On 26 December 1969, he’d left his parents’ house early. He loved December afternoons because he’d go to a cinema, which was empty because everyone was at the bullfights, and come out around 6 p.m. feeling deliciously sad, with the crushing feeling that he was growing up: ten days from now he’d be going to secondary school. He’d arranged to meet up at La Papiruza with Flaco Tuercas, his best friend. They had a special bond. Just six days earlier, Flaco had introduced him to what they call Cannabinol. It had blown his mind. They made a pact. The first day of the holidays, they smoked a fat Buenaventuro and while Rubén lost himself in infinite perspectives, the convergence of every possible colour, Flaco Tuercas’s head lolled, he let his mouth drop open and lost the use of his eyes, drooling blissful threads of saliva. Rubén said, ‘Flaco, Flaco, what are you feeling? I need you to tell me what’s happening to me, I’m all squishy and I can’t breathe properly,’ but it was useless, Flaco had pulled a whitey. He mumbled an apology for not to being able to join Rubén on his first trip, but he was completely off his face; he told Rubén to go get some strong coffee or take a cold shower if he needed to come down, but to leave him in peace and not move him even a millimetre because he was busy throwing up. But Rubén said no, he couldn’t just leave him here, so he picked Flaco up, threw him over his shoulder and, ducking through deserted sidestreets, left Flaco on the doorstep of his house.
After that, Rubén wandered along an Avenida Roosevelt that was deeper and yellower than it had ever been, the avenue looked like it stretched off forever, but an eternity later he arrived at the other end – the weight in his head was probably a good thing; six times he traipsed from one end to the other and stood for twenty minutes like a statue, seeing people as vacuoles, translucent shapes, thinking about the route he was about to take again, travelling and re-travelling the length of this avenue of subaquatic shapes until he could organize his thoughts.
By 9 p.m., his thoughts were fewer and further between, but that too was a good thing; fortunately he felt suddenly exhausted, his legs ached. He did not remember how he got home. The next day, as soon as he woke up, he swore never to smoke that shit again.
Around noon, he and Tuercas met up and the two of them laughed about it. ‘Crucial experience, hardcore, yeah?’
Tuercas gave him grief for dumping him on his own doorstep in the state he was in: ‘Just as well it was my brother who found me and he was stoned as a bagful of fish hooks.’
And they laughed, and Tuercas casually took out a huge spliff: ‘You fancy a toke?’
‘In the middle of the day?’ Rubén said, shocked.
‘It’s completely different, just try it.’
He couldn’t bring himself to say no.
The sun was like a truncheon beating on his head, but the pain was good; the two of them had a wild time and, Holy Mary Mother of God, Rubén even managed to talk to girls in a way he’d never done before. ‘Didn’t I tell you? This is good shit, it gets rid of your inhibitions,’ and Rubén thought yeah, it was. He took a deep breath and deep inside himself he smelled the eddying perfume of Martica, the girl he really fancied at the time.
So, anyway, on 26 December, he met up with Flaco Tuercas on what he thought of as the corner that synchronized the shifting forms of this twilight of rich magentas. El Tuercas said, like it was no big thing, that they were waiting here to hook up with Salvador, an older friend who was already at university, and the three of them were going to see Richie Ray. Rubén agreed, though actually he didn’t care much either way, thinking it would just be one more December gig, never for a moment imagining that the music would be so sharp, nor that it would forever mark every night and every cursed day of his existence.
Salvador showed up, a handsome, dark-skinned guy, hair carefully groomed, scarf sprinkled with cologne, dressed all in white – a colour that showed up the fact he was shit-faced. He’d just been to the bullfights, witnessed the grandeur of El Viti,40 the rudeness of El Cordobés,41 and was loudly proclaiming the glories and the colours of his people, tonight’s going to be some night, and he did a little dance step; he’d brought along some Marracachafa,42 good shit too, so he took them round on to the Calle Orquetona so they could see and smell this mind-blowing gear, pure Colombian mango biche43 with a twist of punto rojo44 that’ll blow your head off, then said why talk about it when they could try it, so he got out some soursop-flavoured skins, handed Tuercas an eyebrow of weed to comb through and, one, two, three, as he was walking along, completely laid-back, he managed to skin up a huge Baboon.
