by Jackson Lear
Last Words
Jackson Lear
Copyright © 2016 Jackson Lear
All rights reserved.
12 July
¡Viva Madrid!
I’d also like to point out: ¡Viva la prostitutes! Seriously, you wouldn’t believe how many there are lining the streets in this part of town, even right next to McDonalds. You’d think there would be, what, five at most? Maybe six? Noooooo, there were over a hundred and that was at 3pm. It’s like I’ve fallen arse-backwards into a bizarro world full of chocolate served in mugs with finger shaped doughnuts. Never mind a culturally recommended nap time or a social life when you don’t get ready to leave until midnight. Oh, and train timetables only tell you how long the wait is until the next one. The red light district seems to be the entire city. Even the directions are based on where the sun is in the sky and not which of the five streets you’re supposed to walk along. There’s a deluge of wine and sangria for lunch … actually, that I might be okay with, especially if I can get three bottles of wine for the price of a sandwich. Suffice to say: Madrid has just climbed to the top of the nuttiest places I’ve ever been to.
Rachel warned me about her apartment while I was still in Berlin. She reaffirmed her living conditions along the metro ride from Atocha to Callao. Was I adequately braced for what I saw? No, because holy shit is her place crowded. It’s like a long term hostel and wreaks of ‘scam’. There are ten bedrooms in the one apartment and it sleeps twelve people, though while I’m here it will sleep thirteen. It’s a good thing that I’m not staying for long, maybe just a week. Shorter if she wasn’t kidding about the lack of an air conditioner. I survived a night in Barcelona but that had the Mediterranean breeze. Here, we are surrounded by two hundred miles of desert.
Many thanks to Rachel for putting me up as well. I told her we can go out for dinner. My shout. Considering what I saw this afternoon we’ll probably have dinner at ten minutes to midnight, our food will be served on triangular plates by staff with cocktail umbrellas in their hair, while covers of Adele and Michael Jackson are sung in Spanish with ‘80s synthesisers as the only accompanying instrument.
Rachel warned me that I might end up looking for a hostel by tomorrow. It’s possible, but either I sleep in a room with seven other sweaty tourists or I sleep on the floor in a room with just her. And the thing with every hostel is that as soon as you have eight people in the one room then one of them, by law, must snore all through the night. Another must stumble in at three in the morning, completely shit-faced, and turn every light on so that they can see what they’re doing. Then they’ll spend half an hour drunkenly texting someone with their phone on full volume so that they know when they get a new message.
God damn that Russian dick was an asshole. The only thing that cheers me up about that whole ordeal was watching the Aussie walk off with the Russian’s shoes. Oh, if only I could’ve stayed long enough for the Russian to wake up, but no, I had a train to catch.
So aside from the ten bedrooms in this place, there is a small lounge that sits five people right next to the front door. There is one small store room that is locked and no one here has the key. There are two bathrooms without locks of any kind and Rachel says you have a fifty/fifty chance of walking in on something you don’t really want to see, since there’s a mix of guys and girls currently living here. There’s a small kitchen with two fridges which are packed to the rim with food and drinks. Rachel warns me that food often goes missing regardless of how clearly you put your name on it.
There’s a tall Italian girl who smokes up a storm. She’s quite lively but she has an attitude in the kitchen with what is Italian food and what is not. Apparently spaghetti bolognese is not actually Italian and you will be stabbed in the face if you ask for it in a real restaurant. This all started when I was in the kitchen talking to Rachel about maybe getting a pizza. A faux pas, I admit, since I can get a pizza anywhere and the whole point of travelling is to go for something a little more authentic. But since I know diddly of the cuisine here I figured I’d get the suggestions going regardless of how ludicrous they sounded.
The Italian girl shook her head at me. “Don’t bother with the pizza here. It’s not real.”
That earned her a curious look. I thought maybe there was a Spanish twist, like it’s extra spicy or topped with paella, but no. “What’s wrong with it?” I asked.
“They do many good things here but pizza is not one of them.”
“Isn’t bad pizza still good pizza?”
She pulled her nose up at me. “You can’t be serious.”
“Salami, cheese, tomato sauce, what’s not to love? Fold it all over into a calzone if you’re so inclined. Or, even better, go to Chicago. Their pizzas are as thick as a lemon meringue pie.”
I knew exactly what I was saying and I still couldn’t help myself, because the best part was the look she gave me. It was like she caught me eating nuggets dipped in sweet and sour sauce while sitting on the toilet. For once all of her bracelets stopped jingling about.
“So, this is my friend,” said Rachel, pointing vaguely in my direction.
The Italian Girl still hadn’t shifted her horrified eyes away from me. “Why would you do that to food? It’s the unrecognised religion of the world.”
Now, that I understood. “Can’t other cultures be inspired by a foreign dish and make it their own?”
“Of course, but they should change the name of it first. Don’t call it pizza if it’s been changed so much that it no longer resembles pizza.”
“I guess. It’s like chips. Malt vinegar and sea salt all the way, none of this ketchup crap. And no matter where you are, chips always taste better when served in a newspaper.”
Her bracelets stopped jangling about again. “Did you grow up homeless?”
