JUST THE PARTS I REMEMBER
Have you ever been to Paris?
I mean have you ever really been to Paris?
If you don't know what I'm talking about, then maybe you haven't. If you've walked around with a camera and a guidebook, if you've looked at the Eiffel Tower and checked it off on your itinerary, if you've boarded or disembarked a tour bus, then I think you don't know what I'm talking about. As wonderful as it is to visit Paris just to see the sights, a closer inspection proves beauty is only skin-deep. Paris has the power to erase you in so many different ways. Not difficult, as you're invisible already, in the multitudes made up of the anonymous who concern themselves with their own invisibility. In Paris, everyone's got something they'd just as well keep hidden. 'Don't ask, don't tell' is the law of the street on streets where even the law seems nearly above itself, wary of drawing attention in a city where attention would appear to be coveted, but only to those who haven't really been to Paris. Only to those who just don't know.
You have to keep in mind that Paris has existed for over two thousand years. You have to remember that Paris is a city in the truest, most contemporary sense of that word. It may well be for lovers, it certainly is a city of lights, but you must accept that there is another side, devoid of conventional love, where the lights are dimmed by choice. The underworld of Paris is as seething, as seedy, as secure in its existence as any on this Earth, and the city upon which it feeds, beautiful and insidiously aware, creates a glaring contrast between the real and the imagined leaving a singularly imagined reality. Here is the most potent argument in the age-old debate between truth and beauty, seemingly separate yet inseparable, tightly intertwined with tacit complacency on both ends. Here are street side cafés whose very walls reverberate with the greatness of past patrons while proprietors keep a constant eye out for future genius while overlooking wanted terrorists who relax and ponder their anonymity with an almost gifted ease. Here, architecture of the highest order, mind-numbing in its beauty and its attention to detail, mates with the Virgin records Megastore, where a heroin buy is made. Here is the top in fashion, dictating what the beautiful people will wear the world over, and when those people go out they go to 'Le Bain Douche' where the booze flows and the cocaine is cut freely on the tables. Here one can walk the silent morning hours wrapped in majesty and history through the courtyard of the Palais du Louvre and understand why Vampire legends thrive, or ride a boat down the Seine full of people whose bacchanal overtures promote an impetuous existence that strives to fill an undefined void. Here is a place where wine is art, art is plentiful, and the drinking age - which is birth - only slightly precedes the age of sexual awareness. Here are the junkies who congregate in front of the Georges Pompidou Center of Modern Art hoping for a methadone handout. Here is life at every angle.
Here is Paris.
PART ONE
Getting There. Being There.
I arrived in Paris on an August Sunday in Nineteen-Ninety-Six. Staring from the window of a cab, my breath shortened with every passing street. Each click of the meter pressed the reality in a bit farther, and I could taste the excitement, the anxiety, the uncertainty of what had taken on the timbre of the first day of my life.
After graduating from college that May, suddenly summer was just another season. I couldn't let that happen. Not this summer, the first summer, and perhaps the only best time to jump in, maybe almost drown before breaking the surface at the last instant, spinning arms and gasping for breath.
The opportunity to live in Paris for an undefined period of time was presented to me and I lunged at it the way a lioness might at a wildebeest, (only without the chewing and a lot less blood). Originally, my arrival had been slated for mid-September, but I went early because of a woman, that magnificent creature whom so many of us often find ourselves in pursuit. In my case unsuccessful pursuit mind you, albeit undeterred. It's pathetic really. The way a stupid animal repeatedly jumping from an electrical charge blocking its food is pathetic.
Jessica was her name, and things weren't serious before she left for a European tour, though they were close. I was hoping a week in Paris might make up for the things she had said to me before leaving. Things like: "You're such a nice guy," or "I wish every guy was as nice as you." Deathblow phrases, those. In my head, the response is always the same: "If you got your wish, then you'd never have sex." Ah! Sex! I'm no dynamo, and the act hardly consumes me, but I would like to have some more before I die. Where better to go, I reasoned, than to a place whose very language is love, a city named for a man whose only fame was seduction.
The cab stopped.
I had come to the right place.
I don't imagine I looked very Parisian standing at the door of number Fifteen Pláce Vauban, bags strewn about ankles that quickly lost patience with my legs as I was sweating, digging through my pockets to find the godforsaken code that would let me into the building. Sunday was the concierge’s day off, so the code was the only way in. Nearly every single apartment in Paris has a corresponding code without which one cannot enter the building. If you went to visit someone, and they forgot to give you their code, you’d have to call from the street and ask for it. If, upon finding a telephone booth, you realize that you hadn't bought a phone card (public phones in France don't accept coins) and it’s past eight o'clock in the evening, then pretty much you're shit out of luck. That's a bit how I felt, rifling through my bags. The heat was hot, as is often the case, and grew more so with every expletive I shouted - first at my wallet for being so full, then at the door for being so closed, and of course at the heat for being so hot. After thoroughly explaining to myself how much of an asshole I was, the slip of paper with the code written on it emerged, like a dank and mischievous earthworm revealed by an April rain, from a secret compartment in my wallet. Secret to me, anyway. After punching numbers on the console artfully embedded into the side of a doorway erected when the concept of punching numbers into a console would have had one hung as a witch, I made my way up to the fourth floor and keyed into my new temporary home.
The size of the apartment was compunded by its severe lack of furnishings. Three beds, two armchairs, one coffee table, a couch and a television. The kitchen, thankfully outfitted with a fridge, table and chairs, was missing even the most basic trashcan. It did have, unnecessary although very French, a built-in wine chiller next to the sink. Any complaints, however, were assuaged when I threw open the windows (French doors, really) and looked out upon the city. From the living room I could see L’hôtel des Invalides and Napoleon’s tomb directly across the street. The tomb looks a bit like the Capitol building in Washington except smaller, and the dome is gold. It gave the impression of a huge all-knowing benevolent entity (wisdom?) turning its head to have a look at me. From one of the bedrooms, I had a postcard view of the Eiffel tower exhilaratingly close by. My introduction to Paris was impeccable, staring as the sun set behind the tower starkly defined against a Florida-orange sky. The first couple of days were a jet-lagged blur and I did little more than sleep and watch the few movies I had brought from home. On the third day, I received a call from Jessica. She had attracted me immediately when we first met, and somehow I wound up dating her over the next few weeks, in the lightest sense of that word. She was fun, and I'd say interesting mainly because she talked so much, which is fine since it takes the pressure off me. And pretty. Cute as a button is the cliché that comes to mind, though I still haven't figured out what's cute about a button. Back home, we went out now and again, messed around, but she never invited me up to her place and never came up to mine, until now.
She came in with a big travel pack strapped to her back, slick with August sweat and breathing hard. She showered and we sat in the kitchen. It was Jessica who alerted me that the large container next to the sink, the one I'd taken to be a wine chiller, was in actuality the mysteriously missing trashcan. Having just gotten in from Amsterdam, she presented a bag of Northern Lights for our enjoyment.
Too tired to go out, the two of us smoked and watched 'Joe vs. The Volcano' (a shamefully under-appreciated movie) and relaxed. I'd been on long travels before so I know the oasis this presented. We talked about worthless stuff, or rather she talked, and when the words were done we simply went at each other. Kissing, touching, squeezing, rubbing. The floor kept getting in the way and it was more a question of comfort than desire when I asked if she wanted to go into my bedroom and continue on something softer. Her pained response was that she had to sleep. She needed to rest, you see, for her trip to Spain the following morning. I suppose it would be bad fucking form to be tired on a goddamn train. Though my teeth clenched in disappointment, the best response I could muster was:
"Spain is great. You'll love it there."
So the next morning she woke me and we went down the street for coffee and croissants. I put her in a cab and watched it speed off, leaving me to spit curses at a dwindling French tailpipe. Walking on a bit further, I discovered (the way Columbus 'discovered') Rue Clare. A conglomeration of indoor and outdoor markets selling fruits, fish, vegetables, cheese and wine, (the latter two presumably not quite as fresh as the rest).
I bought a cheap bottle of red at what would become a familiar shop before returning to the apartment where I planned to get drunk and bitter.
The first half of the bottle saw me lament the fact that things hadn't gone better with Jessica, and how easily she brushed me aside, used me for a shower and a comfortable bed.
As the second half of the bottle conceded the battle to my liver, the tune changed. ‘I'm in Paris’, I thought. This was great. So much to do, so much to see. It was time to go exploring, to discover what this legendary city was all about, to find out for myself if all the stories were true. The Latin Quarter, Montmartre, the Marais, museums, parks - so much. I was here! I ought to be tripping over myself to get out the door. Instead, I lay down and passed out cold. It was evening when I came to, my head clamoring to make a point. Too late to go far, no need to be lost in the dark with no idea how to ask for directions, much less have any. A good time to see the Eiffel tower, I decided, close by and certainly a decent initial visit.
