First of all, the city referred to as "Torrente" should have been written "Torrent." Sorry, and duly corrected. (Me spell good Spanish).
Now, having grown up in Ottawa and visited the National Art Gallery numerous times, I am somewhat cultured. I have been exposed to the various of travelling exhibits, and come face to face with the Masters of the painting world. Even real live Picassos.
Still, it was a different feeling that greeted me at his museum in Barcelona, watching the curing process of a signature in his hometown.
At that point in my life, the look on El Loco's face stirred a thought in me that I cannot fully explain.
Location location location.
Oh, yes - Henry and X. Those two naughty boys and girls. Put the children to bed and read on. (Haven't we all been there?)
Now, having grown up in Ottawa and visited the National Art Gallery numerous times, I am somewhat cultured. I have been exposed to the various of travelling exhibits, and come face to face with the Masters of the painting world. Even real live Picassos.
Still, it was a different feeling that greeted me at his museum in Barcelona, watching the curing process of a signature in his hometown.
At that point in my life, the look on El Loco's face stirred a thought in me that I cannot fully explain.
Location location location.
Oh, yes - Henry and X. Those two naughty boys and girls. Put the children to bed and read on. (Haven't we all been there?)
Chapter 26: Barcelona. Sex With an X.
Hung. There was a bang on the door, a female speaking that Spanish of languages to me. I’m staying, I gave her - in English, and I was half-asleep. But she understood something in the way and left me to my desires my dirty room, my gradual reclamation of another date on a calendar.
“Uno mas,” I slow-mouthed to the wrinkled face staring in the sink mirror - twice, thrice reminding myself how to say ‘one more.’ Yes.
To the communal washroom, the door left unlocked for the showering of my naked body, but nothing. 70-something-year-old Miguel back on shift and accepting my passport, some euros for uno mas. I was that close to striking up a conversation, and yet nothing beyond the dilated veins of my left temple. To the bright of midday and the streets names I’d present if I only knew them, give a more specific outline of my simple stroll if only it were a detailed map of Barcelona telling what became of me donning flannel in the warmth of that March. Sticking my nose in the clouds.
Making Picasso wait whilst Gaudí was the way of two dead guys to show me the neighbourhood without the feel of hazel eyes or the circumstance that led me to have a crush on a girl in denim making her manner somewhere amongst the branding of tourists that had become a game of distraction for little old me.
In the identification of socks of argyle. The spotting of sporty shorts, in the correlation of matching Tilley hats upon him, her majesty of superior exchange rate.
This I did with the mix of cobblestone and old concrete beneath the Nikes on my toes. The shops in my eyes rising in scale, male mannequins growing more taut in their nippled window attire. The side streets giving way to the slope of the wide avenues of L’Eixample, Mr. Guadí slamming a prehistoric jaw onto the side of an acid trip, manifesting a balcony for his creation apartment in a certain part of town running away from the core, history once upon their time.
And the auto-focus cameras draped over the big bellies telling me when to pause and flip to next page on tour. At one point I did run fast and run long into the spirit of not looking back at a hangover that normally does mercifully avoid a traveller. The fresh air, the excitement of the new eased my pound of head in the midst of a raven-haired chica carrying the perfect Spanish ass across the expanse of a tree-lined European avenue. Me without my camera. The couples and the tiny cars making love on the diagonals, holding hands and oblivious to the extremely long stare capable of that there stretch of pavement linking horizon with horizon.
My hand on a nonexistent guide rope, having a word with the self that had gone a few hours without opening the mouth to speak or eat. Silent commentary from a bartender accustomed to speaking to strangers in a friendly manner, striking up conversations, cultivating the clientele of personality mine hunting for tips in the politest of all manners. This, of course, is the most entire What that ran my dry tongue up the side of a walk performed in the peace and quiet of sneaker after sneaker hoping to blend in and avoid the crowds encountered by one person headed to a famous church within the cosmopolitan city.
These the confessions of this tourist roaming the streets of Barcelona, armed with the knowledge of the importance of turning the head and coughing when leaned against a bus stop at 6-or-so-in-the-A.M. and spilling life guts onto the sidewalk of Torrent: La Sagrada Família is just a building is but a wish egged on by donations paying for construction cranes.
Hung. Across the way from that attractive nuisance whose confirmed incompleteness turned Gaudí into a beggar and bum in likeness; sitting in one of those fabulously European cafés I may have remembered to You, trying to order a virgin Screwdriver to go with my strange nostalgia for a bocadillo - hand in hand with my limited Spanish. I placed my order and You already know some of the rest of my stop in those original suburbs running from the density of the Barri Gòtic, handcrafted by the 19th-century modernistas and their blend of architectural worlds; each building different thoughts. The nice waitress arrived and I ate that salty ham within sliced bread, slowly feeling more human with every nosh washed down into the invention of hope, away from X and our now separate hostels.
Caucasians snapping pictures; a loud Texan accent commenting on the colour of a new money not uniformly green. “Funny,” he said.
The words of English tagged onto the construction shroud around a forever-in-progress: ‘Skate or Die’ not exactly within the lexicon of the Spanish artisans, of Gaudí. I smiled and listened for the rolling of wheels, a kid from the oldest burbs making his way with a spray can; I asked for the bill and tipped the usual modest, maybe a tad more. For she was cute, reminded me of someone or another.
Tour buses guarding the perimeter, my nose back towards the clouds, to the stone tips of many towers. My condolences to the commemorative Jesus carved on a cross as I made my rounds of one of the main reasons why people board a plane for beauty Barcelona; my eyes up into the detail of terms brother Clay would know beyond crevice or cleavered spire. A line around the block to get in.
I stepped in front of a moving bus speaking Japanese to me, devoid of the knowledge that Gaudí himself was killed by a slow tram, his appearance so impoverished that he went unrecognized initially. In true Centretown fashion X should have stepped from the trees and said hello, maybe yelled a simple look out for the bus, idiot; but this already two months into the Jesus Years, of a secret excuse that did not extend to miracles and the use of mere steps across innocent streets as justification for wish.
No, I found my way to a nearby bench and just stared over the tops of heads, that’s simply all. It probably wasn’t nearly as romantic as I make it out to be, what with me being truly alone single for the very first time in over two years; March, and everything involved with that iffy month. I could perhaps be persuaded that a Spanish skater kid did zoom on up with some formal papers for me to sign and declare the common-law divorce all legal and done, but I believe I’ll shall stick with a park bench the day after a night of drinking with an American as the official protocol of transpiring events.
Reality, and the actual lifting of the Levi’s sculpting my butt, the sneakers that set off, led me down an avenue to the foot of Barco’s Arc de Triomf, an ornate, brown brick version of yet another piece of Paris that I never did see from aeroplane that hurtled me towards Spain and recognition of that Jesus phrase making its gradual way behind my eyes, into You. Wonderful, and the yellow of a pollen shaken to the floor from a line of craggy trees that for the death of me I could not name; but beautifully poised old fingers of wooden hands that shot the life seeds that were causing the roof of my mouth to itch, my nose to sneeze itself into an almost weep to be concealed from modern hippies playing toss with devil sticks around a drum circle in their park - a bongo a tabla and a tambourine for the musically-declined chico with the dreads down to his firm Spanish ass. A Friday. I did strut my way passed my ubiquitous palms, back to concrete and a street named after a guy named Picasso - a Madonna, a Valentino blessed with the supreme knowledge that everyone should make love in the presence of a burning candle, on a humid night with a fan blowing the flame’s lick clear across the studio; a slow melt freeze of wax that greets the morning and the now dry wet spot laid in without so much as a whimper because not only did one receive a Piece, but thus created a candle caught in headlights, the coolest feather of wax in thee entire neighbourhood. Maybe farther.
Maybe not so much museum quality as selective love walking me into the narrowed alleys of La Ribera on their path separating one from the Gòtic, real estate rising with every step taken amongst its restoration of brick, its quaintness of the uneven carefully aligned into cobblestone with pride, money. This the upscale part of town chosen to house Picasso’s paintings, his sculptures; gaggles of school children blocking the entrance that was me arriving after taking a series of left and rights of chic restaurant, haberdashery. Unseen unmentionables, delicates never hung on the invisible overhead laundry line.
X was supposed to wait for me by a side door nicknamed For Lovers by the locals. Most often times she would wink and I would know that my threat of suicide had been removed from the equation.
Picasso was tanned and bald upon his death, his women a thick book reminiscent of the entire mystery; the urine smell of his Gòtic not so far down the alley from the Ribera wall of glass doors and attendants primed to usher one into a series of converted vertical mansions housing his committed thoughts.
She was supposed to emerge from a bank of self-imposed exile and describe to me in detail the things of mine that made her go bump in the night. Most often times she would wink and show me that the threat of suicide had been removed from the equation.
The talk is of periods, of colours, an early fondness for the fat calves of his aunts and of the saltimbanco - the When time for the Spanish circus to come to town.
The school children paused, encircled, spoke that language for him to understand postmortem. I hung on to the rope and hoped for the best, quietly learned of his separate take on the individuals within a specific Velázquez painting and the way to take art beyond mere adoring copy, his cubism appreciative of the smell of a lover’s deodorant even whilst fucking faces up.
