Latest / The Starter / Ep 7: Clandestino

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Ep 7: Clandestino · The Starter

• Clandestino I never read Don Quixote. I never even came close. I know he’s got a sidekick, Sancho, and Don Quixote himself goes mad and tries to fight windmills out there on horseback in the great old Castilian countryside. But when I hear the name Don Quixote, I think about “Poncho & Lefty,” the REAL “Poncho & Lefty.” Not that watered-down 80s pop country version. No offense, Willie. I’m talking about the original, by the one and only Outlaw Poet, Townes Van Zandt. Maybe it’s the Sancho-Poncho similarity, or maybe it's the adjacent tale of two bros out there on horseback in some vague and distant land and time. Either way - when I think of Don Quixote, I think of my guy Townes. You weren’t your mama’s only boy But her favorite one it seems She began to cry when you said goodbye And sank into your dreams In high school, I was admittedly a slacker. I never tried too hard at sports - I was never good anyways. I excelled at hacky sack and frisbee, and if they had awarded letters for smoking weed, I would have worn a varsity jacket. My grades were admissible, but they could have been better. At one point, my high school girlfriend’s mom questioned my future. “What are you going to do when you graduate?” she asked me. “Work at Walmart.” Little did she know, I would never go corporate. Senior year, I only applied to two colleges: One; The University of Vermont, because that’s where the band Phish came from. And two; The St Louis University campus in Madrid, Spain. I had scored well on the National Spanish Exam, so they sent me a letter in the mail. “Spain, huh? Yeah, that sounds cool,” I thought as I looked over that fateful letter in my hand. The Spain program was less than half the cost of UVM, and at the tender age of eighteen, I wanted to get as far away from home as possible. Madrid sounded alright. I would have preferred to put college off for a couple years and go burn out on Phish tour instead, but after a decade of private schooling, my mom insisted. It’s just what you do. I don’t know that Spain would have ever happened for me if it weren’t for my mom’s accident. I was sitting in English class when I got the news. The secretary came in and pulled me out in the hallway. I thought I was headed straight for the principal’s office. Instead, I was sent to the hospital, where I came upon my mom screaming in agony as they wheeled her into emergency surgery. A little old lady who shouldn’t have been behind the wheel of a car went the wrong direction down a one way street, and pulled out in front of my mom. She swerved to avoid the old lady’s car, and a passing vehicle crashed into the driver side of my mom’s beige Nissan Altima, crushing it like a paper cup. After the accident, I had to go to the junkyard and take pictures of the wrecked vehicle for insurance purposes. It was nothing short of a miracle that the doctors were able to keep her alive after she was pulled from that crumpled shitheap. My stomach still drops when I think about it. I will never drive a Nissan. As my mom was hurried along on a stretcher, and disappeared down the hall, I didn’t know if I would ever see her again. Her femur was shattered, with massive internal bleeding. She was kept in the hospital for weeks, undergoing surgeries, PT, and recovery. To this day, her leg still aches with the weather. At home, I made rules. I was a teenager with a whole house to myself. I understood my situation, and I did not take advantage. I did, however, allow myself a few freedoms. I could have friends over, some visits with the girlfriend, and maybe a few beers in the fridge, but no house parties. I still went to class. I still did my homework. And I kept the house clean. For weeks, I held down the fort and went to visit my mom every day in the hospital. After that, she said she was going to let me go wherever I wanted for school. At my graduating class’s senior dinner, my mom was out of the hospital, but still in a wheelchair. As I wheeled her into the school’s dining hall, there was applause, and cheers. Her accident was near-death, and horrific, but my mom wasn’t going to let that get in her way. It is not in her nature. She told me that some guys tried to rob her outside of a TJ Maxx once. They grabbed her purse, and she wouldn’t let go. They dragged her through the parking lot, and my mom held on tight and screamed, her knees skinned and bloody through her jeans from the pavement. She never let go. Maybe it’s the Slovak roots on her mom’s side, or maybe it’s the German/Irish from Pennsylvania coal country on her dad’s. Either way, my mom is tough. At the end of that summer, she stood with all of us at Brian’s wedding in Montana. There is a picture of us from that day; my mom and her three boys, with the mountains in the background. Us brothers are wearing tuxedos, and my mom looks great. We all do. My hair is long, down to my shoulders, my wispy sideburns are barely coming in. Brian’s hair is even longer, and pulled back in a ponytail. Greg has been out in Oregon, surviving on the diet of a struggling musician. His hair is short, and he looks slightly underfed. We are young, and fresh, and ready for the world. That was the last time we would all be together for over a decade. The Ho Bros wouldn’t ride again until twelve years later, at Greg’s wedding, in Asheville. That night we celebrated, we drank, and we carried on. My mom and I had an early flight out the next