When you go to the Eiffel tower, you've got to do it right. Across the street from L'École Militare at the entrance to Le Champs du Mars you'll get an unshakable view. Directly in front is a large square where military tribunals were once held, and beyond begins a very long and wide median strip of softly manicured grass, greenly contrasting with walkways on either side. There's a break halfway down where a huge fountain spouts diamond water lit from below, and all along the outer edges the trees stand, disinterested. Roll your vision along the median and it seamlessly fades into a fairy tale distance where the tower stands in majestic circumstance. At first glance you may be shaken by the sheer size of the thing, being accustomed to those smaller tin models whose price rises exponentially the closer you get to the reality. Mouth agape, eyes speeding up and down this t.v. antenna gone massively, monstrously wrong - or right - the realization will dawn upon you that it was never bronze or gold, or old and dirty as you may have thought. (Unless, of course, I’m the only person who ever thought that). You'll see that in fact the very steel itself, the huge slabs of elongated steel that twist and cross for what seems like ever are exactly the same color as when some psychotic visionary began putting them together. It could never be any other color. It's a place that forces you to feel. You cannot know until you've actually been there. It is a magical, majestic, sensual tower with more class than high school. What's below is an altogether different story.
Tourists.
Swarthy, half-witted tourists.
There's a huge difference between foreigners and tourists in the way there's a distinction between a guest and a family of skunks. The former is welcomed, offered food and beverage. The latter causes noses to wrinkle in disgust and breeds well justified maniacal hatred. I'm talking about big fat guys with hairy slipper-clad legs and overflowing guts pushing out an XXL T-shirt saying 'Paris University' over too-tight red nylon shorts. Or people unable to see the world unless they see it through the viewfinder of a video camera. Or varicosed women whining in English about how disorganized it all is, how they shouldn't have to wait on such a long line, and where can a person find authentic French fries anyway? These idiots and their piggish cohorts are tourists. The number of tour-buses rolling through this city is enough to boggle the mind. It's easy to understand the reputed xenophobia, what with the sense-numbing hordes of xenon's to phobe.
Despite the ugliness below, the tower persevered and I laughed at the hustle and bustle of human trash from a comfortable distance on the grass shared by groups of others like me, people who preferred to enjoy the spectacle from a disassociated position. Eventually, I got hungry and headed home, stopping for another bottle of wine and some food. I had the impression I could cook something.
The stove was a thing of beauty. Black, sleek, without a single raised surface - not even a knob. It was electric, turned on and off by a touch, designed to make cooking easy. I never had a problem with cooking. In fact, I enjoy it. This night was meant to be simple: Spaghetti and tomato sauce. I started pressing buttons expecting heat. Instead, the display began flashing. And then, the beeping started. A shrill, pounding, relentless sound. Two hours later, I was bemusedly intoxicated and the water was boiling, on the grill. Is it normal to grill water? Through it all, the miserably intrusive death throes of the stove continued. The beeping never ceased. That night, instead of dreaming about the beautiful blonde woman I'd seen under the tower wearing a silver short shiny dress and black cowboy boots, I dreamt of friends, old and new, and something about the extreme, exquisite importance of a comfortable bed. The next night, I cut a wire underneath the stove in order to silence its cries and protect my sanity. Two months passed before a new stove was installed.
I stayed off the sauce for a few days to allow for some clear-headed exploration of my new digs. I walked in Ghandi-esque proportions distinguishable only by not being a short, bald, scantily clad Indian hero who’s been dead for decades. I was alone, completely, and spending too much time in an empty apartment compounded that sense. I carried two books with me always. One, a novel - 'Tropic of Cancer', 'The Stranger', or anything else that might make a specific mention of Paris. The other was a little red book full of maps and a list of every street in the city. The Jardins du Tuileries are fantastic gardens offering a spectacular view from their gates. La Concorde in front, a monument whose centerpiece is an obelisk that Napoleon sailed up the Seine all the way from Egypt. On its far side begins the Champs-Elysées, straddled at its end by the garish Arc De Triomphe. Looking behind, La Madeleine, an imposingly aged building in the distance, and beyond the garden's other side you can just make out the Palais du Louvre. Directly in front runs the Seine itself, on whose opposite banks sits the National Assembly building, an homage to Jeffersonian architecture, and keeping a constant watch, the ever-present Eiffel tower. Once inside the gardens, I’d sit at one of the carp-filled fountains and read until there was a mention or a description of a particular street somewhere in Paris, at which point I'd whip out my handy red street-book and look it up. Once found, direction calibrated, I'd head off in search of the literary destination and reread the passage when I got there. This method worked well. It often took hours of walking in amazement through streets dripping with character, allowing me to see all sorts of Paris. The city is vast. I passed through areas resembling each other only by the sounds of the people around me, the musical language dripping from their lips as vanilla ice cream on a hot day. While just about every single French person smokes ceaselessly, apparently I was the only one in the entire city in possession of a functional lighter. I was asked for it repeatedly, though of course only older French men suffering through late-stage emphysema lacked this necessary tool, and never enthusiastic young French women named Monique who were not only incredibly excited to meet an American, but grateful to have met one with a lighter.
I don't mind being alone. I don't prefer it, but there are worse things. I have a lot of practice. Walking alone, aimlessly, for six or eight hours in a day allows dusty memories, important enough to hold on to, a chance to come up for air. On those days, my thoughts were of travels. And on that day, my thoughts were of a girl I may have been in love with once, who told me there is always a radiance in the darkness; that no matter how black the world may seem, a soul can always be bright at its core.
Alex in the Storm. Bamboozled in Mexico.
Lying in the transitory darkness of room number eleven at the Hi-Lo Motel just outside Minneapolis, I thought I might go crazy. Then, biting through the black, a dull pink neon glare splits the tiny abyss into jagged slices of light and dark, allowing me to see for the hundredth time: water-stains on the ceiling; my clothes draped over a chair; a three-legged desk nailed to the floor. Then, like teeth snapping shut on nothing, the darkness. In a bed somehow wider than it was long, I cursed the Hi-Lo Motel and its flashing neon vacancy sign, and the Indian woman who stuck me in the room directly below it. And again, doomed pink light radiated for a moment through the pitch-darkness of the empty room.
I left the Hi-Lo long before dawn or sleep, and checked into a Hilton in downtown Minneapolis that was more than a step above. It was a welcome change from roadside motels and the slow and steady drive from New York. I was about halfway, and already I'd seen so much. The tough part was seeing it all alone. I wasn’t as used to it as maybe I should’ve been. The by-product of those past few weeks was thinking about things I guess I needed to think about. Decisions, exhumations, realizations, hopes, desires: these are all fodder for the lonely mind in its noble battle against depression. Or because of it. I could not keep my thoughts from frequent melees with memories - some good, some bad, some having to do with Alex. I remember seeing the mud in the shape of her bootprints. Staring at them, feeling them and knowing she was gone without having to be told. Knowing because it was just like her to track mud on my carpet on her way out forever, fully aware I would sit and stare. Knowing because I would know. Because I still could. I couldn’t keep those thoughts at bay that Mid-western night, and even though the room was dark they kept me awake as effectively as flashing pink neon. She snapped off emotions, like a vacancy sign above a nearly empty roadside inn, only they never came back on. I can't say in which silent hour I decided to call her, but it was the same one I gave up trying to sleep. Alex is from Winnipeg, and I could still remember her address. It was easier than I feared, maybe easier than I hoped, to get her phone number. Before I could turn back, I dialed and simply stared at the woman on the other side of the booth's clear panel, drying glasses behind a bar with a cloth so bright I couldn’t take my eyes off it. The bar was empty, far too early even for the alcoholics to begin, though I talked her into running my coffee through with a splash of whiskey, for courage. I almost forgot what I was holding to my head when I heard the voice through the receiver. The bartender’s dexterous fingers danced the bright white cloth from one glass to the next without even looking. Such nonchalant perfection must come from countless mornings cleaning glasses in a hotel bar with no regulars, no one to talk to. She looked bored. Another sound in my ear, louder this time, and my brain snapped to attention only to find it had nothing for my mouth to say, so my mouth took over. "I'm in a hotel bar watching a woman clean glasses, but she's not even looking at her hands. She's like a machine, but her fingers are beautiful. Have you ever felt like that? Separate from yourself?" It was the way I felt at that moment, and I know my fingers may have been as white as the cloth waltzing through the glasses just as easily as I might have dropped the receiver out of my hand. I was about to hang up. Then she spoke.
"It's you, isn't it? I'm feeling my body, I can feel my heart, my mind like I'm going crazy. Is it really you? Where are you?"
I was in Astounded, North Carolina. In Confused, Pennsylvania. In Whathefuck, Kansas.
"I'm in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on my way west." I noticed then I had been squeezing my earlobe. I let go and it was numb. The bartender served a coffee, the cloth draped over her shoulder all the more radiant against her black vest. Alex spoke again.
"Can we meet? Can you make it to Grand Forks by tomorrow night? I'll drive down and we can meet, have dinner. There's tons I want to tell you."
