Ring of Coals in Newcastle

The City Didn’t Need Any More Gray Poets

Alone

I was spending the day inside my flat in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, reading. Due soon: an essay on Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones.

Why was a New Jersey Yankee more interested in Brit lit than his British classmates?

It was good to replace the academic with real-life drama. I had been reading over my journal from when I traveled with Laura through Europe for three weeks. Did the drama end when parting in Pisa? Nay. Did it resume in Newcastle? Aye, well, at least with me.

After a dinner of canned corn, rice, and soy sauce, a feast for a poor student who needed to save pounds for the pubs, Texas Tom knocked at #10 Lovaine Flat. Room #3.

Did he know I was crestfallen? We both had similar issues. He sympathized with me. He was enthralled with Susan who was technically engaged. She was charming, soft, smart, and pretty. Also a practicing Christian. I always respected that. Gave her a moral compass — a foundation of strength.

Two Susans stacked on top of each other would equal one Texas Tom. He was six years older than everyone. Not a student, he worked with a British firm, but living in the dorms.

He had a casual, smooth, Southern drawl, and was built like the size of Texas — standing 6’3 and solid and square like a linebacker. But he wouldn’t hurt anyone, well, anyone on his side. He was from Dallas. He reaffirmed and shattered every stereotype of the Great Republic of Texas.

He was a paradox I respected— conservative on some aspects, fiscal, and liberal on others, social. He was loyal — and if a fight ever came, Texas Tom was essential in your corner. Because he had a job, he would often pay for rounds by waving our pounds away for the next round. I would often sneak to another corner because I did not want to seem like a leech — using a mate for ale.

“We’re heading downtown,” Texas Tom told me. “You coming with us?”

I agreed but needed to shower. He could help himself to the off-license beers in the fridge.

He told me what happened after the crazy “birthday-witch-surprise” story at The Royal Archer the night before. My friend Alex disappeared. And then Texas Tom said he had to grab Montclair Jill away from the clutches of Professor Crosson as she mouthed the words, “Please help me.”

Like some wretch, Professor Crosson waved goodbye. He reminded everyone of the trip to Hadrian’s Wall. My friend Alex and I were the only ones stoked, but now that he had “hooked” up with the girl I had fancied, such academia flew away on the arrant wings of Eros.

Texas Tom said Simon Snow, the bartender at The Royal Archer, was the best Brit he had ever met. “Such a great guy,” he said. “I don’t get his taste in art and animation, but what a great guy. He invited us over again on Sunday to watch American Football.”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

Simon fancied one American girl with ridiculously blonde hair in the 80s Jersey style and way too much make-up. Her name was Connie. She was away from home for the first time. It was also her first time drinking, and I mean nightly drinking. We looked out for her. She was innocent and clueless — a special education major. Let me not speculate on the stereotypes of that major. Simon was a gentleman, though, and I had hoped Connie would fancy Simon, too.

It was strange, because Connie irritated us — even me, and I usually provide wide margins.

Like me and Texas Tom, Simon Snow was a de facto bachelor.

Alone with Friends

Texas Tom and I headed to the Three Bulls Heads on Percy. It was downtown and crowded and smoky and loud. “My Bloody Valentine” was playing as the American contingent found each other, and formed our own separatist colony — and marked our area by the loo — bathroom. The Brits found that word hilarious — as if we wanted to take a “bath.”

Of course, Texas Tom had the first round. With his hands, he could carry five pints while sipping his own. He carved an opening through the crowd like a Texas Longhorn.

As the night wore on the pub was getting rowdier. More Geordies were mixing in with the University crowd. Two storm systems — colliding.

So much, of course, is social class and social mobility and resentment and snobbery.

It was a fun night. It was great not to worry about Alex and Laura. In fact, talking with Kimberly and Susan was a breath of reality. Also, that cute girl from San Jose, California was there — an anomaly of “chilled” West Coast sensibilities mixing with the “bluster” of us East Coasters. Both were so down-to-earth and humble — and Kimberly told me she didn’t know what I ever saw in Laura. “You know, she’s pretty mean,” she told me. “She was mean to me during freshman year in the dorm.” What more did she have to say?

What was weird, too — the San Jose girl started putting her arm around my neck. She wore large glasses — we all did then, and she had a charming smile. She was hanging around Kimberly and Susan more — and I sensed something, perhaps, on the romantic horizon. The girls spoke about wanting to venture out of Newcastle on a weekend trip.

I suggested the Lake District. It may have been that night that I suggested taking them: Walter Bowne and three women. That adventure actually happened — and that’s a story I need to write.

