Bringing Home the Birkin

by Michael Tonello

  We had been happily making the “scene” and hosting dinner parties for half a decade now, and couldn’t be more contented as roommates. (Our biggest disagreement was usually about who would play us in the movie version of our Ptown years—I was holding out for James Spader, she Dyan Cannon, but the debate was ongoing.) And, besides my comfy quarters, just living in Ptown was a luxury. There were only three thousand of us “townies,” versus the sixty thousand “day-trippers” who made the trek to the tip of the Cape on an average day in August. I secretly reveled in the sense of privilege that accompanied staying after Columbus Day, and in being one of the only witnesses to the scope of season in a town ruled by ocean. (This may be slightly less than honorable, but I also loved sitting next to the radio on Race Point Beach on Labor Day, enjoying one of the last days of summer and hearing the reports on the miles of traffic backed up on the bridges that led off the Cape.) But truly, there is an austerity to the winter bleakness of a tourist town, and a ghostly specter of summer that makes the wait for spring bearable. If you have borne the chilling winds and gray skies and white capped views, you know yourself more deserving of the easy charm of June, July, and August. But as noble as we year-rounders felt, there is no question that Ptown remains a New England summer haven, a combination of Martha’s Vineyard and Key West, with a well-deserved history of harboring artists of every imaginable persuasion. (I never tired of knowing that on any given night I could brush shoulders with Norman Mailer or Michael Cunningham.) But I was starting to have qualms about the impermanency of life there, maybe a reflection of my late onset of adulthood. Everyone I met was on their way to somewhere else. At one time this had been exciting, but now it just made me wonder—where was I going?

  It wasn’t until the packing boxes arrived the following week that Kate panicked. Despite our conversation the other night, I could tell she had still assumed I was taking a sabbatical, not becoming an expatriate.

  “My Lord, just how long are you planning to be gone?” she asked, sounding more emotional than her normal low-key self.

  I almost responded sarcastically, something along the lines of “Forever, hopefully.” But when I glanced up from the box I was packing and saw the look on her face, I immediately bit my tongue. Judging from her forlorn expression, Kate needed a hug, not a funny rejoinder. I suddenly felt sad too, not just for her, but for us.

  “Kate, you know I will always come back to visit…but I think I really need to do this Spain move.” I tried to sound as gentle as possible, but firm too. I didn’t want her waiting for me to come back, when I was determined to make a new life for myself in Europe.

  “Well, I guess we’ll just have to make this summer the best one ever,” she said, smiling wanly as she spoke. She was finally accepting my departure, but it wasn’t easy for her. I could sense that it was going to take everything she had to accept the end of our years together. Knowing Kate, I’d bet good money that our Provincetown phone line is still in my name.

  I’d begun the arduous process of putting my affairs in order. My half decade in Provincetown coming to a close, I realized how much fun I’d had. Accustomed to being surrounded on nearly every side, not only by icy Atlantic waters but by a warm circle of friends, I would miss it here. My days of wining, dining, and carousing at the Atlantic House were almost over. My friends, grief-stricken by the news of my impending departure, did what you’d expect. They nearly killed me with a never-ending stream of chemical toxins ingested nearly nightly at all my favorite bars around town. It’s a summer I will long remember, or, more accurately, wish I could. The weeks flew by in a blur of bubble wrap and bottles of bubbly. Andy Warhol had his fifteen minutes, John Lennon had his lost weekend, and I had my summer of living in oblivion. But when crunch time arrived, I realized something else that summer too. Although I did enjoy life’s simple pleasures, I wasn’t exactly Amish when it came to accumulation. I went on a rampage through the house. I Dumpstered, I divvied, I divested.

  In the end, I stashed my remaining worldly possessions into a U-Haul storage facility. Boxes and boxes of books and photographs, enough designer clothing for a runway show, a couple dozen pieces of Roseville pottery, miscellaneous antique mahogany furniture, and my two Martin Friedman oil paintings were crammed into the tiny space. Boston’s real estate market being what it was, I briefly considered renting it out as a somewhat cozy, but really luxe, studio apartment, best suited for petite masters of feng shui. Hey, I needed to be creative; I was still ironing out my financials.

