I found Hookie in his hotel room. He and some groupies of his had taken a full length mirror down off the wall, laid it across the bed, laid some tracks of cocaine down the whole length of the mirror, and were in the middle of a 'snort race' as I walked in. Hookie not only managed to get to the end of his track first, but pivoted around and started back the other way on somebody else's track. This resulted in everyone collapsing with uncontrollable laughter to the floor. I was not amused.
As they lay there, shivering with laughter, one by one they gradually noticed me, and fell quiet, staring at me like I just arose from a crypt. Hookie, a big dumb smile on his face, managed to mumble something first. "What'sa matta, Missuh Guts, ain't ya never seen people havin' a goo time befo'?"
"If frying your brains on that crap is your idea of fun, you're welcome to it."
Hookie managed to stand up, just barely. "Behold, fellow mortals, we're in the presence of a saint! And pray tell, Holy One, jus' what do the gods do fer a goo time, eh?"
I wasn't in the mood to make a scene. "Got a beer?"
"Got a beer?", he repeated. "Oh, one or two. They're in that closet there." I stepped over to the door he was pointing at, and just as I was about to open it, he said "Careful, though. Too much beer might weigh you down, ya know." As I opened the door, I looked up just in time to see an avalanche of beer cans descending down upon me from a closet filled to the ceiling with them. I managed to jump out of the way just in time, as Hookie and his friends collapsed with laughter to the floor again. Now I was in the mood to make a scene. I opened the patio door, and started grabbing his entourage, one by one, and threw them over the balcony railing to the hotel swimming pool three floors below. As the last one went over the side, Hookie stared at me with big, bloodshot eyes, and choked out "What'd ya go and do that fer? Those were the best friends in the world that I had made today!"
"I'm more interested in your enemies, kid. Don't worry about your pals, you can buy some more tomorrow."
He brightened at this. "That's true."
"So tell me, who'd want you dead? Besides anyone with good taste, that is?"
He smiled. "But taste is indeed the issue. Before I got into music, I was a painter - a good one, too. The New York Times had reviewed my work as the finest in new wave art. So one day, some rich debutante comes into my studio and commissions a portrait, having heard I was the hottest thing this side of chic, and she just HAD to have an original Hookie Jones for her very own. So I agree. She pays me a bundle for a portrait which I immediately start work on, under condition that nobody sees it before the unveiling, which she plans to hold at some big Long Island affair full of people like her. She agrees. I finish the painting. The day of the unveiling arrives. In front of 300 of New York's beautiful people, she pulls the sheet off a canvas that she promises everyone will reveal the real her. She turns to see a painting of Miss Piggie wearing the gown she posed in. It took six stockbrokers to get her hands off of my throat."
"Did that surprise you? You deliberately insult her in front of all her friends..."
Hookie looked angry. "Man, you just don't get it, do you? I'm a fuckin' ARTIST, dammit. I had to paint what I felt." His voice got very tense. "You really wanna know what happened in Samoa? We were on a concert tour. We had been singing the same damn numbers off our latest album for two months, night after night, because it was toppin' the punk charts, and everyone wanted to see us play stuff off it, especially our biggest hit, 'Born to Barf'. After two months, we just didn't want to play it again. As we started leaving the stage after the last encore, the audience began to chant 'Born to Barf, Born to Barf'. So I grabbed a mike and politely informed them we were not going to play it. They went right on chanting, so I screamed into the mike, "Look, you ignorant bastards, we're artists. If we don't feel like playing, then we don't play." Then all six of us flipped off 30,000 pissed off Samoans. They went berserk. They charged over the barricades at us, with chairs, and sticks, and anything they could find. I knew what was going to happen, after the painting incident, but the others wouldn't believe me. They were in a kind of shock, I think. I managed to gather my wits, and make a run for the limo, but the rest of them just stood there paralyzed. That was the last time I ever saw them alive. The local police said they never found any trace of their bodies."
He stood there, for a minute, his body shaking with rage. Then he regained his composure, turned back to the mirror, and started laying out another track. "I hope you'll excuse me while I carry on with my brain-rotting. A couple of more snorts and I should manage to forget this conversation entirely."
TO BE CONTINUED...