Steve Clark

I didn't realize how delicate memories were until so many had faded. Even the holidays dim and blow out in my mind so I'm grateful for the Christmas on 1992, indelible in my mind. I woke that Christmas morning, and climbed into the shower and a few moments later slipped and fell out of it, striking my jaw on the toilet bowl.

I wouldn't have chosen to memorialize that holiday by crashing into a toilet bowl. A photo album would be a less violent option. But I am grateful. Things could've turned out differently. It was one of those falls that elsewhere might contribute to the category of "Fatal Accidents" in homeowner insurance statistics. One foot suddenly slipped under another and gravity took over, pulling my frame towards the floor like a toppled tree.

I was in a flat in London and the bathroom was a typical cramped, English affair with the bowl right next to the tub. My survival instinct kicked in on free fall and I remember clutching the shower curtain but it did no good. The curtain was an American kind, secured to the rod by cheap plastic rungs that zipped off in an instant, failing to slow my descent. And despite years of training from a mother and three older sisters, I left the toilet seat up and my jaw struck the beveled edge of the bowl with nothing to cushion the blow but my cheek.

Saying this kind of thing in retrospect means almost nothing but even then, in the moment, I think I knew I was lucky to be there.

The day before I was in Spain, on a bus, heading to Malaga airport, trying to catch the last flight back to England before the holiday closed down the continent.

The bus driver and several passengers were having an animated discussion I couldn't understand. My face and my cargo shorts must have given away my confusion and nationality and a well dressed man came and sat down in an empty seat next to me and in polished English explained that the national transportation union was set to strike at this very hour and our driver was threatening to take us all back to Seville and then walk off the job.

If we did make it to Malaga despite the protestations of the driver, there wouldn't be much in the way of hostels but I could stay for Christmas with he and his family if I liked. They all spoke English so it wouldn't be that different than home. I struggled, at that age, to describe my concept of home though I didn't tell him that.

Thankfully, I didn't have to impose on his goodwill. The strike was averted, at least for me, as I flew out of Malaga airport a few hours later on an almost empty British Airways jet. My precious travel plans weren't jeopardized.

About midway through the flight, the co-pilot came into the cabin, dressed in a Santa suite but for his airline cap, and handed me an inordinate amount of crisps and sweets. I spent the rest of the flight worrying my London bus map with chocolate fingers. I would be getting in late. How to get to south London before everything closed and I was trapped at Heathrow for two days, surviving on Hob Nobs and Schwepps?

Two weeks prior I had quit my job bartending in a London pub. I wanted to spend what little money I'd saved traveling. There was a lull during Christmas. Karim suggested I spend the holiday with he and Nordeen at his flat in South London. The pair worked with me at the pub. They were waiters at the restaurant above the bar. Both men were Muslim and didn't have any plans for the holiday or family to spend it with. Family was back home, in Morocco, where they wanted to be, once they'd made just a little more money.

Nigel was our chef and had nothing to do for the holiday so he got the invite as well. Nigel and I were fast friends and though I hadn't spent much time outside the restaurant with Karim or Nordeen, I was fond of them and a Moroccan Christmas seemed like something I should do. I would be leaving England soon, for where ever planes would take me. I needed an ending.

I had lived above the bar where I worked. It was a total immersion into London's East End, a place that might have been familiar and dreary, coming from my blue collar background, but the accents made all the difference. I became deft at understanding them.

I practiced accents too, on Nigel, and got the knack for his, and soon jumped to Moroccan English, listening to Nordeen and Karim. And they joined Nigel doing American imitations in response. Slow times at the pub sounded like a movie rehearsal, with all of us belting out clich/s with over-the-top inflections.

I also inherited East London's curious insularity. The longer I stayed, the more obscure greater London became. Beyond Wapping, I barely knew my way around the city streets after living there nearly a year. So when I walked out of Heathrow on that Christmas Eve, in cold, driving rain, with a Cadbury-smudged bus map, South London looked as far away as Spain.

"There you are,"

Nigel was walking towards me with a cigarette in his mouth and his hands jammed in his coat pockets.

"Imagine if I'd missed you... why you'd be wandering the streets of London, offering to carol for food. No one would give you a thing," he said as he put his arm around me.

We walked down the street and he pointed out one of those narrow English vans.

"There we are," Nigel said, "a couple of shifty Moroccans in there. I'm surprised the Old Bill hasn't shown up."

Karim had borrowed the van from a friend and as Nigel opened the back door, Nordeen turned around in the front passenger seat and grinned his wide, toothy grin that meant he was playing The American.

"Happy Christmas!" He bellowed, spreading his arms outward. He and Karim, in the drivers seat, both laughed.

"You see what I've had to put up with, Nigel said, "Why, it's a miracle I didn't jump out the back on the way over here. Come on mate, in you go," and he held the door open for me.

I don't remember much of that night now. Lots of drinking and smoking and eating and Radio 1 and wonderful comfort food Nigel conjured from a kitchen he'd never seen. I was in a place I'd never been, but very much at home.

The next morning, I fell out of the shower and hit Karim's toilet bowl with my jaw. There was a black smudge in my memory between the moment I hit the bowl and sitting below it on a stringy shag carpet. I worked my jaw waiting for blinding pain but none came. There weren't any floating teeth, either.

I considered myself lucky and reached for a towel. In time I came to understand how lucky I was.