I didn't know how to react. Their stares went from the Shrek cartoons on my boxers to my lately unworked pecs (although I must say I still have a nice body despite having given up on the gym). What could I say? At first, I felt embarrassed, but then seeing Malena up close, well-worn at thirty-some years old, the shadow of three children in her crow's feet, the most haphazard haircut I've ever seen, and a lifeless stare etched in her eyes, I sympathized with Alberto Muriana. I approached the group, semi-naked and barefoot, and greeted every one of the neighbors with a smile and two kisses on the cheek (including Malena), and the subject of a reunion was settled and forgotten for good.
Unfortunately for my mother.
Published by Felix at 12:40 p.m. * Post a comment
Tuesday, July 24
A hotel in Almeria
I don't know how long I've been in town, but I'm starting to get used to this. It's like going back in time. I leave my parent's house and go for a walk someplace or another, but I barely interact with anyone—and in a town like this, where everyone you run into says hello (whether you know them or not, though in reality everyone knows each other). As of today, I've left the "cloister" on three occasions.
In short, I went out one early afternoon with my father to have a glass of wine and pay a visit to his friends, the fathers of my friends. I don't plan to tell you what has become of some of my classmates because it would make me even more depressed...
Another time to help my mother bring in the groceries. She's the kind who goes grocery shopping daily, the kind who wakes up, thinks about what to make for lunch, and goes to the store. And she's a bit too old to be hauling so many bags. We went to the corner store that the father of my friend Paco Lopez owns (which my friend now personally runs, being a chip off the old block) and the whole time we were there, the women who were shopping wouldn't stop staring at me. It was worse: They talked amongst themselves with their eyes fixed on me, they asked for things while they gawked at my clothes, they looked me up and down as they paid the clerk.
And a third time to try to find a place to have a drink (read: a few drinks) because I had run out of Valium and the very nice pharmacist informed me that she couldn't give me more without a prescription, despite how much I complained or flattered her, despite the nosiness of the other customers, despite her questions about what I needed it for, etc. Well, I rushed out of the house in the middle of the night in search of a bar, but I only found a hole in the wall (a place to play pool, as they call it here, without bothering to give it a Spanish name) full of noisy, unmuffled motorcycles and spoiled kids without a license who drive Audi A3s and BMWs with sunroofs and radios spewing tasteless music at full blast, just like my friend with the red Mercedes, who I never was able to hit with an empty bottle. In the end, I've gotten used to real nighttime silence, a silence that only exists in the countryside, of four-wheelers and air conditioners, and I've discovered that here I don't need Valium. It's a step, right? Let's see what happens when I go back to my apartment and find myself once again with the tacky Mercedes-driving louse and my party-loving neighbor.
So, like I said, it's nice here, even though it's no hotel in Almeria (I don't need it, just like one day I won't need Laura or her memory) and there's no beach. Who needs a beach in summer? Who needs that charming girl in a bikini who walks her dog at dusk along the shore, allowing her adorable Yorkshire Terrier to do its business where I'm going to lay my towel in the morning? Who needs that marvelous shining seascape, with those precious sailboats that come close to the shore, ignoring the line of buoys that protect the swimmers just to show off the breathtaking blonde sitting on the rail, saying, Hey, look at me, I have a sailboat, the E-27434. My daddy dearest bought it for me. I'm the E-27434 or something like that? Who needs that tranquility, the murmur of the sea and a radio belonging to some tasteless guy? And that beauty of the sun setting over the ocean, the sand castles, the topless women...when every so often a German tourist in her seventies walking along the shore shows me what I never wanted to see or even imagine?
It's nice in this town at the end of the world.
Published by Felix at 1:05 p.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, July 26
Back to childhood
I'm still holed up in my parents' house in town. Coming to my parents' house every summer is like going back to my childhood. My room, which I hated as I child for being small, sad and dark, is the quietest, freshest, and most idyllic place in the world to meditate; and this time, without Laura, the visit has gone as smooth as silk. There haven't been whispers of, How long are we staying? or comments like, Maybe we can go out one day and eat something decent. My mother is an exceptional cook (like all mothers, I suppose; I wish I could be a mother so I could cook something just once that wasn't between two slices of bread or wasn't burned), but she has a finite menu, healthy, yes, but a bit repetitive. In theory, there's nothing bad about that, and I suppose her instinct guides her to maintain proper nutritional balance, but Laura got bored.
Luckily (did I really just write that word?), she isn't here this time, and the meals, above all the lunches, have been accompanied by peace and quiet... although, on the contrary, the afternoon naps have been accompanied by the most celibate loneliness, longing for her soft, smooth presence, fighting against heat, digestion and many bouts of feverish masturbation that never reach climax and are always held back by the anguish of tears, whichafter a few weeks have finally stopped regularly showing up on my pillow.
A rice and bean stew, which, sure, might not be the best way to combat the heat (keep in mind that it is made with meat and animal fats, no matter the season), is part of our household's nutritional Bible. And has been my entire life. My mother always makes this dish when I visit because one time I told her it was my favorite, and now she makes it whether it's hot out or not. You fill up on rice and beans and then, hey, time to sweat out a nap.
