It’s hit me. Finally. It hadn’t yet, until now.
I was in Brussels for the weekend with the Katies. We’d planned on going to the south of Holland for the weekend to see the deltas of Zeeland and stay at a town we had been told was “really nice.” Middelburg, we saw on the map, was way down there, so we got up early on Saturday and started driving south in my new company rental Ford Fiesta.
We though it was weird when stopped in Delft for a quick coffee stop and realized we were already halfway there.
“Wow,” Katie said, “this place is deceptively tiny.”
“No, no, it must be as the crow flies,” said other Katie. “It can’t be that small!”
We sipped our breakfast casually on that boat in the Delft canal, reasoning that we were ahead of schedule and could afford to take it easy. But even after driving through Gouda and about a dozen other little Dutch towns in that early September breeze, we had no idea what kind of strange we were dealing with. By 11 in the morning we’d already driven into Middelurg and seen it’s “nice” squares and churches and had been wholly underwhelmed by the dijks we’d seen along the drive.
“Are we sure we drove the right way to see the dijks?” Katie asked.
“There was low-lying land to our left and ocean to our right,” I said. “I don’t know where we could possibly have gone wrong.”
“Well, at least it’s really nice, isn’t it guys?” said other Katie. Which was true. But we couldn’t have been less interested in staying the entire afternoon there, let alone spending the night. We looked at each other for a bit while standing by the center square.
“We’re can’t be too far from Antwerp, right?” Katie offered.
“Yeah,” I said, considering the plan. “Or Bruge.”
“I’ve heard Bruge is nice,” Katie said.
“Yeah, but I wonder what Antwerp looks like,” said Katie. So we went to Antwerp.
–
But Belgium is a small place too and an hour later we had crossed the border without much ceremony. Once in Antwerp we exited the freeway following signs for “centrum” but landed in a nasty-looking part of town that reminded me of some ghetto in Moscow, even though I’ve never been there.
“I think it looks more like a ghetto in Warsaw,” Katie said, “but with more Turks.” Which was true. There were a shitload of Turks in that neighborhood.
When we found the center of Antwerp and sat for a beer it was still early. We gazed out at the grey facades, the trickling fountains and the scores of old people. The soft rain that was starting to come down didn’t help make the dreary main square of Antwerp any cheerier, even though it was “really nice.” But the beer was good.
After an hour Katie looked at me with a coy smile and said, “I wonder what Brussels looks like?” Other Katie tightened her lips and giggled and I knew I must’ve smiled too. So we continued to Brussels and after a fast night of Belgian beer and chocolate fondue pouring from fountains in the windows of chocolateries, we still managed to find a hostel in Brussels. Properly intoxicated and laughing our asses off constantly, we collapsed onto a couple of mattresses.
–
I had woken up with a Katie on either side of me, fully clothed and all limbs accounted for. With no imminent scandal and a ravenous hunger actively collapsing the structure of my stomach, I went downstairs to the free breakfast that that hostel offers. Also, I felt like reading some Ken Kesey, but having recently finished Sometimes a Great Notion I was willing to settle for The Electric Cool-Aid Acid Test.
At the breakfast in the youth hostel the next morning a tall kid with darkish skin and long dreadlocks approached my seat by the corner window, wanting to know where I was from.
“Brazil,” I answered instinctively, a response I’d memorized and trained to come out seamlessly such as to offer no hint of American-ness. A traveler’s answer. No American here, Mr. Traveling-man. Don’t hate me just because I speak English.
Sad, but true these days.
“Are you traveling around Belgium?” He inquired with a Mediterranean tan and a traveler’s beard. Greek, from the sound of it, except for the dark skin and the dreadlocks. I paused and gave my answer some thought because I felt it coming out before I had actually said it:
“No, I live in Amsterdam.” The words hit me much harder than they hit him. I didn’t pay much attention to the typical discussion that must’ve followed.
I live in Amsterdam.
Sweet Jesus, life is good. So many languages. So much desire. So much love to have and to give. An education to be envied. Opportunity at every door and they are either unlocked or smashed open, but always available. An iron will to succeed that is unrivaled. Developed talent coming out my ears. And then…
A travel bug in Paris.
An infection in New Zealand, spread by southeast Asia and Australia.
A full blown epidemic in London and Geneva that lead straight to freedom and then Amsterdam.
And now: Europe at my fingertips.
How did I ever get this far?
