Step one: get to Liverpool Station. Anyone who lives in London will tell you that the station isn't exactly a stone's throw away from Kensington. According to Google maps, it's more like a good ten kilometer walk through the city. But hey, we're young and starry-eyed and when life's seen all glittery and serene and fruitful, trudging through the guts of an iconic city such as London midday in the midst of one of those stifling summer heat-waves is none but another notch on the belt of callous, invigorating life stories to reflect upon for years to come. And that's the guise under which we leave our gracious Inna, all smiles and well-wishing. Shorts and tank-tops are a must obviously as the temperature's tipped just past 25 degrees Celsius. We stop for a breath when we reach Piccadilly Circus, sighing heavy and sticky with sweat as we set our packs down and squeeze between this tourist and all seizing their respective Kodak moments with stiff poses and impish smiles at the foot of dainty, dear Eros and his fountain. The circle is positively bustling with all the foot traffic of an early Saturday afternoon, and we plop down on the curb next to the water, thoroughly exhausted.
Just last night we had casually sprinted the distance, Inna in heels no less, and it had felt fantastic. The London summer nights are crisp and embalming, and we ran with all the excitement and carefree bewilderment of four friends newly fresh to the Old World. Our legs had been spry and alive from a night of raunchous dancing and steeply-priced drinks, ending not on account of some pithy last call, but for a unified recognition of increasingly slurred speech and light wallets. We had just enough cash to be hustled for three grams of MDMA from a desperate-eyed jittery African in a tracksuit. His accomplice was a fair-skinned Russian street queen. From the looks of it, she had the been pretty once, but now her only attraction was primal, in that used-up professional sort of way. She looked like sex, and if that stone gritty alley-way of our rendez-vous hadn't carried that scent of London's Urinal, she probably would've smelled like it too. She did her part to close the deal, eye-fucking the three of our plastered faces, while Inna waited for us, uneasily shifting her weight from heel to heel at the corner of Knightsbridge. To be honest, that wasn't so convincing as the heavy supply of English whiskey from the bars and imported Russian vodka, courtesy of our gracious host, More than anything, the booze did the buying, tickled by our ecstatic memories of that Molly passion. And when we had finally reached a price and the pounds exchanged hands, the two street rats slid and vanished into the shadows from whence they came and they were gone, leaving us to lick our little fingers and dip into a bag of white powder that had a suspicious hint of sweet baking powder. We didn't care. The time was 4:30 in the a.m.; we had had our fun, to its fullest extent, and the four kilometers of late night West End flew by our faces in a flushed hazy dream of Olympic-style delirium, good running form and all. I felt like Usain Bolt, with that air of conquest and accomplishment that leaves you smiling and laughing from ear to ear as you stumble across the finish line. It's the way nights are supposed to end.
We revel longingly on those events that now seem so distant, and begin once again our journey east to Liverpool, the full breadth of which is slowly beginning to dawn on us. The springy-stepped mysticism we had broke from Inna with is all but evaporated and dripping away like so many beads of sweat. All that remains is a resolute determination and a glazed look in our eyes as Grant's phone's GPS takes us down street after street, through plaza after plaza. By the Charles River something clicks ever so slightly in the back of my mind. Looking out across the water, eyes and thoughts arrested by the Tate Museum and its solemn entrance obelisk that rises up to meet the Milennium Bridge, I still feel my figure cutting through the dense humid heat of air ahead of me. But I've altogther lost track of that walking feeling; my feet stepping heavy on the boardwalk, my legs swinging up to keep pace. It's lost to me, and I smile. Auto-pilot. The human body is truely a wonderous machine. I look at the road ahead towards a destination that I cannot see, then down at the black canvas Toms on my feet. Whatever energy is left in my chest lets out a half-chuckle in time with my breathing and I shake my head the way you do when something off-handed and silly pops into your head. I'm wearing geisha slippers; thin black-canvased geisha slippers, like the ones all Asians wear in old movies. Ten paces ahead, Grant and Max haven't heard. No doubt they too are in their own little heat-stroked worlds as well. I want to Charlie Chan light-step up to them on the balls of my feet like the stereotype suggests, but that will have to wait. For my feet at this time are not mine, but their own, assigned and set on the task of Bible-time travel. I don't mind. And I hear no complaints from my feet, although I know I surely will when they'd relinquish the reins. My eyes shoot right, back over to the Tate just as we pass the Bridge entrance on our side of the Charles. The symmetry looking through it to the Tate is altogether perfect aside from the walkway choked with eager camcorder- and camera-toters, dissinterested children, and vacationers like too many red-blood cells crammed into a clogged artery. Contemporary modernism at its finest. Still, a soft regret lingers at the idea of all the musing at modern art that we're passing up. The regret's short-lived and dies altogether when we turn away from the River and the city swallows us whole. The tall gray-stone brick and forlorn windows shoot up on either side of Queen Victoria Street, and although the sun has just passed its peak in the sky, both sidewalks are shaded, and a cool breeze is at our back. I catch up with the others. Walking auto-pilot is still engaged, and my mind has little else to do but wander. Infinite intrigue flows like euphoria and the city pushes past the sweat and soaks into my pores, flashing majestic domes and stately monuments from a distance down side streets and looming over courtyards as my feet whisk me by. Hello, London. And goodbye.
We're close, finally, after three hours and ten kilometers, the station's just around the corner. So fuck it, we break into song. We sing in unison and loudly pretentious like Americans, maniacally throwing every inch of soul and volume we can into each verse. The people shoot us queer looks as we pass, three jolly Yankees in sunglasses, tank-tops, and wild shorts, hunkered down with backpacks and duffle bags, and sweating like expectant mothers in labor (the natural kind).
"Juh-ust a small town girlll..."
