Feria: It's the Shit

A dispatch from early April. . .

Picture a county fair in a dusty, riverside city. Now replace all the rednecks and white trash in beaters and mullets with undeniably gorgeous Spanish women in traditional flamenco dresses and mullets. Wipe out the carnie tents and rides in favor of high-class 'casetas' that form an enormous grid of (mostly) private bungalows. They're basically mead halls made to be dismantled whose romantically-lit and tastefully-decorated interiors feature a bar / kitchen with a staff that busts its ass to snake through sardine tin conditions and serve; all this belies the typical caseta's unassuming and candy-striped façade.

What would a party in the south of Spain be without flamencoesque music? Bands of 3 to 4 guitarists play and sing while guests dance 'la Sevillana,' a four-phase romp that comes off as a more sedate and seductive version of what bailaores do on stage. My mastery of these four phases is key to my getting laid this week. The traditional drink is manzanilla, a stealthily potent apple wine that's occasionally mixed with Sprite to create the 'rebujito' -- the calimocho's blonde cousin. I hope to pound my fair share today.

I like zydeco now and spend my nights dancing among pretty cajun girls with snakes tattooed on their arms.
--My brother the med student, on doing his away rounds in Lafayette (LA)

I experienced what might be considered the Andalusian parallel of this not too long ago when I went to the Feria de Jerez. We hung out at a caseta staffed entirely by proud gypsies, so lo and behold, they got up on stage and performed flamenco. It was a down-home, super-authentic, tourists-need-not-bother way to wrap things up -- the singers still in their aprons and our bartender serving as the guitarist. One of their beautiful, brown cousins sat in the front row, taking it all in with feline eyes usually reserved for Egyptian deities. She looked absolutely stunning in a lime green flamenco dress. Two ladies from the crowd, one in modern clothes (read: too much denim and not enough discretion) and the other in traditional garb, took to the stage and improvised their own little moves to boot.

Luckily for you, feria season doesn't start up again until April of next year. So why not book that shit now?

¡Id a Galilea!

Is what the priest said this evening in mass, the first I had attended in God knows how long. I figured Easter Sunday -- that's Resurrection Sunday for those of you following in Spanglish -- was as good an occasion as any to snap my heathen streak of countless, heathen months. I had shown up more out of secular fascination than pious guilt, to objectively observe how another culture carries out a centuries-old tradition that I used to on a weekly basis. Gimme bonus points since said culture is what I consider the cradle of Catholic zealotry: the south of Spain, specifically the town of Utrera in the province of Sevilla. It's the same town whose Holy Week celebration you get a taste of in the photo below, a very graphic step of Jesus getting flogged by pissed-off Romans. I've also got a flick of the woman who sang very passionately and sensually to this extravagant work of art. It's fun for the whole family! (Bring the kids.)

But I digress. A quarter of the way through mass, I realized I was wearing the same red pants and black jacket that had formed key parts of my Satan ensemble for carnival not a month prior. (So much for looking the part of nice, young Catholic boy.) By the end of mass, I had noted some subtle differences between it and its American counterpart. For starters, the songs are much happier . . . the Peace Be with You part colder . . . the homily more rushed . . . the flock fewer in number . . . and the setting far more hypocritically extravagant. Also, there wasn't a single good-looking parishioner whose Sunday dress curves I could deposit in the spank bank for later.

General Posas and the Utrera Kid

It all started when you got to the municipal library just minutes before it closed, happy you had hauled ass down La Corredera. You paused at its wrought-iron gate a minute to catch your breath, crossed its miniature cobblestone courtyard and entered through its heavy, green doors riddled with golden studs you're more likely to see on a castle than anything else. The bald, bespectacled librarian inside said he'd be more than happy to let you print the script for tonight's rehearsal -- that is, if the place had internet access at the moment. He begins to offer some excuse about the servers being down, but you storm out too soon to give a shit. You curse a blue streak as you pass through Constitution Plaza; you know, the one presided over by the statue of a famous flamenco guitarist who was born and raised in Utrera. But you look past him and through the window of a somewhat hip clothing store called Clover, jonesing for a trendy argyle shirt with the following nonsensical English phrases strung together on its front: The Expert Far Fetch'd Express Hip Punto. You figure inquiring within about this waste of your money will calm your ire at being scriptless.

