She startles my colon by running her fingers softly over my shoulder, 'so are you all together?'
Sheilds and Jim immediately get wise to her angle and embrace each other in hug. 'We are together. And he is with us.'
This aged woman sits down on my lap, 'so you are single, honey.'
She caresses my scalp with her hand. I am certain that the expression on my face reflects the absolute disgust my mind is feeling. Jim and Sheilds can barely contain their laughter. Every single second of those three minutes I despise. Get stuffed the lot of you.
If I was in any other city in the world, apart from maybe Moscow, I would have unkindly pushed her to the floor. The only thing that stops me is that I am sure there is a bouncer hiding somewhere in a back room who will storm out if I start mishandling the hired help. Intuition tells me there are two types of strip club bouncers you don't want to ever mess with in the world, Mexican and Russian. I can't elaborate more than that. Just a feeling I have. I know for certain, Indian strip club bouncers are pussies.
The woman keeps stroking my head. Jim and Sheilds keep laughing. In the end I am only saved from further embarrassment by the club DJ. 'Calling Esmeralda to the stage. Esmeralda to the stage,' he warbles over the sound system. The Mexican Betty White on my lap stands and saunters over to the performance area. The DJ fires up Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard and she starts to slowly gyrate.
'That's it, I'm fucking out of here,' I pointedly state. If I must survive on the harsh streets of Tijuana alone I will prefer to do that than watch Sofia Vergara's great grandmother seductively disrobe. Thankfully Sheilds and Jim didn't need further convincing. Even voyeurism has a limit it seems, and I now know the cutoff lies somewhere between sitting in a show to see a woman cozy up to a donkey and watching geriatric strippers.
Back on the street I draw a deep breath. 'Are you two done, because I am done.'
Kylie nods. 'We are done.' Seems she not only speaks for Jim when it comes to classifying animals she also makes up his mind as it pertains to his energy levels.
The walk back to the border is completed without incident. I am itching to tell the border immigration agent that I was forced into helping my stupid friends search for the woman and donkey show when he asks us, what was the purpose of your visit to Tijuana?
'Why does anyone go to Tijuana?' I respond.
'They all go to have a good time,' he says with a smile.
'Really,' I say, 'I didn't have a good time.'
A worthwhile life is spent asking questions despite a person not necessarily liking the answers. I didn't like his answer.
Legless
The highly improbable is, by definition, still probable. It is the butterfly effect of world travel; how two apparently unconnected events at different ends of the planet are intimately linked together. A man farting in Budapest leads to global warming bleaching the coral of the Great Barrier Reef. A random action in one hemisphere destroys an ecosystem on the other side of the world. Without the happenings of the first act, the series of specific events that lead to the second moment would never occur. If you take a moment to look back during a moment of crisis, when wondering how the hell did I end up in this situation, you will find a definitive series of steps that lead back to the defining moment that sent you on that trajectory. Such as the time a UCLA football victory over USC in Pasadena led me to get down and boogie with the German mafia in a Bavarian nightclub.
Late October 1996 I take a blind date to the UCLA/USC football game at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. These are my prime years. I am living in Santa Monica, playing rugby, going to the beach, screwing up blind dates. Enjoying life.
The game in question, between the two arch rival universities in Southern California, is one for the ages. My date and I don't arrive until half-time, because the traffic around the stadium is like nothing I have ever experienced. Total gridlock. Hollywood blockbuster disaster movie gridlock. As if hordes of Angelinos are simultaneously escaping rising sea levels caused by global warming by praying the higher ground of the Rose Bowl is the safest place to be. We find our seats as the 3rd quarter begins with the score 24 -7 to USC. UCLA is getting schooled in the art of big men running into each other for a 60-minute game that lasts three hours.
Our seats are on the divisional line between the two sets of fans in the south-east corner of the Rose Bowl. The stadium is magnificent. And huge. It is the 17th largest stadium in the world, but only the 11th largest collegiate stadium in the USA. Considering that college football teams normally play a total of six home games a season these mammoth arenas sit empty for up to 350 days a year. Unless stadium management can book a few monster truck rallies. In the row in front of me and across the steps to the right are two Latino men in USC jerseys. Directly in front of me is a well-inebriated Latino man in a UCLA jersey. He has drunken so much already that he is legless. His blood alcohol content is probably sitting close to the ambient air temperature at a balmy 66 degrees. But he can still move like Fred Astaire.
The drunk Latino is having a field day dancing up a storm while supporting his team. He doesn't care about anything. He is just in a state of pure ecstasy. Happy as a pig in shit. The two USC fans scream insults at him, but it does nothing to dent his happiness despite the lopsided score. If you ever want to escalate an argument, then simply smile. Being a joyful person will command both respect and loathing at the same time. That depends on the state of mind of the other person not on your mood. So, who cares?
