Amor de Fado: Love Lost in Lisbon (ROUGH DRAFT)

“Dali, p'ro Bairro Alto, enfim galgou. No céu, a lua cheia refulgia. Ouviu cantar o fado, e então sonhou. Que era a saudade aquela voz que ouvia.”

“From there, towards Bairro Alto, he finally climbed. In the sky, the full moon shone. He heard fado singing, and then he dreamed. That was the longing, that voice I heard.” - Katia Guerreiro, Lisboa À Noite (Lisbon at Night)

“The fucking Belgians, man!” said Zane a hundred thousand times for the rest of eternity. 

But he couldn’t get it out of his head. Seven cocktails before breakfast? And then a shot of Jaeger for everyone? At 10 in the morning? After a night of drinking until sunrise? It was too extraordinary for his little mind to master. Cognitive dissonance began to set in. Were these mere men? Or were they gods?

It had started out so innocently. 

“I’m going down for breakfast,” he told Max. “Probably gonna get an espresso and smoke a cigarette.”

Max nodded from his hungover fugue, “I’ll be down in a bit.”

Zane walked down the marble stairs to the bar of the hostel. The minute the sight of the Belgians drinking heavily graced his tired eyes, Zane knew there would be no breakfast. 

“I’ll have a beer,” he said without question.

“Welcome!” One of the Belgians called out to him. They had a habit of getting everyone around them so drunk that no one ever remembered their names. 

“How long have you guys been drinking?” Zane asked.

“Since about 8:30 in the mornin’,” their blonde leader responded.

“Since we woke up,” the more responsible and very hungover Belgian next to Zane replied with a thousand-yard stare.

“See their cocktail menu? We've been through half of it so far,” Blondie stated with pride.

“Seven cocktails,” the responsible Belgian spoke, still in shock.

“When did you guys go to bed?” Zane asked in a state of forced acceptance.

“Oh, about 4,” another one answered. 

Zane got his Caneca, a large serving of Portuguese beer, and took a long hearty sip.

“Just don’t start talkin’ about guns again,” the Belgian furthest down the bar in a little baseball cap told Zane.

Zane remembered the argument the night before. One of the Belgians and him had gotten into an argument about gun laws in America. What had started as a heated discussion, quickly became the enemy of good vibes in the room.

“But I have kids, man! Can you imagine that? I have kids! I can’t imagine them having to go to school worrying about being shot!” The Belgian’s words dripped drunkenly emphatic.

“I mean it’s different in Europe, but in America, the founders clearly wanted Americans to have the right and ability to violently overthrow their government, should they feel the need to do so. America is founded on the notion of the righteousness of violent rebellion. I mean it’s very clear. You can’t even debate that. As to whether that’s right or wrong, that’s a different issue,” Zane’s words too dripped with drunken passion.

“But can you imagine for a moment, the pain that those guns are causing to real people, to real lives?” The Belgian shot back.

“First of all, I’m not even saying whether or not I agree with guns or gun laws. I mean I do support the rights of Americans to bear arms, but more importantly I’m against prohibition. This country has proven time and time again that illegalizing shit just makes the problem worse. What I am really trying to say is that these situations are not going to change, because of the number of guns produced in America, and because even when there is democratic will for change, it is made illegal by the constitution,” Zane rattled off.

“I just can’t understand that, man,” he said. “How can rational people allow something like that?”

Zane laughed, “I mean people aren’t rational.”

One of the other Belgians and Max butted in, putting an end to the debate for the night.

Now, in the morning after, the peace-loving Belgian, who was also the most hungover, more responsible Belgian, was now sitting at the bar closest to where Zane stood sipping his beer.

“I don’t think we’ll have an issue,” he laughed warmly. 

“I’ll drink to that!” Zane grinned wildly.

They all cheered, toasting their cups together. 

Zane killed his Caneca.

“Can I get another Caneca?” Zane asked the bar girl, Diana.

“Jaeger?” The Belgian with the cap asked.

“Jaeger,” another replied.

“Jaeger?” Another chimed in.

“Jaeger.” The blonde head said definitively.

Max walked in at that precise moment.

“Do you want a Jaeger?” Blondie asked him.

“I thought you were having breakfast?” Max asked with surprise.

“Things changed,” Zane replied. “The Belgians happened.”

“So… Jaeger?” Blondie asked again.

“Everything’s better with Jaeger,” Baseball cap replied.

“I’ll have a Jaeger!” Max shouted.

“Me too!” Zane added.

The Belgians cheered at their words.

“Let’s just get a Jaeger for everybody!” Blondie shouted.

And soon the room was filled with shots of Jaeger. Those who thought they didn’t want Jaeger, were soon convinced that they did. People eating breakfast peacefully had their lives viciously interrupted by the forces of Jaeger. Not a single hand went empty, a symbol of the Belgians’ fierce generosity.

After a loud cheer that could shake the plate tectonics back into Pangaea, the Belgians decided it was finally time for breakfast. Their tradition here had always been Francesinha, the famed Portuguese hole-in-the-wall egg sandwich with enough butter to fill a bayou and like six different kinds of meats, a busted-up coronary clogger if ever there was one. They had been coming there to the Porto Wine Hostel for São João for 6 years straight, which would have been 8 had they not missed out on two years because of the Pandemic. This hostel had learned the hard way, their hearty habits, and now had to stock bottles and bottles of liquor and Jaeger especially for their arrival. It was not an uncommon phenomenon for them to drink the entire City of Porto out of its scant supply of Jaeger by their third day of revelry. 

These 6 Belgian bastards could drink a whole town dry. After all, just imagine what people who drink 7 cocktails for breakfast drink when it’s actually time to party? These were the same bastards who once told Zane and Max that cocktails and beer were a mistake because they didn’t allow for the maximum uptake of liquor into the enteric system. 

“Cocktails are just for breakfast!” One of them would later shout sometime in the deluge.

Outside the people of Porto prepared for their festival. The smell of roasting hog, chorizo, and enough sardines to kill a seal, wafted in through the hostel windows. Standing out on the balcony above the madness, and watching barrels and barrels of Superbock beer wheeled into the bars, Max and Zane realized they were in for quite a night. 

São João, in some minds, is one the greatest festivals on Earth. Lasting for but a single night, fireworks displays and drunken bar crawls to the beach, with concerts spread out across the city, make it a night worthy of the passion of the Portuguese heart. The tradition is to work your way through the madness all the way to the coast for one final raging moment to watch the sunrise. Needless to say, with the Belgians leading them, Max and Zane never made it.

As they prepared themselves for a night of drinking by drinking, Max and Zane shouted warm welcomes when the Belgians finally returned in the afternoon. They sat down and promptly ordered drinks. More people from the hostel filtered in to join the pregame celebrations. After they had gotten their drinks, the Belgians came to the conclusion that more Jaeger was desperately needed. 

But good old Max, when asked if he was ready for another Jaeger, coming from the wise depths of a drunken stupor, stoutheartedly replied:

“And the grass said, ‘Rarely am I not green.’”

The first thing I did when my feet touched the ground in Portugal was to buy a pack of Português cigarettes and a Lisboa lighter. My first breaths of Portuguese night air mingled with the smooth smoke.

Portugal is a peaceful place, even if that peace was paid for by millions of black bodies at millions of reals a head. But should any of us, especially in this day and age, be responsible for our ancestors? I’ve never seen much reason in bearing crosses, especially today. It’s better to live as a kind person and do the right thing now, rather than to apologize for something you never did and think yourself a better person because of it. But if you want to give your meaningless existence the sheen of martyrdom and glorify your ego through idealized suffering, pseudo-redemptive guilt, and cultural resentment, you go right on ahead. As for me, I will be doing anything in my power to create meaning and magic for myself and others, by living a meaningful life and freely giving the Gift of Fearlessness by striving into the unknown.

Almost a month before I would ever meet the Belgian bastards, Riley and I flew into Portugal. We had issues in London with some logistics with a connecting flight, but luckily Air Portugal saved our bacon and got us a free new flight into Lisbon. I had more trouble with my hostel. I had booked it for June 1 when actually we landed on June 2 because of the time change, and even though I had made a downpayment on my bed, the shiesty bastards canceled my reservation so they could fill it with someone else’s ass who would have to pay more. It really threw me for a loop. I wandered the streets that night looking for a hotel, which I finally found for like $50 a night. 

“We flew out out of London on the wings of angels, so who gives a fuck now?” I wrote in my notes.

The entire city of Lisbon was so packed to the gills with cash-happy Americans who desperately wanted to put Covid behind them, that I was lucky to even find a place. For some reason, Lisbon had gone from being a relatively niche place in the minds of most Americans to a fucking insta-famous destination. They probably got the same travel bug during Covid watching videos online, but the fact they all descended the same way at the same time just shows how fucking programmed everyone is these days.

I mean when I came to Lisbon in 2019, I met one American during my entire stay. This time there were entire streets and bars where I wasn’t sure if I had even seen a single Portuguese person. The heavy hollering of English on the streets of Lisbon felt foreign to my ears. But I do like excitement, so I tried to not let my against-the-grain mentality be bristled too much by their porcupine presence. After all, Covid was over for them. They should get a chance to celebrate before reality once again rears its ugly head in harsh judgment of our modern life. 

Lisboa, my fair Lisboa, was so packed with tourists that I could not even get a hostel the next day. So I used my ace-in-the-hole. I had paid for an account on Couchsurfer, an app that lets travelers see people who have an open bed that they are willing to let a couchsurfer use for a predetermined time period. I ended up spending 6 days in Lisbon near the airport for free. It was a little bit of a pain Ubering back and forth, but well worth it ultimately. 

God bless all the people on Couchsurfer!

Lisbon, in my sick impassioned mind, is the greatest city on Earth: Freedom and the sea-breeze coming in off the Rio Tejo fill the air. The hot sun and cool fog are balms to the spirit. Hidden among the tangle of ancient alleyways and underseen thoroughfares, carved through the steep hills, are the secret places that define Lisbon. When one is in Lisbon at night, from Alfama to Bairro Alto, it can sometimes feel like a place out of time and space. There is a celebration happening every night on every corner. Romance pulses through the heart of the city. The warm terracotta-tiled rooftops, and classic mariner architecture make Lisbon the lovechild of Dionysus and Poseidon. From across the river, you would be forgiven for thinking that Lisbon looks like some ancient Mediterranean city. The people of Portugal are by far the most beautiful in all of Europe. Portugal is the last place in Western Europe where one can still feel “Old Europe” in a major city. One can walk the streets of Lisbon without a phone and find everything they need. The streets are littered with informal cafes and restaurants. Development has not resulted in skyscrapers and other industrial monstrosities tearing up the skyline and violating the heart. Lisbon is changing, just like the rest of the world, but when coming from the sad, sick places that have forgotten the old ways of beauty and life, Lisbon feels like coming home.

Not daring to violate the impulses of my Portuguese blood, I enjoyed my first day in Lisbon with a cigarette and an espresso, a time-honored tradition. Throw in a croissant, and you have yourself quite the European affair. I had my pack on that first day, and walked around the whole damned city before Ubering to my host’s place. 

The next day, Riley and I had planned to go to Sintra with some of her new friends from the hostel. 

Sintra! Oh, Sintra! That spirited mountain of the moon! Where Celtic fairy tales and the magic of old primordial flow as clean and clear as its sacred springs. Where the romance of Moors, and the hotblood of Vikings intermingle with the penchants and passions of Bohemian Europe. Where if one climbs high enough, you can see the raging emptiness of the Atlantic beyond the warping woods and rocky terrain. Eternal rain and gorging springs create a vibrant verdant aura unlike anything else in dry Portugal. The volcanic springs that flow out of the mountain are so vivacious and restorative that they are said to have health benefits due to the abundance of minerals coursing through their clean waters. The Moorish fountains carved into the mountain are decadent and everlasting, like sacred shrines to the waters of life.

