The Kebab Queens

It might sound a bit silly, or greedy, or both. But there are songs that make me feel not only powerful but also power-hungry. I’m talking about a song by Coldplay called Viva la vida; not that I am a big fan of this band, actually I’ve always sustained that if a boiled hake had a voice, it would be Chris Martins’.
Apparently, this song was used to motivate the players of the football team that has won three cups after a historical season. (“I used to rule the world, seas would rise when I gave the word”) Not that I’m a big fan of football either, but this fact captured my attention, for it takes to a higher level the motivation you can bring out from certain notes or chords or lyrics.
I can easily imagine all those alfa males listening to the song and removing everything from their heads until the only thing they are able to imagine is winning. (I used to roll the dice, feel the fear in my enemies’ eyes.”)
I use music all the time to motivate myself when I head to the office at seven in the morning, or when I have to go to the supermarket and face up to dozens of old ladies armed with shopping carts. I use it when it rains and I forgot my umbrella, and when I miss someone but want to feel as happy as if they were around.
There was a time when I didn’t need to feed my confidence in order to succeed, I didn’t even think about it in those terms. I had to do something; I did it, I was the best, end of story. But living involves failing, too. And I’ve learnt from my failures that intelligence is not a blank check that guarantees that everything is gonna work out well for you. (“One minute I held the key, next the walls were closed on me.”) Things get even more complicated if your success doesn’t only depend on you.
Some days ago I was a bit worried because I had to perform that belly dance show I have been rehearsing since Christmas. Four years ago, when I moved to this outlaying neighbourhood where I live, I decided to join a dance group to feel I belonged here, maybe put down some roots.
The other women’s reasons for being in this group are also far from having something to do with improving their dance skills. For most of them it is a way out of their routine, a time to laugh or talk about their lives, complaints and miseries. But when they dance and focus on moving their hips and breasts they are just women. Nothing else. No less. And the sensual movements of that dance awaken their inner feminine power. After a couple of hours they go back home with a renewed interest in having sex with their husband (if they have one), or a sudden desire to cook spicier meals in their tiny kitchens. Once, one of the women of the dance group asked our teacher if it was possible to choreograph a dance with shorter steps.
“I have to rehearse in the kitchen, which is only two metres wide. I can’t take long steps or movements without ending up in the sitting-room, where my husband and son would laugh at me if they saw me dancing.” (“It was the wicked and wild wind, blew down the doors to let me in.”)
Obviously, that didn’t put our teacher off choreographing a dance with all its corresponding long steps for a sort of end-of-course party. The idea of performing it on a stage in front of the rest of the neighbourhood was definitely a bad one. I mean all those people don’t have no reason to see in us anything more than a quirky non homogeneous troup of working class women dressed up as odalisques, embarrassing themselves, showing, in some cases, their lack of rhythm and flexibility. They don’t necessarily need to be able to see those magical feminine connections I mentioned some lines ago. That’s why I decided I would take the Coldplay song to our last rehearsal before the show (I bought a couple of six packs, too. The song is powerful but, failing that, I knew the beer would do the trick.)
When I put the CD on and the first notes sounded, all the women in our dance room, as if powered by a spring, started jumping, and laughing and screaming and dancing to that song, dressed in those incongruent outfits and with a can of beer in our hands. (“For some reason I can’t explain, I know Saint Peter won’t call my name.”)
Then came another song and another beer, and another. And at some point I guess we walked to the stage and danced in front of all the neighbourhood, and that in some video recordings there will be inmortalized our tipsy look and our (still) sensual movements. I just remember that I had great fun, which necessarily means we were immense.
Nevertheless, I can’t help thinking about those elements I had to turn to in order to build some confidence in myself to do things I know I can do. Then I miss those times when succeeding was an accident, like being young and spontaneous, a time when I enjoyed an unstructured charm and the unintended soul of a leader. (“But that was when I ruled the world.”)

