Denver, CO (VOL II)

I was standing right in front of Anthony, slipping my hand inside his t shirt. Looking at him straight in the eyes, smiling so nervously, trying to hold my hands from shaking , and specially to keep my knees from becoming water and bend in surrender.I was touching his chest, feeling his skin while I was fighting to overcome my internal turbulence .
I got to catch my escaping voice, my elusive life, and my petrified memory. I forgot everything that I had learnt in the course of life. Thankfully I didn’t forget the spoken word, nor the grammar which, some minutes later would enable me to have a conversation with him.

It took an eternity till I fixed his microphone. Or so it seemed. The “can I put a microphone in you” came out so innocently that I amazed myself with the spontaneous response of my biological/physiological need to feel his texture. “careful, my shirt is old” he said. That’s when I realized I was holding onto his shirt as if my life depended upon it. I looked at him and smiled. He caught me.

Right before we got into the bus, he was holding a big cup. I asked him “what are you drinking?” and he said “Scotch”. I thought “hell, scotch before the show”. That man has telepathic powers (one of his powers, anyways). He saw me thinking and he said “I’m just kidding”.So, when we were sitting right in front of each other I asked him again, after the incredibly intense microphone magical adventure, after a little chat about my “strange sense of diction” (as he called it), after he discussed the possibility that “vulgar” could be a compliment in Guadalajara, and after he asked my friend if she had an operating license for the tiny mini dv camera we were using.

B: so, what are you drinking?
AK: what am I drinking? This is baby elephant’s urine that has been filtered through a micrometer, so that everything that’s left is the pure essence of elephant joy.

B : That sounds very tasty.

AK: You get used to it.

B: I’ve never tried anything like that actually, I’m thinking what’s the closest… (I make a pause) I got my hand inside a bucket with a bunch of human pee once.

AK: A bunch of human pee? From several sources?

B: Several sources, yeah

AK: right!

B: Because I was dancing and I had my wallet on my back and somehow…

AK: …Your wallet fell into the bucket of pee.

B: But I didn’t know it was pee, I don’t have sick tendencies like…

AK: Couldn’t you smell the bucket?

B: I wasn’t smelling the bucket.

AK: No sense of smell in Guadalajara ?

B: I was just trying to get my wallet

AK (smiling): God gave us all a good sense of smell, but you know, urine is not as horrible as people think. There’s a group of people who drink their urine in the morning as a medicine, and it makes sense, if you look at it homoeopathically speaking it has been proved to have some healing properties , not just any urine, but the first urine in the morning and you’re not allowed to drink coffee and alcohol and things like that, but people have been known to heal themselves from drinking urine.

Geli: I got my own urine injected once

AK (in shock): injected?!!

G: yeah

AK: Injected?!!

G: yeah

AK: You took it to a new level.

G: I know

AK: Where are you from?

G: I’m from Germany

AK: That’s where they do the most advanced medicine on earth!! Or were you just trying to get high?

G: no, no no, I went with my dad to this health forum kind of thing and they took our pee and shit and injected us with it.

AK(totally shocked): THE SHIT!!!

G & B (at the same time) : “and shit”, “and stuff”.

AK: Yeah, shit is not… different substance altogether… But they injected you pee! intevenous or intermuscular?

G: Intermuscular

AK: And?

G: It healed my skin.

AK: Did it?

G: Yeah

AK (turning towards me): see? (makes a pause and smiles) It starts with urine and comes back full circle to urine. (I can also see him cracking up inside to himself).

I just laughed.

My first chance to talk to him in depth and we spent 5 minutes talking about urine and even told him about when I sank my hand in a bucket with all my friend's pee. I surely know how to be charming.

B: So…

AK: yeah?

B: what are you drinking?

AK: It’s just something for the throat. It’s a concoction of teas.

I took the cup he was drinking from, I turned it around itself to read it. He turned it and read it for me.

AK: I think it says : “Fuck the world, it’ll never change, gotta keep my head straight and let my balls (pause) hang”. ”That’s William Blake, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with the great poet Blake.”

Later I’d found out that was a gift from Flea, which he actually did in his pottery times. Eventually I had a lot of fun with the image of Flea making that cup for Anthony. I thought it was so sweet.

We got into talking about things I wouldn’t have even imagined talking about with him. . We talked about cocaine and Manuel Noriega, about politics, he told me his thoughts about George Bush and all the Bushes, and he asked if I had been name after Barbara Bush, we talked about his eating habits, and seafood, and how he’s not against shrimp, but prefers some of the cleanest foods from the sea; we talked about his film collection, about the extraordinary sandwiches him and John prepared themselves on the tour bus, about how he uses imitation turkey and John eats real turkey, we talked a little bit about Snoop Dogg...

He pronounced many fruits names in the most perfect Spanish ever pronounced by any American man or any other planet Earth man, about how Anthony thought I was more of a Barbie than a Barbara and how Barbies are “used for cocaine smuggling primarily “ and have large breasts so they’re able to fit more cocaine into the bosoms.

To be continued.