in the dark, Paul favored a hairdo that alternated from long and unkempt to buzz cut and sit over a mug of tea for three or four hours, blending in with whoever would sit with him.
If conversation lulled, Paul would suddenly say something like, "I was thinking today, and I couldn't handle it."
And you just knew it was true.
Once he joined me and a couple of visitors I was trying to impress. He sat quietly as we spoke, and when we stopped talking he looked at my friend and asked with nonchalance, as if discussing the weather, "Have you fucked any girls today?"
Another time, sitting at a table, listening to a waitress tell me how she’d spent the day, Paul politely waited for her to finish and then announced, matter of factly, "I masturbated today."
Paul wasn't looking for a cheap thrill by talking like this. Nor was he trying to be offensive through the use of raw language or wishing to shock anyone. He was—in his mind—simply trying his best to be part of the conversation.
Word was, Paul had been caught smoking weed as a teenager and his horrified parents checked him into a mental institution where they zapped him with several kinds of experimental shock therapy.
The good news was he stopped smoking weed.
Paul lived with his parents up the street, and his life comprised of walking up and down Heath Drive 33 times a day; evenings at Tricky Dick's.
We once gave him a job in the bakehouse, topping cheesecakes with fruit, but he couldn't hack it and quit two weeks later.
"Coughing" Abdullah was an Indian, as in Bombay, with long tangled hair, unkempt dark clothes and a hacking cough that never quit.
He forever twitched, chain-smoked and ran up a tab he could ill afford.
Paul and Abdullah often sat together, rolling cigarettes and drinking tea.
Paul would say something like, "I'm wearing an old tee-shirt today," and Abdullah would gleefully rub his hands together and reply, "Oh yes, oh yes, I understand completely!" and he'd throw his head back and cough into his fist, and look around to see if anyone would take his order for another cup of tea.
Knowing full well that I might one day write about Tricky Dick's, I asked Paul if he would kindly pen an introduction.