morning, and as my brother Brian liked to say, I really tied one on that night. My mom found me in the morning and roused me from my drunken slumber. My effects were scattered. I scrambled and threw everything I could find into my duffel bag, and we left for the airport. Brian told me later that he had to settle a hefty bill with the tuxedo rental place to compensate for missing shoes, vests, and bow ties, thanks to his drunken wedding party. When we got to the airport, I couldn’t find my wallet. My mom pleaded with the gate teller to let me on the plane. Twenty-five years ago, Bozeman airport was nothing more than a couple gates housed in a quaint lodge. They let me through. It was August, 2001, just a few weeks before 9/11. A week later, I was on a plane to Madrid. It didn’t hit me that I would be spending the next two years in a foreign country right away. It was gradual, and then all of a sudden. It didn’t hit me when I tasted my first legal beer during a layover in Amsterdam, with a couple fresh Heinekens from the airport bar. And it didn’t hit me when I stepped off the plane in Madrid, into the hot humid August air, and stood by the baggage carousel at Barajas as fellow passengers smoked cigarettes and waited for their luggage. It wasn’t until I stepped off the Metro, and ascended the concrete subway staircase into the bustling city center of Puerta del Sol. That’s when it hit me. Nighttime in Madrid. The energy, the lights, the people; this city was alive. The landmark neon Tio Pepe sign stood atop a tall building, watching over the whole scene. Little kids stayed up way past bedtime and kicked soccer balls along the sidewalk. Nightlife crowds shuffled past. In Plaza Mayor, musicians played flamenco guitar and accordion. Street performers painted head-to-toe in silver and gold stood like statues, only breaking pose to wave or bow when a coin dropped into their hat. The cafes were full of people eating, drinking, smoking, and all in all, having a grand old time. In the Museo del Jamon, legs of jamon serrano hung from the ceiling, a proud display of the madrileño’s cured meat of choice. Napkins and cigarette butts and olive pits littered the floor. It was customary for bar patrons to throw their refuse onto the ground. The more trash on the floor, the busier and better the restaurant; a salute to the establishment. Before classes started at the university, we went on an orientation hiking trip through the Pyrenees mountains, along the northern border with France. Every day we hiked along mountain trails, through quaint farms and villages. At night, we would stay in refugios; little designated cabins along the trail that hosted hikers and served food and drink. I struck up a conversation with a blond-haired kid from Pittsburgh. His name was Christophe. Like me he was the youngest brother, although his family was bigger - five boys in all. One night at the refugio he invited me to go for a walk along the cobblestone streets of the little mountain village we were staying in. Under ancient lampposts in an alley between buildings from medieval times, Christophe pulled out a joint he had smuggled through customs, all the way from Pittsburgh. We shared the joint, and a friendship was born beneath the Andorran moon. Arriba la luna oh-eh-ah Back in Madrid, we fell into the Spanish custom of rolling hash cigarettes by carefully melting a finger of the compressed hashish over a fistful of tobacco, and rolling it up with a filter; a twisted strip of cardboard pulled from the cigarette pack, making a buffer to keep the flecks of tobacco from being inhaled into your mouth as you took a drag. If you smoked hash, you smoked Camels; no questions asked. Christophe and I encountered another like mind; Alex, from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Alex had gone on a different hiking trip - the easier route, and he had earned himself the nickname of Squats, after crouching down trailside to relieve his bowels after drinking too much vino rioja, Spanish red wine. With the addition of Alex, we established our trio of miscreants. We ran around the streets of Madrid, and treated the vast metropolis as our playground. Throwing water balloons at cars and city buses was a favorite pastime, and there was always a bar to go to. We hopped the metro when we didn’t have enough change for fare, and mooned passersby through the windows as we rode on the train; “pressing ham,” as we liked to call it. Executing a stellar ham press, undetected by fellow passengers, was an art form - and we were pros. There was a bar called la Casa de Cerveza that was popular among college students. For 1,000 pesetas (roughly 5 dollars), you could buy a cup that provided endless refills of beer, as long as you could fight your way through the sweaty drinking crowds for another pour from the bar. One night a song came on, and a blonde girl we were with sang along; Me gustan los aviones Me gustas tu Me gusta viajar Me gustas tu The beat was steady, repetitive, and infectious. The kind of song you kept hearing in your head for days. The girl was a sophomore, and she had been in Madrid for a year. She was well versed. There was another line, that she explained; Me gusta menear Me gustas tu “Menear means to move, to dance,” she said. “But it also means sex.” The song was by Manu Chao, a popular Spanish artist who had a couple hits on the radio, and a new album that had just come out; Proxima Estacion: Esperanza. In the metro, African peddlers sold burned CDs for cheap - 500 pesetas or