Preflight
Five packed purple pieces of luggage lay beside the couch in my apartment— two for me and three for Whitney. We were about a week away from touching down in Barcelona, the first stop on our 3 week European vacation. The suitcases contained about 1/8 of Whitney’s wardrobe and ¾ of mine; throughout that week I wore my Eazy-E t-shirt three times, my Arkansas Razorback T twice, and family reunion shirts dating back to 2005—each complemented a pair of mustard-stained, ripped cargo shorts that had no button. Although I was fully prepared for Europe clothes wise, I wasn’t language wise. I knew enough Spanish to get by: baño, cerveza, and ‘que hora es’ would be my big three. My Italian would sound worse than Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds. And, although, I hounded him for months to burn me a copy of the French Rosetta Stone, Jordan Sokolowski-Parez would contribute to my butchering of the beautiful French language. The lack of French vocab and pronunciation worried me. If the French were anything like the assholes people made them out to be, I’d undoubtedly be called a ‘fat ignorant American Oaf’. If Jordan would’ve burned me a copy at least I’d know they were calling me a ‘fat ignorant American Oaf’. Yet the language barriers were the only semblance of fear in an otherwise deep canyon of excitement and relief. Witchy Wisconsin’s summertime started to take a toll on my body and mind. The hordes of drunken hotdog desirers started to seep into my subconscious as I seemingly dreamt about wieners and brats for the better half of July. Freud would be so excited to psychoanalyze me that he’d have a seizure.
The day before our trip, Whitney got a call from a Lodi school wanting an interview the following morning. She accepted and we decided to meet at Mitchell Int’l at 9:00 for our 11:00 flight to Atlanta. I decided to pull an all-nighter in order to be sedated from all the burdens of flying: screaming babies, shitty food, and bathrooms unfit to shit in. Being the last month of living in the famed ‘Klement’s Sausage Factory’ I called up Spencer, Mike Lang, and Boomer to see if they wanted to get a RISK game a-goin’. It was a-goin’ down. With a 12-pack of PBRs in hand, Eazy-E shirt on my back and a motivation for world domination in mind, Cooter drove us down to KK and Lincoln. I had to drive my mom to Muskego or some shit at 6am to babysit, so I decided that only 8 or 9 of the PBRs would be drank.
It was a full game and animosity was in the air. A huge dispute over the necessity of ‘rolling troughs’ set the tone as 3 of the 6 players found them required in order to prevent stray dice from knocking over pieces. The other 3 were pro-trough-choice. Pav, ever the antagonist, started the argument and, as always, focused his spiteful anger upon me.
“If your hands weren’t so sweaty and fat maybe the dice wouldn’t go off the table,” he said looking around the table for approval of his half-joke.
I didn’t let Pav’s assholery phase me; I was in prime position to secure Europe, having a bunch of horses in the Ukraine, Southern Europe and Iceland—the only likely threat came from Pav, who successfully took over Africa and secured its boarders.
My turn came around and I placed five troops in Southern Europe, deciding to take the offensive on my middle-earth foe in Egypt.
“You’re a fuckin’ queer, Nick,” he said with genuine anger.
“Nuh-uh, you are,” I said fighting pettiness with childishness.
“I’m gonna fuck you up when I roll, kid. ‘Dead man rolling! Dead man rolling!”
I ended my turn, successfully deterring Pav’s Egyptian stronghold. Yet what did not deter was his spite. On his next turn he decided to Kamikaze me with every troop he had—I was depleted in Europe. I hoped that wasn’t a foreshadow or metaphor that came true. I then imagined, looking at my lone troop in Southern Europe, me standing in the middle of the Vatican frantically patting my ass looking for an already pickpocketed wallet. Or me and Whitney staring up at the Eiffel Tower when a suave Frenchman with the promise of Chanel #5 and a Normandy Villa seduces the hell out of her while I stand there brooding Jordan for not getting me that damn Rosetta Stone program.
Pav and I were the first ones out and I finished the 12th PBR as he beat me in every game of Smash Brothers we played. The game was forfeited by the remaining four players and we ended the night listening to Ziggy Stardust. Cooter drove me back home and I stopped at Shell to pick up a frozen pizza. It was 4:45 and I felt drowsy so I put on Mad Max, fully aware that Mel Gibson’s Aussie accent and rock hard bod would keep me up, sexually aroused that is. The last image I remember before closing my eyes was Mel going apeshit on some futuristic Aussie thug.
