Hannah D. Georg
Jack Nicholson, on the Road, Again


Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper are dead. In fact, Dennis Hopper is almost alive, but almost dead, too. However, Jack Nicholson is completely alive. Jack Nicholson is a lawyer, so he says, though no one is sure about it. At least he looks like a lawyer. White shirt, eyeglasses, upper part of frame made of tortoiseshell, or even plastic, lower part made of some kind of metal. He even has a tie. It seems that Jack comes from a family that belonged to the upper middle class, probably from the South. Looks like he studied somewhere in the North-East. Harvard, Yale. When I think a bit about it, I believe he really is a lawyer.

One night, Jack, Peter and Dennis were drinking some whiskey, somewhere outside, under the dark night sky, which was so dark that you couldn’t even see it, smoked perhaps a couple of joints, I don’t remember, and how could I remember when I was not there, and besides I don’t smoke weed; they were talking. After that, maybe the next day, but maybe the day before too, they mounted their Harleys and went to New Orleans. Jack was sitting in the back and all the time he kept babbling some shit and spouting hard philosophy.

In New Orleans, after the Mardi Grass, in some graveyard, with some chicks, they did some acid, especially Jack fried himself.

After that Peter and Denny went off, I’ve heard that somewhere down the road some country bumpkins wasted them, Dennis was cheeky, he showed ‘em the stiff middle finger, and then they took a gun and, you know , like casually, from the truck, while drivin’, shot them. I’ve heard afterwards, someone told me, that the wheel of Hopper’s Harley, overturned in the grass by the road, is still turning. But fuck Pete and Denny; they’re dead, so what.

When Jack Nicholson recovered, that is, woke up, I know, he had that silly smile of his, and he lifted his right eyebrow, and he said: Shit! I’m so thirsty. He went to a gas station, right there by the graveyard, and bought a beer. He opened the can. It was hot. And the beer was hot. He thought: Canned heat. He said: Fuck the law... On the road, again.

And so Jack hit the road. He said, I’m goin’ to California. As he was passing through New Mexico or Arizona, perhaps Missouri, he killed Marlon Brando, a contract killer, a bounty hunter, in fact, who loved to smell nice. After that, at a gas station, which, as it usually goes in America, had a bar, he met a guy, Mike Nichols was his name, I guess, so they went on together to Montana or Nebraska.

In some forest or in a field, Jack sees a woman, she walks, suffering or what, she has a piano, and he decides to help her. Five times he fucked her, and afterwards she was fine.

After that he got stucked again at some gas station, (it is interesting how important the role of gas stations is in the life of Jack Nicholson, or at least in this period of his life), which was owned by some disgusting immigrant, Italian I reckon, already old, who had a young wife Jessica, born Lange, and Jack, as soon as he saw her, said, I gotta have her. So it was, but first he had to kill the husband. He banged her in the kitchen, while she was kneading dough, and since she also had a problem, she was fine afterwards, too.

In the meantime Jack got merried, he had a son, his wife was thin, bony, with big eyes, her name was Shelley Duvall. At first he worked as a postman, but he got fired because he never rang twice, as official rules required, so he decided to become a writer. And he wrote a novel, a very good one, a great step forward in 20th century literature. The novel was called Shining, and I seem to recall some English director made a movie of it, though I don’t know how, because the novel consists of only one sentence which is endlessly repeated. I reckon, he must be a good director. However, Jack himself was not quite satisfied, and he wandered for a long time, in a semi-supine position, through some green labyrinth, and when he got out finally realizing that the way out of the labyrinth is to stand in one place, and not to move, because the labyrinth is in fact moving, and to wait for the exit to come in front of you, and simply to get out, he decided to go to California after all, to warmer parts, because it snowed in the labyrinth and it was cold, and as is well known, in California not only does it never snow there, but it never rains either, especially not in southern California.

When he arrived there, in Hollywood, which is an industrial center, in fact a suburb of L. A., he tried at first as a movie actor but he didn’t do well, and because he didn’t know how to do anything else, he got a job with some sneaky guy, his name was John Houston, who had a company "Honore & Prizzi", some kind of French-Italian mumbo-jumbo; he worked as a kind of legal counselor. There he snagged the daughter of the same John Houston, her name was Anjelica, but since someone wanted to fuck someone over, he had some problems with some gold, although the issue at hand was in fact oil and water. It was tough, so Jack decided to quit all that, and he became a private dick, fuck, he couldn’t get away from the law; however some Polish immigrant, whose name was Polanski I guess, who had been sent by that guy Houston, slit Jack’s nose with a knife.

Jack realizes things are getting a bit hard, and that it is better to lie low for a while, so he decides to go to more peaceful states, Iowa, Utah, Connecticut, I don’t have the slightest idea, but in that general area on the other side of the Rocky Mountains, who could ever remember those American states, there’s so many of them.

He thought, I can raise a bit of hell there, like: to open a flowershop, to plant something, wait for a comet to fall, and that plant to change and to start to eat people, I go to jail, for a short while; but it’s no good in jail, it is closed; I’d better go to an asylum, a loony bin, to pretend that I’m nuts and after that when things quiet down I go out, and there you go.

