Birthday Haiku #1

Eating birthday cake in bed,
listening to leonard Cohen.

First Story

When I was eighteen I used to smoke cigarettes in bed, but only for one week when I decided it was no longer safe to be outside my hostel room in southern Spain. This was in the month of November and after four weeks of walking around aimlessly through whatever it was that Spain had to offer. I was staying in a one bedroom hostel owned by an incredibly old couple. My friend Chris was there as well and we were almost done with our three month tour of Europe. The room was stale even before the air in it had turned into an extension of my lungs and the walls where yellow with a dark puke-green tinge in the corner. There were no windows in this room, just Chris and myself with all our necessary travelling items.

The old lady spoke no English and I had neglected my Spanish long enough to have forgotten it completely, so we never spoke to one another. She was gone all day so this was no problem, but the old man never left the hallway outside my room. He sat on a chair watching baseball games on the television, and was a continuous chain smoker. He never moved off the chair, never ate, and never drank, he just sat there chain smoking and listening to whatever was said around him in hallway. He smoked so much indoors that it made me not feel so badly about doing it myself. I never smoke indoors; I always thought that smoking indoors is like firing a gun indoors, which is awkward and always ends poorly.

Drinking of course goes along with smoking, which is why I did that as well. My drinking habit quickly had increased since coming to Europe and I had become quite good at it. What I was drinking was a cocktail I had named Mostly Gin. Mostly Gin is a mixture of twenty ounces of gin then equal parts red and white wine, whisky, vodka, and cheap Spanish beer. This was stored in a forty ounce bottle, and all of it was stolen from the last hostel that I had stayed. It was a brutal brew. Once, at my last hostel, two young women stole it from my bag and drank three shots apiece. They threw up all night long and for the most part of the next day. Somehow I could handle it. I think this was because I had been reading “Hey Rube” by Hunter S. Thompson and listening only to songs by Warren Zevon. But, all the drinking and smoking and media I was surrounded by made me become quite paranoid. I could not sleep very well after the second day, and I stopped going outside unless it was absolutely necessary. Before I would venture out of my room I would make Chris check for the old man. “Is he out there?” I would ask picturing his smoke engulfed face, taking a drag myself while sitting on my bed. “Yeah, yeah he is,” Chris would answer quietly, because the old man was surely listening. “Damn,” I would let out between puffs.

By the fifth day, I knew that the old couple was spying on me. I would hear the old woman sauntering out through the house passing my room and stopping to listen and look through the key hole. I would sit on my bed looking right at the door and light another cigarette, then wait till she left before I moved again. I would get up, open the door, and check the status of the old man. He would always be down the hall with his baseball games and his habit. I checked to see him on my own because I had decided that I could not trust Chris anymore. I was convinced that he had been paid by my parents to take me on a train ride around Western Kansas that went through small towns where the people could speak different languages. Western Kansas and Europe look exactly the same, until you get to the bigger cities.

The sixth day I just sat on my bed smoking cigarettes from my last pack, and then went to sleep without doing anything at all. That night Chris fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand, but he woke up without doing any damage to himself. I was after that, terrified of smoking in my bed. And I had also decided that it was time to get the hell out of the hostel.

I woke up the next morning and Chris had had all of things packed and ready to go. He told me to do the same and I did. We were going to just run out and never look back, because I was still afraid of the old man and that old woman spy. “We need to go, now.” Chris said, “That old locomotive is gone from his post and I can’t see the woman.” I grabbed my pack and moved towards the door. “Is it safe out there?” I asked nervously. “Yes, yes it is.”