The North Pole

There's a man and his canvas briefcase. He will sit on the metro every morning and spend there around thirty of the earliest minutes of his day, either looking straight ahead, where I usually am, or reading a book. I should know nothing about him for we are strangers and, nevertheless, I know so many things.
I know, for instance, that he can read. He can read, and reads, thus he understands and maybe gets intrigued too. And he focuses on that intrigue or understanding, though sometimes he doesn’t, and then he chooses not to read.
But when he does, he takes his glasses out of his briefcase, steams them up with his breath and rubs them with a lens cloth. He puts them on and, suddenly, the letters and I come into focus in his eyes.
Sometimes he chooses to look at me, or he doesn’t choose to and he just can’t help it, though he is very concerned about me not noticing. But the thing is I always notice everything.

I’ve noticed, for instance, that when he doesn’t read, he looks like any sad-faced fifty-odd year old man going to work, more aware of the way life has wreaked havoc on his face than of the world around him. He just sits on his seat, and grabs his briefcase firmly with both hands, as if it were the hips of a woman. Then I feel sorry for him because he looks as if he hasn’t been kissed for a long time.

On some occasions he wears a t-shirt that says “North Pole” and the potential connections between us just melt tragically. And I would like to ask him:“Have you ever been to the North Pole? Are you intending to?” And if he answered “No” I would tell him he must be careful with what is written on his clothes because it’s meaningful, evocative and should signify something for him, since he’s spreading those two words around the world.
In addition to those letters, on that t-shirt there’s an imprecise drawing of an arctic landscape, with the blurred silhouette of an igloo, and also something like the grid reference of the area, if my memory serves me right. And perhaps yes, perhaps he dreams about going there or he doesn’t dwell on the possibility seriously but he considers it a sort of Promised Land.

This I don’t know.

What I do know, however, is that he breathes and every two days shaves. I know that some days he must curse his luck and some other days he must feel joyful. I know that some things will make him smile, and some will make him cry a river. I know that once his hair was a colour other than grey, and his wrinkles didn’t stay in place when he changed his expression. And I know that North Pole t-shirt is, in fact, a resistance to what he is. Those exciting horizons claim freedom, courage, but his is just the kind of t-shirt that some people will buy, at some point, no matter what it says, without taking into account the contradictory message they’re sending to the rest of us. Their inner beauty sinks under the North Pole waters and only remains visible to those looking with an open heart.

If I could only sit next to him and suggest him:

“Let’s go to the North Pole. If you don’t go, that place will always be a metaphor for your lack of identity."

He would stare at me distrustfully, but then I would say:

“… I can kiss you too, if you want. You look as if you haven’t been kissed for a long time."

If I wouldn’t, he would stay subjugated to the sad slavery of the letters on his t-shirt, totally unaware of the fact that his clothes are really important lessons about how we live our lives.
I mean his and mine.

Grietas por todas partes

Anoche, viendo una película de Jim Jarmusch, me di cuenta de que siento cierta inclinación por los perdedores –digo perdedores en el sentido estético de la palabra–, más que por ningún otro tipo de personajes de ficción. La razón es clara y simple: tal y como les ocurre a ellos, mis armarios de cocina no cierran bien, mis muebles no pegan unos con otros, no me compro zapatos nuevos hasta que los que tengo están destrozados, y las paredes de mi casa tienen grietas. A través de esas grietas, se cuela el invierno. Seguro que por ellas también se escapan algunas cosas.

