Love is Love, No Money Down, by Brian Quinn

It’s a giant, threatening, black-speckled, greasy Banana; smacking, flailing, and pounding. Reed lying on the floor, inert, is getting pummelled, beaten senseless. He’s been slammed into bookcases, thrown through windows, bashed against the fridge. He’s whimpering and crying for his mommy. 

It’s about time.  

He’s spent years berating interns, embarrassing production assistants, and threatening publicists, he’s finally getting his. 

The intruder from The Velvet Underground has finally materialized, formed, wraithlike, leering, and scoffing; this six-foot tall, greasy, soft, overripe, smacking and pounding Banana. 

Port Authority benches are no joke. They’re narrow, uncomfortable, designed to be that way, it keeps the homeless at bay, prevents them from settling. The PA, people suffer here, funnelling in and out, jostling, screaming, crying.        

The county local runs three minutes after the hour, on the hour.  

1:06AM. No more. Nada. The place is empty. Time to stretch out on the designed-to-be hellish bench, twist, turn, flip: struggle to find a comfortable position. 

Close my eyes. Time to relive the dust up in Studio 8H. 

Best to scrunch up, sleep it off. Make it all go away. 

The luncheonette’s red pedestal stools are so short feet touch the floor. Depp, in his battered fedora with the frayed gaping hole in the peak is talking with his mouth full, swinging his tattooed arms above his head for emphasis, shovelling heaping forkfuls of scrambled eggs into his open gob. 

Thompson, lanky, frenetic, sits beside him, unhinged, murderous, a long grey cattle prod held tight in his left hand, a yellow taser in his right. He is obsessed with Jesuits. 

‘Love them!’ he screams, jumping outta his seat, straddling the stool, ‘Love them! Love them!’ until, forced, suddenly, a moment later, to drop the taser when the waitress appears, drops a tuna-melt on the counter. 

‘They’re smart, and mean,’ Thompson says, returning his skinny buttocks to the peeling red Naugahyde stool, flecks of tuna flying from the corners of his frothing lips. ‘Nothing like talking to a smart, mean, Jesuit for Christ’s sake!’ 

Everything in this dream is ass backward.  

Depp is impersonating Thompson with his mumbled, quick, cadence. His sweeping gaze never makes eye contact.  

Thompson’s Depp is all Capt’n Jack Sparrow, clattering shells and light-hearted sight gags.    

Thompson is beating the table with a corn dog telling the waiters to get ‘out of my way you bastards!’, and then, inexplicably, sotto voce: ‘meet me in the command post, I’ve got a supply of nitroglycerin! You’re gonna love it!’ 

Studio 8H is a cramped bit of history. Comic Genius. Belushi, Radner, Chase. Ghosts of SNL comedies past. Looks bigger on TV than it does in person. In person it’s a warren of dark runways, amphitheatre style seating, and a big swinging boom crane arcing overhead. 

The Hollywood Vampires performed on the 30th anniversary special. Alice Cooper front man, Johnny Depp on slide and lead guitar. There was a mix up. Lou Reed was scheduled to perform after the first commercial break, but I fouled up. The Vampires performed in Reed’s time slot. Reed blew a gasket. Cut my head off. Eviscerated me, right in front of Depp and his bandmates.   

‘You little bastard!’ Reed screamed, ‘I’m supposed to perform within the first thirty minutes of the open. It’s in my contract! You violated me and the contract! YOU! You little fucker! I’m going to sue you, Saturday Night Live, Lauren Michaels and the Network! And when it’s all over I’m gonna circle back around and sue you again just to show you what a lowlife worthless piece of shit you really are!’ 

I stammered. Begged for mercy. Babbled incoherently. Fell to my knees, swabbed the gritty stage with my forehead in a feeble attempt to quell the evil beast that threatened to rip my head off, shit down my neck, and put an immediate end to what had been a promising career.  

Reed huffed. Stormed off. Disappeared.  

His publicist grabbed me, helped me up, tried to brush the grit off my shirt. ‘Your forehead is bleeding,’ she said, ‘but don’t worry, he pulls this shit all the time.’  

Depp was devouring a Banana cream pie, not a slice… the whole damn pie, ladling it up into his chomping maw with a massive serving fork. 

The sugar was taking its toll. The pupils of his eyes were expanding and contracting at an astonishing rate.   

‘How do I handle him?’ I asked, seated on a stool of my own, head on the counter, eyes following, close up, the serving fork digging into the pie, my mind a blur. I was sick to my stomach, suffering, replaying my backstage dressing-down at the hands of Reed; caressing the painful, still bloody furrows the stage grit had gouged into my forehead. 

‘Well…Bananas of course!’ Thompson said. No, actually it’s Depp, impersonating Thompson, flailing in his seat, a big bandage covering his waggling index and middle fingers. 

 ‘I told you particularly. It’s Bananas. Giant gob-smacking Bananas!’ 

 ‘Yes, clearly, gobsmacking!’ Thompson, impersonating Depp, wails, ‘Warhol! The Underground! The man knows his herbaceous plants. Genius! A big greasy self-flagellating Banana! Do the trick every time!’ 

‘Let loose the Banana!’ Depp blurts out, waving the serving fork, raising the yellow taser, sighting down the barrel, firing on the pie, meringue flying, screaming; ‘Chase him down! Beat him senseless!’ 

‘The slinking rat-hole-fuck won’t know what hit him!’ Depp, as Thomson, yells. Then, with the corndog again: ‘Out of my way you bastards!’ 

The Banana follows Reed home on the six train, slams, headfirst, into his village lair on Waverley Place.  

I follow, floating, all knowing, above the front door; watch the Banana charge slam, rattle its very hinges, again, and again.  

Gleeful, I spy him. Reed. He’s cowering, inside, visible through the window. 

He knows the Banana is outside. How could he not? All that noise, the head-long banging…the door rattling like the Devil himself.  

I relished his torment, cheer the Banana on! 

‘Go! Go!’ I scream. 

The front door bursts asunder! The Banana charges through the breach, ruthless, menacing, finds Reed babbling incoherently, something about dromedaries and candlestick bowling.   

The Banana strikes him, mercilessly, drags his shrill, inert body across the dining room floor, slams him against the kitchen sink, the armoire, the credenza, corners him in the lavatory.  

Reed, the shifty bastard, squeezes through the tiny frosted privacy window, careens down the block.  

We follow, the Banana and me, race, in hot pursuit; down the block, around the corner, into an all-night deli, bash him. Expose him when he tries to buy weed in Washington Square Park, dog him at his next gig, stand leering and threatening in the wings, trip him when he steps on stage. He tries to sing. Who could perform with a giant self-flagellating Banana threatening their very existence?   

Triumphant, I return to Studio 8H, high-five Belushi, down a celebratory shot or two with Aykroyd, spark up a fat-boy with Chevy, knowing, all the time, I’ll have to return to the bus depot when the sun comes up, catch that first commuter bus back to our little house in the burbs, but now, I am content! content knowing the giant, greezy-soft, gob-smacking, libidinous Banana is still out there doggin’ Reed’s every step, teaching Reed a lesson, pounding him senseless, takin’ a Walk on the Wild Side.  

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Brian Quinn is an Emmy Award Winning TV news journalist living in Manhattan who has spent the last thirty years covering news in New York City and overseas. Much of his work is rooted in those experiences.