by Pablo Tusset
That was Aunt Salomé again. She likes to read the psychology columns in the home decorating magazines, and occasionally gets analytical on everyone.
‘Suspicious of what?’ My father was getting really pissed off now.
‘Well … after all, cases of latent homosexuality are very typical among men who join exclusively masculine, strictly hierarchical organisations. The army, the clergy …’
This is where Uncle Felipe almost choked on his seaweed.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Meee? Nothing!’
‘What do you mean, nothing? Am I supposed to listen to my own wife calling me a homo? I would think that you, of all people, would have proof of exactly the opposite.’
‘Oh, Felipe, for God’s sake, forget it, a person can’t have a normal conversation with you … I am simply making a very general statement.’
‘Oh, really? Well keep in mind that in fifty years I’ve never seen a single queer at the base. Now, things would be different in Spain today if the military service was still mandatory, I can assure you that you wouldn’t see so much homosexuality all over the place. Television is disgusting nowadays, every time you turn it on you get assaulted by some built-up muscle hunk dressed up like a lounge singer …’
‘Those aren’t homosexuals, Felipe, those are drag-queens,’ my mother piped in.
‘Well, I think Felipe has a point,’ interjected Aunt Asunción, slightly more subdued but also with well-formed opinions. ‘To a certain degree, I think everyone should live the way they want to, but when it comes to airing one’s dirty laundry on the television, what do you want me to say? Really, I just don’t see why people need to go to such extremes.’
‘I don’t see anything wrong with the idea that people should be able to openly express their sexual preferences,’ was the unexpected intervention from Carmela the Bohemian Girl, who seemed to be gunning for everyone to come out of the closet as soon as possible.
Sparks now flew out of her mother’s eyes, which were firmly focused on her daughter. Was it possible that this respectable matron was a co-conspirator in my mother’s matchmaking pretensions? The fact is, every time our eyes met her face quickly morphed into expression that had Magnificent Mother-in-Law written all over it, a Magnificent Mother-in-Law who would be overjoyed to see her aging Bohemian Girl daughter married off to the hapless millionaire. The father, on the other hand, seemed more interested in separating the seaweed from the lobster, an attitude that made me predisposed to liking him.
Soon after that, a rosemary sorbet (repugnant, period) arrived, and immediately following that, roast beef, swamped in some kind of papaya sauce in which tiny little pasta bow-ties floated. No doubt MH had tasted such a thing at the banquet of some Very Important Spaniard and had decided to let us all in on her big discovery. Luckily, with a bit of knife-scraping I was able to offload much of the sweet mush and discovered that the meat beneath it was reasonably edible. By the time we got to dessert I was still trying my best not to utter a peep or make direct eye contact with anyone, while everyone else was busy expressing their firmest convictions. Everyone except Aunt Asunción, who tends to be a bit more discreet, and the father of the Bohemian Girl, who also knew how to keep his mouth shut in between mouthfuls.
Now, the part of these dinners that strikes the greatest terror in my heart is the after-dinner conversation. Just around the time coffee is served, when my Magnificent Parents have exhausted all possible topics relating to Culture and Society, they begin to ask me personal questions – almost invariably related to my marital status, my professional prospects, or my medium- and long-range life expectancy. There was a time when I enjoyed shocking them by improvising all sorts of aspirations that would be completely unacceptable for a young, upper-class brat like myself – getting my taxi driver’s licence, or working on an assembly line, things like that. But at this stage of my existence – and, more specifically, given the circumstances at that time – I didn’t feel much like scandalising my aunts and uncles. After all, the poor old farts hadn’t committed any sin other than that of being conservatives (or right-wing, to be more exact) and that is an eminently easy sin to forgive for someone who has had the opportunity to mingle with left-wing intellectuals and ecological types – two groups that are way more difficult to deal with, as far as I’m concerned. And so, I somehow managed to apologise to my fellow diners and arise from the table as soon as we were through with the sweets. FH looked at me disparagingly (for the Grand Master, meals are not over until he lights a cigar), but I got up anyway. If I could hide out for a while, wait around for about as long as a good shit would take, I had a better chance of returning to a fresh conversation topic, one that was unrelated to me. And so I wandered around the apartment until I got to the back stairs, intending to go up to my old bathroom. Maybe I would actually end up taking a crap. After all, stinking up the main bathroom in the house’s public space wasn’t exactly part of my evening plan. But as soon as I opened my old bedroom door, I suddenly felt as if a time-machine had transported me back to the past.
