A Damn Good Day

I rode the 65 back to my place with a smile. I was full of good pizza, melodies and memories.

I arrived at Maykel´s place an hour even later than the hour late time I was supposed to arrive. Rehearsal started at 7, my class ended at seven. It takes an hour on bus to get to his neighborhood. Apparently, it takes an hour to walk back from school, grab my trombone, maintain my relationship with the doorman and find a collectivo.

I navigated the crowd on the collectivo with no small bit of skill, snagging a corner to secure my trombone and a wall to lean myself against. I watched as guitarists darted artfully through the crowd with their lighter, infinitely more popular instrument strapped to their back. The man with the trombone stares down the irritation that the human-sized space of his instrument generates.

After much direction-peddling and street sign-searching, I get off the bus and ubicated, as they say here. I found my way through Boedo, Maykel´s neighboorhood. I´d been once before. By day, it was a beautiful quiet neighborhood, where kids play soccer in the streets, using streetsigns as goal post. By night, it was quietely menacing, like all of Buenos Aires. Still, the pair of women I asked for directions maintained the neighborhood´s onda. They were almost as new to the neighboorhood as I was. They thought I was heading in the right direction. Probably.

Then a guy with long hair, dark skin and a hat walked lazily down the sidewalk in my direction, swinging something. Had Boedo betrayed me? No. It was Maykel with his keys on a lanyard. He´d come to get me. Good guy, Maykel.

I was back in his apartment, the same one I´d visited on the weekend to learn the wind parts for Sudaka Roots, my reggae band. It was as friendly by day as it was by night. He took me upstairs to the salita. There were two more. Nico, on the bass wearing a green and yellow track jacket and sporting the most righteous dreadlock-mullet I´d seen yet and Julian wild-eyed and bearded guitarists. The smoke in the air confirmed the Rastafarian nature of the event.

Maykel explained that he cleared with the other guys in the band and it was cool and I could play with them. Then he said something else that didn´t swim beyond the language barrier. Something about a test, that either this was or it wasn´t.

And then they started to play. Maykel played tortured-broken beats on the set while he sang in harmony with the other two. He sang me lines to play and I picked them up, quick as I could. I fumbled a few times with it before I got the hang of it, but soon we were rockin´ in rhythm.

The song was wild and hilarious, it helped me to feel at ease. It went from cool reggae to waltz to ska-tempo. It had as many breaks as it did for acappella harmony as it did for a coordinated scream from the players. It really made me wish that I understood the lyrics.

Afterwood Nico told me that when Maykel or other wind players came to play, it always amazed him to see how quickly we could pick up the parts. It cost him to learn them, he said. Apparently I had performed above the standard which was expected of the bassist and guitarists by any rate.

We played more, and it was heaven. Maykel´s songs were good. His melodies were harmonized and his compositions thoughtful. His lyrics were righteous, badass. I got a reading later. Something about the Lion stalking those who repress and hide the truth and to live is to create and leave something behind. It was also in D harmonic minor. I can´t resist D harmonic minor.

We had a fucking blast. They joked and kidded around, and though I struggled to keep up. I got maybe half of the jokes. Jokes are hard, that´s pretty good. Nico told me he learned the English he knows from watching movies. Julian said it was because he was too stupid to read the subtitles. I pointed out that Nico had the dreadmullet becuase he was growing the only part of his hair that he could grow in full.

After rehearsal, Nico had to go to play soccer. Julian, Maykel and I reconvened downstairs. Out of the rehearsal, I again felt the discomfort of being in a situation without a focus and without a language to get me by.

We walked downstairs, where Julian indicated a red scrap of clothing in the middle of the floor. Maykel picked it up and took it into another room. Julian continued pointing out bits of clothing and Maykel scooped them into his arms. I detected an air of attempted seriousness and dignity, but when Maykel was full to his shoulders of clothing, they both laughed and I smiled the smile of a joke witnessed, but not understood.

Maykel noticed when he returned from depositing the clothing and tried to explain to me. I was understanding the words he was saying, but not the sense. Finally, he told me.

¨We use the word "mañanero" he said.
"And what does that mean" I asked.

What followed was more of the same quasi-comprehension until finally, he made a familiar dragging-onself-about-by-the-tie gesture and said.

"It means to fuck in the morning"

We chilled, he played me music, lamented the necessity of fighting for the opporunity of playing music in Buenos Aires and further educated me in slang.

"You will have a good education in slang with the negro here" remarked his girlfriend later when she arrived.

They asked me what I thought about pizza here and I said that I wasn´t totally sold. The answer was then to buy some pizza to re-educate me. I protested that I didn´t even have one mango (peso) and they told me that they wouldn´t accept it anyway.

I ate pizza that was finally strange, unusual and delicous. And I was full and happy. We sat and chatted and joked. Talked about what was wrong and right in the world.

When the pizza was done, Julian got ready to leave and so did I. We walked to the door, where Celeste, the girlfriend, confirmed that I knew where the bus was. We all kissed, I thanked them graciously and left.

I walked through the cold and still Boedo night, taking pleasure in the company of the cats that I shared the sidewalk with and arrived at my near-empty collectivo, the 65. I grabbed a seat for myself and my trombone, leaned back to make room for the pizza in my belly and started to hum.