The Whimisical Johnnie Carr

“They use me and abuse me...”

The day was almost as dark as Johnnie Carr's countenance when the shaggy haired journalist stepped hurry-skurry upon the damp sidewalk outside the quaint colonial style lodging where he had dreampt of the good old days when you could take a swing around town, waving at the girls while huddled in the rumble seat of a model T Ford. Perhaps he was wondering whether those good old days were really as good as they were made out to be. In any event, he didn't have time for such idle thoughts: he was a bit late for his interview with Johnnie Carr, so he decided to risk his life zig-zagging across a lonely street in the colonial quarter Colonia, Uruguay, where in the bye-gone days Portuguese and Spanish conquistadores would play something like an antique version of Tom and Jerry.

"Hey! You're not in Buenos Aires!" resounded the melodious voice of a driver who was obviously not an Argentine, although he might well have been a distant cousin of the great great grandfather of José Gervasio Artigas.

Judging by his clothes, he wasn't a Spanish conquistador nor did he have the penchant for goldish-yellow that obsessed the Portuguese adventurers. He was clean-shaven, wore no sword, no helmet and haad his body stuffed into a one-size-too-big English tweed coat that made him appear to slump over the wheel of what could have been a sputtering 1950 Plymouth.

"Here in Colonia we use the sidewalks. That's what they are made for." 

With that bit of practical philosophy, illustrative of the the Mercosur's present hang ups when it comes to couple relationships, the driver sped away at about 15 miles per hour, leaving the journalist's mind a twirl.

After all, maybe he's right, he thought. I mean porteños do have a propensity for forgetting that streets are for cars and sidewalks for people...but why be so dogmatic? Aren't laws made to be broken, or at least taken seriously only when the remaining variables are, shall we say, less than convenient? Or maybe its just a deep seated rivalry between the che's and the charrua's? A sort of Jung style impulse to revenge the past, when Artigas and San Martín and Guemes and Belgrano and O'Higgens and Urquiza and the whole lot of them thought they were struggling against a common enemy, only to end up plotting artificial boarders and saying this is mine and we are like this, not like you over there on the other side, across the river, over that mountain peak. I mean there was absolutely no traffic on that street, not even the street peddlers you so often see in Buenos Aires...until that Uruguayan fellow rumbled out of nowhere. Anyway, I don't think Johnnie likes Johnnie-come-laters and it's already ten after ten and on this side of the river people think they live in Switzerland or something because they always arrive on time.

Luckily, Johnnie was waiting patiently, just as agreed, near the statue of Artigas, that Uruguayan independence hero who almost always is seen in civilian clothes, no sword, an almost happy face, in sharp contrast to the more glum mugs one usually associates with the forefathers. By the way, why doesn't anyone talk about the foremothers? There probably is a pretty solid explanation: the ladies at that time had to stay home and make dinner and babies and wash diapers and gossip and iron and mend clothes and go to church on Sunday morning, so they probably didn't have time to go around lambasting Indians (who weren't even from India), shooting cannon at the king of Spain's Rambo forces or exercising their dagger jabs at the expense of guys wearing the wrong colors. Those thoughts didn't seem very apt as a platform from which to launch an ice-breaker capable of paving the ground for the interview with Johnnie Carr, but the journalist just couldn't get the idea out of his head. So he walked right up to Johnnie and blirted out the first thing that came to mind:

"Tell me the truth: are you really Johnnie?"

"Yea...well, at least here in Colonia that's what most people call me."

"I see...It's just that your're features are so delicate, so refined, almost of female softness, and Johnnie sounds so macho."

Johnnie laughed for a minute or so, wholeheartedly, exhibiting a kind of freedom that one encounters very rarely in today's globalized world. The cachinnation bubbled so wholesomely that any Tom, Dick or Harry crossing the street corner at that very moment might have been amazed to see Johnnie's blackness sparkle with every ha-ha-ha-ha-ah-ah-ha-ha. In fact, instead of beaming eyes, Mr. Carr seemed to be equiped with high beam headlights. (To tell the truth, he was secretely fascinated by the interviewer's rather unconventional information gathering technique.) 

"Let me tell you something," Johnnie said when his giggling died out. "Once I had a girlfriend who looked so much like me people thought we were twins and they would always get our names mixed up."

"Really? What was her name?"

"Lizzie...actually Elizabeth, but everyone called her Lizzie. She was a real black beauty."

"You mean a Negro, oh, pardon me, I mean an Afro-american..."

"No. She was just black like me, beautiful."

"I imagine it was only the name that led to the mix-up."

"Oh yes indeed! We were actually quite different."

"Did you, I mean...did anything...did you ever...you know...did things ever get beyond the starting point?"