I first came to Sintra in 2019. If I had had my choice, I never would have left. But then what would have become of all these great adventures? We ascended the mountain with the help of a guide in a tuk-tuk. He told us the story of how the Celts originally settled this place and had a circle of standing stones similar to Stonehenge, but the Moors drove them out and built their castle on top of their sacred space. He took us to all the springs, and we drank and splashed our faces gratefully. Then we started our ascent up the mountain to the Palace de Pena

The Palace de Pena is the tallest point of Sintra. It was built by Ferdinand, a German who married a Portuguese Princess and became king. Its gardens are an opulent example of living art and architecture, and its storied fairytale-esque constructions sparkle with grandeur. The Palace is really just a piece of romantic art from the 1800s, but it was built on the grounds of an old monastery, whose walls were sandstone and encrusted with seashells. It is said that the old monastery was built because a Portuguese king was hunting with his men around Sintra, when he spotted Vasco da Gama’s ships, returning from India laden with treasure. He was so inspired that he ordered his people to build a monastery at the very site he laid eyes on da Gama’s ship in order to give proper thanks to God.

After a tour around the grounds, we decided to go down to the Moorish Castle. It was built sometime in the 700s. It’s a page torn right out of a fairytale, like everything else in Sintra. From out the crenellations you can see the entire town of Sintra, as well as all of the surrounding towns. Its beauty is not to be underestimated. The green faerie forest comes right up against the moss-covered walls of the entrance. It has a charm that exudes a child-like passion in someone like me.

We took the train out of Sintra back to Lisbon later that afternoon, and decided to go out together that night. While we were walking along the river, we ran into a Brazilian guy who was apparently their guide for some tour earlier in the day. He invited us to come with him to this Brazilian bar right along the river. It was as fuckin’ lit as lit could fuckin’ be. Cigarette smoke filled the air from a hundred hands sitting outside in picnic tables between two old industrial buildings. Vibrations pulsed across the sea of smoke, as two Brazilian guitarists were fuckin’ rippin’ music out of their subs like Dionysian priests delivering vibrating sermons to an ecstatic but gentle congregation. The calm but passionate rock embodied the setting sun over Lisbon perfectly. 

We met up with the Brazilian guys’ friends, and we would all end up running the gauntlet through the Alfama that night, through narrow streets filled with roasting sardines and endless supplies of Sagres and Superbock, the hot, salty lifeblood of the Portuguese people. Never without a beer we slowly made our way through the midnight madness doing our best not to lose anyone. The streets were thronging with people, but here, unlike Bairro Alto, most of these people were actually Portuguese or Brazilian. 

Some might say that Brazilians are actually the best part of Portugal. Dom Pedro I, a one-time King of Portugal, thought the same. As King of Portugal, born in Lisbon but forced to live in Brazil due war and political instability in Europe, as well as the treachery of Portuguese nobles, he declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal, eventually leading a force successfully to war to conquer Portugal, defeat the conservative proponents of absolute monarchy, and usher in an era of representative government in both Portugal and Brazil. He also composed Brazil’s Independence Anthem. He unsuccessfully tried to abolish slavery in Brazil, and ultimately was forced to abdicate two thrones because of his radical views.

Dom Pedro once said, "It grieves me to see my fellow humans giving a man tributes appropriate for the divinity. I know that my blood is the same color as that of the Negroes."

But like so many before and after him, once he was dead and buried, those who spat upon his name were quick to kind words of remembrance, and eventually everyone ignored, warped, or forgot his cause entirely.

I ended up going back to the place I was crashing at like 2 a.m. 

Riley and I never said goodbye, and she was on a train down to Faro the next morning. We would see each other again briefly in Porto after São João, but it wasn’t anything special. Our time had come to an end. We were both okay with that.

A few days later, I headed out of Lisbon on the train to Sintra with just a pack on my back. 

My plan was to hike out of Sintra all the way to Peniche, which is about the halfway point between Lisbon and Porto along the coast. I figured I would hike and hitchhike as needed to make it by a certain day. It would be a one way trip. I planned to return on a bus and meet Max in Lisbon at the airport. Then we would get picked up by his cousin Diogo who is an Uber driver, and get dropped off at Costa da Caparica. 

Costa da Caparica is the homeland of Max’s Portuguese family. What was once a humble fishing village has now been transformed into a place of wealth and development through tourism, a similar story told round the world. Many hidden pearls have been torn from their oysters by the greedy hands of “Progress.” By the 21st Century, this process had become so well-known as to be cliche. In fact, by the Year 2022, the world was desperately searching for new pearls in a sea of already-opened, wasted oysters.

In the Rossio Station, waiting for a train, I paced around with headphones in my ears playing Fado. Fado is the pulsing heart of the Portuguese people, songs of Saudade, of longing. Fado feels like a combination of Flamenco, Parisian influence, and British shanties; love lost at sea. I paced the platforms and gazed at the neoclassical attempts at paintings and frescoes that lined the station attempting to express the unspeakable soul of Portugal. 

Wikipedia describes Saudade as: “an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for something or someone that one loves despite it not necessarily being real or they reciprocate it back. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing may never be had again or attained in one's lifetime.”

Alas, Eden! Alas, Canaan! 

Alas, Atlantis! Alas, Aztlan! 

Alas, Avalon! Alas, Rome! 

Alas, Dixie! Alas, Dresden! 

Alas, Black Tulsa!

Alas, El Dorado!

Alas, San Francisco! 

Alas, Paradise Lost! Alas, my own true love! We may never see your bright stars. We may never touch your shores. We may never taste your bounty. We may never know your peace. We may never hear your sacred stories. We may never see your like again. And yet, we love you all the same, that which is lost and cannot be found. 

Such is Saudade.

The train of forlorn hope carried me to Sintra from the Rossio. Music filled my ears as the world rolled by. People’s faces and voices spoke silently, overwhelmed by the roaring symphony between my ears. I have a terrible disease that makes me listen to music as loud as I possibly can. It is a disease of the soul, and it is terminal. 

Speaking of terminal, before long we pulled into Sintra Station. I got off the train and walked down the road to another part of town where I knew there was a delectable Moorish fountain carved into the mountain overflowing with its fine selection of vintage: sacred springwater. There’s nothing quite like it in the world. When you find a sacred spring, take it into your memory, into your being, for you have found something special and rare in this sad, sick, mundane world. The waters of a sacred spring romanticize life. They bring courage to those too sick to dream. Perhaps they are the last remnants of lost paradise, still trickling out of dead veins until the magic of the world finally dries up.

I filled my camelbak to the fullest, and drank my fill of those cool waters. I splashed my face and made ablutions, marking my forehead and my soul with the spirit of the sacred spring, honoring the old primordial. Gratitude to eternity was given freely, and clarity was received by me graciously, like a long-lost friend. My third eye sparkled, if only for a moment. 

It was as if the spirits were saying, “Welcome home.”

Home, after all, being wherever my feet may happen to tread.

From Sintra, I hiked through the backroads and hidden trails to the main highway, and then onto the coast. I had walked about 8 miles before my knee locked up. The issue had been building over time. The combination of very flat and hard roads and a poorly-adjusted pack on my back were beginning to take their toll. I took a break in a beach town for a few hours and had lunch and charged my phone. The afternoon sun shone warmly, but there was still a chill in the air, a familiar experience of Portugal in early June. Eventually, once my phone was charged, I walked on.

Each time I stopped to take a break, my knee got worse. I was limping along at a painfully slow pace, but I continued nonetheless. Pain has never been an obstacle that I could not overcome. And so I grinded on, slowly but surely. The slightest elevations in the road made my life even harder. The pain was dull and structural, as if I might actually suffer permanent injury from every step. 

Still I pressed on. 

The view of the coast felt scenic and familiar. It was just like something one might see walking along Highway 1 on the California Coast. The major difference was the ancient vineyards lining the land just before the cliffs and terracotta rooftops overlooking the sea. In the afternoon sun, the ruddy, rocky cliff faces and white buildings with orange crowns glowed romantically in the fiery light. 

“Are you not frightened of the cars?” someone once asked me.

“Not particularly,” I answered.

At some point, I could simply go no further. My leg had locked up so bad that continuing was no longer an option. I had gotten off the highway onto dirt farm roads, just limping along. I had already planned to wild-camp on or near the beach that night, and so I figured it might as well be somewhere around here. The enormity of the Atlantic lay below me, and the vineyards and farmland made for beautiful cover from the whipping winds. I kept my eye on the fields as I passed them. It was cloudy, and strangely warm. It would stay that way until sunrise.

I found a spot in a little field overlooking the sea that was protected by a windbreak of bamboo. The air was cool but enjoyable. I curled up in my jacket, using a couple shirts and pants as a pillow. I had downloaded Stranger Things Season 4 onto my phone, and now with a full charge, I eagerly watched a few episodes before falling asleep. It was funny to think I had avoided the show like the plague just some 4 or 5 years before, until a certain girl-who-must-not-be-named finally convinced me to put aside my pride and watch it. And now here I was, watching the show like it was my lifeline to civilization, laying in the Portuguese dirt, a feast for silent mosquitoes. I had to be careful how I laid due to my knee. I hoped against hope that it would be better in the morning.

My hopes would mostly be for not.

As I awoke in the cold grey light of dawn, my first thought was that my knee was actually healed, but as I stood up and started walking down the road, I realized it was not. It didn’t hurt as much as before, and I had a bit more range of movement. But this was going to be a rough hike outta here. I had to walk down the hill into the little valley carved by a creek running into the Atlantic. The downhill wasn’t so bad, but going up the other side was horrible. I made slow going and tried not to rest too long. 

Eventually, I made my way away from the charming serenity of the sea, into the dry dead Mediterranean landscape. I walked towards what the signs led me to believe was a village. I stopped and had breakfast there. Afterwards, I decided to try my thumb at hitchhiking on the highway leading up to Peniche. I still had about 40 miles to go. I had given myself two nights to get there. Now I only had one left.

I got a ride within 10 or 20 minutes. And then another. And then another. Pretty soon I was making progress up the coast. The longest wait in between rides was probably about an hour. Surfers, locals, and fellow travelers helped me along the way. Speaking Spanish combined with Portuguese or “Portugañol,” proved pretty effective. At a certain point, I was picked up by this cool Brazilian guy in a Camaro. He told me he could drop me off at the bus station on his route that was a quick ride to Peniche.

“Sure!” I told him, even though I knew I would have to find a place to stay for the night if I wasn’t just camping on the beach. 

We eventually started talking about festivals, and I told him that I was going to the Running of the Bulls.

He told me he had been there, but didn’t run. He said that it was the greatest fiesta of his life. It made me excited to go. This experience with my knee had convinced me that I was in fact going to run, despite my assurances to my family that I would do otherwise.

“After all, it would suck if I got all these opportunities in Ukraine only to break my leg or something and miss out,” I told them.

 The reality of mortality proved itself a convincing enough argument to run for the roses.

“If I don’t run now, I never will,” I thought, gently rubbing my knee.

After he dropped me off at the bus station I bought a pack of smokes and a ticket to Peniche. Obviously, there was no other decision that I could make other than to get my grateful greedy hands on a pack of Português, the best damned cigarettes in the whole world. After enjoying a cigarette to snap me out of mild sleep deprivation, the bus finally came, and I made it to Peniche. Along the way, I took a well-deserved nap.

Peniche is one of the locations of the World Surf Competition. It is a cliffed-fortress-island-peninsula, with wild waves and beaches that run along either side of it. The weather leans much colder there than in Lisbon or the South of Portugal. Some might say Peniche is the start of the North Portuguese Coast. Being a true Northern Californian myself, this weather was much closer to my heart. While everyone else was a surfer, I had come to hike Peniche’s stony formations and get some much needed R&R before meeting up with Max in Lisbon for what would surely be such decadent-depraved-debauchery as to bring permanent wear and tear on my mind, body, and spirit. My knee magically healed itself rather quickly. When I didn’t wear a pack, there was no trouble at all. 

