Hell, one time in Switzerland on a day not unlike today Bono leaped off a moving boat into the water. McGuinness freaked out and dove in after him, forever earning his 20 percent.

So it is with an impending sense of trouble that I go to the very back of the boat and find Bono and U2's Australian friend Libby stripping down to their underwear. Bono turns and dives into Sydney Harbor. His head bobs up a few yards away, spitting out the little cigar he had between his teeth and calling "Maurice! Come on!" Maurice, with his usual weary sigh, puts down his drink, says, "Back to work," takes off his clothes, and jumps into the water.

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On the upper decks some of U2's guests are gathering to watch the show. Bono is swimming toward the cabin cruisers anchored in front of the fancy houses along this stretch of waterfront. Maurice is swimming along behind him. Bono climbs aboard one boat and furiously tries to get its engine to turn over. Maurice stays close, ready to throw himself in front of any bullet that might come Bono's way. Giving up on his first choice, Bono swims from boat to boat. Clearly he is not the commando in charge of jump starts. Despairing of getting a big boat going, he jumps back'into the water and swims to a small private dock, where he swipes a dinghy and paddles. I can see a man coming out of one of the houses in the hill over the dock, looking down toward the water. I have visions of Bono being netted, gutted, and fried for dinner. The man on the hill returns inside, perhaps to call the cops, perhaps to get a shot­gun. Bono and Maurice, unaware, paddle away.

Eventually Bono rows up to another dock and presents his stolen lifeboat to a gentleman named Herbie who is standing there staring at this dripping wet apparition in black underpants. Bono asks Herbie to please make sure the gentleman on the hill gets his boat back. Then he dives back into the harbor, Maurice still in escort, and swims back to our yacht. He takes off his soaking wet briefs, balls them up, tosses them overboard, saying, "And Mrs. Herbie asked for these."

Bono tells All's nephews that he hopes they've learned an important lesson today: "It's good to steal."

Eric Hausch, Bono's security man, has been watching all the action from the poop deck. No doubt he would have jumped in if Bono had been in danger, but he was not going to swim around like a moron as long as he had his charge in sight. Now, assured that the boss is back aboard and secure, Eric decides to have a little fun with his commander, Jerry Mele. Jerry is a recidivist practical joker, so Eric is delighted to see an opportunity to wind him up. He puts in a call to the hotel and gets the security chief on the line. Then Eric goes into his act: "Jerry! Bono dove off the boat and got hauled off to jail in just his underpants! He's got no money! He's got no I.D.! They think he's a boat thief! We gotta get down there and get him out!"

"Oh, shit! Shit! Who do I know down there? I gotta think! Shit!" Jerry is halfway out the door to the police station before Eric cracks up laughing and suffers an earful of curses, smiling the whole time.

***

418

A few hours later Bono is showered and sharp, sitting out on his balcony forty stories above Sydney Harbor, drinking Kahlua and vodka and surveying the beautiful city spread out before him. Sinatra is singing "One for My Baby" in the background. The lights of Sydney are shining golden, the night sky is purple, and in the penthouse across the way a geisha in full costume is arranging her screens, expecting a visitor.

"I started writing the songs that became Achtung Baby in that building over there," Bono says, pointing to another tower. "You see that apart­ment tower across from it? There was a woman living there I use to watch when I'd come in at six, seven in the morning. She was over­weight, had a punk haircut, and used to get home around the same time I did. I made up a whole life for her—that she ran a punk club, that her parents financed it for her. I started watching her through a telescope." He laughs and says, "We excuse a lot in the name of reconnaissance!"

He sips his White Russian. "One night I was watching her and I happened to look two windows above her. There was another woman with another telescope watching me! I was furious! I was so offended. I jumped up and called her a bitch and pulled the curtains shut."

We laugh and then sit in silence, studying the whole panorama. "You know," Bono says quietly, "most people in the world never get to see this."

An hour later Bono's in a Thai restaurant, with Adam's brother Sebastian, Edge, Morleigh, Edge's sister Jill and her husband, Tim. Tim, who grew up in the same neighborhood as the Evanses and Claytons, now works for Polygram here in Australia. As is bound to happen at such a reunion, childhood stories dominate the conversation. Sebastian says he remembers as a little boy jumping on Edge and beating on him as hard as he could, while Edge paid absolutely no attention. Tim says that he recalls being knocked hard on the head by Adam with a toy gun. Bono says that his great memory of the Clayton house is that it was the first place he ever ate spaghetti.

"They didn't serve spaghetti in my neighborhood," he says. He was having trouble figuring out how to wind it onto his fork when Mrs. Clayton said, "Oh, that's all right, Paul. It's okay to just cut it up into little pieces and eat it." Young Bono went happily about doing that, chomping away, when Mrs. Clayton noticed little Sebastian having the same problem and reprimanded, "Sebastian! Will you eat properly or do

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I have to cut it up for you like a baby!" Bono's face turned bright red and fell into his napkin.

As the wine bottles are emptied everyone agrees that as a child Adam's great claim to fame was his virtuoso ability to fart at the perfect moment. As the English teacher was making his most poignant poetic point Adam would poot. Bono says that the year he sat next to Adam his English grade plummeted. Edge says that Adam's legendary status among his fellow schoolchildren was assured the time he let a big ripper in class and told the angry teacher, "I'm sorry, ma'am, it just slipped out of my bottom."

The plates are cleared and the party considers where to move next and settles on a gay club down the street. Edge's sister gets as far as the flaming Karaoke queens in the outer lounge and says it's time for Tim and her to call it a night. Bono plows farther into the club, coming to a huge barroom where homosexual men in wild costumes are dancing on the tables and across the bar. A man dressed in a buffalo head is spanking a fellow dressed as the pope with a very long feather.

Bono pauses to let Edge take his photo cuddling a sort of bison-headed Batman. A spontaneous chorus line is high-kicking to the Vil­lage People's "Go West," when who should I spot standing with his arms folded in the middle of the scene but that handsome heterosexual Larry Mullen—who I must say in this context bears more than a passing resemblance to one of those Macho Men the Village People so eloquently celebrated.

"Gay clubs are the best place for us to come to," Larry shouts in my ear above the music. "Nobody hassles us, there's not the asshole you find in other clubs who just has to get up and try to start something. They respect us and they're glad to have us. The gay community is always on the cutting edge in music. I'm proud that they like U2 and come to our concerts. They don't see in U2 that macho shit that's beneath so much rock. I have a lot of time for the gay community."

Boy George has gotten a lot of publicity in the British press by saying he's attracted to Larry. When he first went public with his crush in the mid-eighties ("I fancy the drummer in U2! Every time I hear Bono sing I still haven't found what I'm looking for,' I feel like shouting, 'Turn around!' ") Larry was embarrassed. Now he says he has a whole different attitude. "I take it as a compliment!"

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