That‘s it. I was going to see her again. She wanted to see me again. I wrote down when and where, and that was it. This person, once everything I ever knew or wanted to know wanted to see me again, two years after a muddy footprint, the signature of presumably permanent separation that left me in darkness. Vacant. Behind the panel, the bartender’s fingers resumed their dance. I was spending the summer of Ninety-Four on the road, driving from New York to San Francisco where I would turn over the keys of a spanking new Montero to my Uncle in exchange for all expenses. It was his way of giving me a chance to do what I always wanted to do, if I had money or a car, or a father who wouldn't constantly remind me that some people actually had to work for a living. Everything was going smoothly. I had seen so much. In Ohio, there's a big red barn, solitary by the side of one of those flat, desolate Buckeye roads that go on for miles and miles without ever kidding you about having an end.
AT THE END OF THE ROAD I WILL MEET GOD.
That was painted on the side of the decaying barn in three-foot high white letters. I stood by that barn and looked as hard as I could, trying to see the end. I must admit, my eyesight - like my faith - is far from perfect. Further into Ohio, where colors began to slow the ride, I found myself in a field of yellow flowers that seemed, like the road, to stretch into always. Though I didn't know it at the time, today I wonder if it was a field of poppies I’d wandered into. I might have stayed far too long. In Wisconsin, there is a place that may or may not be called Wis. Dells, where apparently some sort of geologic phenomenon exists. I never saw it, thanks to the strip of highway approaching it, blanketed with all sorts of distractions. Go-carts, a Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, a huge mini-golf course where I played nine holes with a gaggle of girls on their day off from a nearby Dairy Queen who had difficulty believing people actually live in New York and don't just work there. People can be funny and kind without realizing they're being that way. Like Mark, the doorman at the Hilton in Minneapolis, who, after a late-night conversation about baseball, offered me a place to stay in Kansas City with his cousins if I was thinking of heading south. I was not. I was going to Grand Forks, North Dakota, and although I had a spring in my step and a smile on my face, I know the first was hesitant and the second forced. As I crossed the ubiquitous Mississippi for the third time that week I knew I was going to see Alex as well as I didn't know why.
I had been driving for five straight hours, periodically glancing at the clouds darkening the sky to the north and intently chewing on a stick of teriyaki beef-jerky that had become a staple of my cross-country diet, when I realized my gas gauge was dangerously close to resting on E. My mind, when it wasn’t on the clouds to the north, was in them, and I thought back with a grimace over the two hours since I had last seen any sign of life at all. I turned the radio off so I might think more clearly and reason out my suddenly imperfect situation when the storm hit. The rain came down as if it despised the Earth, slamming my windshield faster than the wipers could clear it. In no time at all, day became night. Above me, the black clouds were now and again pierced with blue electricity and the soulful sound of thunder. The situation was preparing to overtake me when I saw a light in the distance. The land is so flat here it was impossible to tell how far, but it was there. A sign of life, a beacon. It was slow going through the sudden storm. The terrain was in turmoil. More than once I narrowly avoided being hit by a flying bush or some such thing. Almost forty minutes later I limped the car into the parking lot of Monk's Corner Store, a place so far from any corner it was almost comical. Visibility severely limited, every step was a cautious one while remaining as quick as caution allowed. I had to walk around an impressive custom-built truck apparently without a single straight edge before getting through the door, and that was all it took to get drenched, almost to the bone. Bells clanged above my head as I ran the rain from my hair and behind me a voice full of amnesty resonated: "Welcome to dry land, young man. Here. Warm yerself up on ole Monk." Behind a counter overrun by various tobacco products and a revolving display of Zippo lighters sat an older man whose disarming grin contradicted his great size, holding out a cup of steaming coffee. I took it, thankfully, and inquired about gas.
"Yep, we got gasoline," he assured me. "Only I'm hopin' you won't mind bein' patient n'lettin' the storm pass us by." That was fine, and after using the bathroom I went to the pay phone. Before I picked up the receiver, the only other person in the store besides Monk and myself said:
"Don't bother. Phone's out." He must have noticed my expression because, pursing his lips and shaking his head, he said sympathetically, "I know. What a mess. My name's Trevor." He held out his hand and I shook it. I asked if the truck outside belonged to him.
"Yeah. Well, it's not my truck. I'm driving it for my boss. He's from Atlanta, but he's got a summer place up this way. I drive the truck up and back for him. Don't ask." Trevor was a middle-aged black man with a calm demeanor, and when he spoke his soothing southern drawl I felt comforted, lulled in a good way. We spoke for a time about the pros and cons of New York versus Atlanta, of southern hospitality and northern arrogance. He bought us beers and we stood in the back against the coolers, while Monk kept busy cleaning the big window up front. When Trevor asked what I was doing in North Dakota, I wasn’t quite sure how to answer. I told him I was sidetracked by an old romance. When he pressed for more, I figured it couldn’t hurt. I told him a bit about Alex, how the last image I had was her footprint, how I hated her for a time after, but during I loved her to the point of fooling myself into believing she would never leave. Over time, after she was gone, I realized that I always knew, somehow, she would disappear without warning. It never seemed right to talk about her before, but I suppose the fact that I was on my way to see her caused a logjam of memories and doubts and other nameless feelings. Trevor was a good listener, and I think he knew it was against my nature to talk about myself. Monk, too, was listening by now, both arms crossed over a sizable chest. I can't say how long he'd been there. Long enough. For a moment there was the kind of silence only a driving rain can create: a brilliant white noise that made me to feel truly present. At just the right instant, Trevor broke it.
"I'm gonna take a leak," he said.
I sat at the small table by the window and heard the pitch of the storm rise an octave or two as rain became hail that bounced off the parking lot asphalt as if it were made of rubber. My watch pleaded with me to believe it was just passed three o'clock, but the impenetrable darkness outside argued against. I was beginning to despair at my chances of making it to Grand Forks in time, or in one piece. That was when Monk sat in the chair across from me and began to speak.
"You know son, when I was young - younger'n you - I thought I knew which way was up." (This pit-stop could hardly have been complete without some life-lesson from the proprietor, I think.) "The way a man or boy can feel when he's got hisself a lady, and I mean really got 'er so she knows it and maybe gets him back. A day like this one here, I heard what you were sayin', and I guess you maybe think you know what that feelings about. If you'll pardon my sayin' it though, you were maybe wrong. Thass okay, now. A man's gotta be wrong alotta times to really tell what wrong is, and that's how right happens.
"I used to live a few counties over from here when I was in childhood." He paused to spit a large dark pellet of chewing tobacco into an otherwise empty Snapple Iced Tea bottle. "And as I got to be older, alls I wanted was to get out of the Dakotas, go maybe to Chicago or even Out West cause back then I thought it'd make me a man. Got as far as Bismarck, moppin’ floors up to the university there for a short time. That's where I started to notice that maybe what I thought was up really coulda been sideways, and I started to figure my wrongs and see what was right has always been so. Take it from a guy they call ole Monk, boy: this life's just too damn short to be movin sideways." And with that, he stuffed a handful of fresh tobacco in his mouth and smiled his smile, radiant in the darkness of a North Dakota storm, and I think Trevor saw it too. "You are a wise man, Monk, a wise man."
"Wise enough to know how to pass idle time. You two slickers know how to play cards?" Of course we did, though not as well as Monk who made out like a bandit in round after round of Scat. Until finally the hail stopped, and then the rain, and we all went outside together to smell the wetness and electricity, to feel the clean newness in the cool breeze, and to get our tanks filled with gasoline. Warm handshakes and we watched Trevor drive away in a truck with no edges, leaving Monk and I to share a smoke in the fresh of early evening after the storm and he said:
"I guess you know just about what you're gonna do."
"I sure do Monk. Absolutely."
He shook my hand and told me I was going to be okay, and either he knew all or nothing. I got in my car and drove south, back the way I had come. My last thought of Alex that day was if she still wore those mud-tracking shoes.
Eventually I found myself in the neighborhood of the Black Hills. I had a tent and some blankets in the back of the car, though I hadn’t brought a sleeping bag, assuming I’d never need one. I set up the tent in a campsite with the help of some big German guys and covered myself with blankets. By the end of the hour, I was wearing just about every piece of clothing I had, tripled up on pants and shirts and socks, a cap on tight and shoes, fearing for my life. I heard my voice through chattering teeth: "I'm so cold. I'm dying." And it felt like the truth. Somehow in the height of summertime I experienced the most unforgettable bone-chilling cold of my life, somewhere in the Black Hills of North Dakota. I moved into the car and turned the heater up high, but still couldn’t get any relief. Packing up the tent, I left the impudent mid-July freeze behind. I rented a room in Grand Rapids and got to sleep for a few hours at least. When I woke, the driving rain was back with a vengeance and outside it appeared to be taking its toll. I had hoped to be north of flood country, but when I saw the water flowing fast about a third of the way up my tires, I jumped in the car and drove, away and away. It seemed every mile was taking me further from, and closer, to my destination.
That night, somewhere in Montana and out of the storm, I pulled into a VFW post parking lot and slept in the car. The sun woke me early, and I stumbled to the truckstop across the road for breakfast. In the bathroom, I used two of the three quarters in my pocket to buy a condom from a vending machine for no particular reason. My last quarter went into playing one game of electronic arcade poker, and it was very well spent. That quarter won me a cool hundred bucks, and though the money was quickly gone, I determined to keep the condom for good luck. Unless, of course, I ever get lucky.