less; a buck or two. They would spread all their inventory out on a blanket, laid on the cold hard floor of the subway. The blanket served dual purposes: one; it made for a nice display, and two; it was easy for the peddlers to grab their whole inventory, throw it over their shoulder, and run when the policia came to hassle them. Among the peddler’s collection of burned CDs, I spotted a copy of Manu Chao’s Proxima Estacion: Esperanza. I picked it up. It had his big hit, “Me Gustas Tu,” the song the blonde girl was singing at Casa de Cerveza, and a whole album’s worth of other tunes that would get stuck in your head. The music was simple but catchy. Lots of looped percussion and guitars, along with slide whistle, trumpets, trombones, and anything else he could get his hands on. I was hooked. The album title came from the metro. He had recorded the train announcer’s voice that came over the loudspeaker as you approached your next stop. Proxima Estacion: Esperanza (next station: hope): a metro stop on the way out to the airport. It was the sound of Madrid. My first semester I lived with a host family; a short, red-haired Spanish woman named Mercedes and her husband, Roberto, who suffered from dementia and would occasionally make his way down from the apartment to wander the city streets at night. The apartment was at Cuatro Caminos, two metro stops away from school, or a thirty minute walk if I couldn’t make the train. I would carry my Discman with me as I walked, careful not to let it skip. I listened to Manu Chao over my headphones as I weaved my way through the throngs of commuting madrileños.. Some mornings the metro was so crowdedI would have to choose between elbowing my way into the overstuffed car and packing in like a sardine, or missing the train entirely, and hoofing it. My roommate was a pale and skinny Polish kid named Mariusz. He had a thick Eastern European accent, and he always looked like he was just getting over the flu. “Come mas!” Mercedes would yell at him as we sat at the kitchen table. “Eat more, you are too skinny!” Mariusz didn’t speak a lick of Spanish. “What is she saying?” he would ask me. “Nothing,” I’d laugh. “She just wants you to eat more food.” Mercedes would tell me to eat more as well, but for different reasons. “Come mas!” She would yell at me. “Eat more! So you don’t get so borracho.” One night after the bar, I was sitting with a girl on a bench near Gran Via. We were talking and making out, and a group of three Moroccans walked up, asking us for money. I patted my pockets. “Solo tengo estas pesetas aqui,” I told them. “I only have these pesetas here.” I pulled a few of the tiny button-size coins from my pocket and held them out in my hand for them to see. That’s when they noticed my watch. They latched onto my wrist, and pulled at the metal watchband, not letting go. I jumped up from the bench, trying to swing at them, but they backed away, hanging onto the metal band, and trying to yank it off my wrist. The band dug into my skin, cutting deep, and then broke. The Moroccans ran off down narrow alleyways into the night, taking my watch with them. I ran after, and the girl followed. “It’s a fucking Rolex!” I yelled. My dad had gotten the watch for me as a graduation gift. It was tradition. Brian had one, and so did Greg. My dad had the same watch; a Submariner. Not your fanciest Rolex, but a Rolex nonetheless, with my name and graduation date engraved on the underside of the watch face. I ran through the streets, yelling, as blood poured from my wrist. The watch was gone. I retreated back to the apartment and buzzed downstairs for Mercedes to let me in. I couldn’t find my keys. She opened the door, and found me standing there; drunk and covered in blood. The next day, I found my clothes from the night before, clean and folded, and neatly laid out on my bed. Breakfast at the apartment was sparse; toast crackers with butter, and cafe con leche. I was used to big American breakfasts, with eggs and bacon, hash browns and sausage. Mercedes sent us out into the world on nothing but toast and butter. The coffee though, was excellent; percolated fresh with steamed milk. I became a coffee drinker, and shed some of my baby weight. Campus was tiny - just around 700 students, with one three-story building for classes. On the top floor was a small library that I would scour for new literature. I discovered a copy of The Sun Also Rises. It was the first Hemingway novel that I loved. In high school I had trudged my way through For Whom the Bell Tolls, and found it laborious. The Sun Also Rises was like a dream. Paris and Madrid in the 1920s - scenes of the Lost Generation painted so rich and vibrant I could picture myself there. It made me feel more present in my own version of Spain. And the tales of wild drunken nights validated my own forays into the unknown. I had brought my copy of The Catcher in the Rye with me, and lent it to a friend; Fonz, a short Mexican-American kid from East LA who laughed at everything. He once told me that his dad went to high school with Carlos Santana, a footnote of instant credibility. We were up in his dorm room one day, and I noticed my copy of The Catcher in the Rye lying next to his bed. He had ripped the corner off the front cover to roll a filter for a hash cigarette. I was pissed. “Sorry man, I didn’t know it was such a big deal,” he said. I grabbed my book, and left. You don’t fuck with a man’s literature. I patched the torn corner with a blue-lined note card and scotch tape, and so it remains to