She was supposed to be there in the middle of a Spanish day. In true Centretown fashion she would have creaked the hardwood floor with her Beatle boots, tapped me on the shoulder and told me that they were only children on a forced school trip. Made to travel they were. Fair enough, would have been my answer, but have a look-see at this here portrait given as a gift to a friend of his: El Loco, I would have say of a long, gaunt man with a more than five o’clock shadow and the shabby accoutrement to match. His countenance, his unknown stare out from the rectangular canvass, would have been my readied answer beyond the stroke of signature into bottom right corner that placed Picasso a mere inch inside the various of frame, almost waiting to get out.
I could really lie right about this, now that it be just me and You in the middle of stuff - for I am blessed with the knowledge of the Spanish ending, cursed with the details of it all in my mind in my mouth in her never ever running into me at said museum. Wonderful the level of quality in my description of such an important dot on the Barcelona tourist map. And I believe that I headed back to my grand villa and had me a brief siesta with the dusty drapes yanked to Open, the tall vertical windows split for sniff of air, bed number 2 accepting my naked ass. After money belt that had become a heavy girdle was removed, sweaty socks and shoes plopped to the floor.
But sorry, I failed to mention possibly passing by a church or three given over to a particular saint. The change in smells moving from La Ribera to my Barri Gòtic: welcoming the crossover with a strange gradual handshake.
And me the tour guide; staying to finish up that naked nap in fine style, starfished on top of those rough wool covers everyone’s mother warns them about, because of the likes of me and fellow travellers. Waiting, for X was going to be there when I flicked opened my eyes in unison, simply removing my threat of suicide from the equation: fair enough, I would give her at the time of wished whisper into my ear - blessed with the ability to always wire DVD player, fix future leaky faucets she may perhaps phone me to come deal with.
At very least, when I turned my head to the left there was supposed to be a someone there in that there tall vertical window. Me thoughts that I should take this first lover that came my way of sight, not knowing her secrets, she unaware of mine. The mouthing of a few inviting words, a squint of a kiss to rectify what would otherwise be considered lewd and lascivious behaviour across the brick way three floors up from public consumption. A mere dream of mine that I apologize for in its theory.
Miguel was none the wiser as he peered over his bifocals to accept my passport once the more. “Hasta luego,” I offered. See you later, his French shot forth and said to me. We had spoken, had ever so brief of those conversations, and I was momentarily not alone but the actual reality beyond the open-air menagerie of travel that is poked at with a camera or given lack of please and thank you.
Be nice, I told myself: even as strolling the cobble streets for a drink, for a friend. I was not a local, but an uninvited guest. But still a member of the planet, an Earthian with no need of passport beyond willingness for communication. A thought that I encountered at yet another pub around the way; the lads were watching a rugby test match on a television safe enough to stare with my naked eye - it was sports and thus fairly devoid of the potential ability to invoke memory of tragedy, true love. I turned away during the commercial breaks and never did catch what colour was what country, but the pub was full in the late afternoon and everyone was happy, talking mostly things I could understand without too much translating apart from thick British accents hiding from the Barcelona day right outside the door.
Battered fish and home fries served with that Spanish brand of blended mayonnaise and red peppers. Maybe some spice.
This I guessed as I had me a beer and eavesdropped my way into this guilty pleasure of almost being back at home. No one would know except my silly pride that I was remembering my days of high school rugby back in the East End of my Ottawa, trying to get my head to sing the dirty fight songs that seemed to be ingrained into its Anglo rule book; drank my dark Guinness I did. Tried. Drifted. On the shelf behind the bar was the very first bottle of for real absinthe I had ever seen, read with mine own eyes: Le Vrai Absinthe, from France it be - its breath of wormwood still legal in Spain, a green bottle shaped reminiscent of Bombay Sapphire. The lads continued to be impressed with scrums and line-outs and young bar girl did speak to them the necessary bits of English with that Spanish accent of hers, a big-screen TV staring her in the lovely round face that I shall leave at that. But this: the colour of her hair bobby-pinned into the convenient Up position for late brunch with them chaps following an oval ball passed diagonally around the grass field of home; the sound of my ass squiggling on that there leather-covered stool never to truly convey the whole truth of X once scrubbing the tip of her left toe into the late night pavement of Elgin Street, pushing tips of hazel eyes halfway up into eyelids, slight begging for a kiss before the good-bye that was not at all these Jesus Years of mine - only within the past and thee beginning of the wonderful Where that all sugar snaps come from.
Senorita accepted the usual modest, without knowing to cover her ears to the continuing story of me heading down them cobblestones back towards Molly’s Fair City just off the Reial and its plaza of people not entirely stocked with Spanish - she somewhat oblivious to the boredom that I am capable of churning in the hearts and minds of others. X’s.
I perform this easy possessive pronoun and push a Stop finger towards her underdescribed pouting lips for umpteenth time; but sorry. I be here in this Ottawa, Canada, with the saying sorry for being bad, or so it seems to this boy now.
And despite my best efforts to the contrary I pushed through the oak doors of a tourist bar and sat down at a familiar, pointed towards a Guinness tap. Extremely comfortable with the fact that my life was over in the most dramatic of senses, alone in a bar, cheating the code of true travellers.
But I ordered in the language of that land I romance of and shifted my elbows my weight against the well-crafted wood. That person referred to as Me regaled my inner monologue with the opening lines of a terribly maudlin poem; carefully sniffed words far more exotic than this Now that be of me and this You removed from the mix of limerick and passion seeping its dear clear way down tactile Barcelona wallpaper masquerading as a tin ceiling. In true Gòtic fashion Damien smiled his bright white teeth and asked me if the seat the spin stool beside was taken, actually leaned real close and progressed his manner through the Spanish language of ordering a Bombardier Ale.
“I knew you’d be here,” the man known as Damien did have the temerity to offer his fellow traveller spelled different.
“That’s a lot of lip from the guy at the front of my magical mystery stagger through the piss streets of Barco. You could have run after me last night, saved me. We could have subdued the unruly dorm chaperone, tied him up with a ragged flag or simple bandanna; you could have wiped his sneer and swept after me.”
“But I knew that I could find you here,” was the cool manner his lips continued the screenplay, a crowd beginning to accumulate in those hours after siesta. Stage right, stage left. A cigarette - a brand depending on the close-up - leaves Damien’s hand and touches mine; I thank the man with a smile to be determined.
And the scene continued to catalogue the finest of all tales perfectly lacking mention of the chronological time of life when Jesus bit the dust. We expanded the troupe, took on another lone gunman in need of mother tongue to wag, one to learn me that the expression the whole nine yards is a WW2 reference - the entire length of ammo in a certain plane’s gunner arsenal whilst flying sorties over the Channel. This, according to a wonderful American gentleman snuggled up to a pub off La Rambla. I’ll call him the professor for no apparent reason and the fact that he barely rates a screen credit, let alone character development other than the usual thoughts behind a guy by himself in a bar, a well-thumbed book on the history of circumcision in his waiting lap. I smiled and thanked this man, did not at all reach out and strike him for interrupting my life with Damien; the ciggies, the stout to my waiting mouth, and the hope that felt its way through my veins and remained my left fist to Open and at rest - a moment.
That there professor spoke some of his fluent Spanish and the bartender answered in English with an accent garnered from his part of the world.
I relent and give this learned man in a bar some round spectacles as I leaned over to ask him of that linguistic lisp blamed on a speech-impaired king of Valencia past. “But if so,” he said to me, “why then on certain ‘c’ only? Why not more throughout the language, huh?” Just a myth, was the way he furthered to me. Gracias, I gave him, without the lisp. Bar left, bar right continuing to and from a Friday night near the Mediterranean. The great names for a song making their way before us: Chicas and Lasses, First night in Town, Five guys dressed as Elvis. I told Damien my Elvis Presley story, my where I was when He had died: squatting in my parents' garden eating snow peas when the news came on the radio, Mother announcing from back porch, brother Clay laughing at my childhood tears. Father glued to the TV and a series of news reports in a time well before CNN.
“That’s real pain, Hen.” Thanks, Dame, I seem to recall. “Nah - the King, Hen, the King. He was squeezing one out on the bowl when he bought it, man.” He was 42, I had say to him. “But with a good book in his hour of need.” Playboy, I remembered. “Nope. Something on the Shroud of Turin.” Bullshit, I called on Damien at the time, but if I were to believe my memory of his countenance his tone his most earnestness I would probably have to up and disprove this piece of useless trivia at some necessary moment in my life.
“Shouldn’t we ask these guys what the hell Elvis would be doing in Barcelona?” I shared his concern, but stared the bartender shaking up a drink. “Five of them - all the fuckers the same, no range of age or era. 70’s jump suit Elvis Aaron and ten identical sideburns.” The barkeep, the Spanish one with the hair and eyes running the imagination, finally split the shaker and turned a martini glass into a confused day.