Driving through Yellowstone late the following night, I nearly ran into a buffalo steaming complacently in the center of the road. I mean literally, steam was coming off it. Dug in like a trench warrior, it stood staring at me, maybe aware that I couldn't move and taking advantage, until finally as if insulted, it slowly strode off the road. The next day, I saw herds of these great beasts, but none held me in such awe as my late-night encounter with the smoking buffalo. It had stopped me, stopped the car with me in it, and a lightness rose in my chest. There was a life east of the Mississippi that waited for my changes, my revisions; a life north of the border that maybe waited for me still, in vain. Beyond the steaming buffalo, the west and south. For those, I waited, glad that the wait was nearly over. Soon, a whole new set of directions, of lives, would become lived and not imagined.
Ritzville is a town in the northwestern corner of Washington State where there is almost nothing. One main road, boasting an eatery whose grimy windows look out, as do most windows in Ritzville, upon the hulking metal casket of some long-dead large-machine industry that couldn't have been much when it was actually up and running. There was one motel, where I stayed for two nights because of the single claim to fame of this otherwise DOA town. A place called Zipp's. Zipp's is a fast-food style restaurant just off the highway ramp in Ritzville whose menu includes burgers, fries, and milkshakes. Now, I realize that this probably seems a hardly impressive culinary lineup to anyone who’s never been to Ritzville, as it seemed initially to me. Until I ate there. The almost hallucinogenic delicacy that is a Zipp’s meal is of such great consequence I spent a full two days in order to enjoy the maximum possible amount. Only when one of the servers recognized me as a regular did I realize my blurred judgment. Of course, there will be others, I thought. There never were. Ritzville may as well exist on a parallel dimension because no one seems to know what I'm talking about. But I know. Seattle seemed somehow saved for my arrival. I approached with the assumption that at least in this place, rain is the norm. All three days I spent there were sunny, cloudless. I tried water-skiing on Lake Washington, and discovered quickly why it never attracted me as a pastime. How come a wetsuit isn’t called a drysuit? The image which most struck me was Mount Rainier. When I say I could see the peak, I don't mean I could see it the way one can see the peak of any old mountain. I mean the top of the peak stared full at me, as if the entire body of Rainier were jutting out at an almost ninety degree angle. I was sober, and I saw it for three days. Highway One is everything it's cracked up to be. The Oregon coastline might be the most beautiful stretch in the whole of the United States. About halfway down, there's a small coastal town called Port Orford, just as cute as can be. I could tell right away there was not an ounce of cynicism in the place, the kind of place I can't relate to because I grew up in a city where a healthy serving of cynicism is vital to survival. Not better or worse, just different.
Port Orford does posses a darker side, however. Darker, anyway, to those of us with a dark imagination. This beautiful, sunny gem of a town set along the flat top of a cliff overlooking Orford Bay hides a leprous cousin, the one locked in the basement that nobody talks about. Were you to approach the cliff's sheer edge, you would see another, much smaller settlement crowded between the cliff’s bottom and the bay. There are no signs, no roads apparent to lead a traveler down. In a cute little luncheonette, I asked a cute little smiling waitress for directions. Her smile disappeared. "You can't drive there," she said quickly.
"Okay. Is there a road? I'll walk," I told her. She reached out for a passing man in greasy cook-whites and said in a hushed tone:
"He wants to go down. In The Heads." The man looked me over with a frown, head to toe.
"You can't drive there."
"I know. I can walk." For a while he simply stared, then pointed through the window at a spot across the road.
"Thanks, just ate. I could use a good walk, though. Over that rise, you say?" I was out the door and across the street before they could try any other ways to convince me against it.
The walk down was too silent. The trail too narrow, winding through angled bushes just thick enough to hide whatever lurked behind. Each time I snapped a twig or kicked a loose rock my heart pounded, my head swiveled right and left expecting to see a psychopath with blade raised, or why not Bigfoot? Silence, to a city-boy in the woods, can be scary.
The foot of the path was a welcome sight, and a hundred yards further I could see the ... what had the waitress called it? The Heads.
Maybe a dozen or two plywood one-story buildings, all atop a raised wooden deck giving the unsettling impression of a fishing village lost in time.
When the voice reached my ears from fewer than ten feet away, I almost screamed.
"Can I help you?"
A man with a gruff mustache, shirtless and barefoot, walked towards me.
"Were you looking for something?"
"No. Well, ummm ... I was driving through Port Orford and ..."
"Not much to see, this part of Orford." He stood with hands on hips, examining me.
"This isn't The Heads, then?"
"Those're The Heads," he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder.
Somehow, The Heads are invisible from the top of the cliff, what should be the best vantage point. Rising out of the bay are three huge rocks, daunting, shaped like human heads.
"Wow," I said. "Wow," and meant it.
"In winter, sometimes they've got faces."
"How far out are they?" I asked, entranced by the sight.
"'Bout a quarter mile. You can go out for a closer look if you want."
"How?"
"I got a canoe in the water right now. You ever paddled a canoe?"
"Yeah, sure." Not the whole truth. I'd been in one, years ago.
"Well, come on." He turned like a tide and caught me in the undertow.
The canoe sat wth one end on the beach, the other in the calm water. He pushed until it floated comfortably while I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my pants.
"Do you need a deposit or something?" I asked, lifting myself out of the cool water and into the boat.
"Well, I got your shoes." He pushed me off.
Orford Bay was tranquil and tame, perfect for the novice canoe paddler. With each soft and sure pull I was more and more confused by the subtle warnings from the cliff-top. Soon, it didn't matter.
I had reached The Heads.
Though much larger, they looked no different than they had from afar, and as I maneuvered through them, the sense that they truly did resemble human heads only grew. Setting the paddle across the canoe, I allowed the boat to drift. My mind followed, close behind.
Where does life go, from here? From now? College had a few years left before its uncertain air was sucked out with a final, useless breath. What would be my cushion, then? Graduate school? No. Not for me. Simply an expensive way of postponing the inevitable. There's the rub, though. How can a thing be inevitable while remaining entirely unknown?
Through Eureka, the northern bastion of the promised land, and down the Redwood highway - they really are big trees - and finally I crossed that monumental bridge, that cocky and fearless symbol of the best is yet to come: The Golden Gate.
Driving in San Francisco is a great deal less than easy, for a few reasons. First of all, most of the streets are either too windy, too steep, too narrow, or all three. Secondly, it's a stunningly beautiful city, making the road the last thing I wanted to keep my eyes on. Also, (this applies mostly to me), I had no idea how to get to my uncle's house. I found a spot to park the and took to my feet.
San Francisco is a city so pleasant I imagined it inside a glass bubble, the kind you shake to make the snowflakes fall. (Except it never snows in San Francisco, and the only things that fall when the city shakes are buildings and bridges).
My uncle is an airline pilot, taking people like me to and from wherever it is people like me go. After showing me the city, he stuffed a wad of bills in my hand and asked if my trip was over. Is it ever? I chose to go on.
With money in my pocket and no place in particular to be for awhile, I availed myself the luxury of not going home quite yet. I had a friend who spent summers with his aunt on Isla Mujeres, an island off the coast of Cancun in Mexico. She owns a restaurant there, in a hotel where Peter Daskaloff - subsequently to be known only as 'Dask' - stays for free. Before I left, he'd forced the phone number upon me, despite my assurances that chances of a visit were anorexicly thin. Apparently, Dask knew something I didn't, which is a very rare occurrence.
The idea of relaxing on an island whose name is literally woman was a stone's throw from perfect. Within ten minutes of mentioning it, my uncle secured me a seat on that evening’s red-eye. At nine O'clock the next morning, I was stepping out of a Cancun cab, pissing distance from a small ferry that takes passengers to and from Isla Mujeres. The weight of my pack helped remind me, toot sweet, that the boundaries of immaculate weather end a few miles beyond the San Francisco city limits.
Summer in Mexico is hot. The absence of surprise regarding that statement is equal only to its surprising truth. I felt I could take a bite out of the very air itself, chew it like a stick of jerky. I couldn't wait to find Dask, to hear the look on his face in his voice when he discovered where I was calling from.
The moment I stepped onto the jetty, the no-longer waiting ferry pushed off its opposite end. I smiled, chuckled, and shook my head. These actions simply reflex, taking over whenever the mischievous snake of bamboozlement slithers through the open fields of my plans. I am, begrudgingly, accustomed to expect something somewhere somehow to go wrong. You may, at first, view this as pessimism, the negative prophecy fulfilling itself. I know how it sounds, but it's not that way at all. I've simply been able, or chosen, to accept an impenetrable truth. Something, regardless of action or attitude, will and does go wrong. To get upset every time would drive me to pessimism. To run down the jetty in hopes of catching a ferry that had already left, a heavy pack on my back, through a thick unendurable heat half an hour after disembarking from a sleepless red-eye flight would drive me to become a sweaty, dizzy, wheezing pessimist.
I strolled leisurely to the end of the jetty, unflinchingly optimistic about catching the next ferry.
