San Fermin: prelude

“…the things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences…”

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PHX to JFK

US Airways Flight 12

Departure time: 9:00 AM PST

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7:30 AM 07-06-07

Amy dropped me off at the airport this morning. I was anticipating this trip before today, but this morning I am electrified. I can barely hold still. I can’t wait to get on the plane and get out of this Easy-Bake Oven circle of hell. It’s 117 Fahrenheit outside.

Amy cries, like she does, but it’s barely noticeable and nothing like it would have been during our heyday years ago.

Finally on the tarmac, we’ve been taxiing for a while. I think the pilot intends on driving to New York. The black woman next to me thinks that I have some deep seated need to stare straight down the crack of her ass as she gets up and sits back down again constantly.

Never one for in-flight movies, I doze off for a while waking up near the end of their feature presentation. Blades of Glory. The title reminds me of old Nintendo games.

Our rough landing lets me know that we are arriving in JFK airport. First time in NYC. This is going to be good. JFK was designed and built by village idiots. There is no other possible explanation. Gates are placed haphazardly where one might expect to see a broom closet; baggage claim is in some unused sub-basement.

An engaging young Muslim girl wants to tell me all about how she lives in California, not that far from me, and he husband lives in new york. She’s wearing a baby blue scarf that matches the rest of her clothes and contrasts nicely with her skin tone. She’s attractive despite being covered up; I wonder how their marriage will fare when they live together.

Flying text messages. Nasreen is waiting in the wings for me to get my bag. I’m exiting baggage claim juggling my black satchels and fingering my phone to find out where the girl is at when a chocolate cascade of curls emerges from the sparse crowd and moves toward me.

Nasreen is as short as ever and dressed like noone i know. Black leggings that she cut off at the calf, a scarf that wraps around her waist twice, and one of her tank tops made of a chopped and pinned tshirt from some 1980′s band faded into namelessness. Her embrace is warm as summer sun and more welcome.

After the small eternity of her breasts heating my chest we break apart and bask in each others smiles. The weather is 90 and it feels perfect to me while Nasreen glistens and remarks on the heat.

I was warned that she drove a truck similar to my sister’s vehicle. Yeah, the one that the wheel actually fell off while she was driving. Couple that with my general impression of driving in NYC and you probably have a similarly wonderful mental image to my own. I am not dissapointed.

My first view of her truck is the rear driver side of the bed. Which is the only portion of her truck that is safely in her parking space. The truck is at a 45 degree angle across two spots. She would probably be parked across four parking spaces but her truck halted when it hit the cement pillar at the front of her spaces. So, it’s bumper in a cement pillar and bed in the adjacent space, we load up her beast of burden and fly into traffic.

Nasreen is so distracted talking to me after so long that she drives right past her exit and doesn’t realize it until two miles later when we are about to enter a bridge we shouldn’t be on. So, the scenic route. A great route for my first trip to the Big Apple. Nasreen does her best to explain her understanding of the city and how it as grown. She talks about places she likes and points out Pier 17 where there is a concert we can attend later. Indy Rock Band.

We talk briefly about La Mella; the italian restaraunt i heard about from the hungry, green-eyed girl at the wells fargo on 48th and Ray in Phoenix. I realize that I didn’t come here to see any restaraunt or specific attraction. I came to experience Nasreen’s New York. I tell her so and a beautiful sublime warmth flooks her face. We’re going to her place.

Nasreen shares her apartment with a girl named ‘Seven.’ Not sure what her real name is, I go with it. After trying to parallel park, unsuccessfully, in two spots too small for her truck Nasreen just backs her truck into a mountain of trash bags and rubbish laying on the sidewalk and throws it in park.

I was on the phone with Nasreen several weeks ago as she wandered the streets of Brooklyn at some ungodly hour. She was coming out of the subway and heading to her house, talking in her tired voice that always makes her S’s sound drawn out and lazy, when she suddenly began yelling at someone on her end of the phone. The line went dead.

I tried to call her back but couldn’t raise her for nearly half an hour. Not entirely sure how to direct the police to her location from the other end of the country, i decided to wait it out. When I finally raised her on the phone I got the story.