The interview definitely didn't seem to be getting anywhere, or at least not to where the journalist wanted to take it. But that should not surprise anyone. Cristopher Columbus thought he was going to India, didn't he? You start out in one direction and end up someplace else but maybe the place you end up in is more exciting than the place you wanted to go to or maybe it's the place you wanted to go to but by the time you get there it has changed so much you can't recognize it as the place your wanted to go to in the first place. Anyway, it seemed the appropriate moment to change the subject.

"Tell me something about your life. For example, where were you born."

"There's a bit of confusion about that but my mother invented a rather suggestive nickname for me: De-troit."

"Sounds like like Detroit, Michigan, the hang-out of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors."

"That's right. So I always imagined that I was born there. I've never been back, though, because I hear it's a bit dirty, filled with smog and dusty smoke stacks."

"So you came to Colonia still swathed in soft white linen."

"A bit later, I'd say, but in time to become a fan of Carlos Gardel."

"Really? The bitter-sweet voice of Argentine tango!"

"He was Uruguayan, born in Taquarembo."

"French, actually."

"From Taquarembo! I swear! I used to take him around town. He'd hum like a bumble bee or practice some song he was working on and that really attracted the gals. And in those days they were really sweet. They'd put their hair up in curlers for hours, sprinkle themselves with perfumes you could smell a mile away and then stroll around the square and pretend they were more innocent than they really were and they just loved to be waved at and honestly I was a better waver than Gardel, although I must admit that my voice was no match to his. That didn't matter though because with my waving and his singing we managed to pick up some pretty enticing young ladies..."

"So your're a playboy!"

"No, I wouldn't go that far. But love is a wonderful thing. Wasn't that what Frank Sinatra once said?"

"If I'm not mistaken, rather than talking about love being a wonderful thing he sang about it.."

"O.K. You're right again. But love is super, the greatest thing ever, and I've been there."

"Would you mind telling our readers how to get there?"

"There's no address. You just stop, look and listen and you're there before you even know it."

"And you've been there. Tell me: what is love for you Johnnie?"

"It's going in the right direction, together. You feel she's beside you, almost inside your head, under your skin, right there when you need her. But you have to know how to shift gears when the riding gets rough."

"Sounds like a metaphor."

"The best things in life are metaphors. Just think of this: the first car was propelled by steam and steam is what comes out of your mouth when you kiss on a cold winter morning."

"True, but sometimes people get all steamed up and blow their tops!"

"Look! Are you interviewing me or judging me?"

Things had begun to take a nonsensical turn, so the journalist puckered up his lips and just stared at Johnnie for a full 37 seconds. Then, tired of standing, he opened the door and sat down beside him. 

"Politics...are you a conservative or a revolutionary?"

"Both."

"Both?"

"What's so strange about that? I try to place the best moments of the past in my back seat memory seat while I steer myself towards change, towards a world without beggars on the streets, without ugly skyscrapers, with green trees interspersed with houses in the form of mushrooms, and enough social equality so a guy has time to dream and laugh and play rather than always thinking of money and dollar bills and foreign debts and silly wars and struggles for power and fame and glory and stupidities of the sort."

"You know Johnnie, I think your're right there."

"As you probably have suspected, I'm no longer a youngster but I've lived through lot's of God damn horrible stuff. This thing about being the Switzerland of Latinamerica, for example, if you ask me that's quite a joke. Besides a couple of decades ago there was a dictatorship here too. Once while I was driving on the outskirts of town I saw some men grab a woman by the hair and toss her into a car. They told me later that the poor thing was lambasted like a nasty mosquito in a God-forsaken lock-up and the kidnappers got off the hook, as usual. They did absolutely horrible things in the name of their supposed defense of our republican institutions and way of life. Imagine."

Johnnie was crying. The tears rolled off his blackness and splashed onto the street. The journalist was caught off guard, not knowing what to ask, how to handle the delicate moment. Johnnie Carr suddenly seemed like another person. Who was that girl he had mentioned? Was she his loved one? And yet he still seems so full of life. Perhaps it's age, you get riper as the years go ripping by. It isn't that you forget. You get riper. Things take on a different perspective.

"Johnnie...please forgive me...in these interviews it's difficult not to touch on some sore spot. So I'll just bother you with a last question: What do you think of people?

"They use me and abuse me. But I don't care, really. I know where I'm headed. I love the way I am, the way I look, every single moment in my life and so I'm driving towards the inevitable end with pride mixted with tears. I know I could have had a better life but I've lived it to the hilt. Now I'm running out of gas, but so is the world."

"Johnnie, believe me it has been a pleasure talking with you and I wish you the best of luck...Maybe some of the people who have read this interview might want to contact you. How?"

A coy smile slipped over Johnnie Carr's face. The journalist went through the usual goodbye ceremonies, opened the door. On Johnny Carr's running board the journalist spotted a presentation card which said:

"Visit me when you come to Uruguay. My telephone is 24731.
My address: Taquarembo 246.