I ended up taking a boat to Las Berlengas, the islands off the coast from Peniche out in the Atlantic. The sea was rough, and many of the people aboard the boat got sick or dizzy. I just rode along with the waves, nursing the slight twang in my stomach, and wishing I could smoke a cigarette. I took a tour on a boat around the islands and later in the afternoon I returned. The next day, after 7 days of rest, I left Peniche on my way back to Lisbon by bus.

I mostly played on my phone for the ride there, a well-known vice of mine. When I got to the bus station, I took an Uber to the airport. Soon Max and I were sitting outside the airport waiting for his cousin Diogo. When Diogo pulled up, we threw our things in the trunk,and drove off.

“Hello! Welcome to Lisbon!” Diogo nodded excitedly in the mirror to me while driving. “Have you been here before?”

Max answered him, “Zane is my really good friend who came last time back in 2019. So he’s been to Costa.”

Diogo smiled, processing the information.

“Do you like Portugal?” he asked me.

“I LOVE Portugal. Lisbon is the greatest city on Earth,” I replied earnestly.

Diogo smiled proudly. Then he pivoted to Max, “So how’s your mother?”

Max laughed, “She’s okay, I guess. She and my dad are traveling to Europe later in July, and afterwards they are coming to Costa.”

Diogo nodded, “Do you guys like fish?”

I grinned, “I love fish.”

Max added, “I actually like fish now. I used to not.”

Diogo told us, “Maybe sometime when you are here I can take you out for lunch, and we can go on a drive or something.”

Max laughed, “Sure, but I’m buying. You already picked us up from the airport.”

Diogo shook his head with a wry smile.

Max insisted, “Yes. YES. I am buying. My mother, ALICE, told me, I AM BUYING.”

Diogo laughed at him, “Okay! Okay! We will see!”

We crossed the Lisbon version of the Golden Gate Bridge, and headed south across the Rio Tejo. Costa da Caparica: I had been there before and will probably be there again. Costa is like a 20 minute drive from Lisbon. When we pulled into the little beach town, Diogo dropped us off at Max’s grandma’s house. Her house was a little gated cube that had a main house and 4 tiny exterior apartments. This made it the perfect holiday destination for her relatives in the US and France.

“Call me if you need anything,” Diogo said before driving off.

Max’s grandma, or Vovo, was a frail-little-old-mighty-lady. Cantankerously Catholic, she took Max’s insistence that we do our own laundry and cooking as a direct offense to her honor and to God, and she would hear no word of it. 

“I told you Max! She's not well. She shouldn’t be doing too much,” Alice told us on a video call that night.

“Ok, well then you tell her to stop!” Max exasperatingly replied with a smile.

We took it easy in Costa for the first few days. Max was still tired from the plane ride, and I was still recovering from a cold that had penetrated my lungs in Peniche. I was still hacking and heaving phlegm from time to time, and since my apartment was right next to Vovo’s, she thought I was dying or something. Her relatives had tried to assure her, on their honor as smokers, that this was just something that can happen to a smoker when they quit smoking for a few days, but she wasn’t having it.

The Great Costa Covid Crisis of ‘22 ended with me taking a negative test and her apologizing and Max laughing. 

Once a majority of the phlegm had been ejected from my lungs, we hit Tarquinio, the burnt-out beach bar. We ordered two Canecas and started playing cards and lighting up cigarettes. We would end up drinking and smoking countless more over the course of our 6 days in Costa.

“Do you remember the Gypsies? They’re gone now!” Max told me over a Caneca.

“Fuck yea I remember the Gypsies!” I cackled.

The Gypsies in question were a family living in one of the rental units of Vovo’s house when I first came to Portugal in 2019. Back then, they hadn’t paid rent in like 3 years. Vovo was too terrified of them to do anything, until eventually her daughter Alice insisted something must be done. Portuguese renter protections are so strong that it took 3 more years to evict them in 2022.

The conflict between them had come to head one day when Max’s uncle, Joaquim, came home drunk only to see the Gypsies walking out of the house. He proceeded to yell and cuss at them, which of course they returned in kind. Things escalated quickly from there, and one of the Gypsies smashed an empty wine bottle over Joaquim’s head, and he had to go to the hospital. That happened some time before I came on the scene in 2019.

When I came to Costa for the first time with Max, we were drinking wine and playing cards in one of the little apartments when Joaquim came by, on his way to his apartment. He came inside and watched us play, all the while scoping out around the corner. All of a sudden he started hissing. The Gypsies had come.

Joaquim rushed outside to confront them. Max's family, and specifically his younger brother, Xavier, came out to defuse the tensions. Max and I crept around the corner. Xavier was holding Joaquim back from taking a swing at some very angry-looking Gypsies, and Max rushed over to help him. After more hissing and baring of fangs, the claws were slowly put away, and the Gypsies returned inside to their real-life “Free Parking” space. The police had been called, but were ultimately not needed. The situation was defused, and there was nothing the little-yellow-vests could do anyway.

That was the last time I would see the Gypsies, but that doesn’t stop me and Max from bringing them up everytime we meet on this side of eternity. And we’ll probably keep doing it on the other side! Everytime Max and I meet you can be sure that more than a few stories that have been told a thousand times will be told a thousand times more, and each time a little better and a little drunker than before.

Because after all, what are we if not slaves to a good story?

“The fuckin’ Gypsies, man!” I declared into my tall glass of beer as it followed my words down my gullet.

“Fuckin’ Gyspies,” Max laughed killing his Caneca in kind.

“I think it’s time for a smoke,” I joked, slipping a cig between my lips and lighting her up gracefully.

“I think I’ll follow ya!” Max cheered the oncoming smoke sesh.

“Do you remember that little kid watching porn last time we were in Costa?” I asked, blowing out a plume of smoke.

“Jesus! How could I forget?” Max shook his head, almost choking his smoke-filled lungs with a laugh.

“Remember, that mom saw what he was watching through the glass!” I suppressed laughter.

“She had the “Mom” handbag. You can’t make that up!” Max almost shrieked in excitement.

“Then she goes in and starts telling the cafe owner. The kid’s face was so guilty,” I chuckled on my cigarette.

“He had to be like 6,” Max added.

“Pretty fuckin’ funny,” I laughed.

“We have the craziest stories,” Max chuckled.

“Fuck yea, dude!” I replied emphatically. 

“Didn’t you like, almost die in the Alps?” Max laughed, taking a large gulp of his Caneca, eyes filled with humor and excitement.

I flashed a toothy grin, “I might have had some troubles.”

He didn’t know the half of it.

Back when I first came to Europe in 2019, after spending 6 days in Lisbon, I flew to Geneva and took a bus into France destined for Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, a French “Aspen” nestled high in the Rhone Alps. I would spend 7 days at a ski hostel there, which was cheap and available during the height of summer.

Aiguille du Midi had brought me there. The mountain next to the famous Mont Blanc had an installation built into its peak reminiscent of a James Bond movie or something. I wanted to see it, but I never would. Instead, fate would draw me in a different direction.

That day my two friends at the hostel, Cristophe and Alex, asked me if I wanted to go hiking with them to a special place Alex knew. Alex was a German living in Chamonix as a Ski Guide and Safety Patrol, so he knew all the special places. Their offer was tempting, but I was set on seeing Aiguille du Midi, so I declined. 

The only way up Aiguille du Midi was via gondola. There were two stops: one halfway up and the other at the installation on the peak. The line to get into the gondolas was like Disneyland. It probably took me an hour to finally get on a gondola, and when I finally made it up to the first stop, I was informed that Aiguille du Midi was closed due to high winds. 

Frustrated, I decided to see what kinds of things I could do from halfway up the mountain to make my failure to take advantage of my friends’ offer worth it. Looking at some topographic maps at the gondola station, I saw there was another gondola station about 2-3 hours hike from where I was. I wasn’t prepared for a serious hike. I was even less prepared for snow, having no gloves or snow-worthy boots. I had thought my fate was to gently savor the pleasures of the restaurant on top of the world, not struggle across the steep snowy slopes. I saw the other gondola station in the distance from where I sat in the cafe, sipping espresso and mentally charting my course.

Eventually, I made the decision to just fucking wing it.

There were no paths or trails anywhere. People were just wandering around enjoying the snow and the view. After playing around with the snow a bit and savoring the majestic view of the cloudless ranges of snow-capped mountains shimmering gloriously in the sunlight, I decided to begin what would turn out to be one of the shortest and longest hikes of my entire life. I climbed up to the top of a ridge on the first side of a vast gulley that I would have to cross in order to get to the other side where the gondola station was. I skidded down the granite hillside wildly, every rock betraying my touch, and I just allowed myself to go with the flow as slowly as I could manage. Granite in the Alps is completely different from the Sierra Nevadas in California. In California, the granite is hard and unmoving. In the Alps, every rock is loose in a mix of sandy gravel. You can’t trust your footing to save your life.

When I made it down the bottom, I was laughing. 

I was still panting, but the feeling of momentousness filled my sails. Feeling full of myself, and noticing that somehow I still had internet all the way up on this godforsaken mountain, I decided to record a little video for Snapchat. 

“Hehe. Alps. Fuckin’ Alps. Bitch…” My words fell out in between the panting.

I turned the camera back to the rocky slide of steely stones, “This was rough. This was not a good climb down. I could’ve been a lot more graceful, but I’m alive, for the most part. I guess that’s okay!”

I later regretted the arrogant tone of the video, but watching it again today, I’m like, “Fuck it.”

After a while hanging out on a large warm boulder bursting up through the snow, I decided to try my hand at climbing the other side. I knew it was going to be difficult. Luckily I spotted a trail someone had made through the snow climbing the cliff, and it looked like it was done by a professional, which gave me faith I was on the right track.

In the words of a sign posted in an American National Park that was stolen by me and that girl-who-must-not-be-named, “Stay On Trail.”

Looking up the rocky slope was daunting. Knowing full well the tumultuous nature of those capricious alpine stones, I didn’t know if it would even be possible to climb it. I kept sliding down the snow before I even got to the first rocks big enough to grab ahold of without tearing them out of the hillside. I figured the person whose trail I am following must have better gear than I, and also I could see from the packed snow in their tracks that they had snowshoes or crampons or something. They probably had other gear that made the climb more feasible. Eventually, with enough will and determination, I made it about a quarter of the way up, only to viciously slide back down again. 

I felt a little bit like the itsy-bitsy-spider.

Frustrated, but not prepared to give up, I threw all my energy into the next attempt. Rocks fell out from under me as I danced across them as fast as I could. I had been trying to play it safe before, so this time I decided to bet my life and well-being on every step. I managed to grab hold of the largest boulder, about halfway up the hill. It was sturdy. I barely made it up. I sat there panting wildly. At this point I was sort of stuck. The way back down was treacherous, and the way up was unthinkable. There were no big rocks to help me now. I looked up, and I looked down. I felt the fear enter my heart. Not ideological fear, but deep, primal fear. I call it tiger fear. It was soon joined by its uninvited worst-half: I thought of dying there alone and nameless, all my life culminating up to this point made meaningless in a moment. As previously disavowed ideological fear started to whisper its way into my mind, commingling with the corporeal fear of the tiger, I made the decision, as I always have, to reject it all totally.

As anyone who knows me well will tell you, rejecting things is a great skill of mine.

Ultimately, not ascending those rocks was unworthy of the person I wanted to be. I felt the gods watching me, anxiously awaiting for me to pass or fail. Terrified of going up or down, up became the only acceptable option. Filled with newfound passion and purpose, I skidded up the rocky cliffside, hearing the rocks tumble below me at each one I touched. Good eyes had selected a few rocks that would be slower to tumble down, allowing me to make it out alive.

After clawing my way up the cliffs, I found myself on the next tier of the mountain. 

“The hardest part is over!” I thought triumphantly.

And what would it have mattered to know that I was wrong? There was no going back now.

The afternoon sun had begun to melt the snow even further. My soggy boots that had before been sinking down inches, began sinking down feet. Each step through this crevasse-ridden minefield could be my last. I was aware of this. But the only way was forward, so I kept on stepping. One of my steps fell a little deeper than usual, and the melting snow refroze around my boot locking it in place. It took my bare fingers many minutes to claw away enough snow to free myself. I had to take breaks in between to breathe my poor fingers back to life. This process would repeat itself a few times on this leg of the journey.

