Favorite Song

I'll go with Baba O'Riley.

 

That's a shame.

The story behind my favorite song is pretty cool. I was Shanghai'd aboard a freighter in Milwaukee when I was at Summerfest. I was 10. It was nominally there to pick up Lannon Stone bound for Kampuchea to be used by the Khymer Rouge for a re-education camp, but in reality, it was dropping off a cargo hold full of China white from the Golden Triangle bound for the Lakefront Mafia.

Life as a captive on the freighter was hard. I got the worst jobs. I was a mule for every drug they moved. Skag ... it's fucking glorious and horrible all at once.

Sex slave? The cutthroat mercenary pirates on board tried, but I learned quickly that I had to cut a motherfucker to defend myself. First day on the boat, a particularly evil son of a bitch named Solomon tried to rape me. He was from Gabon and he tried to scare me by saying that if I didn't live to pleasure his balls he'd drug me and sell me off to slavers in the Congo, but I knew how to handle him. As he dropped his pants, I pulled out a makeshift shiv I had crafted from rusty Tsingtao bottlecaps and sliced his balls open from cock to asshole. I then shoved his stricken and exposed testes down his throat and put my elbow into his mouth until he choked to death on them. I carved "balls deep" into his forehead with my shiv. Respect quickly followed.

As we sailed the globe, I became more a part of day-to-day drudgery. I did the normal stuff you do in these matters. I broke up fights. I was initiated into the Tongs. I got scurvy. I befriended a kid named Sven, who had himself been kidnapped onto the ship when it made a stop in Helsinki for illict experimental penicillin smuggled out of the Soviet Union. We shared many interests: soccer, port whores that showered between clients and pure heroin from the Malay Peninsula.

Time passed and we dropped anchor in Rangoon. Sven and I watched a cockfight and got roped into a craps game. Unbeknownst to us, a 4-year-old Burmese kid named U Oo charmed us between rolls while his dirty friend Kyaw Ko Ko pickpocketed us. We both felt fucking stupid when we found out too late that the game was rigged. The Burmese thug in charge gave us a choice since we were skint ... roll for our lives.

We didn't play craps. Best total roll of three. Tie means we both die. I rolled first and threw a six. Sven scored a 10. Sven went first on the second turn and got a three. I got a seven. Tied up at 17 going into the last roll.

I went first on the last shot. My life flashed before my eyes and the dice clanked off the teak shack ... six and three. A nine. Promising.

Sven went Albino white. He knew he had to roll a 10 or more to live. I felt for him. All of those adventures we had were about to come to an end: the rickshaw we jacked in Macao, the opium we comandeered and then smoked in Djarkta, Juanita -- the gentle Tampico whore who gently took away our innocence and virginity for just five pesos. It was all over.

Sven put some extra flick in his wrist and time slowed down as the dice made their fateful journey. Each clank thundered in our ears. First die came to a rest early and revealed a five. He had a shot.

The other die rolled endlessly until it came to a merciful rest. A one. Sven rolled a six.

Before Sven could say a word, a shirtless, 90-pound Burmese scummer who hadn't said a word all night pulled out a ghat, placed it at the back of Sven's skull and pulled the trigger. He didn't even have time to beg.

As Sven's brains splattered all over my face, I realized it was time to abandon ship. After I fought my way out of the Burmese shack, I robbed an English venture capitalist in Rangoon and used his passport to board a flight bound for London and on to Chicago to head home. But I was found out just before the plane was about to taxi. I wasn't going to no Burmese hoosegow, so I went to the cockpit, pulled out my shiv and hijacked the plane. We landed in Teheran and I jumped out. I conveted to Islam, joined the Iranian army, and fought in the Iran-Iraq War for the sole purpose of crossing enemy lines to find my way to Iraqi friendlies and a way back to the U.S.A.

After biding my time in an effort to earn Iranian trust (I even did a pilgrimage to Mecca), I charged an Iraqi position to make my escape. Little did I know, that the bastard Saddam Hussein decided to use that very day to test his phosgene supply. Blinded, I was shot and taken prisoner. They were inclined to gut me from head to toe, but in my agony, a shady CIA operative named Claude decided to help me out. Once I told him about my experience in drug smuggling he put me in charge of moving poppy seeds to Europe to fund the Iraqi war effort.

Only I double-crossed Claude. I took the poppy, used some friendly Kurds to smuggle me into Turkey, and I sold that shit to some Belorussians in Istanbul. I kept some of the poppy for myself for seed money once I reached the States. I bought a plane ticket to America, but just in case the agency was on to me, I asked some sap named Billy Hayes to carry some of my stash for me onto the plane while I paid off a Turkish customs guard to hide the majority of mine in a military casket. Hayes got pinched and I flew home. Midnight Express is a bullshit movie ... the Turks were cool by me.

I don't like to talk about my journey back too much ... the fucking agency never forgets.

Anyway, that's why Go All The Way by the Raspberries is my all-time favorite song.

 

My favorite:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULI5kolBpAk