Dask is an odd bear, to say the very least. His heart of solid gold matches a head just as solid. He is dumb as the day is long, blessed with an ignorance of even his own ignorance. To Dask, all these are true facts:
- The sun is only as hot as a match, but much bigger. - Depending on the day, there are between forty-two and fifty-eight States. - Boston and New Orleans are both counted among those States. - It's possible to drive to Jamaica. (Not the one in Queens). -The Fourth of July is "just a day for fireworks."
The list goes on and on, but I'm sure you get the picture. For those who don't, I'm worried about you.
Dask and I became friends as a result of sharing the same two successive High School periods free, when he employed my services as shotgun in his most beloved open-top Jeep, equipped with the kind of sound system capable of breaking windows on a forty-third floor. He garnered never-ending pleasure from parking in front of all-girl schools and blasting 'Stayin' Alive' by the Bee Gees until some flustered educator chased him away. Dask loved his Jeep so much, that when he and I were visiting Colleges together in Maine, he'd lock the doors and secure 'The Club', even though the only other living creatures in sight were half a dozen cows and a rooster.
So you see, Dask is one of a kind, (a fact for which we should all breathe a sigh of relief), and as I got onto the ferry that would take me to Isla Mujeres, I was truly thankful for his most excellent insight regarding my unexpected acceptance of his altruistic invitation. (Dask, if you read this, that means I meant to rub your belly.)
The city of Cancun that I left behind is a breeding place for paradox.
This leads into paradox number two: Institutions of higher education fail to educate in the basic geography of arguably the most popular spring break destination of their student body.
The third paradox is more a subsection of the second, to whit: College students who sit in dorm rooms drinking cheap beer until they become stupid, annoying, dangerous excuses for humanity and wind up passed out three feet from a pool of unclaimed vomit somehow form a peculiar collective of disdain lasting only as long as their spring break whose unspoken, unwritten oath is to scornfully distort the very definition of 'vacation' by paying a lot of money and traveling - in some cases a ridiculously long distance - to sit in a hotel room drinking cheap beer.
Paradox number four: Vast numbers of Americans go to this spot on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula where they spend their time surrounded by vast numbers of Americans.
The fifth paradox regards perception: During the nine months of Cancun's 'tourist season', (a longer season than Maine's interminable winter, whose unearthly freeze tends to discourage the majority of vacation seekers, making the state of Maine's official claim of being 'Vacationland' viable as paradox 5a), Cancun's thirty-eight thousand hotel rooms are filled to an average capacity of ninety-six percent, (are you getting all this?), and still a common complaint of Cancun's tourists is that there are far too many tourists.
Further inherent absurdities exist, but Cancun was not my final destination. And paradox cannot swim.
The breeze that blew off the ocean as the ferry gained speed was revitalizing and sensuous. My eagerness swelled, each kiss of surf urging I extend my visit by one day, and another, and another… I pulled out my overstuffed wallet and looked for the card on which Dask had penned the phone number. As I fished it out I had a momentary flash of a scene two weeks earlier in a small friendly town named Friendship, somewhere between Milwaukee and Minneapolis. In slow-motion, one frame played out: In a laundromat, I pull my warm pants from a dryer at the end of its cycle and anxiously grab my wallet, checking with a sigh of relief to slow my heart that all the cash made it through unharmed.
Now, staring at this card while all the saliva in my system broke and fled without a fight like France before the Nazis, my mind felt as though it were stuck on a rusty steel spike covered in lime juice. The phone number had been washed away as effectively as the Marginot line of my confidence and wellbeing. Only the last two smudged digits remained readable. My brain exploded in stabbing pain. The double-tongued duplicitous serpent of bamboozlement had lain hidden, waiting for the best - the worst - possible moment to strike. Its fangs, dripping venom, sunk into me then.
I chuckled, smiled, and shook my head.
Sitting, suddenly seasick, stuck on this boat, there were few other options available.
Panic. Panic is useless. No, worse; it's dangerous. I gathered myself, stuffed panic (mine's the consistency of warm oatmeal and honey, how 'bout yours?) back inside its black box.
What was I going to do?
Motherfucker.
Wait, wait, wait. Wait...
It's an island. How big can it be? If I just walk around, I'm bound to run into Dask sooner or later.
This was the first, breathlessly patched together scheme. As a means of maintaining the keel in my mind more evenly than the ferry captain maintained for his glorified wooden bathtub of a boat, I focused on it as nothing less than a plausible reality. The heat, well, the heat would suck tons of ass until I caught sight of Dask. Then I'd have my chance to laugh.
When Isla Mujeres expressed itself visually, I chuckled, smiled, and shook my head. This time, tectonic plate movement and geography itself turned out to be the mastermind culprit behind an impermeable counter-plot, a well-oiled conspiracy of bamboozlement now mounting against me. Had the weather been cool, and my heavy comfortless pack traded in for a sexy bike, I'd still be laughably far from even considering an attempt at executing my farcical strategy of searching for a freak in a freak show.
Glad though I was to be off the ferry and standing on the solid ground of Isla Mujeres, I felt not an inch closer to Dask. The heat, however, was fast becoming intimately familiar.
Although I speak Spanish - the only attribute I held, as I would a golden egg, in my favor - I could not pass for anything but foreign. The population of Isla Mujeres has never had a need, nor felt a desire, to cater to the displaced tourist. It was a concern gladly left to their mainland brethren, recognizing non-Mexicans as travelers who had wandered (often drunkenly) onto the wrong boat from Cancun, perhaps expecting to wind up on Cozumel. I stood motionless for ten minutes at least, looking into the streets of a depressingly large town, debating the pros and cons of sleeping on a beach. It was the dribble of sweat making its determined way down the crack of my beleaguered ass that finally set me in motion.
My brain was boiled alive by the sun and the situation, screaming in pain-confusion-innocence like a helpless lobster whose claws are tied shut so as not to harm the humans intent upon its torture. There was nothing left. I possessed the mental means to handle only one single-sided thought process at a time, and the distinct sense that boulders were rolling through my empty skull was eerily akin to every tenth-grade geometry quiz I'd ever failed, (the sum of which is greater than my math skills can calculate). The first path I chose was direct description. Approaching people on the street, I described Dask with the bogus hope that someone might know him. Nobody did. After debasing myself in front of twenty or thirty people, I'd worked up a furious thirst. To celebrate the failure, I entered a nearby shop and asked for a Coke.
"For here?" queried the vendor in Spanish.
"For here? What do you mean?"
"I mean are you going to drink it here, or take it with you," he explained with a glaring lack of explanation. Another unexpected quandary. How nice.
"I don't know. I guess give me one to go."
Satisfied, he went behind a counter and returned with my Coke. I was flabbergasted.
Though we Americans pat ourselves on the back for our progressive efforts to ponder the abstract idea of recycling, it's a great deal more of a tangible reality in places like, for instance, Isla Mujeres. The vendor gave me a bottle of Coke, minus the bottle. It was poured into a plastic bag with the mouth wrapped around a straw. Fewer than ten paces from the shop, bamboozlement bit my ankle. While making an ill-advised attempt at rearranging the shoulder straps of my pack, unable to abandon all hope of comfort despite myself, my inexperience at handling bag-o-beverage proved costly. Staring at the sickening splatter of liquid frustration, I chuckled, smiled, and shook my head.
The thing about bamboozelment is that it feeds off itself. There can never be just one. If you turn down a wrong street and have to double back, wasting ten minutes looking for the right street, you've had a simple annoyance. If you turn down a wrong street and get completely lost, you're car runs out of gas and you have to walk around until you find a gas station which gets robbed by a guy in a ski-mask who takes your wallet where you'd been keeping the phone number and address to the place you should've been an hour before, well, that is a bona fide bamboozlement.
There is no pattern, no method, and no defense. You can only hope it doesn’t continue indefinitely, and try to remember - hard as it might be - that bamboozelment is often followed by (though rarely equal to) some measure of good fortune. Intent on quenching my victimized thirst, I walked on until I spotted a store that appeared it might offer drinks of the unbagable variety. Glancing at the posted menu, I was about to give up, until the last item presented a heartwarming jewel of potential joy. It was even enough to beat down the snake, to put me back on track, to defeat this scourge of bamboozelment. 'Milkshake'. A ticket to straightforward strategic thought, so very necessary in my current situation.
Somehow, astonishingly, I was ambushed. I was bamboozled.
The word 'milkshake' was written in English, and while all the other words I used were in Spanish, I pronounced that one the way it was spelled.
"I'd like a milkshake," I requested simply.
"Que?" asked the woman,
"A milkshake. Milkshake."
"I don't know what that is. We don't have any of that," she said in Spanish, taking on an expression of the regionally common Mexican Perplexican.
No. Yes. Yes you do have it. Look, there," I said with mounting concern, pointing at the sign. After a moment of insecurity, she saw it, and when she turned around it was as the incarnation of the Devil.
"Ahh! Meel-Shay! Why didn't you just say? Meel-Shay we have." I could not have been more stupefied. Bamboozlement takes many shapes, many forms. My knees buckled, I nearly fell. Instead, I chuckled, smiled, and shook my head.
