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Halberds and Pork Rinds

It is not a secret, but it happens just the same. Little ticket-stub people, mopping floors and counters, driving taxi cabs, serving drinks, carrying boxes. They are somehow invincible. If they lose a job, they go back to their small room, drink a bit of wine or a six-pack in the company of their small table or family. The next morning, they get up and sit by the window for a while. Still invincible. A job would be better, but… life will go on, as always. There will be other jobs, there will always be a way to eat, to get something to drink, to keep a roof overhead. If you live in a country where the culture-current is strong, you can make it compadre. I pause for a moment to sip some bottled water. The memory from earlier comes to mind of a fellow telling me in broken English but a nonetheless matter-of-fact tone that he sells drugs for a living. 'Narcoticos, si?' And with his thumb and index finger pinched together he traces a line between his nose and the table, back and forth. I raise my eyebrows and nod, but say nothing. 'You?' he says, motioning again with his thumb and index finger. 'No, gracias.' Not two minutes later the waitress is wolf-whistling to me. She is fat, 30-plus, smiling and curling in her finger at me. I look at her face and it is pretty enough, but fat like the rest of her. I look back at the drug dealer and he motions with his hand, 'Vamos!' I get up and sit on the barstool next to hers. She takes my hand and pulls it in toward her vagina. My fingers remain still. I will, I feel certain, never see these people ever again. I pull my hand away. I am just sitting there. The drug dealer, who is maybe a bit younger than I am (28), says it is 50 pesos to go with her. I start to consider the conversion rate, but quickly snap out of it. 'No' translates pretty easily. I sit there. There is a drunk fellow on the other side of the bar. When I make eye contact, he starts nodding vigorously, raising two fists in the air and pulling them into sides repeatedly. I feel violated, like I sort of helped him get off. Beer in one hand, remote in the other, leaning back in his chair and the porno credits start rolling… I leave the bar stool and go back to my beer, drinking faster now. At the door, I spin on my heel and shout, 'Adios, Cabrones!' They cheer and raise their beers to me. I walk out and into a hot Tuesday afternoon.

If you live in the U.S. and are unemployed, it is Fuck you/Fuck off/You fucking loser/Get the fuck away from me/And by the way fuck you. By the same token, sympathy is an overwhelmingly subtle humiliation. You become a busted car on the highway, engaging the curiosity of miles of slow motorists. They delight in seeing that trouble has avoided them, finally, and after burrowing their asses deeper into their car seats, they accelerate away. Victory is hard to come by. The highs are too high because the lows are too low. And yet there is nothing that will ever occur to you as being a bigger let down than watching two brothers getting coked up together. Or waiting trash thrown out of a car stopped at a light. Or seeing 14-year-old girls being taken upstairs by 27-year-old men. Older women who feel obligated to explain their individual 'rules' concerning their drinking and smoking while hovering over a shot glass and full ashtray. Cockroaches on the bathroom floor, with their antennae waving over the small white tiles. A 77-year-old man who is so drunk that he cannot speak intelligibly or control his bladder, as is evident by the dark spot around the crotch of his jeans, down the leg and of course that warm smell hovering in the air in front of his bloodshot eyes, unable to focus.

And bullfighting.

I will tell you this: I am sure that the masses will tell me that there are so many nuances and subtleties to bullfighting that I will never understand or appreciate. And that I should not degrade or write off or make fun of another culture. ('Dave, how do you know you won't like it if you haven't even tried it, ya fucking ignoramus?') I watched, watched the drama unfold. Yes, there is a one ton mass of muscle topped with horns loose on the fairgrounds… But I'm not so sure it takes guts to stand in there, just nerve. Why? Give ME a sword and five other guys armed with the same and believe me the bull will have almost no chance. Give me five guys to tire it out and stick it with swords in a concerted attack and let it bleed out for a good hour, and give me one more guy on horseback, armed with a pike to drive a hole in its back so that when I finally stroll out, it can run at ¼ speed at best and I will, after much strutting and cape-waving, slide my sword into that same pike-hole in the bull's back and take all the credit as the poor bastard, now weak from the toils of panic and loss of blood, sinks to its knees at my feet. It will be a slaughter. It is a slaughter. I root for the bull. In the last moments, the bull's back and neck are bleeding freely, with large, ribboned pins stuck in. Its gigantic lungs are burning as its ribcage expands rapidly with huge, trembling pulls. Blood flies up and out of open wounds as it thrashes against death. The blood splatters into the air and falls into the dust.

Matadors are tough-guys who garner no respect. The whole thing is a set-up. It looks like the Disney version of the real thing. Those pieces of shit, so snobby in their fucking gold-sequined tight pants and shoulder-wide jackets. It is gross. I root for the bulls. Poor simple-minded bastards, charging capes, stabbed, loping around the grounds with a bewildered expression. It is not a merciful death. Even the final death-stab, a cheap shot, goes into a pre-made hole. Watch as a dying bull, an animal used in mythologies as a symbol of strength, charges at a man with a cape, standing there with all the grit of Liberace. I mean, if the guy did it alone, well, that would be something. But this is certainly not the case. I am inclined to say that it is a humiliating death, but it cannot be that. But even a bull can feel when it is dying. ('Even a puppy knows when it is being carried to a pond to be drowned.' (H. Miller)). I sense a much larger violation. C'mon, do you really think the guy would just stand there when a bull comes rip-roaring out of the gate? Of course not- he knows that a little flutter of the cape and shuffling in the dirt with his shiny, thin-soled shoes is all it takes at this point. Really, the goddamn thing is so decimated at this point that what the matador does is ceremonial. Hey bro, you better hurry up, the bull's just about ready to kick the bucket. And then a humiliatingly gentle slide-push of the sword, with a p.s.i. similar to that of a falling canary feather. These are the types who will talk shit all night because they have twelve or some of their buddies to back them up. Get him, men! And bring me back a Zima on your way back… Their feet barely touch the ground. They are teed up, shoulder-wide and trim at the hip, complete with Mickey Mouse hat. And I see them, ready to be launched into a thousand pieces. I will do it…

A crescendo builds, louder and louder until it happens and there is a flash of blood and gold sequins everywhere as the masses of people raise their beer-stained mouths to the air.

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