Jam in Tangier A story about what Moroccans thought of a deeply American tune, and the universal language of music. Functional, I will settle for that description of my guitar prowess. But what does any ability level matter when you’re supposed to meet new friends at a hole-in-the-wall music café buried deep in a bazaar, a maze of shoulder-width white walls and rain-slicked, steep cobblestones, and you can’t find it? Carved wooden shop awnings all draped with scarves, leather bags, lined with handmade pointed yellow shoes, great, reeking piles of black soap, pink and yellow incense, and oils line every triple fork and twist of this labyrinth. Juniper wood carved into boxes and polished till the grain pops like veins in marble in one shop. Parakeets chirping in a cage. Around the corner, five cafes brew coffee and tea all at once. Bakeries the size of closets are tucked into the mess somewhere. Stray dogs and cats charge around feet, as do kids chasing a soccer ball. I’m hauling a guitar over potholes where the stones are broken, up uneven and jagged steps, through a soundscape of sales pitches in first French, then Spanish, then Arabic, then English. Someone in a hoodie lounging on a tiny stoop asks if I need directions. Do you know where Buena Vista is? I ask. He leaps up and promises to walk me there. He chatters about how he himself is a musician, he as well played at Buena Vista. The drums, the bass, he sang, he did everything. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another. He stops a tri-fork in the maze of narrow white alleyways, and vaguely gestures that Buena Vista is down the center one. As I begin to walk, he calls out asking for a little something, but I am mostly out of cash, and apologize. He walks away disappointed. Soon it becomes clear that my destination is nowhere nearby at all. Turning corner after corner, ignoring plea after plea to come explore lamps, rugs, spices, and incense. Have dinner here, drink coffee here, eat pastry here, buy gifts for your loved ones here. A sign! Berber Rugs. Someone mentioned this well-known store was nearby the music café. Up the steep ramp of the cramped alleyway I charge, ducking under swaying handwoven scarves. A round wooden sign: Buena Vista. Tendrils of the stress of being unsure of how to find the place grow long thorns of stage freight. It has been a while since I played in front of an audience. The humid cold of this February night has seeped bone-deep into my fingers. Because of the plaster ceiling that bows down like a full belly over an unlit staircase of blue and white broken tiles, I must take the guitar bought used from a shop in Shoreditch back in London off my back. Its stock would bump the low ceiling otherwise. In the first staircase: vague mildew, and the cigarette smell of the air outside. But the darkness and damp give way to warm light and the aroma of freshly brewed espresso. The first floor is a barista’s station with a gleaming espresso machine, stacks of ceramic coffee cups, piles of mint leaves, and glasses for tea. A few floor cushions are scattered around. It hardly takes a full three steps to cross the entire floor. The second floor is the stage. Rows of wooden benches on an incline surface, and a very small stage with chairs that have stained cushions slip-sliding off of skinny black frames. The musicians: a keyboardist, a drummer, and my new friend on guitar. He nods and indicates I can unpack and set up. Five humming amplifiers, and the body heat of four musicians boxed onto a small stage with close walls make the venue an oven of heat and sound. Eight bright stage lights, and the most powerful of all radiations: eyeballs, the forty-four staring eyeballs of twenty-two strangers expecting to be entertained. Sweat chases the humid chill from my fingers, which become unhelpfully slick on the silver tuning pegs of my guitar as I twist them into key. Soon, I am balancing on one of these falling-apart chairs, doing my best not to lean back against the wall and send a decorative bass guitar clattering to the ground, and not so far forward as to make the chair fall apart. We’re all supplying the background music for a Moroccan singer. He has a sharp haircut and a puffer jacket, sweatpants and Adidas shoes. I copy the E minor to F major I spot my friend pressing on his fretboard. The singer fills the venue with verse after verse of a long, lonely, wailing lament without a hook or chorus but with an eventual crescendo. It’s met with whooping and applause. A couple of people do more tunes in the same genre. You! You! Lead us in a song. The real musicians mean me. Tightening throat, pulse in temples, and my own breath loud in my ears as the drummer walks the mic to my mouth by rocking its round stand on the floor around cables and wires. The seat starts sliding off the frame of my chair like someone pulling the rug out from under my feet. I launch into the chords of Friend of the Devil, the Grateful Dead song. The drummer finds a shuffle. The other musicians find the chords. I can’t hear my own voice coming out of the speakers facing the crowd. Same is true of my guitar playing. It is like the feeling of screaming in a dream, but somewhere in the ether, Friend of the Devil is being performed, allegedly by me. Sonically speaking, I might as well have unfurled a gigantic banner of the American flag with blazing red and white stripes and a field of blue stars. After Flamenco rhythms and the neither major nor minor open scale of droning desert wailing, the bongity-bongity and logical square shape of the G-chord progression never sounded so American. Also American are the romantic, mystic, drifter lyrics, the hound-chased narrator hiding in the caves of Utah, but meeting the Devil by the levy after a fool’s bid to outrun him. An outlaw crying the nights away as he runs far and fast as he can from a couple ex-wives, a mean sherif, and the Devil himself on the great American highway. You notice always, but especially when you sing it: it’s a great, great song. In one break between verses, I whip out the best bluegrass-style solo I can play, practiced so often in private, and now played out in an unclear and quavering quality, or maybe it is just fine. After all, we are our own harshest critics, and the speaker the audience hears sounds so far away to me, like music around the block. Then what: the last verse must be sung, the chords cycle, and the song ends. Silence for a split second – one long enough for every self-doubt and regret about an off-beat strum, or wrong note to rip through me faster then light before these ghosts are chased away by a generous applause. Next comes a Moroccan girl dressed all in pink fuzzy jacket and matching pants, and flat white skater shoes. She wants to sing Stand By Me, and while I know it in G, she wants it in C. The keyboardist takes on the role of music teacher and shows us how to modulate to C. He gives the instructions in French, so I simply copy his chord change, which is the same in every language. A moment to discuss language. Other than Moroccan Arabic, people are quite likely to ask you for French or Spanish. Many people speak excellent English as well, but it is slightly less common. I am guessed for a Frenchman often here, because they get so many of them and relatively few Americans. Given the language gap, we rely on the music. Showing chords on key and fret boards, mouthing strumming patterns like, “da dana…bom bom, da dana…bom bom.” Things you can understand no matter where you are from or what language you speak. We supply instrumental backing for the girl as she sings, “when the night, has come,” and all of Stand By Me. Her voice is beautiful, and her English is spiced with the mildest of accents. Another hour lost in the flow of instrumentals, and we are all quite friendly by now, we few behind the strings, drums and mic. We trade compliments about instruments, and how so and so sounded on this or that song. “Please,” asks the keyboardist and our music teacher of the moment with a smile. “Friend of the Devil, once more.” Tonight is the first time he ever heard that song, but he says he likes the lyrics. Who could say no to a request like that? On our way out in the cold night, breath misting in the aura of street lamps, back passed the closed doors of the hundreds of shops in the Kasbah, my friend tells me I sounded “good, but extremely western.” It makes me laugh, and it’s probably spot on.
