The Melon

It started out as a playful thing. A melon. Something you could toss up in the air, then catch, then toss to a friend, who'd then catch it, and toss it back to you. It was a social prop, an "icebreaker," like a corny joke, but worse because it had a physical presence. We were stuck with it. It was obvious that melon would end up being smashed, and it would be really funny. Ha. Ha.

I hated the melon. It was so corny. It was Anthony's idea, of course. Anthony was the American we'd met just a couple hours earlier. He was a head turning, everybody's friend, life of the party type who was so humble that his word was always final, and I realized early on that no matter how you looked at it we were stuck with that fucking melon.

We were Anthony, Jason, Melinda and me. We were all brought together for our friend Niles' wedding in Santiago, Chile. Our kinship was marked by varying degrees of tenuity, but big Anthony's gentle charisma, along with heavy drinking that night, made us four the fastest of friends.

We started off at Michoacan, the one time home to Pablo Neruda, now a preserved cultural estate in Santiago, Chile, where the wedding was to be held the next day. There, outdoors, amidst the oak trees, palm trees and lush grape vines spilling over the veranda, we drank top shelf Mexican tequila (nice legs), good Chilean wine -- even some really cheap box wine -- and then we helped set up tables and chairs and lights and stuff. We also found the melon there, some people played with it (I didn't, at least, not then), and at about 10pm we roared off into the cool summer night, back to the hotel.

Reflection is an interesting thing. Without it, I would die without ever realizing that my hatred and resistance to the melon was the most integral aspect of its role that night, and I was only playing into the plan. The melon was cursed, and I would be its end. Which is why, at this point, it seems stupidly naive to spew vitriol about the evils of the fruit. (Why, how dull can you be, Chileno, of course you dislike the melon -- you will be the one who destroys the melon!). But at the time, I knew no better. So when we were cramped into a mirror paneled elevator ascending to the ninth floor, I could take it no longer:

"THAT MELON STINKS!" I said.

Oh, how that melon stank. It stank with all the sweet, putrid, horrible rot of summer. It was the syrupy smell of death oozing out and mixing with our sweat. It was a pungent aroma that could knock you out, it was a feisty slap in the face!

The others, however, just shrugged and asked me what I was talking about. Can you believe it?

Once we got to the room, I made sure the melon was out on the balcony and then we all set to work on a couple six packs of Cristal. The conversation was marked by bombast, intrigue and confession. The content centered around dreams, love and sex. Like, getting to know you.

We checked the time, threw back the last of the Cristal and descended onto Barrio Bellavista. We had no specific destination, but just kinda ended up at Club 4-40, a hot Santiago salsa floor.

Our table was perched above a colorful display of delicious looking chickatees and suave roosters stepping and twirling gracefully upon the dancefloor. A couple thick trunked palm trees made out of plastic seemed to hold up the roof, and to hold ourselves up we quickly put in some more drink orders. Pisco sour, Pisco cola, whateverthefuck. By the end of the night I'd end up repeatedly leaning over our table waving four fingers at our server, fingers that practically left tracers, burbling out the words, "CUATRO MAS!"

Highlights of the night included salsa, merengue, reggaetón (think Gasolina), being cajoled into dancing by Anthony, dancing with Melinda, Anthony and Melinda dancing, and that girl with really great style, but one major flaw. She looked like a horse. Melinda agreed: "a bit long in the face."

Then there was the impromptu and sexually explicit physical comedy that a hilarious Chilean dance pair acted for their table, that had us in the tables further back howling with glee. At one point Anthony tried to make dance partners out of the three semi-cute wallflowers at the table next to us (he was doing it for me), but he got flatly rejected. Then he stared at nothing for about 3 minutes before turning to me, "I feel like, like a horrible person." Very well delivered. I laughed until it hurt.

No matter how bad an American is at dancing, he'll always look happy coming off the dance floor. Beads of sweat, heavy breathing, twinkle in the eye. The latins, on the other hand, with their seemingly innate majesty of moves, their gift of dance, their ability to effortlessly prance about in a cheerful ode to the beauty of humanity -- why do they leave the floor scowling as if they'd just drowned an unwanted child?

The tab came and I couldn't understand how much 60,000 Chilean pesos was, but it seemed like a lot. Jason was drunkenly losing an argument he started about multiplication tables, and it was high time to get out of there.

From then on the night became a jigsaw puzzle we'd be working on for the next few days. We hollared in five different languages at the cab driver, we climbed a sign post and swayed like palm trees over racing traffic, we crammed ourselves into the mirror paneled elevator - for some reason all the floor numbers were lit up, just like a basketful of pearls. Who did that?

It was 5 in the morning and the elevator was going to stop at every floor along the way. Everytime the doors opened, I vaguely remember my spirit wolf told summoning me to release a howl into the echoing halls. The act was so empowering that my howls grew in strength, and well before the ninth floor, their inertia became so compelling that it really pulled on our bodies, and so there we went, tumbling out of the elevator and into the hallway, falling over each other scrambling up the stairway, as if there was something desperately needed.

There was talk of an unopened can of Cristal.

Melinda, a beautiful streak of fairlylike jet black hair zigzagging upward, Anthony, humongous, gentle Anthony loping gracefully not far behind. Jason, haphazardly and unwillingly smashing into the railing, was trying to tell us that what we were doing was wrong. We were causing a ruckus, and the room was in Niles' name, and he was certain it would all come down upon Niles' head.

Through the haze, though, I could tell that this was The Voice of Reason, and I despised it.

Back in the hotel room, we must have reached relative calm and I found myself out on the balcony, staring over the railing, looking all the way down. I suddenly became whistful, and began to contemplate the distance, myself and even my existence. Then I heard Melinda shout at me, fanatically: "Stop! Don't do it!" She was echoed by Jason, who had a severe tone of desperation in his voice.

I realized that I had the melon in my right hand, and my arm was cocked and ready to hurl the melon nine floors down into the circular courtyard of the Almacenes Paris and Lider mall-grocery store industrial complexes below. There was no stopping me, or so I thought, because then came Anthony's voice from inside: "don't throw that melon!" Suddenly I felt as though, it being entirely my own decision, I might like to see what happens when I actually listen to other people. (Such is the power of persuasion a charismatic person possesses).

It should be noted, however, that Anthony later apologized profusely for telling me not to throw the melon. Had he not been so drunk, he explained, he would have gladly encouraged it. I accepted his apology. I think it's because the Voice of Reason had gotten to him, when his critical faculties were down due to intoxication.

In any case, the melon was not to be hurled off the balcony, gloriously. That was final. But still, the melon was cursed. And because we mortals cannot change the outcome of fate, but rather only the way that outcome comes about, the melon was to be smashed, albeit ungloriously. Indeed, its demise came more like a mouthful of stomach acid that you swallow because you have no place to spit it out.

Rather than hurdle off the balcony, that melon was tossed back into its own gut (the hotel room) and exploded after being thrown poorly toward The Voice of Reason, how dare he speak of responsibility at a time like this!

Ah, the poor melon. How it could no longer hold back its vital rot.It sent Anthony hurling and bowing toward the toilet, the porcelein god. It sent me home to my apt. in a cab and it sent everyone else to another room. Poor, poor melon. I hated you. But for those more innocently minded, they saw you only as a toy.