"Little Americans flirts," to quote Henry James, "[are] the queerest creatures in the world."

Taylor talked me into going out. This is strange, because he never wants to go out. He's not a very outgoing personality. But, he'd just come from Germany. I hadn't seen him in a long time. Who knows, people change.

On the way out of a hookah bar, we asked some German kids for directions. They ended up taking us out to a skeezy college bar aimed at exchange students: mostly Americans, a few Spaniards, and the obligatory Japanese. The few locals are composed of bored college boys, looking to find, fuck, and forget whatever foreign co-ed drunk enough for temporary absolution from her boyfriend back home (because they all have one, whether they admit it or not). Some are sixteen, living with Catholic families who ask, perched around the dinner table, eyebrows raised: "Are you going out again tonight?" These little American flirts talk about Martha's Vineyard, their beach house on Padre Island, or the Hamptons. They gasp when they see hashish or rutting couples in brightly lit corners across the street. They forget to wear jackets when it is 12 C and then cuddle close to you. You stroke their hair and wonder, "When are my children going to do this?"

Taylor attempted to talk to the girl from Martinique, a breathtaking specimen of the beauty colonial France stole long ago. The girl to my right sat on a stool. Her hair is a wondrous mess that Nate Wainscott would envy. This girl and Nate also have similar taste in jeans. Skinny, low cut black ones that show off one's thin figure. Her robin's egg cardigan has a little Lacoste alligator on it.

"J'mapelle Lilly" she says, and it's a lie. I correct her Spanish (which is better than my French) and she makes me hold her handbag. Outside for a smoke she says, "Mi novio, my boyfriend, esta a le Boule, la playa. He leave me here." She hands me the cigarette. "Are you married?" she asks.

"Pff...no, not yet," I say. When the bar closes and everyone is leaving she grabs my hand and leads me to the now-empty brightly lit back room and kisses me. Buddha on the wall looks down.

"Tomorrow. You call me." She writes her number on my map before turning and going off into the night, surrounded by friends.

The next day Taylor and I do yoga in the park.
"She's married, man. And her name's totally not 'Lilly.' It's Tiphane."
I call her anyway.

"You come to my house at 4:30," she says.
"5:30."
"No, 4:30."
"5."
"Okay, fife. Bring your guitar. Bisous."
I show up at 4:30 to prove my point.
"Mentiroso! [Liar!]" she scolds me when I show up. She's from Lyon and twenty-two years old. Her mother is Sicilian and her father is French. Tiphane moved here and bored with this town already. Her house is the size of the apartment building my parents live in. Green leather salon furniture, two hundred years old, pointed at a large, black, shiny flat screen T.V.

Out in the garden sitting on a bench, I play a song I wrote with none other than Salvatore Cassato himself. It's a blues shuffle in A, from a cold night in Chicago and a hot bottle of sake. It goes like this:

I'm good to you.
You're good to me.
You say you love somebody else
but he don't make you happy.
He don't treat you the way he should,
so I'm wood.

I been to the East.
I been to the West.
I had all the kinds of lovin'
that a man could get,
but your kind of lovin'
was the best.

Now up in the mornin'
at the break of day,
you're huggin the pillow
where my body used to lay.
And if he only knew the way you thrill me,
why, he'd kill me.

I ain't gonna fight.
He ain't got the might.
I can satisfy.
He can't even try.
You got your love stoked up so good,
He'll just get hot,
but I'm wood.

Then I played Chopin's Mazurka in D minor on the piano. She liked it a lot. Practically purring as loudly as the fat Siamese I was petting, Tiphane ordered me to play more. I refused. "I haven't practiced in five years," I said. She gave me a pout, a Mars bar, and a kiss goodbye.

"Going back in a flash over the women I've known. It's like a chain which I've forged out of my own misery. Each one bound to the other." Henry Miller.

Portugal is in two days.

I know Martha from California but she is currently in Chile. Please forgive the lower case.