I heard a voice other than Mel’s “Nick, it’s 5:30. You have to drive me to Union Grove, remember?” It was my mom.
Fuck I thought. I was still a little drunk, yet it was enough of a buzz to assure me I was going to Europe today, DUI or not. I excitedly sprang up, ate the last two slices of lukewarm pizza sandwich style, and threw on my Eazy-E shirt.
“You smell like booze, you OK to drive?”
“Yeah,” I sleepily slurred.
I drove her to Union Grove and cranked up CCR’s Greatest Hits on the way back. Fogerty’s rugged yet soothing voice would be the last I’d hear in the States. Good.
I got to Mitchell Int’l at 9:15 with Whitney nowhere in sight. I waited another few minutes before calling her. Just as I pulled out my almost dead phone I saw her strolling up in her, as she called them, ‘Big Girl’s clothes’. Right when she saw me I knew I forgot something, I just didn’t know what.
Flight
“You stink dude,” Whitney said squinting and turning her nose to the side. “You forgot the bag with the change of clothes, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, feigning apology yet still pissed I forgot sunglasses and the iPod.
“Dumbass.”
I didn’t remember a thing on the flight from Mitchell Int. to Atlanta’s airport. Yet from Atlanta’s to Barcelona’s was a different story. I evidently used up my nap hours from MIL to ATL because I couldn’t sleep worth a fuck on the way to Europe.
The atmosphere of the plane was that of a flying cesspool: smelly fat men, crying babies, assholes who lean their seat back far enough to crush yer nuts, and shitty food and movies were no longer clichés, they were all too real. Whit fell asleep before takeoff, so I was alone in enduring the full effect of this irritation. The guy behind us was yammering on and on about how much he loved Paris and saying how much of a Francophile he was. He probably said “Francophile” about 200 goddamn times, each time boiled my blood one degree more. He was a middle-aged guy with a circular wall of thin hair surrounding a moat of a bald spot. He wore small circular glasses over his bugging eyes. An old lady sat next to him. Her engagement to his “days in Pair-ee sipping wine under the Eifel Tower” was almost as disgusting as his annoying pronunciation of “Paris”. She laughed at almost everything he said, even if he wasn’t trying to be funny.
“Oh, you must visit Normandy when you get a chance, so much history and beauty!”
“Whooo-Whooo Whooo. Oh, that’s wonderful!” She sounded like an old crusty owl. Just as the night before, I felt a nervous excitement: I hope I don’t come back and talk to people that way. I wonder if the cruise ship has a 24-hour pizza bar. I hope bidets are in every bathroom.
I yearned, yes, yearned, for my iPod, particularly craving hardcore rap. I wanted, no, yearned for NWA or Snoop or Wu-Tang to take me to a realm where ‘shootin’ mothafuckas in a minute’ and ‘gang bangin’ hoes’ and ‘pullin out gats foe fun’ replaced the contrived world of fashion, art, and European coffee. I was beginning to really regret my forgetfulness. After the 200th Francophile remark I had enough. Really hoping that Europe wouldn’t change me into a woman, I ripped open the headphone baggy and stuffed the ear buds into my ears. The movie selection was, to quote Mark Borchardt, “Scant at best”. Little Fockers, The Dilemma, Hop and a few other shit comedies were offered. I decided upon Cedar Rapids strictly on the basis of John C. Reily. Although it was edited, it was good enough to take my mind off of the “Fads of Pair-ee” for a while.
Cedar Rapids ended and the aristocrats behind me fell asleep, I assumed this because they weren’t talking. I turned my head and got startled; the guy was staring straight at me, sleeping with his eyes open and snoring a nasally snore. I still have the image lodged in my brain; it looked like one of those illustrations from the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" books.The woman’s head was leaning on his shoulder, her nostrils slowly rising and falling.
The plane was dead silent now, save for the distant sound of snoring in the back. I opened the book I brought, Richard Wright’s Native Son. I began reading but closed it after the first paragraph; angry Negro literature just wasn’t doing anything for me 35,000 feet in the air. So I sucked up my pride and watched Little Fockers. Piece of shit doesn’t even begin to describe it. Its kind of sad to see DeNiro, Hoffman, Ben Stiller and Harvey Keitel (who had a small role) milking a franchise that was dead after the first movie. And seeing DeNro take part in fart and projectile puke jokes too.