But the talking that night soon ended — a flying pint glass hit Montclair Jill in the head. She collapsed. Texas Tom had been standing next to her. When the blood trickled from her head, he pushed the others away, charging like that deranged Longhorn, asking what motherfucker threw the damn glass.

Because his voice was soft and Southern, some laughed. But he tossed blokes aside like Trojans against The Rage of Achilles. The bloke who laughed the nearest got punched. Texas Tom saw two nervous blokes slip from the back. He was ready to make for them, but he changed course, composed himself, and returned to Montclair Jill. I always respected that.

By this time, dabbing her face with wet and dry paper towels, Jill touched the blood from her forehead. “My mother wanted me to be careful,” she told us, half drowsy. Texas Tom lifted her. Where was the nearest hospital?

“The Royal Victoria,” a woman near to us said.

“Where?”

“It’s on Queen Victoria Road.”

“Like I know fuck all where that is.”

“By the University — I’ll tek you.”

Should I come along? Texas Tom didn’t think they’d all fit in the girl's mini Fiat so I walked out with them as the crowd parted. What friend went with Montclair Jill? I didn’t know her too well. She sat in the front seat with the British driver. Talk about a good Samaritan — this British woman. I watched the Fiat as it drove up Percy Street.

“He’s a good man, that Texas Tom,” I told the night air. “All those bad things I said about the South, I take back.”

The others said they were heading back to play games, but I glanced at my watch. I had spent too much time inside my one-room — reading, and writing. The night was still young. Kimberly said goodbye — and I think I said I wanted to hear more from her. She smiled. I never thought she was as pretty as the others, but looking at photos now, after all these years, I don’t know what I was thinking. She was smarter and funnier and quirkier than the others — and that black, curly hair and fresh face, devoid of make-up, was natural and beautiful.

Should I have gone back with the three girls and played games? Yes. But I didn’t come to England to play games. I came for the experience of England and its culture. It was the land of my language and many of my heroes. My last name, too, Bowne, is Welsh.

But thinking of Kim and San Jose, I saw an opening in the clouds — and unlike falling for a lass in England or from Spain, like these two I just met, Isabel and Irma, Kimberly attended the same college. San Jose was at least in the same country.

As I headed deeper downtown, where I always felt safe, I thought I could complete some pub writing — like Papa Hemingway. I heard Bigg Market was the place to mix with the “real” Geordies. It was the soul of Newcastle — a remnant of feudal times. Alex once said it sounded like a “Pig” market where guys found pigs to sleep with.

“Sounds promising,” I thought, my virginity like a Scarlet V that weighed forty pounds in shame around my neck. No one knew, for I always lied, but didn’t people really know anyway?

I mean, come on, right?

Alone with a Bloke

Passing through the narrow streets of Cloth and Groat Market, I heard the slurred, bizarre accents of the locals, electricity from the Friday evening crowd that frightened as well as fascinated, like parents fighting. I was no longer an American among Americans. I no longer had my two “wingmen” for flight — the fast tongue of Alex or the muscle of Texas Tom.

The girls in Bigg Market didn’t wear jackets. Jackets inside clubs were the worst. Most wore ridiculously short black skirts and loose blouses. I was twenty-one, and pleasant enough in the face. Acne scars from my teen years marked my face, but it was still a strong face that would improve with age, a beard, and sex. I had been experimenting with facial hair. I liked the ruggedness in the mirror. Two weeks would give me a healthy beard.

I passed by several long queues of “stags and hens” in front of clubs like Circus Circus, Blu Bambo, and Boom with the typical bingers. One lad had a tattoo of a dragon on his head. Another — a spider web on his arm. Many of the “birds” had blotchy legs and hair-sprayed hair. Some — fishnet stockings— modern-day groundlings.

Was that snobbish of me? Probably. I came from a solidly working-class family — my dad a printer — and his dad a printer — and I was the first Bowne to attend college. Affected snobbery was a defense mechanism.

Simon Snow, the bartender at The Royal Archer told me to “slag off Geordie girls” because they were trashy — that meant to avoid — and I had too much class. One guy was urinating in the alley. Two yellow-shirted gentlemen were escorting a chubby girl out of a club.

I asked one girl: “Is this the queue for the club?”

“Hey, wher you frem?

“New Jersey,” I replied. “South Jersey — close to Philly, actually.”

One girl pulled the other girl away, both laughing. “That’s what they all say.”