Hungry in Germany MANNHEIM – Three whole days bedridden with a stomach bug, likely from a German sausage that didn’t sit well with me. The last 48 hours on nothing but water with electrolyte tablets dissolved in it. Welcome to Germany. Outside my window, twin white smokestacks belch white steam into gray sky. Flat-fronted, boxy Mercedes trucks back in and out of work lots. German zoning isn’t like American zoning. When I first got off the tram in this district with its manufacturing plants, factories, and construction yards everywhere, I thought I had been given the wrong address. Surely, I thought, nobody lives here. They do, though. Couched between paved lots where cranes haul yellow girders skyward, surrounded by industrial buildings, vehicles, and smokestacks, there is a sturdy German apartment where I’ve got an Airbnb. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours in audio, hardcover, or paperback here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another. I came to Mannheim to spend time with a friend from back home. She advised me not to bring up the fact that Germany is still not allowed to have a military. Apparently, her German fiancé reacted quite badly to this topic and spluttered about the small army and further rearmaments going on due to Russia and Ukraine. Don’t know much about it. Not that I have anybody to talk to about current or historical events while lying in bed with a stomach bug. But alone and woozy, I do have time to think about that no military, or small military rule. I mean, surely enough is enough by now, right? So much time has passed. So much cultural evolution has happened. Right? Daylight breaks. It’s just below freezing outside. Lightheaded and extra cold after 48 hours without a bite of solid food, I layer up and begin the half-hour walk to the nearest tram station. I step outside and inhale the fresh air. Scratch that, it’s not fresh at all, it all stinks of rotten eggs. The rows of factories all churn up groundwater and kick hydrogen sulfide stink into the neighborhood’s air every single morning. My stomach flips over. I shiver and try not to breathe too much. As I cross the Alter Rhine, the rotten egg smell blows away, but the temperature drops sharply as I walk over the bridge. The Alter Rhines – leftover bodies of water created when the Germans straightened the Rhine. After all, you can’t have a river running wherever it will, wild and free. That’s just unruly and disorganized. The water-chilled wind rips through my peacoat and two sweaters. It’s so cold I might as well be out here shivering naked. “Nein, nein! Du wirst dir das Bein brechen, wenn du das so machst!” A work crew foreman is barking orders at a crew member who was about to drop down a manhole with a tool bag slung over his shoulder. The workmen all wear rubber suits with reflective cuffs on the legs. Look at the rage on the foreman’s face. Listen to the murder in his voice. The wrongness in the work of his crew stinks like filth in his nose. I shrug my head into my coat and press forward into the wind. The sky is gray. The water is brown. The old brick buildings have broken-out windows, walls with missing chunks, and exposed peeling plaster. Vines grow over bricks. The newer buildings feature the same harsh industrial angles you might see in any other city. This part of Mannheim is either old and abandoned or indistinct and unremarkable. There is an underground tunnel leading to the train station across the street. The walls are covered in graffiti. Puddles and creeks of piss run down into the sewer grates. You have to pay to use the scattered public bathrooms around here. Men, women, and children alike all find hidden corners and go in the streets rather than cough up a half Euro for the pay toilets. I hold my breath and focus on making it to the other end of the tunnel to catch the train. Train Ride To be honest, I don’t have a plan. I just ride the train until the area out the window looks promising. The buildings don’t have signs. There’s no indication of restaurants around. The train pulls to a stop with a cafe. Maybe they have soup on the menu. I hop off the train and walk over to read the menu posted outside. I study it and work to remember my survival-level German vocabulary or decode what I’m reading. Through the streaky brown glass, I see people inside smoking like it’s 1959. The woman behind the counter throws her hands up at me in impatient rage. I check to see if I’m blocking anybody’s way, but I’m not, I’m alone out here. Come on lady, can’t I read the menu in peace? Nobody else has ever done this? I lift a hand to thank and appease her and walk away. What hospitality! What warm hearts. I should just go back to the Airbnb and sleep. I can make it one more day without eating. More than halfway there already. Though the hunger seems to double or even triple the cold weather. Wonder if the cleaning lady is still there. She’s another figure who projected an air of silent, clenched rage. Her eyebrows tweezed to pitch-black perfection. Hair disciplined in a gelled black bun. A snarl in her mouth. The hard angles of her shoulders as she whipped dust out of the corners of the room. More disgusted than the foreman of that work crew. OK, what is with this place? My friend can’t hang out with me, I’m all alone. Can’t stomach the food, see a ray of sunshine, or even a smile for that matter. Yeah, I’ve changed my mind. No military for you sausage-fueled, shivering, snarling, barking little martinets. Who straightens a river? Leave it alone. Germany, your coldness, harshness, and anger are seeping into my blood like the windchill. Back Home The cleaners leave all the windows open, so even though I step inside I can’t really warm up yet. I leave my coat on. What’s this outside my door? There’s a chocolate Saint Nikolaus standing there. Wrapped in red tinfoil with gold crosses on his red hat and shoulders. I pick it up and stare at it. It unbolts my brain for a moment. How many years since a Christmas at home? How many years more since a Christmas with magic? This little chocolate saint. Taking an auger to mood and memory. I’m too old to think about stuff like that anymore! I’ve got to put this guy down. He’s dredging my spirit too much. I can’t be in a foreign country so woozy, witless, and starving that a chocolate saint can strip the years and makes me a kid again. I’ve got to get inside my room fast where I’m not exposed. I text the Airbnb host, “thank you for the chocolate!” She writes back, “It was left by Saint Nikolaus, of course!” She adds a winking emoji. Ah, you guys aren’t so bad. You’re the sweetest people ever. Sorry for what I thought earlier – the sausage-munching rage machine thing. I didn’t mean it. This chocolate is rich and delicious, and it’s the one thing I’ve had to eat all day. I eat it sitting near the radiator.