“Blue Curaçao, vodka and a sniff of cranberry: a Purple Haze, my friend.” I paused, and then apologized to the beautiful Damien. “You’re right. AbsoSmurfly right; no way the King let’s himself be upstaged by himself. They could have called one another, simply reserved a style.” And I left out the part about one Jesus - one longhair in a dirty white robe, the brown sandals that never made it up the cross. The only visual we have of his 33 years. And I could lie and say that this be the entire What that ran my head, there on a stool sandwiched between two Americans and room somewhat full of Elvii and thoughts of kings.
“Then it’s settled; we have to fix this.” And Damien was most definitely on holidays; drinking and stinking, waiting to sleep with strangers and taking his identity for a walk, offering up his traveller’s impunity for the ginger stroll. He’d mentioned the hairy transvestites plying on La Rambla without some much as gagging, almost a twinkle in his big blue eyes. Shared me numerous ciggies, but asked of weed; we were swapping habits or bits of ways of life perhaps. “So we fix, huh?” he tempted.
To some, the fact that Jesus and Elvis both consist of 5 letters be of no small coincidence; to the cult followings - it’s set in stone.
“Do you believe me that I’m on vacation?” I grabbed him square by shoulders and asked him if I truly had the appearance of a man not at work. Tell me please, I added.
He reminded me that I didn’t live here. He wondered me if I planned to stay.
I blinked and this he gave me: “In the meantime, Henry, let’s get Elvis.” My smile turned me to the professor and asked if he were aware that the King’s funeral procession plum cleaned the city of Memphis out of white limos, robbed the nearby towns and counties for miles, all for that there great moment of tragedy. As he parted his lips I informed him that I was on vacation and for the time being not a bartender but a mere civilian, free to talk … or not … to strangers. If he were to give me just a minute, was the way I put it to him. Thanked him and stood up, moved, walked with Damien to stage right in the process of confronting them five ersatz kings of rock and or roll.
“Soy un perdedor, chico.” I’m a loser, baby, said I to the smallish one - in Spanish. And I had translated, because the 5 were of the Australian way.
In true Centretown fashion X spread the oak doors and recognized, joined a cue to confront fifth business with a simple drag on a ciggie purchased on foreign soil. As she had finally run out of du Mauriers; as I had as a matter of course taken to the inhaling of Fortunas in mass quantities.
And I could lie and present her on the arm of another, give her an Alsatian lover of disputable accent meant to fill a knapsack full of jealousy; if I were to try most hard I could probably find my way into an avoidance of what really happened when confronting the mass Elvis persuasion, bury the things gleaned from the warning label on the last Canadian pack of ciggies smoked: Murders - 510; Alcohol - 1 900; Car accidents - 2 900; Suicides - 3 900; Tobacco - 45 000. The equivalent of a small city dying from tobacco use each year.
In true Centretown fashion she joined the onslaught of Damien’s and my say towards 5 Australians' run on downtown Barco, their bonding bachelor party and last gasp of one’s freedom. “Did you ever stop to realize the consequences?” This she heard as our further Hello to them, what Damien had said to them Elvis one as all.
And with the appropriate centuries filter of British say, tallest Elvis ordered five Foster’s and let it be.
“Did you ever even realize the consequences of dreaming the same?”
“Dressing,” she corrected the him being Damien, and I will leave it at that. I shall omit the tearing of sideburns, theirs and ours, the playful tussling of high collars, the tilting of big old fake studded sunglasses. The eventual utterance of sorry sorry sorry, but take that and that. I will concentrate and squeeze You what it felt like to once again have a special girl kind of on my side of the argument.
“Your girl is cool.”
“She’s not mine, Damien.”
Fun. But for why, guys, was the What she tugged and sat us down with at the far end of bar. Away from that Elvii all. Near and beside the native Spanish bartender-slash-mixologist; his hair, eyes, height of no over importance, but a necessary leveling of my temperament for the story to continue as thus: “Uno Guinness, por favor, Hector.” And that he gave her with a two-pour. Her gratuity rounded up to the euro, modest. The mere change left but eye contact present between the two. I could go on, but the near lie ends dead here with her simple want of a stout, say of her growing Spanish.
And I was breathing in and out.
“Did he tell you his Elvis story? Is that what this was all about, hmm? Huh? Tell him some more useless shit, Hen. Go on.” And she gave me the supreme favour of not calling me Hun she did.
“Your ex is really cool,” from a grown man of the relative same age as the Us found squat on the three stools I present as fact and not at all the fiction of my maybe making.
She joined us with her hair still that curly way. Natural. Only a girl on vacation. “I’m cool, Hen.” Her arms up and out, pointing sky left and sky right. “I’m way cooler than Mr. Elvis - all one two three four five of them,” a squint and fire of finger pistol aimed above our heads. “I’m cool cool.” A shooter arrived, or rather was slid towards her by Hector; he lit the thing on fire and motioned with chin towards them five waving guys named Elvis.
“Make a wish, go on and blow it out, dear.” That was the professor, and I take back his spectacles just to spite him, picture him with an east west combover for the time being. Still, my tone did not rise. My hands remained upon a sleeve of beer as X complied and moved her brief gaze up towards a ceiling of gilded wallpaper; a pause a gulp and she was through and beyond, down the throat. And yes, the two-and-a-half years of instinct tempted me to hold her non-straightened hair as she leaned back to finish swallowing that hunk of once burning liquid love and seal her wish. For that’s what boyfriends do, simply what one does.
My Guinness, my two hands still most stifled and well-behaved. Unromantic. “What did the sambuca fairy bring you?” I breathed her. When do we kiss, was the way of my actual thought.
Others still existed within this frame, but only X and me for this now that was completely beyond Winnepeg-spelled-all-wrong and Fonzie sat beside on a quiet Monday night, Elgin Street, Ottawa. Before. “You’re..being..licked,” said in the slow manner of a salty man worthy of an entire paragraph on for why to leave a friend at a much great speed. And only just we three caballeros that be out for a night on the town of Ottawa when things truly began for me, and perhaps her.
Later she would admit to me her lusty grasp of my face witnessed by one Winnepeg - my ass viewed upon leave of that stage she worked at on Ottawa’s Elgin Street. Back home and preceding the Spanish that I present in the Now.
As a matter of course I did anon step back into said establishment, begin this resplendent All that continues these thoughts with You. “I don’t believe you two; I really do not believe you.” But Damien was on vacation when he talked of us and thus was to be taken with a grain of sea salt amongst a trail of smoke ascending from various 3 ciggies perched on our shared ashtray.
But this. In them Canadian days when I first occasioned a cigarette with my drink, Winnepeg smirked and lit up outside on a street and I accepted and inhaled and then went back inside to sink a pink in the corner pocket across the way from her Elgin stage. My mere whiff of the thought process that sustains me now. “I won’t accept that you two are done as a couple. You cannot tell me anywheres different.” Fine. Great for Damien, I thought to me and self.
“Damien, we are done with this,” was the way that she put down the growing Barcelona sentiment of the time. I cowered and then leapt up and almost but put my arm around the beautiful American to preserve the simple conversation that was one of us spying a lean of the professor ever closer towards our circle.
She knew nothing of this as my mouth closed sideways and let him have his moment in the sunshine of our non-love: “The Spaniards really don’t have much use for the shooter, miss. But that wish of yours, I’m afraid I really must beg as to its specifics.” It was her stage presence that he was asking X to recall, if not her diary. “Miss …?”
A boyfriend leaps from the forlorn shadows of the second stool of this foreign setting to reach the professor’s pencil neck in nick time to create a lasting impression. He makes himself the embodiment of the question at hand, comports with the utmost knowledge of the insides of her pretty head. It’s true: “Tell him, darling,” said I. And she with the manner that I have mostly left out; beyond the words that I have placed in her mouth and within that which You must have been guessing at and inserting where needed - surely making these thoughts right, better.
“Who are you?” in so many words from her. He started to begin his lips and I once the more cross long bits of his thinning hair over top his bald scalp. “Who are you to ruin the silence of my wish making, and the what that would happen if I were to tell you? Are you not aware of the potential for harm? Sidewalk cracks and my mother’s back; train tracks and always lifting up your feet, just in case. Do you not know never to ask?” Polite she was, to one of his eyes at a time.
“An educated woman you are, miss.” Thus they proceeded to wrap themselves amongst the end of any and all discouraging word between the two.
I presently give the nice man back his glasses, lick and fix his hair with the fashion sense of a very real person quite capable of holding secrets beyond their expiry dates. Not destroying endings for the mere sake of explaining a bodily phenomenon.
And within seconds, this from him to her: “No, my dear, it’s the theory behind Immortal Beloved; Gary Oldham, playing the actual Beethoven, one far far too deaf to hear his lover’s eventual sentimental whisper into his ear, that she did indeed love him after all. One suddenly realizes why he was such a bastard to this woman throughout the last half of film, his later life.” The professor slowly wept, recapped the movie to my ex whilst bit down on a beer coaster, leaned down to touch its tip against the wood of a bar. “He was under the belief that she had cared more for his brother, all along. But he was deaf, only able to continue his magnificent music via the cranial vibrations.” This here was movie talk and some clearly sappy overhear, them there fag ends tearing down my ability to conduct my cinematic viewing strictly anew.