Some random bastard had taken a slotted screwdriver and used it as a key, forcing open the passenger door of her truck. She had walked up on him in the act of pilfering her camera and scared him off. She spent the next few hours walking the streets; hunting him.

As I exit the truck I can see she still hasn’t fixed the keyhole yet.

Lugging my baggage and some of Nasreen’s sculptures up to her apartment on the fifth floor is made easier by the now-working elevator secured behind three separate locked doors. The lift smells of people. The fifth floor is shaped like a too-small ‘T’ with all halls the same length and containing too many doors. I’m about to find out why. New York City has very small apartments.

Nasreen opens the door and a yell comes rolling out.

“Are you alone?”

Nasreen peeks in and starts laughing; asking me to stay in the hall for a moment. Minutes later, I am permitted entry to the apartment and introduced to a hastily-dressed, previously-nude, “Seven.” Still thinking I’ve heard wrong, I make a mental note to ask Nasreen about it later.

The house is filled, almost strewn with art work. Each wall is a different color accenting and offsetting the art hanging there. Some paintings are huge, over 8 feet across; others are tactile creations slashed with pennies and seashells.

My favorite is an unassuming piece hanging on the wall of the bathroom. A ‘One Way’ sign being swallowed by blues and white caps. As if California had finally fallen into the ocean and the last person left on that broken coast had affixed this vision of the last piece of doomed civilization sinking into that blue abyss to the wall in this tiny apartment.

Nasreen’s room is less than half the size of my bedroom in Arizona. There is not one square foot of empty space on her walls. Clippings, sketches, postcards, ads, and pictures litter her walls in a massive framework of vibrant visual cacophony.

Lazing around the room for a while, I sift through the myriad of takeout menus Nasreen supplies me at my demand for food. A take-out menu for a vegetarian restaurant that Nasreen mentioned catches my eye. Seven confirms my hungry suspicions by screaming something unintelligible from the next room about the vegan barbecue chicken wings that they offer.

It’s a mild walk, sliding through the shadows cast by the building in the late afternoon sun. We cross the Pratt campus with all it’s color and juvenile delinquent scenery.

Red Bamboo in Brooklyn is an Experience. The vast majority of the menu is vegan. The remainder is vegetarian, only because it contains cheese. Somehow, much of the menu still looks delicious to me: an avowed omnivore. The vegan buffalo wings are awesome. The vegan mango chicken is served in hollowed out chilled mango shells and is all i could ask for; draped in peppers and a sauce like ‘sweet and sour’ minus the MSG. Nasreen the preferential vegetarian, on the other hand, has managed to order a bowl of runny oatmeal/sick drizzled over unappetizing tofu cubes. She can’t eat it and I can’t stop laughing. We split desert, some decadent cheesecake-chocolate-fruit thing, and I make a grab for the check when it comes. True to form, Nasreen’s grip is pretty good and instead of wrestling her for it I agree to split it and we are off again into the cool evening.

She takes her time walking me through Brooklyn. She knows the slate in the sidewalk and explains how and when it is replaced. She talks of helping neighbors move and the strange things she has seen. This is Nasreen’s New York. This is the tone for the night.

The New York city subway is disappointingly normal; no muggers, no ninjas, no movie stars. We took the tube downtown to Union Square, arm in arm, my rapt attention on Nasreen as she recounted stories of strange occurrences and sights she had seen on the subway during her time in NYC. Teacher and student we flew, creaked, squealed, and groaned our way through the subterranean New York darkness.

Ascending out of the underground into the night air was like water in the desert. We walked Union Square like lazy lovers; drinking in the sights and the company. People are kissing here and there in the summer warmth. There is some ridiculous band in the square playing a raging blast of country-rockabilly-bluegrass. Failing to define it, we sit perched on the stairs above them and watch the crowd making asses of themselves. Of particular interest to me is the drunk Mexican clutching his beer and doing somersaults around the band until he pukes.

After several indiscernible songs and so many dances, we’re off. Going nowhere with nowhere to go, we walk and talk. The Big Apple and it’s marvels take a back seat to warm familiarity between two long separated friends. Tiring and retiring we ride the tube back to Brooklyn; avoiding bored New York policemen and staggering citizens. Three locked doors, 5 stories up. We crack the door to the apartment to find Seven dancing and singing her way around the apartment sans Gene Kelly.

