Last Words

by Jackson Lear

  Part 2.

  The Italian Girl has a name: Cristina, from Milan. I grabbed a couple of phrases off my tablet and made her laugh, probably at my incompetent accent, but still a laugh is a laugh. I got her with, ‘Che palle’ - ‘what a pain in the ass.’ Then, ‘Non vedo l’ora’ - ‘I can’t wait.’ I figure I can use those two for the rest of my life. Thankfully I got her and not the Dutch guy since all of my Dutch flew out of my head a couple of weeks ago. Cristina offered me some wine as a thank you.

  She’s studying chemistry and wants to complete her degree in the States. She’s worried about her level of English. She’ll be fine. An hour of talking to her and I made more grammar mistakes than she did. The funny thing about her is that she’s spent the entire day in her blue pyjama bottoms with a dark long sleeved t-shirts. It’s as hot as balls in here. I guess it’s just a comfort thing. Or maybe she just sweats through her nice clothes and wants to keep them as presentable as possible.

  We talked a little about Madrid. Apparently there is a huge gay area in town which I’m supposed to explore. She said it’s a lot of fun and a hot spot for picking up straight girls. They go to the clubs here so they don’t have to worry about guys hitting on them, since the guys are focussing on each other. The girls lower their defences and start to appreciate a straight guy talking to her. Too bad I don’t have my own room. Over here I might be considered exotic. I guess some crazy señorita out there has a thing for Arctic-white monoglots. Cristina then said the perfect place to meet everyone is standing in line for the bathroom. The lines take forever and you have about five minutes of talk time before moving along. Even the male bathrooms take a while because dudes are getting blow jobs. What the fuck happened to the ‘avoid eye contact at all times’ policy?

  During our conversation the French girl came in to grab a drink. She doesn’t speak much English and barely any Spanish, but she was very stoned and giggly so that helped to understand her. Cristina warned me that the French girl really is sixteen, so leave her to the two French guys who yesterday managed to burn their macaroni and cheese. Cristina said she and the Russian girl helped the kids out and cooked their dinner.

  It’s weird thinking down to the French kids. I guess it’s like at work. I waltzed in with my heart slamming in my chest like it was the first day of school again, hoping that I would make a friend or two and not fuck anything up, only to find myself working with forty and fifty year olds who have smoked half their lives away and are rumoured to be ex-cons. How the fuck do you break the ice like that? So … anyone watch the Simpsons last night? No? Well then, I better go to the bathroom and read up on football as much as I can.

  Cristina helped me make a killer pasta dish, though she balked at me using dried spaghetti when apparently making fresh pasta is easy. She said the most important thing was to add the cooked pasta to the sauce the moment you take it out of the boiling water. Strain it first, of course, but plonk it into the sauce immediately after. The pasta will still be trying to absorb moisture and if you wait too long it will clump together. That certainly explains some of my past mistakes in life. Really important: add a splash of balsamic vinegar at the end to the sauce, stir, taste. If it’s too sweet add more vinegar, if it’s too sour add more sugar. I wish I had an Italian grandmother who could teach me these things. Mine were either into crochet or Eastenders.

  Rachel will be back soon. Until then I’m waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle. Then I need figure out where to hang my clothes. There is a line between one side of the building and the other which looks out onto a courtyard four floors below. I’ve never left my clothes to dry four floors up before. How did they even fix the line in the first place? Anyway, the German guy (Michael, easy enough to remember) must have drawn the short straw with the apartment because his bedroom window is the only one that can access the clothes line, so he has to accept a dozen people coming in and out of his room all day to get their clothes. Most of the time he lies back on his bed with the laptop nearby and with the door wide open. I feel a little sorry for the guy. There would be very little privacy when he wants it.

  I’m pretty sure with every window in the building looking into the bathroom there’s not going to be much privacy in there either. I’ll ask Rachel how she deals with it or if she even cares.

  Part 3.