A veces observo las grietas, aunque otras veces me olvido de que existen y no las veo. Pero de vez en cuando me doy cuenta de que se han agrandado y sé que ello es el resultado de un proceso que tiene lugar cada noche. Porque de noche oigo la casa.
Cuando estoy en la cama con todas las luces apagadas es cuando oigo los crujidos de mi casa al estirarse desperezándose, enfrentándose a los cambios de temperatura, empezando el día ahora que el mío se ha terminado. Vengo a sentirme como si compartiera casa con mi propia casa, por así decirlo. No es tan distinto a tener un compañero de piso noctámbulo, excepto porque por la mañana no te encuentras sus platos sucios y sus ceniceros en la pila de la cocina.
En algunas ocasiones la casa ha ido demasiado lejos y sus ruidos han sido más intensos y profundos, como si el techo estuviera a punto de caerse. Evidentemente, no puedo decir que sepa lo que eso significa, pero lo interpreto como una queja porque ha llegado la primavera y no estoy pintando la casa, como haría la mayoría de la gente. Algunas noches he estado a punto de levantarme de la cama y gritarle a las paredes: “Eh, casa, yo también tengo grietas y no dramatizo tanto.” Pero la casa ya debe saber, como yo, que las grietas son sin duda un rasgo característico de los perdedores. Quizá no tanto las grietas, sino como la falta de resistencia al hecho de que existan.

Las paredes de la casa donde vivía cuando era una niña estaban todas empapeladas, pero yo reseguía el papel pintado por toda la sala de estar todo el pasillo y las habitaciones con mi manita y sentía las grietas bajo los dibujos de flores. Me hacían sentir incómoda, porque no se pretendía que se vieran, pero allí estaban, podían sentirse, amenazadoras como un secreto vergonzoso. Me prometí que algún día tendría una casa tan blanca y lisa como una tarta nupcial, pero siempre me las he arreglado para acabar viviendo en casas cuyas paredes parecían más bien un plato de arroz con leche. No sólo las paredes; con los años me he encontrado grietas en mi piel, en mis conocimientos y en mis convicciones. Grietas en mis labios, en mi felicidad y en mis defectos. Grietas por todas partes, que nos exponen a millones de influencias, como el amor y la luz, y la duda y el envejecimiento.
De todos modos, al final, esas fisuras que mis deditos reseguían por las paredes de la casa de mi infancia acabaron siéndome familiares, y tocarlas me tranquilizaba. En cierto modo, sentía que esas grietas eran más ciertas que las flores del papel pintado, en el que siempre era primavera, mientras que a través de las grietas teníamos acceso a todas las estaciones del año. Y las certezas son reconfortantes, no importa lo duras que sean.

Si la casa pudiera ver las cosas desde mi punto de vista, tal vez dejaría de quejarse. No soy perfecta y mi casa no es una tarta nupcial. Tapar nuestras grietas no cambiaría eso; sólo nos convertiría en verdaderos perdedores, en todos los sentidos de la palabra, excepto en el estético, por supuesto.

 

Every bread you make

It feels good. I mean creating something. Anything. A short story, a drawing, a baby, a brick wall, a turd. A loaf of bread. You pick a few things from around you and then produce something with a shape, a texture, a character. You can give them a name. Take photos of them. Buy them accessories. Take them out for a walk. Maybe these last proposals wouldn’t really work for the turd, or the brick wall, but even so. What I really mean is, I don’t think I can cope with a baby right now, not to mention I can’t draw. I can write stories but I don’t get my hands dirty by doing that. I started baking bread because I can’t draw. Yeah, that’s how it all happened.
I’ve made two decent drawings in my life, both on the same day: one of a guy and one of a seagull. I called them “Guy” and “Seagull”. Since them I haven’t been able to draw properly again, but I still need to do it sometimes. Some things you can’t describe, it doesn’t work, they lose all the spirit you’ve seen in them in that very moment, the art gets spoiled. Creating means projecting onto an object a sudden glimpse of comprehension of the world you live in. Sometimes writing can express this, but sometimes you need something else. Taking a picture, or shooting a film, composing a song, arranging a choreography, building a wall and ruining your hands doing it. Or drawing a picture. It’s clear that expressing oneself takes more than one skill. That’s why my notebooks are full of written babies, drawings and walls, detailed descriptions, useless as literary material, of things I will never be able to produce.
Then the bread machine appeared out of nowhere and I knew my frustrations had come to a provisional end. I took it off a shelf in the supermarket and, as I was holding the cardboard box, I already felt like a goddess. I understood it would be to me a top hat I could put feelings into and pull some bread out. They might not become a work of art, but the ideas and thoughts that are not meant to be written would have a shape, a body. And the smell of yeast invading all the corners of my flat would be their soul.
I just have to pick all the ingredients and leave the machine do all the kneading. Then I can talk to the dough for a couple of hours or so, or put some suitable music on. I can tell it jokes or cry a little. I can show it my boobs. I can do whatever it takes. Then my hands will give it the right shape and bake it. Three hours later I’ll be holding in my hands the warm result of that process, and give it a name. My first bread was a white ciabatta, with olives and herbs. I told it a secret and called it Renata. Then came Rita, which was quite a sad whole grain bread with raisins, that was raised listening to Portishead. Later I made a rye bread with beer and sunflower seeds and I called it Lou, and then a nut and chocolate bread and named it Thomas. I danced for both of them. And they have all existed just because I can’t draw, but they have done the trick as well as the drawing would have done. They stop all the noise of the world in my head for a while, and make me feel so good, just like washing machines in motion, or the embrace of a man in a flannel shirt. I eat them on their own, though most people insist on saying how bland it is to eat bread without oil or ham or cheese or butter. They could never imagine how good it tastes to eat all my affection.

