Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man
Page 15
Published by Felix at 12:10 a.m. * Post a comment
Sunday, December 16
Tea in the Sahara
I'm once again in the exotic "Internet café" in the middle of the desert, having a breakfast of mint tea at three in the afternoon. I don't know where I've been since Friday afternoon. I don't remember having left the café or what I did before or after. I think I slept for more than twenty-four hours, but I don't know where.
I woke up with the sun in my eyes. It was filtering in through a small window. My head hurt as if I'd been beaten. I was lying on the foulest-smelling blanket I've ever smelled. I jumped up and ran out of there. I then found myself in a sort of kitchen where a woman and three small kids looked at me with calm curiosity. It smelled like cabbage and curry, and there was an enormous pot on a low fire. I searched for the door with my eyes, then left without saying goodbye.
I walked along the dirt road for a while, blinded by the sun, until I stumbled on a parked car. It took me a bit to realize it was the Renault 12 that I had bought in Marrakesh, and when I tried to put it in gear and then opened the hood in a huff, I realized that the seller hadn't been smiling at me when I left his store. He had been laughing at me! The motor isn't only the least cared-for motor in existence, with pieces missing like the radiator cap and others I wasn't able to identify, but there was also some loose wiring hanging above the radiator. Why wouldn't he laugh? The son of a bitch made the sale of his life.
So I went back to the Internet café. I didn't know where else to go. After I finish writing this and drinking my tea, I'm going to see if I find someone to help me get out of here.
Published by Felix at 2:58 p.m. * Post a comment
Monday, December 17
Djellabah
I'm staying in this small town (when I find out how to spell the name or at least how to pronounce it, I'll let you know). Yesterday, I slept in a room that I rented for five euros a night. For that price, the wife of the mayor gave me a bed (a mat), exotic food and housekeeping service.
For the moment, I've spent the morning chatting (sometimes in French, sometimes in gestures) with my new neighbors. One of them, who hasn't moved from the same seat in the café since I arrived, promised to find me work. I think I understood that he's a farmer, although I haven't seen a single live (or, at least, green) plant around here. Not even my poor non-carnivorous plant would survive here. There's only rocks and sand, but he promised. It's a first step toward freedom, toward living a calmer life, and I don't care about the money (having an Internet café so close, I don't think I'm going to have an issue collecting my sick leave pay), so I accepted. What could I say?
I don't know if I'll have the guts to wear a djellabah (it's like cross-dressing!), but I feel integrated.
At dusk, I woke up in my chair in the café, my neck aching and soaked through with sweat. It's going to be hard for me to accept some of the conditions of my new liberated life, like not having a shower nearby. Since all of my café-mates were also asleep, I went outside to stretch my legs and pay a visit to my car. I locked it, taking everything that I had to the room I've rented.
In these houses, keys don't exist, so after knocking and getting no answer, I entered and walked right into a family conclave underway: sixteen women of all ages. The older women covered their faces with a veil as soon as they saw me, while the youngest scanned me eagerly with their eyes. Those eyes that Moroccan women have.
As soon as I can, I have to ask if what they say is true—that marriages here are negotiated by offering camels to the fathers in exchange for the hand of one of his daughters. It sounds equally sexist and capitalist, but I'm curious. Who knows? Maybe in this place where no one reads Cosmopolitan, I can find a woman who makes me happy and doesn't make my head hurt.
Published by Felix at 2:26 p.m. * Post a comment
Wednesday, December 19
And hookah
I'm back in the same hotel from my first day in Morocco. I gave up.
This morning I woke up again with a headache. I know now that it was the water pipe. The neighbors, those bastards, didn't take me into consideration or didn't take into account my inexperience with those terrible drugs. Even so, I have to be grateful to them: Thanks to them, I had a revealing dream.
In the dream, my Moroccan friend searched online for a job for me picking rocks in the middle of the desert. I was happy with my sun-up, sun-down schedule because when I came back each night to my rented room, I found it full of young virgins who performed the dance of the seven veils for me without music, all girls who belonged to my landlords' family, dozens of virgins who arrived in greater and greater numbers, young women of all ages who danced around me and who I was never able to touch. In my dream, there was a moment when the father appeared and he clapped his hands and all of them sat on the floor to watch me eat dinner. I looked at their veiled faces and discovered that half of them had Laura's dark eyes and the other half had Consuelo's bright eyes, and that in reality there were dozens of Lauras and dozens of Consuelos. I shouted and all of them lowered the veils from their faces and there were Lauras, Consuelos and also M, the curtain of smoke, and the girl from the gym who only talked about her ex, and all of my frustrated attempts at having a normal and reasonable love life. All of them pointed at me and forced me to eat, but the food was tremendously spicy and I ended up with diarrhea in the middle of the desert, not knowing how to get home.