Enter Antonio Domínguez, former primary school teacher and biographer of the Utrera Kid. These days he's owner / manager of both Clover branches, so you ask him about the shirt in the ventana. Excitement wells up in his eyes at the chance to school a foreign youth like yourself, and he takes you by the arm so you can guide him to the item in question. Turns out the word ventana refers only to the windows of houses, while escaparata is what's used to refer to display windows. Right before you get ghost and put an end to his condescension, Antonio kindly leads you back into the store and asks you where you're from. His gorgeous cashier slinks down the stairs with all the grace of an ivory fox and says hola. She boasts a charming smile, almond-shaped eyes the color of mahogany, and (most likely) a boyfriend of many years. Either way, the girl's genuinely interested in hearing your story. Part of it involves sharing your apellidos with Antonio, who upon hearing your dad's, craps himself with excitement over such a coincidence: turns out a general of that same name once granted the Utrera Kid a private audience at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War just so he could hear him sing. Tré cosmic.

If you wanna define surreal, try this on for size: going to a bar called Latino in the middle of southern Spain to meet up with some friends, only to wind up catching a show that features the Rock N' Roll Dildos. Don't get it twisted -- the band's from Málaga and actually does a kick-ass job covering the following classics:

1) Do You Love Me? (Now That I Can Dance) by the Contours
2) Search & Destroy by Iggy Pop and the Stooges
3) Gay Bar by Electric Six
4) I Love Rock N' Roll by Joan Jett and the Heartbreakers

Two of the above are packaged in some iteration or 'nother of Guitar Hero, and the other two are bona fide crowd pleasers. Post your guesses as to which is which, and the winner gets Dio's oxygen tank.

Seriously, though, the shit rocked. Dildos' female vocalist crooned and cawed every last lyric in imperceptibly broken English, all the while channeling Mick Jagger's iconic strut as if it were buttressed by a pair of red stilettos and decked out in a black tee. (Come to think of it, that's not too far outside his realm of possibilities.) Their lead guitarist reminded you of every dime-a-dozen, hipster musician you'd seen crawl out of a hole in Long Island to land fame in a generic, 3/4 sleeve t-shirt and moptop. So good for him! At least he's Spanish. Kinda bothered you that he turned his back to the crowd every time a song called for him to solo, but in this respect you figure he broke away from typicality. Oh, Utrera: you never cease to surprise me.

And We Have Lift-Off! (Again)

Día de la Paz 2008. (January 30th)
I present the kids with an activity about Martin Luther King, a brief resumé of his life that starts with an imagination exercise where they picture their own society as systematically discriminatory as his. The Sevilla Football Club / Real Betis Balompié rivalry leads to a divide in the quality of schooling each soccer nation receives, their parents get booted to the back of the bus for not being from Andalucía, and one of their playground water fountains bears a sign that reads "Blondes Only." I make sure they learn to pronounce CIVIL RIGHTS, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE, NON-VIOLENCE, and of course, I HAVE A DREAM. In some classes, I encourage the kids to read an abridged, Spanish version of MLK's famous speech. They show their appreciation for my hard work by calling one of my all-time heroes ugly, mistaking him at first for Pelé, and not paying attention in general. Let freedom ring, indeed.

Carnaval 2008. (February 2nd) With my so-fresh-and-so-clean-clean Lucifer costume pressed and ready to go, I decide to spend the afternoon helping one of my best friends here move out of a house he's only lived in for four months. In between chain-smoking a pack of Chesterfields I picked up for him and emptying his closet, he tells me the sordid tale of how the woman he lived with -- a nice lady, his girlfriend of damn near four years -- put horns on him. He calls her an egotistical, materialistic leech (Spanish word of the day: sanguijuela) for feeding off of him and his resources, those of the guy she was dating when they first met, and the poor schmuck he caught her in bed with after coming home early from a visit to Sevilla one day. They were smoking a post-coital spliff at the time. The other guy plays the piano, earns a fat headmaster's paycheck, and has the kind of friends who've formed a literary circle. To sum up, my buddy teaches me the following saying: "Es el tipo de mujer que no suelta un nabo hasta que agarre otro." She's the kind of woman who doesn't let go of one dick until she grabs another one. I refer to this as I help him pack up his fishing hats, one of which says "Huelva Blackbass Club: Catch And Release." I retitle it "Huelva Dick Club: Catch And Release." We laugh, I eat enormous olives on his tiny terrace, and am happy that we'll be roommates come March.