When UCLA score a touchdown to pull within ten points, the drunk guy carries on like he won a green card in the lottery. The two USC fans resentfully blow it off. UCLA trails by 17 points with six minutes left in the 4th quarter. An impossible position to mount a comeback. While I don't honestly care about the result, I feel sorry for the two USC guys to the right of me. To cop an hour and a half of absolute rejection to their gloating while only 25 minutes of play transpires must be hard to swallow. When someone is told to dance like no one is watching it must be insulting to be watching and therefore considered irrelevant. For anyone on the outside who doesn't give a shit, it is great theatre.
Miraculously, UCLA draws level with 40 seconds left to play. Up until that moment the drunk fan is still showered with abuse. It is an incredible effort of self-belief in his team. He has not been downbeat for a second, while the game is now tied. The two USC supporters suddenly become two sullen bitter fucks who don't care to watch this guy's disco moves anymore. UCLA fans, and even some of the USC fans, prevent the two angry Latinos from beating up the UCLA guy. After a short fracas the UCLA fan returns unfazed to his dancing. The game heads to double overtime before UCLA block a penalty kick then score on the ensuing play to win 48-41. It is amazing to experience firsthand the change in the emotional tide of the game, while Mr. Party remained a beacon of consistency with his euphoria.
I drop off my date after the game. She was a nice girl, but we are not a good match. I enjoy hearty competition while she is the type that thinks everyone should be awarded a winner's medal. There should be no victors or losers in a game, she told me. I was scolded for daring to let out a cheer when UCLA won. What about the opposition's feelings, she said? Who gives a shit? It is a game. The constrained excitement I had to bottle up all afternoon combined with the exploits of dancing guy has left me so fired up that, if I was an Albanian refugee I would have broken into the Serbian parliament to twerk in the face of Slobodan Milosevic. Get me to the victory party.
I expect the community of Westwood, where the UCLA campus is located, to erupt in celebration. Their football team has just won one of the most dramatic games of football against their arch rivals. I walk the short distance from my apartment down to the main drag in town. The entire area is dead. There is no loud honking of horns, no groups of drunk men singing the UCLA fight song as they walk from bar to bar, no police cars being set on fire. When professional teams win important sport's games in the USA there is always a riot. College age students pull down a few goal posts a
fter a victory then check themselves into the university infirmary to rest up. C'mon people. Live a little. State funerals in communist countries have more festivity. If this year's crop of UCLA students had been trapped in East Germany on the night the Berlin Wall was dismantled they probably still would have gone to bed early.
After ordering a beer at Rocco's Tavern, I start a conversation with an attractive girl named Suzanne. She is from Germany and studying a semester abroad for her architecture degree. She had no idea there was even a game today. That's okay, with a stunning girl in my presence I have moved on from caring about American football. Her first words are, 'you look like a guy that will make a great friend.' Dropped in the friendzone form the opening exchange. Oh joy. The friendzone, the death knell for male expectations regarding dating, courtship, then marriage. She is leaving to return to Munich in a few days anyway.
We strike up a quick friendship, as she adores Los Angeles and I want to know why? Is it the absolute calmness on the streets tonight? She asks if I will help her locate an architecture firm to give her an internship, so she can return next year. She gives me her contact details and I say I will do what I can to help. Every number I am given I keep. It is more fun to live life honestly believing that I will wind up in Germany one day and could use a mate to show me around than to think, why bother I will never see this person again. I find Suzanne's number in my pocket a few days later and stash it in my glove compartment. A week later I am in a horrendous car accident. I spend 20 days in a coma, my car is written off, and lord knows what happens to everything in my glove compartment.
Legless - part 2
Eight months later, after my return from recovery in Australia, a dozen members of my rugby team in Santa Monica head to the beach to go surf kayaking. Six of us are in the back of a teammate's van. Among them is a face I don't know, a new kid from Scotland. We start talking about regular things: where you from; how long you played rugby; ever had prostate cancer? He tells me he is an architecture student doing an internship at a firm for six months. I casually throw out that I'd met an attractive girl from Germany eight months previous who wanted to do exactly that. But then we lost contact.
'Is her name, Suzanne?' He asks.
I hesitated. Is this guy screwing with me? 'Yes. How did you know?'
'A guess. There is a German girl named that doing an internship at my firm along with me,' he remarks.
I am completely knocked on my arse. This is the biggest, "what the fuck' moment I have experienced. The world is not that huge. The paths of two people separated by half the world, not to mention a city of 18 million people, have inconceivably reconnected thanks to a random meeting in the back of a van with a Scotsman. A Scotsman? How can that be? What have the Scots ever done? Does the history of mankind have even one paragraph referring to the Scots? A sentence? They are a wonderful people to be sure, but not game changers. They haven't won a Wimbledon title since 1896. (This was before the time of Andy Murray) This is a watershed moment in their history. Their entire nation has become relevant again. The world is in fact more intimately connected because of our relationships with people born north of Hadrian's wall. We aren’t removed by 6 degrees of separation. Scotland connects us all.
Suzanne and I meet up a few days later and I explain the reason for my lack of communication. She understands. Despite the daunting size of Los Angeles, she always expected to see me again. Like the dancing guy at the UCLA game, some people live life with an optimist view that everything will work out. In 1997 a thing called the internet is developing popularity, so we swap email addresses to remain in contact. Suzanne invites me to visit her and her family in Germany. It so happens, I plan to do an around the world trip for my 30th birthday the next year. This is to be my gift to myself after the car accident. Bavaria is added to the itinerary of my, 'thank the bloody Universe I am still alive 30th birthday tour.'
