Monkeyshines
chapter six

Sam and I blew two weeks in Miami Beach, then drove to New York in a "drive-away" Cadillac. From there we flew on Icelandic Airlines to Luxembourg. During a layover in Iceland, we sent postcards to our families. I was going to Europe to say hello to Katya. Sam agreed to go along because he couldn't think of a good reason not to. Europe was where WWII was fought. That was Sam's idea about Europe. After we de-planed in Luxembourg, we went to a grocery store, and as we walked among the other customers, Sam said, "Gee. There sure are a lot of foreigners here."
In Munich, Sam took a job as a baggage handler for Lufthansa. We separated with a quiet sense that fate might put us back in touch soon, or we might never see each other again. We were conscious, sentient particles of dust in the wind.
I ran into another of the ubiquitous one-armed WWII vets, this one operating a motorcycle repair shop on the edge of Munich. His name was George, pronounced Gay-org, and he sold me a 1954 BMW motorcycle for $140. I told him I was driving down to Rome. Seeing how unprepared I was to cross the Alps, he gave me a heavy winter coat, an asbestos garment that resembled cowboy chaps, a scarf and heavy gloves. I thought thanks to him many times in the next two weeks. Even with the extra gear, I got frostbite on my thighs.
At the last minute, Doug, a kid from Denver, decided to ride along with me. We froze together over the Brenner Pass, through the ancient villages, past the Roman aquaducts, and down to Rome.
We had a near disaster outside Rome. As we pulled out of a gas station, a car bore down on us, and I accelerated hard to cross the road without being hit. I also had to make a left turn to avoid crashing down a steep hill. The bike came around, but the turn opened up. We hit the gravel shoulder. In order to control the bike, I had to accelerate. We were headed straight for a big green light pole. I couldn't turn left to the pavement, I couldn't brake, and I couldn't turn right. At the last possible moment, Doug bailed out. As he jumped, he changed the lean of the bike, and I missed the pole, stopping the bike in a ditch. Doug bruised his thumb and I bent a foot peg on the bike. We cursed the driver who put us in this bind, but he wasn't extraordinarily aggressive. We learned that most Italian drivers drove to the grocery store like it was a lap in the Grand Prix.
From Rome, we followed the Italian coast up to the Riviera. San Remo, Finale Ligure, San Tropez, Cannes, Nice. They were relatively deserted. It was early in the season. I saw a woman and a child undress completely on a public beach on the Riviera, then put on bathing gear. In Chicago she'd have been arrested. Here, she nearly caused a motorcyclist to crash into a tree, but that wasn't her fault. It was mine.
I was raised Catholic in Chicago. The Irish Catholicism in vogue when I was a kid had been influenced by the Jansenists. They taught one of the most anti-sexual dogmas of any religion. This seemed to have a reverse effect on a lot of us young boys. Most of us were utterly preoccupied with ferreting out sexual experiences while being told we were perverse for doing so. We were Ahabs chasing our Moby Dicks. I felt antagonism toward my teachers over this, but then I decided that nobody really understood sexuality. They just guessed. Nobody knew where the hypothalamus got its information.
One sunny afternoon, we pulled over to the curb in Monte Carlo, in front of some regal looking buildings, one of which had to be the famous Casino. A pair of well dressed men stood nearby and I asked them to point out the casino. One said he managed it. He said he'd toured Europe by motorcycle when he was young, and asked if we'd like a tour of the casino.
"Sure," I said. "Absolutely," Doug said.
After three weeks in the mountains, we walked into comfort and wealth. Raymond, the manager, took us into the main dining room. It had a swimming pool right in the middle of it. We saw the entire Monte Carlo harbor through a glass wall. Raymond pointed out Aristotle Onassis' yacht which laid by its permanent mooring.
Everyone was extremely deferential to Raymond. They grinned and waved to him, and seemed quite pleased with his subtle responses, even the slightest movement of his hand or a nearly imperceptible nod.
The tour ended suddenly. A beautiful French woman/girl pranced up to Raymond in that teasy, kissy way that some females are so good at. She had a bikini on, but you had to look twice to be sure. The second look discovered the escaping pubic hairs and the peek-a-boo nipples. Raymond introduced us, and it looked like she might get kissy and cuddly with us. I couldn't bear it. I had to get out of there or I'd bust. "We gotta get going," I said, "We're, ah, running late." Raymond smiled. He understood.
He quickly wrote a note to allow us into the casino without charge and permit us to enter the private gaming rooms. He pointed out that even he couldn't let people in at night if they weren't properly dressed. We knew our limit though. It was a fine fantasy, but we weren't casino material. Not that night, anyway. We drove on to Katya's.
Katya had acquired a French boyfriend. Jean Claude something. She was shockingly demonstrative in her affection for him. She fawned over him. She sat on his lap, kissing and cooing. In response, I broke out the pint of Jim Beam that I carried in case of emergency. I couldn't hold my liquor worth a damn, so I hoped this Frenchman was unfamiliar with whisky. I wanted to shift the emphasis of the evening by getting him drunk. Katya was annoyed by this ploy. Her provocative behavior became irrelevant as Jean and I got drunk. If there was a winner in the drinking match, it was Jean, but when I wobbled out of the house, I left a similarly incapacitated Frenchman behind me.