  She cares. She says you get used to it. Just as long as there are no cameras to record the moment then a startled half naked housemate is the worst of your problems.

  It’s late now, though not late enough for some people. Half of the apartment are going out later but I’m wrecked. After sitting on my ass for almost two full days of travelling you’d think I would be fully rested, but no. Rachel and I went to this Japanese restaurant and we drank a little sake.

  Ha! ‘A little.’

  As we were walking to the next place it occurred to me … we just ordered fresh seafood even though we’re surrounded by two hundred miles of desert. Thankfully I stuck to the Chicken Katsu thing. When in a new country and in doubt, always go with chicken.

  It must suck being a backpacking vegan. Although, there was that guy in Amsterdam. We chowed down in some greasy burger place. He said he was vegetarian while travelling, vegan at home, and yet there he was tucking into a meaty burger.

  “I have this once a year in memory of my brother.”

  I guess everyone needs rules to be flexible now and then or else you’ll just go insane.

  Afterwards Rachel brought me to a churros hotspot. I never had them before. It was like eating a sugarless doughnut which you dip in liquid chocolate. It was quite nice. It’s a twenty-four hour place and is supposed to be packed in the early hours of the morning as people wait for the first train of the day after a night of clubbing.

  Rachel and I chatted a lot, reminisced, it was all good. I gave her the brief story of Alana and I, how I had tried to surprise her with flowers at the front of the gym, waiting for her to come out and she never did, and I waited until the gym was locked up for the night. Rachel asked how I found out. Believe it or not, it came from her dad. He was hesitating the whole afternoon, which was probably made harder because Alana was always in a bubbly mood. If she had been a bitch it would have been easy to knock her down a peg or two, but no. Her dad leaned over and whispered, “The next time you hear her talk about what she’s looking forward to in the future, have a listen and compare it to yours.”

  Yeah, that confused me for a while. Then it happened. “I can’t wait to have a house, renovate the kitchen and push it out into the garden, turn the loft into something useful, have breakfast in bed every Sunday, and wake up to someone who loves me.”

  Honey, you already wake up to someone who loves you, so why is it still on your list of dreams for the future?

  Oh.

  Annoyingly, this occurred during a lunch time restaurant date when Lauren and Matt announced that they were pregnant. On the walk back to the Tube Alana asked if I was okay. I went home single. The next day she started dating Assface.

  There are statues in this place called Sol and one is a bear eating a strawberry tree (I didn’t think strawberries grew on trees …). Then we went to Plaza Mayor to see a big statue of a guy on a horse. That was the plan, but when we got there the whole area had been converted to house a free classical concert.

  Rachel piqued up and said, “They’re playing the Planets.” It sounded like the Star Wars theme. “That’s what it’s based on.” Huh.

  So we waited and listened. And waited. It was a long piece. The sound wasn’t great either because it was live, echoing off the surrounding buildings and hitting us all at the wrong time. Afterwards they played the Valkerie song from Apocalypse Now.

  We got back to Rachel’s place at eleven thirty and I checked my emails. Still nothing exciting happening in the world. After a few days of limited access, it’s disappointing to see that no one has missed me yet. Rachel is checking her emails now. There’s giggling coming from the room next door. As far as I can tell t
he French girl is all alone in there.

  Despite being dead on my feet I don’t feel like going to bed just yet. Maybe because it’s 34 degrees and there’s no air-con.

  13 July

  Weird, weird day. First of all, the funny things:

  Between Gran Vía and Sol are lots of walkways weaving around giant department stores. By the looks of things it’s just one single company that operates all the stores across several buildings. One building sells clothes, the other building sells electronics. I’m still having to translate euros to pounds. Under the pathways are the metro lines with large air vents that blast air up as the train goes by. Rachel was wearing a full length casual dress and got blasted, à la Marilyn Monroe, and her dress really did shoot up over her face.

  “At least I was wearing clean underwear,” she said, laughing it off.