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Thunder and lightning in the darkness of Houston, site of my latest professional escapades…and I can’t sleep.
The AC is running mad in my Marriott room, a temporary abode that seems to spread across the country. Still, the covers are too thick and it feels as if someone lit a fire under the bed. I toss the bedspread around, looking for a pocket of cool air. I rotate the 16 pillows they put on the bed, looking for one where the heat has completely dissipated and I can rest my head on it without taking on more thermal energy.
I speculate that in the heart of this storm, the atmosphere is thicker and the humidity is too saturated to properly take heat from anything. The television has long been turned off and still I lie, awake. Hours go by and I am kept awake by the tune in my head, some annoying Norah Jones blues rift that I can’t remember hearing. I am also kept awake by the anxiety of the ever approaching dawn. I wrestle with the possibility that it’s too late to sleep — that I’m better off staying awake for another hour or two and then just going straight to work.
Wait. What? No…
Dammit.
Stuck in Houston is no place to be, not during any time of year. Particularly depressing is being here on the vernal equinox, the cusp of my birthday season. I hear the flowers are in full bloom but it’s not like I see the light of day from where I am. In here it’s a war room of nerds and executives that run the world with their corporate expense accounts. That and Texas freeways are empty, soul-less stretches of tollways and concrete that are 2nd to sucking only compared to the LA basin. They say nature abhors a vacuum but I’m still trying to figure out what this place is filled with besides empty hotel lots and corporate parks off of freeways that never made sense to anyone but the locals.
Luckily there are a lot of trees and the tex-mex isn’t all that bad here. Your stomach builds immunity to toxins more rapidly than you’d think and with the right amounts of bourbon in your gut, things are almost passable.
I exagerate, of course, readers. Things are not quite that grim. Plus: mileage!
The problem is that now, in the morning, I’m alone in the office. It’s not my office, you understand, but that doesn’t matter. For me, usually alone is a good place where sounds are not heard and new ones are invented. But today there are things to be done and dammit, I don’t want to do all this crap myself.
Where the hell is everybody?
At first I thought that what was keeping them all away was a combination of flu and hanta virus with a dash of anthrax, but no. Apparently all of my co-workers in this remote location just outside of north Houston are stuck, either in a holding pattern burning fuel at 10,000 ft or on a taxiway at the airport because all the computers at IAH are down.
I’m not talking down, like the printers don’t work or they can’t ping Google. I mean the tower is out. Gone. Struck by lightning and had anything with a computer chip in it simple fizzle and turn into a very expensive paper weight. They’re tagging luggage with pencil and paper.
Did you get that? Pencil and paper.
Am I getting through to you? I can’t imagine that a tower getting struck by lightning is a typical occurrence, but at least it warrants a contingency plan, no? And how are they communicating with the airplanes up at 10k? Carrier Pigeons? I heard a particularly loud CRACK this morning…I imagine that’s what a flock of pigeons being vaporized by the madness sounds like.
Needless to say, the day goes by far too slowly for pleasure. It’s bad enough to have Oracle database problems at 7 in the morning … but being alone to fix it is a stretch to ask of any man.
Shit. This madness is being thrust upon me but who cares? You don’t want to hear about it. But I must handle it.
And that’s validation, readers. We’re all seeking validation for the things we do, be it paying student loans, doing your job correctly, behaving as a part of some kind of society or some other form of growing up. We’re all seeking validation. People are fourteen-year-old teenagers who are either faking whatever maturity and control that they can get away with or else they simply don’t know any better. Either way, it’s all bullshit. There is no control unless you know it, just like there is no surrender unless you accept it.
… and ’round and ’round we go.
Headquarters, Tomball Parkway in Houston, TX — March 2007
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..Hey mr. tamborine man, play a song for me…
…aahh Bob — I have no room in my head for you at the moment; the winds howl for change in the depths of this new darkness, this new emptiness that clogs my beautiful night. Twisted fences sprout in my brain and rips thoughts like the barbs on the wire next to a stretch of rural road. Who knows what lies beyond them now?
The last few months have lacked anything resembling the required dose of regularity that it takes for me to even make sense of a situation, let alone write something compelling about it. Afflicted with a debilitating condition that involves not living close to work, I’ve had to commute over 300 miles a week just to get me to somewhere new enough to think clearly. I realize that this has spawned some entries that are wrought with simile and metaphor, none of which you have understood or made sense of. But it is what it is and I hope we can start to move forward again, now that I’ve fallen off my proverbial cliff, even if I occasionally find myself still falling. Don’t worry about me, though; I’ll be fine.