Enter Cádiz. The two-hour train ride I take to get there isn't half bad, and I manage to pull it off solo and sober. In my car is a cadre of professional cyclists who've emerged from a terrible crash covered in bloody gashes and with twigs in their helmets, a cow with a bullhorn, a sexy bee, a tranny nun, a belly-dancer, a rosy-cheeked cardinal, and some guy who probably meant well but wound up looking like a supergay country singer. We get serenaded by a traveling band of mobsters lead by a guitarist wearing a wig, and see a pair of shackled prisoners brutalized by the Spanish Civil Guard. Stepping off the train means joining a massive throng of revelers who've turned every platform and the entire station into something out of a witch's wet dream. Naturally, some women have taken the opportunity to slore out with suggestive costumes. God bless them. Case in point, I see a trio of Cani girlfriends in slutty cowgirl outfits sporting near-identical tramp stamps. Other highlights (lowlights?) include plenty of adults dressed as babies, an entire army of devils, the Simpsons, half a dozen high school buddies dressed as Hitler, blackface bush babies, the General and contestants from Takeshi's Castle / MXC, and a tour group of drunken American girls desperate to get stuffed by the Spaniards who're shooting fish in a barrel with their come-ons.

I drink the following, listed in chronological order: a rum and Coke for 4 euros, a liter of Andalusian beer for 2 euros, and an entire bottle of wine that my buddy Robert was kind enough to hump from Sevilla. No wonder, then, that I wake up the following morning with zero recollection of how I lost one of my devil horns and half a pint of blood through a cut in my foot. [Update: The fog of my hangover cleared, I remember that the latter is the result of stepping on a shard of glass vicious enough to slice through my shoe and knick the ball of my foot. I remember standing flamingo-style with my left sock off and watching droplet after droplet hit Town Hall Plaza before applying emergency gauze -- i.e., cocktail napkins -- to staunch the flow. The missing horn remains a mystery.] Robert helps me piece together the rest of the evening when he calls and thanks me for putting in work with a sweet-looking girl from North Carolina whose left tit wound up in his mouth on a couch somewhere in the Remedies.

Super Bowl XLII. (February 3rd) What I like to call the Surreal Bowl. Why? We watch Eli Manning lead the wildcard-winning New York Giants to a championship, for starters. We do so in silence for the first half thanks to noise complaints which are entirely predictable at 12 am on a Sunday morning, then move to a bar on Betis Street called Bogart whose owner happens to be Paz Vega -- a native of Triana. (I'm personally a Penelope Cruz guy.)

International Friendly btw Spain and France. (February 6th) The first time they met since the latter bounced the former out of World Cup contention in 2006.

Hip-Hop Night at Buddha. (February 7th) This means play vulture with a shit ton of American girls who've invaded Sevilla. Night winds up in a whore club around the corner from Robert's apartment, one I have to pull him kicking and screaming from because he's curious about the drugged-out first stringers who're comatose in the corner booth. He thanks me the next day.

"It's the Land's Fault" performance by GUATE at a theater festival in Two Sisters. (February 8th) Following a rousing performance, you celebrate with the gang and get drunk at Utrera's most prestigious elementary school. At Bar Latino, a former player tells you a hilarious joke about magical apples. (Turn it around!) This is after you translate, line by line, a saccharin American ballad he happens to know by heart.

Hangover-busting, afternoon run through town. (February 9th) You hear flamenco blasted from an Opel behind a Citröen that, in turn, is blasting a reggaetón song laid over the beat to "I Wanna Fuck You" by Akon feat. Snoop Dogg. It happens in front of the actors' entrance at the municipal theater, on Álvarez Quintero Street.

The Allfits perform at Sonic Banana. (February 9th-10th) You meet up with the cat arranging some promotion for the First Annual Utrera City Short Film Festival. Y'all bounce to Antigua, where you flirt with a gaggle of lovely girls via free pins and stickers. An older, tasty nighthawk sticks her finger in your beer to measure its head. You tone down the vulture act this time around, triumphing over it with less staring and more talking. At Latino 54, you run into Miriam. Then Carmen's friends. Then Carmen herself. None of the above recognizes you thanks to your recently shaven head. You don't quite remember what you said to Carmen while drunkenly flirting with her, but it was mostly in English. The point is that it made things crystal clear: you're hot for her, and have grown only more so with the passage of time.

(First) Haikubicon Submission

Heath Ledger's dead now.

What's a Dark Knight fan to do?

Brokeback Mountain's gay.