He had gone and ruined an ending for me. I wet my lips, cleared my throat and prepared to say nothing about the real Santa starting out as a mere Turkish bishop, before his meteoric rise to St. Nick, Father Christmas, the lesser half of Mrs. Claus. I asked Damien for another ciggie, a light, an inhalation. Began a thought in no way near the Devil the basis for which upon Darth Vader was created, Rosebud being the name of a childhood Kane’s beloved sled - coincidently William Randolph Hurst’s moniker for an area of his mistress’ anatomy.
Just smoke into our lungs, nicotine for wisdom, saltpeter burning factory-rolled American paper more bright and evenly and longer and unknown to most of purchasing public.
I rewet my lips to ensure that what I had to say would not in any way be tarnished in the annals of time by some sort of fretted pause or stutter of my say. “Excuse me,” I began, “sorry, but I was just wondering if you two were aware that virtually all men hang lower on the left side?” A motion towards my crotch. “The testes.” And it was a Friday night in the big city; a full audience on hand, the ushers beginning with the standing room only. A line-up outside. The actors continuing with their choreography of pouring pints for the languages of the walk-in world.
She told him that I was the keeper of useless information, all the stupid shit. And then she smiled that which I may have remembered to You as involving the hazel mix of her eyes, crow’s feet that came from 31 years on the spinning planet - some of time waking up in the middle of it, gasping to breathe, unable to say anything that sure.
He enquired if we were married, if we were dating.
And I had to give him that I was supremely unaware of any specific real physiological reason for the testicles of an adult male to droop more so on one side than another.
So yes, she left out the parts involving us living together, never did lie to that very real man from America; she merely omitted, and followed my return to the beautiful Damien. Her head turning, the language of her body soon after. I noticed. I saw, on the second shelf, behind the nameless British expatriate doubling the local voice, a bottle of Irish Mist – a whiskey liqueur used mainly for Irish coffee purposes.
Within reach of that young chap, some Rose’s Lime Cordial. Its syrupy juice: for margaritas, the dash part of a lime and lager.
“I. do not. see. any absinthe up there.” This was the part of the night where my index finger scanned all the around and posed, ignored a Kiwi guy-girl couple bickering in our growing background of sound.
“No one does, Hen. No-body.” And this conversation evolved into the wiggly worm of difference between now illegal mescal and tequila with a capital T; the region of the name Champagne, sparkling wine, and the local cava of the Spain with which we sat in and discussed these highly important matters.
Americans claiming bourbon in the name of a small county in Kentucky.
Whisky without the e hailing from either Scotland or Canada. “Check the labels,” I goaded these other two.
“Doesn’t absinthe make you go crazy?” Ça c’est fou, learned in the French of her early life beyond our Ottawa, Centretown.
“I’m trying very very hard to access trivia,” came the handsome Damien and that certain string of words that maybe perhaps lent itself well to giggling amongst the dead of an air of never mind and letting it go. “Wait. Wait. Ok Yeah, the White House was once burnt down by Canadians … at one time.” British, I added. Whatever, I was further heard to offer and use to push myself away from my stool.
“Shall we, then?” Let’s do it, was more the way of my actual say. “Up the street - I know a place. This absinthe, my friends.” So forgive us, but we agreed, began to move from one style of English to another. To the leaned good-bye for Hector from X, a meeting of the eye with 5 Aussie Elvii. To the faint smudge of her lipstick on their so long cheeks. To that cobblestone alley and its absence of light; to the fullness of Europe and three people but nearly hand in hand amongst the last of meandering tourist throng.
“They’re all white as us,” was Damien’s motioning opinion of that walk up the narrow confine, only one two of small moving car for us to curtsy an allowance for. Spaniards with the slight of tan always in bloom. Yes, perhaps. And I could instead concentrate on making our way into another establishment famed after a girl from back home in England, a name that as a matter of course escapes me. The door opened and here’s some of the rest that I remember: it didn’t make me sick and it didn’t make me crazy; it cost us something of 9 euro a pop and it didn’t make me any more drunk. It’s the wormwood that’s evil, X told me, after the pouring of shots and then some sugar in teaspoons had been lit on fire and melted into our Day-Glo drinks. Pub lights low. The shade of bartender’s hair still bobby-pinned into the Upright position.
“I have a strong desire to sleep with you, Hen.” But, of course, I must be leaving something out: those words from X’s mouth not out of nowhere. Maybe that absinthe magic, the long swim over the Atlantic finally catching up with her. Perhaps merely me omitting or heaven forbid lying - but no and never more, as I have said once the twice.
The sugar kills the natural bitter, and balances. It is a warm taste in the manner of a brandy felt migrating south down the entire alimentary canal.
And this somewhere before or after her experiencing a strong desire of the degree to which I choose to describe it - for true, I cross my heart and return a listen to Damien running fingers through his beautifully greased dirty blonde hair; with us and internally warmed in the city of Barcelona. “You guys are damn liars, you are you are.” A big-screen TV and 15 men fighting 15 men for possession of 1 rugby ball. “I am getting nothing off this.” We had wanted to paint impasto flowers to last the entire night. “Nothing and nothing and you guys are liars.”
But I no longer was one. “Absolutely yes: She has a strong desire to sleep with me.” I mentioned the hazel of her eyes that had not wavered throughout and dared him to stare her in the both at once, assured him that it was impossible and laughed as he ignored sound advice and still tried. She tried along with, but knew. Did it because we had wanted all the fun without one of us resorting to trimming off part of our ear and mailing it off to the other; X smiled the tips of her lips and Damien closed one eye, she mirroring the same.
I watched her unfold this visual truth to him with the fresh knowledge of what she had whispered to me moments before. Fair enough, he gave her. Damn liars, he insisted on adding and remaining us to be; she touched my left hand and he swam with the absinthe making its way as goldfish in our stomachs.
Still talking English in Barcelona we were.
She touched his left hand and he smiled and pulled a pen from his pocket, scribbled an e-mail address onto a beer coaster. He was possibly off to that isle of Mallorca in the morning, beginning to feel in the way. I touched his right hand with my right hand and granted him safe passage for the rest of that time being within that thing called vacation. The attractive Damien turned and staggered out of an English-style pub, lights turned to Low.
And I suppose the rest; remember that we made our way through the warren of my adopted Gòtic with the minimal of wrong turn - “look for the hostel flag,” I oversimplified us towards a small plaza, a familiar statue covered in bilingual graffiti. This way, I urged; to the smell of urine, to the intangible, to the colour of soot on brick in that slightest of open alley of light. To that red cross against white background, hanging over the door before us that end of night. To the pressing of a buzzer and the voice within granting us entry. She enjoyed the wend of the marble staircase, took her sweet time and allowed herself the echo of scuff, her left hand still on the wooden rail as I pushed open a much smaller door to present her before nighttime Miguel. Always the same look from him: he was sad, he was tired, he was willing, he was hard to tell. He asked us a something in quiet Spanish, and I whispered to her in English. She questioned in French and he added in similar that he would require her passport: this was Ok, I nodded the both of them.
We paused in the hallway by a frosted view down into the tiny courtyard; an old window creak cracked and she peered down at a locked up postcard of European pigeons asleep for the dark while. Cool, she said, and I led us into my fabulous flat.
Dear Toronto friend fond of all things pornographic, have a wee dram and perhaps the seat beside me. Watch that free remark of hers - however brief - upon the number of beds, that being the two for the one man alone in the Barcelona of big and beautiful. I believe that I nodded out loud for everyone beyond my split window to hear. “Come look up, X.” Wondrous, she smelled of smoke. It’s even prettier when day, my say and breath going out said window.
Dear friend in Toronto: I could lie and speak of sweet sweaty kiss kisses that particular night.
Say that a guy named Jesus never sandal-walked on Earth.
But in all honesty it happened mostly on bed number 2, the one closest to that split open window, the drapes set to Open, left for Hope to drift on up.
I could lie and allow talk of a passionate embrace, but I no longer indulge in such practices.
Merely tell truths of those used wool covers pulled back, the pillow grabbed. Miguel, nearby, turning the page of some drama penned in Spanish. I explain comfort and the speed of knowing our way in that lack of light that was allowing flesh fingers to remove denim without the exchange of monies, without the spelling out of touch and where and love and protection.
That act called Sex eventually utilizing 4 knees to scrape 2 beds back and forth. These bits and pieces I recall getting mixed up within swear words whispered softer and soft and not so loud and then noisy for hostel to hear and envy and wish upon a phone call back to Australia. Miguel still flipping the pages of some paperback that I could read and get every sixth or seventh word of, grab the gist of its love or romance or slip and slide without need of artificial lubrication to interfere with the natural flow of myself releasing a million thoughts between the tips of her still curly and natural hair, the crease that runs the back of her body. Something said sweet and lovely, but fuck me fuck me just the same. Her God sandwich, my lips; a hand in and up and towards that spot of the alphabet found and rubbed, but fuck me fuck me just the same. I am there, I was there I was there and she moved or I shifted and entered another way, a verse within a country family song that had once made her cry until all dry, had made me want to fight and punch someone when told of.
