by Eddie Rock
At the top of the sierras, the mists close in and I feel like the last man standing. On my left is a rickety old barbed-wire fence and beyond it no-man’s-land. A crack of lightning illuminates the sky, followed by a loud boom of thunder this time. It painfully rattles through my brain, and here I am a perfect conductor for a million volts of wrath. Now would be a good time for God to strike me down for all my past and present ill behaviors and religious misdemeanors.
But to put it in the immortal words of the great chief Sitting Bull:
“Today is not a good day to die!”
“Today is in fact a shit day to die!”
The rain lashes down even heavier as I head farther into the storm and I’m soaked to the bone. As the mists clear, I finally pick up the arrows on a tarmac road. Up ahead in the distance, one tall and one small person walk hand in hand. As I get closer I hear the voices of a woman and child. As I pass by, the mother says a staunch “Hello” and the little boy just smiles with his cheeky little SpongeBob SquarePants face, absolutely soaked to the bone, poor little fella. I wish I had some of those boiled sweets left. They might cheer him up a bit.
In the village of Orbaneja I dive out of the rain into a roadside bar for a warm-up and a coffee. Sitting at the table next to me is a strange German couple I haven’t seen before. She looks very fresh, strong, and healthy. Amazonian almost, with a face that wouldn’t look out of place in a Yankee sandwich on the front cover of a hard-core porn magazine. But her lover looks the total opposite. It looks to me as if she’s wearing him out, the lucky bastard. It’s not fair! She should be with someone like me. I could handle it. No problemo!
The doors opens and in walk mother and son. I quickly deduce from her age and his height that she must have had the little chappie quite early in life. She must be in her mid-twenties and the boy prepubescent. It happens! A boy I know back at home got his sixteen-year-old babysitter pregnant when he was just twelve, the dirty little fecker! But like I say, it happens.
The tiny boy takes off his wet jacket, and a very large and very wet pair of breasts flop out from under the wet T-shirt.
The poor-old Spanish barman almost eats his lit cigarette in shock, while Spongepants delves in her pack for a dry top.
All her stuff is wet through, so the little girl squeaks faintly to her friend, who has a massive hissy fit as she goes through her own pack to find a dry T-shirt for her wet little friend, which she thrusts angrily in her face. Poor Spongepants squeaks a faint thank you and heads for the bathroom, while grumpy bollocks sorts through her pack, sighing and moaning. Obviously she’s the one who wears the strap-on (I mean trousers) in that relationship!
With all this commotion going on, I find myself staring at the large wall-mounted television, watching a disturbing daytime programme about ladies’ incontinence problems, with a life-size model of the internal and external parts of a lady’s anatomy on the screen above me.
“Nice program!” says Butch.
“Err, yeah!” I nervously agree.
Her little friend comes back from the toilet with a dry top on, and her nipples almost knock my hat off. I don’t know where to look—fannies and bumholes, on the telly, little boy’s tits, or the porn star sitting canoodling behind me!
The Lord definitely moves in mysterious ways—either that or he has a wicked sense of humor. The seven-foot German naturist at Roncesvalles, with a big loud mouth and an acorn-sized excuse for a cock; now a dwarflike girl with 34GG breasts and her bossy lesbian lover; and finally a dominant, sexually athletic female with a sickly weak male! I finish my coffee staring at the television as a lady’s intimate parts are being tapped with a stick by a mad-looking professor and I think it’s time to leave.
“Butch and Spongepants,” I christen the lesbian lovers.
The cold rain brings me back to my senses, but I can’t stop thinking about the two girls and what they get up to in their fully equipped lesbian dungeon. My fantasy comes to an end as a group of cackling French biddies overtake me quickly and the beautiful countryside making way for the dirty and industrial.
Cars and lorries scream along the motorway and the air becomes foul with the fumes and the smells of the big city. Maybe I ought to get myself a room for the night with some fine wines and Belgian chocolates. I’ll invite Butch and Spongepants for a bit of lesbian entertainment. But I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the glass of a shop window. “Maybe not!” I look like a homeless crack fiend. Toxic sweat oozes from my pores, leaving huge salty marks all over my ripped shirt, with scabs and sores on my ears, lips, and face. My hands have been itching so badly that I’ve scratched every tiny blister red raw and my face says I need a fix!