And maybe it was like this. Maybe he really raised a bit of hell, and maybe he got busted, and sentenced, for a short while, and then a prison doc sent him for observation.

Anyway, one day, he came to the sanatorium. They received him nicely. You know these new methods, humane attitude towards patients, group therapy and all that stuff.

In the beginning for him it was fun, in fact it wasn’t, it was not fun enough. What is the essence of comedy?, Jack asked himself, and answered: Undermining the system.

So he got into trouble with the head nurse, her name was Louise Fletcher, pretty, OK, with somewhat watery eyes, actually she wanted, though she didn’t know it, to fuck Jack, but, if she had only had black eyes, maybe something would have happened, but as she didn’t nothing did. (Jack knew, of course, and he would have fucked her, why not, but he did’t want to). That was of course an aggravating circumstance for his future destiny. Once he even succeeded in making her laugh, which is, as is well known, very important for the relationship between man and woman, but she pretended nothing had happened. On the other hand, maybe just because of that, she decided that he was in a need of some electric schock therapy. And Jack, crazy as he is, thought: Fine, there you go, fuck me.

After that he turned all the lunatics onto freedom. Like, freedom is very important. That is the most important thing: to be free.

There was a guy there, Bibbit was his name, he had some problems with his mother, she wouldn’t put out for him, and Jack decided to help him, he fixed him up with a girl, how she got from town into the hospital, I don’t recall, and how could I when I was not there, in any case Bibbit became free.

And a really big Indian was there too, he always kept silent and cleaned the floor. Jack called him Chief, which in the Indian language means Chief.

Once they were playing basketball in the yard, and Jack taught him how to put the ball through the hoop. Chief couldn’t become free because he, as an Indian, is always free.

Jack told ‘em, all those lunatics, One day I’ll break the window, and I’ll go. And then, one day, he took them, all those lunatics, fishing, and then the people knew what freedom was.

Louise got very angry, so they gave Jack a lobotomy, and after that Chief put him to sleep. Now I see: Aristotle is to blame. If he had written the second part of Poetics maybe Miss Fletcher wouldn’t have got so angry. After that Chief broke the window and went off to the mountains. What he was doing in the mountains, I don’t know, I don’t recall, and how could I recall when I don’t know anything about that; anyway, after that Chief played in the NBA, for the L.A.Lakers, (Jack is a fan), he changed his English name and now his name was Vlade Divac, which in the Indian language means: One who plays basketball well.

Later I heard from Dave Stewart in London that Jack called, to get some sleep, though it’s not that clear to me, seeing as Jack was left lying - or was it really Jack - in that asulym, still and unconscious, even dead.

After that, when he woke up, Jack was mostly a devil, he kept the company of witches, he was in comics, became a werewolf.

I don’t know about the rest, but Bibbit surely, as already free, went out through the window, after Vlade Divac did, went to a movie, where he saw a film with Mae West, you know, that lousy, little actress with nice, big tits, young Bibbit liked her very much. He decided to write her a letter, and he did, in which he said nice and good words to her. She answered and sent him a photograph, or even two, and after that he wrote her more.

After that, as every free man, as a knight, he decided to perform a heroic deed, and conquer thus the heart of his beloved.

And here is how it was. He went to the southernmost tip of South America, to Tierra del Fuego. There they have, what is it, they have there?, a mountain, a hill, a peak, a rock; something which is the most difficult thing to climb up in the world. People have conquered Mount Everest, Mont Blanc, Pamyr, Georgsberg, but this peak on Tierra del Fuego no one could conquer. The greatest climbers in the world tried to go up that rock which simply screams, it is that sharp and thin, with their best equipment, but no one succeeded.

And then one day the best climber in the world, came, ready to conquer it, because only this rock was left for him to be the best of the best. He watched it for days, from afar, from near, circling around it. Waited.

And then one day at the foothill of that stone needle, under some rock, he came upon a dwelling: a small fire, dry branches, few things, a letter stuck to the wall of that halfcave, a photograph. That’s where Bibbit lived. They talked a bit. Bibbit said that it was a beast-mountain, and showed his hand, lacking three fingers, which it had bitten off; he said that it was a terrible mountain, alive and cruel. He said that he was there because of Mae West and that she was writing to him, and that she had writen to him that when he conquered that rock, he must come to Hollywood, and that she had two more peaks to be conquered, meaning her fabuluos tits, and that she would gladly let him do it.

This guy must be crazy, the greatest climber in the world thought.

And then one day, the greatest climber in the world, competing with a spider-man - a German director made a documentary about it (by the way, the spider-man, because he was not good, was killed there, he broke his spine) - set out to conquer the peak, and he conquered it. Up there, among the winds, on the toughest peak, under the Sun, the blond hair of Mae West fluttered from a photograph on a small flag.

Bibbit never went to Hollywood, because it was no longer important to conquer the tits of divine Mae. Ne went on living there, at the southermnmost tip of the Earth, in his cave.

After that, recently, once again, I heard from Dave Stewart that Jack called London, on the phone, he spoke, he talked, he inquired about his dream from somebody, he wanted to get some sleep, but I don’t know anything furher, I don’t have any more news about Jack Nicholson.



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