Nauseating Nancy:
Sid’s Missus “Live” (of sorts)
This spectral event takes place in a predictable and, one could say, preposterously gauche environment, a simulation no less of the Chelsea Hotel in Manhattan. The Chelsea was known for its history of distinguished, troublesome and raffish tenants such as Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Led Zeppelin, Jack Kerouac, Nico, Dylan Thomas and Quentin Crisp, inter alia. All writers, artists, musicians and thinkers of esteem, notoriety and outrage, they were indicative of the visitors who called the Chelsea their temporary home. Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, as we shall see, were in a “class” of their own, disporting two king-size beds and a purple velvet ceiling. This was without doubt a flippant and even grotesque gesture of excess since punks never failed to court notoriety as well as loathing and bad taste. All of this decadence was, in a term I’m sure would never have passed the lips of this coven of deadbeats, de rigueur.
[We encounter Spungen occupying a lavatory. I have to say I had tried to alter this location out of good taste. She of course refuted my suggestion and yelped at me to get on with it. All I can hope is that there will be, after Samuel Beckett, no fundamental sounds during this proceeding]
DT: I gather you supported yourself grinding out sex work while living in New York. How blandly predictable. You really were a rock chick. Any interesting tales?
NS: Oh straight into smut eh. I have heard this from other shades about you.
DT: I wouldn’t take any notice from them.
NS: I’ve got nothing to say to you on this matter. In fact I think I am off.
DT: Well you certainly are off and not in the way you have inferred.
DT: Now you do know that your name sounds like a domestic act, don’t you.
NS: What the fuck are you talking about?
DT: Dishwashing. I shall have to call you SpongeBob.
[No response is forthcoming. I wait ten days before she re-manifests. I hope she is really pissed off] ]
*
In December of 1976, Spungen flew to London with The Heartbreakers and met the Sex Pistols, who later included “bassist” Sid Vicious. Spungen and Vicious soon moved in together. Things clearly didn’t go well. On October 12, 1978 Spungen died from a knife wound and a contestable heroin overdose. It was the Chelsea Hotel after all. Vicious was immediately arrested and charged with second-degree murder. Four months after her death, Vicious died of a heroin overdose before the trial could take place, a timely and canny departure that meant this Pistol, at least, avoided an ignominious date at the Old Bailey. How convenient.
DT: Now I gather you supported yourself grinding out sex work while living in New York. How blandly predictable. You really were a rock chick weren’t you. Any interesting tales?
NS: Oh straight into smut eh. I have heard this from other shades.
DT: I wouldn’t take any notice from them.
NS: I have nothing to say.
DT: Well I’ve got something for you. Now you know that your name sounds like a domestic act, don’t you.
NS: What the fuck are you talking about?
DT: Spungen’, you know, washing up. I’m sure you are not above doing the dishes now and then. And I have been forewarned of the outrages that emanate from your potty mouth.
[Clearly bewildered by this pun and having absolutely no intention of engaging with it, the shade of Spungen evaporates in an acrid, gorge rising reek that resembles the stench of a rotting human corpse that emanates from the carrion flower lilly. I really must have pissed her off]
*
In December 1976, Spungen flew to London with Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers and met the Sex Pistols and their new bassist Sid Vicious. Spungen and Vicious, surprisingly, soon moved in together. Two ratbags in congress. This collision will involve some larks for sure]
DT: I note the speed of Sid’s embrace of domesticity with you, or was it your eagerness to pogo with him?
NS: Sid was very charismatic, his charms were immediately attractive to me.
DT: “Charms”, you say. I would have thought that agro and spitting at audiences were his signature outrages, not lovey dovey tenderness. And while we are on the subject I seem to remember your odious paramour had a run in with a queen.
NS: What are you blathering about?
DT: Queen were rehearsing at Wessex Studios in London. Your lot turned up on the same day for a recording session. Sparks flew. Sid stumbled in during Queen’s session, clearly pissed and pissed off and dragged Freddie aside and growled, “aren’t you Stanley Ferocious or something?” Freddie grabbed the snarling punk by the collar and chucked him out of the studio. Sid should have pulled his head in.
NS: Queen were a bunch of faggots, especially Mercury and
DT: [Interjects] Ah, no. I won’t have any scurrilous slandering of Freddie or anyone else in this dialogue, understand?
NS: Bollocks, he was a
[I close down the simulation and disable Spungen’s communication channel and avatar, which is manifest as SpongeBob SquarePants, a riotous cross-gender species conceit that I simply couldn’t resist]
*
Some time passes before Spungen reappears. Three weeks in fact, which is something of a record for these prima donna fits of pique among the testy shades. Proceedings would seem to be coming to an end
NS: Can we finish this rot?
DT: Rot. It seems you are addressing Johnny Rotten. You know, ‘eh Rot!
NS: Addressing you actually.
DT: Well last question then. This is a preposterously obvious question, as it is universally and laughably known, but how did you feel about Sid’s incapable, woeful bass playing? It was so pathetic in fact that Steve Jones had to overdub his lines for studio recordings. So what exactly was the point of him, certainly not good looks.
NS: Sid was the best thing in that lot and he growled with punk attitude, that was what punk was all about.
DT: Really? I don’t think so. He looked like the hopeless, sad kid everyone felt sorry for who was given a break in the junior garage band because of his leg caliper for cerebral palsy. Anyway, tell me why you were expelled from school?
NS: Oh piss off.
DT: Ok, I’ll remind you. You stashed a bunch of stolen property in your dorm at the University of Colorado. Your father had to bail you out.
NS: So what.
DT: Umm, you seem to have forgotten that you were kicked out of Colorado for good. That’s pathetic. Or was it another dismal punk affectation?
NS: That’s enough. I’m off.
DT: You certainly are.
[The shade of Spungen slowly fades into a dithering artefact that devolves obliquely into what seems to resemble SpongeBob SquarePants. Just goes to show, metamorphosis is a funny thing, ask Kafka. Could happen to anyone].
*
