Portrait: Oil on canvas. Big John Zeuffle life size, 210 x 100 cm (86 x 37).

Of Big John's many talents & accomplishments (other than having grown extremely large!) he sang folk songs to the accompaniment of his acoustic guitar (&, I must say, thinking back now, he was an unmitigatedly excellent friend). We finished this painting over a period of a couple of months when he would wake me in my studio after he finished his bar gigs. We would paint/pose respectively, smoking plenty of joints, listening to music loud on the excellent stereo I had at the time, in a studio that fell into my hands that was downtown in a commercial locale without sleeping neighbours. We usually ended the session having a big breakfast of pure cholesterol in its native form at the Greek, the only place open as the sun came up.

I have always liked big 'elegant' cars (yes, I feel too guilty these days but this painting is 15 or 20 years old, & we were still enjoying the relief after the seventies scare where the ending availabilty of oil resources was greatly exaggerrated) but at the time all I could afford was a Chevy Chevette, The American version of the Fiat 500, i.e.- a shopping cart. When John got into its passenger seat he had to keep his neck bent under its ceiling & his left arm over the shoulder of the back of my seat so that his own shoulders didn't get into the space I needed to drive.

I remember one early morning, stoned out of our heads but still taking hits from John's little wooden pipe as we drove through an absolutely still night of sleeping neighbours whose steets were deep in snow. I drove along very slowly in part because of the danger of the winter roads & in part because I was too stoned, tired & hungry to move any quicker.

We reached a red street light just before our destination a couple of kilometres from the studio when I saw the first moving car we had that evening: a police car coming to a stop at the same red light facing us from the other side of the intersection... I did one of those stoned, slow-motion panic reactions that took me right across the red light at ten kilometres an hour right in front of them... I pulled over before they had time to put their lights on & turn around. In the seconds we waited John tries desperately to put the pipe out with one hand (the other trapped behind my seat) against his jeans- sparks flying dangerously, I open my window to let some of the thick smoke that enveloped the small enclosed space, out.

Looking back I can see it from the cop's point of view: I approach the miniature car, it is very early in the morning, it is absolutely dark but for the halloed lights of streetlamps, the air is pristine with lack of moisture- still & completely silent but for my boots sloshing through the wet snow. The driver is opening his window, is there danger? Do I unlatch my side-arm? Holy shit! Are they in danger? Look at the smoke pouring out of his window, is it an emergency? Do they have a fire in the car? -- Then the sweet smell of John's superior California grass hits him-- Oh... --he looks inside my window at Big John crumpled into the tiny space, at my frightened eyes... of the three of us the only words spoken were the cop's, shaking his head: Jeeez! Just try & take it easy you guys! And he waved us on...!