Actually, I liked Jean. He impressed me with the extent of his knowledge of affairs outside France. I couldn't have made a wild guess at the name of the mayor of Dijon or Paris. Jean knew a lot about Chicago and Mayor Daley. And Jean wasn't unusual in this regard.
Doug and I left for Barcelona. On route we stayed at the best youth hostel we'd ever seen. It was in a castle that stood on a hilltop outside Perpignon, overlooking the Mediterranean. We were the only guests. The ancient buildings in this quiet place let me feel like part of history. It was like the night in Rome when Doug and I slept on top of the “wedding cake” monument to King Victor Emmanuel II. I'd felt like I was back in ancient Rome when I woke up to the early morning sun shining on the city. (A policeman stopped us as we strolled down the steps of the monument. He threatened to arrest us, but bought us a coffee instead.)
The Spanish border was our next stop after Perpignon. The Spanish customs inspectors were scumbags. They were purposely rough with my pack, and broke the clay Hofbrau Haus beer stein I had tied on it. They seemed to be in a sort of telepathic harmony with the old priest in Rome who thought long haired youths were devils. There were feelings of serious tension at that border, and it wasn't just me.
I saw an apparent tourist taking pictures of a fountain. The fountain had a policeman leaning against it. The policeman carried an automatic rifle. The policeman ran over to the tourist and demanded his camera. The tourist drew back, appealing the policeman's demand. BANGO! Right across the chops with the butt of that rifle. The policeman yanked the camera away from the fallen man, took the film out, and tossed it on the ground. The policeman walked away slowly. The tourist got up, felt gingerly around the reddened side of his face, retrieved his camera, and walked off in a direction away from the policeman. I thought, "Watch out, this is a dangerous place."
From the border we drove along the Costa Brava toward Barcelona. We camped out on a hilltop that night. At least twenty other people camped on that same hilltop, travelers from everywhere. We built a bonfire. People played music. Everyone sang.
We didn't stop in Barcelona, but turned west, up onto the central plateau toward Zaragoza. We drove west for six hours leaning forward as far as we could to reduce wind resistance. The headwind was so strong we could only go 45 miles an hour instead of the usual 65. In Zaragoza we saw a lot of American Air Force personnel from the nearby base, prices were dramatically higher than we'd seen elsewhere, and nobody talked politics.
We got a hotel room there, in an inexpensive old-fashioned place that had a courtyard accessed by heavy, double wood doors that were rounded off at the tops. I put the motorcycle inside the courtyard. Even though it was ten years old, it was a BMW, and lots of people were interested in it. Sometimes a crowd surrounded it in the small villages. Teen-agers eyed it fondly.
From our hotel room, we heard music coming from the room next door. I was drawn to the door of that room and found myself knocking on it. I had no idea what I was going to say.
"We heard music," I said in my most deferential tone as the door opened.
My smile must have conveyed that I liked what I’d heard.
"Come in, Come in," said the guy who'd opened the door.
His smile said that he was not at all unhappy to be interrupted. His name was Francisco. The woman there was named Maria. They were performers and had been practicing. They preferred a live audience, so we were given a bottle of wine and told to sit on the bed. Francisco and Maria went on practicing. He played Flamenco guitar. She danced. They were possessed. We listened for an hour, and when we left, our hearts were pounding.
In the morning we left for Madrid. In Madrid, everyone talked politics. Especially then. The university was shut down, and the whole philosophy department had disappeared. Clutches of troops loitered in semi-hidden marshalling areas. We spent our afternoons at the Cafe Las Mercedes and our nights in the Flamenco caves.
On a windy Easter Sunday we went to the bullfights. The matador had trouble because of that wind. When he presented his cape, the wind blew it back over his arm. Each time this happened, a torero rushed into the ring to get the bull's attention. It could have been undisciplined competition on the part of the torero or frustrated ingratitude on the part of the matador. Who knows? The matador finally turned toward the torero in an apparent rage, raised his sword, and ordered him out of the ring. The crowd gasped. I saw the matador's face clearly, and it showed that he understood that gasp. It meant the bull had charged while the matador's attention was turned toward the torero. When the matador returned his attention to the bull, it was too late. The bull hooked the matador on one horn, and threw him straight up in the air. He came down on the horns. The bull tossed him to the ground, gored him, and trampled him. They carried the matador off on a stretcher, but he was dead. He'd been one of Spain's best. I heard people say, "No le hizo bastante caso." (No lay ee-so bah-stahn-tay cah-so. He shouldn't have broken his concentration.)
