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By Root 1234 0

up a book on the steering wheel, and start reading. As a driver, she was at her bizarre zenith. Over six feet tall, and large-breasted, she dripped sensuality with each husky pant that started and ended every sentence. Her mind worked constantly. Julie was smart, but camouflaged her intelligence by playing the innocent, sweet thing who didn’t quite understand what was happening to or around her. She caught up and passed every car on the highway. We’d talk a few platitudes and exchange a bit of gossip, but often, there was no conversation at all, as Julie was engrossed in her book while driving. I’d sit, rigid, and she would bury her nose down between the pages, propping the book on the steering wheel, occasionally glancing up at the road. A few trips with Julie cured me of trying to bum rides; I opted to pay the hefty taxi fare.

Weekends had me en route to Mexico and Tijuana, a border town some two hours’ drive south of LA. Already legendary for its danger, reputedly filled with thieves, bandits, drug addicts, pickpockets, and prostitutes, Tijuana thrilled me. Jack Donaldson and his buddy Scotty Groves would pick me up on Saturday morning. Wreathed in cigarette smoke, Scotty could not talk without coughing, and the cough sounded like the squish your boots make when traversing a marsh. He boasted, “I smoke when I’m taking a shower,” as if it were a badge of honor. I thought, “This guy’s on his last legs.” A gambling man, Scotty loved Las Vegas, but Tijuana had the racetrack, and horses were his primary passion. He claimed, “I’ve sat in every seat at that racetrack, and my winnings pay my rent!” Though Jack never placed bets, Scotty bet on everything, even Tijuana’s bullfights. In Barcelona the year before, I had been to the bullfights, and witnessed the archaic theater of the bullring: the pageantry, colors, beauty, skill, and art balanced against danger, cruelty, and death. In a spontaneous pas de deux, the matador and bull dance together—the possibility of maiming or death for the matador and certain destruction for the bull drive their choreography.

As a prologue, to give the matador an edge and prepare the bull for his confrontation, two acrobatic, deft, and nimble men (banderilleros) enter the ring. Carrying a pair of barbed darts decorated with colored ribbons (banderillas), they take turns rushing at the bull, attempting to stab their darts into the muscles in the back of the bull’s neck, while avoiding the horns by leaping and twisting their bodies out of the way at the last second. Watching the banderilleros avoid the bull’s horns, I envisioned the bull dances of ancient Crete. Accounts describe how naked, nubile dancers (teens and subteens, boys and girls) would run straight at the bull and seize its horns, or leap and land with their feet on its head. Using the toss of the bull’s head as a springboard, these Cretan dancers were catapulted into spinning, twisting aerial feats or left squirming impaled on a horn.

To me, the least sympathetic of the cast is the picador. He prances in on a padded horse, brandishing a lance, for the picador’s role is to lacerate and weaken the powerful muscles at the back of the bull’s head. The shaft has a crosspiece to prevent the blade from sliding too deep into the bull. The immense strength of the bull is phenomenal; I have seen it hook its horns under the padding of the horse and toss both horse and picador over the barricade and out of the ring. Sometimes, the horse gets gored. Though I love the pageantry and music, every time the bull dies and they drag off the now lifeless piece of meat, I feel sickened and wish I weren’t there.

Not so in Portugal, where the bull is not slain. A horse and rider enter the ring to shift and dodge, adroitly avoiding the charges of the bull. The high point comes when a daisy chain of garishly dressed heroes line up to face the bull. The most courageous (or the loser of the coin toss) stands at the head of the line, wearing generous padding and backed up by a long line of cronies. They attempt to bring the bull’s full charge to a stop. Lucky