Fear and Loathing in Madrid

Europe in spring and early summer is overrun with young backpackers wandering from youth festival to youth festival in a complex and time-honored mating ritual that is particularly favored among the northerners who hadn't seen the sun in months.

Beaches around the Mediterranean filled to bursting with pale nude and half-nude bodies worshipping the Sun. Couples copulated in the surf of Corfu. Bare-breasted women strut across the sands of San Tropez, seeking that ultimate uninterrupted shade of roasted chicken. Men tended the beach fires of La Concha surmounted by vast platters of paella in the hopes of attracting those roasted chickens.

Being a red head who had just spent the past year in Dublin, my skin was indistinguishable from my white t-shirt.

The custom among backpackers was to trade books at campsites – an antiquated ritual now largely replaced by dumbphones – while trading war stories of the road and hard-learned tips for survival, like the location of cheap laundromats and ways to cheat the Eurail system.

I had learned that train trips over 8 hours long were a viable alternative to paying for accommodations. The five bucks saved on youth hostels could be leveraged into a pretty darned good sandwich and a bottle of cheap beer or wine, depending on the latitude.

It was during this leg of my journey that I was introduced to such great works of Western literature as The Women's Room, The Other Side of Midnight and The Way to Dusty Death. I occasionally lucked into the rare bit of Poe or Kant, but for the most part my reading list was uninspired and uninspiring.

It was mid-April and I was en route to Spain, along with hordes of pasty-looking Brits and Germans. I mostly wanted to experience the brand-new French TGV, but also because I had grown weary of the French animosity toward Anglophones. I spoke fluent Spanish and wanted to go to some country where I could communicate effectively without being spat at.

Once settled into relative luxury aboard the bullet train, I watched the greening French countryside slide past at mind-numbing speed. The ride was so smooth compared to other trains on the continent that I imagined a doctor could perform emergency surgery on the ample tables, with a bottle of red table wine for anesthetic.

The TGV came to a nearly imperceptible halt at the northern foot of the Pyrenees Mountains, where one had to board a coal-burning relic of a previous century for the arduous crossing. It was disorienting to step down from the rail equivalent of Emirate Airlines, and step up into something out of a Zane Grey dime-store novel.

Imagine the Hogwart's train after 20 years of ill-repair. The wood used to finish out the interior had petrified in place. Each car had a line of 4-person cabins lining one side and a narrow walkway down the other. You could not pass another person in the walkway without one of you having to duck into one of the cabins, allowing the other to go by.

Unable to navigate the path to a cabin with my pack on, I carried the 20-kilo mass in front on me, weaving and dodging boisterous youths excitedly detailing their plans for the beaches of Pechon or Niembru. Being of exceedingly fair skin, I shared neither their enthusiasm nor their destinations.

Instead, my sites were set on the broad avenudos of Madrid, and the curious blend of Mediterranean and Moorish cultures. I much preferred the darkened and air-conditioned interiors of museums to the 10- to 15-minute stints I could safely enjoy on a beach.

The antiquated conveyance on which I found myself lurched several times as I was hoisting my oversized pack up to the overhead rack. I was nearly thrown into the lap of a beautiful German girl. She looked the very stereotype of Nordic idealism – sandy blond hair, square jaw, ample breasts, and a body chiseled by the uber-healthy German outdoor lifestyle.

I sat down by the window and across from the vision of self-sufficient femininity. After a moment, a man of about my age entered, swung his pack up, and then sat next me. He was a swarthy fellow with neatly groomed beard, pressed khaki pants and a polo shirt – not the look of one on a journey, but rather on holiday.

The train was full to overflowing, and six of us backpackers crammed ourselves into the cabin (did I mention they were designed for 4?).

The train slammed into gear and groaned under the stress of yet one more trip across the mountains. Clouds of thick, black smoke wafted past the window as we slowly gained momentum. I could hear the locomotive chugging like something out of an old Western and the train began to move faster than the folks walking on the platform.

The sounds of grinding metal rippled down the length of the train as it jumped and paused between each cycle of the pistons. In the cabin, we riveted our attention on the overhead racks, nervously waiting for one of the packs to leap down on us like a hungry panther.