A mile in my mother's trousers

I'm in my parent’s dining room, sitting on a chair, in front of the dining table. There’s hot, thick green stuff all over me. My parents are sitting on the sofa, staring at me; their mouths wide open. None of us knows exactly where the cat is but, by now, he must have found the greatest hiding place ever. He knows he has been bad, though I don’t really think he planned to bathe me in spinach soup. But when he decided he would take a run-up to execute a great jump from the floor and skid on the table, he was clearly looking for some kind of effect.

My parents start apologising as if everything was their fault. They also start calling the cat, saying “where are you, you naughty thing?” as if they were speaking to a little child. No heads will roll, so I just say “It’s ok” and go to the bathroom to try to clean my clothes, but there’s no way. I decide I’ll take them off, stuff them into a plastic bag and put them in the washing machine when I get home. Then I go into what used to be my bedroom and I realise I don’t have any clothes to wear. I didn’t leave anything at my parent’s, not a single t-shirt. My mum comes into what is now her room, looks at me just wearing my underwear and a pair of orange and blue striped socks and says:

“I’ll get you something of mine”.

Uh-oh. The prospect of wearing my mum’s clothes is not especially exciting, but I don’t think I have a choice. Five minutes later she is passing me out a red top –very nice, I bought it myself and gave it to her last Christmas- and a pair of black trousers. As I’m trying to button them up and going through the humiliating process of accepting my mum is slimmer than me, I can hear her saying:

“You can keep them if you want. I never wear them.”
“They don’t fit you, right?”
“Oh, it’s not that. It’s just I only wear them at funerals.”

Brilliant. I sense some kind of bad omen behind this fact, which becomes a reality when I put on my trainers and everything starts to go downhill. The trousers are far too short for me, so my flashy striped socks show between them and the trainers. My green coat doesn’t go with the rest of my attire. My blue and orange socks weren’t intended to be visible. Apart from that, I can’t breathe with the trousers on, so I won’t be able to sit down on the metro unless I undo them. Saying that I look absolutely ridiculous is an understatement. But my mum looks at me absent-mindedly because her favourite tv quiz show has started and says:

“You look very pretty, love.”

But I know that if I go outside in these trousers I’ll be attending my dignity’s funeral. And I do it anyway. And I feel as if I have accepted a stupid bet and I’m just finding out that the reward isn’t worth it. And I feel slightly scared when I put my feet on the pavement, exactly like when I was a child and I had to walk to school in a homemade fancy dress costume. I pray that I won’t meet any friends or acquaintances, especially those that would judge me, either for my trousers or for my lack of confidence. It’s a long way to my place, so on the metro I discreetly undo the trousers and take a seat, in front of an old lady who stares at my multicoloured socks with serious concern, then stares at me frowning from behind her extra thick glasses and goes back to the socks again. I look at her and think “At least I don’t smell of pee”, but it doesn’t make me feel better. I look at my socks and suddenly feel happy to be wearing them today, because they’re an act of defiance to those trousers I want to get rid of. I can’t help but see them as a prelude to a life in front of tv quiz shows. And I decide I’ll throw them away and I’ll get my mum a pair of striped socks.