With a meel-shay as my only consolation, I sat on the street and gathered my overcooked thoughts. Regardless of what I read on my watch, it was miserably clear no time had passed. My mission to find Dask, in truth virtually every moment since leaving San Francisco, was a massive, astounding failure. It was over. I was too tired and too hot to mount any counteroffensive against the knavish battalion of vipers that had me under a bamboozling siege. I was indefensible. The primary reason I'd come to Isla Mujeres was to relax. Clearly, that wasn’t going to happen. Painfully, I accepted defeat. There was nothing to gain from wallowing on this temperature-challenged island, save for achieving a level of crispiness normally reserved for a potato. The sooner I got back to the airport, the sooner I'd be home.
At the dock, another bamboozlement kicked my now apathetic soul when it was down. Tickets were sold at a store on the other end of the street I thought I'd left behind.
With head hung low I waited as the storekeeper wrote out my ticket. His counter was covered with stickers of surfing clubs, of moped rental shops, of restaurants, of ...
Hold it.
What had caught my eye?
There was a phone number below the name of a restaurant.
The last two digits matched the two still left of what Dask had scribbled.
When I looked up at the shopkeeper, he flinched and took a step back.
"How do I get here?" I asked, banging a fist on the sticker.
The heavy stench of bamboozelment lifted. The mongoose of fortune chased it off. Although I had failed, victory was thrust upon me. When I got to the hotel it was with a diminished sense of anticipation, a sense that had been dulled, beaten into a shamed submission by the series of recent events. Plodding along the wooden platform separating guest-rooms from a beach I had no interest in, I frothed with frustration, forcing a blockade against any triumphant thoughts. If this turned into another bamboozelment, I'd have no option but to sit on the beach and patiently wait to die. So effective was this blockade, even the sight of Dask splashing about in a pool was unable to lift it.
"Holy shit!" Dask yelled when he saw me. "You look like hell! What are you doing here? What happened to you?" His gleeful cackle did little to relieve my tension. It took ten days, each lazier than the last on an island whose bid for paradise would certainly have been realized if not for its proximity to Cancun before I could spell relief.
The Stones of Life. A Week in the Country.
Things change. Life changes so much. Sometimes it frightens me, amazes me, how a thing so certain and true can completely turn, ostensibly without effort. So much has happened to me, and around me, and though I'm still young often the one thing that keeps me going is curiosity. Even during the hardest, most depressed moments of my life, what stops me from diving out the nearest window is a desire to see just how the whole thing turns out. Have you ever felt that way? A wise man once postulated that taking the road less traveled made all the difference. I always wondered why he hadn't seen fit to build his own road, placing one stone in front of another without worrying which direction it might turn. I like to think that's what I've been doing. Someday, when all the stones have run out, I want to look back upon the road I've built and marvel at the twists and turns, at the varied stone selection and the grass growing through the gaps. Maybe then I can stuff my hands into empty pockets and stroll back, curiosity quelled, satisfied with ending.
For now, though, stones are plentiful.
Julie was in Lagnes, a town just outside Avignon in southern France with her family and friends at their summer home where I had been once before but kept almost no memory of at all, an amnesia understandable under circumstances I'll explain later. The first time I met Julie was years ago in New York, when she spent a few days at my father's house. Being of comparable age, he asked me to show her around the city, which I agreed to do with pleasure. I was young and impressed by her beauty and the fact that, being from France, she must really know how to French kiss. But I dropped the ball. I invited Nate out with us.
Nate is a constant. The best friend I have in the world, enough to call family. The one person I would take a bullet for because I know he’d take one for me. There is nothing unforgivable, nothing profane between us, and the only thing truly sacred is our friendship. Nate is effortlessly charming, and if I were a woman ... I'd be terribly confused. I knew I was lost when Julie paid more attention to him in the first twenty minutes than she had to me over the previous three hours. Hey, when you're sixteen, that shit's important. The following days the three of us hung out together, (rather they hung out while I chaperoned), and I was pissed at life the way a slighted sixteen year old kid is supposed to be. On the train from Paris to Avignon to visit Julie and her family I thought of that past with a warm rush and a concentrated effort to remember what really was important back then. She picked me up at the station with her boyfriend and another couple, and we all piled into one of those round, comfortable, deceptively small French cars and drove to Lagnes through authentic French countryside. Lush, aged with a wine-maker’s patience. I was struck by the infinite difference in the feel and the look of this country as compared to the U.S. Modern though France may be, one cannot separate its oldness. Not old in a decayed, dirty, ass-pinching way. Old in a wise, regal and righteous way. I could feel it in the heat; taste it with every deep fragrant breath; see it in the dust that raised up behind us as we reached the house. That word, 'house', does an injustice to the history contained in stone walls. Led up a staircase and down a long, narrow corridor, I was reminded of castles I'd never been in, to a bright and comforting room that all but guaranteed restful slumber. "We go swimming while Maya prepares the lunch, oui?" Julie said in an endearingly thick accent. "We wait for you there."
Happily, I donned my multicolored jungle trunks and walked around the outside of the house, allowing soft heat to knead me like the fingers of a skilled masseuse. I stood, feeling oddly victorious, at the lip of a stone ledge over which I could survey the entire valley below. Impeccable, dark green and inseparably combined with, and enhanced by, the constant low-pitched hum of beetles. It's easy to understand how a painter could become great simply by copying what he saw here, or a writer create with the clarity of thought and ease of breath afforded within such a canvasless masterpiece. After a time, I found the pool and jumped in.
When lunch was called hunger had moled its way into my stomach as a worm into an apple. I no longer possessed the culinary preconceptions I had held back home. Food, even basics, is not quite the same in France, particularly when one is without a stove. My meals in Paris had been lonely and simple. Eating in Lagnes was like chewing on dreams. What they called provincial, I called orgasmic. Fruity wine flowed freely, a huge bowl of chopped and seasoned tomatoes, all sorts of breads and cheeses, pureed lentils and peppers on garlic toast, and some things I couldn't even guess at. Soft, silky, filling and just right in every way. I spoke almost no French, and they almost no English, but enjoyment escaped from me as air from a punctured balloon.
Dinner was a cacophony of crepes: chicken, cheese, ham, vegetable, chocolate, banana, one better than the last and I could have sat at that table for hours. Days were made of relaxation, dozing under the shade of a tree, reading by the pool, strolling through the forest. Nights were for play. Ping-Pong under a perfect sky, hide-and-seek like school kids, bocce-ball by the light of an approving moon. I had forgotten everything, or at least forgiven. Cheap metallic wine to douse lonely thoughts was gratefully replaced by sweet, delicious nectars that made me laugh and dance and smile with every sip.
One day, we drove to a monastery. Hundreds of years old, it lay hidden at the bottom of a narrow valley, tall lush hills on either side. The heat outdoors was deceiving. Inside, the stone and shadows kept it cool. We took a trail up the side of a hill behind it and, out of breath, smoked cigarettes at the top. It reminded me just a little of Vermont, except that everyone but me was speaking French. It reminded me a little more of Italy, trudging up a hill to traipse on the remains of one of Apollo's temples. It made me think of El Cerro Pelado, The Bald Noggin, in Uruguay on my uncle's ranch. He would often take me up there, the two of us on horses, trying to steer me in the right direction on the path, maybe of life. My uncle Coco was one of the wisest men I have ever known and I can't forget those evenings staring out at an impossible number of stars and listening to The Truth in Spanish, on my uncle's ranch. Each of these places gave me a feeling, a rush of decisions I could never make. I could live here. That's what I thought. I could spend every day of the rest of my life in this place. I wanted to. But I know that can't be. I can never settle, never stop. Even if I lived five hundred years I'd never see all there is to see. I need to travel, to move from one life to the next. Staying in the same place, even for just a few years, seems like death to me now. It's the wandering, the curiosity, the ability to leave where I am that keeps me going. And I can't stop. I will never stop.
Needless to say, when the week in Lagnes was over, I didn't want to leave. The wonderful house. The town with the clear narrow stream winding through it and the big man at the bakery who gave us an extra eclair or two whenever we came in. Julie and her friends and a bond transcending language. Poolside chats with her brother who spoke enough English to tell me about being a judge in Tahiti. All these things I cannot forget. They have forever found a niche in the annals of my travel, and that's why I do it.
Eventually, of course, there was no other recourse but to make my peace as best I could. Inevitably, there must be a farewell. I returned to Paris.
That night, I experienced once again the nuances of French cuisine at Chez McDonald's on Saint-Germain. The guy behind me, a fiftyish Englishman who should have known better, stuck his head through the window (well, actually there was an opening for heads. He didn't smash through) and asked in English:
"Are your cones really just two Francs?"
Now, there were various posters alerting even the dullest of passersby that this was in fact the case, and yet here was this man asking a French woman in English if it was true, as though it might be a practical joke played at his expense. When she nodded at what struck me an infuriatingly insulting question, he proceeded to congratulate her.