I suppose, if I had been born into a normal family, the clan would have turned my bedroom into an ironing room, but in a duplex apartment of 700-plus square metres, with five suites, a library, servants’ quarters, sauna, and an upstairs–downstairs terrace that wraps around the perimeter of the building, there is no pressing need to reconstitute the bedroooms of emancipated offspring. As such, my expensive, rich-adolescent trinkets were all there, exactly as I had left them fifteen years earlier. Even the huge bookcase overflowing with books hadn’t changed. I confess: I have read books – I was young, naive. When I caught on to the plot I thought of burning that mountain of paper, but I eventually came to understand that burning books is as excessive an act as reading them: the best thing one can do, simply, is ignore them, like those microscopic specks that live on our eyelashes. Things got even worse after my book bout – that was when I got bit by the travel bug, which is an even bigger rip-off. Anyway, a little light-bulb went off in my head as I gazed at the spine of the first volume of Antonio Escohotado’s History of Drugs. I approached the headboard of my old bed and opened the vertical cabinet where Beba used to store my pillow and my pyjamas. I stuck my arm in, all the way to my armpit, and patted about in the dark corner. Bingo: the hash box, a silver case, now tarnished with age. I opened it and found an old half-empty sheaf of Esmoquín rolling papers and a considerable amount of hash. All I had on me was a pack of Ducados, but it wouldn’t be the first joint I ever lit with unfiltered cigarettes. I warmed up the rock: 1983 vintage, purchased at the Plaza de la Virreina. It still smelled exactly as it was supposed to smell. I sat on the sofa to roll the joint and went outside to smoke it, as I did in the old days, to avoid contaminating the room with the tell-tale aroma.
The upper level of my parents’ terrace looks kind of like a ship’s deck, with its teak railing, Love Boat style beach chairs and four ancient pieces of gym equipment that my Magnificent Brother was quite addicted to in his day. I approached the railing on the side that faced the water, just above the university’s Department of Pharmacology. Fifteen years since I had last smoked a joint in that part of the world, right at the spot on the railing where I used to stub out my joints just in case The First, tattler that he was, caught me in the act. Fifteen years and the only things of mine that remained were my twin predilections for weed and alcohol (I discovered whores a bit later). The affinity for weed, alcohol and a millionaire father. Twenty-five million. Twenty-five. Which included properties, entire buildings in the centre of Barcelona and Madrid, various summer homes in the Costa Brava, rental apartments in Castelldefels and Salou. And then there were the stocks, the bonds, the shares in various companies, the industrial outfits, the works of art, the jewellery, the gold, the safe-deposit boxes spread over various banks, the contents of which only FH knew about. Surely it would be a piece of cake to slap together a hundred thousand in cash. And what is a hundred thousand in exchange for a Magnificent S
on, an Architect of the Temple and Master in Dodgy Financial Deals? It hadn’t occurred to me before. Kidnapping for ransom … This possible resolution to the issue brought with it a tremendous sense of relief, but something inside of me told me it couldn’t be so simple. Maybe I was loath to give up my little investigation, the Jaume Guillamet mystery, the trials and tribulations of Lord Henry in that big old citadel, Jenny G and her high-class hookers, Lady First and her romantic intrigue. Without meaning to, I had begun to envision myself as a double-oh-something secret agent, going head-to-head with a cult of evil philosophers, and the movie I had begun to film inside my head had made me use all my wits, all my might, all my mettle. And now, suddenly, all Indiana Jones had to do was get Daddy to pay the ransom and the bad guys would free the hostage, his hair a bit mussed but no worse for the wear. I struggled with this, trying to identify the place inside of me where this stupid urge had come from – what dark corner of my past was making me feel this idiotic need to be useful, to dazzle my Father’s Highness and my Magnificent Brother? I decided to attribute it all to the sinister influence of the setting – my room, my books, the scorched hole on the terrace railing that belied so many forgotten joints. I didn’t have time to finish the thought, though, because Carmela the Bohemian Girl suddenly appeared on the grass-covered surface of the terrace just below and slightly in front of me. She approached the railing, rested her forearms on the edge and stretched her thigh backwards a bit, resting the tips of her toes on the terrace floor. She looked just about ready to kick back and have a smoke while looking out onto the post-twilight sky. Immediately I thought of running for cover just in case she looked up toward me but, helpless in the presence of that body, I tried to etch the image of her hind quarters in my mind so that I would be able jerk off in their memory at some later date – as soon as I had the chance, in fact. Just then, I hit a fat knot of hash in the joint and the aggressive drag I took caused me to cough, loud and violent. As soon as I start to cough, my twenty-five years of abstinence from all sports other than the living room variety come back to haunt me.
