The Reluctant Matador: Meet my Bullfighting Consultant.

With my WIP (work-in-progress) second novel, I’m running up hot and heavy against the “write what you know” adage. The book is set in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. As such there are a lot of references to restaurants and food (I don’t cook, am not a foodie, and prefer others pick where to dine), many Spanish words (my second language is pitiful French), and a bit of bullfighting (please!). So, I need a lot of help. Fortunately, having been a consultant in a previous life, I have no trouble asking for it.

In my last blog post, I shared how I’ve purloined required foodie intel to date and my plans for a culinary consultant. In this edition I’ll introduce the professional everyone needs in their rolodex—a personal bullfighting consultant.

And, I’ll also show the result of what I learned in a unique video performance at the end.

The Genesis of My Need for Bullfighting Expertise

I got the idea for the setting of my WIP from anecdotes a friend had shared over the years about the lively expat community in San Miguel. I realized this could offer a framework for the generational story I wanted to tell and embarked upon a series of trips to familiarize myself with the place. In addition to the fiestas, the food, the art, and all the other wonderful aspects of the city, I learned San Miguel also has a bullring. Though hardly my cup of tea, I did feel that if I wanted to really understand the culture of the city that is the setting for my story, I needed to steel myself and attend one—but only one—bullfight.

When I went down for Easter about three years ago to see the magnificent Holy Week celebrations, it was also bullfighting season. I was invited to tag along with an enthusiast, who transformed my trepidation about the experience by interpreting the fight from a point of view I would never have considered—the bull’s. This anthropomorphic perspective was fascinating and, through the bull’s journey in the ring, I found the metaphor for my story: the wonderful moment of safety and satisfaction some bulls find before the end—the querencia.

Bringing it to the page was trickier. Bullfighting is a very complicated, ritualistic art form, with elements both pagan and reminiscent of aspects of the Catholic mass. Though it is only depicted in a single scene in my entire novel, it still had to be believable. After an early reading, I realized I couldn’t coast on my rookie observations in my hurry to skip to my thematic “moment” without getting the many details absolutely right. The enthusiast gave me books and pointed me in the right direction, but it was tough to understand the translated texts, and I longed for an “interpreter” closer to home that I could nag at will until I got it right.

And then, as they say, the Universe presented me with what I needed.

How Did I Luck Out?

Todd Behrend

It turns out, in the oddest of circumstances, I had a resource just one degree of separation away. Abby, my massage therapist, an avid reader and fan of my first book, one day asked about my WIP while unhinging my frozen neck muscles. Lo and behold she is married to a Renaissance man with an unusual set of skills and interests, that include bullfighting.

Before I know it, I’ve sent along my problematic scene to this man I’ve never met, and he suggests we do get together—there is so much I’m getting wrong and have to learn and he’s delighted to share.

And so, at an outside restaurant during the first break in the COVID lock down I meet Todd Behrend, a true aficionado--one who deeply understands and appreciates the art of bullfighting. And, at one point in his life actually trained to become a bullfighter.

What are the odds?

A Renaissance Aficionado from the National Theater to the Plaza de Toros

How? Why? Yes, I know the first question you have. It’s the one I asked as well. How does one even fathom becoming a bullfighter in the modern world?

Though when I met Todd, he was winding up a long and successful career in the hospitality industry, I learned he’d previously been a Chicago actor. In his twenties he’d taken advantage of an opportunity for serious study at the National Theater in London and elsewhere in Europe, which of course led to a lot of recreational travelling throughout the continent. While in Spain, though he originally had no interest in bullfighting—too bloody—he finally relented and made what he thought was to be his only visit. Instead, he found it to be one of the most compelling things he’d ever seen. “Everything I thought I was doing in theater was in bullfighting,” he realized. “But it was actual, not fictional, risk.”

He quit acting and spent the next three years training with former professionals in Chicago, traveling to Ecuador and Mexico, honing his skills and training to become a matador. Secretly, however, part of him was reluctant, constantly grappling with the fact that as much as he loved the art form of bullfighting, he hated the idea of killing an animal. He was enthralled but…reluctant.

Eventually, an encounter with a particular two-year-old bull settled the dilemma. As he puts it, he “had his ass handed to him,” which was “a very large pill to swallow” and a wakeup call that he was unlikely to achieve the personal goals he’d set for himself and that he’d started too late in the game.

At the same time, he no longer had to wrestle with committing to the understanding of all serious bullfighting professionals—that they won’t take the bull’s life unless they are willing to give up theirs.

He wasn’t, and my story and I are the beneficiaries of his unique experience as well as his relatable struggle.

The Universe done good.

And so has Todd.

After his sojourn with bullfighting, Todd returned to acting, appearing in network television shows including Chicago P.D. Today, he has moved to another phase of his Renaissance life, to which he’s committed with equal gusto and less personal peril. He is a Certified Sommelier | Court of Master Sommeliers and Wine Consultant, a position from which I confess I’ve also benefited in terms of recommendations for excellent holiday gifts for my wine connoisseur friends.

Oh and when we meet to discuss my story, he brings wine.

You Say “Potato,” I say “Pomme de Terre,” but Should Say “ Patata”

Though this headline doesn’t work exactly, it does set up another consulting need that I roped Todd into with his fluent Spanish.

In another early reading of my bullfighting scene, in which there are quite a few Spanish words, I sounded them out with the only knowledge I had—high school romance language (French) and phonics—as well as what I’d gleaned from a freshman year Spanish dialogue I’d memorized while my best friend was practicing it out loud.

I thought I sounded pretty good. Until someone from the audience asked me if I was referring to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. She pronounced it differently, I had apparently used my French accent.

Shortly after that disgrace, I was invited by my friend, Isabelle Olivier, a master harpist from Paris, to perform with her during her autumn tour. It was to be a reading from my WIP accompanied by her original music at a concert onstage at Pianoforte in Chicago. We’d done this before with an excerpt from my first novel, to great success. However, I realized that had all been in my native tongue. This new excerpt had TEN Spanish words and phrases, some repeated.

Desperate, I sent the list to Todd. Could he give me idiot-proof, syllable-by-syllable phonetic pronunciations of each word? As a result, I had a ball learning to say San Miguel i- yend- day, and la keh-wren-see-ah, even though I could hardly master the critical tongue flick at the back of my teeth or, heavens, roll my Rs in the week I had to rehearse. But I could handle it, except for one tongue-twisting word: Banderillero.

This word, describing the colorful men who both rev up and wear down the bull for the matador throughout the stages of the fight, is challenging even with the phonetic spelling. It’s five syllables, all of which need to be said of a piece, without stopping. I, of course, had a tendency to hesitate after the third, which annihilated any possibility of making it to a coherent end. I could do it once or twice, if I could say it very fast and keep my head out of it. But I knew that would not be so easy during a reading before an audience that would be live streaming internationally from the stage of Pianoforte.

Todd was supportive, pointing out that Ernest Hemingway had found banderillero to be the most difficult word to pronounce in Spanish. I tell everyone this, so they’ll have sympathy.

I practiced like crazy, but I had to say the word EIGHT TIMES in my seven-minute reading, and the morning of the performance I was a basket case. I finally realized that I’d ruin the entire reading if I worried about this, and decided on a bastardized plan that would get me through. I’d say the full read the first time, then shorten it to “yeros,” for the next five mentions, then return with a rousing full, nearly tongue-rolling finale for the last.

How did I do? Please see for yourself in the video presented here. Listen to the prelude of Isabelle’s wonderful music, or advance directly to 22:48 where the reading starts.

Enjoy…and be kind.

Thank God, bullfighting is only in the one scene.

Todd has yet to weigh in.