Seized in the manic mystery of the moment, shivering, I began to sing softly:

“Cold mountain water, the jade merchant’s daughter; Mountains of the Moon, Electra, bow and bend to me. Hi, ho, the carrion crow! Faldi Raldi Rigda. Hi, ho, the carrion crow! Bow and bend to me.”

I have a theory that the forces of this world are much less likely to bring the hammer down on a truehearted bastard singing for his life like there’s no tomorrow. Also nothing bad has ever happened to me while singing. And so I challenged the mountain with my voice. The words rose up from the depths of my soul. And why should it not be the Grateful Dead? No music has ever reached me the same as them. We ate the acid, and where would we be if we didn’t? The dead are grateful because they know peace. 

“If you want to take me,” my spirit told the mountain, “Then do it.”

These words rang through my defiant singing. Just another fool whistling past the graveyard of eternity. That’s all I ever am, really. 

Angered by my impetuous irreverence to its raw might and beauty, the mountain lashed out against me, to demonstrate its total dominion over my life at that very moment. And yet, I couldn’t help but think that the mountain loved me, in the same way a cousin or brother might punch you in the face while he was drunk because he was angry that you did not respect his love. It is that same aggrieved love of the spirits that seems to keep me alive in these situations. I also couldn’t help but think that the mountain had some stubborn admiration for my total commitment of life and limb.

I didn’t have time to think long. All of a sudden, my feet fell out from under me, and I found myself falling down to my shoulders in the snow as I struggled to cling to the icy edges of the crevasse. Below me was about 10 or 20 feet of narrow open space along a giant boulder. As I struggled and squirmed, I managed to kick my way up the boulder and flop outta the trap like a fish outta water.

It took me a second to regain my bearings. And then, shivering, I started singing again:

“Heyyyyy, Tom Banjo! It’s time, to matter! The Earth will see you on through this time. The Earth will see you on through this time! 

Down by the water, Marsh King’s daughter, did you know? Clothed in tatters, always will be, Tom where did you go? 

Mountains of the Moon, Electra, Mountains of the Moon. All along the, all along, the Mountains of the Moon! 

Hi, ho, the carrion crow! Faldi Raldi Rigda! Hi, ho, the carrion crow! Bow and bend to me…”

The Old respected the audacity of the New, the fierce determination behind young irreverent eyes and a will to warp the world. And so the mountain respected the fool and let him go. 

“If I make it through this, I’m gonna buy everyone a beer tonight!” I thought to myself.

I continued to hum, whistle, and sing bits and pieces of many songs, as I laid prone crawling through the snow up the mountaineer’s trail carved along the slope, careful to not put too much weight in any one spot. I finally made some progress after the painful slow going in between waiting for my fingers to thaw after sessions of clawing my boots out from the icy embrace of death. It was then that I looked down the slope to see that the gondola station was now much further below me than before. The realization hit me like an avalanche: I was going higher up towards Mont Blanc. 

Tired and thoroughly battered, I decided to just glissade down the slope about 1000 yards towards the station, using my elbow like a rudder. Thank God my Swiss Army jacket seemed to be made of divine material. It was actually hella fun. I soon forgot my earlier miseries in the ecstasy of the moment. That triumph would prove to be fleeting, at best. When I made it down to the gondola station, I saw it was a rusted out shell of its former glory. 

This gondola station hadn’t been used in ages!

I decided to take a break and recollect myself before making any decisions. The afternoon sun was beginning to get downright hot. I stopped to take in the marvelous alpine view. I looked over at a glacial behemoth melting down the mountain into a tumultuous torrent to form a raging river. I breathed in. What a good day to be alive. I pulled off my boots, and laid them upside down in the sunshine. My socks I laid on the warm rusty metal shell of the station. I would later use a lighter to dry them that I was only able to light in a little tent created by my jacket to block out the rivetting wind. They never really got dry, but eventually became bearable. My boots were so soaked that there was just no cure for it.

It was time to make some decisions. I mean, it would take more than 3 hours to get back to the original station, and it would be closed by the time I could make it back. I looked down the route of the brokedown gondola all the way down the mountain. It seemed clear to me that the only way off the mountain was hiking all the way down. There was still a lot of rugged mountain and densely packed snow in between me and easier living, but I figured staying along the gondola route would give me options to navigate around the worst snowdrifts. 

At first, I found myself glissading and trying to climb around gondola parts to avoid stepping in the snow. Even so, a few times I found myself wading through the thick of it. Eventually I made it down the mountain far enough to where islands of bushes began to grow that had no snow under them. I began hopping from island to island. My feet met anything that wasn’t snow with joyous jubilation. I clung to the weak and sharp branches that whipped and cut me as if they were Christ himself. They were undoubtedly my salvation after suffering so long in snow.

The mountain began to become more like a mountain in summer, and soon there wasn’t any snow at all. The evergreen forest greeted me graciously, but the downhill trails that now greeted me, grated on my wet feet, blistering my toes terribly as I descended. At one point, I had to use a broken section of cable from the gondola to rappel down a cliff, using my Swiss Army jacket cuffs like handguards. Divine material, indeed. The sound of roaring water coming off the glacier and the singing of birds hummed beautifully in my ears.

I eventually came out at the foot of the mountain fairly far from Chamonix, at a tunnel entrance of the French-Italian border. I asked a border guard who barely spoke English how to get to Chamonix. He instructed me to go around the base of the mountain and over to Chamonix in like a U-shape. I stopped at the border station, and went to the bathroom. I took off my boots and socks, dried them on the hand-driers, and bought some snacks out of the machine there. Nothing like surviving a grueling ordeal to make food taste better.

After that I wandered into a park at the base of the valley by the main river whose trails led to Chamonix. It vacillated between verdant pine forest and decadent deciduousness by the rivers and streams. I felt like I had been walking through the woods forever, when suddenly I came upon a fairytale cottage with little stacks of wood under the eaves, and a nice wooden patio, where people dined happily as if there weren’t any jagged mountains or blistered feet in the whole world. It was a damned restaurant! I felt like I was in a fever dream. I almost teared up at the sight of such a thing. 

I promptly took a seat, ordered a glass of wine and a salad, and lit up a cigarette. I had fucking made it. I was alive. My soul smiled. My lungs that had worked so hard, now quivered in ecstasy at the toxicity of the smoke. I had challenged the world to take me, and yet again the world refused. There was a certain dark bliss in that. And in the corners of the spirit that were the least dark, faith began to take root. 

When I made it back to the hostel, I bought Alex and Christophe many beers. They couldn’t believe my story. I had walked into that hostel like a wounded man, face full of triumph. They both knew full-well the dangers and crevasses that awaited fools in the Alps.

“The angels must have been with you today,” Alex told me.

“What can I say? I’ve got friends in high places,” I replied.

Later that trip, the one in 2019, before returning to Portugal to meet up with Max, I would end up taking the bus from Chamonix to Milan, take the train to Lake Como, hike the peninsula above Bellagio, hitchhike from Lake Como to the Swiss border, get picked up by a group of female Italian EDM artists on their way to a festival in Switzerland, ascend the the steepest section of mountain I’ve ever seen in their beat-ass van, get dropped off in Sils-Maria, spend the next seven days hiking around the mountains and lakes there in between making daily pilgrimages to Nietzsche’s house to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra in his reading chair, then take a train across Switzerland to Geneva, and fly back to Lisbon.

Now back in the Year 2022, I reminded Max of all these things.

“Jesus,” he shook his head, killing his Caneca. “That’s so fucking crazy.”

Our time in Costa went by like a summer breeze.

Before long it was time to head out of the nest, and back into the thrall of madness that defines our drunken epics. Some people might say, “Drunken antics.” But those people just don’t appreciate the depth and delight of the kind of truehearted fuckery two good old boys like me and Max can get up to when we put our minds to it. 

It was my birthday, after all.

It was time to head back to Lisbon. We were staying for a night in the city for my birthday. I had booked us a table at the famed locale of Fado and fantastic fare, Clube de Fado. Our plan was to hit Clube de Fado and then go out drinking. Needless to say, we got so drunk during our time there we didn’t need any other liquor lover. Fado treated us right. 

Diogo gave us a ride to the hostel from Costa. The plan was to stay the night in Lisbon, and then take the train to Porto. We were going to Porto for São João, a legendary Portuguese festival of ill-repute. I had only found out about it from Riley, but even after she and I went our separate ways, the idea of Sao Joao still tugged at my heartstrings. It was time to see if the legends were true. 

“When you guys get to Porto, you must try the Francesinha!” Diogo insisted. 

“What is that?” I asked.

“It’s like a sandwich,” Max replied.

“It’s very good. Very Portuguese,” Diogo assured me through the rearview mirror.

By the way, for those of you who don’t know, European Portuguese sounds like Spanish, if the Spaniards had sand in their mouths. I used to joke to Max that the Portuguese must have discovered chewing tobacco before inventing their language. Brazilians will laugh at this.

Fran-sha-zheen-ya. What a mouthful!

Diogo dropped us off at the hostel with a smile. We got situated in our rooms, and then prepared ourselves for our journey down the hills of Lisbon across Bairro Alto and to Alfama. Max thought he would change into nice clothes later, but for logistical reasons and a certain impatient Zane, he never did. He was wearing a Petaluma t-shirt and shorts, the height of humor!

We wandered through Lisbon early in the afternoon sun. The steep hills were good for my tired legs to acclimate to their chosen life’s purpose. Without a pack on, my knee no longer troubled me. Rest in Costa had served me well. Maybe some Atlantic magic and the massage of the Portuguese riptide had cured me. We planned to hang out around Lisbon and kill time until our reservation. Max wanted to find a vape before we went to dinner. 

“Just smoke a cigarette, you pussy,” I told him.

“It’ll only take a second,” he assured me.

Which is true if a second in his experiential-timeline is really a fuckin’ hour in the timeline of mere mortals such as the rest of us. Of course, I was totally patient. And of course, I didn’t rip on him for being a vape-addicted-little-bitch. Actually, I am very understanding.

“You’re such a fuckin’ fiend,” I ripped on him remorselessly.

“Yea, yea, whatever,” he replied, still entirely focused on his mission for the acquisition of vaporized nicotine. 

He held us up when his vape store turned out to be nonexistent. 

I lit up a cigarette in protest, and really took my time to enjoy it.

“Okay! I think there’s another place over here,” Max spoke to himself as much as me.

“Whatever you say, man,” I shook my head in disappointment.

The tobacco store did not have vapes because Portuguese people don’t cater to little bitches quite as much as the rest of the known world. Max would find no comfort here. I smiled in contempt and contentment. Max started thinking of another plan as we walked. 

We stopped in a crowded courtyard that was a main thoroughfare. The stress of the hot sun beat down upon us. The crowd seemed to swell around us. Max kept trying desperately to think of a solution. I pulled out my pack of Portuguese Suaves.

“Let’s just have smoke,” I encouraged him.

Max shook his head in defeat.

“Okay, give me a cigarette,” he relented.

And thus the Portuguese Vape Crisis of 2022 was resolved with a deliciously bold in flavor, but soft in character, Portuguese cigarette.

And the people rejoiced.

With cigarettes in our mouths and hopes in our hearts, we continued meandering through Lisbon. We had gotten ourselves to the main tourist drag running all the way to the arch and past the river. The Alfama, which housed Clube de Fado in its secret by-ways, was on our left, going up towards the old hills and the castle. I had a place in mind to rest, a little ways down from the Sé, an old Portuguese medieval cathedral. The place was called Pata Negra, a little jamoneria. I had been there before, and the owner and workers spoke English and were fun to talk to. One might assume that being fun, they were probably Brazilian, and one would be right!

Max and I ordered drinks and started talking to the owner about life. He had lived in America for a while, and was all around one of the most interesting guys in Lisbon, as Brazilians are bound to be. The combination of red wine and cigarettes made his stories all the better. Red wine and cigarettes: the European equivalent of epiphany. 

