Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man

by Amador Gálvez, Félix; Finch, L. ;

  I can't express in writing the sensations that ran through my knees, inner thighs and fists in the seconds that followed, but I had an unexpected reaction. I walked up to the bar and standing over the stool that held the evidence of the crime, I called the waiter over. Carlos, can I have the usual, an Irish coffee? The individual who was sitting next to the stool with the jacket and bag pretended not to hear me, entertained by something on his phone, but his fingers as well as his back were as stiff as a broomstick.

  I went back to my table and observed him. A little older than me, with a gut that wasn't familiar with the word "gym" and long, curly hair tied back like a démodé yuppie. What's more, he was a little shorter than me. I considered these numeric disparities and couldn't come up with an answer. Was that really the specimen who Laura left me for, the "handsome" (her words) man who made me feel like an "ugly" divorcée?

  I coolly sipped my coffee, relishing the tension that was consuming the poor wretch, observing him as if I were scientifically studying how long a human body nearing forty can maintain an erect posture. His nerves must have been like electrical wires.

  Once or twice, my ex's friend stuck her head out, only to disappear once again into the bathrooms. After a while, they both left their hideout, laughing and joking artificially to draw my attention. I greeted them with a nod of the head, which made Laura twist her face in anger, ready her most inoffensive cynicism and blurt out, What are you doing here? Are you looking to fight? I frowned and turned to Laura, speaking in a serene voice. I'm here for an Irish coffee, like always. But she had decided the attack was her best defense. On a Wednesday afternoon, she shrieked. Well, I responded sarcastically, I thought it was Monday, so I said, “Why not go out for drinks today to put a little pep in my step tomorrow at the office?” She made one of those angry gestures that used to drive me crazy and make her so, so attractive, and then left the bar, tugging at her friend, upset like a teenager.

  I laughed to myself. What's left when the one you love intends to become your enemy? Irony, just irony. Calmly, I got up and walked to the bar like I always do to return my glass to Carlos. The guy with slicked-back hair remained unmoving, stock-still, almost statuesque if it weren't for his belly, which trembled with tension. While I wait for my change, out of the corner of my eye I observed a bead of sweat slip wildly down his front, headed straight for suicide.

  In the door, I bumped into Laura and her friend again. They pretended to argue over where to go. I told them goodbye and crossed the street, but then changed my mind. I walked back and called them over, raising my voice. Laura launched a murderous look in my direction. I became serious. You forgot your jacket and bag inside, I told her. No...I didn't bring a jacket, she stammered, lying in spite of the cold. I think you did, I responded with bile. You left it next to your boyfriend...the one with the beer gut.

  And I walked away, enjoying the expression in her eyes and the color in her cheeks, which had turned a red more vibrant than her Adolfo Dominguez jacket.

  Published by Felix at 12:38 a.m. * Post a comment

  Friday, June 29

  This isn't goodbye

  I'm going on vacation.

  Actually, there's nothing that I want more than to disappear, but the chances of that happening are slim.

  For now, I have to keep my annual promise of spending a week with my parents in my hometown. They're calmer these days, and in any case I wouldn't mind their advice and sermons. I'm getting used to thinking a lot, and these spiritual exercises will sooner or later center me.

  When it comes to you, damn dear diary, I have to try to put my thoughts in order without resorting to information technology. Anyway, more often than not there isn't ADSL or cell phone coverage in town, so I won't be bringing my laptop. What the town does have is parents. My mother has already threatened me with a certain mandatory social life. I've already declared myself a conscientious objector, but mothers don't understand these novelties. She mentioned a certain girlfriend that I had in elementary school (hell, in elementary school) whose husband has left her. I'm not the only divorcée in town! Will this be a good thing or a motherly trick to...? I'm going to see if I can find a vacation online just for me.

  At any rate, on the off chance I still have readers (who are probably male, not female at this point), if anything occurs to you, dear and patient reader, don't hesitate to leave a comment. I'll be back in August, God and parents willing, with clearer ideas and a future that's less bleak.