The next few hours I just kinda sat there, waiting for the Captain to announce our arrival into Spain. A few hours later our Captain announced our arrival into Spain.
Barcelona
In just 24 hours my body scent changed from normal to booze to BO to rancid garbage to Indian food. I needed a shower and a change of clothes, bad. We hailed a cab and I said in my best Spanish accent “Hola, Hotel Barceló, por favor.” The driver tilted his head in acknowledgment and drove. Whit and I looked out the window as the driver weaved in between cars at 70 MPH. Huge buildings and churches on the right opposed rolling hills and a stretch of cemeteries to the left. As we passed an above ground cemetery with expensive looking statue headstones, Whitney, still drowsy from the flight, mumbled something about being cremated and thrown into the ocean. I made a Big Lebowski reference that she ignored, eyes closed.
€50 later we were at Hotel Barceló. I heard conflicting stories about tipping in Europe, some people say it’s not customary and people’ll get offended if you do, yet others say that it’s customary. I met them in the middle and tipped him 3 Euros. He gave me a look of “You cheap fuck” and got back into his cab.
The outside of the hotel looked like a spaceship: hot pink and green neon lights made the circular, chode-like building gleam, even in the fresh morning light. The inside was even more mod and swanky; gold statues of elephants and horses and goats stood in no particular order, a semi-circle of black leather couches formed around a bookshelf and some house music played softly from the speakers. It looked like a place that held the Cocaine, Pornstar, and Surrealist Convention all on the same day. As we stood in awe of the pleasure dome’s ambiance, a tall man wearing a turban came up and said, “Check-in 2 O’clock. I can take luggage until then, yes?”
“Yeah,” we both said hesitantly, still wowed by the interior and realizing we had five hours to kill until check in.
We walked out the door, past a hooker saying something in Spanish, and aimlessly embarked upon a drowsy romp round the city.
As we walked thru the winding boulevards and spacious main streets, a constant hum of voices seemed to be floating above us. This was a physical hum, you could feel it; it made my head feel light and tingly, like when you feel Adderall starting to kick in. It was every language imaginable converged into one--soft yet echoing, fleeting but ever-present. It made my head so light that I needed to sit down. We sat at a café directly across from a Columbus statue and ordered coffee. I was kinda disappointed when the waiter brought out a cup a little bigger than a thimble. My fat fingers could not fit thru the porcelain handle and I nearly spilled it when I picked it up by its base. Suddenly my stomach let me know that I hadn’t shat out my ass in nearly a day. For a guy who shits at least three times a day and ate McDonalds at the Atlanta Airport the night before, I knew I had to get this mud out quickly, or else I’d be walking around Barcelona looking and smelling like that guy with all the boils that hangs out on Brady St.
Hey, maybe I could shit myself. I’d just park myself on a busy street, put a hat in front of me, and get sympathy Euros from tourists like the amputees and old women do. I’d only be there until check in, what another 3 ½ hours? Not bad. I could buy Whitney and I a solid dinner with that money, maybe a bottle of wine. I’d only have to put up with shame from people I’d never see again. I’d just start gurgling some gibberish with an accent and I’d be fool proof.
I had to decide quickly, I could feel my ass contracting; any second now a baby turd would be birthed headfirst. I waddled down a flight of stairs to the bathroom, thinking that sacrificing the shit to the café septic tank would be far more rewarding than wallowing in it for 3 ½ hours. I sat, it slid, I wiped, oh did I wipe, I flushed, it did not swirl, I flushed again, nothing. Evidently European toilets were not designed for 3-double-cheeseburger-with-a-side-of-large-fry shits that big burly Americans took. I stood in the small stuffy bathroom cubicle for another second, scanning the sides of the toilet for a plunger, even a toilet brush to pry out the turd and wads of TP. Nothing. I shrugged it off, realizing the futility of caring. I climbed the stairs feeling relieved by the lifted burden of bowel movements, and saw a hunched over old man limping down the stairs using only his right leg. I felt bad that he was prolonging something that might kill him, maybe he’d fall down the stairs and it’d be a more painless death than suffocation via shit. Maybe I should show sympathy and push him down. We made eye contact as we passed and I saw a Spanish newspaper clutched between his left arm. I pictured the obituary:
 |
| Alonso era muy querido por la familia, los tullidos, los enfermos de SIDA, y animales |
Ricardo Alonso, padre, abuelo, filántropo y médico de niños, murieron asfixiados en un baño de café apretados jueves. Dejó a su gran familia, el SIDA y la investigación del cáncer y el refugio de Rescate de Animales en la agonía lenta y dolorosa. Ricardo donados a numerosas organizaciones de caridad cerca de Barcelona y sus amigos dicen que él dedicó su vida a ayudar a superar la pobreza en la juventud privilegiada de. Diciendo que el Sr. Alonso se perdió una gran subestimación. El servicio se llevará a cabo en la iglesia St. Michel (762) 459-0023. Ataúd cerrado.