At a busy junction the arrows have completely vanished off the face of the earth. So again, I follow my instincts and signs for the cathedral. My hangover is really starting to kick in badly now and I’m getting more and more stressed out. So I light up a Ducados to help me think. After two hits the whole pack goes in the bin, closely followed by the carefully extinguished offender, and now I feel like shit.
Luckily I spot the German couple from the café studying a map, but suddenly they dart off and I give chase. They are a hard act to follow. Eventually, after chasing them for about a half mile and losing them a couple of times, they finally stop and get out their map. “The pilgrims’ hostel?” I ask them in hopeful expectation, but they both shrug and shake their heads.
“No, it’s not on our map,” says the sickly man. “No, we are looking for the Crown Plaza Hotel,” says the sex kitten, almost purring with delight. The lovers shrug and walk off, leaving me standing on the busy city corner.
“Thanks a million!” I curse. I bet they even made arrangements with Butch and Spongepants to join them in their suite for some debauched sexual antics. I scratch and bleed some more in utter frustration while I curse the yellow arrow man, yet again!
“It’s all your fucking fault, you bastard!” I shout at the sky. Probably the exact words I would say to him before tipping the yellow paint over his head, then hitting him repeatedly with the tin.
Eventually a flurry of yellow arrows rain down on me and I find myself in the outskirts of the city, lost and confused. A kindly Japanese pilgrim coming the other way directs me to the hostel.
“Rápido,” he says. “The beds are running out.”
I step up a gear and come to what can only be described as a jerry-built pilgrims’ hostel, looking like the set of The Great Escape meets Auf Wiedersehen, Pet!
All we need now is a machine-gun tower, a pallet of bricks, and Jimmy Nail in his baggy underpants, stamping our credentials while swigging from a bottle of Beck’s lager.
BURGOS TO HONTANAS
CRINT EASTROOD
BURGOS MAY BE A GREAT PLACE to spend the weekend with your lesbian lover, but I need to get out of here, quick-style! The walk out of the city is, thankfully, much nicer than the one coming in, and I’m pleased to report that there are yellow arrows all over the fecking place.
I meet a speedy English pensioner called Mike. He’s originally from Yorkshire. We have a lot in common. He tells me that this is the second time he has walked the Camino, his first attempt sadly ending in total hospitalization.
“Tendonitis,” says Mike. “This time I’m taking it steady.”
“Could have fooled me,” I attempt to say, while inhaling part of my sandwich. For a moment everything stops; my eyes bulge as my lungs gasp for air, and on the third cough I propel the foreign object into the atmosphere and make another mental note never to eat and drink while running! I look up but Mike has gone. I watch as he tears off into the distance in a cloud of dust like the mighty Road Runner.
“Meep, meep!”
Farther down the road I take a leisurely lunch break in Rabé de las Calzadas.
The little café owner looks a lot like Kevin Moynihan, the hardworking, hard-drinking, tough Irish foreman I had in Holland during the nineties. Except that this guy is a third of his size but has the same head, pie
rcing eyes and Thomas Magnum–style mustache.
“Un jamón queso bocadillo, por favor,” I say.
Little Kevin babbles away . . . something about a rock or a stone. He comes back from the kitchen with a stick of bread, then proceeds to beat the life out of it on the oak bar. Like a fool I tell him it will be fine, so he stands it on top of the coffee machine to breathe a bit of life back into it and offers me a Ducados while I wait. After five minutes or so he gives the bread another good doink on the corner of the coffee machine and shrugs once again.
Suddenly a crazed English lady makes a dramatic entrance by crashing through the doors in a fluster and panting at little Kevin.
“I need foooood!” she says in English, putting her finger in her mouth and acting like some kind of cavewoman.
“No,” says little Kevin, “there’s no bread left until I go shopping.”
She understands the “No” bit but sees my resurrecting bread on the coffee machine and cries, “I haven’t eaten for two days!”