One night, on my way back from the tower, a choir group began singing in the center of Champs du Mars. The sound and the view and the cool breeze compelled me to lie down and enjoy for awhile. Beside me, a couple in biker shorts named Manny and Amelia from Melbourne, Australia, kindly shared their melon. Someone, apparently in protest, had flung it at them earlier that afternoon.
The routine for those days was calm, smooth. Waking up late, taking long walks, reading voraciously. I usually don't drink alone, especially in bars where I understand nobody. To speak the language of love one must first make intelligible sounds in the tongue of really, really like. I was determined to learn some French.
As days passed like kidney stones I began to feel anxiety over the coming trip. A rare thing but justified, I think. It would mark the second time I traveled to Morocco. I'm lucky I survived the first.
A Deserted Past.
High school graduation, long awaited and joyfully accepted like getting out of prison early on good behavior, combines the best and worst of being a child of divorced parents into one exhausting event. Though I had to work overtime at the ceremony juggling my family and making certain they never came into close contact, my efforts were rewarded. Each parent tried to outdo the other in the gift department.
From my mother, a trip. She and I took a cruise around the Hawaiian Islands and I tell you it was pure decadence. The food on this floating five-star restaurant was spectacular. The entertainment was a little old for me, but I got to wear my white suit at the captain's dinner. And the islands! Every day something different. Paddling a royack down a prehistoric river on the garden Isle of Kauai, where I was everybody's 'cous'. Clinging to a horizontal root for my life off the side of a steep hill staggered by the gallons and gallons of water that begun pummeling me without warning from above on one side of Maui. Going down two hundred feet in a Plexiglas-bottomed submarine on the other. Speeding around on a catamaran, snorkeling in a lagoon until I saw a shark in Oahu. Beaches and boat drinks and eggs Benedict for breakfast and cruising around Hawaii was a damn lot of fun.
From my father, a trip. One month (with my brother in lieu of our dad) hopping through Spain, connecting cities and towns like dots in a game. Beginning in Madrid, we rushed off to Barcelona just three days after the closing ceremonies of that year's Olympic games. That's really a great time to see a city, if you can swing it, because while the crowds have mostly gone, the trappings are still in place - the lights and the circumstance. Barcelona is a city of wide, rambling walkways, ('Las Ramblas' most notably), beneath the shadow of Montjuic, up which a climb will test your cardiovascular condition as well as your imagination as you look down upon a sparkling city by the sea that Dali knew well, albeit shimmering in reality.
My brother Diego and myself were doing our best to see as much as we possibly could in the time allotted. A poor travel strategy, I've found. What's more, we had to do it under a budget that was restricting at best, and which my brother saw fit to restrict even further so we could have money left when we went home. Against my overruled wishes, there were episodes eating bite-sized cubes of liver for lunch, and sharing a loaf of bread at two in the morning in a train station, hobo-style.
In Sevilla, we went to the Expo, the world’s fair that I guess is a pretty big deal in some circles. My brother decided that once through the gates the soda machines would be too expensive. The vicious heat made readily available beverage an important concern. His solution: we each buy a case of soda to carry around in our backpacks beneath the sweltering sun. It took no time at all for them to become a warm antithesis to refreshment, and I stared longingly at what seemed thousands of vendors or pay machines that stood, snickering, at every corner. We easily spent twelve hours at the Expo, though not one of them was really easy. The midpoint of our trip placed us in an entirely unredeemable city called Gibraltar at Spain's southernmost tip. All we found to do was walk along the boat yards where every guy and his uncle offered to sell us hash. In retrospect, things may have gone smoother had we bought some. On one of these walks, my brother spied a ship that traveled back and forth from the boat yards of Gibraltar to Spanish Morocco, close to a Moroccan city named Tetuan. I made no arguments when he suggested we buy tickets and take a ride, and early the next morning we were on our way. Recognizing this non-sanctioned detour as our first chance for real adventure, I assumed no matter what happened, it would be memorable. Sometimes memory is overrated.
Once off the boat in the Spanish port, we got in a cab and gave the address of a hotel my brother had found in one of his books. Now, in Morocco, two white-skinned kids don't have a chance in the world of passing incognito. There is no option but to stand out. As we were about to ride off, a young Moroccan man ran towards us shouting in several languages that he would be our guide. Unsure what to do, we instructed the driver to drive while we looked back with concern at this would-be-guide who ran easily for three miles trying to keep up, knocking on our window whenever the cab slowed. Finally, we lost him. I was a bit rattled when we checked into the bare-bones establishment that passes for a decent hotel in Tetuan.
The few hours spent in Morocco had already worn us out. Forced to be ultra-conscious about our physical person made us tense, and as soon as we dropped into a bed, sleep was unavoidable. I awoke to my brother’s curses. He can’t abide wasted daylight. Wearing the clothes we slept in, we made our way down to the excuse for a lobby where, to our shock and dismay, the man who chased our cab through the diesel-filthy streets of Tetuan sat waiting. He jumped up, all smiles, and basically informed us he would be our guide. No money, he said, just the opportunity to show us his beautiful city. Clearly, there was no escaping this cat’s persistent ways, so we conceded with a concerted effort to make like we knew exactly what we were doing. In retrospect, maybe it was interesting. At the time, it was miserable. The guide wouldn't shut up. The stifling, narrow, winding Medina streets were packed elbow to elbow with people who stared shamelessly, grabbed brutishly, and everyone was trying to sell something. I can remember turning my head in disgust from a freshly killed rabbit on a meat-hook dripping blood just in time to watch a chicken get its head chopped off with a cleaver. Realizing there was no way out, nowhere to hide, I felt every bit the stranger in a strange land, and I couldn't wait for it to be over. My brother and I were so discombobulated I doubt either of us noticed being led down an alleyway and up a flight of stairs until we looked around and discovered ourselves alone among hundreds of rugs. A salesman appeared and greeted our guide, who apparently worked for him on commission, and began in earnest to pitch his damn rugs. I couldn't tell you how many times we said 'no' before being disgustedly shooed from the shop but I think it's the one English word Moroccan's don't understand.
Back at the hotel, I had no intentions of straying out after dark. As my brother studied his veritable library of guidebooks, (essentially useless, I've learned, if it's adventure you seek), I stared out the window and watched shades of blue grow black by degree in a sky whose darkness must have been a comfort for people to the east. I pictured them in countless caravans, atop camels, crisscrossing the desert, decidedly inexplicable in their reasons, entirely impressive in their actions. It was the desert I wanted to see. Not this dirty, unfriendly city of depressed existence.
That morning, very early, I was pressed awake by a sound I had never truly heard before. A sound I recognized immediately. A man shouting from the top of a Mosque tower, calling the city to prayer. The tower was visible from our window, though it was difficult to say how close, framed within a foreign sunrise. I woke my brother and we watched in awed silence this everyday occurrence in a culture so different from our own. Even then, we were both worldly but without aspirations of being wise and, trite as it may sound, I felt truly humbled. I travel to learn just how significantly insignificant I am on this unending globe that contains existence the way a balsa-wood cage might contain a hungry lion.
The sunrise prayer-call went far to dissipate our distaste for Morocco, but not far enough to keep us in Tetuan. Packs upon our backs, we trudged about a while, a bit more accustomed to the wily ways of the natives, hoping to find some direction towards the port. Along our way, we passed a bus station where one bus sat idle, apparently destined for Cairo.
"We should take that bus," I said. "Come on, Diego, we have to get on that bus." I figured he would never go for it, which is probably what made it so easy to suggest. I like to travel spontaneously that way. If something comes up, just do it, as one fledgling company's ad campaign urges. No matter where you go or how you get there, you'll always be traveling, right? There's beauty in that, somewhere. My brother plans everything. Flipping through those damned books trying to find out what he should see rather than taking note of what he is seeing. He's older and, I'll admit, more responsible, so I had to defer. He stood, thumbs under sack-straps, figuring out loud.
"It would take us ... then three days there ... back to Europe by way of Italy or Greece ... leaves ten days to make Milan for the flight home ... " I thought he was humoring me, muttering about cushion time, about how we wanted to go to Rome anyway, etc. ... As soon as I had talked myself out of ever wanting to get on the bus, and realized it was a terrible idea to begin with, my brother said:
"Fine. Let's find out what time it leaves."
"Diego, wait a minute. Are you sure that's a good idea? I'd hate to wind up stuck in the desert, you know?"
"What's the matter? You're the one always talking about adventure this and adventure that. Here's the chance."
"Okay, well, that’s just me talking. I think maybe no." "Come on. Cairo's supposed to be unbelievable. Let's go."
The discussion was over. I wish we had never walked past that station. I wish I had kept my fucking mouth shut.