Ah Well, he prolly lived a good life, I thought. “What took so long?” Whitney asked, smirking.
“Took a shit,” I replied. “Let’s walk down to the water.”
I could smell and feel the shitty perfume around me. It was like an invisible fence warning people to stay at least five feet away. I thought I could deter some of this stench by buying some deodorant (which was in the bag I forgot at home). We walked into a convenience store so that I could buy some deo and Whit could buy a memory card for her camera. The personal hygiene section was right above the Spam and something called latillas, and I thought it was weird that stuff to make you so fresh and so clean clean was sitting above preserved meat. The decision was between speed stick gel and axe. Swearing never to buy axe, I reached for the pit jelly. “Gross, I hate that stuff,” I heard Whitney’s voice say.
“I do too, but it kinda feels good when you put it on and I’m not putting that axe shit under my—”
“Here, buy this.” She held a roll of Dove in front of her.
“Isn’t that women’s deodorant?”
“They make men’s too, and this was in the men’s isle.”
“I don’t think they differentiate between isles, Whit. There’s toothpaste right above Spam for Fuck’s sake. At least smell it to make sure.”
“It’s sealed, come on trust me. If it were women’s it’d say it on the front.”
“Isn’t that implied because it’s Dove? Plus do you even know how to say ‘women’ in Spanish?”
“Seniorita. Now come on its almost check in and I wanna shower and nap.” I was too tired and smelly to argue. I paid the clerk €4 for the roll and followed Whit out; she was irritated because they didn’t have a memory card.
We made it back to the hotel and saw the hooker in the same spot, but this time talking to a tall man holding a collie on a leash. The club music seemed to intensify; in six or seven more hours there’d probably be a coke orgy in the lobby. We stepped inside the elevator, which was no bigger than a coat closet, and were shoulder to shoulder. A sign read ‘max capacity 8 persons’. Ha. Maybe 8 coked-out pornstars assuming some compact sex position could fit, but not 8 Nick and Whitneys. We rode up to the tenth floor, thankful that it didn’t stop along the way. Whit reiterated my smelliness and said I could get in the shower first.
The room had the same aura as the lobby: pink neon lights framed the king-size bed and some Dali-esque paintings hung from the egg-white walls. The shower had no curtains and there was no showerhead, just a transparent pane and some holes in the center of the stainless steel ceiling. It was perfect. I got naked and proceeded to take the best fucking shower of my life, which I promise, unlike the shit I took 3 hours prior, will not detail. Nothing really to describe. I just stood there for about 20 minutes. Damn Hotel Barceló’s ‘Go Green’ credo to hell. I brushed my teef and rolled on some of the Dove, which turned out to be womanly scented. I turned on the TV and watched a few episodes of Los Simpsons. All pre-season 12 episodes. It didn’t need it to be in English for me to know what was going on. Chester Lampwick argued and fought with Grandpa over painted fences and blintzes, then with Krusty. Ah. Any old Simpsons episode in Spanish is still a million times better than a new one in English.
I fell asleep with the image of Rich Uncle Skeleton and Dinner Dog and Disgruntled Goat in my head. I felt content. Not only because Spain and probably the whole of Europe only syndicate good Simpson episodes, but because I was clean; the dirtiness of Pav and Risk and the Francophile and the old woman’s laugh and McDonalds and customers at the Dogg Haus and everything else that polluted my soul in America was now gone, I could start fresh in Europe—escaping burdens and obligations, even if it is only for a few weeks. It was with this sense of purity that I slept uninterrupted—safe in the knowledge of escape.