“I’m sorry, sorry.” It slipped, was the whisper to her curled up on bed number 2; she refused my hug, buried a flashback of life long before me. It didn’t matter, was the eventual stroke of her left hand, the choosing of another number for her to spread herself back on. Open.
Be careful, she said in that dark, actually informed that she had gone off the Pill; and I returned slow and on top so as to remain my nose in the clouds, say nothing discernible beyond nasty dirty sex. Trying very hard to keep from interfering with the straight raw withdrawal that was her saying good-bye to intimacy.
And I could lie, say that I don’t have a faint memory of trying to wrap my arms around her in the middle of our eventual sleep on bed number 1.
Hung. There was a bang on the door, a female speaking that Spanish of languages to me. I’m staying, I gave her - in English, and I was half-asleep. But she understood something in the way and left me to my desires my dirty room, my gradual reclamation of another date on a calendar.
“Uno mas,” I slow-mouthed to the wrinkled face staring in the sink mirror - twice, thrice reminding myself how to say ‘one more.’ Yes.
To the communal washroom, the door left unlocked for the showering of my naked body, but nothing. 70-something-year-old Miguel back on shift and accepting my passport, some euros for uno mas. I was that close to striking up a conversation, and yet nothing beyond the dilated veins of my left temple. To the bright of midday and the streets names I’d present if I only knew them, give a more specific outline of my simple stroll if only it were a detailed map of Barcelona telling what became of me donning flannel in the warmth of that March. Sticking my nose in the clouds.
Making Picasso wait whilst Gaudí was the way of two dead guys to show me the neighbourhood without the feel of hazel eyes or the circumstance that led me to have a crush on a girl in denim making her manner somewhere amongst the branding of tourists that had become a game of distraction for little old me.
In the identification of socks of argyle. The spotting of sporty shorts, in the correlation of matching Tilley hats upon him, her majesty of superior exchange rate.
This I did with the mix of cobblestone and old concrete beneath the Nikes on my toes. The shops in my eyes rising in scale, male mannequins growing more taut in their nippled window attire. The side streets giving way to the slope of the wide avenues of L’Eixample, Mr. Guadí slamming a prehistoric jaw onto the side of an acid trip, manifesting a balcony for his creation apartment in a certain part of town running away from the core, history once upon their time.
And the auto-focus cameras draped over the big bellies telling me when to pause and flip to next page on tour. At one point I did run fast and run long into the spirit of not looking back at a hangover that normally does mercifully avoid a traveller. The fresh air, the excitement of the new eased my pound of head in the midst of a raven-haired chica carrying the perfect Spanish ass across the expanse of a tree-lined European avenue. Me without my camera. The couples and the tiny cars making love on the diagonals, holding hands and oblivious to the extremely long stare capable of that there stretch of pavement linking horizon with horizon.
My hand on a nonexistent guide rope, having a word with the self that had gone a few hours without opening the mouth to speak or eat. Silent commentary from a bartender accustomed to speaking to strangers in a friendly manner, striking up conversations, cultivating the clientele of personality mine hunting for tips in the politest of all manners. This, of course, is the most entire What that ran my dry tongue up the side of a walk performed in the peace and quiet of sneaker after sneaker hoping to blend in and avoid the crowds encountered by one person headed to a famous church within the cosmopolitan city.
These the confessions of this tourist roaming the streets of Barcelona, armed with the knowledge of the importance of turning the head and coughing when leaned against a bus stop at 6-or-so-in-the-A.M. and spilling life guts onto the sidewalk of Torrent: La Sagrada Família is just a building is but a wish egged on by donations paying for construction cranes.
Hung. Across the way from that attractive nuisance whose confirmed incompleteness turned Gaudí into a beggar and bum in likeness; sitting in one of those fabulously European cafés I may have remembered to You, trying to order a virgin Screwdriver to go with my strange nostalgia for a bocadillo - hand in hand with my limited Spanish. I placed my order and You already know some of the rest of my stop in those original suburbs running from the density of the Barri Gòtic, handcrafted by the 19th-century modernistas and their blend of architectural worlds; each building different thoughts. The nice waitress arrived and I ate that salty ham within sliced bread, slowly feeling more human with every nosh washed down into the invention of hope, away from X and our now separate hostels.
Caucasians snapping pictures; a loud Texan accent commenting on the colour of a new money not uniformly green. “Funny,” he said.
The words of English tagged onto the construction shroud around a forever-in-progress: ‘Skate or Die’ not exactly within the lexicon of the Spanish artisans, of Gaudí. I smiled and listened for the rolling of wheels, a kid from the oldest burbs making his way with a spray can; I asked for the bill and tipped the usual modest, maybe a tad more. For she was cute, reminded me of someone or another.
Tour buses guarding the perimeter, my nose back towards the clouds, to the stone tips of many towers. My condolences to the commemorative Jesus carved on a cross as I made my rounds of one of the main reasons why people board a plane for beauty Barcelona; my eyes up into the detail of terms brother Clay would know beyond crevice or cleavered spire. A line around the block to get in.
I stepped in front of a moving bus speaking Japanese to me, devoid of the knowledge that Gaudí himself was killed by a slow tram, his appearance so impoverished that he went unrecognized initially. In true Centretown fashion X should have stepped from the trees and said hello, maybe yelled a simple look out for the bus, idiot; but this already two months into the Jesus Years, of a secret excuse that did not extend to miracles and the use of mere steps across innocent streets as justification for wish.
No, I found my way to a nearby bench and just stared over the tops of heads, that’s simply all. It probably wasn’t nearly as romantic as I make it out to be, what with me being truly alone single for the very first time in over two years; March, and everything involved with that iffy month. I could perhaps be persuaded that a Spanish skater kid did zoom on up with some formal papers for me to sign and declare the common-law divorce all legal and done, but I believe I’ll shall stick with a park bench the day after a night of drinking with an American as the official protocol of transpiring events.
Reality, and the actual lifting of the Levi’s sculpting my butt, the sneakers that set off, led me down an avenue to the foot of Barco’s Arc de Triomf, an ornate, brown brick version of yet another piece of Paris that I never did see from aeroplane that hurtled me towards Spain and recognition of that Jesus phrase making its gradual way behind my eyes, into You. Wonderful, and the yellow of a pollen shaken to the floor from a line of craggy trees that for the death of me I could not name; but beautifully poised old fingers of wooden hands that shot the life seeds that were causing the roof of my mouth to itch, my nose to sneeze itself into an almost weep to be concealed from modern hippies playing toss with devil sticks around a drum circle in their park - a bongo a tabla and a tambourine for the musically-declined chico with the dreads down to his firm Spanish ass. A Friday. I did strut my way passed my ubiquitous palms, back to concrete and a street named after a guy named Picasso - a Madonna, a Valentino blessed with the supreme knowledge that everyone should make love in the presence of a burning candle, on a humid night with a fan blowing the flame’s lick clear across the studio; a slow melt freeze of wax that greets the morning and the now dry wet spot laid in without so much as a whimper because not only did one receive a Piece, but thus created a candle caught in headlights, the coolest feather of wax in thee entire neighbourhood. Maybe farther.
Maybe not so much museum quality as selective love walking me into the narrowed alleys of La Ribera on their path separating one from the Gòtic, real estate rising with every step taken amongst its restoration of brick, its quaintness of the uneven carefully aligned into cobblestone with pride, money. This the upscale part of town chosen to house Picasso’s paintings, his sculptures; gaggles of school children blocking the entrance that was me arriving after taking a series of left and rights of chic restaurant, haberdashery. Unseen unmentionables, delicates never hung on the invisible overhead laundry line.
X was supposed to wait for me by a side door nicknamed For Lovers by the locals. Most often times she would wink and I would know that my threat of suicide had been removed from the equation.
Picasso was tanned and bald upon his death, his women a thick book reminiscent of the entire mystery; the urine smell of his Gòtic not so far down the alley from the Ribera wall of glass doors and attendants primed to usher one into a series of converted vertical mansions housing his committed thoughts.
She was supposed to emerge from a bank of self-imposed exile and describe to me in detail the things of mine that made her go bump in the night. Most often times she would wink and show me that the threat of suicide had been removed from the equation.
The talk is of periods, of colours, an early fondness for the fat calves of his aunts and of the saltimbanco - the When time for the Spanish circus to come to town.
The school children paused, encircled, spoke that language for him to understand postmortem. I hung on to the rope and hoped for the best, quietly learned of his separate take on the individuals within a specific Velázquez painting and the way to take art beyond mere adoring copy, his cubism appreciative of the smell of a lover’s deodorant even whilst fucking faces up.
She was supposed to be there in the middle of a Spanish day. In true Centretown fashion she would have creaked the hardwood floor with her Beatle boots, tapped me on the shoulder and told me that they were only children on a forced school trip. Made to travel they were. Fair enough, would have been my answer, but have a look-see at this here portrait given as a gift to a friend of his: El Loco, I would have say of a long, gaunt man with a more than five o’clock shadow and the shabby accoutrement to match. His countenance, his unknown stare out from the rectangular canvass, would have been my readied answer beyond the stroke of signature into bottom right corner that placed Picasso a mere inch inside the various of frame, almost waiting to get out.
