Bucharest. Gray skies. Cold. Concrete communist towers stacked like monochrome Jenga blocks. Somewhere at ground level, a million roughneck pigeons plot vengeance against pedestrians and freshly washed cars.
A million of them, puffed up with yesterday's food scraps, ready to circle downtown dropping bombs of gray sludge.
The video on my iPhone starts recording – my "proof of life" insurance policy. Should things turn tragic, I imagine this iPhone crawling home from the crime scene back to mom — limping toward the U.S. Embassy like a dying soldier. One last message home.
I'd want my mom to see it... a cinematic farewell filmed in 4k. Proof that her first born lived wide. Took risks. Ate strange meats in a strange home. Stepped a few inches past comfort and into wonder.
Here comes the wonder.
I'm sitting in a stranger's Dacia – a car that sound like a chain-smoking dinosaur, driven by my personal maniac and new best friend.
Call him Micu or Andre, he goes by both. He's my Airbnb host. A McDonald's connoisseur who collects sweater-based ketchup stains like hedge fund managers collect Rolex.
Five-foot-five. Built like a retired circus bear. Smells like he's been slow-cooked in salami. If this ride goes wrong do me a favor, add pallbearer to Micu's title.
He grins at me with the joy of a man who's either found Jesus or lost his medication.
"Alex"
"Today, I show you real Romania. We go eat MICI at traditional Romanian Restaurant"
"Inside someone house"
He punches the steering wheel like it owes him money. We're moving. Not fast. But moving. Micu's tin, tuna can, barely on four wheels struggles. Sounds like an asthmatic – wheezing profusely shoving our collective four hundred pounds down the intersection.
Somewhere between shallow breaths and the Dacia's death rattle, I realize... this is where a trauma-ridden man learns who he really is. Halfway between fascination, wondering if insatiably curiosity is bravery or just my personal brand masquerading as something it's not.
DAYS EARLIER
The Door. The first thing I felt amazement over living in Bucharest was my front door. A slab of iron and concrete, strong enough to survive a .50 cal round or mutant bear attack. I admired it the way straight men admire beefcakes at the gym. Heavy, unmovable, the door said "Your safe here. Mostly."
The apartment itself was a Soviet cube serving my bourgeois California boy standard well as a cozy Airbnb. Endless blocks of gray towers, some painted in colorful murals loomed outside my window.
If New York projects were Kevin Hart not in stature but formidableness. These were Michael Clarke Duncan.
Every morning around eleven, just as I'd begin pretending to work, I'd hear it.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
A knock. A rhythm. A Summoning.
"ALEX"
Micu's high pitch sang through six inches of weapons grade door.
"I miss my Black Man today."
"You have plans?"
Now where I come from, this is what we call a boundary issue.
Micu never asked normal host questions like "Need more toilet paper?" or "How's the Wi-Fi?" Just existential the-world-is-burning check-ins. Statements of possession. Inappropriate fly-bys from a man who'd never read The Art of NOT Intruding.
Micu stood there. Smiling.
Just Smiling.
Seven full seconds of "I just installed a camera in your lamp" energy.
And every time, instead of playing the role of angry black man, saying what needed to be said - "Micu, BOUNDARIES!" - I'd shy away like Drake during his Kendrick beef. I'd smile back. Nod, and close 1500 lbs of mutant bear-proof door. Drake really did stick his head in the sand like a Emu huh?
THE GIFT
One afternoon, Micu appeared holding a tray of strawberries - the universal olive branch of weird tenant / airbnb host found everywhere.
They sat lopsided, bruised but plump. It looked like Micu tried positioning them thoughtfully like a bouquet of flowers. I ate ever every one in one sitting, straight from the plastic contraption. No sugar. No shame. Didn't even rinse them off.
Somewhere between bite six and eureka moment, I realized something... Micu doesn't fear me.
He doesn't see "Black man in foreign land." He saw Alex. Or maybe his version of an American Black man.
I'm six feet tall, born in the Bronx, raised in the Bay, draped in an overpriced Parajumpers puffer jacket that makes me look like a luxury marshmallow. Back home, my existences comes preloaded with other people's projections. Here, in this concrete tundra, I'm just a human with penchant for fresh fruit.
Maybe Micu saw through the noise. Maybe he sensed that beneath my creative swagger lives a man who cries during sad flicks.
Boom Boom Boom.
"Alex!" You put on sneakers. I take you to Romanian restaurant."
"Illegal traditional restaurant inside home."
Of course, I obliged.
I didn't come to Bucharest to play it safe. I came to see who I'd become when I stripped away the algorithm, the expectations, the performance perfection of Sea of Sameness American living.
So I followed Micu into his Dacia. Into whatever illegal sausage operation awaited.
The iPhone kept recording.
Just in case.