  And I hope to have less dire developments to tell you.

  Until then.

  Published by Felix at 12:34 a.m. * Post a comment

  Tuesday, July 3

  Starting line

  I'm packing my suitcase (by myself, yes) unenthusiastically. The truth is that I've spent these last four days developing a scientific method that won't let me forget anything.

  It would have never occurred to me that packing a suitcase could be so complicated. In fact, it's the first time I've done it. You can imagine, dear damn diary, who took care of this before... But on my last day of work before vacation, while we were drinking the obligatory goodbye beers, one of the girls from Accounting asked me, Do you have everything ready? Are your bags all packed? And a chill ran down my spine, the kind that you get when something happens to you that you knew happens in real life, but you thought only happened to other people. I must have looked so stupefied that e-v-e-r-y single woman present looked at each other with faces full of compassion. Poor fool, they must have thought, or at best, We feel so sorry for him.

  And that night I didn't sleep. Or the next night. Until I discovered (or invented) a more trustworthy, reliable and infallible system than counting on a female presence when confronted with this difficult task.

  First step: I've stopped trying to iron.

  Basic principle: Everything is going to wrinkle while en route.

  Solution: My mother not only won't refuse...she'll insist on ironing my clothes!

  Second step: I've stopped trying to figure out what I'll need.

  Basic principle: I don't think I'll be leaving my parents' house.

  Solution: If I need something, I'll buy it there.

  Third step: I've given up on trying to work out what I'm forgetting.

  Basic principle: I'm not a fortune-teller (Laura was, yes, but women claim to have many skills that aren't scientifically proven).

  Solution: If I forget any object, piece of clothing or whatchamacallit that's essential for my survival, it'll be a good excuse to come back to my apartment.

  Even still, I'm not excited to be packing my suitcase. It would be best just to zip it up and leave already. If I need anything, I'll buy it in town and if they don't have it, fine, didn't I survive sixteen years of that rural and inbred lifestyle? What could possibly happen in that pocket of primitive civilization that I couldn't resolve?

  We'll talk about that later. I'm going to leave now. Let's see if I get caught up in a real good traffic jam and have time to think before going back to my roots.

  Published by Felix at 4:26 p.m. * Post a comment

  Tuesday, July 10

  The Internet café at the end of the world

  Hello dear, forgotten diary. How are you? I see that you're still there, devoted to reading me as if you missed me. What faith you have. Nobody misses me anymore, not even my mother seemed to miss me (I think she did, but she acted as if she hadn't been waiting for me). The thing is that even I'm forgetting me. It's so true: Writing is helping me get to know myself.

  Well, okay then, here I am. I was feeling lost, like every year, as I made my way to my parents' place in my hometown without Laura, expecting to relive every vacation of my (married) life in the form of a reproach (Oh, son, oh, what have you done. How did you let her leave?), but no, my mother pretended she wasn't expecting me (she did act surprised over the color of my hair, but didn't make any comment about it), fixed up my room and ignored me. I gave my father a digital television as a gift and we spent as much time a
s possible watching TV or taking a nap, avoiding my mother's comments, which never materialized. We remained in our macho paradise (which I must say you get used to quickly) until a little while ago when my father insisted that I accompany him on a walk. So you can see the town, son. The mayor's put in a roundabout along the main drive. An excuse like any other because my mother looked at us out of the corner of her eye, and I had a feeling that we were going to the Aviles tavern for a glass of wine.

  Indeed, my father took me to the temple of tranquility that is this tavern, an old-school place with casks full of wine aging in front of our eyes, a pressed dirt floor and their unique grape must, a fresh and somber place where a wife has never set foot, except (they say) the wife of an old festival official, who would chase her out of there day after day, waving a frying pan and spitting hellfire.