  Standing there looking at it all stacked like cordwood, I took pause. As George Carlin puts it, it was just “stuff.” But it was my stuff, and none of it was going to Spain. Oh well, in for a peseta, in for a pound. I returned to my car (already sold), where two jumbo suitcases sat in the trunk, bursting at the seams with all the Prada, Ralph Lauren, and Jil Sander I would need for the time being. I hoped Barcelona was as ready for me as I was for it.

  3

  Vespas and Vespers

  After a couple weeks of sightseeing and forays into Barcelona’s nightlife (conveniently, my hotel served continental breakfast at six A.M.—right after last call), I suddenly remembered I wasn’t on vacation. I needed to get an apartment.

  At $120 a night, the Hotel del Pi wasn’t exactly within my budget. Of course, I didn’t really know my budget, but dropping $4,000 a month for bed and bath seemed a little high. It was time to go house hunting.

  At the real estate office I was handed a form on a clipboard to complete, and I obediently sat down in the row of vinyl chairs that the receptionist had indicated. I felt unusually anxious and I thought it could be the vibe in there, which was reminiscent of a DMV or the waiting area in a hospital. As I puzzled over the questionnaire (written in Spanish, of course), I realized what actually was bugging me. Up until this day, I had been but a return ticket away from going home. Now, answering questions like ¿cuántos dormitorios?, I realized that no matter how many bedrooms I settled on, I was going to be sleeping in Spain. Once I found my apartment, there’d be no flying over the Atlantic to get home—instead, I had to make my own home across the Atlantic. I had to grow up, and really commit to my new life, once and for all—of course I was anxious. But then again, they say the chemicals your body produces when anxious are the same ones it produces when you are in love. And what I felt for Barcelona sure seemed like the real thing to me.

  None of the nightmare scenarios many people had predicted had yet befallen me, either. I had been able to connect with people, regardless of the language barrier. In Spain every person takes English in school, although I should note that getting them to actually use it is another matter. I broke the code pretty quickly, though: only their embarrassment held them back, so if I used my really rotten Spanish, people were more than happy to use their not-so-rotten English. I was finding the “barrier” something that I could easily hop. (Additionally, as Barcelona was already well on its way to being the “new Paris,” I met people from all over Europe all the time, and most spoke English to one degree or another.) I wasn’t lonely, or isolated, or homesick; I didn’t miss drive-thrus, strip malls, trailer parks, or open-container laws. I never pictured myself as someone who would make the move to Europe, but there I was, and I couldn’t be happier. Yet even with all my rationalization, and my burgeoning love of Barcelona, it was still very strange to be in that office, sitting on a vinyl chair, peering at a form in black and white, and knowing a single irrevocable fact: once I signed a lease, I would truly be an expatriate.

  With a building boom going on in Barcelona, literally hundreds of apartments were available, but I was distinctly unmotivated to settle on one. There were a couple of reasons for this. One of them was my handsome Spanish real estate agent. I had grown somewhat addicted to bouncing over Barcelona’s cobblestone streets on the back of his Vespa. The main reason, though, was the simple fear of making a mistake—a standard apartment lease in Spain is five years long (and unlike marriage, there is no way out). I was shown many beautiful
apartments, but for me the decision boiled down to a real estate cliché: location, location, and location. I couldn’t for the life of me settle on a neighborhood. I narrowed it down to the Eixample, the Borne, and the Barrio Gottico. The Eixample was Barcelona’s “gay ghetto”—a smooth transition from Provincetown, plus I could easily walk home after clubbing. The Borne boasted cutting-edge galleries, trendy boutiques, and avant-garde eateries, all nestled around the Picasso Museum—creating a Spanish SoHo that never failed to charm me. My hotel sat squarely in the Barrio Gottico, which was home to Barcelona’s famous Las Ramblas, a kilometer-long pedestrian mall lined with sycamore trees. I had already gotten into the habit of taking my morning constitutional there, replete with iced cortado. (I really dug that in my new city September was still summer.) I wavered daily between these three near-perfect choices. I tried to come up with a scheme to leave my housing quandary to fate, and failed even at that. I would have flipped a coin, but I couldn’t find any three-sided ones; my crystal ball was back in my storage unit in the States; and I didn’t know enough Spanish to explain to anyone the concept of drawing straws. I was stuck. I started to wonder if my commitment phobia was about to land me in the poorhouse.