As the train began to hit its stride, my seatmate turned to me and asked, "You speak English?"

I immediately recognized the accent. "Yes," I replied, "And Texan too."

He flashed a broad grin and stuck out his hand. "Tim," he said, "From Waco. Damned glad to finally meet another Texan. Been a while."

I agreed and took his hand. "Bernard," I replied, "From Houston. How'd you end up in this predicament?"

Tim explained that he was living in Madrid as the personal English tutor for a wealthy family. He was studying literature at Baylor University, particularly Spanish and Mexican poetry, and had taken a semester off to immerse himself in the culture. The family was vacationing in Greece for a couple of weeks, so he had gone on walk-about.

The German girl had become interested in our conversation and Tim and I entered a friendly competition for her attention. At one point, she stepped out of the cabin to find the toilet, so we decided a stretch couldn't hurt.

Along the outer edge of the walkway was a gutter, of sorts. In this gutter, urine from the sloshing and overflowing toilets ran first one way going uphill, then the other going down. Given the copious amounts of beer and wine being consumed by the hordes, this trough slowly grew to a raging river. Many of the hordes had given up on queueing for the toilets and had taken to relieving themselves directly into the gutter, thus never straying too far or too long from their supply of alcohol.

In an adjoining car, paper boat races had drawn feverish gamblers looking for a windfall. Origami vessels of every description plied standing waves of piss down the length of the car, with explosive cheers and jeers erupting every so often, as winners collected from losers.

When the German girl eventually returned, Tim and I decided it was time for lunch, and we retook our places in the cramped quarters.

Everyone has a comfort food, something that unleashes floods of warm, syrupy memories in times when one feels most isolated from the familiar. Peanut butter is mine. Don't ask why, I have never examined the phenomenon that closely. What I do know is when Tim produced some, the very sight of that squeeze tube full of glorious, sacred peanut butter was an emotional experience I still vividly remember. It was not easy to come by in Europe in those days.

We became instant friends, partly because I had La Vache Qui Rit cheese with olives, a few precious slices of luncheon (mystery) meat and a baguette, while Tim had an object of faith around which I might have built a religion at that moment. He offered a generous dollop of his treasure in exchange for a share of my rations, and the match was consummated.

We had boarded the train at nine in the morning and were scheduled to arrive at the southern foot of the mountains around 8 hours later. With full belly and a pint of black beer in me, I settled in for a long nap.

At some point, I woke to see a glorious mountain vista out the grimy window. Eager to experience the fresh mountain air, I slid the window open, only to flood the over-stuffed cabin with clouds of black coal smoke.

I slammed the window shut as my compatriots awoke gagging while feeling for the door handle, blinded by tears from the acrid fumes.

When I had recovered a bit and lived down the slanderous comments in the cabin, I took a crumpled pack of Gauloise from my sock and carefully removed a barely integrated filterless cigarette from it. Tim and I stepped into the fetid swamp of the walk-way and shared the foul-tasting French tobacco and a laugh, making notes on the experience for the next camp consortium on survival tips.

After a time, we returned to the sardine pit, having confirmed that our cramped and numb limbs were still attached and functioning.

The subject in the room had turned to books, as it always did. A Swede, a German, two Spaniards and two Texans got down to the complicated ritual of swapping our libraries. I don't recall what I had to offer, but it attracted the German girl's attention, and the book she offered attracted Tim's, who in turn gave me a tome that would change the course of my life.

Up to that point, I had lived a fairly sheltered life. I was blissfully unaware of Gonzo journalism and this guy – Hunter S. Thompson, peering at me from the liner notes, with aviator glasses and a foot-long cigarette holder clenched between thin lips. He looked vaguely dangerous, and thankfully I had no idea just how dangerous.

Despite my naiveté, I had already had my weltanschauung warped by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s Breakfast of Champions (another profound moment in my life), and Tom Robbins' genre-rattling Another Roadside Attraction. Between them, I had been weaned off of safe novels, but I was ill-prepared for the ride I was about to take.

Tim said that if I liked Vonnegut and Robbins, I would love this book. I curse him to this day for that statement.