  That wasn’t the only time it happened. Two American girls were caught out while I was walking along a little while later. The locals seem to have figured out not to walk on the vents but there was always cheering and clapping when they saw someone fall for it. I bet it only happens to foreigners.

  There were lots of guys selling stuff on the side of the road, like wallets, handbags, watches, and man can they move fast when they see the police coming around the corner.

  Rachel and I went out for breakfast to a small sandwich shop. Along with our order we got a bottle of red wine. That was a surprise. Red wine for breakfast.

  For lunch we went out to this other place with Cristina and Derek, the Dutch guy. It was the first time I saw Cristina not in her pyjamas. Black jeans and a dark grey tank top. Her bracelets kept jangling about, so naturally, with her being an Italian, they jangled quite a lot. She also wore thick eyeliner so it looked like a wing on the side of each eye. Derek got a few compliments for wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. I rocked up in a t-shirt and shorts, much like Rachel. It was too hot to bother looking presentable. This turned out to be a mistake as almost immediately the phones came out and now there are pictures of me on the Internet looking like I have just rolled out of bed on minimal sleep.

  We went to a place down this small alley that Derek knew of. It was a tiny restaurant on the back of someone’s house. I could see right through to the family’s kitchen and dining room. The owner was the only one working there and he operated as the waiter, chef, and service extraordinaire. The most customers he would ever have at one time would be sixteen people. He brought out some paella, which is your typical rice and seafood mix. He also did some toasted bread thing which Rachel told me about and I have since forgotten the name of. Since everything is made in bulk the guy doesn’t need to hire anyone else. And guess what we also ordered? Two bottles of red wine. They were so nice I took a picture of the label so I can find them when I get back to London.

  We did have a couple of weird guys come up to us as we were eating, trying to sell packets of tissues and flowers. The flower guy looked indignant that two strapping men would dine with two feisty ladies and refuse to buy flowers, but none of us are dating. Cristina told us she was bi and didn’t realise that was even an option until after she slept with her best friend from school. Derek said he was married when he was nineteen and divorced at twenty one. He is grateful that he got marriage out of his system at an early age. God knows what I said with two lots of half bottles of wine in me but I know it must have been awesomely embarrassing if I got a cheer and a high five from Derek and a weird look from Rachel.

  Cristina and Derek were wondering about our situation and thought Rachel and I were a couple. How else could we explain me sleeping on the floor? But no, I’m just cashing in on an old favour. Rachel stayed at my place a couple of times during various troubles. We told them about her old roommate who got them all evicted. The stupid cow was too afraid to tell anyone what had happened. She knew for three weeks that they were getting evicted before she confessed. She was too embarrassed because the eviction was her fault and she wanted to avoid a confrontation with her friends. Rachel is still bitter about it. She stayed on my sofa until she found a new place, so now she’s repaying a favour. I was trying to remember when that happened when Rachel piped up.

  “You had just started dating Alana.”

  Sooooooooo … fuck. Did she think I was cheating on her at the start of our relationship?

  Cristina and Derek got the condensed version of the story. Met through a friend at uni, both had opposite schedules and near misses, and we only really hooked up over a week-long ditch of classes by flying off to Greece where her cousin had a spare room for a few days.

  Cristina spent most of the time peering at me inquisitively. “Did you think you were meant to be?”

  “No, I thought she was interesting.”