What I want to get to today is a plan. Like a count before you pull the trigger — you have to have a count — you know, for balance. And you should have expected this, reader, you really should have.
Don’t get me wrong; I separate many things. Nevertheless, it’s made it that much more refreshing to return to the screens of the internet on Monday morning to my readings: jcarrol, who I’ve read since Herb Caen passed on, that aging bastard who is always ten steps ahead of me, except when he isn’t. Morford, the sick, twisted hateomaniac who has yet to say something downright wrong. And Neva, my darling of the fruitful tongue, how I wait for the weekend to pass in order to love your words on Monday, or sometimes Tuesday when Monday passes too quickly. Who can tell us what will come of such things? Shall we stand by waiting for what the future brings? Or fear gifts from southern belles with wedding rings?
And those are just the Chronicle writers. I’ve still got a stack of books haunting me since christmas, including Fitzgerald, Kesey, Vonnegut and some new ones. No, in case you were wondering, not a soul had enough vision to get me more HST. Not a one. And maybe it’s for the best, since that guy has a way pushing me over some edge I can never see until it’s far, far too late.
In spite of this help I went out and got them myself; that’s how self-destructive I can be sometimes.
And the plan? Right. Let’s get back to that since it’s why we’re here tonight anyways. Quit fucking around and talk, man. The plan is and has always been about new horizons. That’s the gist of it, anyways. The city. Europe. Morocco. It doesn’t much matter. It just has to go somewhere. Too many schemes have died on the continental airlines page, looking for tickets out of here. It’s time for that shit to stop. Eventually it will drive me insane with self-doubt concerning my convictions. I have the incentive, the festering ideas that sit simmering on my mind while all the proteins denature. What I need is more drive. Something physical on which to strike my match.
Hold on. The wind is beginning to blow. You know what I’m talking about. Not ‘hold on’ as in ‘wait a sec’. HOLD ON!, as in GRAB ON TO SOMETHING AND GRIP IT TIGHT!
After so much time, it’s easy to forget how to hold on. But when you’ve gone through such times, you’ve gotta hold on; things are getting rough and it’s true that I’ve never weathered rougher times. But I will be forced to again, I’ve learned, so I may as well figure out how to do it right this first time. Things are getting black but I’ll see blacker so I may as well learn to lighten the mood, even in this darkness.
–
Ah, hell… I’m reading back over that and it’s true: I do a piss-poor job with the setting most of the time. And I shouldn’t — setting is important. You have to establish setting before you dive into the story. Sure, there are many ways to establish setting, so I’m not going to apologize, but I’m just sayin’.
Sometimes it’s not so much a matter of the place, but the situation in which one finds oneself…and it makes sense that you all don’t see it because you weren’t, you know, there. That’s why I’m here, I guess: to see to it that you see it.
Often - much more often than it probably should be - there is alcohol involved. These are usually strange kinds of scenes, filled with the kinds of people and the debauchery that folk where I’m from like to pretend don’t exist between the tunnel and the mountain.
But, on with the setting. I’ve found myself stuck in Orange County for a few weeks, which is so close to where they stuffed the carcass of the living breath of California that you can smell the decay from the shallow grave they rushed to dig. But no one came looking for the body. Not in these hills.
I didn’t realize how close to the edge of the desert I was. Somewhere in between LA and the vast Mojave, sitting on the border of two worlds with a case of Heineken that somebody’s expense account had paid for. It sounds cliche to say it but I was physically lost somewhere in the translation.
At one point in the night I found myself crouched against a wall behind some abandoned government building, huddled from the wind and overlooking a valley of strip malls and dim lights. I hugged my knees as the Santa Ana desert wind had its way with the dust. It’s not saddness that I feel at times like these; it’s closer to a deep curiosity of how the fuck I got there at all.
–
All around me was something worse than death: mediocrity. Apathy in the face of incoherency is mediocre, I don’t care what county you’re in. It shows, in casual conversations of politics, the ignorance of even obvious facts as opposed to the wishful thinking of the oblivious masses. If knowledge is power then America is lost. There’s nothing else we can do.
