Right. It’s been a month now and I have covered a lot of air miles. If my memory serves me right (and it never does) I believe the last time I wrote anything at all here I was in Rome at some super swish hotel with no bathroom. Well I’m in Madrid now and the bathroom counter is lined with marble and the desk clerks look like supermodels.
But I don’t. Due to the fact that I just let a London barber buzz my head with a pair of gardening clippers I now resemble either an 18th century mental patient or a prison escapee. My colleagues, with all the tact I have come to expect from a race of sexually repressed gnomes gathered around me when I walked back to my desk and said in unison, “My, that’s a bit severe.”
I don’t care. In fact, I think I’ll stay with this look and cultivate it a bit further. On Tuesday when I went to rehearsal I dressed in my finest torn Levis a red hoddie and battered biker jacket: I had an entire row to myself on the tube.
Come to think of it, back in The Golden Years when I was starving in San Francisco I used to have similar experiences on the bus. I had hair then- lots of it –down to my ass in fact and I liked to wear it undone. In order to get to work and school (which were one in the same at that time) I would ride the 30 Stockton through Chinatown; no matter how crowded the bus was (and it is legendary for crowdedness) I would always, without fail, have an empty seat next to me. I have seen 150 year old grandmothers with club feet carrying an anvil who would pointedly refuse to so much as glance in the general direction of the vacant seat by my side. Pregnant women. Blind men. Guys with fresh stitches in their head and open sores, everyone would leave me alone. This may sound cool but it was, in fact, very embarrassing.
Just in case you are not lucky enough to live in San Francisco, let me tell you about the 30 Stockton bus. It’s the kind of bus that not only lets you get in contact with your fellow man but allows a city dweller to experience, up close and personal, the wonders of rural livestock. Let’s just say that there are certain elements of the Chinese community in San Francisco who like their food so fresh that it must be transported home from the shop in a cage and not a shopping bag.
Which, in a way, I can respect. We live in such a sanitized world where the act of killing our dinner is so far removed from the act of eating it that we forget that before it was stake, it was a cow. If you’re going to eat meat you should at least be prepared to look the animal you are about to slice up in the eye before you ice it. I’m as riddled with hypocrisy in this area as most of my fellow omnivores: don’t show me the chicken, just give me the nuggets.
I tried the veg thing for a couple of years and for the entire duration of the exercise all I wanted was a cheeseburger. I have a friend who is a vegan of the no leather shoes variety (she wears rubber Welly boots year round) who claims that the smell of cooking meat makes her gag. I never reached that stage of enlightenment; bacon in a frying pan was enough to send me into a salivating, food-lust filled frenzy. In the end I folded like a book slamming shut and gorged myself for a weekend on anything that could be moulded into a patty shape. Sure I made myself sick but not quite as sick as I thought I would be. In the end, which is to say from that point on, I took the compromise position of only eating chicken and fish and to make every attempt to keep the wanton exploitation of animals to a minimum. I won’t win any awards for ethics but I’d like to think that there are a few piglets in the world who are very happy I’ve sworn off BLTs.
As is quite usual, I have diverged completely from whatever originally inspired me to start writing this entry. Ah yes, I am in Spain and I therefore must write like Hemingway:
The men at the bar were old and thin with moustaches that sagged down wrinkled faces. Their hands, when they grasped their drinks, were lined as the furrows in the earth they tilled and baked to the same colour. When they laughed, as they did now, it was at stories grown familiar by their telling. The bartender, who was still young enough not to have heard all their lies before, laughed too. He liked the old men and did not pity them, as others might, their age or their poverty.
One man did not join in the conversations at the bar. He sat alone behind a small round table covered with stained grease cloth, his wine untouched, the last ember of his cigarette dying in an ashtray. He held in his hand an envelope, yellow with age, from which he carefully removed and unfolded a letter. The men at the bar lowered their voices.
“The same letter every night.” Said one of the men sadly.
“I wonder what it says?” asked the bartender.
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I could not. I only pour his drinks. You men are his friends, he would not take offense if one of you were to ask him.”
“He has not been our friend for years; he barely even speaks to us now.”
“Perhaps you insulted him in some way?”
“No, that is not the reason, that letter is the reason.”
The man at the table folded the letter neatly along well-worn creases and slid it back into the envelope. He sat, for a while, staring at the door with the look of a man who had accepted a fact without understanding it. He rolled a cigarette, lit it and watched the smoke weave its way to the ceiling.
“Do you remember when he received it?” One of the old men asked.
“Fifteen years ago at least.”
“Maybe it is from his wife or his son?”
“They were both dead by then.”
“A mistress?”
“He hardly looks the type to have had one.”
“The years change a man. Look at me, I used to have great muscles.”
“And hair!”
They laughed at this and, spell broken, turned back to their drinks.
The evening grew late and the old men began to leave. They gathered their coats, paid their tabs and walked, somewhat unsteadily, toward their homes. At last only the bartender and the man at the table remained.
“I would like to close up now” the bartender said.
“Of course,” said the man, as if awaking from a dream. “How many?”
“Two glasses.”
The old man stood and went to the bar. He took a few coins from a leather change purse and set them on the counter.
“Is that enough?” he asked.
“Yes.”
The bartender slid the money into a small tin box.
“You spoke about my letter tonight?”
“We speak about it every night.”
“And what do you say?”
“We imagine it to be filled with intrigue and heartache.”
“Maybe at one time but now, now it is only faint words on yellow paper.”
“Perhaps you should tell them?”
“Perhaps I would if they asked.”
“They are your friends and feel the letter drove you away.”
The old man thought about this for a while.
“No,” he said at last, “I did that.”
He put on his black coat and grey felt hat, taking time to adjust it on his head. The two men shook hands. The old man took the letter out of his pocket and placed it on the bar. The bartender’s eyes grew wide and he moved a step backwards.
With a faint smile the old man said, “It is too late for me to make new friends so it would be best if I return to my old ones.” He turned away and walked to the door.
“What am I to do with it?” stammered the bartender.
The old man stopped. “Whatever you feel is right” he answered without looking back. He stood very still and listened. For a long time he heard nothing at all except for his own heart in his ears. The room was cold now and his breath hung in the air. A lifetime passed before he heard: a match was struck and flames caught paper. He turned his collar up and walked out into the night.
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