Eventually it was time to go to Clube de Fado.

We walked up the cobblestone alleyways under the Sé, walking past the old cathedral and eventually in front of Clube de Fado. We were early. It was only 5 p.m., but we decided you’re never too early to start drinking. We promptly came into the 1920s-style bar and ordered ourselves some very potent cocktails. They would of course be followed by more potent cocktails. Later we would go outside for a smoke before the music started and get our photo taken by a lady walking on the street. I changed the color to black-and-white. It’s a funny photo. 

We went back inside the club, and sat back down at our table. We had been seated as close as you can possibly sit to the band, since we were the first ones to arrive. We were reminded that we should order our meals before the Fado began so as to not interrupt. When a Fado singer steps into a room, everyone is expected to stop eating, as even the slightest noise such as a fork clinking a plate can disrupt her concentration. When we ordered our meal, Max ordered a bottle of champagne.

“Before you say anything, I don’t care about money. I mean I’m on vacation!” Max told me.

Right as he said that, the room began to grow quiet as the bassist, Portuguese guitarist, and singer walked between the tables and took their places in the corner of the room. Max’s elbows were inches away from the bassist, at one point they bumped into each other slightly during one of the songs. We were so close we could feel them. The lights began to dim, the guitar started to sing, and then the woman’s voice moaned in the dark. 

Rhythms as fast as a heartbeat and songs as slow as sadness filled the chamber of the restaurant one after another. The drunken sadness of self-reflection echoed in their every melody, the last drop of sadness from an age-old bottle of wine that won’t ever taste the same again. The champagne came out during a little break.

Max and I toasted dutifully.

“Happy birthday man!” He exclaimed.

“Thanks Max! This is probably MY best birthday ever,” I told him, referencing our friend Eric’s tearful birthday blues in Mexico. 

“I’m just glad that we’re in Portugal again!” Max cried out after a long bubbly sip.

“There’s no place I’d rather be!” I assured him.

Our meals came out shortly after the champagne. I had ordered a seafood risotto, which was fucking phenemonal. I forget what Max had, but it was just as good. The bottle of red wine we had been drinking after our cocktails was empty, and the champagne was soon empty. Before the Fado singer could start singing again, I called the waiter over and asked for another bottle of Pinot. 

He solemnly swore it would be on its way soon.

The next round of Fado came on like a fatal fever, like a delirium I had come to accept as a gift from God in the manic heights of its bliss and delusion. Every moment of my life became worth it just to suffer so well in that moment. I never wanted it to end, knowing all things must end, and that was the beauty of it. It was just this momentary whisper in time, telling me lies, like love can last forever. 

But I knew in my heart, life is fleeting and love is more so. 

But isn’t it beautiful to dream otherwise, if only for a while?

Max and I stumbled out of that house of Fado in a daze. 

The cobblestones challenged us. They disrespected us. They didn’t think we could take them. They were wrong. We could absolutely take them. Just slowly. Very slowly. Somehow after walking what felt like forever, we flagged a cab, and our bodies found their way into their beds at the hostel that night. 

Well, except for Max, who apparently found another body in his bunk and drunkenly tried to yell at them to get out of the bunk, to no avail. He eventually just slept on the top mattress without any bedding. 

The next day as we were smoking a cigarette on the balcony, decidedly hungover, Max told me, “I think I screamed at that girl last night.”

I chuckled wordlessly in amusement.

“Well, fuck her. She should have been in the right bed,” Max continued. 

“She was probably scared to death of you,” I shook my head with a smile.

“Not my problem,” Max declared, throwing out his cigarette over the balcony.

We settled our affairs at the hostel, and walked down the streets of Lisbon to the train station on our way to Porto for São João. We had a lot of time to kill, and so we found ourselves once again smoking cigarettes and drinking beer and wine outside Pata Negra. The walk to the train station afterwards was about 30 minutes. The labyrinthine layout of the station threatened to derail our adventure. We actually got on the right train at the wrong time, were forced to exit that train halfway to Porto and wait half an hour for our correct train, even though they had the same destinations and stops. It was pretty ridiculous, but it gave us time to smoke a cigarette and ponder life’s great mysteries in Coimbra. Coimbra is a very historical Portuguese town famed for castles and its own version of Fado. 

When we got on the right train, it felt right. It was only an hour or so to Porto. Once we got there, we had a couple Estrella Galicia’s and called an Uber. The ride over to the hostel was nice and easy. Porto’s dark-grey gothic character loomed differently than warm-hearted Lisbon. It felt more French and European than Mediterranean Lisbon. The statues and monuments were beautiful nonetheless, in that sterner way. 

We arrived at the Porto Wine Hostel and proceeded to put our things away before heading to the bar. This would be our first encounter with the Belgians, whose drunken gravity we did not yet realize. We were poured our complimentary glasses of Port provided to all guests by the hostel upon arrival. This was the sacrament that would start our journey.

We befriended the Belgians, and they invited us to go out to dinner with them and some of the workers from the hostel. They all seemed to know each other well, and Max and I were excited to go. One of the hostel guys knew about this nice little hole-in-the-wall restaurant right around the corner. We drank bottles and bottles of Portuguese wine curated for us by our new friends from Porto. We must have had a bottle from every region in Portugal!

The meal was nice. I had a leg of lamb that was to die for, the details of which slightly escape my mind at the moment, because the wine demanded more attention at the time. Every fragrant drop was delicious and divine, Dionysus’s tears of joy at the beauty of creation. 

After a few hours in the restaurant, we paid our very complex split tab, and went back to the hostel to keep drinking. It was there that we met Alexandros, the Greek. Man, did he not like Turks. When he got drunk he would start raving like a paranoid lunatic about the threat of the Turks to civilization. It was fucking hilarious. I still can’t even fully comprehend just how funny it truly was.

“It’s the fucking Turks, man! It’s always the fucking Turks!” Alexandros once shouted, pounding the table, and spilling all our beer.

For those of you who do not know, there is major drama between Greeks and Turks over lots of tiny fucking islands that no one knows the names of anyway, and hundreds of years of conflict and oppression. You know, just European things! But what do I know anyway? For me, Cyprus is just a beautiful tree that grows along the coast.

Max and I spent our first session of heavy drinking with Alexandros outside the hostel until like 2 or 3 in the morning. Finally we just couldn’t take it anymore. Max was the first one to call it a night, and I would follow him an hour later. Alexandros just kept going.

He has a famous quote from that night along the lines of, “Don’t buy me a beer. Buy me a lobster!”

Another funny situation with Alexandros was when he asked how my parents put up with my crazy adventures and risk-taking behaviors. This seems to be a recurring question that I get asked all the time, that I seem to answer in a different way every time. This time, whether because of the cool Portuguese night air or just the delicious beer, I was feeling pretty bold.

I told him, “Well I’m an only child. They kind of have to put up with me. I’m the only legacy they got!”

Alexandros just shook his head, “And so the only legacy is out here running with bulls and drinking with crazy people like me!” 

I nodded, “Looks that way.”

The next morning was São João and Belgian breakfast. And then the Belgians returned later in the day with their message of love and Jaeger for us poor, sad, Jaegerless souls. Our first shot of Jaeger in the morning, compliments of our Flemish friends, was followed by a round that evening. 

And as I have already relayed to you good people, when the Belgians asked proudly who would follow them into the warm embrace of Jaeger’s love, Max stoutheartedly replied, “And the grass said, ‘Rarely am I not green.’” 

And so we all had Jaeger.  

As we drank with the Belgians, a girl from out of my dreams, walked up to the bar and sat next to me, her intense stony-blue eyes never leaving mine. Her hair was light brown and long. Her name was Rebeka. She was French-Canadian. Her accent was unmistakable. I’ve never much liked French people or French girls, despite my befriending quite a few of them, but for her I could make an exception. Her eyes had a way of piercing to the depths of my soul. She asked if she could go out with us tonight, and Max and I told her she’d be welcome. And then she started asking me about my entire fucking life during an intense session of mind-melding. Our shared passion for the City of Lisbon and its charming indelible romance was like a spark that lit the fire between us.

Some of the conversation is not well remembered by me, but I do remember one famous line.

“Do you still do drugs?” Rebeka asked after hearing some small tidbits from my wilder days.

“I’m retired now,” I told her with a grin.

Which was pretty much true. I mean I occasionally get pulled out of retirement on some consulting gigs, but for the most part I don’t really do drugs anymore. At least not like I used to. Mostly now I just fucking drink and do cocaine a few times a year. I have no regrets. I have lived well. If I am to die today, or sober up today, it will still be a good day. 

There’s a lot to be grateful for.

“You know this guy is a journalist going to Ukraine,” Max drunkenly told one of the Belgians pointing at me. 

“You’re going to Ukraine?” The peace-loving Belgian asked. “I’ve seen some shit on the news. Isn’t it dangerous?”

I replied with a shrug, “Well, it is a war.”

Putting an arm around my shoulder, Max drunkenly slurred, “This guy’s also doing the Running of the Bulls!”

Rebeka smiled gently, her French-Canadian heard plainly, “Sounds like you’re going to have lots of adventures.”

I laughed, “I’ve been known to adventure from time to time.”

Max continued to slurring-ly endorse me, “This guy and I went to school together. He is, like, the smartest guy I know.”

Rebeka smiled at Max’s openness.

“Well, I don’t know about all that,” I demurred. “But I do like to live a life worth living.”

The peace-loving Belgian responded, raising his glass slightly, “Well, I wish you good luck in your travels. Stay safe in Ukraine!”

I raised my glass in reply, “I will try.”

When the scene had calmed down a little, and everyone went back to their drinking, Rebeka asked me, “So you’re a writer? I am studying literature in university.”

I nodded, “Oh, that’s cool. Yea, I used to be a journalist for my school news outlet. Actually my ex was the Editor-in-Chief before me.”

Rebeka asked with her Quebecois accent, “Any good stories?”

I laughed the type of laugh that comes from the knowledge that the person you’re talking to can’t even comprehend the sheer fucking volume of insanity that you bring the table.

“Well, I used to be a firechaser,” I told her.

“Firechaser?” She asked.

“Yea, we used to chase wildfires and get footage and photos and livestreams. It was the fuckin’ best!” I answered vivaciously.

“Oh wow. Isn’t that dangerous?” Rebeka asked, increasingly intrigued.

“I mean I guess so, but for me it was just something I loved doing,” I replied honestly.

“I can see why you’re going to Ukraine,” she commented.

“Yea. I do like to be where stuff is happening,” I told her. “Also the two biggest stories I did as a student-journalist were this profile of a Jewish French Resistance fighter turned climate activist from my hometown, and an article titled, ‘Top 10 cigarettes I smoked in Europe.’”

Rebeka raised her eyebrows, “Top 10 cigarettes?”

I nodded with a chuckle, “It’s actually always in the top 5 or 6 when you search Top 10 Cigarettes on Google. It’s been trending on my old outlet’s website for like 3 years hahaha! It’s because of all the people searching it on Google. It’s driving them insane trying to get a story to outperform it!”

Actually just recently in 2023, it was pushed into second place by a story about an SRJC student who jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived. But now, as of June 19, 2023, “Top 10 cigarettes I smoked in Europe” has reclaimed its place in the sun as the Oak Leaf’s #1 trending story. 

You can’t keep good content down!

Rebeka laughed and then changed the subject.

“Why the Running of the Bulls?” she asked, switching gears.

“The Sun Also Rises was like one my favorite fucking books as kid because I didn’t understand it. Like it had no fucking purpose, no plot. Just all these people wandering around, getting fucked up, and having drama. It was decadent, but also strangely realistic. Because that’s how life happens right? It’s chaotic and passionate,” I ranted gently.

“I think I see now,” Rebeka smirked.

She had been drinking one of my favorite Portuguese affairs, Vinho Verde, going through a few glasses, and steadily getting more and more buzzed. Vinho Verde is a fresh wine made without aging using green grapes. It’s the fucking GOAT. All around us, the chaotic turmoil continued. The noise reached maximum levels as that early-part-of-the-night-manic-conversation rang out into the heavens.

