I knew I couldn’t afford the luxury of a cab ride to the airport. The last person who I wanted to ask for a lift also happened to be the only person who would not be working in the middle of the day.

Left with no options, I was forced to call my mom.

When we pulled up to the curb, I pulled on my leather bomber jacket despite it being 80 degrees outside. It had to be a bomber jacket, because in 1989 no one could go anywhere cold without looking like he was going to blow up a piece of Europe at the expense of a few innocent cows.  As I got out of the car, I threw a duffle bag over my shoulder while my driver struggled for an appropriate message.

“You look like one of those…you know, one of those travelers.”

“What!?” I started to glance around to see if anyone had heard. Why was she talking like this?

“Be careful. I love you.”

I should have known that my first trip abroad would involve an uncomfortable mom-compliment. If there has ever been a single, defining factor that has prevented me from living the really cool, Tom Jones lifestyle it would be my mother.

Despite the fact that she has managed bands, co-operated a pirate radio station and helped my brother run an “after hours” bottle club, I have never been able to cash in on her cool capital.

On the contrary, she has never failed to turn any minor event into a colossal source of embarrassment, usually with a well-placed sentence containing the word “nice.”

Examples:

My first day on the job, she had to meet me out on my patrol to “give me something.” I knew it was just an excuse to see me in my uniform, but I humored her. Of course, my goodwill met with disaster in the form of this awkwardness bomb, “You look nice in your police car and outfit.”

Then when I bought a car last year, she said, “I’m proud of you. You wanted something and you went and got it.” Yeah, Mom, because nothing says, “I’ve arrived” like a Jeep Wrangler. She followed it up with a comment that it “really suited my adventurous lifestyle.” I almost torched it that very night for the insurance money.

To make matters worse, every time I write a story, she believes that the main character is actually me. “Have you read his new story? This time he’s a ghost,” or “I didn’t like that one because he kills someone in it.”

I can’t remember if I even told her that I loved her when I left. I probably didn’t, because I would have been worried that someone might mistake her for my wife despite the ridiculously maternal nature of her affection and our disparate ages. Either way, it didn’t really matter to me. By the same time the following day, I would finally be able to live my life without an embarrassing narrative.

Barcelona – November, 1989

If you asked me what you should eat at Las Ramblas in Barcelona, my answer would be an emparedado del salami y del queso (a salami and cheese sandwich). I recommend this for a few reasons, none of which would have anything to do with the quality of the sandwich. It was mediocre. To begin with, it is one of the few foods that I know how to order in Spanish. If you print this page or just remember that phrase, you’ll also know how to order it. Secondly, and this is more important, when you’re leaning against an old building with one boot against the granite, dressed like you’re about to bomb Dresden, you can hold the sandwich with one of your hands while you smoke a cheroot with the other.

Yeah, that’s how I rolled in ’89:  a series of unfortunately selected outfits, mixed with awkward poses and questionable health habits in an ineffective attempt to make myself look dangerous.

As was the custom of all traveling ne’er-do-wells of the period, I had purchased an English language tourist map on the street. Of course, it’s impossible to eat, smoke and hold a map at the same time, so after I finished the salami and cheese, I cracked open the atlas and began looking for something to do to kill the night.

I moved beyond Las Ramblas to some of the back streets in search of a cantina where I could have a whiskey or some other drink that I would try to down, while maintaining a steely look in my eyes. The decision on which bar to patronize was brought to an abrupt end when I spotted a classic thug in the alley (I swear that I’m not making this up) dressed like Arthur Fonzarelli, holding a switchblade. He also had a toothpick in his mouth. In truth, he was not really posing an immediate threat to me, but I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and entered the little bar immediately to my right.

After my eyes adjusted to the relative darkness of the room, I found my way to a barstool and ordered a cerveza, mainly because it was a word that I knew.  A few moments after the man had set the beer in front of me, I noticed that a woman had entered the room from somewhere in the shadows. She walked over and sat in the seat next to mine.

It was dark, but I could see that she was a Rubenesque woman in her mid thirties wearing heavy makeup and a flimsy negligee.  When she sat on the stool, she pinned my right leg between hers and asked me if I would buy her a drink. I indicated to the bartender to give her what she wanted, with what I thought was an extremely slick hand gesture. In my mind, I would buy her a drink, have as good of a chat as our language barrier would allow and then head back into the alley to take my chances with Fonzie. You see, for all of my worldliness I had failed to recognize that this woman was a prostitute until she said, “There are rooms upstairs. You should take me to one.”

I was gracious in my refusal, but I quickly paid my tab and left. In 1989, I was firmly in the “I don’t pay for sex” camp. It wasn’t that I objected to prostitution on any moral grounds. I just fancied myself such a cocksman that prostitution was completely, and utterly, unnecessary. Apparently, my self-image was unphased by the infrequency with which I was actually obtaining sex.