Seven is Puerto Rican; the song is boisterous, Spanish, and suggestive. Following her rolling hips into the front room, i wait for a pause in the cant and take the moment to ask about the One Way sign in the next room. She stops and addresses me genuinely, staring into my face in that open honest way of the islands, ” You are the first person ever to comment on that piece.” She warms even further; a brilliant smile that sings of nudity and reggaetón. We’re friends.

Seven sings into the night until she leaves around 1 a.m. to go dancing. Nasreen mostly ignores me; going about her evening rituals and leaving me to peruse her walls in wonderment at those two-dimensional treasures.

The bed is big enough for two in the way that the room is big enough for the bed; barely. The remainder of our night is spent in inside jokes, kindred spirit, and shared exploration of the holy and sacred soul opposite the other. We know this dance and we do it well.

Nasreen is not a morning person. The fact that she was able to wake up each morning at Sundance this year and function is simply a testament to her willpower and anything but commonplace. She is dreamily sedate on awakening and lovely. 9 a.m. is always early when you went to sleep with the sunrise. I’m fairly familiar with my itinerary and don’t bother looking at it other than to check my flight time. Noon-ish.

Breakfast consists of whatever I can pull from the cabinets, supplemented by a purloined bag of cranberries I shove into my bag for a snack later. Curbside the trash is piled up as it has been all around the city. In passing I comment about sommeone forgetting to pick up the trash; it’s early and my brain isn’t working well enough to form sentences beyond the capacity of a drunk chimpanzee. Nasreen accuses me of making fun of her road-weary truck. Smiling infuriatingly, I can’t be bothered to correct her.

Wheeling the truck deftly through the potholes and pedestrians littering the street, we swing through a local grocery mart so I can grab some more food for the trip saving me from slavery to the devilish whims of the flight attendants. The cashier doesn’t speak english and looks at me like I’m retarded. I had better get used to this.

I haven’t truly appreciated Nasreen’s driving before arriving at JFK. My itinerary informs me that I’m leaving from La Guardia. And I don’t leave until 1:30 p.m. Nasreen’s gaze could freeze ice. Arriving at my terminal at La Guardia 2.5 hours early was definitely not in the plan. Punch drunk on too little sleep we pass the time slumped over one another giggling.

It’s nearly an hour before my flight and I have to head for security. Nasreen and I separate sluggishly, rueful that our visit was so short, and with promises to meet again soon. I’m hungry again.

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LGA to PHL

US Airways Flight 3843

Departure time: 1:25 PM EST

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Blessed sleep. Not even the gymnast girl at my side can entice me out of the rough hour of stolen sleep that is mine between take-off and landing. The landing bounces me back to consciousness. I’m up the jetway and running in a flash. Front Row Seat. Three Hour Layover. Nothing to do but drink. And try and remember where exactly I am supposed to be going when I get to Pamplona.

Philidelphia airport has free wireless internet. Perfectly usable for someone with a laptop or other wireless enabled device. Someone; not me. I, the intrepid adventuring traveler off to engage wild animals who will have no need for such devices and no appreciation for the lack of wires, have opted not to bring my laptop. I have also neglected to bring the directions to my place of lodging.

As Philidelphia Airport has been kind enough to provide wireless internet, they have no kiosk computers. Thus I am without internet access. I have no clue of my final destination other than Pamplona, Spain. A hard target to miss, though somewhat less precise that I need at the moment. In the two dozen or so emails I received from the Pamplona Posse I am renting the flat from were at least as many links to the google maps pictoral of the address. And at least as many admonitions to print out the locale. I neglected.

Will Gentle is what one might call, “The Economy Fag.”

He buys frozen salmon cakes in the shape of burgers and calls them filets. He buys furniture at IKEA and drives a Sephia. He has an eye for color and presentation that oft accompanies the homosexual inclination.

And he is a true and trustworthy friend.

Lacking another option, I call up Will, who is coincidentally also drinking, and ask him to log into my email.

Calle de San Gregorio.

31001.

Harp Bar.