Around noon, after finishing my tea, my old man friend began to speak to me half in Arabic and half in French about a job. I responded in undiluted Spanish: no and no. I stood up, bowed and walked to my car to see if I could get it to start.
After three hours of waiting and four on the road, a taxi driver dropped me off at the hotel. How easy life is with money, and how stupid adventure is. Finding myself once again with Wi-Fi in a hotel room has been like spotting an oasis in the desert, and never has a statement rang truer for me than that one. I know that the dream might sound outlandish. However, the lethargy of the men who spend their lives in the café and the complaisance of the women who served me food made me cringe, and I know that I would have never adapted to that pace of life. The part about diarrhea is real. I still have to interrupt my writing every so often to attend to it. The trip on the highway was done in installments.
Tomorrow I return to Spain. I have no doubt about it. I don't know what I will do back at home. I'll ask to come back from leave and return to work, if only just to see my friends. Yes, I'll ask to come back as soon as I arrive. I'll rebuild my life. I have lots of things to occupy my time, and now that I remember it, in two days I have to appear before a judge to consent to the conditions that Laura stipulated in our separation agreement.
Published by Felix at 12:47 a.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, December 20
Goodnight, Spain
I just took a taxi home from the Madrid airport. The plane, the damn plane from Low-Cost Airlines (if I remember the name I'll file an official complaint) arrived at quarter to four, but what was left of my suitcases didn't appear on the belt until quarter after ten. I'm screwed. I don't know why I came back, but here I am. I'm not going to disappoint Laura or the judge, and I'm going to see if I can find a fresh start or I'm going to find a way to kill myself that's more sedentary than traveling to the desert.
I'm not going to unpack or have dinner. At any rate, there's no wine left. I drank it all just before the psychologist decided that I was crazy and that it's better for me to be depressed at home than at work. Goodnight, Spain.
Published by Felix at 12:06 a.m. * Post a comment
Thursday, December 20
Sign, period
I went and I signed. Why think about it? It's a legal obligation once everything has come to an end, and I have to take it like a man. Sign, period. I confirmed that my relationship with Laura has ended definitively. Divorce and even Captain Thunder if he's so inclined could show up at any time.
I felt so good that I went to work and greeted all
my friends. My sunburn has almost faded and I knew that they would be happy to see me, and I can't deny that I've come back with renewed energy, which even includes the desire to ask to come back from leave and start working again, but I settled for saying hello and stealing them away from there to have a few beers during work hours (what a great pastime). However, before leaving, I had a heavenly encounter. I was telling the secretaries stupid things, pushing my friends toward the elevator in the direction of the bar, when I stumbled on the mail cart.
The girl from the mailroom, so serious and inscrutable like always, smiled at me and said, I see your trip went well. I don't know if it's her privileged position in the company, going from department to department, which keeps her in the loop about everyone, but since she gave me that advice (that I should surprise Consuelo with the plane tickets) I see a sensitivity in her that I've never appreciated before in a woman.
Then, I bowed and I heard how my friends howled behind me. She acted like she didn't hear them and bid me farewell with a smile that said I'm glad you're back and a comment that cured me of everything (I said e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g) that has happened to me in the last year: I hope we see each other at the Christmas party.
I swear, I've never looked forward to the damn loathsome company Christmas party like I do now.
Published by Felix at 3:49 p.m. * Post a comment
Saturday, December 22
Life comes and goes
Dear blog,
She's sleeping. It's true, even though it seems like a dream and, given the time, I keep pinching myself to see if this is real or the fantasy of an ugly, lonely divorcée.
The girl from the mailroom is in the other room, sleeping in my bed. How? Why? I still don't have the answer, but the butterflies I have are so different from what I felt up until now with other women...
How did this happen?
In the end, I decided to go to the company Christmas party. It promised to be the same boring and colorful affair as usual: male colleagues squeezed into formal wear, determined to stuff themselves with more food and alcohol than their suits would allow, and attractive (and not so attractive) female colleagues wearing an excess of make-up and more, too funny. It seems seeing each other outside of work changes our behavior not necessarily for the better.
Until the girl from the mailroom arrived.
She was breathtaking. No jeans or ponytail in sight. She came in a magnificent black dress that would have made me applaud if my jaw hadn't already fallen to the floor. Black from head to toe, no cleavage or slit, but made of such delicate fabric that you could discern her perfect (incredibly perfect!) figure, defying the most basic laws of geometry.