‘I can tell little Rubén here is nervous, he doesn’t realize I’m the sort of guy who can spark up a fuck-off spliff in a force-nine gale with a couple of Feds half a block away and disappear before they can lay their hands on me. Just do like I do, Rubén.’
Rubén hesitated, then sparked up the fat doobie that tasted of guanábana. Fuck. It had a vicious kick to it.
‘Sure it does, that’s ’cos they grow it up in the north of the valley, the most vicious part of the country.’ Then: ‘Wow, your eyes, man!’
And they still hadn’t finished smoking the Bandero when Salvador suddenly said, ‘You know what, guys? You know what would be crucial, bestial, essential for tonight? Something primo, bang-up, first-class, guaranteed no bad trips, all chilled, no hassle? A couple of Red Birds45 each.’ A pause then he said: ‘So, whaddya say?’
‘Yeaaaah,’ said Tuercas. ‘Never tried Seconal, have you Rubén?’
‘No, never,’ Rubén replied, choking and coughing, listening to one or other of them talking.
‘In that case, you’ve never had the best.’
Which was exactly how I felt, pressed up against Rubén, clinging to his body as he prattled on; he couldn’t stop talking. ‘Don’t give up on me now, we’re just getting to the salsas; you’re the one got me to spill my guts so don’t bail on me now.’ Problem was I couldn’t dance, I could barely stand without wanting to do anything but suck out all the insides from this body that was somehow holding me up. ‘Pelada, pelada, keep your head up, hold it together for me’, sacatión manantión ilé sacatión manantión jesua, sacatión manantión mojé.46 I felt so tired, but now he’d started tickling me and jabbing me in the ribs, the belly button, his fingers like spiders spreading pins and needles along my hips, and suddenly I wasn’t tired, I was laughing like a idiot, don’t conk out now, keep pumping to the rhythm, Miki, and now he was laughing too, laughing as he kept telling me his story. I had my eyes closed, then I opened them, thinking that if I stopped laughing I’d fall down, and he said, ‘I Invite You to Get Down and Boogaloo,’47 and then, wham, we hit the floor. ‘Don’t stop, don’t even think about it, just open your eyes and listen to me, feel how cool we are, pie-eyed and pilled up – c’mon, enjoy life.’ Oh, those were the days.
Anyway, Salvador paid for a taxi to the place they were going to score, some sleazy dive on the corner of Novena and Catorceavo, behind Fray Damián College – the asshole of the universe. They agreed Salvador and El Tuercas would go in, pop a couple of Seconal and bring Rubén’s out, one in each hand. No payment necessary, it was all on Salvador.
That’s how it went down. Rubén hardly even had to wait, though he really didn’t dig the cold sweat he could feel trickling down his forehead.
‘Hang loose, kid, we’re back, it’s all under control: now I’m going to make like I’m sparking up a cigarette; you make like you’re shielding the lighter from the wind, and you pop the pills, cool?’
‘Right here?’
‘Absolutely, round here you can’t be going round carrying; you’re better going round loaded.’
Rubén just had time to think: ‘I’ll stash one down my jockeys.’ But they were new and very tight and he had to be careful not to accidentally shove it up his ass.
‘Ready?’
‘Yeah.’ Boom, he felt him
self surrounded, felt trapped.
‘Swallow hard.’
He built up some saliva, swallowed hard and down it went.
‘Thaaaaat’s it.’
So cool, all these strange new pleasures, new feelings, it was choice.
After that, they had to put on some speed to get to where the salsa was; it wouldn’t be cool to show up late, there’d be no tickets and that would be a real bummer. They caught another taxi. This was motorvation. Rubén looked out at the passing streets, wide-eyed, waiting for the effects to kick in. He didn’t want to ask, he didn’t want to be told what they were. He’d read an article about psychedelia in a Spanish edition of Life and was waiting for the whispered murmur of hallucinations in his brain: ‘I’d like to see a burning bush.’ He would have been better off asking. He couldn’t have been more wrong about what he’d just taken. It didn’t produce any of the effects he was expecting. The only thing that happened was that as they were driving past San Fercho, he felt blissed out, like he needed to close his eyes and he found himself daydreaming about getting expelled, then someone thumped him on the shoulder – ‘Heeey!’ – then in the chest; he opened his eyes, expecting to find himself face to face with his teachers.