Earlier this week, stuck in SFO at red-eye time, I couldn’t read or write; I couldn’t focus properly because CNN was on and the lunacy was too much. I couldn’t handle the random people, the short-sighted conversations and all the commercial breaks in between. It’s beyond my abilities as a human being to put up with that level of bullshit and I may as well lose my ideas of any sort of future whatsoever. Sweeping amounts of luck will be required for things to work at this pace. And if history is any kind of indicator, we will rape everything decent long before anything good happens.
–
Back in the desert I looked around that old building in the moonlight, which I found was an old Greyhound terminal there at the edge of the desert, a place covered in age and asbestos and surrounding me were ghosts of absurd mustaches and People Magazines stretched all over everyone’s faces, covered in Britney Spears and Brad Pitt’s baby. I felt a violent urge to lose my breakfast when I consider what it means because suddenly, America’s problems seem too few given the conditions on the ground.
I stuck around the bus station long enough to lose the hope of having any at all and made my way back towards the hotel. Even then I knew that there was no explanation other than choice for why that evening had been spent alone. I walked on anyways.
Back at whatever Hilton the corporate travel agent had bunked me in that week I stumbled on steps I didn’t expect to find. Was I in LA still? Houston? Columbus? Kansas City? Orlando? Dallas? No not Dallas - why would I be in Dallas? I travel so much that if I don’t pay attention it all becomes a blur, especially if I drink too much - which I do. I’m pretty sure it was either Houston or LA, though.
In that horrible place, someone had managed to stick what must have been their idea of a palace. I groaned a heavy sigh as I approached a sculpted and molded gob of concrete, a cheesy hunk of bad taste in a land of tastelessness. Medieval steps and stone walls crowded the spacious room that was otherwise filled with light and music from the sad piano playing in the acoustic lobby by the granite-lined elevators. As I approached the music the headache that dominates my waking thoughts these days didn’t lift but it did loosen its hold, its grip. It was a window just long enough for me to enjoy the melancholy music from the depths of some desperate soul, playing for a crowd that wasn’t listening in the lobby of a Hilton palace, lost in the middle of the Los Angeles basin. Man, do I know what that feels like, I thought.
Sounds rushed into my ears like memories on a full-mooned night when no one is around. An idiot laughed absurd noises downstairs and I felt like tagging her across the jaw with a grapefruit from up on the upstairs loft, where I stood listening to the piano. She never said a word, just went on with her ridiculous noises while that old man playing the piano cried his heart out through his ivory souls…
All I needed was the grapefruit, or even a lime and a moment, but the citrus never presented itself and the moment passed just as surely as others have. With the ding of its arrival, I got into the elevator. It swallowed me whole and I emerged on the other side, much as I have been before, frustrated, confused, drunk, and alone.
When will it end, oh lord?
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Indeed, reader, indeed.
Interesting places have eluded me for some time now. I have been entrenched in São Paulo for the summer and I didn’t know how to get out. And just as I was plotting my escape I ran into an obstacle so cock-blockingly aggressive that I had no chance. My one hope was to sit through it, ride it out and hope for the best.
Really… it’s not my fault. The world cup was happening in Germany.
As the only country to have participated in every single world cup since the inception of the games in 1930, Brazil goes crazy no matter where it’s held. With games being held twice, sometimes three times a day, the gridlock of the city, the traffic of the Beast became intolerable. Every day at 11 in the morning and then again just after lunch, it didn’t matter who was going home or who was going to work, who was picking up their children or who was going grocery shopping…STAND BACK! Stay indoors at all costs lest you be caught in the whirlwinds of the streets of São Paulo during a world cup game. If you get stuck out there you won’t come home for 7 hours, and that’s when neither of the teams are good.
And if Brazil was playing, forget it. Don’t even bother getting out of bed unless you want to watch the game. Accomplishing anything else is impossible while the ball is in play.
Because it’s not about good. It’s about emotion, excitement. Soccer — or Futbol, for them — is about more than watching their team win. With such humble lives, sometimes that victory is the only one they’ll get all day.
I’m managing to find some balance to myself in this world of extremes. Expensive dinners and drinks with the boss, fancy hotels and a 12th story view have not turned me into an animal yet. Neither has life and all its unruly injustice and ostentatious flirting with the disaster that may be just around the corner. And how have I managed to do it? What have I needed to keep grounded in this elusive existence?
A weather eye on the horizon.