Our raucous drinking was interrupted by being informed that it was time for dinner. The hostel owner told us to go downstairs to the restaurant and sign in. Rebeka, Max, and I went first. We were followed by our new friends Levi, an Aussie-Briton, and this girl from Berlin who actually lived in London. We finally figured out a way inside and sat at a table. We were having soup and bread. The main course would be grilled meats and sardines.

“I like sardines, but they’re such a pain in the ass to eat.” I told everyone.

“I love sardines,” Rebeka said passionately.

“I don’t like sardines at all,” Max said deadpan.

“Not very Portuguese of you,” I joked.

When wine came around, the tales began to get crazy.

“You think I have crazy stories?” Max asked the Berlin Girl and Rebeka incredulously, responding to their major reaction to some minor misadventure. “You should fucking hear this guy! You know he hitchhiked like 50 miles in Portugal with a busted knee?”

“What happened to your knee?” Berlin Girl asked me.

“I injured it in a car crash when I was 18,” I replied matter-of-factly.

“So? Go on?” Rebeka asked me, eyes intense as ever. “Tell us the story.”

“Well, I was driving home from work one night after getting hella sick because I hadn’t slept, and I’d been partying nonstop for weeks,” I told them. “I was feeling pretty beat, but I actually decided not to take any drugs at that moment to pick myself back up, and that’s what got me.”

My audience was filled with stares of bloody wonder. 

“I was driving on this road in front of some car dealerships in our town. There were cars parked all along the sides of it. I saw the speed limit was 35 mph, so I looked down to check my speed. In that moment, I guess I clipped the bumper of a car in front of me and overcorrected. I was only going 35. I had a little two door Chevy Cavalier. It flipped onto the driver’s side and skidded like 30 yards. My window was open, and my leg dangled out the driver’s side window as it skidded along. If my leg had moved inches in either direction, it would be gone. When I came to, my leg was covered in blood, my jeans were torn, and my knee was right on the edge of the window. The car was gently rocking back and forth, going eeeeeet-eeeeeeet, eeeeeet-eeeeeeet, putting pressure on my knee and taking pressure off. My leg was covered in road burn and had a bunch of bits of glass and asphalt in it. I pulled myself up through the passenger window, which had also been open, but I couldn’t make it all the way, and people from the car dealership came up and pulled me out,” I spoke intensely-nonchalant.

“And I had never really had any problems with it until I was hiking in Portugal this year,” I finished.

“I told you Americans are crazy,” Rebeka said to the Berlin Girl.

“Honestly, that’s not even his craziest story,” Max chuckled knowingly.

“Does everyone where you guys are from do drugs?” Berlin Girl asked Max.

“Eh, I mean yea, most of the people we went to high school with have done at least one hard drug. And all of our friends did acid together this one time,” Max replied like it was no big deal.

“Is this a normal experience?” Rebeka asked.

“Um, I would say we are an extreme example of a normal situation,” I replied with a smile.

“I mean it’s not so weird. Lots of people in Australia are like that,” Levi chipped in.

“I mean have you done acid?” Berlin Girl asked Levi.

“Yea, I’ve done all sorts of stuff. My life’s a bit like these guys,” Levi answered her.

“You like Hunter S Thompson?” Levi asked me.

“Oh fuck yea, I grew up on Hunter S Thompson. Fear and Loathing changed my life,” I laughed.

“So if that’s not the craziest story, then what it is?” Rebeka asked me, still deeply intrigued.

Max leapt in before I could answer.

“You know this guy hiked a mountain with a broken leg! We didn’t even know he was coming because he had just broken his leg trying to skateboard drunk like a few weeks before, and then this guy just shows up to the campsite with his crutches and a case of beer!” Max chortled uncontrollably. “Like he drove all the way up there!”

I laughed and nodded, “Also I drive a manual, and was using my broken leg on the clutch! When I told my doctor that I drive a manual, she was like, ‘you can’t be driving!’”

The eyes of the audience widened again.

“Yea, one day, I just decided to drive to Taco Bell after a week or so of being bedridden after surgery, and after I made it, I was like, I’m gonna hit the casino! Then later I was like, I guess I can drive! Might as well go up to Sardine Lakes!” I almost shouted enthusiastically.

“Didn’t you get like two tickets driving there?” Max matched my enthusiasm.

“Yea…” I just broke down in laughter. “Also I was 4-wheeling and shit with our friend Eric and his girlfriend Nadia in the back of my truck, just FLYING down the mountain! They were bumping all over the place, man!”

“Do you get a lot of tickets?” Rebeka asked knowingly.

“Well, that summer of 2018 I paid $3,300 in parking tickets, speeding tickets, carpool tickets, seatbelt tickets, and library fees,” I admitted with a grin. 

How do cops expect us not to speed when there’s such good music in the world? 

Don’t tell ME to turn it down, officer!

Max started laughing hysterically.

“Also this guy straight took off his cast, and started swimming in the lake,” Max told everyone.

“Jesus, that’s hardcore,” Levi spoke with respect.

“Are all Americans this crazy, or are you guys just extra crazy?” Berlin Girl asked.

“I mean, our friend group is the craziest that I know of,” Max’s words turned strangely serious. “When we were like in highschool, the challenges for losing this card game we always play were SO insane. Like some of the craziest challenges were like jumping off the roof, smoking heroin, getting tased, killing bottles of liquor, and then driving home.”

I pitched in for posterity, “I mean the heroin challenge was like one or two times, and the tasing was with my electric lighter. Also there was that one time where I had to smoke a random plant in my yard.”

“So are those the craziest stories you have?” Rebeka asked, intent to know more.

“Well I dunno about the craziest, but this one time, when we were like 16 or 17, my friends and I had a little bit of a race,” my smile widened like a fox.

“Oh god, yea this was crazy,” Max said, just shaking his head.

“So this one time, we were going up to the Russian River…” I started.

“Which is a river that goes through where we live in Sonoma County,” Max interjected. 

“And our friend Eric was taking us up to a spot up at the county line like an hour or so north of where we live. He likes to show off, and since no one could pass him because he was our guide there, he was going like 90 mph the whole way up Highway 101, and we were just trying to keep up with him. We had four cars. Max was in my car. Us and the other cars behind Eric were racing for second place and trying to pass each other the whole way up. It was insane. Of course we were all smoking weed on the drive. When we finally got to the river we started drinking heavily and really hitting the weed. At some point, when we were getting ready to leave, someone had the bright idea of racing back down. So, everyone got their shit together as fast as they could, and started booking it up the cliffs with our stuff, trying to be the first to get to the cars. If it weren't for the liquor, we probably would have been too stoned to race! Eric and I were the first to get to our cars, and I was like screaming at Max to get the fuck in the car. He jumped in, and I took off like a fuckin’ demon rippin’ dust everywhere, and Eric was rippin’ right behind me. We screeched out onto the freeway, and it was a competitive race. My speedometer read 110 mph all the way down from the Sonoma-Mendocino county line to the Rohnert Park exit when I had to stop for gas. There was this one point where I literally risked our lives for victory and cut in front of a semi-truck with a minivan right in front of me. We had like inches to spare. We took the lead all the way down, so I guess it was worth it. I mean we were like 15 minutes ahead of Eric, but we had to get off for gas, so it's still up for debate who won, since technically we didn’t get off in Petaluma,” my heart filled with pride as I recounted the adventure. 

“That’s fuckin’ nuts,” Levi laughed.

“I’m surprised you guys are still alive,” Rebeka said wide-eyed.

“Honestly, I think we all are,” Max replied with a drunken chuckle.

“You guys are fucking insane,” Berlin Girl laughed into her glass of wine.

The food had come in the middle of storytime, and I had barely touched a thing, so enthralled was I with our myths and legends. This is not an uncommon situation for a Zane that has been provoked into the real redwork of telling a good story. And boy does a drunk like a skunk Zane know how to tell a good story. Max was so faded that he had actually been caught off guard by the intense questioning, and seemed to be very thankful that I was in the mood to carry the weight of our responsibility that day. It is a burden we must be willing to bear, if not for ourselves, then for the sake of our friends. After all, if we don’t tell the stories of the legends we grew up with, who will? 

In the butchered words of my old friend Friedrich, “A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.”

The same goes for a storyteller I suppose.

I picked at my sardines knowing I had to eat something. Grilled meats went down my gullet greedily. Decidedly drunk, I felt it was my responsibility to eat as much as I could, to make sure I would last the night. The wine flowed freely. Across at the other table, the Belgians were going wild, their boisterous energy enough to make even the most hardened female heart blush with embarrassment; not the embarrassment of attraction of course, but that hot sticky kind of embarrassment a person feels when they are watching someone make a complete fool of themselves. 

But if those Belgians were fools, then I was surely one of them!

After dinner, Levi, Rebeka, Berlin Girl, Max, me and the goddamned Belgians formed a group. We also met up with Alexandros. He had stayed out all night, and now he had finally crawled out of whatever hole he had stowed away in, and was ready to fucking rock this festival.

The Belgians claimed they had a secret spot to see the fireworks that wouldn’t be so crowded, right along the river, and who were we not to follow these 6-year veterans of São João? The narrow cobblestone streets of Porto were choking with people. The park in front of the hostel was now the site of two separate concerts, and people were running wild through the streets. We did our best to stick together. The chaotic din of activity was made even more disorienting by the people carrying plastic hammers, who would hit strangers they passed on the head, a strange tradition of São João. I soon got my hands on one of those polyethylene pretties.

If you give me a hammer, and the right and ability to hit people, it’s going to be a problem. 

Most people hit halfheartedly. But a Zane does not do anything halfheartedly, except for his chores. So it was inevitable that he would just start whacking the fuck out of strangers in fast and comical ways. It was also equally inevitable that the decision would quickly be made to remove Zane from his hammer privileges for the sake of group cohesion. I would say this process took about 30 minutes. Unanimous consent is rare in this day and age, and it is heartwarming to see how a Zane can inspire it in others.

At some point, Alexandros, Max, and I got separated from the rest of the clan. We wandered around this one section of Porto for like half an hour before we got a call from Levi, directing us to take a long narrow road up the side of a cliff to a bar where they were all drinking. Our navigation skills proved to be poor due to Portuguese design logic and drunken dismemberment. Luckily, you can only be wrong so many times before you end up being right, and eventually, somehow, by the grace of the liquor, we made it up that goddamn hill. 

We arrived at the cliffside bar just as the caravan was leaving.

“Where have you guys been?” Rebeka asked.

“Struggling,” I told her.

“These streets make no sense,” Alexandros assured her.

“Hey, you guys finally made it!” Levi shouted, not exactly sober.

“I’m just glad to be here,” Max said, giving him a drunken arm over the shoulder.

“Follow us guys! We are getting close now!” Blondie Belgian called out. 

The group formed up, and started marching up the road, only to come out on top of the other side in a whole new world of festivities and free spirits. We walked through a fair with toys and games that proved to be quite discombobulating. There seemed to be just concert after concert, and we eventually passed a concert that seemed to be the greatest of them all. All along the way we would stop for beers in the lovely little cups that the Portuguese hold so dear. Drunk-walking should be a sport, and that night it was. It was the main event. People had come from all over the world just to be here, watching people stumble through the night. 

It's a bold, brave, beautiful thing to believe in. 

We didn’t linger at the concert because we were on a mission. We were going to see those goddamn fireworks down by the river or get drunk tryin’! The night got more and more warbled as things went along. The stumble-bumble floating through the streets not really understanding how we actually made it anywhere, began to take its toll, as the vibrations of life took on a more desperate tone. People were losing faith. Sweaty faces and tired eyes began to fill the caravan. 

And then, just when it seemed like all was lost, Blondie Belgian’s voice rang faithfully through the night, “We’re here! It’s just down these steps now!”

“Wooooooooooooooooooooo!” The people cheered.