I could really lie right about this, now that it be just me and You in the middle of stuff - for I am blessed with the knowledge of the Spanish ending, cursed with the details of it all in my mind in my mouth in her never ever running into me at said museum. Wonderful the level of quality in my description of such an important dot on the Barcelona tourist map. And I believe that I headed back to my grand villa and had me a brief siesta with the dusty drapes yanked to Open, the tall vertical windows split for sniff of air, bed number 2 accepting my naked ass. After money belt that had become a heavy girdle was removed, sweaty socks and shoes plopped to the floor.
But sorry, I failed to mention possibly passing by a church or three given over to a particular saint. The change in smells moving from La Ribera to my Barri Gòtic: welcoming the crossover with a strange gradual handshake.
And me the tour guide; staying to finish up that naked nap in fine style, starfished on top of those rough wool covers everyone’s mother warns them about, because of the likes of me and fellow travellers. Waiting, for X was going to be there when I flicked opened my eyes in unison, simply removing my threat of suicide from the equation: fair enough, I would give her at the time of wished whisper into my ear - blessed with the ability to always wire DVD player, fix future leaky faucets she may perhaps phone me to come deal with.
At very least, when I turned my head to the left there was supposed to be a someone there in that there tall vertical window. Me thoughts that I should take this first lover that came my way of sight, not knowing her secrets, she unaware of mine. The mouthing of a few inviting words, a squint of a kiss to rectify what would otherwise be considered lewd and lascivious behaviour across the brick way three floors up from public consumption. A mere dream of mine that I apologize for in its theory.
Miguel was none the wiser as he peered over his bifocals to accept my passport once the more. “Hasta luego,” I offered. See you later, his French shot forth and said to me. We had spoken, had ever so brief of those conversations, and I was momentarily not alone but the actual reality beyond the open-air menagerie of travel that is poked at with a camera or given lack of please and thank you.
Be nice, I told myself: even as strolling the cobble streets for a drink, for a friend. I was not a local, but an uninvited guest. But still a member of the planet, an Earthian with no need of passport beyond willingness for communication. A thought that I encountered at yet another pub around the way; the lads were watching a rugby test match on a television safe enough to stare with my naked eye - it was sports and thus fairly devoid of the potential ability to invoke memory of tragedy, true love. I turned away during the commercial breaks and never did catch what colour was what country, but the pub was full in the late afternoon and everyone was happy, talking mostly things I could understand without too much translating apart from thick British accents hiding from the Barcelona day right outside the door.
Battered fish and home fries served with that Spanish brand of blended mayonnaise and red peppers. Maybe some spice.
This I guessed as I had me a beer and eavesdropped my way into this guilty pleasure of almost being back at home. No one would know except my silly pride that I was remembering my days of high school rugby back in the East End of my Ottawa, trying to get my head to sing the dirty fight songs that seemed to be ingrained into its Anglo rule book; drank my dark Guinness I did. Tried. Drifted. On the shelf behind the bar was the very first bottle of for real absinthe I had ever seen, read with mine own eyes: Le Vrai Absinthe, from France it be - its breath of wormwood still legal in Spain, a green bottle shaped reminiscent of Bombay Sapphire. The lads continued to be impressed with scrums and line-outs and young bar girl did speak to them the necessary bits of English with that Spanish accent of hers, a big-screen TV staring her in the lovely round face that I shall leave at that. But this: the colour of her hair bobby-pinned into the convenient Up position for late brunch with them chaps following an oval ball passed diagonally around the grass field of home; the sound of my ass squiggling on that there leather-covered stool never to truly convey the whole truth of X once scrubbing the tip of her left toe into the late night pavement of Elgin Street, pushing tips of hazel eyes halfway up into eyelids, slight begging for a kiss before the good-bye that was not at all these Jesus Years of mine - only within the past and thee beginning of the wonderful Where that all sugar snaps come from.
Senorita accepted the usual modest, without knowing to cover her ears to the continuing story of me heading down them cobblestones back towards Molly’s Fair City just off the Reial and its plaza of people not entirely stocked with Spanish - she somewhat oblivious to the boredom that I am capable of churning in the hearts and minds of others. X’s.
I perform this easy possessive pronoun and push a Stop finger towards her underdescribed pouting lips for umpteenth time; but sorry. I be here in this Ottawa, Canada, with the saying sorry for being bad, or so it seems to this boy now.
And despite my best efforts to the contrary I pushed through the oak doors of a tourist bar and sat down at a familiar, pointed towards a Guinness tap. Extremely comfortable with the fact that my life was over in the most dramatic of senses, alone in a bar, cheating the code of true travellers.
But I ordered in the language of that land I romance of and shifted my elbows my weight against the well-crafted wood. That person referred to as Me regaled my inner monologue with the opening lines of a terribly maudlin poem; carefully sniffed words far more exotic than this Now that be of me and this You removed from the mix of limerick and passion seeping its dear clear way down tactile Barcelona wallpaper masquerading as a tin ceiling. In true Gòtic fashion Damien smiled his bright white teeth and asked me if the seat the spin stool beside was taken, actually leaned real close and progressed his manner through the Spanish language of ordering a Bombardier Ale.
“I knew you’d be here,” the man known as Damien did have the temerity to offer his fellow traveller spelled different.
“That’s a lot of lip from the guy at the front of my magical mystery stagger through the piss streets of Barco. You could have run after me last night, saved me. We could have subdued the unruly dorm chaperone, tied him up with a ragged flag or simple bandanna; you could have wiped his sneer and swept after me.”
“But I knew that I could find you here,” was the cool manner his lips continued the screenplay, a crowd beginning to accumulate in those hours after siesta. Stage right, stage left. A cigarette - a brand depending on the close-up - leaves Damien’s hand and touches mine; I thank the man with a smile to be determined.
And the scene continued to catalogue the finest of all tales perfectly lacking mention of the chronological time of life when Jesus bit the dust. We expanded the troupe, took on another lone gunman in need of mother tongue to wag, one to learn me that the expression the whole nine yards is a WW2 reference - the entire length of ammo in a certain plane’s gunner arsenal whilst flying sorties over the Channel. This, according to a wonderful American gentleman snuggled up to a pub off La Rambla. I’ll call him the professor for no apparent reason and the fact that he barely rates a screen credit, let alone character development other than the usual thoughts behind a guy by himself in a bar, a well-thumbed book on the history of circumcision in his waiting lap. I smiled and thanked this man, did not at all reach out and strike him for interrupting my life with Damien; the ciggies, the stout to my waiting mouth, and the hope that felt its way through my veins and remained my left fist to Open and at rest - a moment.
That there professor spoke some of his fluent Spanish and the bartender answered in English with an accent garnered from his part of the world.
I relent and give this learned man in a bar some round spectacles as I leaned over to ask him of that linguistic lisp blamed on a speech-impaired king of Valencia past. “But if so,” he said to me, “why then on certain ‘c’ only? Why not more throughout the language, huh?” Just a myth, was the way he furthered to me. Gracias, I gave him, without the lisp. Bar left, bar right continuing to and from a Friday night near the Mediterranean. The great names for a song making their way before us: Chicas and Lasses, First night in Town, Five guys dressed as Elvis. I told Damien my Elvis Presley story, my where I was when He had died: squatting in my parents' garden eating snow peas when the news came on the radio, Mother announcing from back porch, brother Clay laughing at my childhood tears. Father glued to the TV and a series of news reports in a time well before CNN.
“That’s real pain, Hen.” Thanks, Dame, I seem to recall. “Nah - the King, Hen, the King. He was squeezing one out on the bowl when he bought it, man.” He was 42, I had say to him. “But with a good book in his hour of need.” Playboy, I remembered. “Nope. Something on the Shroud of Turin.” Bullshit, I called on Damien at the time, but if I were to believe my memory of his countenance his tone his most earnestness I would probably have to up and disprove this piece of useless trivia at some necessary moment in my life.
“Shouldn’t we ask these guys what the hell Elvis would be doing in Barcelona?” I shared his concern, but stared the bartender shaking up a drink. “Five of them - all the fuckers the same, no range of age or era. 70’s jump suit Elvis Aaron and ten identical sideburns.” The barkeep, the Spanish one with the hair and eyes running the imagination, finally split the shaker and turned a martini glass into a confused day.
“Blue Curaçao, vodka and a sniff of cranberry: a Purple Haze, my friend.” I paused, and then apologized to the beautiful Damien. “You’re right. AbsoSmurfly right; no way the King let’s himself be upstaged by himself. They could have called one another, simply reserved a style.” And I left out the part about one Jesus - one longhair in a dirty white robe, the brown sandals that never made it up the cross. The only visual we have of his 33 years. And I could lie and say that this be the entire What that ran my head, there on a stool sandwiched between two Americans and room somewhat full of Elvii and thoughts of kings.
“Then it’s settled; we have to fix this.” And Damien was most definitely on holidays; drinking and stinking, waiting to sleep with strangers and taking his identity for a walk, offering up his traveller’s impunity for the ginger stroll. He’d mentioned the hairy transvestites plying on La Rambla without some much as gagging, almost a twinkle in his big blue eyes. Shared me numerous ciggies, but asked of weed; we were swapping habits or bits of ways of life perhaps. “So we fix, huh?” he tempted.