‘You can’t crash now, it’s dangerous.’
‘He’s right,’ Tuercas agreed.
‘You got to learn to control it; you feel sleepy at first and it’s nice, but then later you feel cool and fresh.’
‘Bring on the crowds,’ he thought, ‘bring on the buzz.’ Was someone repeating his thoughts?
And El Tuercas said, ‘I’d love to see you in there, with all those peladas, with no bad vibes, no fear.’
They got to the Caseta Panamericana on the site of the old hippodrome. The bleachers from the old stadium were still there, and there were crowds, the place was heaving, but our three were lost souls so they’d find room, there were still tickets. The moon was swollen like a pus-filled sore in the sky and Rubén didn’t think twice, he dived head first into the queue, because from inside he could hear music, the soaring trumpets, the tap of shoes, the glorious noise, but ‘Don’t be crazy,’ Salvador said, tugging on his arm. ‘Before we go in we’re going to blaze up a Barbecue – look,’ he opened his hand. ‘It’s already skinned up; come on, we’ll go round the back (better keep an eye on this kid, he’s out of his tree).’
‘Chill,’ said El Tuercas. ‘I know the kid – isn’t that right, Rubén? You mellow?’
‘Mellow!’ said Rubén.
‘Way mellow?’
‘Hundred per cent mellow!’
‘Psyched!’
‘Totally psyched!’
‘Good gear?’
‘The fucking best!’
So they dodged round the entrance, the blaze of light, in search of some shadow. Rubén stumbled along, propping himself up against the rough, badly plastered wall. He pictured a guy wandering through the city like this, hugging the walls and the trees to hold himself up. Eventually they ran into a gang of stoned heads who shot them a conspiratorial look in the darkness and smiled and Salvador sparked up the Baro and pulled on it hard, sucking it down in a long, deep toke. ‘You get a better hit this way, smoke goes straight to your brain,’ he said, the champion of dope-head purism. Rubén was really getting to like the taste of this smoke; he exhaled deeply so his lungs would be empty when the spliff reached him. The wall they were leaning against backed on to the stage. ‘Listen to the salsa and tell me this isn’t a fucking branch office of heaven.’ They stubbed out the roach (it was brutal what a dope head he’d become these past few days) and hurried back round to the front. ‘We’re heading in,’ they said to the guys next to them. ‘Get Sharp!’ boom, boom.
When they got back round to the entrance it was like a miracle, the heaving crowds had disappeared. ‘See that? Nothing like a blast to clear things out – come, get in the queue.’ They each bought a ticket but Rubén didn’t feel like he was in the queue; he felt like he’d slipped into a parallel universe where the laws of cause and effect were different, mystifying, so he allowed himself to close his eyes for a split second longer and he imagined the band. It’s one of his most lasting memories, and one he’s tried to superimpose on the images of what happened later, because from this moment on, Rubén starts to forget.
There was a lot of pushing and shoving and Salvador ended up trading insults with some kid in a red shirt but they wound up shaking hands.
‘We cool?’
‘Sure, we’re cool.’