“Only wear them for funerals”, I’ll say to her. And she will smile, and know what I mean.

My Sunday Rest

There's a dildo living at the bottom of my bedside table draw. It has been living there for a long time, and I seldom take it out. It is average size, the usual shape, but I’ve never been very fond of its slippery texture, like that of a used condom. I’ve never been very fond of its colour either. My dildo is bright purple, looks like a penis from outer space. I know this is a totally arbitrary association of ideas, but that’s the way it feels. And I don’t have many fantasies about creatures from other planets. Sometimes I see it more as a complement for a toy I don’t have: the disproportionate member of a Buzz Lightyear. To be honest, this idea doesn’t turn me on either.

Leaving aside concerns about the colour, the great thing about it is that it can vibrate. It can keep the precision and the rhythm like nothing else. It can do all the work while you just go deeper into your fantasies. And just with the help of two small batteries which, unfortunately, last Sunday had run out.
It wasn’t really a big deal, I mean the fact that the dildo wouldn’t work, I can usually do without it, but, somehow, I had already planted a seed in my brain: the idea of using it. It was like, for instance, when I’m cooking couscous and I imagine it will have zucchini in it. Even if I don’t usually use it so therefore I know it’s not necessary, if I have imagined it, I can leave the couscous and run with the apron under my coat to get one zucchini from the greengrocer’s. Something similar happened with the dildo on Sunday. I had imagined the evening would be funnier with it, and I just thought going out for five minutes to get some batteries would be worth it.

I put on my jeans, my trainers, and a coat and I buttoned it up to hide the fact that I was not wearing a bra. I tied my hair back in a ponytail; took the keys and my purse and ran downstairs. When I got outside, the silence, the isolation, the shop doors closed and that Sunday sensation made me realize that it was, indeed, Sunday. No problem. There’s plenty of convenience stores around, they are everywhere, they sell a wide variety of things, they will have batteries.

Course they will.

I just have to walk a few meters to get to the closest shop, open as usual, with the manager sitting back in a chair, watching a Bollywood film. It’s what he always does, at any time, no matter when you go, sitting in the same position without any alteration. He must be in his early forties; his skin is dark brown, and because of the poor light of the shop you are always surprised to see his eyes floating in the darkness. He doesn’t say or do anything, just stares at you for a moment, like a cat that mistrusts the visitors. Sometimes he lets his beard grow out, but he looks hotter when he doesn’t. I’ve never seen him smiling, though I know he must be able to. I know he must be able of lots of things, but it feels like he’s saving all the emotions for later, collecting them for the right time and place; but you can feel them, beating, holding their breath behind his eyes, about to explode but still waiting.

When I got into the shop he averted his eyes from the telly and raised his head with a quick movement to say hello. I said hello and went in. I slowly walked along the only shop corridor. He sells plungers, baked beans, drawing pins, rubber rings. He must have batteries. But the corridor ended and I had to retrace my steps sceptically. “They must be with the sweets, behind the counter”, I said to myself, so I asked him:

“Do you sell batteries?"

“No. No batteries.”-he answered without taking his eyes of the screen.

“No batteries?” I repeated instinctively. Because I couldn’t believe it. It would have been so reasonable and perfect that he would have had batteries. It’s like when you love someone who doesn’t love you; your first thought tends to be that the feeling must be hidden somewhere inside them, very deep, it’s just they can’t see it. I have a quick look behind him but there’s only chocolate bars and chewing gum.
I was about to leave the shop when I heard him asking behind my back
“What kind of batteries do you need?”