‘It’s cold. You should have put on a warmer jacket,’ the little smartass said as she turned up to get a look at me. Someone should have told her that evening gown necklines are not designed to be viewed from an upstairs terrace. In any event, I swore that I would not allow myself to be ridiculed once more.
‘I was lying when I said that bit about the cold,’ I called down to her.
‘Oh, really? And do you lie to everyone or just to piano players?’
‘I lie whenever I can get some kind of advantage out of it.’
‘And what kind of advantage did you gain from lying to me before, if you don’t mind the question?’
‘I’m glad you asked that. It just so happens that you are so fucking hot that if I spend five minutes in your presence I will have to go straight to the bathroom to jerk off and I don’t want to go blind. You know.’
‘In that case, I have another question: are you this crass with everyone or just with piano players?’
‘I thought you believed that everyone should freely express their sexual inclinations.’
‘I’m afraid that yours are not sexual inclinations; they are plain and simple insolence.’
‘Shall I assume, then, that only gays have acceptable sexual inclinations, or do you just find it inappropriate that someone might be turned on by your body?’
‘I find you, in general, to be inappropriate.’
‘That’s why instead of fucking you I’ll have to settle for jerking off. Obviously that’s the only thing about you that interests me.’
‘Oh, really? Why is that the only thing?’
I couldn’t believe it, but the chick was eating this up. It was a serious calculation error on my part: I forgot that every so often you end up with a mental case.
‘All right, all right, skip it already.’
‘No. Why should I?’ she asked.
‘Why? Why?’
‘Right. Why don’t you want to jerk off with me?’
All I could think of right then was to be completely straight with her. When the first lie malfunctions, you don’t have too many options left.
‘Because the only thing about you that interests me is your body. I don’t know anything about the rest of you, but I’m not really interested, either.’
‘So what? … I don’t care much about you beyond your body, either. I like you. Guys like you turn me on. I get the feeling you’d be a good fuck.’
Good God. There is nothing worse than not living up to this type of expectation – and there are, after all, certain girls that fantasise about giant cocks so I decided to take extra precautions.
‘I wouldn’t be so sure of that if I were you.’
‘Well, anyway, it’s all the same to me – if you’ve got a little prick or something it’s not like I’m going to laugh at you. So what’s it going to be? A fuck? Can I get up to that terrace from here?’
‘Hey, hey, hang on a second …’
She had already walked over to where the upper terrace jutted out over the lower one. She looked left and right to make sure the coast was clear, shrugged off the spaghetti straps of her evening gown and removed her breasts from her bra cups.
‘Look. Take a look at my tits. I want you to touch them.’
My little bird went flying up to attention. I couldn’t help it.
‘Come on, tell me how to get up there, I’m all hot and bothered now.’
