Friday, November 16, 2007

The Pot In Spain Grows Mainly On The Government Official

This is a satellite photo of the Strait of Gibraltar, where Spain and Africa attempt an Eskimo kiss with only 7 miles between them. It's also where the Atlantic Ocean (lower left hand corner) is separated from the Mediterranean Sea (top of the photo). It reminds me of how much trouble I got into when I passed through this part of the world.

I was traveling with a girlfriend in the south of France and we went down to Barcelona for a few days. I met a guy named Craig and he and I decided to go on to Africa while my friend went back to France. We crossed the Strait on a ferry and ended up in Ceuta, Spanish Morocco, at the northern tip of the African continent. (the red dot on the photo below) Spain still controls this city and has since 1580.

Craig was a smoker. I was not. He bought cigarettes over food and when I complained he told me cigarettes took the hunger away. And presto-chango I became a smoker. Thank God I quit, 12 years later.

Because Craig and I had little funds between us, we spent a few nights at youth hostels and then decided to sleep on the beach with a lot of the other tourists. I had a big leather bag that I’d bought in Paris. It had our passports, the top of my bikini, some silver jewelry I’d picked up in Spain and most of our money in it. The first night on the beach I had carefully dug a hollowed out space in the sand, laid the bag in it, covered it with a sweater and used it as my pillow. Craig and I went to sleep and the next thing I knew I was jostled awake. It took me a few seconds to realize the purse was gone.

Beach thieves are really smart. They wait until you’re moving in or out of Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the dream state, which is the deepest part of sleep. You know when you’re in a dream and there’s a car coming and you can’t move out of the way? It’s called Sleep Paralysis and it’s when the body is disconnected from the brain, leaving the body paralyzed. It occurs when you go in or out of REM and somehow these beach thieves know exactly when it happens. They lifted my head and stole the bag from under the sweater while my body remained immobilized. This also sometimes happens to me during sex. But I digress.

Craig and I went to the police and they put us on the first morning ferry back to Spain. And then we had to get to Seville, since that was the nearest consulate. We were in deep shit. With no papers, how were we going to get back into the U.S.? All I could think about was that I was the one in my family who always got into trouble and I was certainly going to hear about this for years to come. But I was also the only one in my family who had an interesting life since the rest of them were all chicken shits. Don't be a chicken shit with your life. You'll have nothing to talk about when you're in an old folks home drooling creamed corn down your bib.We arrived in Seville in the middle of the night and the consul was alone in this huge mansion that served as the consulate. If there were servants or a staff, we didn’t see them. The consul helped us get in touch with our parents. I have mercifully blocked out what my father said to me but I’m sure there were swear words involved.

“We can get you new papers, but you'll have to stay here a day or two until your backgrounds have been cleared to travel,” the consul said as he pulled out a joint, lit it and passed it to Craig.

The three of us took a few hits and within fifteen minutes I felt really sick. The kind of sick where you know something is really, really wrong. I went to the bathroom and emptied every part of my intestine. All 39 miles of it. I was gone for so long that Craig came looking for me.

“What are you doing in there?” he asked.
“Making breakfast, what do you think I’m doing?”

Men.

“Is there anything I can do?”
“I’m scared.”
“You’re high. That’s all.”
“It won’t stop coming out, I think I might die of evacuation of the bowel.”
“Yeah... again? Just high. And that’s not a disease.”
“You don’t know.”

A few days later Craig and I parted company at the Madrid airport. I flew into Dulles International in Washington D.C. and as I waited in the customs line, the kid in front of me asked if I was old enough to bring liquor into the country. I said that I was and he passed me a sealed box of Courvoisier. He cleared customs and then I cleared and when I looked up, two armed guards took my arms and told me to follow them.

I was led to a small room and interrogated for about an hour. Why was I smuggling drugs for the American boy? How did I know there wasn’t heroin in the sealed box? Why did I have a hand-carved ivory hash pipe on me? Yeah, that last one was tricky.

Both the kid and I were released at the same time. Customs had made many calls. My Dad was a Colonel in the Army AND worked for the U.S. Government. Oops. The kid was in the top of his class at West Point. Oops squared.

I stayed at my Dad’s house for a while and for the first few months his phone was tapped. I would talk to my friends and we could hear the little click that went off every minute without fail. After a while I started making fun of it and saying that the feds had stopped me for smuggling drugs and how dumb they were and oh yes, I COULD HEAR THE TAPPING.

End of tapping. And chat.

16 comments:

  1. "Don't be a chicken shit with your life. You'll have nothing to talk about when you're in an old folks home drooling creamed corn down your bib."

    Words to live by. I'm not quite sure why more people don't.

    ReplyDelete
  2. You are so lucky you didn't get in more trouble. I can't believe you smoked pot with an official. Frankly I live in a family of mostly chicken shits and if I reflect long enough I am thankful. They have saved me from getting my ass kicked on more than one occasion.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That's both hilarious and scary!
    I'll have stuff to talk about when I am in a nursing home, but nobody will be listening.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Making breakfast

    And you should have forced him to eat it, just to prove that you weren't bullshitting.

    You'll have nothing to talk about when you're in an old folks home drooling creamed corn

    Oh, yes - I will have a few things to talk about then. In between wanting to know who the hell has been into my tequila stash, that is. In actuality, you really only need a FEW things to talk about when you get to the creamed corn drooling stage because while the "assisted living" staff may know you're repeating yourself, you probably won't.

    FWIW, I've been to Rota, Cadiz and Jerez de Frontera but never inland in Spain.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous12:01 PM

    Jenee, we're standups, which is why we do stuff like that. Big Balls.

    Anne, everyone needs to have their ass kicked a few times.

    gm, it's funny but the only part of the whole ordeal that scared me happened in that bathroom. I'm pretty fearless.

    I wish I had done more museums in Spain. I think 'Guernica' is there and I've only seen it once, when it was on loan to the Louvre.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous2:28 PM

    You'd better be working on that book because you have led one interesting life!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous2:41 PM

    surcie, despite Jess Riley's (Riley's Ramblings on sidebar)amazing encouragement (and a rewrite of my query letter that was brilliant)I am lagging. I think I'm blogging to avoid it. Now I just got a paid writing gig so more excuses to avoid!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I'll be drooling creamed corn on my chin before I can come up with a comment good enough for this story, so I'm not even going to try - but it's a great story!

    ReplyDelete
  9. See, this is why I have to make crazy shit up.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I just re wrote my last blog entry to avoid getting my assed kicked. My sisters told me it was too risqe (SP?) and inappropriate. This comment has nothing to do with your fantastic tale, its just about avoiding my ass getting kicked (fatal flaw).

    ReplyDelete
  11. Anonymous9:27 PM

    madmad, your comment was more than perfect for this story.

    diesel, I have a hard time believing your life is completely normal.

    anne, ok, talk about a giant tease!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous10:41 PM

    Funny story.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Anonymous3:28 PM

    I agree about the not being a chicken shit part. Nicely said.

    Did you mean that sometimes strangers steal your purse during sex? I got confused at that part.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Anonymous4:27 PM

    Thanks Mickeys.

    Frogster, yes, sometimes strangers steal my purse during sex. It's why I had to stop doing it at the grocery store.

    ReplyDelete
  15. I am such a chicken shit. or I just married way too young.

    ReplyDelete
  16. สุดยอดเว็บตรงไม่ผ่านเอเย่นต์
    ระดับตำนานมาพร้อมกับค่ายเกมสล็อตjoker
    เป็นค่ายเกมที่มาแรง ฝาก-ถอน ไม่มีขั้นต่ำ

    ReplyDelete