Riptide & Camel Ride Paddling, paddling like crazy in the foamy water and big waves off the shore of an African surf and fishing village called Taghazout in Morocco. There’s no ATM in town, so you have to bike to the next village over to get cash. It’s just that kind of place. Despite all evidence to the contrary, I am convinced I can rip on a short board, so I have rented one along with a wetsuit, and I am getting churned, tumbled and plunged under waves like you would not believe. This is session two for the day. Did one in the morning, and the sun is going down now. In a calm moment on the water, when I turn to face shore, the village is…gone. Only tan desert hills with dark green splotches of short juniper trees cover the landscape. Get my book Odd Jobs & After Hours here. It’s about drifting down the east coast of the USA chasing one sketchy, so-called opportunity after another. Get it in hardcover, paperback, or audio at the link. One mansion with a high wall and big tinted windows stands alone. North-ish of me, deep in the distant hills, there is a tiny stripe of white cubes. Buildings veiled by haze. Those cubes are the hostels, restaurants, cafes, and surf shops of Taghazout, where I am staying. Miles and miles away. How did it get so far away so fast? Those riptides are sneaky, treacherous entities, huh? Nothing to do but start the long, slogging trek back in wet sand. But wait, what’s this? A man in a blue robe and straw hat is napping between two camels in the shade of a dune. One camel is tan and one camel is white. The logical choice, the correct decision becomes clear. What’s more, on impulse, I stuck 100 Dirham in the back pocket of my board shorts. That’s ten dollars in American money, and it is the key to unlocking this whole situation. The guy with camels is named Hassan. The tan camel is Bolo, and the white camel is Carlos. “Can we ride back to Taghazout?” Hassan nods and grins. “Even if I got this?” I show him the surfboard. He looks at the cameIs and nods. “Be careful,” Hassan says. “They spit.” “Can’t be worse than my last wipeout. Imagine doing 20,000 ice cold neti pots at once.” Hassan laughs. “Clears the sinuses, though.” I will be riding Carlos the white camel. Hassan shows me the stirrup, a metal bar, and how to get up on the dark red, hand-woven, rug-like saddle. Then Carlos stands up. Back legs first, and I’m pitched forward at a steep angle, gripping the surfboard under my armpit, lurching and staring at the back of Carlos’s long, hairy neck with its patches of knotted, dust-filled fur. Up go the front legs, and here we are. What an elevated view of the ocean and shore. Hassan mounts Bolo, and we start towards Taghazout carried by the forward rock and roll motion of the indolent, dour lipped, heavily-lidded camels. “I take your surfboard,” Hassan says. I press the yellow board deeper into my armpit. “No, I got it.” “Please, I carry for you.” “You wouldn’t ask a knight to let someone else carry his sword, would you?” This, Hassan understands. He laughs and does not offer again. The waves that plunged me under and rolled me all evening long are roaring to the left. The desert hills with their tent camps and RVs stand to the right. On a camel, wearing a wetsuit and surfboard, plodding back to where I’m staying. It does make me wonder, if ever a term such as camel hypnosis was coined. How can it not exist? Drying out under desert sun, gently rolling along without so much as a car stereo to distract you. “These guys must get great miles to the gallon.” Hassan stares at me. “Of water!” Now Hassan stares at me while I laugh at my own joke. Nice, cool, we’re having a good time. Eventually, when we arrive at the eroded, worn out, stone rocks that lead up to Taghazout, the camels kneel once more, again with their steep pitch forward. “Thank you Hassan, and thank you Carlos.” I unzip my wetsuit, find the soaked, but honestly still very crisp 100 Dirham note, and give it to Hassan. It might be too much, it might be too little, but it’s all I have, if you know what I mean.
