I went for a drive today. It wasn’t very adventurous, I’ll admit, as I sat, drowned in my music while the noonday traffic blared outside. Cars went bumper to bumper, metal nearly grinding against metal, my vehicle wrestling with others as I fought my way to the exit lane. Perhaps the effort wasn’t worth it but damn it, I needed a good handle of whisky because I knew exactly the toll my week would take on the ever fracturing psyche of this man who, possessing a thousand thoughts, needed a substance that would reduce that thousand to, at maximum, a hundred.
Wheeling off, I passed through the parking lot of a local strip mall. A garish yellow sign hung above the entryway as I sailed along, its large, glittering words screaming “FIESTA” and, in smaller worlds, “bodega”. My car jolted into its parking spot and, stepping into the afternoon light, the sun filtering through hazy skies, I heard the conversations of a couple as, like two ships meeting in the night, they signaled the each and drew close. “Hola amiga. Como estas?” “Bien, y tu?” “Muy bien, gracias, pero…”
In my thirst and irritation at the traffic, I grumbled at the happiness of these friends, shaking my head as I guided my steps to the pavement leading away from the Fiesta. What sheer gall, what grand sense of entitlement, that these two would deign to be happy while I, in my misery, simply searched out the nearest vendor of that ever estimable drink, Jack Daniels. I can assure you it was no small relief when my phone lit up. The cell phone, God’s great gift to mankind, ever assuring us that we will never be entirely alone even when we are lying down to sleep in our concrete homes, isolated in iceboxes decorated with a few posters and the ever glowing comfort of the television?
“Bonjour. Como tale vu?” I joked, feigning with the barest elements of a language being forced upon me by my doctoral studies, though I had to admit having taken a shining to the sound of what small morsels I could summon to my tongue. My friend, her voice full of pain and the anguish known only by a woman needing an emergency fix to her nails, asked where I was. Where was I? Where was I? Why, in the oasis of a concrete desert while armies of vehicles marched on to destination unknown. That’s where I was, and gods have mercy if I knew where there was a place to have her nails done.
Of course serendipity still makes her august presence felt even in the cool of February and, my eyes drifting upward to the sign above me, I blinked twice at what could only be divine grace. Diva Nails? My friend being all the signs of a diva, I assured her there was a place, in the midst of the warfare being waged on the highways, where she could find her respite. Quickly poking my head inside, I saw the faces of short women, their light skin, thin hair and spritely bodies dashing about. The chatter within was indiscernible to my outsider’s ears and, conferring this to my friend, she gave me the only response that was apparently required.
“You don’t speak nail salon. I’m heading over there.”
Fine, I agreed, but my own insatiable craving demanded my attention in the meanwhile. I nodded a goodbye to the short women, whose native tongue still scattered through the air in threads I could not hope to unravel, but whose prices were in the language spoken by all Americans. The numbers seemed fair and, satisfied, I continued my ever quickening jaunt down the street. A group of young men stood around, heads capped and well dressed. I nodded as I passed, the one greeting me with “As-salamu-alaikum”. I waved a return and with all the grace of a limping ostrich I returned “Wa-alaikum-assalam”. However, my attempt at the return seemed to be more than be satisfactory and, with a bow of his head and an ivory smile that gleamed in the sun, he turned to his fellows.
Huffing, I finally entered my church, its walls lined with glittering bottles of black, blue, brown and white. They sat in all manor of arrangements, bottles, labels and wrappings, like a child’s Christmas changed by the passing of time until it was deemed fit by Old Saint Nicholas as becoming of an adult. With more than a pop in my step I snatched the nearest bottle from its stand, skittered with the energetic frenzy known only by bees at the sniff of pollen, and arrived at the altar of my consumption. Giving my tithes, I was blessed by a glittering bottle in an exchange older than the American society and, prepared once more for my week, I burst from the door, ready to do battle with the armies of afternoon traffic.
The next night I, as millions of others did, watched the Superbowl. There was an apparent uproar among some about a Coca Cola commercial. Apparently some had trouble with the use of many languages and cultures. As I drank on my whiskey, I couldn’t help but laugh and ask why.