I sold my motorcycle in Madrid, for $200. Doug flew back to Denver, and I met an American girl named Dawn. She'd been traveling for years. She lived with an aging Spanish general. The general was certainly deviating from Spain's public policy governing sexual conduct. He needed to relieve his loneliness, I assumed, and I accepted that, but his men nearly arrested me for kissing Dawn good-bye at the train station. We kissed each other on the lips. A policeman shouted at us and waved his stick. I thought he wanted a young woman to kiss him on the lips.
I met another old Canadian guy at that train station. He was the flip side of Vespa Ted from Istanbul. His name was Bob, and he was in his sixties, the bike he was selling looked older. I imagined that bike had been discarded at the station by its previous owner, out of disgust. Bob extolled the quality of the bike.
"I just rode it down from Toledo," he croaked, "and you can have it for $6."
I bought it, as a hedge against the day when I found myself in Bob's shoes. He looked like a derelict. He said he was "just traveling around," but he looked like he'd been traveling around since the end of the Spanish Civil War. He could have been one of those crazy Anarchists who absolutely distrusted all government and had tried to fashion a society that didn't depend on money. They'd been crushed by Francisco Franco's Fascists. Bob looked crushed. He had none of Vespa Ted's elan. I left the bike where I bought it. I expected Bob might sell it again and again.
I took a train to Grenada and climbed the hill to the Alhambra, a place full of spirits of Knights and Saracens. I swam in the imagery of Sir Walter Scott, and entertained many confused ideas about the battles that raged there. Moslems, Christians and Jews had lived here in harmony for generations. Then they warred with each other. Were they misled by government or church leaders? Were they bored? Did their social harmony break apart because of some trick by a business elite? Were the people stupid or childish? Did they go to war out of necessity, or were they ordered to go? Was it the only job they could get? Maybe some strange chemical got into their water supply? It was surely a beautiful place. Maybe humans just weren't able to share a beautiful place.
As I walked south from Grenada hoping to hitch a ride, I began to smell the rankest stink. I looked around to see who or what caused this annoyance. I saw no obvious source, no farmer spreading nasty chemicals or manure, no smoke stack spewing toxic clouds, nothing suspicious at all. I thought I'd just have to wait until the stink went away. It followed me. It was very close. Aha! I looked down at the offenders. My tennis shoes. I took them off and threw them away. Unfortunately, they were my only shoes. Fortunately it was almost always warm in the south of Spain.
I got a ride to Jerez-de-la-Frontiera with a Dutchman named Hans who worked in Spain as a grape watcher and wine taster. He was very gentle and stunningly erudite. He spoke Spanish, Flemish, French, English and German, or so he said. I had no cause to disbelieve him. We probed each other's metaphysical frontiers and time passed quickly as we drove through rural Spain. We reached Jerez at dinner time and Hans invited me to share a meal. I suspected briefly that Hans might have sexual intentions. My radar, though, said all clear.
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Monkeyshine #16, although I frequently forgot to apply it, said homosexual males tended to interpret friendliness as a borderline sexual response, while almost everyone else tended to interpret friendliness as a sign of weakness.
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In this instance, the dinner, the wine, and the music were all excellent. After an evening of absorbing conversation Hans offered me a tidy little guest room. It was paradise. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Hans.
The Dutchman seemed to have no grievances against anyone in the world. Except a little one against the Americans at the airbase for causing inflation. Hans claimed they were devastating the local economy by throwing their money around foolishly. Sour grapes? Maybe, but Hans was an expert on grapes. He left before I got up in the morning and I let myself out.
I traveled on through Andalusia. Andalusia was full of Flamenco music. It was explosive. Like the people. A hundred yards south of Andalusia was Gibralter. I stopped at Gibralter to get my passport stamped at Smokey Joe's Cafe, an "in" thing for travelers of that era.
Smokey Joe's had a three page menu, but only five different items on it. There was spaghetti, toast, chips, beans and eggs. Page one detailed the prices of the two-item meals, like eggs and toast, eggs and chips, spaghetti and eggs, beans and eggs, beans and chips, etc.
Page two detailed the prices of three-item meals, like spaghetti, eggs and chips; beans, chips and toast; spaghetti, chips and beans, etc.
Page three had four item meals. Reading that menu was like staring at busy wallpaper.
Gibralter also had gorillas that ran loose on the rock. It was a major tourist attraction. People enjoyed watching those silly creatures cavort in the wild. I met a fellow on the rock who explained what he called "group theory."
He said the individual person had no meaning in the modern world. We have value only in association with large groups, he said. Identifying with the whole human race was too general. Cleaving to a handful of friends was too narrow and specific. One had to join some large sub-group that defined itself in competitive terms against all the other sub-groups. This arrangement was imposed on us, he said, by established groups positioned to exploit the competition they instigated in others. I didn't understand what the hell he was talking about.
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It was a kind of social partnership that involved monkeyshine #21, the compulsion to join groups, and monkeyshine #24, the exploition of people who cavorted in silly groups.
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I also met a warm, skinny Englishman in Gibralter, named Ken Wells. He was dark-eyed, had long dark hair, and he played the guitar. He traveled around absorbing different ethnic music. We left for Morocco together.