Caught Between Curfew & Culture | Colombia I am doing the tightrope walk of organizing a date while sitting here under a plant that’s sprouting from a stone patio, with a view of the mild, mid-afternoon bustle of a middle-classish, family-friendly neighborhood, my back to the door of a $7 per night Airbnb in Colombia. (In a cave with my book, Odd Jobs & After Hours. Get your copy on Amazon here.) Food delivery guys on motorcycles with insulated red backpacks putter at slow speeds down the block. The U.S. Marine veteran in the room next to mine is also out on the porch. He is cursing the snot out of a video pundit on his iPhone, and chain-smoking. And I am tapping, backspacing, Google translating, and double-checking my way through a Whatsapp conversation with a Colombian girl named Carla. We matched on Tinder. Through clumsy, ham-fisted, beginner Spanish, I am laboring to achieve that detached yet interested, breezy yet clear, kind of gamesmanship that Whatsapp flirting requires. (What? You’re above it? You’re telling respond when you see a message and not when an appropriately coy period of time has passed? You get to the point and you don’t waste anybody’s time? I doubt that, friend. I doubt that very much.) Ah, but Colombia! Colombia is a nation still capped by the cosmic dome of Catholicism. A people still cupped in the hands of God. Not like the bloated, broken, chimp children of the USA, desperate to suck all the money, food, and flesh they can into their faces while their little rock plummets through the void. For this fundamental fork in our cultural backgrounds, when I asked for her address so I could send her a cab to pick her up, she snapped back, “A cab? To my address? I’m not a prostitute!” Now, I thought I understood that in Spanish but I used Google translate to be sure. I put the phone in my pocket, a take a walk around the block. When I get back to my Airbnb, there is another message from Carla. “In the USA, the man can go over to a woman’s house for a first date, but it is different here.” “I understand. I was only trying to offer you a ride to the restaurant.” “Yes, I don’t have a bike or car, I need a ride.” I set the phone down again. What’s caused by the language barrier here, and what’s her? Is it even worth the trouble of explaining to this…woman, that cabbie’s need, and actually outright demand, addresses? You can’t coo gently to them like homing pigeons, and let instinct guide them. Go where you feel, cabbie. She’s out there, somewhere. A new message banner appears. “Can u send it here?” She drops a pin at a cafe that logically must be within walking distance of her house. “Yes. Does 6 work?” “Can we do 8?” “See you then!” Time to whittle, time to pace, time to kick cans, and kill time. But time does move on, and 8pm does arrive, and here I am in collared shirt and slacks, leather shoes, standing on a corner outsides a parrilla place. Parrilla. It means grill. That seems kind of general. I read the Spanish menu posted outside the joint slowly, guessing my way through words I don’t know. A cab pulls up to the curb, and out steps Carla, looking more or less like her pictures. Black hair, and good looking, like many Colombianas. Skittish steps. Darting eyes. (Is this neighborhood scary? Am I?) We meet and do a quick cheek kiss. She laughs at my clunky Spanish. We get an outdoor table. I can pick out what she does: nurse, and share what I do: writer. I manage to ask her what’s best on the menu, and she points to a mix of grilled meats over a bed of french fries. It has chicharrón, sausages, a grilled steak, some kind of sauce drizzled all over it. Peppers and onions in there, too. We get one of those and two mai tais. Soon that becomes two mai tais for me, and one for her, because the bartender is quite talented, and all communication is a taxing effort. She says something fast, something that ends in a rising, questioning tone. “No sabo,” I say, and shrug. She bursts out laughing. I sip my mai tai, analyzing this. Smiling. Clearly, I am funny. And this is good. Right? She types at blistering speed into Google translate on my phone. She shows me her English message. “I can’t believe you said that!” it reads. “When someone speaks bad Spanish we call them no sabos. If you want to say I don’t know, say no sé. I laugh and say no sé, no sé etching a deep, dark mental note. The mixed grill over fries arrives. It’s a banger. Hot, fresh, and tasty. We eat and chat about music, and movies, and work, and life, and English, and Spanish, and the USA, and Colombia. The mixed grill disappears, and the check appears. Blue-raspberry and red raspberry lights blast through the windows of the restaurant. Sirens wail. The heroic Colombian police department is doing a slow, loud roll down the street. Restaurants and bars up and down the block give their lights the double blink. “Curfew!” she says. “For COVID?” I ask. She nods. Spanish roars out of a police megaphone. I check my watch. 10pm. A whole city on high school curfew hours. I pay the check, and we’re out the door. There are just so many cops! And that megaphone message, which is definitely enforcing curfew runs on a loop. People are vanishing left and right. She tells me she needs a ride home, and I tell her I know. As I tap on my phone for a ride, she taps me frantically on the shoulder. Two cars, two cars! You’re an honest woman, Carla, I got it, I know, we’re cool. The Uber I call for her arrives. And look at me, Captain Charming, I open the door for her. She sits in the cab, steps out suddenly, then gives me a quick kiss on the lips. “Hide while your cab comes!” she says. It’s interesting advice, probably wise. I nod. Then I’m alone. It’s me, the law, and the great specter of COVID-19, making its deadly post 10pm rounds. Giant potted plants line the outside of a hotel on a corner. I dart over, and crouch behind one plant before the police pass again. Red and blue lights wash around the round, matte ceramics of the plant pots, and shine through their spiky fronds. There’s that same megaphone message again. The Uber driver sends me a message. “Sorry! No rides after 10pm for COVID.” No, that can’t be right. I try three more Ubers, but all decline. I try two yellow cabs. Same deal, no rides after 10pm. I peek out from behind the potted plants at the empty street. So here we are. It was 15 minutes to get here by car, which is (maps tells me) an hour fifteen by foot. Hmm. Cops are out, I saw them tapping people on the shoulder to get them going on their way. Right now, the streets are empty. What’s the move, here? Stick near buildings and start speed walking the hour fifteen back to the Airbnb? It’s the only option, and I had better get going. Maybe I can periodically check to see if there’s a rogue driver looking for a final fair of the night. I get going. Tap, tap, tap. Leather dress shoes, not too grippy, pretty hard-bottomed, on the empty street. Battery life dying fast. I take a notebook out of my pocket and copy down the street turns down in case the battery dies mid-journey. Ten minutes into the walk. No signs of cabs or Ubers. Compliance all around. Fifteen