I was completely unable to maintain a normal train of thought. I should have said no, straightaway, but those tits were like two bundles of heaven. Instead, I began to babble.
‘Swear it, swear it or promise me on your honour that never again after this night will you ever take a single step to try and see me again.’
‘Whaat?’
Oh, fuck it. From up above, I pointed the way toward the other side of the terrace, where there is a little staircase one can climb up without running the risk of being seen from the living room. She tucked her two little treasures back into her dress, hopped up the steps without making too much noise and I received her with open arms. At the first open attack my fly took on the proportions of the Mikerinos pyramid; she pushed her cunt against me and as soon as she felt the bulge she extricated herself from my arms and dragged me over to the bit of wall that led into the bathrooms. She shoved me up against the wall with a sharp thrust, and told me to shut up as she began to take off my belt. Suddenly, she seemed unable to hold back and planted her hand on the zipper as if assessing the contents underneath. Then she lowered the zipper, stuck her hand in and tried to massage the bulge in my boxers. A difficult task. She changed her tactic, and crouched down before me, pushing her way through until she had my boxers down around my ankles and my shirt-tails fluttering in mid-air. Her panting calmed down a bit when she parted the shirt-tails and my genital apparatus appeared before her eyes, in full attack mode. She contemplated it for a moment and then rubbed it with all her might.
‘Well, it’s no cause for fireworks, but there’s enough there,’ she said, which assuaged my nerves a bit – I mean, at least it got an ‘enough.’
And so then, suddenly, I felt a smooth, unmistakable warm feeling, and as I lowered my gaze I found her clinging to the recently approved item. It’s unbelievable: the minute you drop your guard these bohemian babes pounce on you to suck you off.
‘No, no, wait …’ I said. She turned her head up, puzzled, looking at me with my prick in her hand.
‘You don’t like it?’
‘Not so much. Come on, get up on your feet.’
The blow job had set me back a bit, and so I stalled for time by raising her skirt to pat around a bit, here and there.
‘What is it that you like, then?’ she asked.
‘This little thing, right here,’ I answered, having covered just enough terrain to be able to identify what I meant with full precision. She raised a thigh, resting her knee against the wall behind me, giving me room to
lift up her panties and sink my middle finger in the little crevice that was exposed. Pure spring water. She started kissing me, all over my face, thanking me for that little trickle as if the accomplishment were mine. Full-fledged flow. Siphon-like. Niagara.
‘Give it to me,’ she said, a proposal that I found most opportune. I raised her dress even more, lowered her panties with my hand so that she could step out with at least one foot, and I invited her with my body language to climb up and rest her thighs around my hips. She did so. She was heavy, and I couldn’t quite raise her up enough and so my prick ended up squashed against her cunt, hairy and wet as a feverish racoon. We had to turn about 180 degrees and rest her back against the wall – if not, there was no way we would be able to finish off the event. I managed to pull it off by taking three little leaps with my feet together, and once we had positioned ourselves against the wall in a flurry of sighs and frantic movements, I did not make even the most minimal attempt to restrain myself: after a scant few deep thrusts she was already pronouncing the letter O and then, very soon after, my legs had begun to shake under the weight of her body, clinging to mine like a creeping fig bush. I tried to hold the position so that she could continue coming in short spurts, with those delicious spasms, but I was only able to let her rub up and down with relish for a few seconds. I wasn’t straight-on anymore: my cock and I had been reduced to one massive, inconsistent blob, a sad giant with feet of clay.
‘Listen, I’m sorry but I’m going to have to lower you because my legs are going to buckle any second and that’ll kind of kill the mood.’
I must have sounded very serious because my comment made her howl with laughter. Just what we needed. What little bit of strength I had left was not enough to raise her up on my own. I needed some cooperation from her – otherwise her entire dress would scrape against the rough surface of the wall. She continued laughing hysterically, which made me laugh, too, and so we continued slipping and sliding until we were halfway down in a rather difficult position: me with my boxers at half-mast and her with her skirt up around her ears and her panties hanging from the heel of one of her shoes.