I was hungry. I found a takeaway shop. I felt the shock of the transition as soon as I finished eating my chicken kebab, chatting lightly with a bloke with an Indian accent outside the kebab shop. The gentle guy with beautiful dark skin said he was taking a break. “I’m trying to take it easy now,” he said. “What brings you out here?”

“This girl I used to fancy is with my mate right now,” I replied, wiping my mouth. For some reason, I used British terms with the Brits. I watched a group of black-leathered ruffians leaping over park benches.

The guy laughed awkwardly. “No, no, what brought you to Newcastle?”

“The distance granted by the great pond,” I replied. “Away from all the Old World — New Jersey and Philadelphia.”

I told him about selling my Nissan 200SX to finance a good part of my travels. I didn’t want him to think I was a rich American studying abroad. I commuted to college and worked thirty hours a week at the Holiday Inn.

It was cold now. The streets buzzed. The mist was gone. The sun — going down behind St. Nicholas Cathedral. It had been pleasant to see the yellow minutes fade from the buildings with a polite stranger. Some of the posher restaurants were closing. My friend said there would be a sinister moon that night. Thinking it may have been some Hindu omen, I shook the young man’s hand goodbye.

“I don’t feel safe,” he said. “Some call me a dirty Paki, and I’m from New Delhi.”

“But you’re British. You sure sound British.”

“Yes, but you know,” he said, smiling. “That’s a thing, great, about you Yanks.”

“What?”

“The innocence,” he said. “Or naiveté about the world. It’s both refreshing and irritating.”

Alone with a Lass

As I walked without any direction, I thought, I spoiled the trip by being so obsessive. It didn’t start out that way, but day after day, the obsession grew, and soon, I was more interested in catering to Laura than visiting the Louvre.

She needed me as the tour guide and as a porter, but why did I need her?

I wasn’t in the frame of mind to dance, but the loneliness was too much to bear alone. Hanging out with the American crowd was antithetical to the reasons I came to England. Then I stumbled upon the Duke of Wellington along the High Bridge, a proper pub without being too crowded. There was a wooden floor and I found a wooden table in the far corner of the pub. I ordered a pint of Abbot Ale and gazed at the pictures of the Battle of Waterloo.

In these last few weeks, I underwent such emotional seesaws. But one thing was for sure. I was jealous. “And I’m so damn unsure about myself,” I wrote in those journals, that now serve as fast-melting mountain torrents to this growing river of memory.

I recalled traveling with Laura from Zürich to Munich. The bloke across from me kept winking at me. “He thought I was getting some,” I wrote. Even though I knew I wouldn’t like, never, it was neat to think someone was thinking I would.

“It was one of the spoils of traveling with a pretty girl,” I wrote. I had never been around a pretty girl for so long. What was there about her, anyway? Besides, looks — and needing a chaperone? I was paranoid about men who looked at her, and I wasn’t even her boyfriend.

I closed my journal. “What’s in yee buk?” a voice asked.

“My book? Just stuff I’m writing.”

And there shot within me the urge. A woman had approached me. She was about five foot three, with black hair — off the forehead and spiked like an ostrich feather and down her back. She wore overlarge s-shaped snake earrings with an eye of green jade. She had one crooked tooth among white teeth and wore a tight-fitting red blouse.

I liked her short denim skirt and black clogs. Her fingers were painted glossy blood red with a silver bracelet collared tight around her wrist. I must have mustered a confused smile. A muffled “hello” escaped.

“Yee weren’t leaving? Were yee?” she asked, in her Geordie accent.

“Well, ah, I was planning on…”

“Are yee frem the States?”

“Yeah.”

She looked at me suspiciously as if I was feeding her a line, and I told her I was really from New Jersey. Was it like the way the girls back home like the British accent — like they were all Mr. Darcy or Mr. Knightly from Jane Austen?

“Ee! It’s amazing what some lads will syah te get into yer keks.”

“Keks?’

“Linins? Yee knoo, trousers.” She tugged on my jeans. That was nice.

“I never thought being from New Jersey would ever get me anywhere.”

She laughed. “Yee taak funny,” she said.

“Listen to how I say ‘water,’” I said. “I say it like wooter.”

“Ah thowt yee stood oot,” she said laughing. “An ah se wator. I’ve been watching yee. Ah thowt I’d come ower an syah aalreet.” She moved closer and whispered, a tongue-lick away, “Me name’s Alex.”