–
So it is that another unethical government program is thrown into the open, leaked, burst forth into the airwaves, or whatever you wanna call it. There’s nothing really new about this particular unethical government program; it shares all the same attributes as the others: hugging the edge of the legal blade, carefully researched and interpreted by the right minds and endorsed by the right faces, it shines into the heart of the ignorant as the tough choice - ergo, the right thing to do.
So it’s legal. Ok, so what?
No, really. So what?
It’s still wrong. It’s expensive. It’s immoral. It’s intrusive. Most importantly, it’s useless. The only thing different about this one is that Attorney General what’s-his-face is now slandering the media because they published national secrets. That’s a new twist, Mr. Gonzales, and bravo for going down a route where Satan gets a little finicky. You truly are the future of evil. And Dick: watch out for this kid; he’s coming for you and you may have to shoot him in the face.
Idiots. So far, nobody seems to give a damn, and that sucks for us. Who knows? What I do know is that it seems pretty silly to call something a national secret if you guard it so well that the New York Times can get their hands on it.
Think about it. What does the NYT want? Readers. An audience. Why? because it equals dollars. People who are out to hurt the US - assuming we need to refer to them as if they were some sort of organized group — will uncover the same shit. They have a much more profound je ne sais quoi… oh yeah, drive: they think they’re right.
Which is a powerful thing that we here haven’t really known in a while, probably since World War Two. It’s probably why they’re winning the so called struggle against extremism — and they are, they are…don’t kid yourself. The American Government is pathologically finding ways to come out with a good image, at least until the end of the current administration’s run. That’s their thing, as it were. Image. It equals those dollars we discussed earlier.
Even in the movies, most bad guys do what they do because in their own skewed view of reality, they were doing the right thing, at least for themselves. It’s true that they may not have followed their own arguments to the very ends of logic, but until wherever they got with it, they considered themselves justified. Foolish were the ones who wanted money and the real looneys were those guys that just wanted to take over the world because, well, what the hell does that mean, you know? Can you imagine the administrative hell that would be?
But we’re not dealing with only slightly twisted minds like Lex Luthor. That guy had a vision: real estate. Acquiring the property was just the means. The end goal was investment. Business. Growth. Power was just a consequence and killing off most of California was the price he felt justified his gain. I’m not going to convince him he’s wrong and that’s not just because I have a profound love affair with California.
But what we’re dealing with in the real world today is not a rogue mind bent on achieving a stated objective. There is no end solution for them. The means is the end, and we’re playing right into their game.
Which leads me to… Bush. Oh man. The man has no substance, and any of the arguments I have against his blatherings turn into rants without direction, sort of like arguing with a child. I think I’ve made my point to those of you smart enough to understand by now. To the rest of you…sorry. I’m just not really into sympathy for retarded decisions. Just don’t vote for the dumber or two evils next time you decide to take the time to do it. If you’re feeling particularly patriotic and you still want to ruin the world in a disastrous kind of way, feel free to exercise your right not to vote. We’ll all thank the stars that we live in a country which gives you that right.
While you’re at it, feel free to not reproduce either, and if it’s too late for that, consider letting others raise your kids. Move to Antarctica, where your air conditioning bill will decrease dramatically. I promise you that it will.
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Saturday started off as hectic as one would have expected when coordinating a trip between three families, only one of which is not loaded with the burden… err, blessing, I should say — of children under 6. It’s a goddamn miracle we arrived at the lovely little beach town of Cambury before 1 pm. A goddamn miracle.
Speaking of which, the boys and I were quite the fools back in the day when we traveled to Guarujá and payed a hundred Reais to squeeze into the maid’s room at the hotel for a weekend. Had we continued another hour north we would have found it well worth our troubles and adventures to be lost in the thickest of jungles of the Mata Atlantica bordering the nicest beach town yet.
Such is the folly of youth, I suppose.
Often times it happens that the universe is not cooperative and decides to turn things against one’s every whim. Sometimes though - sometimes the universe gets creative and events conspire to turn your way. I feel, friends, that this weekend was one such time.
I had every intention of spending the weekend surfing as much as possible on my birthday budget, though renting boards in Brazil is getting more and more expensive every time I’m here. I never really considered just chilling on the beach…I never really understood why people do that when there’s so much more to do.
But the universe conspired, remember, and all was set on track.