“It’s near Ca-Lay Pablo Sarasate,” he slurs out. “Pablo is west of the Harp.”

“Calle Pablo Sarasate?”

“That’s what I said!”

“Thanks a million dude. I’m sure I don’t need to reiterate the need for discretion on this.”

“I already forgot the password.”

Some modicum of directions in hand, I head for the duty free store. Jack Daniels and Jim Beam are to be my traveling companions today. Finding a bottle of Jack the size of which hearkens back to Middle Earth, I grab it and a smaller bottle of Jim for the road. I’m flying all night and want to be well stocked.

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PHL to MAD

US Airways Flight 740

Departure time: 6:00 PM EST

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Seat A. Window.

The enlisted man to my right has the forearms that I lift for. The easy tilt of his accent marks him as Southern and a surfer, both. I’m guessing Texas by way of San Diego. Born in Houston, entered the Navy; now an officer and a nurse. Two tours in Iraq and a tour in Cuba have not ruined his sense of humor or the odd Texan charisma. He is entering the Anesthesia Master’s program at Georgetown University, moving his girlfriend with him. Sitting on the runway waiting for the crew to decide whether or not to fix the plane’s auxiliary power unit, he starts to rattle off stories.

Blackwater Bridge.

Blackwater is the name of the largest private military in the world. Owned by some fundamental Christian guy I can’t be bothered to remember the name of. These guys are Serious. Some time ago, members of Blackwater were captured, tortured, killed, and hung from a bridge in Iraq by terrorists.

Todd, my neighbor for this flight, was there for some clean-up operations. As a medic, he was there to support EOD; Explosive Ordinance Disposal. They play with bombs.

EOD guys are one of the few groups of people on the planet that I will instantly give credit for being crazier than me. I might have a death wish that I entertain from time to time, but these guys live it; eat, sleep, breathe napalm flavored death every day. They party like they have adrenal imbalances.

At Blackwater, EODs use a remote control car with a contained EMI field to drive out on to the bridge. This field should, in theory, stop the mines from activating and making chef boyardee out of the troops coming out to disable them. Technically.

Todd didn’t even bother unpacking his supplies. It was hot enough to cook a man in his armor and Todd sat in the shade of the Hum-vee slugging his canteen with abandon. When the EOD asked him to get his supplies Todd asked him,”Do you really believe that if you mess up while you are crouched over that bomb that there will be enough of you left for me to do anything to?”

That is this guys reality. Not for the first time in my life do I wish I had joined the military. The hollow cold inside me resonates the frigid emptiness of my cowardice and the lackluster life I have led.

The time comes for the attendants to come around peddling headphones to the captive, understimulated, opiate-addled Americans packed into this flying barge. When Todd offers the vendor the requisite $5 bill, the attendant simply tells him, “Your money’s no good here” and passes him the package assuring Todd that it was his pleasure.

There was a time when I wasn’t so broken and empty. There have been times when I had my own entourage and the greatness of another man was something to be celebrated without relation to my own worth. Today, this mans valour rings too vibrant in my muted world.

Todd flicks absently through a book about Spain. He licks his fingers to turn each leaf; a habit I abandoned after I read Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose.”

The Atlantic is marble. Black slate paving the floor of the corridor to the New World. Black with midnight blue carving the last vein of sunlight through the peripheri of this unceasing ocean of stone.

Kerouac gives me something to entertain my mind between stolen naps. By the time I looked out the window the other side of the sky is a sliver. A slash of hinted blue; light midnight; not the sightless obsidian I’ve left behind.

Closing my eyes does nothing. I think and write and read. The pane of glass is cold against my hand, but warmer than the air outside.

That glow grew, slowly in intensity, but faster than I had ever seen Helios rise on land. Lighting from silver to blob to glow to angel to horizon.

The sun rises differently over the ocean. No Mountains, no terrain; it comes up roundly, as it is depicted in space; cresting a circumpherent burst of all that Apollo yellow waiting to bake the life from the earth in this new day somehow more full of promise than any other before it.

Todd and I exchange perfunctory words of parting and we both evacuate the plane; splashing into the sea of people flowing ceaselessly to immigration… customs… Spain.