“No. English.”
“And you wrap your food in newspaper?”
“Of course not! The guy I’m paying does that for me.”
She scoffed and mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch.
Rachel came to the rescue. “So Mark’s going to be here for about a week.”
“Then there’s no time to lose. Bay leaves.”
“Bailey’s?”
“Leaves. In the box right behind you.”
Lo and behold I was practically sitting on her tub of herbs and spices. I handed it over.
“Thank you. Do you drink?”
Uh …
“Good. Grab a glass, pass me the wine. This is one of my favourites, in case you ever find yourself in a shop wondering what to get me as a farewell gift. FYI -”
Yeah, Rachel warned me that it’s really depressing listening to foreigners speak your language exceptionally well when you can barely string a sentence together in any other language, let alone theirs.
“FYI, there is no such thing as cooking wine. You only cook with the wine you would drink. And not the cheap stuff that comes at the end of the night, no. The nice bottle you begin with. You’re also from London?”
“Yep. West side, near Uxbridge.”
Then came a smile. Turns out, she spent a year on our fine shores at some school I haven’t heard of when she was sixteen. Thus, she has sampled our fine cuisine, which is all French, Indian and faux-Italian, so there wasn’t much I could add to the conversation.
“How did you two meet?” she asked.
Hmm. Does she think we’re dating? Probably not, she was just making chit chat. Still …
“School,” said Rachel.
“Well, let’s not sell the story short, there,” I said.
“But we did meet in school.”
“I remember.”
“So there’s not much of a story.”
I cleared my throat. “We met in detention when we were fourteen. She forgo
t to bring her homework one day and I got caught drawing a stickman flipbook.”
“A what?” asked Italian Girl.
“On each page you draw a little figure, like a dinosaur chasing a stickman. You flip the pages and it shows the dinosaur catching up to the guy and biting his head off. I got caught doing that. Detention. The teacher left the room because someone was having an asthma attack outside. I asked Rachel if she wanted to go to the dance together on Friday.”
“That was the first time you met?” asked Italian Girl.
“Yep. I’d seen her around but never spoke to her.”
“He didn’t even know my name,” said Rachel.
“And you asked her out?” asked Italian Girl.
“I asked her to the dance.”
“Isn’t that the same?”
“Not quite. And she said no.”
“Because it wasn’t a couples’ dance, it was just some lame school disco thing,” said Rachel.
“Why her?” asked Italian Girl.
“My friend told me I had to go with a girl.”
“Which wasn’t true, Mark’s just the gullible kind,” said Rachel.
Italian Girl shook her head at me as though I made no sense at all. And in hindsight what fourteen year old actually does make sense? “You asked someone you’d never spoken to before?”
“I’ll be honest, I was in a bit of a panic at the time.”
“It was certainly spontaneous,” said Rachel. “Just a quick blurting out of, ‘Do you want to go to the dance? On Friday?’”
Italian Girl sighed, offered me some more wine, and that seemed to be the end of that conversation. So, we started talking about travelling.
I keep thinking that one day I’d like to do a six week tour of Italy, drive around in a convertible and learn how to cook like an Italian master. The best thing I seem to have done with the diary is kept the back full of recipes from other travellers. Everyone has one killer recipe. All you have to do is chat to them while they’re in the kitchen, shadow them over the frying pan, help out, and write everything down as they’re dictating. You would think that after all this time I would have acquired more than 10 recipes, but no. Sometimes the guy or girl you end up talking to is in the same boat and neither of us can cook for shit. And unfortunately I’ve found that just because I have the recipe doesn’t mean my version ends up being any good. Still not sure why.
Besides Italian Girl, there are three sixteen year old French kids here (two guys and the one girl they’re both trying to sleep with). They’re celebrating the end of their exams by drinking cheap beer and smoking pot. The girl is sleeping in the room next to ours (ours being the first room on the right as you come in through the front door). The two French guys are staying in the room next to her. I heard too many names in such a short amount of time to remember who anyone is, though I know that no one is named Pierre. That’s a shame, since it’s the only French name I know. Those three don’t speak much English.
There is a German guy here who speaks really fast. I asked where abouts he’s from and hoped he would say Berlin. Nope. Dresden. He saw my eyes go wide when he mentioned his home town and then he said exactly what I feared he would say: “You know only one thing about Dresden, don’t you?” Yep. Nothing like my people carpet bombing his people during the war to build a lasting friendship. But hey, my grandparents lived through the blitz so we both got to blame previous generations of war atrocities. Good times.
There are two girls here sharing the room in the corner. One is from Croatia and the other is from the west side of Ireland, near Sligo she said, at which point I had to say, “I almost went there while riding around the country on my bike.” Then I felt like an idiot. Saying you almost went somewhere and didn’t is kinda pointless. I almost went to the North Pole that one time, then I realised I was flat broke and could barely afford to go to Sweden. Plus, I made it sound like I thought her town was boring enough to avoid without knowing anything about it. So far I’ve offended Italian Girl, Dresden Guy, and Irish Girl. I really have to stop saying the first thing that comes to mind.