Now we just had to stagger down these stone steps to the banks of the river. Some people were already gathered, waiting expectantly for the rumble of Portuguese Pride to fill the skies. The river glistened beautifully under the bright lights of the city. Lovely sailboats and little yachts had moored themselves, so they could partake in both the river and the fireworks. The main bridge across the river was covered in a thronging horde of people. We were glad to have followed the Belgians instead of braving those treacherous waves of human flesh. The group broke apart a bit, as people positioned themselves on the stairway for what they thought might be a better position. Max, Rebeka, Levi, Alexandros, and I stuck together closer to the top.

The thunderous claps of fireworks shook us even from so far away. The multicolored aurora glittered in the night sky. The pulsating blasts of color continued their elaborate dance in the cool embrace of the Portuguese fog, a fiery tango of romantic passion. Rebeka inched ever so closer to me. Her body felt warm.

After the epic episodic melodies of fire and saltpeter subsided, our group slowly meandered its way back up the street after lingering for a time, embracing the moment. There was a lull in our energy, but it was decided that that was nothing a nice cold Superbock couldn’t fix. We quickly refilled and found ourselves back on our way. The concert had summoned us at last.

It was in the chaos of the concert that the group finally fractured, and the schism of the group became permanent. The decision had been made, albeit somewhat haphazardly, that after the concert we would all meet up at the hostel bar for a drink and to reassess our options. After that, the group broke up pretty quickly, torn to pieces by the currents of concertgoers, like a tiny fishing boat shattered and scattered upon the rocks by the Portuguese riptide. 

And so it was that Levi, Rebeka, and I ended up alone together for the journey back again.

We had a pretty kick-ass time. We left the concert after like an hour or so. Levi and I were drunk and wilding through the streets, while Rebeka watched the tomfoolery in buzzed-buzzed-buzzing amusement. All of our laughter echoed through the marble behemoths surrounding us. Rebeka would not stop staring at me. Her eyes seemed like I was the only person in the entire world, even as she innocently flirted with both me and Levi, in a manner just meant to be friendly. My eyes have an intensity of their own, and so we danced, her and I, through looks and gazes and stares.

Eventually after walking about two-thirds of the way back to the Porto Wine Hostel, we decided, well Levi and I decided, that we were hungry. At first he was fucking obsessed with the idea of hitting “Mac-donald’s,” but when we came to the sad sight of a McDonald’s that is sober and closed when you are drunk and open, we decided to change tactics.

“I think it’s time for a kebap!” Levi declared definitively.

“I could fuckin’ demolish a kebap right now,” I salivated in agreement.

“Like I said I’m not hungry, but I don't mind coming with you guys,” Rebeka smiled warmly.

We wandered the wastelands of hunger until we finally came upon an open kebap place. It was a wondrous miracle, and as such in the 21st Century, it was packed to the gills with people. We navigated the labyrinthine queue for about 10 or 20 minutes before we finally escaped with our kebaps. We wandered over to a place to sit down and eat them on the street. Levi and I sat down, but Rebeka did not.

“Um, I’m just gonna stand,” she said, pointing to the pools of throw-up all around us.

Levi quickly stood up, but kept on eating without missing a beat.

“Eh,” I shrugged. “I mean I already sat down!” 

After Levi and I finished eating, I stood up, and we continued on our merry way. 

Each moment that passed brought us all closer together. 

Pretty soon we were back at the park in front of the hostel. It was around 3 or 4 in the morning, and things had ever so slightly slowed down. But the party in front of the hostel would not die until dawn, the last fiery embers of passion to survive the night in Porto. We made our way through the thronging crowd and up inside the hostel. The hostel bar was open, but only for guests.

Inside was a wild scene of rampant jubilation. The hostel owner was getting fucking plowed with his staff, and shots of Jaeger were flying around the room like there was no tomorrow. Which, considering how hungover we all would be, just might have been true. Levi got sucked into Belgian madness, as Rebeka and I walked over to where we saw Max smoking a cigarette on the balcony. He had some scrapes and blood on his arms. Alexandros was next to him, blowing smoke.

“I hurt myself doing limbo under a parking booth thing,” Max told me in dazed excitement when we made it over to them.

“Yes, we all did that! It was pretty dumb,” Alexandros admitted.

Rebeka and I stood there outside hanging with them to get a moment’s peace from the tumultuous trip unfolding inside. I lit up a cigarette. She looked at it romantically. 

“So… uh. Do you have an Instagram?” I asked. 

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t use social media.”

I smiled a wry smile, “What about a WhatsApp?”

She shot that wry smile right back at me, “Sure, I can give you my WhatsApp.”

You could see in her eyes that she had gone against her better judgment. 

One of the other major bonds between Rebeka and I was our shared Azorean heritage. 

The Azores are the far-flung smattering of volcanic islands in the middle of the Atlantic, and if you believe Joe Rogan, fucking Atlantis. The Portuguese settled the islands and there were no native inhabitants (Obviously because they sank with Atlantis). The blood of the Azores is the blood of sailors, as only adventurers and the families of adventurers settled on the remote islands. But who knows? Maybe we’re all just Atlanteans, long lost and looking for home. My family immigrated from the Azores to California. Apparently her family immigrated to Quebec. 

She entered her full name into my phone. Her Portuguese last name was beautiful. The French girl in her made sure that I knew how to pronounce it correctly. Mispronunciation, after all, being worse to French morality than pedophilia. 

After that encounter we made our way inside and dove back into the fray. The Belgians had summoned us for battle. It was time for shots. The Jaeger, the last bottles in Porto, had long since run dry, and people were wondering what to knock back next.

“Let’s do a shot of rum!” I suggested. It turns out that wasn’t the best idea.

Murmurs of agreement rippled through the crowd. Shots of rum found themselves in all our hands. The noble Belgians raised theirs proudly and the rest of us peasants followed. In the end, it was the hostel owner who made one final cheers in Portuguese.

“Saud!” he cried, our voices following in unison.

Seconds later the peace-loving Belgian, also known as the responsible/hungover Belgian, threw up all over the bar, and had to be carried out by his comrades. My stomach was not immune to the sweet fires of the Caribbean either, and I made my way to the bathroom, only to not make it all the way and vomit into the kitchen sink. I think Max puked too.

The rum did us dirty. 

In the aftermath of this nonsense, a tired and disgusted hostel owner informed everyone the bar was closed. It was around 5 or 6 a.m. We didn’t quite make it till sunrise, but considering we had been drinking heavily for about 20 hours, I think we can be forgiven.

It is a well-known fact that there are partially decomposed corpses that have more life in them than I did when I woke up with a start the next morning. The dehydration had begun to set in. My mouth was a desiccated desert, with animals dropping dead from the heat, leaving a foul, rotten aroma. My limbs ached, and I felt my joints grind against each other with every ill-advised movement. With nothing else left in my life, I retreated into the sanctuary of my smartphone.

Rebeka had texted me a goodbye, informing me that she had left early, and was in fact, the most hungover she had ever been in her life. I guess she didn’t really drink too much in real-life. The morning train to Lisbon did not sound welcoming at all, and I felt thankful that Max and I wouldn’t be leaving until the next morning. Levi had also messaged me on Instagram and tagged me in a story. He too had left in the morning without saying goodbye.

On the bunk above me, I heard Max rustle his way into some basic form of consciousness.

“Welcome to hell!” I greeted him with a burnt-out chuckle.

“I need waterrrrrr,” Max moaned loudly.

“I need an early grave,” I grimaced.

Max let out a barrage of hysterical laughter at the crackling-comic-commentary.

Eventually I got up and walked to the sink, splashed my face with cold water and took feral gulps from that silver spring in the concrete jungle, like a modern animal. Max just watched me jealously, still unable to will himself to water.

“I think I’m gonna go downstairs,” I told him.

“I’ll be down after I shower,” he replied, looking lobotomized by his electronic device. 

The Belgians were there at breakfast again, but the fiery passion had been burned out of them. The cocktails were no longer a breakfast, but a medication. I got sucked back in willingly, but this time there was no celebration. Blondie was missing. I was informed he had been hit pretty hard by reality this morning, and had yet to recover.

It was beer for breakfast again, and the smoking of plenty of vitamin C’s.

The ancient and well-worn hangover cure took effect almost immediately. But the energy I had lost the night before was irreplaceable. Two days and nights of drinking heavily in Porto were beginning to take their toll on my feeble composition and fragile psyche, and the third session was already well underway.

Max would come down, and we would slurp down vodka redbulls like there was no tomorrow. 

The girl working at the bar, Diana, ripped on us, “As much as you guys make fun of the Belgians, you guys are basically just as bad!”

Max laughed, “I’d like to think I’m worse than the Belgians.”

I shook my head vociferously, “No one is worse than the Belgians.”

Max replied, “I dunno. I mean they are pretty crazy drunks, but our friend group is pretty fucking crazy.”

I nodded in agreement, “Yea. That’s true, but on the sheer level of alcoholism, you gotta give it to the Belgians. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Later that day, Alexandros hit us up and asked if we wanted to go out for food and then drinks. We told him to meet us at the hostel, and pretty soon the three of us were back out on the streets of Porto, a danger to ourselves and others. We actually ended up meeting Riley, who was now in Porto, and her friends for a drink or two. It was nice enough, but a little awkward. We weren’t together anymore, after all. It was actually Max who wanted to see Riley. We didn’t stay long. We would end up coming back to the bars in front of the hostel, where there seemed to be a party raging in their collective outdoor patio every night until dawn.

This was the notorious moment, that Alexandros still doesn’t remember, when he bashed his hand on the table shouting in paranoid delusions about the threat of the Turks to modern society. When he slammed the table, it fell over, and all our beers and dreams went with it. The entire crowd of this giant patio went silent, watching in awe as the scene continued to unfold. The Portuguese were entirely unprepared for this blatant display of aggression, having lived their entire lives in this peaceful little country where wielding a knife is considered the epitome of brutality, and police wear little yellow vests armed only with tasers. Alexandros apologized, but his apologies seemed empty, and the fiery desire for Turkish blood still burned brightly in his body.

We left Alexandros, or he left us. I can’t really remember. We were pretty drunk at the time, believe it or not. All I know is that Max and I ended up with some of the Belgians at the hostel bar. What I later found out the next day is that somehow Alexandros stumbled down the street without us to a nearby hookah bar, met some Morroccans, went to the clubs until 8 in the morning, broke his hand by punching a wall at some point (or so we assume), and finished the night off with his new Moroccan friends at Mac-Donald’s. 

I was told all this later when Max and I made it back to Costa, and this broken-handed motherfucker video-calls me asking, “What the fuck happened last night?”

I laughed, shaking my head in disbelief, “You got drunk and started yelling at the Turks and hit our table.”

Alexandros nodded over the call thoughtfully, “I kinda remember that, but how did I break my hand?”

I looked shocked, “You broke your hand!?”

Alexandros kept nodding, “Yea, man. This is serious. Where is Max? I need you two to get on the phone and tell me what happened last night, because I don’t remember.”

Max came over and we both got on the screen. 

“Hey Alexandros! How’s it goin’?” Max asked.

“It’s going. It’s going. Listen, Max, do you remember what happened last night?” Alexandros inquired.

“All I remember is you going off on your own or something after the table incident,” Max told him.

“What about the Moroccans?” Alexandros pressed him.

“What Moroccans? I did NOT see any Moroccans,” Max assured him.

“Well I broke my hand, man.” Alexandros complained. “I think it might have been in the club. With the Moroccans. Then we went to Mac-Donald’s. Maybe I punched a wall or something.”

I interjected, “Maybe you should stop hitting things and leave those poor Turks alone!”

Alexandros laughed and shook his head sheepishly, “Yea, man. I think I may have to quit drinking so much.”

That was the last we heard from Alexandros for a while, until later in 2023, when he would wish my ass a Happy New Year and tell me, “My arm is still in pain from that night. I was sure you had sticky pictures or video that you did not send me. I still don’t remember what happened that night. Only you and Max can share, as witnesses.”