* * * *
The sound of Whitney’s blow dryer woke me up and I covered my ears with the squishy pillow on which I slept. She musta saw me moving because she yelled something over the blow of the dryer. “dfbjdifipquoNORWAYndsfknfgjknfkdnKIDSjdbfiwnwepvBOMBuqiwlkqjd.” The TV was on when I finally opened my eyes and I saw a photo of Aaron Eckhart with a caption that read “Christian Fundamentalist Admits to Bombing, Shooting”. No way the guy from ‘Thank You for Smoking’ and those terrible chick flicks is a Christian was my first thought of the first real day in Europe. It turned out Aaron Eckhart didn’t bomb an Oslo building or shoot 80 innocent kids, it was just some fucker named Anders. Knowing everyone would have a field fucking day, maybe even another pointless war if this guy was Muslim, I was kinda relieved when I saw his blonde hair and blue eyes and pasty-white skin. But I didn’t want to see blue eyes or white skin anymore. We were in Barcelona with a long day ahead of us. I wanted to see olive oil skin, jet-black hair, men with permanent 5 o’clock shadows and women with designer high heels and long legs. I wanted to get lost on the boulevards and get drunk in the afternoon off of €2 wine. I opened the shades and saw the streets buzzing with movement.
We mulled over what to do in Spain’s biggest city, scanning a detailed folding map that showed its landmarks and museums. “The Barri Gotic” looks pretty happenin’,” I said glancing back down at the map after reading the scrolling bar on CNN that read “Amy Winehouse Found Dead in her London Apartment”. “Look, the Picasso museum is there too. Let’s go.” I said this last part with urgency and irritation. I didn’t want to hear Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper pontificating death—innocent victim deaths or narcissistic, waste of talent deaths—I wanted meaningful death, artistic death, the death you can see with every brush stroke, organic death—ones uncorrupted by lead or chemical, death we can really learn something from—Picasso death. We walked up an artsy section of El Raval to the main drag of La Rambla, a wide street with everything from restaurants to porn stores. There we picked up the tourist bus where you can ‘hop on [and] hop off’ at your leisure. We bought a 2-day pass for €26 apiece. We passed the Barri Gotic, or Gothic Quarter, and decided to get off next time around, too wowed by the city’s architecture to get off right away. Old gothic and baroque churches and municipal buildings stood between modern business centers. They were contradictions, but big and beautiful contradictions that implied modernization with a strong sense of the past. All very tall, we sat atop the double-decker bus for two hours, heads swiveling and tilted upwards. There were banners advertising a big 2-day music festival featuring Maceo Parker, Bon Jovi, Judas Priest, Motörhead, and Animal Collective—like the architecture, a big beautiful contradiction of genres. We hopped off the bus as it was making its second round past the Barri Gotic and walked to where Pablo’s museum was. As we walked thru the boulevards, semi-lost and semi-dehydrated, we were stopped by a beautiful young girl giving away free samples of gelato. Her eyes like her hair were a shade down from jet-black and they contrasted the tray of multi-colored gelato flavors. “Sample?” she asked stressing the second syllable to the point of extremity. We picked out a random flavor from the tray, towering over the young Spaniard with our broad American shoulders and big American heads. I asked her where the Picasso museum was. “Ehh…”she searched, smiling a beautiful smile. “There,” pointing to the left. “Annnd, to ze right, annnd right once moore.” I said ‘thank you’ and she also said ‘thank you’ and all three of us nodded our heads at each other, probably resembling two Chinese business men with their overseas partner.
A huge photograph of Picasso’s bald little gremlin head hung above the entrance. The lobby looked like a hollowed out cave and the ground was made of concrete with pebbles embedded in it. The sections of the museum, which separated Picasso’s different ‘periods’, reminded me of the inside of the Landmark, but with less drunk hipsters. I never really realized how versatile he was as a painter: from Renaissance-esque to realism to cartoons to sculpting—I garnered a newfound respect for Pablo. Look, he even painted Whitney—twice!
The museum dedicated a section to Van Gogh also. The plaque on the wall next to a self-portrait said he was a big influence on Picasso but never became famous until he shot and killed himself. I can just see that nervous Dutch fucker:
Damn, I know I’m the best artist in all of Europe. Why doesn’t anyone buy my paintings? Don’t they like my self-portraits, or wheat fields, or orchids? I am worthless. I cut off my ear and gave it to some dude. What the fuck good did that do? Now there’s a big ugly gash in the side of my head and I can’t hear. We’ll, I may as well kill myself with this here gun in this here wheat field. Maybe people will think it’s a symbolic gesture of my frustration as an artist.
