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| Madrid Not Pictured |
When I got off the plane, I already understood what this was. I was sick. Bad sick. Like, "I haven't been this sick in years," sick. The density and color of what was coming out of me was only slightly more convincing than the millipedes of pressure bubbles worming their way through my eustachian tubes. All of my big ideas from an afternoon in NYC had been incinerated by bouts of uneasy sleep and high temperature. Something about the fashion of politics? It was the May Day protest in Union Square and I saw a 50+ woman wearing faux-alligator Naturalizer slip-ons and poly-blend pants gleefully holding an "Occupy Queens!" banner while having her picture taken. Protest tourism? Was that it? Anyway, you get it--it wasn't going to be a very good essay.
Once my feet were on the ground, I knew what had to be done. I found the airport's pay as you go Internet terminal, went to Orbitz, and booked a daily-budget-decimating hotel. I had already booked a hostel, but I knew I couldn't get well in a room with three other people. A couple of little girls went to the computer terminal next to me to scavenge the remaining minutes from the last user. They went to YouTube. I finished my booking and found a nice looking hotel away from the city center. I copied the information provided me, and found a taxi cab. Here you go girls, fifteen minutes left.
What do you mean you don't speak English? I thought that's why we went to Europe, so we didn't have to learn another language. The address? Avda Pio XII, Madrid, 28016.
Pio Dose is the street, what is the number?
This was all the information I had. "It's a hotel," I wheezed through the saturation hearing the words thump in my head like I had my fingers in my ears.
He seemed concerned--in what little pidgin we could piece together--about my hotel selection. It was a nice hotel, but it was far from everything. "You take a bus, you take a taxi," he puffed a little breath as he motioned toward the city drifting past us. And what a city Madrid is from the view of a taxi cab window, snow capped mountains, and lush foliage, deciduous and evergreen. Sunlight dripped off the cones of spring blossoms heavy in the branches.
Like a pro, he found the Hotel. Not on his "first try," that belittles a man and his craft, it was all instinct. He knew where this beleaguered American tourist well beyond his depth belonged.
The Confortel Pio XII was nice and clean and quiet. This was all I required. I went to my room, dropped my bags like a thoughtless child home from elementary school, and guzzled two of the four free bottles of water in the mini-fridge. I have to let someone know where I am. I have to get medicine. I have to shower. In a fortuitous bounce, there was a pharmacy, a corner store, and a sandwich shop a short walk away.
The pharmacist talked me into the sublingual homeopathic remedy because, "It take one, two days. No chemical. Other one take...five, seven day." And if the looks I'd been getting since NYC were any indicator, I was already edging into 'he might be making bathroom meth' territory, so no sudafed for this guy. I wanted to make jokes about needing a bunch of matchsticks, but pharmacies in Spain don't really appear to work in the--I'm gonna go get Maw-Maw's scrip, sun tan lotion, and four packs of after season Peeps--kind of way.
I bought my meds, the most precious little grilled bread sammie stuffed with 'Jamon Y Brie,' and a bottle of Spanish Gatorade. The only indicator was the Olympic Rings on the side, and it wasn't soda. I bathed my awful stench, ate my delicious, darling sandwich, and vanished into a cragged fault of fevered sleep.
Floating high above Madrid, my clapboard coffin was four walls of full color projections. Images shot through the heat of my mind manifested in distorted images with no continuity. As I turned myself over in bed I was in an all brick apartment, one with distinguished modern features. There was a woman there I once knew. She was the best friend of an ex-girlfriend. I thought we understood each other. I was young and mixed up. I saw her in line at the movies once, but this was not that time.
My mouth so dry, she looked at me with something beneath contempt, I wasn't worthy of even her disdain. It was pity. It was the well of indifference where you drown the things not worth hating. "But you never answered my friend request," I croaked out, sweat beading on my forehead. "Then your FB page was gone."
"Yeah."
I could charm this thing another direction. "What, did you purge me from your memory?"
Her glance slid all the way down her famously aquiline nose. "Not purged."
"Deleted?" As the words came out of me, they echoed with how much of my fear her answer carried. Her smile was dense with satisfaction.
I descended down a miles long tunnel of sheets. I heard the back wall roll away and in the distance, a dog barked. Immediately, I snapped to. I jumped out of bed and in the dark scrambled for my dog. He was horrified as I collected him in my arms. If he had heard the other dog, he would have run away. A woman crossed through the dark with her dog. She remotely locked a luxury sedan and had on a gaudy silk scarf, all paisley and anchors and bright colors draped over a dark overcoat.
"He would just run away like that? He's not a very good dog, but there are no bad dogs..."
Just bad owners. I sat up in bed. Still in Madrid. Still in this hotel. It's dark out. I need to drink more water.
When I was a child there was an incident where I was sick and didn't hydrate. My parents woke in the middle of the night to find me ranting and raving. My bed was a battleship and a fire truck and they had to keep moving me between beds as I would sweat through sheets in about half an hour. I have no memory of this. If my parents hadn't been there, I would have died. This is my biggest fear. I didn't want my first memory of Spain to be waking up in a prison hospital because I walked naked across the Pio XII Confortel lobby. I filled my water bottle in the sink, drank the whole thing, and laid back down.
No TV. Don't check the time. These things will defeat you. Get through the night. This was my mantra, like a healing spell over and over again. But, they're not mine.
"They're not mine! They're Houston's."