I took it on faith from my fellow Texan and student of literature, and dutifully stashed the book in my pack. Attractive German girls were far more appealing at the moment.

By the bye, we survived the passage to Espania and disembarked in the sleepy village of Pasai Donibane. Had I not been blinded by German girls, I would have been dazzled by the 16th century time warp I had stepped into.

Instead, Tim and I quickly boarded the waiting train across the platform. We were crushed to see the German girl take off down the platform looking for an eastbound car. After checking the route posted next to the door to confirm it would stop in Madrid, we entered and settled into a somewhat more comfortable cabin. At least the benches were covered with worn cloth and the diesel locomotive might allow us a slight breeze in the unairconditioned cabin.

The train eventually slammed to a halt at the Estación del Arte, dead center in Madrid. We emerged onto the platform and sized up the lay of the land. The station was a cavernous monument to 1920s iron mongers. It had the flavor of long-faded opulence and the echoes of voices like ghosts imploring us to note their passing. The soaring walls were set with thousands of panes of glass, through which streamed dirty shafts of blazing sunlight seeking shadows in which to hide from the heat.

Tim and I were both experienced enough travelers that we could spot the hucksters lurking at the terminal exits, like salivating flies about to pounce of rotting garbage.

Tim took point and I covered the 6, as we wended our way like drunken ballarinos through the clouds of shady taxi offers and suspiciously solicitous tourist aides. They called to us in a half-dozen languages, trying to catch which ones we would react to. Being well practiced at running this gauntlet, we picked a target exit and avoided eye contact at all costs.

We emerged victorious into the blazing sun of midday Spain. Breathing in the thick, dusty air was like sticking one's head into a heated oven after running a marathon. There didn't seem to be enough air to sustain life, and what was available was painfully hot to inhale.

During one of the customary campsite symposia, I had received a recommendation to use the Alfred hostel roughly 150 meters from the station. The walk was brutal and we arrived soaked with sweat and sporting a shade of crimson previously unreported in our species.

My eyes stung from the salt and I could barely make out details inside. It took several minutes to adapt to the gloom in the lobby, but eventually tables of lounging packers emerged and I caught sight of the registration desk at the far end.

We paid 5 nights in advance and were given a key to our footlockers, attached by wire to a large, heavy washer. We hauled our carcasses up the stairs to the bunk room, stuffed our worldly possessions into the provided foot lockers and made a bee-line for the showers on the next floor up.

Never, in all of recorded history, did a cold shower feel so welcome.

It was late afternoon by the time we once again resembled civilized humans. As is the custom in Spanish culture, the entire nation had shut down for siesta. The only movement on the streets was the relentless mirages hovering over baking cobblestones. I could feel the heat building on the bottoms of my feet, even through the thick rubber soles of my hiking boots. Decked out in our finest cotton shorts and t-shirts, Tim and I struck out across the urban desert in search of life on this forbidding planet.

As luck would have it, there was a tavern a short walk from the hostel that stayed open, primarily preying on journeyers who were unused to a relaxed lifestyle. Tim and I quickly became regulars, bringing our books and ordering copious amounts of lukewarm cervesa to while away the lugubrious afternoons.

No more than three pages into the well-worn copy of The Great Shark Hunt, I was hooked.

Here was a journalist, a profession I associated with the sedate visage of Walter Cronkite, being sent to the Kentucky Derby, the Superbowl and political conventions, and never actually making it to any of the assigned events.

Instead, he and his Samoan lawyer sidekick were transporting suitcases full of booze, pills and weed, and trashing hotel rooms during paranoid hallucinations of bats and narcs, while occasionally watching moments of the events on television – at least until the TV was shot dead and/or launched out the window.

I gobbled down the yellowing pulp like Mother's Milk, while single-handedly expanding the market share of Estrella Galicia one liter at a time. I went on beer-fueled flights of fancy, imagining myself to be the new generation of Gonzo.

I vaguely recall one such day sitting down at around 2 in the afternoon and being asked to go home at closing time some 12 hours later. I can only blame Hunter for part of that. Beautiful German girls take the rest.