She looked around the room and her dark eyes stopped when they reached mine. I started to tremble, the nervousness reaching fever pitch in my knees as she came over. I probably said something stupid as a greeting, and she burst out laughing with the same quiet kindness with which she leaves mail on your desk. Then, all of the confidence that I lost the day Laura left me came rushing back.
I told her (unable to believe that it was me who was saying the words) that I thought her dress was wonderful and that I was glad to see her there, in the middle of so much rabble. She responded that she was also glad to see me and begged me to stay close to her all night because the rest of our coworkers intimidated her.
I don't want to go into detail. I will only say that dinner was full of laughter and smiles, and that while talking with her I discovered a women who must be a rare breed. She's not only kind, friendly and not at all superficial, but I found out she doesn't drink, doesn't have dogs or an ex, and later, does have breasts and doesn't need the lights to be turned off to make love.
A few hours ago we ended up at my house. By her own initiative.
It's interesting the twists and turns that life takes. It comes and it goes. Just when everything seemed finished, she, the girl from the mailroom, appeared through the veil of routine that makes us all see the world as motionless pieces on the stage of our everyday life (read: the office), and I managed to see her without the mask, like a person—and what a person she is! It's true that life is unfair (it's always unfair) and it's not at all unusual to find your Ideal Woman (with all of the ingredients you've been searching for) like Consuelo, only to fall in love with someone else who's nothing like her. And that's what has suddenly happened to me.
She's sleeping now, but a little while ago, as we were resting next to each other in silence, she looked at me, and seeing her magnificent nudity and the mix of shyness and excitement in her eyes, I couldn't help but say something out loud. You were right in front of my eyes the whole time, but I didn't see you. She smiled and hugged me silently. Then, taking her time, she whispered something that I didn't understand initially, but in the stillness of the night sounded like, I was there, waiting for you the whole time, a promise that for the first time in my life didn't scare me, didn't make me run out of there. I hugged her tighter and she pretended to fall asleep.
A little later, thinking about the turns that my life has taken, from when I thought I was happily married until now, I felt sorry for Laura, who messed up when she chose me and who thinks she's escaped to a better life. I also felt sorry for Consuelo, who I never was able to understand, because she knew that she didn't suit me but she accepted it. In spite of everything, I have no hard feelings for her. Consuelo gave me a lot of consuelo (ha ha, I keep making the same stupid joke with that play on words), and thinking about it, I realized that even after making love to her, I still didn't know the name of the Girl From the Mailroom.
Dolores, my name is Dolores, she told me, and I don't know if I was thinking aloud or I asked her. A chill ran down my spine. Dolores means “pain” in Spanish, and doing the math, if Consuelo gave me consolation (C = c), what can I expect from Dolores?
And I got up slowly, and went to write it all down in my blog.
Published by Felix at 4:02 a.m. * Post a comment
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Diary of an Ugly, Recently Divorced Man is a fiction project that was born from the anecdotes of some friends whose marriages had broken up. The sense of humor with which they accepted their fate inspired me to start writing. At the time, I wasn't involved in any complicated projects, I had just finished a novel, and I only had rough ideas for some short stories. What's more, my most recent work had been characterized by poetic gloom or social concerns, so I needed to get back in touch with the sense of irony and roguish spirit which are always lurking within me and which I've enjoyed so many times in stories by such caustic authors like Tom Sharpe or Gabriel Barrios Fedriani, who in one comment captured the strength of this character—that he's ever the philosopher, not matter the circumstances. My friends pushed me, literally, giving me more and more anecdotes—not all of them funny—and motivating me to create my Ugly Man. My meetings with them, which were somewhat more uncivilized than the ones that appear in Diary, compose the other pillar of inspiration; their names, used with their permission, are accompanied by some changes to their personalities because as real people, there comes a moment when they stop being believable.
The online blog appeared as an alternative to the traditional diary. It gave me another kind of creative freedom, and soon I was to gauge reader interest and response. A problem arose when after publishing the first pages of the diary, many began to take what I wrote seriously. Not only did I receive messages of consolation and understanding, but also a few less-than-decent propositions that, as a married man, I had to ignore. The plot continued to evolve and the character continued to develop, enriched by experiences real and invented, and the thing began to take on a life of its own.
Launched in April 2007, the work lived online for some years, and now continues in the form of a trilogy of electronic books. There are many people who have encouraged the Ugly Man and warmly embraced him.
The author can't take all the credit. To everyone, thank you.
Felix Amador
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