I was thunderstruck. I felt he knew everything about me and the dildo, but how could he? I looked at myself to check if there was something that was giving me away. Obviously, there was nothing. Suddenly I remembered he keeps an iron stick under the counter, to protect himself from hypothetical thieves. He showed it to me once, I don’t know why, as if he had felt like telling me a secret. That day I tried to look very impressed but I felt sorry for him and I don’t think I could hide it.
“Just batteries. Small ones, I guess.”

"Go to the shop on the corner, they will have batteries there."

“Right. Thank you.”
And I disappeared from the shop feeling ridiculously embarrassed, as if I had been caught stealing something. It would have made much more sense to go to the shop he had indicated to me on the first place. They sell cell phones, watches, calculators… that sort of thing; but I never thought it would be open on a Sunday. The man that runs that shop always wears a white coat, like a doctor or a chemist. He also wears a pair of big specs with tinted lenses. When I went into the shop I saw him sitting in front of his computer. He looked serious, focused. Immediately he raised his head to say:

“Can I help you?”
I tried to find a couple of eyes behind those glasses but without success.

“Yeah. I need some batteries. Small batteries.”

“Small?” I sensed in his tone of voice a subtle recrimination for my lack of rigor.

“Yeah. Like this.” And I showed him with my fingers the rough size of the batteries I need.
I must admit it wasn’t very accurate but, what the hell? How many different kinds of small batteries exist?
He stood up and sighed and walked slowly up to a shelf. He mostly devotes his life to selling phone cards and calculators, but with that coat and that efficient air he looks like he works on the particle accelerator, and I respect him more for that.

“Like this?” he said showing me a for pack of batteries that would work for my tv remote.

“No, smaller.”
He looked at the batteries in his hand and suddenly I heard the question coming from his mouth, without prior warning.

“What are they for?”

Jesus Christ.
No time to feel sorry for myself. Think. Fast. Say anything. Anything.

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”
He clearly didn't’t believe what I was saying. Tomorrow all the neighbourhood will know I’m a slapper. Soon they will burn me at the stake.

“No. Somebody else asked me to buy them. But I don’t know what they are for.”
I tried to look convincing. I think I did fine.

“Well, I don’t have any smaller batteries, unless you want watch batteries.”

When I got out of the shop I was carrying a little plastic bag with four batteries for my remote control and a waterproof radio for the shower. I didn’t need them, but I was trying really hard to do something about that emptiness I felt.
I got home; left my shopping on the kitchen table and only then did I wake up to the fact that I wouldn’t be able to use my dildo. But thereupon I opened the fridge and I realized there was a zucchini, and that was my salvation for it meant I could cook couscous.
A proper one.

The slow learner

Getting on the metro looks like an easy thing to do, but the truth is you have to learn how to do it. I used to know how, then I forgot, and afterwards I had to learn how to do it again. I didn’t have any other choice, although some people say that, whatever you do, you’re making a choice because you always have, at least, two possibilities between which you can choose.
I thought about this idea the day before I started working in the office where I still work, because I realised I would have to learn again how to travel on the metro. No other way to get to the office occurred to me, because it’s too far to get there by bicycle, or on foot or even by bus. So I suppose the other possibility consisted of renouncing that job and trying to find something around the area where I live, which would have opened a new range of possibilities: from sweeping the streets to part-timing at the bakers’. Taking this into account, I guess I can safely state that, in the end, I did choose the metro, strange as it still seems to me.

The night before I started working in the office, I hardly slept a wink, so worried was I about being out of practice. But as with most unpleasant things in life, all you have to do is train yourself hard, in other words: do it again and again until you get sick of complaining and start doing it mechanically, until you lose any trace of synchronicity between your acts and your thoughts. From the moment I open my eyes one minute before the alarm clock rings, until I am under the ground sitting next to a dozing stranger, there is a sort of blackout. I know there has been a shower, a coffee, and a Kiss, because that’s what there always is. But I am not making those little decisions. The only decision I make is to let things happen, as they happen for everybody else on the metro.