–
On arrival at our pretty little pousada, I went around back to explore the joint and its surrounding foliage, which is ample and thick, just the way I like it. I can only imagine what people must think seeing a white dude with long hair, an obviously-foreign look about him and poking around a maintenance area that has barely any room between it and the jungle. Suspicions of mischief must overload their minds.
Whatever their fears, they stayed away, and I am thankful for that. With few exceptions, in a place like this I’m pretty much anti-people.
While exploring I found an old dude with white hair and very short shorts waxing a surfboard with a grin on his face that could fit a kitten.
“Alex,” he introduced himself, reaching over his wooden board to shake my hand. I took it.
Alex worked as a real-estate agent in Campinas and also ran a welding supply company. I think that’s what it was. I might have lost some of that in the translation.
“Are you in the pousada for long,” he asked me.
“Nah, just the weekend. Hope to get some surfing done.”
“Good,” he said. “This is the place to do it. Rodrigo runs a very nice pousada here - plenty of space to move around and everyone leaves you alone. My wife and I don’t go anywhere else in this state.”
“Wonderful,” I said. “That’s exactly what I’ll need this weekend.”
I asked him what the going rate was for board-rental in the area. It varies so much, I’d found, on other beaches, and the tooth picker and dick dragging locals usually don’t know shit about that kind of thing.
“Why the hell would you rent a board?” He asked. “I’ve got 5 in that closet behind you.”
I looked at him in mild disbelief, waiting for him to tell me how much he was going to charge me for his boards. But it never came.
“I won’t lend you this one because I just got it and want to try it out. It’s a big board too, shaped by a guy in San Luis Obispo in California. Great surf out there!”
“I know,” I said, hiding my smile, “I’ve heard.” That was no time to show off.
So he gave me his long board and I headed for the sand, to beach where the waves were plentiful, fast, well-formed and over sandbars, not rocks or a reef. Sand is better than stones or coral in a situation like this where you’re surfing in a Speedo.
–
Later that evening, surfed out and tanked on a clear liquor that Alex had served up for me, I joined him and his wife, Amparo, in a conversation with the funny little man who owns the pousada, Rodrigo.
Amparo was a short, black-haired woman with the body of a 25 year-old but the sullenness of a woman 15 years her senior. She was the quiet type and we didn’t hear much from her throughout the night, but her exotic beauty complimented her stern appearance and she wore her age well.
Rodrigo, we quickly discovered, an Anarchist. How about that? I don’t think I’ve ever met one before. Alex mentioned that he becomes more anarchistic the more drunk he is but at this point he was pretty far gone and he really wanted government out.
“What Brazil is needs,” he stumbled, “isn’t fairness or fewer taxes or health care. We need to do what the Americans are doing! Terrorism!”
I leaned back on the couch. Alex rolled his eyes. Amparo said nothing.
“Look at how much unity it’s inspired in them. We need more terrorism in this country.”
“So why don’t you do something about it, you freak?” Alex said pointedly, clearly probing his friend’s inebriation.
“I don’t think you realize what it takes to have good terrorists bother you,” I told him, very casually. “You have to work at it. You think it was easy pissing off enough people in the right way?”
Alex and Rodrigo looked at me with confusion on their faces.
“You boys need more insight into the stealing that goes on the government. There’s too much hiding behind legislation and phony back offices in the Brazilian Government. If you’re going to have an anarchistic revolt full of terror and senseless violence, you have to get people there. You have to steal out in the open, lie to the people directly, in the press conferences, to their faces, and look comfortable doing it full of disdain for the law and with a middle finger out of the public. The only other way to do it is to invade enough middle eastern countries, but you don’t have the organization for that.”
They seemed satisfied with this advice and mulled over it for the rest of the night but I got bored of festering unrest. It started to get disgusting when another idiot joined their conversation and really jammed a log under their fire. He spoke of military occupation and oppression of free thought as if it were the only solution, a polar opposite to our inn-keeper, Rodrigo.
“Sometimes,” he said, “the only solution is to wipe out the trouble makers. Get rid of that scum.” Everyone looked aghast. I don’t think any of them had ever met so much as a neocon, let alone a tyrannical lunatic.
Their arguments ensued, mostly civilized, and mostly because Rodrigo passed out on the table a few minutes into it. I took the opportunity to sneak off elsewhere, to a place where the anarchists aren’t yet looming, but neither are the neocons, the armies of Jesus, or the Nazis. Fuck, man, I don’t need that on a weekend.
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