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One particular trip to the flicks however turned out to be very embarrassing. I can’t remember what I went to see – it wasn’t a comedy that I do remember. I got there early, grabbed some popcorn and a cola and sat in an aisle seat. The popcorn was disgusting, as I’d bought the salted variety. Popcorn is sweet, always has been and always should be. Whoever decided to add butter and salt want their head examining if you ask me – some odd quirky American invention probably. I know salted popcorn is normal now in our own country, but if you look back at the early nineties, it wasn’t. In the UK you got sweet popcorn or bags of toffee-coated popcorn, and that’s how it should have remained. I personally think there should a law banning the sale of popcorn inside cinemas unless it’s sweet. Well that’s how strong I feel about the stuff. Suffice to say on this occasion, I discretely put the disgusting salted purchase under my seat. Now I didn’t realise that the seat next to me was a little bit dirty. Well actually it looked like there was some dried chewing gum stuck on the padded fabric. I never really took any notice of it until the cinema started to fill up. People would be coming up speaking away in Portuguese gibberish to me, obviously asking if the seat next to me was taken. I’d simple look back at them in some sort of dumb muted expression swinging my legs in so they could squeeze past.

Hey all I knew was ”foda-se fihlo da puta”, which wouldn’t have gone down well.

“Excuse me is this seat free?”

“Fuck you, you son of a bitch.”

Nah, it was better to play dumb than start swearing at everyone.

Each time I let someone squeeze past to sit down, the people in the next seat pointed out that there was ‘shu, shu’ on the seat. Now I don’t know if that means the seat was dirty or if they were saying don’t sit there because there’s some dried shit on the padding. Each time this happened, the people would squeeze past me again to find another place to watch the movie.

This went on and on and on.

I even tried to pretend the seat was taken. That didn’t work. I also tried to mimic the term ‘shu shu’, but I got dirty looks in return. I should have really just got up and found another seat of my own. I think I didn’t in case someone shouted after me thinking that I’d left behind the unwanted popcorn I’d put under my seat. Instead I sat still thinking the film would be starting any minute and then I could forget about the people sitting around me and the bloody popcorn. By now everyone around me had probably guessed that I was foreign so I got plenty of funny looks. They obviously thought that I was some sort of nutter for not being able to understand what was going on - a crazy gringo!

Unfortunately I did stand out, I mean it was the early nineties and I sported a mullet. What a stupid name for a haircut. I have no idea where the term came from but apparently I had one. I prefer to say I was growing my hair like Bono from U2, ala ‘The Joshua Tree’ style. It wasn’t quite long enough to go into a full ponytail but it was getting there.

Bono is one of my heroes, and U2 are my favourite rock band, thus the hair growing tribute thing.

Weird?

Nah I don’t think so.

Then again I often got called Axl Rose for some reason. Maybe it was the baseball cap being worn backwards in true US rock star fashion that prompted that case of mistaken identity. I wasn’t asked for my autograph mind you, but bizarrely it wouldn’t be the first time I’d be compared to famous people on my travels in South America. That however is another story for another country.

The long hair and especially my earring would get many people asking if I was a ‘bicha’ (gay) or ‘bicha loca’ (crazy gay). Nice!