It’s my first day on the underground for a long time, and I know I’m not choosing to have a man sitting next to me and trying to catch some phrases from the book I’m reading. I’m sure I don’t choose that he suddenly says:

“I don’t have any memory at all. I can read a sentence and the next second I don’t remember what I’ve just read.”

There is a code on the metro that states that someone with a book in their hands doesn’t want to be disturbed, they are not available for a chat, the book is a screen, a protection, a paper shield, a message meaning “Leave me alone.” Everybody knows that. And when someone dares to break the rules it could be for two reasons: he’s a nutter or he’s not a regular metro traveller. It just takes me the time to look him in the eye to know today I’ve got the nutter.

“That’s a pity.” –I say with a small forced smile, and get on with my book, trying to forget his shady look.After five seconds he replies:

“Why do you think this happens to me?”

It couldn’t be that easy. I answer “Well, I don’t know”, but by then I’ve assumed I’m gonna be having a conversation with a loony all the way to the office, which is not a great way to start my brand new life as a metro traveller. But all I can do is give up, close the book, resign myself.

He’s quite young, and stout, and his eyes are of a scary deep black. Is the kind of scruffy-looking guy whose greasy hair makes him look as if he had been licked by an enormous tongue. He takes things easy, and pauses like a couple of minutes between sentences. Maybe he’s a thoughtful nutter, or just a slow one. Or maybe, as happens to him with books, he forgets sentences before he says them, and has to wait until they come into his head again and say them straight away.

“Maybe it’s my hard disk. Could that be the reason? Do you think my hard disk could be full?”

“It certainly could. Yes. Definitely.”

There’s just three stops left. I’ve resolved I’m gonna get through this unharmed.

“It’s the same with faces. I never remember a face.”

I nod.

He talks.

“I wouldn’t recognize you if I saw you in an hour.”

I try to look worried about it, but I think that’s great news.

We cover the last part of my trip in total silence. And when my stop comes I stand up, say goodbye to him and, for a moment, I have the feeling he doesn’t know who I am. When I get off the metro and walk down the corridor I can hardly feel the hollow beat of my heart because of the rush, and the rabble, and I know this is gonna be tough. I say to myself “you should quit now, it’s easier while it’s still painful”, because soon this sharp pain will become just an occasional sorrow that will strike me when I least expect it. I know that, from now on, this feeling that I’m living somebody else’s life will walk me home every day, and I’ll shut the door in its face until next morning, when I’ll go downstairs, open the door, and feel it fall on my shoulders, like a robe I won’t be able to take off easily. I’ll walk to the metro and carefully pick my seat, next to a bored secretary, a smelly drunk, a builder carrying macaroni in a plastic box… the possibilities are endless, because you always have at least two possibilities between which you can choose. I guess it takes a little more practice to feel grateful for that.

Installations

Every time I walk into the opening of an art exhibition, whether it takes place in an art gallery or in some space properly fitted out for the event, I become invisible. I know that because:

a) Nobody looks at me

b) I always get stepped on.

Always.

People push me around to go back and forth as if they wanted to do it through me; they don't even react to my I-want-to-pass face when they're standing in my way, and they don't bat an eyelid when I move them out of my way to do it either. To tell the truth, I suspect I’m the victim of an obvious attitude of contempt towards me. And although this could be seen as an excess of susceptibility on my part, the truth is my poor and crushed toes can prove that I’m not exaggerating.

This could be the reason why I seldom go to art exhibitions on my own initiative. I either get invited by a friend who is exhibiting his own work or by a friend who’s got a similar commitment and doesn’t want to attend it on his own. This last reason made me take my feet to an art gallery yesterday, and I really wouldn’t have minded going, if it wasn’t for this inconvenient phenomenon that turns me into an invisible tread-onable being.
To make things worse, it turned out to be “An Installation”, with people walking around anarchically and no chance for me to exchange a look of complicity with anyone, to walk all over the place naturally, or keep my shoes and toes intact up to the end.