Sitting in the back of the bus rolling through and out of the city, I wanted to close my eyes and be someplace else. We’d bought half a dozen sandwiches each and about as many gallons of water before embarking, unaware of the deal with food. I knew the sandwiches wouldn’t be eaten the moment I stepped aboard. It would take a cyclopean effort to eat anything in the stink of this smoking-encouraged bus lacking only a few goats pissing in the aisles. It was crowded and loud and I couldn't understand a word and I had visions of this hunk of shit overheating somewhere in the desert. I'm not of the mind that being adventurous means being stupid, though admittedly the two are often bound up in one another. I did all I could to try and fall asleep, to make the ride feel shorter. As I'm sure we're all aware, trying to sleep is futile. It makes you appreciate the option of being knocked unconscious with a shovel. Infuriating hours passed. My mood was grim and I could give two shits for a pyramid at that point. Now and again, the bus pulled over to the side of the road and all the passengers silently filed out. They each laid their own small carpet on the ground and, kneeling towards Mecca, they prayed. Of course my brother and I were the only two infidels, and we would quietly slink away in respect to their privacy. I realize I was too young then to truly appreciate the life lessons that knelt about me, but I can never forget. Memory is a large part of experience, and I'm grateful. All I felt at the time was misery and discomfort.
As the deadening sun made its much anticipated exit to clear room for ashy darkness, sleep cut me a break and let me drift into its domain. I dreamt of the Sphinx, laughing at what I felt confident was the answer to its riddle.
I was rattled awake with what struck me as unnecessary force.
"What! The fuck."
Out the window was the desert beneath an early morning sun, like a titanically humongous beach without water. I've hated the beach since I was twelve, when I nearly died off one. I was a great swimmer as a child, or so I thought. Good enough to swim in the Long Island Sound by myself. Until one day I was out pretty far when it started raining. The waves grew larger and more menacing, my only recourse to swim into them, under and through them. With the storm imminent I chanced a glance towards shore and was shocked by how much of it I could see. When I noticed the only other person still on the beach was the lifeguard walking away from it, I knew I was cooked. Somehow, I remembered my lessons and took off my bathing suit (red jungle scene), waved it over my head and began screaming like a constipated banshee. Next thing I remember, I’m having my stomach pumped on the beach, completely naked. It was the first time in my life that I felt death kick me in the ass with absolute certainty, only to run away like my brother used to after giving me a charley horse. The second time was in the desert, somewhere between Morocco and Egypt.
"You should be awake now," my brother said with a nod towards the other side of the bus. It had stopped, and though the passengers were restless, they weren't getting up for prayer. My first guess was that the small white stucco cabin visible through a dusty window might be a food or gas stop. Then I spied three men come out of it in green army camouflage suits, odd as there was nothing green for miles. To complete this already unsavory picture, each carried a very large automatic rifle. They boarded the now quiet bus, and I saw they weren't men at all but boys, maybe younger than I was.
The other passengers silently waved papers and passports for the soldiers to inspect and I silently wished we had never left Spain. It was impossible to circumvent our dissimilarity from the typical Morocco to Egypt bus passenger. One of the gun-toting kids approached my brother and I, expressionless until he held our passports, and his face contorted into the kind of disbelief that made me hitch my breath and will the barrel of his weapon to remain pointed at the floor. While he maneuvered his way down the aisle to his cohorts in arms still holding our passports, I turned to my brother.
"We're fucked," I casually mentioned, though by the pale skin, wide eyes, and shaking chin I guess he had figured that out on his own. The three youngins spoke to each other in heated Arabic, wielding our passports angrily as though they were pink slips. After a few excruciating moments and an awful lot of fingers pointed in our direction, a decision was reached. The very wrong one, I think.
Two cubs rudely beckoned us from our seats while the third grabbed our bags. With what I had every reason to believe was a loaded gun in my back I was disbelievingly led off the bus behind Diego, who had by now turned white as a ghost.
It was cooler off the bus than on. A soft breeze blew towards distinctly defined hills at an impossible distance and the first thing to really strike me about the desert was how the sand into which I half expected to sink up to my ankles was actually hard as tarmac. The fist thing to really strike me about the back of my knees was the butt of a rifle, and in the blink of an eye I was on the ground beside my brother who knelt like he was trying to find Mecca.
Okay. So things had gone poorly. We spoke no Arabic, and our captors - for lack of a better word - no English. Our bags were taken into the stucco shed and searched. Sweat trickled nonchalantly down my back. I could hear the two inside the shed, shouting in harsh tones into a radio identifiable by even harsher static. From the corner of one eye I saw the young soldier on guard light a cigarette and I geared my psychic powers towards forcing him to offer me one. My powers failed me, as they usually do, thus fulfilling my predictions. Both my brother and I were speechless, his mind locked into running silent scenarios, my eyes running races through the grooves in the stucco wall three feet in front.
We were in a shitload of trouble. Nobody knew where we were. Leaving Europe had never been part of the game plan. Now, in the desert, two sweaty, scared, confused kids at the whim of three heat-packing adolescents, our position could hardly have been much worse. Things were really, really bad.
Kneeling upon the tarmac sand for hours, the ebb and flow of hatred, confusion, compassion and boredom. For a time that seemed it would end in absolute darkness we were prodded, shouted at, pushed down and kicked. Later, I thought of action heroes faced with the possibility of imminent death who manage to restructure the situation to be the only ones left standing. Me, I'm no action hero. Forced to consider the distinct possibility of being shot in the back, I could only stare forward and will things to get better of their own accord, wondering if I would ever again taste the carbonara at Gino's on sixty-third and Lexington avenue in New York. My God! Gino's with its wallpaper of zebras chasing arrows, arrows chasing zebras, against a deep red background - what I wouldn't give to have been back there at that moment; to have been anywhere. The very idea of jumping up on aching knees to fight my way out never crossed my mind. If I were to die, it would be quietly, without fanfare. The survival instinct is severely overrated, particularly when semiautomatic weapons come into play.
The sensations are indescribable. I think I've blocked them out. We've spoken about it, my brother and I, and neither of us can find deeper meaning in any of it. He says it made him angry, having to die on his knees in the desert like an animal. Myself, I remember only the spectacular calm that soothed my whole being like a drug and the hope that when death happened it would be quick, and that it wouldn't hurt. I felt badly for my mother and father, losing the two of us at once. Literally losing us, not knowing where we were, or even where to look.
At some point our tormentors ceased tormenting us and spoke among themselves in what seemed a quizzical tone. I assumed they were trying to decide whether to kill us then, to kill us both or one at a time. Reservedly flabbergasted that I would come to an end like this one, I cleared my mind for any final thoughts as I waited - anxiously, I must admit - for my life to pass before me.
Then, something happened.
Two of the boy-soldiers pulled my brother up by his armpits and led him around the small building. I tried to keep my personal sentinel from hearing my tears, dry and painful beneath the uncaring desert sun. I desperately wanted to block out the sound of the gunshots, but before I couldn’t figure out how, Diego came around the other side of the building with his two friends in tow sporting a large wet spot on the front of his pants. As I was forcefully hoisted to my shaky feet and led around the building on numbed knees, I weighed death against indefinite incarceration and found them both indisputably unpleasant. Imagine that. I was stopped, and a wooden cup was thrust into my hand, brimming with water. All else was forgotten. I drank deeply, breathing through my nose so as not to interrupt my copious enjoyment of the deliciously refreshing beverage. When the last drop was gone, breathing hard and unsure what to do, I held the cup out to be taken. It was filled again and - praise Allah! - a cigarette was proffered towards me. I took it, one of them lit it, and the first drag was the deepest and most decadent I have ever known. Only when they lit butts of their own did I begin to feel there was still a chance to end up with a story to tell. It felt like a ball of wax string unraveling in my gut, which for a moment had me worried I might throw up all over a guy with a really big gun, but that soon passed. One of them pointed out towards the hills at what may have been a cloud of dust from the wheels of an automobile. The look in their eyes and the tone in their voice lent credence to the idea, and gave the impression our fate would be decided by whomever was approaching.
With great sadness, I tossed the bare, burnt filter to the ground, slowly finished the water in the wooden cup, and allowed myself to be led back around and into the building. It was bare inside, our belongings strewn over a table in the back, and what resembled a Solid State radio in one corner. I was pushed into a room where my brother sat, head in hands, unimpressed at how air-condition cool it was inside as opposed to out in the desert. There was no door, but the tiny room was nonetheless transformed into a cell when one of the young soldier-dudes stood just beyond the threshold. After assuring each other we were begrudgingly okay under the circumstances, Diego and I resumed our silence.
Being off my knees and out of the heat went far to clear my head for more immediate considerations, such as 'what next.' I was sure the final decision would come from the man who approached across unknown miles of Sahara. It was impossible to make any decisive estimate as to how long that might take. The desert has a way of disturbing otherwise reliable perceptions. Frustration ate at my gut as I realized there was no time frame here in a situation where I really needed answers. I pined for a book to read, to tug me gently away from the debilitating feeling of utter helplessness that nibbled at my brain, making a hole to swim into so it could feast from the inside like a school of pirhanna, only without quite so many teeth.
Waiting sucks. Be it for a person, a movie, drugs, or a table at Gino's, it sucks. The waiter is absolutely powerless, totally dependent upon that for which he is waiting.
For a long while we were left alone, and time simply passed. Our three sentinels went about their abstractly normal behavior, which seemed to be not much of anything at all. The five of us were prisoners of this desert, we more so than they due to the unfair distribution of firepower. Diego had passed out in a corner, and I was left to ignore my hunger, and the fact th |