Now They Say Brain Bleed

Citing recent clinical research on what excessive Benadryl use can do to you, the title of this post is lifted from a frantic e-mail my mother wrote me from work. She knew I had been taking the stuff on a nightly basis to help me get over a brutal case of jetlag, and figured the above statement would conclude the following one quite nicely: "HIJO, WE'VE ALWAYS KNOWN THIS SINCE MED SCHOOL THAT IT INCREASES BLOOD PRESSURE FOR WHOMEVER TAKES IT." Awesome. I need a bleeding brain like I need another fucking hole in my head.

Had a wild dream last night, of the borderline nocturnal emission variety. Lemme walk you through it. You wade through subconscious haze to show up at a beautiful house that's eerily familiar, only to be greeted by an absolutely slamming and salaciously eager version of Laura Prepon. She's wearing nothing but a pair of tight, white work-out shorts and red nail polish with lipstick to match. After rubbing those gravity-defying tits of hers against you, she whips around and bends over to offer up her ass like holy alabaster. Before you know it, your dick's out and she's slid it between her thighs to get some glans-on-clit action mediated by nothing but a layer of lycra. Just as it's getting good, one of those pesky time lapses intervenes like a skipping record and you find yourself helping Chris Simonson out with his laundry. Turns out your old high school soccer buddy is Laura Prepon's brother. Naturally, I woke up with an erection that could split oak.

Carmen's been swimming through my head a lot lately. I had managed to block her out for a solid three days or so while tending to some important bidness, but she crept up on me ever so gingerly this evening. You want evidence? Picture this. I'm flying solo at Antigua on a Thursday night, staring like a perplexed manchild at my blurry reflection in a coffee machine behind the bar. The urge to see her, along with the fact that I can't, moves me so much that I actually mouth the opening words to that one Red Hot Chili Peppers song about heroine-induced longing as it plays on the house speakers. (I should probably be more specific.) "Sometimes I feel like I don't have a partner. Sometimes I feel like I'm all alone." Still can't decide what's more over the top about this moment: how pathetic it is, or how cliché. But don't consider it a cry for help. After all, I only paid one euro for a glass of Kronenbourg draft.

My friend Juan taught me the Spanish equivalent of sea clam vs. bearded clam as we wrapped up our early evening run through town tonight. "Hay dos tipos de almeja: almejas de la mar, and almejas de lamer." Get at me when you get the joke, which actually isn't all that different from its American counterpart.

The latest headline in the special needs middle school paper that is my life, reads something like this: CARLOS DECIDES TO MOVE TO SEVILLA The Impulse Could Prove Fatal. The drastic change would pair nicely with the shaved head I plan to sport in two weeks time for my Carnival costume. Cádiz, baby, Cádiz! UPDATE: I've since decided Lucifer is best interpreted with long, dark locks. The Brown neo-Nazi treatment has therefore been put on hold.

"Además, son preservativos de tamaño extra-grande." I had never re-told that story in English to my buddies, much less in Spanish to three co-workers with whom I have friendships of varying intimacy and depth. But we had just spent a half hour at The Little Corner Tavern for our customary post-school day, pre-meeting coffee break shooting the shit and swapping sex stories -- specifically the kind where you somehow get caught by your gal or guy's family. The dusty, cobblestone street lined with orange trees and lit on fire by the 3 o' clock sun seemed like the perfect place for me to share the following whopper. On second thought, that road bears zero resemblance to this blog so I'll kindly spare you the embarrassment.

“Me da mucho miedo la oscuridad!” said a kid.
“Vete a la luz, hombre!” said a clever octogenarian.
Today during my late night run, the town suffered a systemic blackout. It happened not an hour after I found out I’d be moving to Sevilla. Kinda reminds me of the time epic, November thunderstorms crippled Utrera on the same afternoon I finally decided to get over my ex. But back to the lecture at hand. Parents taking their babies out for a stroll at the time, store employees magically trapped behind automatic glass doors, old ladies staring down from their balconies — we didn’t find ourselves in the midst of nameless chaos, but instead brimming with a stunned, quiet appreciation of the fact that no one had any fucking idea what was going on. Liberating, really. The moment the lights came back on, I felt disappointment.