Apparently he doesn’t remember us regaling him with accounts of his fuckery the first time.

Anyways, back to Max and I drinking with the Belgians in the hostel bar…

We made it up to the bar, after the chaotic bullshit Alexandros laid down on the table, only to find more chaotic bullshit emanating from the Belgians’ very being. There were only 3 of them: Blondie, Baseball cap (though now he had no hat), and one of the others. Responsible Belgian was in bed because they had a train to Lisbon early the next morning. They were knocking back shots of whiskey with the broken confidence of empty-handed gamblers’ who just couldn’t quite learn the lessons of their losses.

“Guess that means no beer for breakfast,” I thought to myself thankfully.

We ordered cocktails and started drinking with the bastards.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Baseball cap told me, his eyes unable to focus. “You need to drink liquor. Your stomach is only so big.”

I laughed, “Are you saying I should maximize the amount of liquor I can fit into my stomach?”

The drunken Belgian nodded.

We ended up drinking with them until like 2 a.m., when the hostel bar closed, and decided not to follow them into the night when their faces, beaded with sweat and empty eyes, floated downstairs to the still open bars. It was a damn good thing we didn’t go with them, or I don’t know if we would have made it out of Porto alive.

We woke up the next morning somehow even more hungover than the day before. I decided to stay in bed until 11 a.m. to avoid bumping into the Belgians for “breakfast.” I felt I had earned a much needed respite. Max and I grabbed our things and walked downstairs one last time. It felt good knowing we might get one peaceful morning before we shoved ourselves on a train. 

I should have known we would not escape so easily.

Despite their assurances of an early departure, there they were: the fucking Belgians. It was always the fucking Belgians! I should have known there was no escaping the fucking Belgians! The hostel bar that morning looked like a scene out of the only saloon on the Island of Misfit Toys. We were looking at sad faces, and broken spirits. The hostel owner proposed a final toast, a shot of vodka for everyone, on the house. It was time for one last shot. One last song before the road. Humility had cashed them out, but pride had dealt them one last hand. 

“One last shot for São João!” Blondie shouted. 

“Do you want vodka as well?” The hostel owner asked me and Max.

Identities built upon heavy drinking had little choice but to swill it down honorably. Of course Max and I would join them! We wouldn’t let it go down any other way. Once we were all given our pourings of poison, we threw back the fiery clearwater in our silvery glasses with a, “Saud!”

Yes, I should have known we would have one last hurrah. There was no escaping it.

“I thought you guys had a train to catch?” I asked the Responsible Belgian.

“It ended up that some of us were not going to be able to wake up that early. So we had to reschedule,” he told me with a chuckle.

My thoughts immediately returned to the drunken antics of the night before. I smiled.

We bid farewell to the Belgians and sent them on their way, as legends such as they deserve to be sent off. Then Max and I realized our bodies were in critical condition, and promptly ordered breakfast. I could barely pick at my food. Max continued to order vodka redbulls, but I stuck with espresso and cigarettes. We had to wait a few hours before our train, and we were in no condition to go anywhere else. 

When the Uber finally came to take us to the train station, I put my head out the window and felt the world roll by in luscious, surreal fashion. This was farewell, Porto! We had survived São João. There is no doubt in my mind, that, even to this day, it is the drunkest 4 days I have ever spent. The hangover brought me to the precipice of existential terror, as any good hangover should after a body has experienced such extreme delirium for such an extended period of time. Not even the Running of the Bulls and its 9 days of debauchery compared to this. In reality, São João was that entire experience packed into a single night. 

And, of course, we were there for 3 days and nights. And on the fourth day we left…

When Max and I pulled into Lisbon on the train, we decided to hit Pata Negra, that heavenly jamoneria that I have hit every time I have been in Lisbon. We were waiting for Diogo to come and pick us up to drive us back to Costa. I sipped wine and ate jamon with a couple cigarettes coming along for the ride. Max had a big fuckin’ Caneca. I was on the phone the whole time. I had been since Porto.

Rebeka and I had been texting on WhatsApp since she left. I regaled her with some of the stupid stories she missed out on, and she regaled me with her love of Lisbon, into whose arms she had been returned. When I told her that Max and I were at a cafe, she asked the unthinkable, “Do you want to get together in Lisbon?”

I told her that I was pretty burnt, but I suggested that we meet the next day as it was my last in Portugal, and I had spent enough time with Max for several lifetimes. She agreed to meet me outside the Rossio Station sometime in the afternoon.

“Pretty sure she has a boyfriend,” Levi told me via Instagram.

I didn’t a-hundred-percent believe him, but I felt that if she did have a boyfriend, they must not be in a very good relationship if she was asking me out on a date. Also the way she stared so deeply into my eyes haunted my spirit. It was like an invitation. Who was I to say no?

Looking back, she was probably just doing what many women, including my ex, do in Europe: play dangerous games with the hot hearts of European fantasies before returning to the cooler calmer climes of American realities as if nothing ever happened. 

This was only further confirmed when she reminded me over text that, “she just wanted to go out as friends,” and was, “still in a relationship.”

This troubled me some, but I still felt it was worth it to go. 

The next day Diogo took Max and I to lunch. One of their relatives owned a sushi place over in Almada. After lunch he drove us down the coast to a beautiful little beach town to check out the sights. Much to my surprise, when he heard I was worried about making it to Lisbon on time to meet Rebeka, he offered to drive me. I was so thankful that words cannot explain it. I felt like a huge burden had been lifted off my shoulders.

We dropped Max off at his grandma's place in Costa, and then headed across that golden bridge to the city. 

“Good luck with your date!” Diogo wished me warmly as I got out of the car at the Rossio.

“Thank you so much for the ride, Diogo! I hope your family is very happy!” I told him.

Rebeka was late meeting me, or rather we were on opposite sides of the Rossio and it took me like 30 minutes to find her. When I did she was talking to this Portuguese guy like she knew him very well. They were talking about life and philosophy with a bit of politics. Of course somehow the conversation of American Imperialism came up, because why wouldn’t it?

“We don’t have to worry about that stuff here. We already mined up everything valuable years ago. That’s why it’s so peaceful here,” the guy told me, referring to Portugal.

“Well, I mean that peace is because of years of slavery,” I replied.

“Eh, everyone was doing that kind of stuff back then,” he shrugged.

We went back and forth about history and radical politics for a while, before Rebeka and I were able to break away from him. He asked us if we would meet him at the clubs that night, and we politely declined. It wasn’t her scene, and I had a flight the next day. Also even if I didn’t, I’ve never really much liked clubs.

“How do you know that guy?” I asked her when we got out of earshot.

“I don’t,” she replied with a smile.

“That’s hilarious. I thought he was from your hostel or something. That’s why I was trying not to be rude. I didn’t know what the scene was,” I continued.

“Nope. He just started talking to me like 15 minutes before you came,” she told me.

“You were pretty comfortable with him,” I commented.

“I like to get to know interesting people,” she shined that same wry smile.

My heart fluttered in rhythm with her eyelashes.

We walked out of the station and onto the street.

“Any ideas where we’re going?” she asked kindly.

“I have a little spot in mind. It’s just up here I think,” I told her.

“Okay, lead the way!” Rebeka agreed.

“So how’s life in Montreal?” I asked after a while of walking.

“It’s okay. I finally saved up enough money working in a restaurant to be able to come here for a month. With Covid, things have been pretty hard. I never imagined that I would move in with my boyfriend, but here we are,” Rebeka told me.

“Hm. Same thing happened with me and my ex,” I added.

“Really?” Rebeka asked incredulously.

“Yup. We were a Covid couple. Though she hated that term,” I spoke softly.

“Yea it’s hard because my boyfriend is an anglophone, so there’s a bit of a cultural divide,” She informed me.

“Is that a problem in Canada?” I asked.

“Oh, yea. There’s kind of a crisis going on with French speakers there. Everyday more and more places in Montreal just speak English. The language is dying,” She said sadly.

“Is anyone doing anything about it?” I asked.

“People try to come up with solutions, but they’re kind of nationalist and just cause more problems without really solving the issue,” She replied.

Rebeka was fiery and passionate about language. She proceeded to rant about the ins-and-outs of the issue. I happily listened to every word. It was a fascinating topic and social phenomenon that I knew existed in some places, but had never really encountered in life up until then.

We made it to where we were going after meandering up the hills of Lisbon. Our destination was Jardim do Torel, a charming little park and vista that I had accidentally stumbled upon on my first outing in Lisbon that trip. The view was momentous.

“Oh my god,” she said. “It’s so beautiful.”

“Yea, I was hoping the trees would still be blooming, but I guess they’ve finished now,” I remarked.

“Oh, the ones with the purple blossoms! Oh, that must have been beautiful!” Rebeka spoke passionately peaceful. 

Time stopped for just that moment, and we shared it, her and I. That was it. That was the peak of my time in Portugal. That moment, together with her in Lisbon. From the Jardim you could see the skyline of Lisbon all the way to the river. It was spectacular, with or without the purple blossoms on the trees.

Rebeka started talking to me about Ukraine, “I love seeing you laugh. I just hope you are able to still be like this, after seeing something like that. I just hope what you witness there doesn’t make you lose your innocence.”

I smiled childishly, “There’s nothing in the world that can do that!”

She replied unconvinced, “We will see…”

We left the park and headed back down into the center of Lisbon looking for a push in some direction. In this case that direction was dinner. We stopped in a little restaurant near Lisbon’s “Broadway,” where little houses of musical theater stood like all creatures of the stage, waiting for some love. 

We ordered a bottle of wine. It flushed its burgundy ink in Rebeka’s cheeks. I ordered a whole Dorado fish and picked at it gently, my focus mainly on her eyes and mesmerized by her voice. Afterwards, we had some coffee and a little dessert. When we paid our tab, Rebeka noticed I didn’t tip (something I normally do profusely everywhere but Europe). She ran back inside and gave the old man waiter some Euros and thanked him graciously for his service. He tried to deny her, but she insisted. So impressed was he by her gesture that they stood talking for a few minutes.

Rebeka and I decided to just go for a walk in the evening as the sunset. The darkness that had been creeping in ruled over the city, its bold lights bravely fighting off the gloom as best they could. There was a nip in the air. The fog poured in off the river. We stopped in a little bar and had a couple of beers. It was noisy.

“So,” I said as we sat down, “You’ll be going back to real-life soon.”

She replied sadly, “Yes, but I miss Montreal. Don’t you ever miss home?”

I smiled gently and shook my head, “I love being where I am.”

She swooned thinking about home.

“I love Montreal. It’s so beautiful. You must visit someday. I don’t know if I could live without the snow. It’s so peaceful,” she told me.

“Maybe someday I’ll show up at your door,” I grinned, killing my beer.

We went for the last part of our walk. We just wandered around the river district. My plan was to call an Uber once I found a spot with wifi. We had about a half-hour till then. I made the most of it, conversationally-speaking. But eventually all things must end. And as luck would have it, I would find internet at a closed Pata Negra. We leaned up against the wall waiting for the Uber, making last desperate attempts at deep talk. But eventually the Uber came. 

Rebeka looked into my eyes and said, “Goodbye.”

I gave her a long hug and never saw her again.

As the cab drove away, I looked down at my feet and smiled.

One of my great troubles with women is that when I go out with them, especially on warm lovely walks in warm lovely places, I have such a good time that I forget my true purpose, and end up just living in the moment with them without making a move. The funny thing is I would do it the same way a thousand-times again, even if it hurts in the long-run each time, because I simply enjoy myself too much in those moments to care.

I didn’t get everything I wanted that day, but I got a lot of what I needed. 

Maybe it all just amounted to more joyous suffering, more beautiful sadness.

Just one more feeling of Saudade.

But it was a bright spot in my life nonetheless.

And like everything else in my life, the good and the bad, I have no regrets.

The next day Diogo dropped Max and I off at the airport. We hugged and said our goodbyes and flew off in two different directions: him going West, and me going East; him back to the real-world, and myself on another adventure. 

Spain was calling. San Fermin smiled.