GLASGOW: Day 1

My flight took me to Dusseldorf.

Anyways, I wasn’t there long before I left to London with a full bladder.

I wasn’t immediately able to locate a toilet and ended up in a strange room with stumpy little waiting stools done up in black leather.

I’ll cut to the meat of the issue.

I landed in Glasgow at 3:40, retrieved my pack from the baggage claim, and wondered into the front lobby where I purchased a bus ticket to downtown. The girl who sold me the stub invited me to a bonfire in the park: “A celebration of, well—” she said. “Trees and stuff.”

I boarded the bus with a map and sat beside a blond with nice skin and a miniskirt, her jean jacket was of the fashionably faded sort, light blue and worn thin at the elbows.

The driver has a butterfly tattooed on his forearm, distorted by age, spalted with sun-stains, and a leather banded watch of working class distinction.

Adventure kindles within my gut, boiling at the base of my spin.

Kevin will be waiting.

I can sense His presence in the city, somewhere on a hostel cot with His legs crossed, fingers tapping the touch screen of his device: cold blooded and calculating.

I arrive.

Downtown Glasgow: neat buildings and buses, built on a slope. Lots of beards and fish & chip shops, paperboys yelling with a bundle tucked under their arms, raincoats and hats and umbrellas.

I locate the hostel, check in, and voyage to the sixth floor.

The elevator bings, halts, and makes it’s announcements in that generic, robo-Brit-bitch voice they always seem to have.

“Mind the door, please.” It says.

I step off the lift.

Shove open the door.

Kevin, seated on his bunk, raises a hand, “Hey man.”

“Yo, yo, yo.” I say—just like that: casual—dropping my pack and glancing at the open beds.

So it begins.

An hour later we ended up walking our asses into our ankles and stumbled into a pub called O’NEIL’S.

On the bouncer’s recommendation we both ordered Bangers and Mash.

Food was great, atmosphere too: high ceilings, cedar beams, etcetera. We ate and drank and were merry, then headed to the park.

As it was, the bonfire wasn’t a bonfire, not really, it was more of a giant humongous thirty minute firework display and carnival with hamburger stands and thousands of reeling Scotts.

We stood in the damp grass until our toes ached, watching a large electrical screen as it flash and blinked—50 DAYS TILL CHRISTMAS—pink letters on a bright white surface.

BANG.

The first firework exploded, leaving a trail of smoke in its wake; pink sparks jittering toward earth as the massive speakers erupt, blasting the Batman theme from either side of the park.

“Nahna-nahna-nahna-nahna, nahna-nahna-nahna—BAT-MAN!”

Everyone cheers, phones extended.

Pictures and videos.

Smiles bathed in various hues of color.

I nearly trip over a bicycle, shoved as a horde of cloaked figures marches through the crowd waving banners and picket signs, shouting. They’re clad in blue capes, with masks strapped to their faces—the pale smiling face of GUY FAWKES—and they’ve got a police escort.

The sky continues to detonate and flash.

What day is it?

And I remember: “Remember, remember the fifth of November.”

Kevin and I scoot back as the throng passes. Overhead the clouds have become a canvas of orchestrated explosion and color, and the crowd roars with each projectile.

The music continues: a loud background of noise.

“Nahna-nahna-nahna-nahna, nahna-nahna-nahna—BAT-MAN!”

Thirty minutes later we nearly suffocate trying to leave.

I find myself shoulder-to-shoulder with the entire population of Glasgow. You can hear the strangest things in a crowd if you just listen. Things like: “I’d like to take a hammer and hit him with it, and then hit him again, and again, and again, until he dies!”

We return to the hostel, to the room—the sole occupants of 604.

Who, if any, will occupy the empty bunks?

Night curtains my eyelids and I sleep.

The sound of grappling hooks assaults the windowsill.

Kevin has nightmares.