minutes into the walk, with the longest steps I can manage. Red and blue lights shine around the corner, so I step into an alleyway. The cops drive past while I’m crouched behind a dumpster. Then it’s back to hoofing it, to pitter-pattering along, making the big long trek home. Twenty-five minutes into the walk, and 10 percent battery life left. Ding! It’s a Whatsapp from Carla. “Home safe! Smiley emoji. Thank you for lovely time. I’m going to bed now.” And I look up at two stars, shining in the night between the buildings, and I take a deep, sweet, fresh, breath, and write back, “Happy for you! Sleep well.” Then it’s back to the hike. Police sirens again. They’re getting louder faster which means that they’re not after me, they’re after a real crime. Right? I crouch next to a set of steps under an awning, and a squad car barrels down the street, sirens screaming. Half an hour left to walk, and that’s easy, that’s doable, that’s practically recreational, but these dress shoes are hard as marble slates on the bottom, and they feel like they are too small now. It’s around then I start turning over in my mind, “two cabs, you can’t ride with me then tell the driver where to go after, I’m home safe, I’m sleeping, that’s all that matters. I’m good! That’s all that matters!” Not because I really mean it, but because it makes me laugh, and a little angry, and that keeps you going, going, going. Phone is dead. Going off my paper directions. City zombies appear. There are maybe twelve homeless people in this next stretch of road. Swaying back and forth. Screaming into the night. I should take a right turn and try to get around them. But can I course-correct after the detour? Should I walk between them instead? They’re skinny, they’re not too dangerous. Right? Or maybe…Or maybe they’re fueled by bitterness, hunger, and crack fumes, maybe they’re armed with shards of broken window wrapped in rags, and garden hoses with nails driven through the end to make spiky whips. Maybe they’ll smell Gringo on me, and descend like drooling junkyard dogs. I take the detour, and trust I can still find my next turn. My collared shirt is soaked with sweat. Feet still mad at me for wearing dress shoes for this unplanned hike. Wait a minute. Who is this? One moped rider is going down the street. I step out and wave at him to come over. He’s a delivery driver going home. I can tell from the insulated red bag behind him. I hold up some peso notes and point at the address on my paper. He gets it. I climb aboard behind him, and he zooms through the final stretch of my walk-in about 7 minutes, even with a detour to avoid a police curfew checkpoint. I thank him and hand him the pesos. I reach into my pocket for more to give him, but he refuses and drives home. The veteran is still on the porch, still watching videos, still chain-smoking. “Date go well?” he asks. I do a quick recap of the date, the curfew, the trip back, and he finds the scenario hysterical. “Put that story in your book!” he says. Let myself into the room. Turn on the shower. Kick off the dress shoes. I step into the cramped, narrow shower. Didn’t get mugged! Didn’t get fined for violating curfew! Didn’t get lost. But wait. Did the date go well? Did I do OK? Was I weird? Ah, forget it. No sé.
Epiphany in Medellin *** Enjoy this story, and for stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. Here I am, sitting on the stone tiles of a gated front porch on a block in Colombia, waiting on hold for a hospital back in the USA to send me written proof of a negative COVID test. Not sure how often cops ask for proof of negative, but the Airbnb host told me to have something ready. And she told me to practice saying, “I have proof I’m COVID negative,” in Spanish. Tengo prueba de COVID negativa. Or something. I set the phone’s on hold jazz music to a quiet speaker setting, and watch the block wake up. People aren’t going to work today. It’s Epiphany, and that’s a national holiday here. That’s when the Three Wise Men brought gold, Frankincense & Myrhh to baby Jesus. There’s something about watching a day start in a foreign country that’s like seeing a play begin. Queue the woman shaking a washed blue shirt over her balcony and hanging it on a white line. Queue the couple opening the front door of the apartment and assembling a ramp over the steps for the man’s moped to drive down. This morning, everybody is out on their apartment balcony doing chores or eating breakfast. Each of the four balconies visible is like its own world. One with a grandmother-age woman and her daughter, one with a couple, one with a family of four, and one family of three, are all having a day-off kind of morning. Instant coffee and a cigarette while leaning off the rail for one dad, pancakes and orange juice for the kids, and moms bustling around on mom business. Colombia has barred travel again, but I got here just before the gates closed. Now, I must stay in my Airbnb unless I can get proof of a negative COVID test. But the hospital’s hold music will not end. No cabs run, and many restaurants are closed. I start to realize I may not be able to get a bite to eat today. But no wait, look across the street. A few apartment doors to the left. A woman is pushing an industrial grill out the door. She and a man walk a big striped restaurant sign out of their front door. The sign reads Donde Toby. (Where is Toby? That’s what that means, right? The street food place is asking me where Toby is? For its name?) I can’t get over how different the apartments are here. You never think about building codes until you see what happens when they’re not there. Each building is slightly different creating a patchwork of odd angles and different colors. Motorcyclists and moped buzz down the block. A skin and bone man in a baggy polo and ripped jeans has two trash bags on his arms. He rifles through bags of trash left on the ground. Around the corner, on a second story balcony, somebody is reading what must be the gospel through a megaphone. I can hash out enough Spanish to know it’s the gospel, and based on the day it must be the story of the Three Kings. Black haired mothers in pandemic masks walk their children down the block. And underneath it all that hospital hold music won’t end. And it’s times like these, hungry in a foreign country that’s closed most of its restaurants, unable to leave and delivery service on holiday, yes, it’s times like these that make you ask the big questions. Such as, where is Toby? My patio is four feet above sidewalk level, made of brick-colored stones standing behind a painted white iron gate. If I walk to the end of the patio, I can see down the street where the man is preaching. There are lush green mountains rising behind him. They are covered in mist, but in the morning you can see their looming, rolling shapes. A voice crackles through the hold music. It thanks me for waiting and asks how it can help. I explain my situation. Sizzling grill, Spanish megaphone sermon, the rising buzz of a motorcycle’s engine. Dogs yap. A little bit of rain comes and goes. It’s all a symphony nobody could ever write.