Next March, a few days before my birthday, I arrive in Germany. Suzanne meets me at the Munich train station with her boyfriend. He is a decathlete hoping to make it to the Sydney Olympics. Strapping young lad. The guy is blonde, blue eyed, and mathematically perfected proportioned cold war throwback German engineering and efficiency flowed through his veins. He could have made an excellent advisory for Sean Connery's James Bond. I am slightly intimidated while he is not thrilled to hear how Suzanne and I met in a bar in Los Angeles. At some point I am sure he will break my neck without registering a single emotion on his face.
We all tramp off to the Starkbierfest, the less well known but equally popular Munich beer festival. The variety of beer is expansive but every amber drop available is at least 7% alcohol content. This tradition of brewing stronger beers for Lent began with the Paulaner monks in the 16th Century. The potent brews were called liquid bread, and the extra calories helped to sustain the monks during the 40 days of fasting. Of course it did.
The Starkbierfest, or strong beer festival, is essentially Oktoberfest on the other side of Christmas. People drink copious amounts of beer, dance on tables, and sing songs. Only in Spring instead of Fall. Engaging in conversation with Suzanne's boyfriend is like chipping away at the Berlin Wall with a blunt spork. Until he takes his second mouthful of beer. Suddenly the boy develops the charisma of Rupaul. His eyes sparkle, he smiles, an aura of light appears around his frame. Being in such good shape he has no tolerance of alcohol. Then the DJ starts playing a 1976 chart topper by Smokie. The boyfriend triple jumps onto the table and leads the crowd in belting out the chorus, 'and for twenty-four years I've been living next door to Alice. Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?' Wow, where have you been cowboy? I love having a beer with Suzanne and her boyfriend, especially when he gets plastered and jumps on the tables. For the rest of the evening the German crowd is passionate, laughs heavily, and swigs beer steins from right to left. Good stuff. Hard to believe these crazy funsters invented Auschwitz?
The next day Suzanne and I drive two and half hours to her home town of Eschenbach in Bavaria. We zip past Nuremburg on the Autobahn and I recall the rally that was held here many moons ago. I realize that I haven't been around Germans long enough to know what they are really like as a people. Are they straight laced, high boot steppers? Or are they beer swilling, lederhosen wearing funsters? If all I had to rely on was news reports and history lessons, I would never have guessed Germans are the type of people who love the redux of 'Living next door to Alice.' That is why you must travel, to find these things out.
As I expected, Suzanne's parents are extremely pleasant. While the family home is warm and inviting. Suzanne has a teenage sister who is both a champion tennis player and a highly competitive individual. She welcomes a new rival into the house. With a house guest comes the excitement of an opportunity to bury me with a game of tennis, cards, or paper/rock/scissors. Anything to win. The mother kindly offers to do some clothes washing for me. This proposal is a god send amongst those who travel the world on a budget. More often than not there is a weekly decision that comes down to, should I spend some money to wash my clothes at a laundromat? Or should I save that money for beer? Beer always wins. If there is one thing that world travelers enjoy more than a warm bed, a home cooked meal, or their parents wiring them money - it is someone's mother doing their laundry for them.
Of course, this invariably leads to the embarrassing situation of the mother cleaning out the pockets of my jeans and finding a package of condoms. The joy at having clean clothes is always displaced with the shame of having to avoid eye contact with the mother over dinner. All the while trying to come up with a reasonable explanation to clarify that you never intended to use those with her daughter. Not that her daughter isn't more than beautiful enough to deserve the desires of a man. But just not from me. But I do think she is beautiful. Um, is there a tighter corner to paint one's self into?
Let's face it. There is no reasonable explanation someone can come up with. This is the worst situation you can be in when staying with the family of a friend of the opposite sex. The absolute wo
rst. At this point I would normally excuse myself from the dinner table and go to the bathroom and throw up. In a gesture as benevolent as the Germans joining in with the Allies to play soccer on the Western front during WWII, the mother says nothing to anyone. But I can tell from the way she is glaring at me, she found them.
Some travelling advice from someone who thinks he knows about these things. If you want to smuggle diamonds, or barrow bonds, or even hard drugs, through an airport TSA station here is how you do it. Put the contraband into a normal carry-on bag. Don't disguise it or wrap it up. Leave it out in the open. Now put a used condom on top of it. One dollar gets you a thousand that any security person who opens that bag will zip it straight back up again. If that is too daring or messy for you, then instead place a folded item of clothing over the items being smuggled. Now put a packet of condoms on top of that. When the TSA agent sees them be prepared for some embarrassing questions along the lines of, 'who is looking to get lucky?' The agent will probably point the packet out to the other security personnel, so they also can have a laugh at your expense, then he will send you on your way. These are examples of what I like to call Simon's law. People never do the best job if there is A) the possibility to be disgusted or B) a chance to make fun of someone else.
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