Rant in D Minor: Nothing to declare

An interviewer once asked David Lynch why he doesn’t like to leave his Los Angeles home. The director’s reply was savant simple: ‘Because bad things might happen.’

Self-styled, self-promoting, self-loving/loathing memoirist and all-round dandy Warhol Sebastian Horsley might’ve had pause to ponder that line last week when he was refused entry to the US by Customs and Border Protection officials on the grounds of ‘moral turpitude’ – which is a bit like scolding a hog for rooting in its own truffles.
Horsley could hardly complain. Most of us fill in the appropriate answers on the Visa waiver form; he wrote an entire book – Dandy In The Underworld (Harper Perennial) – that was basically one long bad advertisement for himself; a 328-page litany of illegal and probably immoral misadventures.
What I’d really like to know is how come the Customs and Border Protection folk had read the book before its New York launch party had even taken place? Last time I passed through immigration and proferred my index finger and retina for checking, the ladies and gents on duty weren’t exactly up to their eyes in Baudelaire, Huysmans, Wilde and sundry other Euro decadents.
We call upon the author to explain.
While we’re on the subject, London’s Guardian led with a front page story last month speculating about invasions of privacy that may be perpetrated upon people wishing to travel throughout the EU. According to the report, the two most contentious pieces of data that will soon be demanded by the British government are credit card and phone information.
Me, I think the authorities should be given more information, not less. I have no life, and I’d like to share as much of that non-life as possible with the intelligence community. I’m flattered they’re interested. Care to see my holiday snaps from Ibiza ’83? Or how about the 1986 Enniscorthy Vocational School dinner dance? That’s me with the David Coverdale poodle ’do and a tie as wide as a plank. I also have a dog-eared old ticket to see the Stones at Slane from June 1982, price £12.50, a partially eaten stick of Wrigley’s and some yellowed copies of 2000AD circa 1978.
My back pages? They’re all yours. Read ’em and weep.