Landing in Colombia Medellin at Night Enjoy this story, and for stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. *** Rain splattering the windows of the airplane. Dim purple and orange light shining through the little round window. Going just by the big flat tarmac alone, Medellin, Colombia, looks like Miami, Florida. I’m watching the tarmac for signs of Colombianism, you might say. Meaning what? Meaning having seen tarmacs in England, Russia, the USA, and now Colombia, I always watch to see if they, for example, drive the suitcases in a different kind of tiny truck. Yeah, it just looks like more Miami for now. A couple of friends of mine will be here in a few days. They’ve been before. They said I should come down this time. Just for a few stories. Just for a lark. And as you do, I larked my luggage out of the overhead bin and larked myself out the double sliding front doors. “Where you go?” asks a cabbie. And I set one bag down to fish an address out of my pocket, and he grabs my bag and starts stomping towards his cab, being the aggressive salesman he is. And wanting to keep up with my socks and underwear, I stomp after him to his cab. I mean, one ride seems as good as another. He’s got this stick shift Hyundai. A ceramic Virgin Mary is glued to the dash in front of the passenger. Two rosaries are looped around her stand. He floors the gas pedal shooting between rows of waiting cabs and Ubers, and those rosary beads rattle against the dash. We drive under palm trees and so far it is nothing I haven’t seen before. But the cabbie is getting agitated over something. “Get ready, get ready. Man, you gonna see something here, man!” Whoosh! The treeline ends, and there is all of Medellin, a city built in a green valley. Yellow town lights run up the sides of purple mountains. Clouds drift in front of the tops of skyscrapers. A yellow biplane circles near the mountainsides. “Hey! Where we going?” I can’t stop staring. “Where we going?” I hand the cabbie the address of the Airbnb. “I don’t know, I don’t know!” I check the dash for a GPS. Nothing. “Can you use your phone?” I ask. “No card!” That’s a shame. My own phone is dead as a brick. The battery decided it couldn’t hold a charge anymore sometime in the middle of my layover at MIA. The charger takes ages to wake it up, if it can bring it to life at all. Bad timing, you know, going to a foreign country, but you can’t put things off forever or wait till everything is perfect. Otherwise, you’ll never do them. The cabbie barks, “Policia! Policia!” Oh great. Meaning what? Get passports, bribe or bail money ready? Chuck this bag of coke out the window before he sees us? There’s the cop in military green with a lime green helmet on a motorcycle by the side of the road. But then the cabbie screeches the Hyundai to a stop in the dead middle of the road, and tells me to roll down my window. The cop is checking a phone in a heavily padded case. “Hey, it’s alright, we don’t need to bother him,” I say. “We can go.” The cabbie whips his hand in circles to tell me to roll down the window again. Grudgingly, I do. The cop looks up. Cabbie grabs the address. He must be asking the cop how to get there in Spanish. The cop does some gesturing. Left at the this and right when you see that. And bang, we’re off again! “I would never, ever stop in the middle of the road to ask a roadside cop for directions in the US,” I say. “No?” “No, they’re by the road to give you tickets, you can’t just roll down your window and yell, ‘hey, where’s Dairy Queen?’ at them.” “La policia es mi seguridad!” Must be, “police are my security.” His voice rises to a full bellow in this tiny cab, with just him, me & ceramic Mary. What I lack in Spanish, he’s making up for in sheer volume. “¡La policía es mi protección!” He thumps his chest. Not in the milkiest suburbs of the states could you find this kind of confidence in the boys in blue! “La policía no es corrupta!” Not even a little bit corrupta? I’ll still keep my distance, you mad cabbie you! We scream around a bend in the overpass. His whip the wheel & tilt the tires driving style makes this yellow cab shoot through the dark like a bullet. But what incredible greed my eyes have for all things Medellin! The dance of mist over moonlit mountains, the jungle plants and flowers growing from every island in the road. Has my battery pack brought my phone to life yet? I check it. Still dead. A motorcyclist appears in sideview mirror’s reflection. “Phone down, phone down, other hand, no window hand,” yells the cabbie, who is now sweating heavily into his stiff-collared shirt. He then mimes and chatters and explanation. Medellin runs on motorcycles. They rule the streets by day. And sometimes, a motorcyclist will steal an iPhone right out of a driver’s hand, even at a full 60-70mph. Which strikes me as a rather acrobatic, visually stunning kind of a crime. Imagine, you’re rocketing along in the passenger seat of a cab. A motorcyclist’s image swells in the sideview mirror. The biker’s shoulders dip left. His arm swipes through the window, scooping your phone right out of your hand, then zoom, he vanishes off into the night, carrying your drunk texts, your photos, your alarm clocks, your work email, your apps, your absolutely everything down into the underbelly of a world about which you know nothing, and if you’re lucky, you never will. Anyway, my phone stays in my pocket for the rest of the ride. Finally, the cabbie pulls off the highway into some side streets. The odd angles of apartment buildings are jammed together. They’re smaller, more cramped than you might see in the states. Everybody has a small balcony. “Peligrosso, peligrosso,” the hoarse cabbie stage whispers. There are enormous piles of garbage bags on street corners. Street art of the Joker, for some reason. Windows covered with large metal shutters, and bars. Doors made of solid metal. Possibly bulletproof. And city zombies (they are in every city) shuffle around in a nearby park. Bug eyed, broken toothed, slack jawed and jonesing for poison, no doubt. There’s a man with a shopping cart in a poncho and straw hat. There’s a woman in cutoff shorts, heels and a halter top. Nails a puma would envy. I don’t mean to make assumptions, but she probably has an engineering degree. One rail-thin guy is standing in the middle of the street, arms crossed over his ribs. A cigarette burning in his fingers. He looks like one of the city zombies. The cab squeaks to a stop, and the cabbie shouts for directions again. This cabbie will ask anybody where a street is! Three turns later, he drops me off at a place. This neighborhood looks a little better. Iron gate painted white. A lockbox with a key inside. Luckily, I wrote down the code before my phone died. The room is the exact size of a queen-sized bed. There’s a full-sized bed in the center. You have to scoot sideways like a crab to get around the bed to a miniature bathroom and shower. Can you drink the tap water here? Folks back home told me no. I boil tap water in this electric kettle, and drink tea-temperature water, unmixed with anything. But hey, I made it. Bedtime. To be continued.