  I needn’t have worried. Cupid struck in the form of a two-hundred-year-old, recently renovated apartment building. I’ve always been a romantic, and it was truly love at first sight. The building sat directly on the Ramblas and was a postcard of everything I liked most in Spanish architecture. Six stories of glass and stone, adorned with wrought-iron balconies and newly installed French glass doors, it exuded both Old World charm and the aroma of fresh paint. The first two stories of the ancient façade had been converted into a glass-enclosed atrium, accommodating a sumptuous marble-and-mahogany entrance lobby. It was I. M. Pei meets Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. My heart was already pounding as I stepped off the elevator and walked across a steel-and-glass footbridge. The massive apartment door opened on crisp white walls and brand-new light oak hardwood floors. Huge windows (a rare feature in Spanish-style architecture) flooded the apartment with daylight. They overlooked the adjacent rooftops, providing both a charming exterior view and an immediate sense of interior expanse. When I stepped out the double-glass doors from the living room onto the large balcony and spotted the Olympic Tower, I knew I’d be signing a lease. My Vespa-riding days were officially over.

  The Hotel del Pi was only two blocks from my new home. However, when you added in the hotel’s five flights of stairs, my two jumbo suitcases (which weighed more than me), the crowds of tourists aimlessly meandering on the Ramblas, and the goddamn cobblestones, it felt more like two miles. I arrived sweaty but triumphant. Home sweet home. I spent the afternoon cleaning and settling in—mapping out a furniture floor plan, drafting a list of immediate necessities, and weighing my options on various window treatments.

  The day whizzed by, but then at dusk, disaster struck. I flipped a switch and discovered my recessed lighting system was lacking two essential components—lights and electricity. Hm. On a whim, I went to the kitchen and tried the sink. No water. Still, no real biggie—I figured I needed to make some calls in the morning. I could tough it out for a night. Hell, I was already resigned to a sleeping bag—it would be like camp, minus the evening vespers and the marshmallows. I ran down to the corner store and bought a couple boxes of votives, a case of bottled water, and some wine. Nothing was going to ruin the first day in my new apartment. I’d already devised a master plan: takeout by candlelight.

  Feeling ludicrously pleased with myself for my unflagging optimism, I snagged some menus from the lobby. But when I picked up the phone, my plan—and my optimism—crumbled. No dial tone. I opened the bottle of wine. Hm again. My evening vespers were turning into taps. Try as I might to positively spin this new development, halfway through the bottle of wine I had still only come up with one truly cheering thought—the suitcases could stay right the hell where they were. I decided that sitting in the dark drinking was getting me nowhere, so I packed a carry-on and headed back to the hotel.

  The next morning, after yet another bleary-eyed continental breakfast, I made some calls from the room. I discovered that my utilities would not be functioning for quite some time—nine or ten days, to be exact. And as far as the light fixtures went, apparently they were the tenant’s responsibility. The moving-in experience was undoubtedly one of the few cultural differences between Spain and the States that I found slightly less than charming. No wonder their leases were five years long—no one ever wanted to have to move again.

  4

  Warding Off Trouble

  Less than two weeks later, my apartment had all sorts of newfangled modern conveniences: water, electricity, telephone, lights, and a bed. I was thrilled to be finally feathering my nest. Not that it was all wine and roses. Those initial housing cultural differences were more numerous than I had first supposed. I had been so thoroughly infatuated and blindingly starry-eyed on that original visit, I had failed to note a somewhat glaring architectural omission—a complete lack of closets. For anyone else, this would be highly problematic, but for me it was near catastrophic. The only thing I currently had a lot of was clothes, and I shuddered to think about what I had in storage. Fortunately the Aussie who installed the lights did double duty as a carpenter (he also did the window treatments—go figure). I was already hemorrhaging money, what was another couple grand for the glory of closet privileges? And I reasoned that one of the freshly acquired armoires could double as a coffin when I retired to my pauper’s grave. Don’t get me wrong, normally I reveled in excessive leisure time, but at the rate I was spending money, I was more than ready to see a paycheck again. Now that I was (mostly) settled in, I was eager to start slinging jewelry.