  My father isn't complicated. He doesn't see my divorce (I consider it to be more of an "abandonment") as a punishment from heaven. Unlike my mother, he doesn't ever get upset. He walked in and greeted everyone with a huge smile. When he comes to this place, he seems like a different man. His regular crowd responded with a warm, Hey, what's new? and my father said, You guys remember my son? And all of them offered me their hand and invited me to sit. Nobody looked at me or asked me anything. Just like that.

  Like I told you before, my hometown isn't what it used to be (my neighbors have entered the twenty-first century trading mules for tows and all-terrain vehicles, converting their potato fields into residential areas and their fallow land into golf courses, though all of that is on the other side of the national highway), but the most surprising thing was yet to come. In the middle of the conversation, I made the most incredible discovery two tables over: four computers, LCD screens, a Wi-Fi router. On the edge of the world in the most unexpected place, the Aviles has installed an Internet café, so to speak, in their tavern.

  So here I am. I thought I was lost in the middle of nowhere, but I'm actually connected to the world, writing once again in my dear damn diary. It's possible that the guys who hang around my dad (they couldn't be more typical of a small town) aren't surprised by the Wi-Fi or the teenagers who come here in the afternoons to chat. They looked at me when I connected to the Internet with the same casualness with which they didn't ask me about my divorce. What can you do? I miss my friends and I'm going to send them some emails. I also missed my diary. I was looking forward to this. So here I am again. And with many stories to tell.

  Published by Felix at 2:55 p.m. * Post a comment

  Thursday, July 12

  A small-town Robinson Crusoe

  Today, I woke up with a terrible feeling in my stomach. I feel alone.

  Not alone like when I'm in my apartment thinking about Laura, but alone, far from civilization, like a small-town Robinson Crusoe, missing my friends, the slavish routine of sticking to a schedule, the meetings and the overtime, missing my appointment book and my clients, even my bosses—in short, missing human contact.

  I woke up at the tactful vacation time of nine something, almost ten (in the morning, of course), and my mother's radio was announcing from someplace in the house that it was the tenth anniversary of the assassination of Spanish politician Miguel Angel Blanco. I felt a knot in my stomach, and it wasn't from hunger for breakfast.

  Ten years ago, I was in Silicon Valley (yes, the mythical Silicon Valley) finalizing some agreements with the American suppliers, and taking advantage of the situation I was eating breakfast like I had every day in the hotel room, listening to Internet radio on my laptop, when I heard something. A city councilor in the Basque Country from the conservative Popular Party who was younger than me had been kidnapped and murdered by separatist group ETA. It wasn't anything new for Spain, with the Basque conflict ongoing, but Americans like to dramatize the news, and I could hear President Aznar on the radio saying something like, We're better. Let's go after them, after them, and then, maybe because they were incited or just angry, I don't know how many thousands of people who were protesting silently made their way to the headquarters of ETA's political wing, Batasuna. The Basque police stopped them, and the crowd yelled, They'll kill you, don't protect them. Unbelievable. But the best part came afterward, when the police looked at one another, and one said, Let's take off our face masks. It'll be fine. And they took off their face masks in front of Batasuna headquarters, and the protesters broke out in applause.

  To me, these heartening examples of unity, the feeling of you shouting at the same time as thousands of people around you are shouting, make me feel big, as if I'm a part of an impressive, wonderful whole, and in moments like today when I'm feeling alone and far away from the world, they make me long for the human contact of a friend or a colleague or (why not) that certain someone who left me.

  A few days before everything I just explained, the Civil Guard ended up freeing kidnapped prison official Jose Antonio Ortega Lara after a long time in captivity. That was ten days beforehand, and it's been ten years today since the murder. The grief from remembering the news has brought me back my urge to cry, which I had left behind in my apartment.

  Published by Felix at 11:37 a.m. * Post a comment

  Sunday, July 15

  A month-long prison sentence

  Here I am once again in the cyber-tavern. When I sat down in front of the computer, all the old men who were dozing in front of their glasses of wine turned to look at me. I'm theater.