"No suelo hacer esto, pero... ¿te apetece un café?"
She was absolutely gorgeous, damn near perfect in every way. I wanted to pull a Florentino Ariza and take home the window that both our reflections sat in for a solid ten minutes. We had first exchanged glances while standing outside the on-board restroom. Then, I found a seat at Dos Hermanas. She found the one right across from me at Cantaelgallo. And so I spent the most scenic leg of my journey darting a furtive stare here and there. At her alabaster thighs. At her architecture textbook. At her dainty waist. At her white, cable-knit sweater. At her porcelain face, her doe eyes. Just when I couldn't stand plotting another cliché to describe her features later on, I noticed something: she had stepped up and begun engaging me in the same way. What had begun as something slightly sick and stalker-esque on my part turned into a surprisingly viable exchange. I could've spent eternity this way, flicking my pupils at her in forked tongue Morse code and shortly thereafter receiving a telegram of my own. "I'm out of your league. STOP And you know it. STOP But I love the attention. STOP And you're kind of cute." She turned down my invitation to coffee with a polite 'no,' a charming giggle, and a flip of her chestnut hair. We parted ways, and I walked back to my apartment happy for having dared.

2008 Rhymes With Coos Hounds're Great

And you know it. Consider this a belated "Happy New Year!" to you and to the cosmos.

Since I tend to embrace blogging clichés, the following is a list of my new year's resolutions:

1. Eat healthier. Or is it more healthily? Whichever one makes me sound less like a whiny, fat chick.

2. Jerk off less.

2. Write more.

With that last one in mind, I present a list of things I've lost during my most recent stint in Spain. Behind each object is a story worth scribbling, the kind that may reach publication some day. Also behind each object is me cursing like a bitch at having lost it.

I return to Andalusia this coming Sunday to continue working as a bilingual classroom assistant, so let's keep our fingers crossed that they turn up some time thereafter:

An un-lined black journal left in the seat pocket in front of me on my transatlantic flight home. Given I had just started writing in it, the damage was minimal: an entry that turned a series of amateur bullfights I had seen solo in the main plaza of my town (tons of sand + collapsible bleachers = makeshift plaza de toros) into a second-person short story about longing to belong. And wanting to make out with your boss's fly-ass daughter.

A black video iPod abandoned on the seat of a Sevilla commuter train not a year and a half after receiving it for my birthday. How does one do that, you ask? It's easy when you're black-out drunk at 5:50 in the morning and getting kicked off your ride home by an ornery conductor who swears you don't have enough fare. I then Hulked out, kicked over a trash can on the platform, and became the victim of excessive police force. The perpetrator? A goddamn rent-a-cop.

A blue disposable camera, used and forgotten in my boss's brand new car the day of my school's Christmas pageant. It was a celebration, bitches, and I have photo evidence. Hilarious snapshots of pre-pubescent Spaniards getting hopped up on Fanta and going ape-shit since no real class was held for any of them all day. This may or may not include a disturbingly graphic scene (like something out of a discotheque for the under-aged) that broke out in the music classroom thanks to a mob of hyper 5th graders, a serious speaker system, and the same four reggaetón techno songs on loop. Update: I have since found the damn thing -- right where I left it -- and will post the choicest flicks once laws against kiddie porn relax worldwide.

My belief in man's dominance of the animal kingdom, as well as a pair of my favorite headphones, after seeing countless tourists deeply fascinated by the turtle pond in the enormous greenhouse that is Madrid's Atocha Renfe station.

Now on to this entry's conclusion. What better way to wrap up 2008's inaugural post, than by ripping off writers whose words are more thought-provoking than I mine? Here are what I consider the highlights (thus far) of Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks, currently in its second season.

"TOM: Well, I don't care how good your dribble is! There's no way I'm changing the team name.
RILEY: Suit yourself. I just feel sorry for them. They ain't never gonna get that win you promised them. And for what? One man's ego?"

"RILEY: Nigga, you know that wasn't no chain! That was a necklace. This'll be a real chain. Oo-hoo-hoo, man! I can't wait for niggas to start hating. I can't wait.
HUEY: So you judge your success by how much ill will you generate from those around you? RILEY: Hey, if niggas ain't mad at you, you're doing something wrong.
HUEY: By that definition, then, you have a very bright future."

"I had forgotten that a nigga moment cannot be resolved through violence, but wherever there's harmony and peace, a nigga moment cannot exist." -Huey Freeman

As a lagniappe, enjoy this threesome of quotes from the debut season of another Adult Swim toon I tend to watch: Xavier, Renegade Angel.

"Don't know if you know this, but I'm a survivor. We're a dying breed." -Xavier

"Life is just death in drag." -Xavier

"My beef is not with you. I'm woefully beefless." -Xavier