Now that the alley appeared to be clear of any Happy Days characters, I felt comfortable pulling out my tourist map again. Various nocturnal diversions such as bars, cantinas, discotheques and nightclubs, were listed by category in the margin of the map.  Having just come from a bar, I decided that I should probably set my sights on something a little higher in the nightlife food chain. In the US, discotheques had never recovered their reputation from the Saturday Night Fever phenomenon. While that may seem like a grand nostalgic movie now, in 1989 discos were on the same hipness level as hootenannies.  Nightclubs, on the other hand, were de rigueur in the States and therefore should have ruled the day everywhere else in the world.

This arrogance was typical of the thought process of 1989-Chillbear. I would forge straight ahead with very little care of the possibility that I could be making a miscalculation. A 51% certainty was a guarantee of success regardless of how many times this approach had failed me in the past. To me, there was no chance that cultural differences would ascribe a different meaning to the already ambiguous term “nightclub.”

I hailed a taxi and told the driver in perfectly unaccented American English, “Take me to Club Barcelona.” Then after a few seconds I added, “Por favor.” I smugly eased back into my seat. Look at me melting in after only a few hours. Approximately 45 seconds later, the taxi stopped in front of Club Barcelona, because it was only about 200 feet from the cantina from which I had just emerged. I handed the driver too much money in embarrassment and exited the cab, as the Spanish Fonze was walking by.

When I would leave later that night, I would notice the photos of nude women plastered all over the box office where I purchased admission for $8 worth of pesetas, but somehow I was still under the impression that I was going to be walking into a gaudy danceteria when I plunked my cash down. I blindly took the ticket and walked to the doorman.

A pair of black doors parted and I entered a dark room with a center-lit stage featuring three stunningly beautiful women performing sexual acts upon one another with a vibrator. The neon light that read “Oh, a NIGHT-CLUB” went off in my head. Although this development was not according to plan, the bold adventurer in me was accustomed to having to make decisions in an instant. I decided to stay.

The stage that supported the revolving bed upon which my three new girlfriends shared their mechanical phallus, extended from the wall into the center of the room. It was surrounded on three sides by two rows of fixed theater seats. As all of these were already filled with drunken Spaniards, I opted to stand just behind the center row, leaning on a column. Much to my despair, the curtain went down on the lesbian trifecta, just as I situated myself into a cool stance that would be appreciated by no one.

After about a minute, the curtain rose again on a blacked out stage. A single spotlight illuminated a bleached blonde woman who was wearing a black negligee, with a matching hat and veil. She was nothing like the attractive young women from the earlier act. She was portly, older and her skin told me that she was not new to this life. However, she was happy, fun and the crowd loved her. She worked her way through the audience saying a few words of Spanish into a cordless microphone and eliciting laughs.

Because I didn’t find her attractive and didn’t understand what she was saying, I had let my attention lapse. Then I heard:

“Sie aus Deutschland?”

She was looking directly at me.

“No, I’m from America.” And nothing is better than that, I knew that I didn’t have to add.

“Oh, an Americano?”

The crowd seemed to give a knowing little chuckle. I laughed too, because I wanted them to believe that I knew what was going on.

“You know ‘cock?’ You know ‘pussy?’” She asked me.

“Si.” I replied and the crowd went wild. We were a huge hit, the two of us.

She moved on for a few minutes and then burst into a cacophony of fraudulent tears. This would be the part of her standup act that necessitated her wearing the widow garb. She was saying words to the effect:

“Yo necesito tres muchachos.”

Whatever she was mourning would require three men from the audience to console her. She walked around the stage scanning the audience while she sobbed.

She eventually stopped in front of me. I was a crowd favorite from before. With a flourish of her microphone, she announced, “El Americano!” The crowd erupted into applause as she pulled me up onto the stage.

I waited patiently as she carefully selected two other winners from the audience. I used the time trying to contemplate a badass stance that would really take command of the stage. This was one time my mother wouldn’t be crashing in and stealing the moment. I hoped.

“You really look nice in your live sex show.”

No, that probably wouldn’t be happening.

We were assembled in a line and she began whipping the crowd into a frenzy. An odd phenomenon occurred. The crowd began chanting “Americano!” This was no longer about a way hipper than average young adult out on the town. It was now about American pride and I was not going to let my country down.

Whatever was going on – and I still really had no idea – this was going to be my crowning achievement.

She walked over to me and began pulling my sweater over my head. Despite the clearly heterosexual theme of the show, the removal of my sweater somehow incited the Spaniards. Men around the room were on their feet cheering their new champion, as the black widow then lunged for my belt buckle.

“You looked cute running off of the stage with your sweater in your hand, blushing like when you were little.”

I watched the rest of her show from a position of shame in the audience. The second muchacho was stripped down to his underwear before he tucked tail and ran. The third man was completely disrobed and then had unprotected sex with the grieving widow.

When the lights came on at the end of the night, no one was talking about the Americano. No one even looked at him. They weren’t fellow Americans, but the Spaniards have a healthy contempt for anyone who won’t participate in a live sex show for his country. How did America do? Well, she recovered. One week later the Berlin wall was razed to the ground and the eyes of a proud and grateful nation gloated for about a decade. However, twenty years later, I still haven’t been included in another sex show, and yes, Mom, I know it’s “their loss.”