During the week that Tim and I wandered around Madrid, discussing the finer points of Thomspson's symbolism and choices of intoxicants, we stumbled onto a medieval castle looking wildly out of place where it stood. The massive wooden doors were slightly ajar. There was just enough room for us to sidle into the empty courtyard.

Looking around, I half expected Rod Serling to appear and set the plot for an episode of time-traveling mystery.

Tim, being still partially tourist, took out his camera and began snapping away. I, being a veteran journeyer by this time, began committing various still images to my long-term memory.

Besides, my camera had been stolen by Arab drug dealers in Morocco, but that's another story.

The castle was straight out of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler. The ramparts were ringed with walkways protected by balustrades inside and out. There was an empty guard shack to one side of the enormous doors. Several other small buildings were scattered around the walls – one or two might have been stables or carriage houses. At the far end, a larger building of two or three floors and a semi-circular façade offered clear views of the entire interior. In the center was a broad open courtyard paved with pea gravel and looking well-trodden, but with no signs of current life.

Tim and I stared at each other in disbelief. We had stumbled into a tourist trap with no tourists and apparently no traps.

I don't know how long we stood there, but it couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes. Tim was happily snapping away, while I scanned the scene into memory.

As if from the air itself, Tim and I both heard the unmistakable sound (to any Texan) of a hammer being pulled back. Michelangelo would have been inspired by our poses as we froze solid in mid-action.

There was an ominous crunching sound of heavy boots walking slowly and deliberately across the gravel, approaching us from behind. It seemed impossible that we didn't hear someone come up behind us, but my mind was otherwise occupied and that detail seemed unimportant at that moment.

As we stood there gripped with fear and sweating like a glass of iced tea, a man in the uniform of a guardia civil strolled at a determined pace around in front of us. He was about six feet tall, wearing impenetrable aviator glasses and sporting a foot-long cigarette holder clenched in his brown teeth. More importantly, he had a shiny silver .45 caliber pistol leveled directly at us.

At that precise moment, Tim and I simultaneously decided it was an opportune time to burst into hysterical laughter. Within seconds, tears were streaming down our faces, as a bizarre mixture of terror and irony tightened its grip on our funny bones. Though one of the most terrifying sights in all of post-Fascist Spain was yelling at us and waving a pistol, locked and loaded, in our faces, we couldn't stop laughing. Trying only made it worse.

As anyone who knows Thompson will tell you, having a man in Fascist uniform, who looks like Hunter Thompson waving a gun in your face and yelling incomprehensibly in Spanish only served to push us further to our certain doom, laughing uncontrollably every step of the way.

As I write this, I am stroking the scar on my left temple where the generalissimo struck me with the gun sight at the business end of his cocked and loaded .45-caliber pistol. The warm, sticky sensation sliding down the side of my face sobered me up, but only slightly. I still had a powerful feeling of someone poking my long thoracic nerve, causing my abdomen to convulse involuntarily.

I held my hand up...slowly. "Wait, wait," I pleaded. "May I show you something?"

He appeared to gaze intently at me, though it was impossible to tell behind the limousine-tinted aviator glasses. He might have been sizing me up for a coffin, as anything else.

"What is it?" he demanded.

"A book…here in my pack. I think you will understand when you see it," I said in a voice trembling with an insane combination of terror and fresh paroxysms of laughter. I gingerly indicated the day pack on my shoulder.

The generalissimo yanked the day pack from me and tossed it to a subordinate who had mysteriously appeared at his side, while the pistol never strayed far from my coronal artery.

The subordinate opened the bag, looked inside, then reached in and pulled out the slowly disintegrating copy of The Great Shark Hunt. He showed it to the generalissimo, who glanced quickly at it then back at us.

So what?" he growled like a pit bull on crack.

At that moment, I could tell the subordinate had seen the image on the back of the book. His face almost imperceptibly smirked, but he quickly suppressed it.

"Turn it around, please," I said to the vaguely nervous subordinate. He flipped the book over.

For what may have been one of the shortest intervals of time known to science, the generalissimo looked puzzled, maybe even shocked. He snatched the book, thankfully dropping the ugly end of his pistol down to the ground. He flipped the book over several times and stared silently at the image on the back cover for several powerful thumps of my heart.