  Then Ward called. He sounded a little weird, and almost immediately launched into a lengthy, complicated speech about businessy things like logistics and cost analysis. I gradually realized that beneath the surface of his convoluted language choices and purposefully indirect delivery lurked two rather salient facts, one of which piggybacked on the other. Fact one: he wasn’t going to move his manufacturing to Barcelona, hence, fact two: I wasn’t going to be working for him. This led me to a personal fact three—I was screwed.

  I managed to subdue my growing panic and assured Ward I’d be okay. We exchanged good-byes, and as soon as the receiver was in its cradle, I calmly assessed the situation. Okay, that’s a huge lie, I totally freaked. Here I was with a five-year lease, no work visa, and a rather significant language barrier. Unless I could find an under-the-table job that only involved asking people their name and ordering a beer, I was up the shit creek without a paleta.

  I was going to handle this like a man. I called my mother. Lucky for me, my mother was not the normal kind of mom. She wasn’t going to freak out at the idea of her firstborn stranded in a foreign country without any way to earn an honest buck. No, my mother had unflappable poise and a matter-of-fact approach to dilemmas. People sometimes remarked on the resemblance she bore to the actress Tyne Daly, from that old cop show Cagney and Lacey. And, like Lacey, my mother never missed a trick—and she could detect a lie a mile off. Now, this may not sound so comforting (and when I’d missed curfew at sixteen it sure wasn’t), but at times like this it was exactly what the doctor ordered. I wanted some down-to-earth advice, not someone who would reinforce my panic. And as always, she came through, cool as a cucumber.

  She reminded me I still had my hair and makeup skills, and, more important, a history of “stepping in shit and coming out roses” (no paleta necessary in that analogy). We also decided I’d come to Florida for Christmas. Besides getting to see much-missed family and friends, it would give me an opportunity for a side trip up north to raid my storage locker. (I was determined to get my money’s worth out of those damned Aussie armoires.) I got off the phone before she ran out of good bolstering material and mentioned that I still had my health—that would be too depressing. As it was, I felt marginally better after our talk.

>   I had barely hung up the phone when it rang again. It was my dad, the comedian in the family. He managed to fit a lot of personality into a somewhat shorter-than-average Italian frame. Although he wasn’t usually the one I called for advice, he came through big that night with a story about my youthful ambition, one that I had almost forgotten.

  When I was fifteen, what I wanted more than anything was to go on the Paris trip with the rest of my French class. My parents, who had never been to Europe themselves, told me that in order to go, I needed to earn my own way. To come up with the $900 or so, a veritable fortune to me at the time, I would need to be creative. After much brainstorming, I hatched a plan, one that required a little financial investment and a lot of time investment. For me and my limited teenage resources (time I had, money—not so much), it was ideal. On weekends, my dad used to golf at Halifax Country Club (about an hour’s drive from Boston), and that became the venue. For three months of summer weekends, I rode to the course with him at the rather unpleasantly early hour of six A.M., rented a golf cart, and threw my “coolers” (two trash cans full of ice) into the back. I was a moving concession stand—I sold potato chips, sandwiches (freshly made by yours truly), and sodas. All day long I simply drove the course, selling everything at a considerable markup to red-faced golfers. Did my plan work? Oui, and it created a lifelong belief in creative enterprise. I think my dad’s point was, if I could get to Paris at fifteen, I could probably survive in Barcelona more than twenty years later. But, knowing my dad, it could also have been his way of telling me that if all else failed, I could always break into the Spanish golf-course concession scene.