  Damn, I think I need to return to civilization, to routine. I need my own desktop computer and I need to write every day in my diary-blog, but my mother has made me promise to stay longer than the usual week. What am I going to do back in the city, where am I going to go by myself, I don't have anything else to do, I have a month of vacation time for a reason, the town air is doing me good, I'm too skinny, do I know that this is my house too and I can stay however long I want... She said it all.

  The truth is she's right. I don't have anywhere to go, nor do I know what I would do in my apartment without the spiritual guidance of my work schedule. Yes. When you don't live for anyone or set goals in your private life, the only holy book that guides you is a schedule. A work schedule, a gym schedule, I don't know... I'm staying. I'm going to forget myself and I'm going to become a small-town castaway, like I said. It's decided. I'm going to prolong my vacation in this corner of the world, where time is so elastic that days seem like weeks; I don't know if a time machine would return me to real life as an old man or a young boy (wouldn't my mother love that).

  And while here, I'm going to make the most of it and do a little meditation to center myself and try to figure out where to channel my loneliness. Look for my karma, basically. Meditate. Think. Even though it's not the ideal location to do it. Silence doesn't exist here. During the day, you can hear four-wheelers rumbling down the street. What are four-wheelers, you ask? Well, they're what country bumpkins drive these days. The neighbors' children who before rode donkeys now ride four-wheelers. Nature lovers who before came from the city to go hiking in our fields now come with four-wheelers to trample the native flora, including what grows at the bottom of the creeks. What are four-wheelers, you ask? Well, they're four-wheel motorcycles for those who are too clumsy to balance on two wheels. And at night (oh, at night!), the whirr of air conditioners has drowned out the choir of crickets chirping, which made for such good sleep before. To summarize, rural tourism isn't what it used to be, and to meditate it would have been handy for me to bring a Bill Evans mp3.

  Published by Felix at 12:11 p.m. * Post a comment

  Wednesday, July 18

  An old love

  For mothers, the fact that we grow older is of no importance. They always see and will always see us as small children. I had been out of the house for five years during university when I got married, but I remember perfectly on the day I left for our honeymoon, my mother clearly shouted at me, Look both ways before you cross the street! Mothers are equal parts predictable and inscrutable. Yes, we know how they are, but it's so difficult
to know what they expect of you...

  Spending my vacation with my parents, alone, without Laura, has been like coming back home to live with them, reliving a stage of my life that I thought was forgotten. Will I once again become an adolescent, a withdrawn dreamer who's partly an asshole?

  Yesterday, my mother fulfilled the promise (threat?) that she had made me when I told her I was coming alone to spend a few days at their house: She arranged it so I would see that old girlfriend whose husband left her. Malena. It is true that knowing I'm not the only divorcée in town takes away some of the pressure from my social interactions. In the end, I did spend many years, beginning as infants, playing outside with Malena. The last memory I have of her is one afternoon at the end of high school. She couldn't make up her mind and was flirting with both Alberto Muriana and me. The last memory is of that tantalizing teenage body that drove us both crazy.

  Now that Alberto had left her, my mother wanted to organize a reunion for us. What I didn't imagine was how absurd the thing was going to end up being.

  It happened yesterday afternoon. My mother, who doesn't make a living gossiping even though she'd like that, had wanted to invite Malena to dinner in order to tell her all of my misfortunes, but in a small town that is impossible, so she called all of her friends and neighbors (including Malena) for one of those parties during which they snack and pass around Tupperware gadgets. My mother says she sells Tupperware, but what she likes to do more is to invite her friends over to the house to drink coffee with milk and talk about plants and flowers. Later, if there's anyone interested in one of the products, she pushes the idea from their minds, and in the end she never sells anything.

  Naturally, it had to be afternoon coffee. That way, she made sure I would be there, since I take a nap after lunch when I spend vacation at their house. And I was there. I woke up, stretched and left my room in boxers, yawning like a chimpanzee, and opened my eyes to see all of the neighbors, retirees and young women (including Malena) alike, looking me up and down in astonishment.