Kevin says truthfully that there is no bread and that’s that, but she thinks he’s being awkward and starts to cause a scene. So little Kevin offers her a Ducados in an attempt to restore the peace. But she shrieks and sighs and then turns on her heel, throwing back her head, and says, “I suppose I’ll just have to starve then!”
She wails again and flees in the same dramatic fashion. We both laugh as Kevin gives my bread a final crack on the counter, then takes it through to the kitchen, returning minutes later with what looks like a delicious sandwich full of chorizo, cheese, and tomato.
I open my mouth as wide as it will go and bite down hard, almost breaking off my two front teeth in the process. To prevent teeth damage, I put the sandwich on the bar and give it a good hard punch. Then, however painfully, I eat the lot, while being heavily scrutinized by little Kevin.
When I finish, he shakes my hand, gives me a free coffee, and awards me another Ducados—and, finally, a “¡Buen camino!”
* * * *
Back out on the strange road ahead in the distance, I see the remarkable sight of an enormous black lady making very awkward progress.
“¡Hola, buen camino!” she shouts in a jolly French accent as I give her a wide berth. As I pass through Hornillos del Camino, a strange man runs out of his house and starts shouting in my face, giving me quite a startle. The words “Fuck off, caveman!” roll off my tongue without thinking, and I walk off very proud of that one.
* * * *
In Hontanas I’m joined by the Japanese pilgrim I saw yesterday, and it turns out that he’s actually Korean. He can’t speak English and I can’t speak Korean, but between us, we manage to have a bit of Eurocraic. He mimics the actions of a Wild West gunfighter, throwing back an imaginary poncho and firing at an unseen attacker. He blows the smoke from the end of his imaginary pistol and spins it on one finger before he reholsters and sits down, whistling a bit of Sergio Leone.
“Crint Eastrood,” he says. “You like?”
“Clint Eastwood! Yeah, man!”
I’m beginning to get his vibe. I suppose these streets do look a little like those in the spaghetti westerns.
“Eddie.” I introduce myself.
“Wee,” he says.
“Nice to meet you, Wee.” I shake his hand.
“No! Ree!” he says.
“Ah, OK, sorry, Ree.”
“No, Ree!” he says excitedly, thrusting his pilgrim’s credentials in my face. Lee Chatchapingyas is his name.
“Ah, Lee,” I say, and a big smile plays out on his face. Meanwhile, the unmistakable figures of Butch and Spongepants appear on the horizon.
“Oh!” says Lee, as only Asians can, putting his hand close to the floor as if to measure a small person as we watch them approaching.
Lee’s eyes almost pop out of his head as Spongepants’s unmanageable puppies jostle in and out of her vest top. She struggles to take off her oversize pack as Butch tells her where to sit and what to do. Little Spongepants squeaks back like a church mouse, doing everything she says, and I wonder if it’s about time that the tables were turned and Spongepants got to wear the strap-on for a change.
In Hontanas there are only so many imaginary gunfight and lesbian fantasies one can have, and clean, crisp, and clinical boredom has set in for the day. Luckily, Cocker’s book provides the afternoon’s entertainment as I tear small strips from the cardboard cover and fire them from the elastic band.
HONTANAS TO CASTROJERIZ
LOVE IS IN THE AIR
WE SET OFF FROM HONTANAS, gunfighting our way out of town, acting like a pair of clowns, much to the disapproval of some very authentic medieval faces, and we arrive in Castrojeriz quite early.
Lee decides he will go farther, but I fancy an easy one today. So I bid farewell to my Wild West Korean buddy and we have our final gunfight in front of the pilgrims’ hostel. Lee shoots first and I fall to my knees, clutching my stomach as he blows the smoke from the barrel of his six guns. I watch him disappear into the distance, whistling the theme tune to The Good the Bad and the Ugly.
Speaking of which, an ill-mannered rabble begin to line up behind me tutting, sighing, and squabbling. Today I’m numero uno in the queue, and I shall guard my place to the very last drop of blood of the pilgrim. We enter the hostel in an orderly fashion and I’m first in the shower too, but the hot water on my hands inflames them more and I can’t resist another frantic scratch until the water turns crimson.
