Lady Liberty and the Loose Llamas of Luxembourg

I spent some time in Luxembourg in the late 80s with old man McDougal. We were working at a bakery -- I worked unleavened breads exclusively, but McDougal was something of a utility player, moving between danishes and petit fours with equal ease.

McDougal explained to me that in Luxembourg (unlike in our native Birmingham, Alabama) it was neither lady-like nor homo-erotic to work in a flour-based kitchen service industry.

Our time in the Grand Duchy was indeed grand, though neither elegant nor luxurious, as one might imagine of a stay in the land of Luxembourg. In retrospect, we might have achieved some level of luxury, had we not spent so much of our spare funds freeing Fran Drescher from house arrest in Luxembourg Castle. Had we not dropped two years' savings on this endeavor, we would have been able to embark on our journey* before the greatest decade was pulled out from under our feet like Gloria Gaynor's glamorous run some years prior.

Maybe then we would have been able to live to a higher standard than was afforded at the Libertarian Ladies League (LLL) shelter on LaMontagne Lane, Mertert, Luxembourg. Maybe mad McDougal wouldn't have sold two of my eye teeth and all of my hair for drug money in November of '90, rendering me bald and snaggletoothed with a distended belly and low self esteem that would undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life.

"I can forgive the sale of hair, McDougal," I admitted. "But for God's sake. The follicles? You had to sell the follicles, too?"

Of course, he did have to sell the follicles. For Christ's sake, it's a package deal over there. They don't want hair without follicles the same way we wouldn't want Wendy's without fries -- or whiskey without water and wanton masturbatory mayhem.

But I digress.

You know I don't speak a word of French, German, or Luxembourgish. Which is fine when your days are limited to prepping unleavened bread and scooping pig entrails out of the gutters of the Libertarian Ladies League shelter. But when you get roped into political prisoners and international pseudo-starlets, it helps to be able to speak the language of the land.

Our efforts to free Ms. Drescher were hampered by McDougal's misguided belief that Fran was one half of the balladeer duet of Peaches and Herb. Initially I tried to explain her true identity to McDougal, but he wouldn't listen. And I don't know if it was McDougal's skills at rhetoric, or my own shortcomings (i.e. PCP addiction and IQ of a tree frog), but I eventually came to believe him, and was equally concerned with freeing the pop songstress ... err ... Ms. Drescher.

"We can't let Herb rot in that dungeon," McDougal demanded.

"Err ... I think Herb is the male half of the duo," I suggested.

"Right," McDougal said.

"Ms. Drescher is a woman."

Upon hearing this claim, McDougal just laughed and laughed and laughed for some 36 minutes straight, until his laughter finally convinced me that I was mistaken and Ms. Drescher was not a woman at all, but was in fact Herb.

Negotiations stalled when the Grand Duke Lucas of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg accidentally freed a peasant who was slated to be hanged the next day for clubbing a herring to death with a sock full of raw bacon in the town square.

"We have no black singers in our dungeon," the Grand Duke insisted.

"Poppycock!" pronounced McDougal. "Free Ms. Drescher at once."

The Grand Duke of the Grand Duchy was confused. "Ms. Drescher, or Herb?"

"Precisely!"

This debate went on for a solid 12 hours until the Grand Duke of the Grand Duchy finally relented and freed Herb Drescher, a Jewish haberdasher and Nazi sympathizer, who'd been locked in the Luxembourg Castle dungeon since 1944. Ms. Drescher was finally released under her own recognizance the following Friday.

For a brief time, I tried to convince McDougal that we'd made a mistake, and that all of our efforts had been for naught.

But when the Dreschers belted out a blistering rendition of "Reunited", we knew this whole ordeal had been worth it.

By the end, McDougal and I were broke, unemployed (plus, I was missing the eye teeth and the hair), but we learned that we had been part of something bigger.

That was the first time that I had a sense of God's grand plan for us all. Peaches and Herb were back together, McDougal was an international hero, and I (though snaggletoothed and with a distended belly) had witnessed a miracle.

Also, later that summer, I dry humped a half-dead llama in Lisbon.

~~~

* This post was originally going to be about the motorcycle trip McDougal and I took retracinig Magellan's route to circumnavigate the globe ... which was exceedingly difficult (obviously), as Magellan's was a water-based route and Triumph T140s are not known for their performance on the open seas. However, this post fell apart after I took a bunch of pills and moved back in with my mom and her boyfriend, Larry, again.