Embarrassed at my sudden arousal, the urge, always the procreant urge, I thought, thinking of Whitman at such a fucking time as this, fixing my urge through my jeans underneath the table. I translated her accent and laughed at the simple line: “I thought I’d come over and say hi.” It was that easy. My tummy rumbled as the same old anxiety nagged me. “I’m Walter.”

“Are yee drunk or just shy?”

“I guess I’m shy.”

“Well, that’s canny good, cos drunk guys are ne canny good. Yee can ernly get off so much on drink. Fre those of weh whee leik te get off. Ah bet yee leik te get off.”

I nodded stupidly, foolishly, understanding one of every three words, but the words that stood out were: “I bet you like to get off.”

“You’re thinking I’m either a hacky whore or a tart. Well, Ah ain’t a whore. Ah just get horny noo an then, ya’ knaa, an Ah think you’re really cute. Ah come te the toon te hev some fun. The blokes oot near the coast are fucking wankers, ya’ knaa, so Ah come te The Toon fre a bit of a holiday. If you’re a slut in a smaal toon, everyone knows fuck aal.”

I continued listening, nodding, trying not to stare at her red blouse. Was she calling herself a slut from a small town? And she gets horny now and then? It would have been rude to ask what she meant, so I just continued deciphering; normally, she wasn’t my type — foul-mouthed and too much make-up, an awkward carriage, and too aggressive. She also lacked the evidence of a sound education. But she did say, “You’re really cute” in that authentic North East accent. Was this woman real? Or some scripted femme fatale?

The thought of actually touching her breasts, to kiss those lips — well, I sat stunned, gawking, wondering what my dad would think of his son in some Bigg Market pub with a British lass.

I could see my dad, raising his pint glass, saying. “That’s me boy.” He was always asking me about girls, and I had nothing to give him —

But I knew my dad only thought that way; he never acted that way, and what kind of son was I for not acting like my own pop? Who fell in love with his first girl? Who waited until the honeymoon to lose his virginity in his mid-twenties, too? And then — Wham! Bam! The Mam divorced him ten years later. He told me once he wanted to die — he was so lonely. He never fell out of love, really, with my mom, even after.

Did I want that life? Could I change the life script?

Would I reason things into intellectual dust, leaving me justified but alone? The aroma of her perfume seized me. I swallowed. The perfume was some drug. An attentive woman is so ennobling. I felt for my wallet. Perhaps the WC might have a vending machine, or if not, maybe she would supply a new condom. This type of woman — she would probably carry such things, right? And what the fuck was I thinking? She could be rotted with disease! There is outercourse, too. I don’t want a damn baby when I’m in the States!

“Listen, ha aboot wuh git yeut iv heor?” she asked. “Wheor are yee stayin?”

Ok — she wanted to get out of here. I was a student, staying at Lovaine Flats. She said that sounded fine. She seized my hand. It wasn’t like we were that close. We were down by the River Tyne. “As long as yee av a single room.”

I tucked my chin into my chest and left with Alex — it was weird she had the same name as my mate. “Alex, I’d like you to meet Alex.” My heart raced as I walked along with her. We stopped at the corner. Yellow headlights filled The High Street. She turned to me. Could she ask a question? Without thinking, because I wasn’t thinking, especially with the pints, I nodded. She reached into her pocket with those red fingernails and pulled out an orange plastic container. She rattled a single pill.

“Ah leik te git pumped, git up, yee knaa, an Ah ernly got this little bit of miaow miaow left which isn’t much, yee knaa fre both of weh. Ah think wi can git on.”

I was completely baffled. “Meow Meow?”

She laughed. “No, Lover’s speed. XTC.”

“The band?” I asked.

“No, ecstasy.”

I suddenly understood. The most I did was drink — and the only joint I held was in a campground in Amish Country from a girl I was also in love with in high school, but I passed the joint to the left-hand side in the middle of a cornfield after a five-second existential crisis. “I don’t do that.”

“Ah gut one pill. But it’s not much really even fre me. An Ah leik te git up before wi geet into owt yee knaa.” She hugged me. I knew she could feel me down there, so I backed away. “Ah bettor when ahm flyin high.”

I heard “before we get into it” and that she was “better” for it, but I balked and said, “Listen, I don’t think…”

“You’ll be tee. An there’s just not enough fre me. Ah knaa this bloke around the corner me lass telt me aboot. Could yee gissies lowy? Ah knaa cute American lads hev loads of lowy.”

Knowing ‘lowy’ meant money, I instinctively reached for my wallet, embarrassed at the old condom, my Johnnie Rotten. She wanted money. She wanted money to buy ecstasy so she could have better sex with me because she was better at sex when she was flying high. Was this all really happening? Would I feel better if I just gave her money for sex?