  Rachel had to run off to class and almost left her phone at the restaurant. I walked back through Sol for a while with Cristina and Derek, hoping to catch a few more Marilyn Monroe impersonations. No luck. We returned to the apartment and found Rachel there. Her class had been cancelled. The school are hoping to find a replacement teacher for tomorrow as their current one had to fly back home for an emergency. So one of the students who lives a five minute walk from the school took everyone’s number and will send them a message tomorrow if the class is still cancelled. As a result, I went to another afternoon lunch, this time with Rachel’s class. They are all from different parts of the world. One of the girl’s is from Cambodia and she’s been living in Madrid for years. She was supposed to be doing a business course here that got cancelled at the last minute so she had to find something to fulfil her student visa requirements as quickly as possible, so she’s breezing through the course because she’s already pretty fluent. Everyone wants her help to study Spanish but instead she shows them the cool parts of town, which is how we found this bar that does awesome sangria and those toasty things again. I found out why we got a discount on the food: the Cambodian girl is dating the owner and she always brings him more customers. As we were walking back through the twisting roads I noticed a couple of menus. Apparently our discounted bill is the normal price of the other restaurants. Apparently just saying, “The owner likes you so this is discounted,” is enough to earn a bigger tip.

  We saw the police in action again, this time actually chasing down some of the street vendors.

  There are more prostitutes than I thought possible. There must have been a hundred of them on one of the main roads heading towards Sol. It was still early in the afternoon so I can’t wait to see what it’s like this evening. We’re all going out to a club later on. Rachel warned me that we’ll only just be arriving at 1am. If we arrive any later we’ll have to pay to get in. Even so, the clubs won’t start getting busy until 2am. I need a shirt so I can roll my sleeves up.

  Michael, the German guy, said if I spend more than five minutes in the gay area I can get a free blow job, no questions asked (not by Michael, but from one of the locals). I got into trouble when I said, “He better be very charming and look ridiculously good in a dress.” Michael said, “That shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Last night was bitchingly hot. I know Madrid is surrounded by a desert and we’re in the summer but last night was just fucking awful. I knew Rachel was awake from the heat, as were most of the housemates. It was four in the morning and everyone was dripping with sweat. Those with private rooms could sleep naked and with the window wide open. This morning Rachel came back from the shower and told me if it gets that hot again she’s going to strip and not care about it. I don’t think she will. I’ve known her for a long time and she doesn’t seem like the type. But sleep deprivation can do the wacky on the unsuspecting mind.

  Okay, some of the weirdness from today. And yesterday. The Internet is very slow. Cristina said the government had recently introduced a filter to monitor various websites, including email. Wonderful. No doubt it’s to stop kiddie porn and those evil music downloaders. That explains why it has been slow, despite the government’s assurances that the speed decrease would be unnoticeabl
e. Yesterday … there was very little Internet. Very little for today as well.

  The news said the Internet company is working on the problem and the heat has affected something or other, and as such we can expect outages in various parts of the country. They explained in detail but I don’t speak Spanish. The news channels aren’t all that bothered that the entirety of our porn supply has suddenly dried up. No, they’re just blaming the heat. Exhibit A points to the blindingly obvious fact that Spain gets hot in the summer. Exhibit B points to every summer before this one when the heat did NOT melt some cable terminal thing.

  If the Internet is back up to full speed by tomorrow then I can book the rest of my trip through Spain. None of the housemates here have been to the south so I can’t really ask their opinions on where to go. Still not sure where to go after that. Maybe Portugal, maybe Ibiza. Cristina recommended Sardinia and Corsica. Not sure if I’ll have the time or money. I figure I have about three more weeks in continental Europe before I hit up Ireland and Scotland, then train it back to London by the end of August. Depending on how broke I am I might have to skip Ireland altogether.

  Do you know what isn’t ‘down’? The phone lines. Michael called home last night and said the Internet was acting a little weird there as well. Some sites were blocked. The ones in particular were Eastern European and Russian sites. So, the Internet has ‘melted’ here, is slow in Germany, and is ‘down’ in Russia and The Ukraine.

  The Russian girl (I still can’t remember her name, but man alive is she gorgeous. She’s tall and slinky, speaks spectacular English, has a double degree, and is the kind of girl I would drop down on one knee for, she also seems to be stuck on super-dork mode and wears several of those coloured wristbands made from twine). Anyway, she said there was a problem in St. Petersberg and the airports were closed due to a ‘credible’ terrorist threat. She actually said ‘credible’.