To some, the fact that Jesus and Elvis both consist of 5 letters be of no small coincidence; to the cult followings - it’s set in stone.
“Do you believe me that I’m on vacation?” I grabbed him square by shoulders and asked him if I truly had the appearance of a man not at work. Tell me please, I added.
He reminded me that I didn’t live here. He wondered me if I planned to stay.
I blinked and this he gave me: “In the meantime, Henry, let’s get Elvis.” My smile turned me to the professor and asked if he were aware that the King’s funeral procession plum cleaned the city of Memphis out of white limos, robbed the nearby towns and counties for miles, all for that there great moment of tragedy. As he parted his lips I informed him that I was on vacation and for the time being not a bartender but a mere civilian, free to talk … or not … to strangers. If he were to give me just a minute, was the way I put it to him. Thanked him and stood up, moved, walked with Damien to stage right in the process of confronting them five ersatz kings of rock and or roll.
“Soy un perdedor, chico.” I’m a loser, baby, said I to the smallish one - in Spanish. And I had translated, because the 5 were of the Australian way.
In true Centretown fashion X spread the oak doors and recognized, joined a cue to confront fifth business with a simple drag on a ciggie purchased on foreign soil. As she had finally run out of du Mauriers; as I had as a matter of course taken to the inhaling of Fortunas in mass quantities.
And I could lie and present her on the arm of another, give her an Alsatian lover of disputable accent meant to fill a knapsack full of jealousy; if I were to try most hard I could probably find my way into an avoidance of what really happened when confronting the mass Elvis persuasion, bury the things gleaned from the warning label on the last Canadian pack of ciggies smoked: Murders - 510; Alcohol - 1 900; Car accidents - 2 900; Suicides - 3 900; Tobacco - 45 000. The equivalent of a small city dying from tobacco use each year.
In true Centretown fashion she joined the onslaught of Damien’s and my say towards 5 Australians' run on downtown Barco, their bonding bachelor party and last gasp of one’s freedom. “Did you ever stop to realize the consequences?” This she heard as our further Hello to them, what Damien had said to them Elvis one as all.
And with the appropriate centuries filter of British say, tallest Elvis ordered five Foster’s and let it be.
“Did you ever even realize the consequences of dreaming the same?”
“Dressing,” she corrected the him being Damien, and I will leave it at that. I shall omit the tearing of sideburns, theirs and ours, the playful tussling of high collars, the tilting of big old fake studded sunglasses. The eventual utterance of sorry sorry sorry, but take that and that. I will concentrate and squeeze You what it felt like to once again have a special girl kind of on my side of the argument.
“Your girl is cool.”
“She’s not mine, Damien.”
Fun. But for why, guys, was the What she tugged and sat us down with at the far end of bar. Away from that Elvii all. Near and beside the native Spanish bartender-slash-mixologist; his hair, eyes, height of no over importance, but a necessary leveling of my temperament for the story to continue as thus: “Uno Guinness, por favor, Hector.” And that he gave her with a two-pour. Her gratuity rounded up to the euro, modest. The mere change left but eye contact present between the two. I could go on, but the near lie ends dead here with her simple want of a stout, say of her growing Spanish.
And I was breathing in and out.
“Did he tell you his Elvis story? Is that what this was all about, hmm? Huh? Tell him some more useless shit, Hen. Go on.” And she gave me the supreme favour of not calling me Hun she did.
“Your ex is really cool,” from a grown man of the relative same age as the Us found squat on the three stools I present as fact and not at all the fiction of my maybe making.
She joined us with her hair still that curly way. Natural. Only a girl on vacation. “I’m cool, Hen.” Her arms up and out, pointing sky left and sky right. “I’m way cooler than Mr. Elvis - all one two three four five of them,” a squint and fire of finger pistol aimed above our heads. “I’m cool cool.” A shooter arrived, or rather was slid towards her by Hector; he lit the thing on fire and motioned with chin towards them five waving guys named Elvis.
“Make a wish, go on and blow it out, dear.” That was the professor, and I take back his spectacles just to spite him, picture him with an east west combover for the time being. Still, my tone did not rise. My hands remained upon a sleeve of beer as X complied and moved her brief gaze up towards a ceiling of gilded wallpaper; a pause a gulp and she was through and beyond, down the throat. And yes, the two-and-a-half years of instinct tempted me to hold her non-straightened hair as she leaned back to finish swallowing that hunk of once burning liquid love and seal her wish. For that’s what boyfriends do, simply what one does.
My Guinness, my two hands still most stifled and well-behaved. Unromantic. “What did the sambuca fairy bring you?” I breathed her. When do we kiss, was the way of my actual thought.
Others still existed within this frame, but only X and me for this now that was completely beyond Winnepeg-spelled-all-wrong and Fonzie sat beside on a quiet Monday night, Elgin Street, Ottawa. Before. “You’re..being..licked,” said in the slow manner of a salty man worthy of an entire paragraph on for why to leave a friend at a much great speed. And only just we three caballeros that be out for a night on the town of Ottawa when things truly began for me, and perhaps her.
Later she would admit to me her lusty grasp of my face witnessed by one Winnepeg - my ass viewed upon leave of that stage she worked at on Ottawa’s Elgin Street. Back home and preceding the Spanish that I present in the Now.
As a matter of course I did anon step back into said establishment, begin this resplendent All that continues these thoughts with You. “I don’t believe you two; I really do not believe you.” But Damien was on vacation when he talked of us and thus was to be taken with a grain of sea salt amongst a trail of smoke ascending from various 3 ciggies perched on our shared ashtray.
But this. In them Canadian days when I first occasioned a cigarette with my drink, Winnepeg smirked and lit up outside on a street and I accepted and inhaled and then went back inside to sink a pink in the corner pocket across the way from her Elgin stage. My mere whiff of the thought process that sustains me now. “I won’t accept that you two are done as a couple. You cannot tell me anywheres different.” Fine. Great for Damien, I thought to me and self.
“Damien, we are done with this,” was the way that she put down the growing Barcelona sentiment of the time. I cowered and then leapt up and almost but put my arm around the beautiful American to preserve the simple conversation that was one of us spying a lean of the professor ever closer towards our circle.
She knew nothing of this as my mouth closed sideways and let him have his moment in the sunshine of our non-love: “The Spaniards really don’t have much use for the shooter, miss. But that wish of yours, I’m afraid I really must beg as to its specifics.” It was her stage presence that he was asking X to recall, if not her diary. “Miss …?”
A boyfriend leaps from the forlorn shadows of the second stool of this foreign setting to reach the professor’s pencil neck in nick time to create a lasting impression. He makes himself the embodiment of the question at hand, comports with the utmost knowledge of the insides of her pretty head. It’s true: “Tell him, darling,” said I. And she with the manner that I have mostly left out; beyond the words that I have placed in her mouth and within that which You must have been guessing at and inserting where needed - surely making these thoughts right, better.
“Who are you?” in so many words from her. He started to begin his lips and I once the more cross long bits of his thinning hair over top his bald scalp. “Who are you to ruin the silence of my wish making, and the what that would happen if I were to tell you? Are you not aware of the potential for harm? Sidewalk cracks and my mother’s back; train tracks and always lifting up your feet, just in case. Do you not know never to ask?” Polite she was, to one of his eyes at a time.
“An educated woman you are, miss.” Thus they proceeded to wrap themselves amongst the end of any and all discouraging word between the two.
I presently give the nice man back his glasses, lick and fix his hair with the fashion sense of a very real person quite capable of holding secrets beyond their expiry dates. Not destroying endings for the mere sake of explaining a bodily phenomenon.
And within seconds, this from him to her: “No, my dear, it’s the theory behind Immortal Beloved; Gary Oldham, playing the actual Beethoven, one far far too deaf to hear his lover’s eventual sentimental whisper into his ear, that she did indeed love him after all. One suddenly realizes why he was such a bastard to this woman throughout the last half of film, his later life.” The professor slowly wept, recapped the movie to my ex whilst bit down on a beer coaster, leaned down to touch its tip against the wood of a bar. “He was under the belief that she had cared more for his brother, all along. But he was deaf, only able to continue his magnificent music via the cranial vibrations.” This here was movie talk and some clearly sappy overhear, them there fag ends tearing down my ability to conduct my cinematic viewing strictly anew.
He had gone and ruined an ending for me. I wet my lips, cleared my throat and prepared to say nothing about the real Santa starting out as a mere Turkish bishop, before his meteoric rise to St. Nick, Father Christmas, the lesser half of Mrs. Claus. I asked Damien for another ciggie, a light, an inhalation. Began a thought in no way near the Devil the basis for which upon Darth Vader was created, Rosebud being the name of a childhood Kane’s beloved sled - coincidently William Randolph Hurst’s moniker for an area of his mistress’ anatomy.
Just smoke into our lungs, nicotine for wisdom, saltpeter burning factory-rolled American paper more bright and evenly and longer and unknown to most of purchasing public.