A Voice shouts from a distance:
Vincent! Vincent! The Louvre has decided to buy ALL of your paintings! They said they’re opening up a new exhibit dedicated to your genius! They said your art is revolutionary and their museum NEEDS to house it for the greater of good of Mankind! They now want modern art because of YOU! Can’t you hear me? Vincent, I said the Louvre wants to buy your art. Vincent why can’t you—oh yeah, you cut off your ear.
BANG
So it goes.
We exited thru the gift shop and I bought some postcards, some for me some for you, my friends. I bought a bunch of the raunchy ones—squid and octopus tentacles curling around naked bodies, a guy going down on a girl as her cat watches, a penis-looking plant getting kissed by a woman, etc…It’s kind of a sham that these Picasso pieces (along with a lot more) don’t get the attention that his Cubist ones do.
That night we ate at a café and ordered big plates of tapas, which basically means appetizers. Barcelonans are big on ordering different tapas and sharing amongst themselves. I ordered some good-ass croquettes with a light breading and cheese and some smooth-ass potato in the middle. Whit got this big-ass plate of skin-on potatoes with some pinkish-orange sauce on top. We shared our tapas in the warm Spanish night and I could see how Picasso was inspired to draw someone who resembled Whitney. She looked really good with her straight hair, drinking from a big-ass wine glass. We walked back to the hotel hearing the faint harmony of an accordion and guitar—a beautiful contradiction that ended a day of literal and artistic death.
For the first time in a while I woke up before Whitney. From the look on her sleeping face (a frown with her bottom lip slowly quivering) she was dreaming about swimming away from manta rays in the ocean, a recurring dream that she had told me about. I think it’s romantic to watch your significant other sleep don’t you? I only do it a few times a month anyway. Most people can tell when their girlfriend is angry or happy or irritated, but swimming away from manta rays subconsciously? I crept to the shower and turned on the water. Putting a palm-full of hotel conditioner in my hair I wondered what kinds of dreams ancient Egyptians or Druids had. Did they have recurring dreams about being chased like many of we do? Or sex dreams? Did King Tut ever have a wet dream about busty Amunet bathing in the Nile? Did they wake up with morning wood too?
I Love Shower Thoughts!
I wonder what the first human thought when he got a boner. Or the first guy to cum. wouldn’t that be a trip? Just hangin’ in your cave, staring at the wall then feeling your pelvis apparatus somehow start to grow and harden. And doing your best to tame it, but it feels good and you keep going. Then, say, 5 minutes later, a geyser of sticky liquid comes out and you freak out and you think your first rational thought after a lifetime of empty emotion and you feel that life has purpose and this sticky liquid could be used for the betterment of people like you and people like you in the future and you stand up and grunt a tremendous groan and then the camera slowly pans out as you shake your dinosaur bone in the sunset, sticky from a moments worth of accomplishment. But enough about my But 13th Birthday..... (Punch-line Drum!)
Language, food, boners, and dreams—those are the four things that are unique to every culture.
As the thick layer of conditioner washed out of my hair so did my thoughts of boners and dreams. We planned on covering the outskirts of the city by catching the blue and green lines of the ‘hop on/off’ bus. Mike Lang and Bea told us about different landmarks, and I had written their suggestions on a piece of paper. All coincided with where the bus was heading and I was dressed and ready to go even before Whit woke up. I read a little of Native Son to kill the time—I was now in the mood for angry Negro Lit. The protagonist, Bigger, is a trouble making Hood Rat from Chicago. I read just enough to get into it and heard Whit mumble:
“What’re you doin’ up so early?”
“Just starting this book. Since there aren’t as many black folks in Spain as there is the US, I gotta remind myself of home somehow.”
“Uh-huh. OK you’re kinda weird sometimes, you know that.”
“No.”
She got up and stretched, “Look at you all dressed and rarin’ to go. You look like a little boy on his first day of kindergarten. Well lemmie just get ready and we can go.”
She got ready and we left.