"Who is this?" he demanded, as he thrust the back of the book towards Tim and me. From our perspective, there on the left was a mean, nasty, armed holdover from Spain's Fascist past, and on the right was Hunter S. Thompson's visage staring at us from the liner notes. The two of them were almost identically posed.

Tim tried so hard to stifle a guffaw that he blew a week's worth of snot down the front of his face and shirt. I was on the verge of fainting, working so hard to strangle a fresh wave of hysteria while standing in Madrid's legendary heat.

There are moments in life when one is aware of every electro-chemical transaction in one's body. This was one of them.

"His name is Hunter Thompson," I managed. "He is a famous American writer." A week before, I wouldn't have known who Thompson was, but I figured the "famous" part couldn't hurt and might stroke the generalissimo's ego a bit.

The generalissimo turned the book around again and stared at the image. After a moment, he tossed the book at the subordinate, who grappled with it then shoved it back in the bag. He rummaged around a bit more and took out my passport. He opened it and held it up for the the boss to see.

The generalissimo gazed briefly at it, then grunted and mumbled, "Americanos."

After a moment's pause, he looked at us again. "What are you doing here?"

"We were walking around and saw this castle. The gate was open, so we came in to look around," Tim said in flawless Spanish through strands of drying snot – he hadn't moved his hands throughout this entire exchange, preferring to look ridiculous to the implied alternative.

The generalissimo barked something at the subordinate having to do with puerta and abierta. The subordinate stuffed my passport back in the bag and tossed it on the ground, then ran off towards the entrance where we had come in, and well out of our fixed gazes.

The generalissimo appeared to glance over our shoulders at the subordinate, though it was hard to tell behind the inscrutable eyewear. After a moment, he released the hammer and holstered his pistol. He stepped forward and took the camera from Tim's hands. He fumbled with it for a moment, then opened the camera and pulled the film out, exposing its entire length, which he threw on the ground. He tossed the camera back to Tim and motioned for me to pick up my bag.

Silently, he waved dismissively towards the massive wooden doors. We stood motionless for a moment, afraid to move and craving to run.

"Go," he barked.

We backed up slowly, then turned to exit. It was then that we saw the six or seven guardia with MP-5 submachine guns at the ready and arrayed behind us.

We didn't stop running till we were back at our tavern. We breathlessly told the tale to our fellow travelers, who plied us with free beer until the story became heavily embellished with each iteration.

At some point that night, we had engaged in hand-to-hand combat and the cut on my temple was a close encounter with hot lead. If it hadn't been for my lightning reflexes, I would have caught that bullet square in the forehead.

And through it all, the crust of snot on Tim's beard remained fully intact and evolved into a badge of meritorious service in the war against Fascism, having been unleashed by the severe torture he had undergone.

We drank lavishly the rest of that day, and tossed uneasily that night, while visions of bats and narcs danced in our heads.

"And that, sir, is how you nearly got me killed, and saved my life at the same time."

A decade later and thousands of miles away in the dressing room of the Tower theater in Houston, Thompson sat motionless and stared at me for what seemed like a coon's age. The only thing I could see in his face was my own reflection in the lenses of his black aviator's glasses.

Suddenly, he thrust his ever-present bottle of Chivas at me and said, "Drink.'

I took one of the many shot glasses from the dressing room table and poured out a healthy serving, while Thompson fished out a miniature butane blow torch and lit his cigarette. The "No Smoking" sign on the wall behind him framed his head like a perverse halo.

I held up my glass in salute and he snatched the bottle from me. He waggled it in my general direction while muttering something that sounded like, "Damn good thing you had my book."

I tossed back my shot and he took a long, soulful swig off the bottle. Just then, his driver appeared at the door, ready to deliver him back to his hotel.

I stood and Thompson waved me towards him. He grabbed my arm and pulled himself out of the chair. Once erect, he seemed able to navigate himself. He swerved towards the door, then paused and half turned back to me.

"Good story. Maybe I'll use it," he mumbled, then turned and vanished into the darkened corridor, leaving a swirl of blue-gray smoke in his wake that lingered like a thought, then scurried after him.