One day, I was trying to finish a heaping bowl of the stuff when I noticed my father was staring at me. I gestured at him, then asked him, and again, then looked at my mother, who was distractedly cutting fruit. (She still peels fruit for my father! For me, okay, since she still considers me a schoolboy, but for my father? Yes, this town lives in another age.) Finally, my father grunted something. I eventually worked out that he had asked something like, And now what are you going to eat? What do you mean what am I going to eat? What are you going to eat? Who's going to cook for you? I've always eaten lunch at the office. And for dinner, what people call dinner, we would eat out twice a week and the rest of the time we'd eat something light, like a sandwich (Laura was always on a diet despite her great body) and we only cooked (the plural is absurd—she cooked) when we had guests. I eat out, I answered curtly. My father grunted something else, but this time I wasn't able to understand him. So I continued to eat in silence.
Rice and beans, he murmured after a while. I shrugged my shoulders in a tense reply, as if my father was trying to explain to me that babies aren't delivered by storks, but he didn't want to use the exact words. And he was trying to do something similar. Finally, his patience ran out. That's why you get married, he growled, almost without caring that my mother might hear him. And I replied, intrigued, For beans? His eyes colored with a mix of paternal disappointment and Trojan fury. Because mothers don't live forever, you idiot!
And all of my troubles came rushing back.
Published by Felix at 5:53 p.m. * Post a comment
Sunday, July 29
Back to maturity
On Tuesday, I'm leaving first thing in the morning. Yes, in the end I've spent almost the entire month here. Initially, I thought that keeping my annual promise of letting my mother dote on me and fatten me up like a growing child was going to be torture akin to the Spanish Inquisition, especially because I came alone this year, but it's actually been like crawling back inside the womb for a few weeks. Where is there a better place to relax? There's no hotel in Almeria or spa that's as good. Silently, methodically, my mother has been t
aking care of me like her life depends on it (all mothers take care of their children like their lives depend on it—that's a scientific fact).
All in all, it wasn't as simple as coming here, spending the week, fulfilling my obligation and then going off on a trip somewhere far way, like I've done in other years.
The truth is I've spent the entire month inside the old walls of my parents' old house, moored to my old nineties bed, smelling the smells of summer from when summer meant summer, refusing to move... Weeks have passed... My mother hasn't complained at all... And this morning the alarm on my cell phone sounded and I remembered that I have to go back to my coveted life of a well-paid bachelor in the big, warm, welcoming city.
On Tuesday, I'm leaving first thing in the morning.
Published by Felix at 2:27 p.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, August 2
The return
Dear damn diary, I'm more or less (more less than more) back. It's been a terrible month, a month spent like a castaway, far from everything, far from the real world, because my hometown doesn't seem to be anywhere in this world. Everything is different there, anchored in the past or (even better) in a scene from a movie of manners, from another time, you know what I mean. Off the record, it actually wasn't so bad. I'm a man, I can spend time alone (I already have experience with that), but nobody would understand why during these last few days in my hometown I felt happy...somehow.
And here I am, immersed in the warmth of the big city, far from the warmth of my family, in the middle of August, once again in my "home." Nobody would believe me that this isn't exile, but coming back to my apartment after being gone for almost a month, to find these empty walls, this empty fridge, this empty bed, has been like coming home. Seriously! I've experienced so many things here that I think I can call this my home.
The empty bottles of Ribera del Duero are still lined up next to the balcony, in case I have the chance and the urge to throw them at the tacky Mercedes; the new rug reminds me of my first attempts at cooking (and also of the fact that my insurance company still doesn't want to reimburse me); the half-full bottle of hair dye is still next to the sink to remind me of my age and what a coward I am sometimes; my address book still contains the phone numbers of some of Lolo's friends, who I agreed to go out with after I declared my Week of Sex in June and had as many dates as failures... And all of these irritating memories are recorded in detail on the virtual pages of this digital diary that I know I’ll be spending many more hours with. I feel good now. Isn't that a home?
Published by Felix at 12:20 a.m. * Post a comment
Tuesday, August 7
A bit-city Robinson Crusoe
I just got back from eating a rubbery and yellowed Russian salad and drinking two ice-cold beers at a bar a little over a mile from my apartment. My coworkers aren't the only ones who have abandoned me. The Imperial Palace is closed and Antoinette is probably on vacation with her family in China or, if she's smart, in Benidorm. Following suit, the rest of the bars from here to the outer limits of the city have closed as well.
Why Russian salad?
I suppose there are moments in every man's life when it's time to make some changes. I suppose too that change is never easy. It's hard for me to get used to changes, and the worst part is they're happening all at once. If it was hard for me to get used to living without Laura and even harder to live with my parents for almost a month, I confess that the hardest thing of all has been coming back to my lonely single man's apartment (!!!).
Long story short, I've forgotten everything that I had "learned" about cooking. Just imagine, dear damn diary, me, who had finally gotten a hang of living with all this masculine freedom; me, the guy who survived his first month separated thanks to the bakery downstairs, cured Spanish ham and a crate of twelve bottles of Ribera del Duero wine. I tried to cook some noodles, but I got bored looking for the cheat sheets (read: recipes) that my female colleagues and secretaries had given me, so in the end I gave up. In any case, I hadn't bought the noodles either.