Peace and harmony. A cop frisked them for weapons, then a security guard frisked them for illicit substances, they passed the ticket inspector – Rubén swears he had ticket number 1,001 – and then, bang, they were staring at the band across a sea of heads bobbing and bouncing to the sound of the hills. This first, sudden flash was enough to know he was now a part of a throbbing sea of colour, of the vibrant, pulsing side of a world that had only just unfurled before him. Wondrous, his every sense was heightened, bursting into bloom with every blast of the trumpets. Wondrous, this drowsy numbness, the limp, exhausting wait before he stepped in here, to this confluence of lights and voices telling him: ‘Get sharp, people, because they’re watching you.’ Wondrous, the taste: he opened his mouth, wreathed himself in its perfume, the scent of primal happiness and of the deepest depths of dreams. Wondrous, the pounding pulse of the thousands of feet that threatened at any moment to make the floor give way, bring the roof crashing down – divine retribution for so much joy. Wondrous, being elastic boy, taut and snappy as a voice sang, ‘You’ve got to be a fly everywhere,’ and obedient to the power of frenzy with the seven powers behind him. Wondrous (though less so) being unable to bear the idea of being so far away from the band, the congas, congas move to the rhythm. Wondrous, the kaleidoscopic rainbow of shirts, colours kindled by soul sweat as he made his way alone through the crowd of couples. Some trod on his foot, but most simply moved out of the way, so clear and firm was his intent; he moved faster, getting steadily closer to the stage, Moses parting the waters, a blur of faces thirsty for sugar-cane firewater, for a kiss stolen in a flash of wild abandonment, pimped out and later conceived in double sweetness, because with this music no one could stop, sambumbia, frenzied spirits of every possible race, Chinese, Indian, Castilian, glorious Negritude, where is mine? Plumes of smoke, the pent-up aggression in every body, the intoxication of the drums, one vast eruption of joy and still Rubén crept forward, I feel so close to you, I want you to know it, and he peeled his eyes, clapping and waving his hands, and for the first time he recognized the expressions of blissful exhaustion brought on by expending every ounce of energy and joy on a shifting wind, on a melody that was interrupted only for another song to begin, greeted by an explosion of applause. What do you want, blood? Fine, you got it – one false dance move and you could end up with a couple of broken ribs; total illumination, ache for the rhythm, feel the pulsing force, jump and for what you are about to receive, be truly thankful. I keep on moving; I don’t stop like any decent person. The trickling torrent of the piano helps him, gives him momentum, makes his body leaner so he can slip through the crowd, moving faster and faster, hey, these people don’t know but I’ve got a saint … and his name’s Richie, I hear a voice keeps saying get sharp. To the pounding of the drumskins he kept bounding ahead – the couples on the dance floor take him for some frenzied dancer – moved more by the fury than the rhythm, and then up on stage the maestro supremo gave the signal to finish; Rubén made one last leap and landed with a boooom! in the deafening silence left when the music stopped. The dipshit looked around him wildly, trying to get his bearings, dazed and jostled by couples leaving the dance floor, needing a break, by the giggles of a handful of girls staring at him. But now, miraculously, in front stretched twenty metres of empty space, and Bobby Cruz looked at him and opened his mouth, and
Héctor Cubero blasted a conga riff into his face. Rubén wouldn’t have said anything if Bobby Cruz hadn’t been giving him clear signals to keep coming, to keep on running. And like the fruit loop that he was in that moment, he obeyed, but he’d waited too long, the congas were already pounding again and he was caught halfway by a new tide of dancers surging on to the floor. The problem was he’d hesitated, he’d frozen in the spotlights; he cursed himself, but he summoned his reserves, his stamina: screaming insults and shattering shinbones, he cleared a path and came to a line of kids hopped up on pills and dope like him, worshipping their idol and snorting in total agreement at every note, at every cryptic lyric, because the most wasted among them – the ones who’ve really lived – are busy deciphering what they mean. Now, with every grudging ‘’Scuse me’, Rubén was getting closer. Surrounding the stage was a crowd of about thirty people and Rubén knew every one of them: these were the guys who hung out in the park in Barona, in Las Piedras, in Marque, Colseguros, Santa Elena, Fercho Viejo – ‘Hey, there’s Rubén, let him through’ – and just like three years later, at the Fania All-Stars gig in 1973, the song ‘Ahora vengo yo’ by R. Ray and B. Cruz marked the start of his adventure:
‘Get Rubén up so he can dance, where is he, where’s Rubén, where is he, where’s Rubén, where is he, where’s Rubén, where is he, where’s Rubén, where is he, where’s Rubén, where is he, where’s Rubén, where is he, where’s Rubén, there he is, here’s Rubén! Here’s Rubén! Everyone agreed? Rubén’s here, si señor, everyone agreed? Si señor, here’s Rubén! Si señor, everyone agreed? Here’s Rubén! Si señor, here’s Rubén! Everyone agreed? Here we go …’
Hello, hello – okay – everybody happy? 48
Yeah!!
Everybody hot?
Yeah!!
So now take off my clothes!!
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