— — — — — — 1 — — — — — —
March 20. First Day of Spring. Thirty Four Thousand Feet Above the Pacific.
Minorities are often as thick as thieves. The gravity of it fascinated him. Like attracting like. If it wasn’t for this pseudo-scientific law of nature he wouldn’t’ve been sitting next to another half-crazy white guy who was also contemplating his imminent death, but for some reason still trying to play it cool.
(a picture of 2 cartoonish grown men in tiny side-by-side airplane seats; eye-bugging, slack-jawed screaming, wrapped around each other in fear. Almost like Scooby & Shaggy. The inside of the plane at an extreme angle towards the crash)
One hurriedly trying to finish the last few pages of his book, the other with cigarettes and lighter in hand wondering just when the flashing ‘No Smoking‘ light would cease to matter enough. The pilot blurted something in Spanish over the PA and the air suddenly smelled of fear-piss and the worse stench of pleading prayer. He couldn’t understand any of the words, but their meaning was clear.
He tried not to hate his only friend. No, of course this wasn’t Shiva’s fault, but Gringo wouldn’t have been heading back towards the States (at terminal velocity) if it weren’t for Shiva.
— — — — — — 2 — — — — — —
About a couple of months earlier. Somewhere South of Tropic of Cancer, North of the Equator.
The atmosphere was changing. He didn’t know what a low pressure system was, but he liked the sound of it. Much better than tropical depression. His day had started out Lightly Buzzed but then in the early afternoon the winds of change blew in and it slowly became Slightly Stoned out. The pressures kept steadily dropping and though he was always more of a day tripper, it now looked as if it was going to be a psychedelic evening followed by another hard day’s night.
That’s the way it was in Paradise, the weather always stayed the same so his mind-state had to change. He looked into the cloudless blue and predicted that tomorrow would bring a Tequila Sunrise. Or maybe a Dark and Stormy, or six.
He felt both at home and out of place on that perfectly insipid beach. The view was just like those boring and talentless paintings he’d been taught to hate in art school. Nothing but sun, sand, sea, pelicans, and palm trees. Fucking palm trees! They dropped their fruit ready to be eaten and drunk from! He was inside a goddamned painting, and he hated himself for wanting to spend the rest of his life recreating.
There he sat, a scratch on a Jimmy Buffett record. A cynical little interruption in the three-hundred-and-sixty degree bliss. He was from New York after all, he wasn’t supposed to… Jimmy Buffett.
(A picture of our little protagonist sitting on a perfect beach. Like a black scratchy stick-figure drawn in crayon onto one of those typical tropical scenes.)
— — — — — — 3 — — — — — —
It wasn’t often he was stunned into silence. But when he saw the man dancing toward the ocean in the setting-sun-spotlight, covered from head to toe in blue mud, wearing only a towel over his shoulders and skins of a felled muppet as a loin cloth, all his thoughts and hallucinations screamed and fled for cover.
It was probably just the drugs but this stranger seemed to be the perfect blend between Shiva Presley and Elvis the Destroyer.
(A picture of a religious-quality shiva/elvis hybrid, the sun setting behind him like a halo. He’s painted Blue and standing on one foot like Shiva, but with Elvis glasses, a red flower lea, and a little cape. The words under him like a comic-book-title Shiva LosVegas!)
— — — — — — 4 — — — — — —
By the time Mother Nature’s son strode out of the water the world had turned full-moon-shine silver. The soft light reflected off the waves, the saturated sands, and the slick sheen of Shiva’s nudity. He was a paler shade of blue now and it was obvious that he was white… Well, blue/white. A fellow gringo.
“Gringo! Hay! Gringo” Shiva’s head snapped up and he began walking towards the call. “I wasn’t calling you a gringo. I was introducing myself.” his sense of humor was far too dry for that rainforest humidity. He extended his hand, “Gringo Starr.”
(Now Gringo Starr’s Comic-book intro. Wearing aviators and a too tight Thomas the Tank Engine t-shirt.)
It had been late winter when Gringo had left the States. He’d marked his forehead with an X made from the ashes of the bridges he’d burned, gave up Home for lent, and ran away to join the Carnival in Rio. Even he was fuzzy on the details
— — — — — — 5 — — — — — —
When he’d first gotten to South America, Gringo thought was doing lines like a rockstar. Soon though, he learned that he’d been overdoing them like a gringo-tourist. Afraid the powder would rot or run out. This discovery that it wouldn’t didn’t slow him down. Thus Gringo Starr was born.
Now a beard clung to his jowls like scrub-brush, and his mustache curled rapscallion up towards a poor sun-brunt nose that eternally shouldered the weight of his slightly broken shades. His other accessory of excess was a BarbieDoll hand hanging from a kite-string around his neck, it’s sole purpose was for cupping bumps of white powder for insufflation.
“Ganja?” Shiva asked.
“Depends if you’re offering of asking?” Both the weed and liquor in Central America were shit by Gringo’s standards so he never carried either. The climate and the cocaine however were far better than anything he could found stateside.
Shiva magically produced a smoldering pipe from god-knows-where.
“Only if you shake my hand.” Gringo said dangling his makeshift necklace. “Just say no/w.” said the blueish stranger in a strange and slippery accent.
“A shake for some shake.”
— — — — — — 6 — — — — — —
Some collection of hours, or days, and maybe even meters later. A large town or a small city.
“Drink?” Shiva asked
“It’s must be five o’clock somewhere, right?”
Shiva looked down at his watch and thought for a moment. “Istanbul.” he nodded.
Gringo could tell that they were going to be good friends.
(Maybe a collage of them doing things like getting beaten up by a big brown woman. Them running scared and amok.)
— — — — — — 7 — — — — — —
They both loved Cost Rica, though the nights were hotter than Virgin Marry’s asshole. The days burnt their skin off in peeling sweaty sheets. Shiva said they were just growing too big for it, like reptilians. At least that’s what Gringo liked to believe he was trying to say.
(Them with their skin coming off showing the lizards underneath, like the old show ‘V’ while they tried to proposition a young lady who looks like Mother-Mary lifting up her blue/white robes saying, “can buy me love”)
— — — — — — 8 — — — — — —
They spent the days going down with the ship in their bottles of booze and untangling the shoreline. With their nights they ripped tides as they BodySurfed the moon’s pull on the FireWater. Mornings they woke knotted in fish-net stockings ready to start over again
(1 has PURA tattooed on his knuckles, the other VITA on his, holding fists side-by-side)
They liked it so much they tattooed PURA VITA across their knuckles with the hallowed bone of a lion fish, Like zen prison-ink.
— — — — — — 9 — — — — — —
What they liked the most though, was that whenever anything went wrong, no matter what, they could always blame it on the playful and mischievous little monkeys.
(Them ‘Eiffel Towering’ a monkey wearing a sombrero)
— — — — — — 10 — — — — — —
They were almost having too much fun. Yes, they loved Costa Rica, Though sometimes the country preferred to love them from afar.
(Them sitting next to each other, on a cot, in a dark, gray, cage. Board.)
— — — Intermission — — —