The place was absolutely crowded, and the exhibition itself was pretty disappointing. It was called “Living rooms” and it was divided into different areas, fully furnished as living rooms with weird details, like an old tv screen emerging from the wallpaper with futuristic news on, or an armchair with a back like a padded headstone. There was a corridor with some paintings too, and there I was, taking refuge, staring at a bit of wall between two paintings, happily imagining it was the space between two thoughts, when I suddenly felt the heavy weight of a shoe landing on my right foot.

The owner of the shoe turned out to be a hipster I had seen just after I arrived, holding a blue drink, discussing loudly with other hipsters the depth of the blacks of a painting that I swear was completely white. I couldn’t believe the crap they were talking; until I realised they all were dressed the same way, with weird-shaped jeans, retro glasses, and bad haircuts, and the similarity between them made me think I was facing a sect of pretentious morons who -if they could see me- would have thought I was a narrow-minded square.
I wanted to shoot him an accusing look, not only because of the stamp but especially because of his snobbery, and tell him: “Hey, asshole, you’ve just trodden on my foot.”

But maybe after this he would have looked down on my foot, said “sorry” and gone away. And I would have had to learn –from him– the difference between being invisible and being ignorable. So I didn’t say anything and kept calm, accepting my lack of coolness, and not offering any resistance to the fact that I don’t belong to places where people drink blue drinks, but still maintaining that the guy stepped on me because he couldn’t see me, because I’m a superhero and I can fade away until I vanish. Because I don’t usually fit but I don’t have to admit it in anybody’s presence. Even less so in someone’s who thinks the height of sophistication is wearing trousers below his arse. Hell no.

Of Dreams and Doughnuts

I always have breakfast at the same place. I always order the same: a ham sandwich and a mint tea. Not the weirdest breakfast one can order; once I saw someone having a beer and an ice lolly at 9.00 in the morning. After six months of having exactly the same, the waiter, who has always shown himself to be extremely shy and prudent, told me:

"Last night I dreamt you ordered a cheese sandwich."

He’s in love with me. You don’t have to be very wise to know that. As with most waiters, you get with him the feeling that he’s a waiter by the wonders of determinism, and that he couldn’t be anything else. What I’m trying to say is that I don’t feel the same about him. But that morning I liked the way a complex feeling had shown itself, in his subconscious, in such a small simple way.

"Oh, did you? I’ll have a cheese sandwich then" is all I was able to say. And I immediately regretted it, for it might have offered him the erroneous idea that I’m willing to make his dreams come true. I have never ordered a cheese sandwich again.

But yesterday I ordered a doughnut. It was the nicest glazed doughnut I had seen, or maybe it was just me, sometimes I’m extremely sensitive to the beauty of sugary, rich-in- saturated-fats stuff under any guise. Anyway. The waiter smiled at my order; maybe he interprets these little variations in our repetitive communication pattern as a sort of a progress in our relationship. He provided the doughnut –still that naïve smile on his face- and while he was placing the rest of the orders on the table, he noticed that I was taking a picture of the doughnut. Obviously he couldn’t help but ask “Why are you taking a picture of a doughnut?" –his gullible eyes wide open.

"Because I like it."

"But why don’t you take a picture of your friends?" –and at that point I knew he was overstepping the imaginary line between us because he just didn’t understand why the hell somebody would want a picture of a doughnut.
I had a quick look at my workmates and said “Well, I like the doughnut best”. I had to say these last words with a big smile to avoid hurting anybody’s feelings. He stared at me astonished, he didn’t know what to say or do, let alone what to think or feel about me. “Someone taking a picture of a doughnut: What is that supposed to mean?” That’s what his concerned eyes said, as if he had never thought, nor imagined that life and beauty and doughnuts could be seen in a slightly less conventional way.

I saw pure incomprehension in his eyes. He probably saw a massive distance growing beetween us. And he possibly wondered how come that distance was, inexplicably, bigger than the one between us while he was lying down in bed, next to his wife, and I was in his brain, asking him for a cheese sandwich.
But I don’t think he wondered what, if anything, the doughnut had to teach him about that.