After a week in the apartment thinking that my upset stomach was the product of jet lag from the trip (yes, jet lag—the traffic jams on the highway went on forever...), I deduced instinctively that it was because of the food I had left in the fridge. Basically, the fridge isn't as perfect or useful a machine as they sell it as. It turns out that the sheer fact of sticking food in the fridge doesn't guarantee that it won't spoil, and that everything (everything!) has a shelf life of a few days, after which it starts to go bad. The problem is that these last few days my sense of smell and my generous use of spices has led me to recklessly scarf down all the food I had left behind in the fridge when I went to my parents' house.
After all this, is a rubbery Russian salad and two beers really going to hurt me?
Published by Felix at 12:26 a.m. * Post a comment
Friday, August 10
Flied lice
I'm happy. I feel like a new man once again. I've found a Chinese restaurant that's open in August.
The place itself isn't anything great (I'm not a demanding guy), but they have egg rolls that are done just right and some delicious chop suey. The service isn't bad either. It's not like Antoinette and her family's, but Asian people are nice and polite. It's right before the exit for the highway, past the stadium and the two industrial parks, then turn right as if you're going to the outlet mall; it's a little far from my apartment, but these days the streets are deserted and you can get anywhere in a flash.
Published by Felix at 12:05 a.m. * Post a comment
Tuesday, August 14
Girl stuff
It's incredible what you can learn by talking to women. I don't usually talk to them, and even less so at work (except for work topics), not because I'm a misogynist or something even harder to pronounce, but because I already have my social circle, which comprises Joaquin, Lolo, Ricardo, Juan Carlos, Manolo from Seville, and myself, a social circle that sees us instinctively gather around the coffeemaker and that has developed around what we have in common.
But during this damned vacation season, there isn't a single masculine soul on my floor, and this morning I went to pour myself a large cup of black coffee to escape the boredom of reviewing the reviews of projects that had already been reviewed, when I ran into an administrator from Accounts, Inma I-Don't-Know-What (it might be Carrasco or Capelo, I don't know; we barely met once in some finance meeting), and she opened my eyes to a whole new world.
I opened my mouth to tell her good morning, and she asked me how I was doing in my new apartment. I don't remember her last name, but she knows that I live in a new apartment! I responded with something vague about how difficult it is for a guy to survive domestic chores (not in those words, of course), and she started to give me advice about ironing, cooking, cleaning the bathroom, air fresheners (it seems that they are more necessary in a single man's apartment than anywhere else) and the advantages of laundry detergent with activated oxygen.
But what really opened my eyes was what she said about hanging clothes to dry. She does it, and her clothes don't take four days to go from wet to damp. Then, according to what she said, it's easier to iron them.
Well, I just got home. I arrived home a little late because the 24-hour store didn't have drying racks (what a difficult apparatus to put together) and I had to go look in the superstore. As soon as got in, I put some of Inma's knowledge into practice, and I admit that life in my new home now feels easier and I'm a little more optimistic about the future. What can you do? I've always been a little naïve.
Tomorrow I'm going to call her to have a coffee with me mid-morning, but in the cafeteria, leisurely, so I have time to take notes while we talk about things.
Published by Felix at 12:19 a.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, August 16
Long hot summer
There's no one at the office.
Why do they force me to take my vacation in July? One year yes and two no, is how it goes. I don't think it
makes much sense because in the end, all the work is finished in August and I'm here like an idiot, half the time staring at the closed accounts and projects planned for September on the computer screen, and the other half staring silently at the coffeemaker.
Everyone is on vacation. Ha. I wish I could have taken them all to my hometown. The time we would have had...
Lolo called me not too long ago. Being polite, he asked me how things were going, and then became interested in hearing about the office. The building is dead, man, I said, half dead from boredom myself. Then he told me to go to Juan Carlos's desk and wouldn't let up about it, so I got up, cell phone in hand, and traversed the enormous carpeted hallway to the other side of the floor like someone competing in the four-hundred-meter dash.
Do you see her? he asked me, his voice metallic on the phone, and I saw her, a new secretary, probably a substitute for the summer (Exactly, a substitute), who couldn't be more twenty-four years old and no less than a C cup (Just like you like them, you bastard, the voice on the phone said, as if he were my masculine conscience). She was smiling, a bit dull (Do you need something, sir? Mr. Gonzalez is on vacation) but remarkable in how little she liked to wear (Those shirts of hers are sure small, huh? Describe the one she's wearing today, come one, man. Please. Don't make me come into the office in August...).
I hung up without doing what my ex-Sex Guru asked. The girl isn't ugly, and she has that something, that charm we men can perceive that is synonymous with the adjective "easy," but she has a strange look, like an upper-class snob without class who backs up traffic every time she parks the blue Mini Cooper her father bought her in her rented garage. No, I'll pass on girls, at least until the weather cools down and my levels of tension shoot up again. Then I'll see if I'm able to keep control of my involuntary impulses.
Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man Page 7