The midday heat has evaporated any ideas of chemists into thin air. Luckily, I come across an Irish bar, and I’m its first customer of the day. I’m equally delighted when the barman pours my pint of Guinness the proper Irish way, joined by a plate of tapas. This is the life!
It’s a great little bar for a knees up, but where is everybody today? There’s not a soul in sight. I tire quickly of my own company and venture back to the hostel for a much-needed siesta. Unfortunately, I find my bed space invaded by a group of goofy-looking young Germans with their arms and legs hanging all over the place.
I gesture to my bed and they all look at me like I’m some kind of turd left by a Martian. When I wake up, they are still there, goofing, lolling about, and doing my head in. So I go back to the bar and read from my guidebook about Saint Anthony’s fire—a highly contagious skin disease producing burning red blisters, which scourged Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It’s now seemingly making a comeback, starting with me as its first modern-day victim. Again I tire quickly of the Irish bar and head for the Spanish bar opposite the hostel. Inside the bar, workmen watch the bullfighting on a large wall-mounted television.
I can’t help but watch as the opening ceremony commences with jeering crowds and crazy trumpet music.
The matadors enter the dusty arena, three abreast in their glittering suits like a trio of ballroom dancers. As the bull comes galloping into the arena, I let out a cheer, which doesn’t go down too well with the bar-side spectators. I wonder if the bull is one of the legendary Miura bulls, the breed known as the “bulls of death” because they realize a bit quicker than ordinary bulls that the enemy is not the heart-shaped red cloth attached to the baton—it’s the silly man in ladies’ underwear holding it! The matador gets the better of the poor-old bull, and I can’t watch as the dagger is drawn. I gaze out the window at the equally depressing sight of a load of boring erberts reading their Pablo Coolio and Shirley MacLaine novels, and yet again I wonder to myself for the umpteenth time why am I doing this pilgrimage thing, what good it’s gonna do me and what I’m going to do afterward.
But hope springs eternal as a vision of beauty in the form of the German girl walks out of the hostel and sits down on the stone wall to read.
“Come on, Elvis, it’s now or never!” I say to myself as I nip in the toilets to check my appearance and then casually walk out of the bar.
“Oh. ¡Hola!” she says.
“Hola, I’m Eddie.”
“Eva,” she says. “Pleased to meet you,” she adds with
a smile.
We sit together on the wall and exchange pleasantries. Eva tells me that she’s from Leipzig. She is a massage therapist and is also quite thirsty. So I invite her for a beer back across the road. One thing we have got in common is our love for animals, and we both cheer the unlucky bulls to the dirty looks of the dirty men.
A small man walks into the bar with a couple of shopping bags as I go up to get a refill, and his little face lights up. It’s miniature Kevin Moynihan, the concrete bread man! He shakes my hand, delighted to see me, and buys me a Johnnie Walker whisky. No ifs or buts. It’s mandatory!
I stand there with him like a spare part, nodding for five minutes while he tells his cronies about the kryptonite sandwich, even reenacting the part where I punched it and ate it. His friends are in stitches and we toast to “rockadillos” as I shake all their hands and eventually sit back down with laughing Eva. She thinks it’s hilarious as miniature Kevin keeps looking over every ten seconds, raising his eyebrows, and fingering the corners of his moustache. Eventually he leaves, giving me the thumbs-up and a crafty wink before wishing me a “Buen camino.” What a character! Eva is laughing again and I would love to keep her laughing all night long.
CASTROJERIZ TO FRÓMISTA
SAINT ELMO’S FIRE; MAN IN MOTION
ALL ALONE ON THE STRANGE ROAD and not a soul in sight. Erbert-free, just the way I like it, really. I can’t stop thinking about sexy Eva and her strong, shapely, well-made German legs. I like the way she talks, too, with her eyes wide and innocent like a baby deer’s. But she laughs with a devilish twang to her sexy accent and I can quite easily imagine her naked with . . .
Suddenly something in the grass moves! At first I dismiss it as a mouse or snake and return to Eva, now stark bollock, except for a pair of jackboots, a riding crop, and a wicked grin!
The grass shakes me to my senses again and I carefully part the long strands. There before me is a small blue-and-white songbird with a blade of grass wrapped round his tiny leg, trapped and frightened.