Jumping Out an Airplane Enjoy this story, and for stories you won’t find online, grab my book here. This tiny plane is climbing and circling higher and higher. When I say tiny, I mean tiny. There are no seats. Just room for four people to sit on the ground, shoulder to shoulder. Two first-time skydivers practically on the laps of two instructors, crammed on the floor of the airplane. Outside the windows of the cramped canister, we’re gaining altitude. Big, flat Florida is getting smaller and smaller. It’s an overcast day. We feel every lurch, every tilt, every time the plane tips its wings to turn. “I know you’re the pilot but do you jump sometimes, too?” Dalina asks the pilot. “He does, and he’s working now,” her instructor says. She giggles and claps a hand over her mouth. A confirmed adrenaline junky, she’s practically bouncing off the cabin walls. She and I met when I was surfing, recently. And shockingly, this skydiving trip is the first time we’re hanging out. And when the plane tips, the vast view of Earth itself rises up the windows, like when you tilt a glass of OJ and the juice runs up the side. Criss-crossing runways, a double baseball diamond, pine-green grassy fields, all rapidly shrinking. Spiky heads of palm trees. Squiggly, slithering rivers. Roads, quiet, with few cars at this early weekend hour. The beach is misty. You can see the lapping shoreline, but you can’t pick out where the water stops and the sky begins on the horizon. It’s all one grey, foggy, shimmering sheet. The beach hotels look like dollhouses. The propeller whirs & roars. Man. Can’t believe I’m going to jump out of this tiny airplane. I have dedicated the past week to not thinking about it. Now the moment is here. Back on the ground, when the pilot asked who wanted to jump first, Dalina and I both said, “me!” at the same time. She tried to let me go first, but a, “ladies first” settled the matter. She’s sitting by the window now. It was actually open when we were starting to take off, but they rolled it down. She and I kill time with some getting to know you chit chat, because after all, we just met by chance on the beach a couple of weeks ago when I was finishing up surfing. She sent me a message in the middle of the night making if I wanted to skydive. I answered yes, and woke up to a screenshot of skydiving ticket receipts. The plane climbs in higher and higher circles. Her jump instructor grabs the door handle and lifts it upward. The door rattles open, and there’s a great gaping hole in the airplane cabin, showing a view of wispy clouds & a forever of grey sky out there under the wing. The cabin is drowning in roaring wind, propeller whir, and shivering cold air. Dalina puts a sneaker out on the metal step over the wheel with all 14,000 feet of air racing away underneath this Campbell soup can of an airplane. “You’ve got this, you’ve got this,” I yell. Dalina closes her eyes, and arches back like the instructor told her to do. And then her instructor grabs the doorframe and dives. And they’re gone. Vanished, so fast, and so far. It’s like witnessing an execution. Scoot! Slide! My jump instructor is sidling on his bum over to the door. Fast. My hands grip my harness. “Head arched back, feet together pointing back when we go!” the guy yells in Camel cigarette breath. The wind speed makes putting my boot out onto the metal plate over the wheel like moving underwater. I fight the wind to shove my boot onto that rusty metal step. Earth curvature, water bodies, moving mist, whipping clouds. Ocean below. System buzzing and clammy like it’s time to die. View out the airplane: the thin body, and tail of the plane. The wing of the plane above me. Metal ridges, a coffee-color rust stain on the underside of the wing. A red stripe and a yellow stripe on the white wing. A row of white bolts. Jump! Stomach drops. Air roaring in ears. Whole body in free fall. Fighting air pressure to inhale thin air. Arms out like wings now. Giddy, terrified. Rushing at the misty morning ground. Like dropping from the top of the world’s tallest rollercoaster, but without the rollercoaster. A flapping, unfurling snap of fabric overhead. A great jolt. And then silence. No more rush of air. Gentle, downward motion. I look up, and there’s the parachute, spreading overhead like a bodega awning. “Don’t get scared, I’m going to make your harness a little more comfortable.” He doesn’t even need to raise his voice anymore. It’s the type of sound quality like when you’re on a ski lift, chatting with somebody. He unbuckles something on my harness and I drop down on one side. This feeling, I hate. I’m gripping my shoulder straps again. About to tell him not to worry about the harness. Imagine, he unbuckles the wrong thing, and I plunge away from him. There’d be nothing anyone could do. Then he unbuckles something on the other side and I drop-lurch down a little more. He’s done. The worst is over. I’m swinging in this harness, thousands of feet in the air, with the purest, most unblocked, un-windowed view of a Florida field, town, and beach you could ever have. We tilt way to the left. Glide in circles. Over a river. Over a highway. Back around towards the jump office. Now lower, probably even with the height of a skyscraper’s top. Dropping down story after story towards the blown-around long grass in pine & grey colored fields. We swing out hundreds of feet over two big water towers. Then keep dropping. “Point your feet straight out,” says the instructor. I do. We circle down, fast now. Green ground skim-skipping away. And ground starts skidding under my calves, under my legs, bootheels skimming and skidding until I stop, watery & high-eyed, every nerve singing. Stand & stretch. Can’t stop laughing. Glad I did it. Glad it’s over. Glad to be alive. Where am I? Turn, and there’s the one little trailer that serves as the office. I can hear soccer moms cheering their kids in the field on the other side of a chainlink fence. It is all very normal, but I am very different. They ask me to go to the trailer and return my harness. I do. Weightless Dalina is slower to fall, she’s still gliding hundreds of feet above us. “How was it?” the next two jumpers beg to know. “You’ll love it, you’ll love it,” I tell them. Dalina soon lands. We meet in the trailer with a hug & giddy, garbled recap. Then walk out on the sweet, solid, ground to find breakfast.