We hopped on the red line bus then transferred over to the blue line. The blue line’s route went past the Basílica de la Sagrada Família, the most impressive fucking piece of archeteture I’ve ever seen. It’s a Catholic church that started being built in 1882 and won’t be finished until 2026. It’s a giant of a fucker, you could probably take all the churches on the South Side, stack em up, spread em out, and they wouldn’t be able to come close to how big this fucker is. It’s also probably the most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen—if it were a women I’d give her a Perfect 10, Nicole Kidman status. Even though we were 50 yards away, the detail could be plainly seen: pillars and towers and crosses and statues everywhere—it looked like the castle in Little Mermaid, save the dick shaped pillars. From the suggestion of Mike and Bea, we got off at Parc Güell, a big fucker of a park designed by the same architect (Gaudí) as Sagrada Família. We had to walk up a steep sidewalk to get to the entrance. The University is situated here and I knew I couldn’t walk up that path day in and day out. Either I’d get in really good shape or I’d keel over from cardiac arrest. As we trudged further up the footpath, sweaty and red from the Spanish sun and incline, Whitney stopped. Her face looked like she was having a manta ray dream as she looked up, mortified. “What. The. Fuck,” she stammered holding her left hand to the right side of her head.
“What?”
“A fucking bird shit on me,” She pushed her hair aside revealing a big glob of white bird shit. “It’s in my hair! Oh my God, Nick!”
I burst out laughing, “I hope it was one of those green birds that are flyin’ around haha. At least it’s something exotic and not a pigeon!”
“Seriously, it’s all over my hair and new shirt. Shit!” She was wearing a black shirt and the shit stood out like, well, bird shit on a black shirt. This was the third time in her life Whitney got shat on by a bird.
“Why does this always happen to me?” she asked, trying to act pissed yet still realizing the humor of the situation. “Welp, looks like I’m gonna be cleaning some shit off me for a while, good thing I brought some hand sanitizer and wet naps.” She entered a little café on the opposite side of the street while I ate an ice cream cone. I saw a line of birds sitting on an awning of a gift shop; two of those green parakeets and a few pigeons. Maybe they were laughing at their deed, bantering amongst each other like teenagers do after they holler at a girl. Maybe it’s her pretty blonde hair that attracts these teenage birds; maybe it’s their way of ‘hollering’ at her. I crunched into the cone and nodded my head at the row of birds. It was a nod of ‘good one guys but now I have to deal with a shit covered girlfriend all day.”
She exited thru the narrow entrance frantically looking up for another surprise attack. I wanted to tell her that no more birds would shit on her because I telepathically sent a message to them via head nod, but then she’d just call me a ‘fucking idiot.’
“My shirt’s stained,” she frowned.
“I’ll walk ahead of you. I’ll be your Knight in Shining Shit if I have to.”
Finally, after battling incline, shit, sweat, and hoards of tourists, we reached our destination. Like the cathedral Sagrada Família, Parc Güell was the most impressive park I’ve ever been to. It reminded me of an onion that has different flavored layers. The core housed Gaudi’s museum and a gigantic set of stairs with a mosaic iguana on the side. The iguana-protected stairs brought you to a pillared shelter, resembling a Greek senate hall. Scenic beauty overrode fatigue as we climbed the seemingly endless staircases, which took us to seemingly endless sections of the park. One level may look Up North, with chipmunks scampering across pine needles and pinecones while another looks like an Old Spanish village with mariachis playing for pesetas. The most impressive section was in the middle of the park, a huge concrete platform that resembled a typical city plaza. A long winding mosaic bench shaped like a serpent lined the plaza and people young and old, Spanish and German and American and French sat together listening as a reggae band played “Hotel California” then “Jamming”. They and we drank wine, splitting our attention between the view of the vast ocean and the dread locked performers. I firmly believe that political, economic, military and cultural hostility can be alleviated by booze, a body of water, and live music. On the real. We descended down the stairs past the chipmunks and mariachis and pillars and iguana, reeling from the wine and humming “Hotel California”.
We kept our buzz going on La Rambla ordering some pints of estrella and paella, a Spanish dish made with rice, shrimp, crayfish and sausage. It was our last night in Barcelona and the street was busy. Tomorrow we’d embark on a ship around Italy, but tonight I wanted to get real sauced up and roam around. The beer was strong and by the fourth pint I had a nice body buzz going on. We walked around a bit then stumbled back to the hotel, declining dealer’s attempts to sell us weed and whatnot. The hooker was not loitering around the entrance tonight, maybe some lonely sap decided to pick her up. Some scratchy, crappy DJ replaced the house music in the lobby and we decided to have a nightcap on the top floor’s bar. It was closed for the night. I really didn’t want to leave yet. Barcelona was by far the coolest city I’ve ever seen, and we were only there for three nights. We only saw the thumb of a big and beautiful body—an impossible body that even Casa Nova couldn’t see all of. And there we were, just pieces of dead skin ready to be brushed off, only to hop on another body—a boot perhaps.