I rewet my lips to ensure that what I had to say would not in any way be tarnished in the annals of time by some sort of fretted pause or stutter of my say. “Excuse me,” I began, “sorry, but I was just wondering if you two were aware that virtually all men hang lower on the left side?” A motion towards my crotch. “The testes.” And it was a Friday night in the big city; a full audience on hand, the ushers beginning with the standing room only. A line-up outside. The actors continuing with their choreography of pouring pints for the languages of the walk-in world.
She told him that I was the keeper of useless information, all the stupid shit. And then she smiled that which I may have remembered to You as involving the hazel mix of her eyes, crow’s feet that came from 31 years on the spinning planet - some of time waking up in the middle of it, gasping to breathe, unable to say anything that sure.
He enquired if we were married, if we were dating.
And I had to give him that I was supremely unaware of any specific real physiological reason for the testicles of an adult male to droop more so on one side than another.
So yes, she left out the parts involving us living together, never did lie to that very real man from America; she merely omitted, and followed my return to the beautiful Damien. Her head turning, the language of her body soon after. I noticed. I saw, on the second shelf, behind the nameless British expatriate doubling the local voice, a bottle of Irish Mist – a whiskey liqueur used mainly for Irish coffee purposes.
Within reach of that young chap, some Rose’s Lime Cordial. Its syrupy juice: for margaritas, the dash part of a lime and lager.
“I. do not. see. any absinthe up there.” This was the part of the night where my index finger scanned all the around and posed, ignored a Kiwi guy-girl couple bickering in our growing background of sound.
“No one does, Hen. No-body.” And this conversation evolved into the wiggly worm of difference between now illegal mescal and tequila with a capital T; the region of the name Champagne, sparkling wine, and the local cava of the Spain with which we sat in and discussed these highly important matters.
Americans claiming bourbon in the name of a small county in Kentucky.
Whisky without the e hailing from either Scotland or Canada. “Check the labels,” I goaded these other two.
“Doesn’t absinthe make you go crazy?” Ça c’est fou, learned in the French of her early life beyond our Ottawa, Centretown.
“I’m trying very very hard to access trivia,” came the handsome Damien and that certain string of words that maybe perhaps lent itself well to giggling amongst the dead of an air of never mind and letting it go. “Wait. Wait. Ok Yeah, the White House was once burnt down by Canadians … at one time.” British, I added. Whatever, I was further heard to offer and use to push myself away from my stool.
“Shall we, then?” Let’s do it, was more the way of my actual say. “Up the street - I know a place. This absinthe, my friends.” So forgive us, but we agreed, began to move from one style of English to another. To the leaned good-bye for Hector from X, a meeting of the eye with 5 Aussie Elvii. To the faint smudge of her lipstick on their so long cheeks. To that cobblestone alley and its absence of light; to the fullness of Europe and three people but nearly hand in hand amongst the last of meandering tourist throng.
“They’re all white as us,” was Damien’s motioning opinion of that walk up the narrow confine, only one two of small moving car for us to curtsy an allowance for. Spaniards with the slight of tan always in bloom. Yes, perhaps. And I could instead concentrate on making our way into another establishment famed after a girl from back home in England, a name that as a matter of course escapes me. The door opened and here’s some of the rest that I remember: it didn’t make me sick and it didn’t make me crazy; it cost us something of 9 euro a pop and it didn’t make me any more drunk. It’s the wormwood that’s evil, X told me, after the pouring of shots and then some sugar in teaspoons had been lit on fire and melted into our Day-Glo drinks. Pub lights low. The shade of bartender’s hair still bobby-pinned into the Upright position.
“I have a strong desire to sleep with you, Hen.” But, of course, I must be leaving something out: those words from X’s mouth not out of nowhere. Maybe that absinthe magic, the long swim over the Atlantic finally catching up with her. Perhaps merely me omitting or heaven forbid lying - but no and never more, as I have said once the twice.
The sugar kills the natural bitter, and balances. It is a warm taste in the manner of a brandy felt migrating south down the entire alimentary canal.
And this somewhere before or after her experiencing a strong desire of the degree to which I choose to describe it - for true, I cross my heart and return a listen to Damien running fingers through his beautifully greased dirty blonde hair; with us and internally warmed in the city of Barcelona. “You guys are damn liars, you are you are.” A big-screen TV and 15 men fighting 15 men for possession of 1 rugby ball. “I am getting nothing off this.” We had wanted to paint impasto flowers to last the entire night. “Nothing and nothing and you guys are liars.”
But I no longer was one. “Absolutely yes: She has a strong desire to sleep with me.” I mentioned the hazel of her eyes that had not wavered throughout and dared him to stare her in the both at once, assured him that it was impossible and laughed as he ignored sound advice and still tried. She tried along with, but knew. Did it because we had wanted all the fun without one of us resorting to trimming off part of our ear and mailing it off to the other; X smiled the tips of her lips and Damien closed one eye, she mirroring the same.
I watched her unfold this visual truth to him with the fresh knowledge of what she had whispered to me moments before. Fair enough, he gave her. Damn liars, he insisted on adding and remaining us to be; she touched my left hand and he swam with the absinthe making its way as goldfish in our stomachs.
Still talking English in Barcelona we were.
She touched his left hand and he smiled and pulled a pen from his pocket, scribbled an e-mail address onto a beer coaster. He was possibly off to that isle of Mallorca in the morning, beginning to feel in the way. I touched his right hand with my right hand and granted him safe passage for the rest of that time being within that thing called vacation. The attractive Damien turned and staggered out of an English-style pub, lights turned to Low.
And I suppose the rest; remember that we made our way through the warren of my adopted Gòtic with the minimal of wrong turn - “look for the hostel flag,” I oversimplified us towards a small plaza, a familiar statue covered in bilingual graffiti. This way, I urged; to the smell of urine, to the intangible, to the colour of soot on brick in that slightest of open alley of light. To that red cross against white background, hanging over the door before us that end of night. To the pressing of a buzzer and the voice within granting us entry. She enjoyed the wend of the marble staircase, took her sweet time and allowed herself the echo of scuff, her left hand still on the wooden rail as I pushed open a much smaller door to present her before nighttime Miguel. Always the same look from him: he was sad, he was tired, he was willing, he was hard to tell. He asked us a something in quiet Spanish, and I whispered to her in English. She questioned in French and he added in similar that he would require her passport: this was Ok, I nodded the both of them.
We paused in the hallway by a frosted view down into the tiny courtyard; an old window creak cracked and she peered down at a locked up postcard of European pigeons asleep for the dark while. Cool, she said, and I led us into my fabulous flat.
Dear Toronto friend fond of all things pornographic, have a wee dram and perhaps the seat beside me. Watch that free remark of hers - however brief - upon the number of beds, that being the two for the one man alone in the Barcelona of big and beautiful. I believe that I nodded out loud for everyone beyond my split window to hear. “Come look up, X.” Wondrous, she smelled of smoke. It’s even prettier when day, my say and breath going out said window.
Dear friend in Toronto: I could lie and speak of sweet sweaty kiss kisses that particular night.
Say that a guy named Jesus never sandal-walked on Earth.
But in all honesty it happened mostly on bed number 2, the one closest to that split open window, the drapes set to Open, left for Hope to drift on up.
I could lie and allow talk of a passionate embrace, but I no longer indulge in such practices.
Merely tell truths of those used wool covers pulled back, the pillow grabbed. Miguel, nearby, turning the page of some drama penned in Spanish. I explain comfort and the speed of knowing our way in that lack of light that was allowing flesh fingers to remove denim without the exchange of monies, without the spelling out of touch and where and love and protection.
That act called Sex eventually utilizing 4 knees to scrape 2 beds back and forth. These bits and pieces I recall getting mixed up within swear words whispered softer and soft and not so loud and then noisy for hostel to hear and envy and wish upon a phone call back to Australia. Miguel still flipping the pages of some paperback that I could read and get every sixth or seventh word of, grab the gist of its love or romance or slip and slide without need of artificial lubrication to interfere with the natural flow of myself releasing a million thoughts between the tips of her still curly and natural hair, the crease that runs the back of her body. Something said sweet and lovely, but fuck me fuck me just the same. Her God sandwich, my lips; a hand in and up and towards that spot of the alphabet found and rubbed, but fuck me fuck me just the same. I am there, I was there I was there and she moved or I shifted and entered another way, a verse within a country family song that had once made her cry until all dry, had made me want to fight and punch someone when told of.
“I’m sorry, sorry.” It slipped, was the whisper to her curled up on bed number 2; she refused my hug, buried a flashback of life long before me. It didn’t matter, was the eventual stroke of her left hand, the choosing of another number for her to spread herself back on. Open.
Be careful, she said in that dark, actually informed that she had gone off the Pill; and I returned slow and on top so as to remain my nose in the clouds, say nothing discernible beyond nasty dirty sex. Trying very hard to keep from interfering with the straight raw withdrawal that was her saying good-bye to intimacy.
And I could lie, say that I don’t have a faint memory of trying to wrap my arms around her in the middle of our eventual sleep on bed number 1.
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