dear martha -

hope you're doing okay. are you still in chile? staying out of trouble? i'm sure you're busy having lots of adventures, seducing tall, dark, and handsome latin men.
as for me, i'm back in the land of the mangers-fromage (cheese-eaters) at my folks' house. i left mad about a week ago. i survived my year as elementary school teacher, bankrolled a few grand, and now, i am as i should be: sans job, house, bills, or steady girl. my only problem is my lack of a bike (or velo as they say here in france) but that is quickly being remedied. the weekend before i left i ran in an alleycat race and a ciclonudista rally, which is exactly what it sounds like. the attatched photo is from in front of the royal palace in madrid. the alleycat was not nearly so mellow: a scramble to seven "Corte Ingles" department stores scattered throughout madrid. roughly twenty five kilometers in length, seven stalwart bike punks and myself dodged buses, taxis, cars, and mopeds, generally ignoring traffic signals as we wove our way through rush hour traffic and 110F/43C degree temperatures on fixed gear bicycles (my buddy juan lent me his spare). i placed fifth out of eight. it was my first time not finishing dead last. i only rode so fast because i was in so much pain. my friend lori was there to witness the start and the finish (though she was a good two liters of beer in by the time i wheezed across the finish line at the okupa). she came to visit from NYC, as she got two weeks off her job as a techie for sesame street. she and i have history, but it's always been a fairly casual thing (except the for this one really hairy experience but that's another story). anyhow, she had a lot of fun, and my friend rike (remember her?) kept her company. speaking of rike, things took off with her. she became my steady girl of sorts, though she's a riot grrl and would totally break my kneecaps if i she heard me say anything like that (but it's true). i guess she liked my politics. hah! we took a weekend around valencia on the beach and we slept on roofs and abandoned lots. i never actually met a girl who would do that kind of thing before, just the ones who would talk about it. that trip was really great, actually. we caught the bus down to valencia from mad, kicked around for the rest of the day. the next day we rolled on to faro de cullera, and there it was fuckin' fantastic - white sand beaches, clear blue water, palm trees, the whole nine yards. we were smack dab between two small resort towns in an even smaller podunk with barely a grocery. there were eight people on the beach, and one of them passed me some hash. it was amazing. we slept there on the beach looking at shooting stars and rike told me about hitch hiking through patagonia. in the morning i woke up with the sun and ran ten kilometers down the beach only to find a giant statue of buddha standing at the mouth of a river. when i got back to our "campsite" i took a skinny dip in the ocean to cool off. people seemed pretty lax about nudity there. later in the day rike and i hiked up a mountain along an old pilgrim trail to an old castle, talking about fearlessness, stopping only to drink water and cry. we made it back to valencia for the festival de san juan (summer solstice to us pagans). thousands of people showed up at the beach to make bonfires. to the sound of pipes and drums, people drank themselves silly. at midnight everbody ran into the ocean to jump three waves and ran then back onto shore to leap three times over the roaring bonfires.
when we got back to mad two days later, spain was in the playoffs for the european football championship. rike, lori, my aussie friend josh, and i met up with all my mexican gang to watch the final game (spain won). during halftime i hit the streets and sold the all the scotch i had left to people smoking cigarettes outside of bars. i made enough to pay for dinner. it got so crazy in the streets later that the cops had to bust out the tear gas and rubber bullets.
it was kind of sad seeing rike off. she was good to me and more than a lover she was a very good friend. i learned a lot from her. i left her my bike; i wish i coulda left her more (or not at all). i gotta admit, i'm gonna miss mad a bit. for as much as it pissed me off, it had a lot of things going for it and the few friends i made were solid. i hope to see them again, but pedro is in india, conchi is wandering the pyrenees on bike, josh is walking to santiago de compostela...carlos will probably make it to lisbon in august, though, and my mexican homie panchito is gonna be in SF this winter. most likely i will meet up with him then. maybe if you're that neck o' the woods i can present y'all. he's a real card.
my last night in madrid i spent in front of an old convent where forty nuns were executed by a firing squad of anarchists during the civil war. some of my best friends from madrid were there: panchito, josh, carlos, rike. the next day lori and i caught an overnight sleeper train to paris. all my luggage made flying unreasonably expensive. i had a couple of old guys (70+) as roomies. they told me what life was like under franco and how bad the old spanish cars were. in paris we met a queer dude from louisiana by way of san diego, but we left him at the taxi stand. lori and i had to go on to angers and my parents. lori was there for a couple of days. my parentals gave her the obligatory tour of the local chateau and a french cuisine meal. lori split for rome and met up with my sister in a random turn of events. since then i've just been chillin' with my parental units, drinking beer and doing laundry with them.
i dumpstered two quality (but very old) bikes and my dad and i are working on getting them roadworthy for the portugal trip. it's taken us to every single bike shop in town. we even fell in with the local anarchist collective that runs a little bike co-op. today we got a contact for an old (60+) pro cycle racer who specializes in vintage bike parts. tomorrow pop and i will pay him a visit.
my buddy taylor shows up wednesday, coming in from berlin. it'll be a whole different kettle of fish then.
well, i think that's about it. take care of yourself. don't worry about writing a novel back, but it'd be nice to know if you're alive...

peace,
rafe