Sharing a Surfboard | Florida Enjoy this piece, and grab my book for stories you won’t find online. *** They make it look easy as a dream. Riding green, foamy curling waves on a surfboard. I rented one while I was back in Florida for a wedding. Now, in the water off of Cocoa Beach, I’m getting chafed red by a giant, oblong, wobbling blue surfboard that wants to tilt, dip, and pitch me under the water at every second. I can see other beginners not having much luck on their own tropical colored boards (yellow, pink, key lime green). The board is twice my size. Squeaks and slips right out from under me. The water is cold, but it’s clean. No seaweed. Cocoa Beach both sounds nice and is nice. After getting swamped by a few more waves, I swim the board into knee-deep water. The new plan is to catch a little wave and just stand on this thing for once. It works. I ride the board standing up for maybe ten or fifteen feet. Feels like being a billionaire. As I’m sinking down into the now ankle-deep water, I see my small success has not gone unnoticed. “Can I try that?” a young voice screams. It’s a bunch of kids. Maybe five of them. Three girls, two boys, and a mom. One of the girls is asking. “What’s your name?” “Gemini,” she says. “Ask your mom.” “She says it’s OK!” I need a rest anyway. “Sure, give it a try.” I un-velcro the strap from around my ankle. Gemini, her brothers and sisters swarm the board in a flash. They’re screaming and fighting over it like a game of King of the Hill. I have thrown an entire family into chaos. Gemini secures the strap around her ankle. While this may sound like snatching the crown, it’s a serious tactical error. The weight of her three siblings carries the board into shin-deep water. She’s being pulled along as it surges up and down in the water. I have thrown an entire family into chaos. The blue board seems as alive as a giant eel, bucking and chucking brothers and sisters into the water. They’re trying to stand on the sinking board. Look-amme-momma-look-amme. This doesn’t last long. In under a full minute, they figure they’ve got my money’s worth. They shove the board back to me. It floats towards me in the water. Their mom calls, “Thank you.” I return to trying to do short standing rides on the board in shallow water. I can pop into a standing position and ride the board ten or fifteen feet at a stretch. Tomorrow I should do even better. The sun is setting. The water is lighting up warm orange. It makes a shimmering, blurry reflection of the sky. Cold water wipes me out. After one more standing ride, I figure I can’t top that this evening. Tuck the board under my arm and return to the shop as the sun goes down. End
You could be like me Enjoy this story & grab my book here. None of the stories online appear in the book. It’s a warm evening on South Beach. Fish bowls of blue cocktail drink on the table, and friends from back home visiting. Reggaeton blasting. Crowds of people tramping up and down the block. The beach is just across the street. You can’t hear, smell, or see it under the music, cooking food, and darkness, but it’s there. Steve and I are raving drunk. Laughing about something moronic. Our dates are getting to know each other. “Buttons for sale, buttons for sale.” A Rasta man with his head in a giant wrap wears a coat completely covered in pin buttons. He rattles one lapel at me. “Buttons for sale,” he says. Jesus, Sinatra, Hailie Selassie, Marley, Marylyn, Elvis, Bogart all on buttons. “Hey!” I say. Lurching a little at this point. “That’s Idi Amin! He’s on your jacket with Elvis and Jesus and whoever.” “So what?” “He eats people!” “So what?” “So Rastas don’t even eat meat but you got a guy who eats people on your button.” “That’s not my problem!” he says. I think about that. Deeply drunk, it sounds like logic. I mean, who’s problem would it be, then? “You want to buy that man eater button?” “No man, I’m good.” “Can’t be thinkin’ you’re above other people,” he says. But with good humor and a smile. “I don’t, in fact, I was probably a guy like you in another life.” Steve drunk laughs at the mental image. My date looks at me suspiciously. I think I’m slurring my words a little. “You could be a guy like me in this life, too. You don’t need your things.” “You’re right, take my jacket,” I say. I unhook it from the back of my chair. Shove it right at the Rasta man, who is shocked. Steve puts his hand on my jacket. “You sir, are officially drunk,” Steve says. He’s swaying a little himself, though. The Rasta man is laughing hysterically now. He walks away, still laughing. You can hear his jacket buttons jingling for a mile.
Shots at the Bodega The guy behind the bodega has his mask down. He’s pouring aguardiente into disposable shot glasses for himself, his colleague and a someone who is either his girlfriend or another colleague. It’s a Saturday night in Medellin. These guys are partying right on the job. Salsa music on the JBL. Fans, but no AC. Chatting there among plastic tubs of dulce de leche treats, pressed guava sugar candy, and plastic wrapped pan queso. The bodega is so narrow you practically walk sideways between soup cans on one shelf and auto fluids on the other back to the back fridge. Grab three bottles of water and carry them up to the register. It’s a good job if you can drink aguardiente, I say. They laugh. Maybe at my bad Spanish, maybe at the remark. Maybe at their own cramped Saturday night public work party here on this sleepy street. Out comes a fourth plastic shot glass. They pour one sloshing right to the rim. It’s for me. I drain it. Licorice flavor and alcohol that makes the throat convulse. Feel that energy kick. They laugh, and the guy behind the register plucks out a Chesterfield for the road. Well, when traveling, you accept hospitality. So I take it, accept a light, and exit. Cold water bottles dripping condensation all over my arm. Cool night. Hot cheeks from the liquor. Glad they’re having a good time in there.