WestVirginiaVille

There’s a scene in the Martin Scorcese movie, “Hugo,” where Hugo looks out from a high clock tower in the Paris train station where he lives a secret life. it’s a scene one is able to see for oneself. There’s a place you must stand, though, and it’s not inside a clock tower.

Walker DeVille and Abdullah flee the Buddhist temple and head to a 17th century Paris flat for Christmas. His mother wants him home, but he’s not coming. Walker reads a postcard from Davin back in Lagos from bullet-riddled Chad.

Abdullah was on fire. This was not something new. Abdullah’s pants — more specifically, his pant cuffs — had caught fire before on the construction site of the Buddhist temple in a Parisian suburb.

It is inherently interesting to write about drugs. Most of us live obedient, law-abiding lives, or we try to appear as if we do. Behind the masquerade, of course, all sorts of illegal, un-abiding, disgraceful, unappealing, messy things are going on.

‘I was not born nor did I come of age in the Appalachian hills. I came to them relatively late – in my early 20s. That means, as they figure these things in Appalachia, I’m still something of a newcomer.’

Abdullah’s face bore a startling resemblance to Moamar Kadafy’s, except that unlike the Libyan dictator’s scowling visage, his tended upward, into frequent dimpled smiles, revealing bone-white teeth.

Exiting stage left from West Virginia, Walker DeVille crash lands at a Buddhist temple in a suburb of Paris with a Moroccan Arab who knows the way to Hashish Street.

Walker DeVille’s ‘Bohemian Life’ begins again as he trashes his life and his love in backwoods West Virginia and buys a one-way ticket to France. He’s not sure of anything except that he’s going, going, gone.

Walker DeVille: ‘If it took a quarter-hit of hillbilly mescaline to gain entry to the world of the gods, well, back then I considered that a good $15 investment.’

What happened to bring you back to WestVirginiaVille, if you left once before? In the debut of an occasional series, Walker DeVille tries again to tell his tale.