this day, a memory of Madrid; of hash cigarettes in the dorms, and Fonz from East LA. A couple years ago, I lent the book to my oldest son Henry. I had enrolled as an art major but quickly dropped it after a painting course I signed up for required a one hour round trip and $300 in art supplies. I took a course in journalism instead, and it was the first A I ever got in college. I switched majors. Growing up, As were the expectation, though I always let a few Bs slide through. They did not go unnoticed. “You should be getting all As,” my mom would tell me. “You’re on scholarship.” Contact with home was minimal. I would write the occasional email or make calls from payphones out on the street corner. For a few hundred pesetas, I could phone home, and the countdown on the call would begin; anywhere from three to five minutes before the Telefonica operator announced that the call was about to end. “All is well! Send money soon!” That old chestnut. When I spoke Spanish, I spoke it in the way that I had learned; like a Mexican. I never adopted the Castilian lisp over the c’s and z’s, like my friend Alex, who spoke like a drunken old Spaniard on a park bench, exaggerating his rolled ere’s and zetas. Alex would always give me shit for it. “Dude you sound like such an American!” he would say. “Uhhh…donde esta el baño, por favor?” Aside from ordering another round of drinks or bumming a cigarette, Christophe didn’t speak much Spanish at all. Before we went back home for break, Christophe and I made a deal; we would trade CDs with each other. We had bonded over our shared appreciation of good old American rock and roll, and our music collections were of mutual interest. “The CD Exchange," Christophe called it. He had done this a while back, when he was in Brazil, and one of the discs he came away with from that exchange was Clandestino, an earlier album from Manu Chao. I pulled the brightly colored red and yellow disc from its sleeve, and tucked it into my own CD case. Proxima Estacion: Esperanza was good - it was really good. But Clandestino was something special. It was smoother and calmer, less frenetic than the buzzing Esperanza. And it was alive - with soul, and rhythm, and culture. Manu Chao sang in Spanish and French, Arabic and Portuguese. I picked up little pieces here and there. If Esperanza was the sound of Madrid at night, when the city is alive and energized, and you are weaving your way through busy sidewalks and crowded metro cars, then Clandestino was Madrid on a Sunday afternoon with no real destination in mind. The soundtrack to a leisurely stroll through Parque Retiro or meandering through old city side streets on a sunfilled day. Clandestino was the soundtrack I reached for every morning, and played in my Discman on long walks to class. Me dicen el clandestino Por no llevar papel (they call me clandestine For not carrying papers) During our second year in Madrid, Christophe and Alex and I got an apartment together. The trio of miscreants now had an address, at a thousand euros a month. Whatever money we had left after rent went towards hash and beer. Mahou Clasica: The Unofficial Old Man Beer of Spain, served in brown glass litres. Our endless sea of empty bottles on the kitchen counter grew by day. “Hey Dicknose, you gonna drink all that wine?” Christophe would ask Alex as we bullshitted around the apartment. “Dicknose” was a common epithet, and a favorite among our crew. Alex had a habit of downing four or five bottles of red wine in one sitting, sinking deeper into his Oklahoma drawl as the wine disappeared. “Boy I tell you what…” He would go on and on. Some nights we would go out to the discoteca and dance and party until dawn. After the club, as the city still lay asleep, we would be too wired to go to bed, so we’d stay up and play songs on the little red boombox in the parlor. Christophe and I made mixtapes. We would trade songs back and forth, playing our favorites and stuff we wanted to impress each other with. Forty-five minutes would go by, then flip the cassette, and we’d dub another forty-five for Side B. We stayed up smoking hash cigarettes and sharing music that we loved as the sun rose outside our windows. As the tape kept rolling, we could hear the birds chirping and the metropolitan sounds of a waking city. As far as I know, none of those mixtapes survived. El viento viene El viento se va Por la carretera (The wind comes The wind goes Down the road) It turns out Don Quixote wasn’t really mad, he was just a little delusional. He internalized books about knights on horseback, stepped out into the world, and fancied himself the hero; the chivalrous knight who came to restore order and sweep the fair maiden off her feet. He operated inside of a dream, the way he thought the world should be. And really, is that so bad? I don’t speak a whole lot of Spanish these days, but I’ve still got it. Every now and then, when the mood is right, I’ll throw on some Manu Chao, and sing along in my old foreign tongue. This morning, I went out for a bike ride through our neighborhood, with my headphones on. As I set out on my ride, I pulled up Clandestino, and turned the volume all the way up. I rode past the park where Teddy and Phillip play, and into the woods where we go on long stroller walks through the trails. I waited for the words I knew, and sang along. I pushed the pedals along to the familiar rhythms and steady driving beats, and sank back into that old dream, if only for a little while. El viento viene El viento se va Por la carretera