So the Irish girl and the Croatian girl don’t know each other, they just got stuck with a room together. Originally there was the Dutch guy in that room (he said he was sharing with another guy who snored), but when another room became empty he quickly moved.
The Dutch guy is pretty cool. You know what’s quite irritating? Everyone speaks English (except for the three French kids). I’m in the middle of Spain, full of internationals and everyone speaks English. I can barely count to ten in another language and they’re all geniuses. Rachel called them polyglots or something like that. I have no idea what a glot is but I wrote it down in my sudoku book to remind me.
So there’s Rachel, the three Frenchies, the Italian girl, the German Dresden guy, Miss Sligo and Miss Croatia (Miss Croatia really is quite good looking with great legs. She has the long flat face thing working for her), the Dutch guy who has to explain to the Frenchies that he doesn’t carry weed with him wherever he goes, and I’ve been told about the other three who haven’t come home yet. There’s the Russian girl, the Indian girl, and a Turkish guy. Everyone is supposedly nice and friendly. Most of them are here to study Spanish for a few weeks before going home. The rare few are here on a longer term basis. The only advantage I can see in staying here for months on end is that it is in the heart of the city right in the night club district. Aside from that it’s hot, crowded, and way too expensive (well, not for me, because I’m staying on Rachel’s floor for free).
Rachel left about twenty minutes ago to do her Spanish class and will be back later. She said I was lucky to get to Madrid when I did, and no kidding. Yesterday all of France seemed to go on strike as though it’s a national event. I was stuck in Nice for a few hours trying to figure out what the hell to do. They were happy enough for me to pay for a full fare ticket from Paris to Barcelona, but did they deliver? No. I got to Nice and listened to a French announcement, and for the first time in my life there was no one around who spoke English. There was a very nice French guy in a beret (I honestly didn’t expect to see anyone in a beret except British uni posers), and he managed to communicate a lot with just “Uh …” and gestures. He waved me out of my seat, which was quite easy when the entire carriage full of people got up and left. I thought I had to change trains and was desperately checking my ticket. Long story short, because my hand is cramping up: France is on strike, I filled out my sudoku book and bought another, found a Columbian guy who had hired a mini van and offered to take a bunch of people to Barcelona if we paid our share of the rental and petrol. Fair enough. I went along and sat with my sixteen kilo backpack on my lap for a couple of hours, pinned up against the window next to a fat and sweaty guy who complained endlessly about the heat. Yeah, it’s the Riviera in summer, of course it’s going to be hot. At least I had the decency to shower in the morning. I offered him some Tic Tacs.
“I’m okay, thanks,” he said.
The transport problems were a little better in Barcelona. It took a while to figure out how to buy a ticket for the train as I had to find out what sort of ticket I needed, where to go and all that. This morning I took the train out to Madrid as per normal and as soon as I was half an hour away from Barcelona I got a text message from Rachel asking if I was on one of the delayed or cancelled trains. It turned out that Barcelona was getting in on the strike action as well and the authorities are having a hell of a time dealing with all of the tourists.
Paris was nice but there was no Internet at the hostel. I had to go to a café and try to order something from the scrawl on the blackboard. The nineteen year old kid had never heard of a cappuccino. Or, more likely, he’s never heard me say it in a terrible French accent. So I sat there with some weak brown liquid thing as I endured the slowest Internet connection known to man. Some of the sites took so long to load they ended up timing out before loading even a single frame. I tried my phone and could call and text normally but I couldn’t get online, as
if there was no signal. Rachel said I could check my emails on her computer but it’s password protected, so I’ll have to wait until she comes home. In the meantime I have Clint’s ancient tablet to carry around. He’s not getting it back until I’ve beaten his Freecell score.
Overall, yeah, leaving the laptop at home has been good for my sanity. It’s forced me to see the world from my own two feet, instead of from the bed of a hostel like I’ve seen plenty of others do. The tablet has been good for browsing and booking hostels, not for logging into a dozen sites where I can see Alana getting all cosy with Assface. At least when I log in at an Internet Café I’m surrounded by people in the daytime. It’s much easier to keep a clear head and realise that I’m having a kickass July. Maybe I can get a photo with my arms around some of the prostitutes, make Alana jealous.
No, that’s a fast way of getting robbed. And an easy way of looking pathetic.
So, Rachel plans on staying in Madrid for another six weeks. She says she wants to lose weight and has a target of twenty kilos. She figures the heat will help with that. I’ve been here for a couple of hours and I’m sure I’ve lost weight as well, so I believe her. But, honestly? I haven’t seen her in four months and she looks the same now as she did back then. She said the final straw came a couple of days before Madrid when she was in a restaurant and her bra broke. I didn’t even know that could happen. She said it was so embarrassing because she was almost falling out of her top and her dress was designed in a way that made taking her bra off, even in the bathroom, a little difficult. Yeah, that has me stumped.
I have enough euro with me for a couple of bottles of wine tonight. There will be stories. Oh my god, will there be stories. I’m still curious as to how Rachel even ended up in Spain. It wasn’t even a hint of an idea when I last saw her.
I suppose I have four hours to work on the condensed version of why Alana dumped me.
Or I could see if anyone’s in the kitchen.