Before I separated the pockets in my wallet, she grabbed my arm and spied two twenty-pound notes. “This is rites. Heor, tek this,” she demanded, handing me a blue tablet. “I’ll be reet back.”

After stuffing my money in her pocket, she ran toward a beige van and hopped in. Dumbfounded, her perfume dissipating as the van turned a corner, I wondered where they went, unaware of others passing me. How long would “right back” take?

Panicked, I stuffed the tablet in my jeans. I surveyed the street. A few minutes had elapsed. A ruddy-faced man held the pub door open for his three staggering girlfriends, locked arm-in-arm. Up the road, a man was playing bagpipes. Bagpipes! Fucking bagpipes!

I paced in front of the pub. I was scared — I didn’t want the bobbies to arrest me. Holding my right arm over my stomach, I searched for the beige van. Someone asked me if I was all right. Stunned, I said I was just waiting on a friend. Did I really want to see the van again?

With both arms, like a vise, strapped across my midsection, twenty minutes had elapsed. I laughed, shaking my head. I was robbed — something straight out of Dickens — like an Artful Dodge! Was that Fagan or Bill Sikes driving the van?

Alone Again

Instead of inspecting the tablet, I tossed it in a bin. The pill could have been dyed aspirin. Deep in unmindful prose, I walked underneath the Tyne Bridge and along the Tyne and walked for the sake of walking, as I did back home. The cops back home would stop me at two in the morning, asking what I was doing. “Taking a long walk like Robert Frost and Charles Dickens.” I looked okay — especially with the literary allusions, and they said just be careful. I think I walked in Newcastle for two hours. I could have followed the Tyne all the way to Tynemouth on the rugged North Sea.

During my walk, I recalled my own bad poetry:

On the Rue de St. Germaine — He drinks and he dreams and he drinks — Till he dreams no more.

The river was the best place to drown young sorrows. I clenched my fist, upset at my own doggerel melodrama. I kicked a trash bin, spilling rotten fruit onto the cement. I doubled over and threw up, half from drink, half from humiliation. It was a lesson — and perhaps not too expensive. Forty quid. Forty pounds. Lots of lost rounds for the lads and lasses!

I thought of that line from Horace that I started my journal: “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero.” Seize the day, put no trust in the morrow.” I thought of what my friend Steve wrote as the preface in my Europe journal: “Let me leave you with the words of Robert Frost: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference.” To me, he wrote, that says Walter Bowne.

I wondered about that. Was it ironic? Would more time need to elapse before such a belief was actualized? Isn’t it sad we can’t have both — going back to play games with the girls and having this humiliating experience? Or a trinity of paths and experiences — like going to The Royal Victoria Hospital to check on my friend? Shouldn’t I have done that?

I tried to keep my pants away from the splatter — the vomit, the profane, the body and soul expelling the toxins, both alcoholic and imbecilic — and the sacred — the poetry and the divine.

Embarrassed, I looked around. Wiped my mouth. I laughed nervously. Not for the first time, I asked, Who am I, anyway? What is it that I want out of life? Adventures, yes — but I knew it was much more than that.

Welcome to Wonders of Bigg Market, I thought. I was such a Pinnochio — shystered and conned. Simon had warned me. And I was just a babe in the forest. It’s amazing a wolf hadn’t devoured me by now — all alone, clueless and gullible.

With the taste of the vomit clinging to my teeth, I dug into the crevices with my tongue and swallowed. It was then I wanted my mom, but that would have to wait until Thursday night — when I called home. It was expensive. I sat for a long time by the Tyne — writing a poem about Time and the Tyne and Mine and Water. Then I murmured:

Over bridges — a-crossing the River Seine — The Would-Be-Lover sits with his drink —

The Tyne and The Seine became one — The Thames joined it — as well as The Arno in Florence and the Canals of Venice and the Salach River in Salzburg and the Var in Nice and the Tiber of Rome — and the Rhône in Geneva — and my own Delaware River back home. I found my voice by the rivers. Langston Hughes knew rivers, old ones, and mighty ones. I knew something about water too. I also knew about Narcissus — so I kept my reflection away from the water.

Of course, none of this would be communicated to anyone — except to the journal — and to a God who must have been laughing — or to the Devil, who had tested me with God’s blessings like Job.

So, who won the wager? Any bets?

Thank you for reading. Follow me on Medium at Walter Bowne

Other true stories from my days as an undergraduate in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in Northern England and throughout Europe can be found:

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