She held the pack of Marlboro lights in her hand. Forbidden, unspeakable contraband he'd forgotten to properly conceal in his backpack.
"You lie, you lie!" his stepmother charged. "Don't lie to me."
Heat rising in their faces, both trying not cry, they could barely choke out words.
"You know the rules. If you wanna live like that, it's not gonna be in this house."
A car horn honked out front, his ride to school. He grabbed his backpack and turned to storm out.
"This isn't over. When we get back to San Angelo were going to talk about this."
He'd already decided another outcome. He was moving out. That way he could smoke all the cigarettes he wanted. He got into his friend Houston's car, Houston not knowing he'd tried to sell him out moments before. He was flushed and tears finally broke the dam of his ducts.
"Woah, dude. What's wrong?" Houston asked.
"I just got kicked out of my house."
"What? No way."
"Just take me to buy a pack of cigarettes."
"We're late. Can't you just take one of mine ?"
"Take me to buy a pack of fucking cigarettes! Please..."
The fever pressed its crooked fingers across my brain into nooks where forgotten fears and self consciousness lived. I kept drinking more water. My gold water bottle like an illuminated cistern with all of life inside.
I had to put my mind another place. I started talking through the many houses and mottos and alliances in my head at a screaming pace. House Stark, House Lannister, House Bolton, House Baratheon, House Targaryen, House Tyrell, House Greyjoy. I started naming other houses I hadn't heard of before, but I knew they had to be in there. I was the grand maester. I was in a tower in my tunic recording this great record. Wedged between my bed and this world of fantasy, I could feel the ramparts of the many kingdoms emerging from the white cotton threads. My brain howled down the King's Road until it could go no further. The alliances, the names, none of it made sense anymore. I was afraid to shift in bed as I could feel the gears all around me. The many pieces of this complex puzzle where all of my answers could be found were laid out in perfect order at all sides. I cracked my eyes open. It was light out. My bed was just sheets and pillows.
I staggered out of bed. I sat in a chair. I filled my gleaming gold water bottle. The rest of the day I listened to Radiolab podcasts.
By Sunday I'd been in my hotel room for so many hours straight I was afraid to leave, but wanted to do nothing more. I showered, shaved my face, put on some clothes, and charged out the door like I was going to have to break through it.
I walked around the neighborhood until I found a metro stop. I descended into the belly, bought my ticket, and passed it though. The gate swung open, a major victory. I walked down the stairs, and immediately a Madrid cop shouted after me. No, not this. No on my first day. I turned back, he scowled, and handed me my ticket. After you insert the ticket, it shoots through the machine and you collect it. Why? Do I need it to get out of the subway? I thanked him in my best "Gracias," a word I still haven't gotten right by Spain's standards. In Spain it's said with a lisp. Gra-th-ias.
I'm not a man who looks for symbols in his life, but the subway floor was decorated with chess pieces. Could I get to the heart of town and back with out losing myself? Icy, still sick sweat poured down my back. Your move Madrid.
The subway let out and my only goal was to make it to the main city park. I followed the iron filings in my blood like a compass. I saw it and almost wept. But I was hungry. I'd had perhaps one meal in the last 36 hours. I walked until I found a Burger King. I know, what a sad American with his disgusting burgers in the heart of all this delicious Spanish food. Flame broiled and French fried, I made my way back to the park.
It was a beautiful day. The sun hung around the trees and reclined in the grass and ran its fingertips through the water spilling from fountains. As we are its children, we did the same.
Fathers nervously calling after daughters who scurried a little too far into the bushes while he wasn't watching.
Crowds gathered around a street performer whose overgrown goatee must have been forced from his chin by his outsized charm. He even had a bit where he used one of those plastic grabber hands to flip off the crowd. Middle fingers are funny in every language, in case you'd forgotten.
Long lines of people waited to play in little blue and white boats crowded onto a huge man made pond.
Statuary and nature, man and woman, dogs and runners, it was a park on planet earth.
I did stumble across a manicured promenade with shrubbery groomed into an impressive spectacle. They stood tall and in oddly fitted bulbous shapes, almost in contempt of nature. A statue stood between them hoisting a tragedy mask toward the heavens.
Huh, there is the Prado. It was closed, in case you were wondering.
I walked the the length of the the park, and as I got near the exit I saw some Spanish kids all wearing matching soccer uniforms save one friend sporting a NY Knicks shirt featuring Carmelo Anthony. The only thing worse than rooting for the Lakers (Go Lakeshow!) is rooting for the Knicks, and not even a throwback Ewing jersey or...ugh, there really is no good option. But this young Spaniard, in that gaudy orange and blue, I loved him. He defied what was expected of him. I wanted to give him an Ultimate Jordan DVD and my copy of Buffalo Gals Back to Skool and whisper, "keep it secret. Keep it safe."
I sat on a bench. Humanity whirled past me. Rollerblading is huge in Madrid right now. And it finally hit me, I'm in Spain. I'm here. This is my life. This is really happening.
When I arrived back at my metro station later, I tromped heel-toe over the tile chess pieces laid into the floor, and where I'm not hack enough to grant myself a, "Check and Mate," moment, I felt pretty damned good. I helped some Chinese girls carry their luggage up the stairs. I went back to the hotel, packed my bags, and watched Blood: The Last Vampire in Spanish. Really, impressively so, not good. Not at all. As I settled into bed I thought for the first time, "I think I'm going to make it. I can do this."
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