Saturday, December 31, 2011

Did you know that...

"If you watch 'Jaws' backwards, it's a movie about a shark that keeps throwing up people until they have to open a beach"

From Highdeas, on film.

I have been home for a little more than a week and it is about to be a new year.

Coming home has been an adjustment but it is nice to be back in America and feel like I truly belong again. Now I understand the word homeland. On Christmas Eve I couldn’t fall asleep. I lay in my bed, wide awake, feeling uneasy—like there was something I was forgetting. I got up, went downstairs, double checked that I had locked the door, poured myself a glass of water, and got back into bed: I still couldn't fall asleep. Everything was quiet both inside and outside the house. It seemed to me like I must have been the only person on my street awake. Then I realized that’s exactly what was wrong—- the quiet! After four months of falling asleep in Barcelona listening to dogs bark, drunks laugh, and my host mother’s sleeping-pill-induced snores, the true and perfect silence of two A.M. on a sleepy little Delaware street was eerie. When I arrived in Barcelona I used to put in ear plugs when I read; now I saw silence differently—as a morbid vacuum where noise should have been—and it creeped me out.

Provincial life does have its advantages, however. For one, it is beautiful. I missed nature while I was abroad. I went for a bike ride with my father the other day and it blew me away. I had forgotten how picturesque the area where I’m from is. It was as though I was pedaling through a Wyeth painting filled with gently rolling hills, barren of their wheat in the wintertime, and little gurgling creeks, still rimmed with early morning ice that the sun was busy thawing away. We rode past deer, squirrels and chipmunks, red tailed hawks, turkey vultures, and plenty of geese. Beyond the wooden fences lining the narrow back roads, horses with thermal blankets covering their flanks stood outside old stone farmhouses stomping and shaking off the cold; sheep grazed languidly on the thin grass that sprouted through farm ponds' muddy banks. And then, of course, there were the neighbors out walking their decidedly American dogs: happy Labradors and energetic golden retrievers with owners who said hello, wished you a happy new year, and smiled. We even biked past an elderly couple who had hitched up their ponies to a little covered wagon and were out for a ride in the brisk mid-morning air. They waved the most enthusiastically of them all.

But it wasn’t until today, shooting sporting clays with special edition red, white, and blue colored shotgun shells, that I was irrevocably convinced that my time in Barcelona is truly over and gone: tonight, when December ends and the fireworks go off, I’m going to pretend it's the fourth of July.

Tuesday, December 27, 2011

A Bertrand Russell Quartet:

"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny."


"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time."


"I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."


"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live."

Monday, December 26, 2011

“...I doubt very seriously whether anyone will hire me.'

'What do you mean, babe? You're a fine boy with a good education.'

'Employers sense in me a denial of their values.' He rolled over onto his back. 'They fear me. I suspect that they can see that I am forced to function in a century I loathe."

― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Friday, December 23, 2011

I didn’t understand how much I had in Barcelona until I had to leave it all.

Over my last supper, I told my host-mother that I had carried my lucky buckeye in my pocket every day since she had given it to me. She laughed and said it was obvious.

“Why?” I asked.

“Hombre,” she said, “because you’re very lucky.”

I asked why and she counted off four reasons on four stubby brown fingers.

1. “You’re always smiling.”

2. “You like what you study.”

3. “You got a chance to travel and see the world at an age when you were young enough for it to change you.”

4. “Your parents clearly love you a ton.”

I thought about it and realized that she was completely right, even if she had forgotten to mention my great friends and the fact that I'm damn good looking. I am very, very fortunate and in the most cliched sense, before living abroad I didn't take stock enough in what I had at home.

Then she asked me if I thought she was lucky. I had to think about it for a minute. She was widowed when both her children were young. Every day she visits her senile father in the retirement home she pays for by working overtime and he asks her how her deceased husband is doing. She is cynical and pessimistic when she watches the news; her son often tells her she needs to cheer up.

“Yeah,” I said, “you’re lucky.”

She waited.

“You have two great kids, you have a nice apartment, you like your job, and you still have your father.”

She cocked her head sideways and thought about it. “And I have a grandson,” she said, smiling.

As a goodbye present I gave Pol, her son, a bottle of rum and an alpaca wool hat I bought in Argentina that he had once told me he was jealous of. He was thrilled and tried it on in the bathroom mirror under his bright orange snowboarding goggles.

He opened the rum and poured three glasses. He called to his mom and we all went into the dining room. We looked down at the glasses and swirled our ice and didn’t speak: I was leaving in the morning. Paul shrugged.

“Salud,” he said, and we drank.

Luisa shuddered. “¡Que fuerte!”

Pol and I laughed but she was right, it was strong. After a while we got to winding down and saying bye and I thanked them both for everything they had done for me. Then Pol got to talking about the path of life: el camino de la vida.

“Every single person we meet,” he said, “makes us who we are.”

“I know,” I said.


Later, he came into my room with his FC Barcelona jersey and handed it to me.

“Now you have something from the best fútbol team in the world.”

I put it on and he smiled and so did I. I do not know what he was thinking but I was wondering if I would ever see him again.

“Merry Christmas, Curtis” he said.

“Feliz Navidad, tío.”


That night I stopped by the neighborhood bar, Marc's.

Marc put a beer and a plate of olives down in front of me before I had to ask.

When it came time to leave, “Marc, I go home tomorrow.”

He exhaled. “One last drink on the house?” he asked.

“One last drink,” I said.

He poured himself one, too.


Then I hiked up a mountain to an abandoned fort that is a good place to go if you want to impress a girl. She wore the right shoes this time. It was dark away from the lights of the city and we tripped on stones we couldn’t see as we walked up the broken path. When we got to the bunkers the only other people there were some Spanish teenagers smoking a joint—it was windy and cold and they were having trouble keeping it lit. The two of us sat down where we sat the last time, when the skyline was foreign and the city still unfamiliar. Our legs hung out over the concrete lip of the bunker and all of Barcelona was at our feet. I looked out towards the ocean I couldn’t see in the dark, past neon Christmas lights, and cars like ants with two lit eyes, and so many glowing windows with open blinds: each one the home of a person I would never meet or know but was nonetheless going through the exact same infinitely profound experience of being conscious and alive. I looked past the shadows of skyscrapers and hotels and the twisting spires of the Sagrada Familia. The lights twinkled and turned on the chilled air somewhere between their origin and my eye and everywhere I looked there was a memory. The moon was a crescent, like somebody had delicately carved out the rest.

Our hands were cold in each other’s.

“I’ll miss you,” she said.

I looked out over the city one last time.

“I’ll miss you, too.”

Then we got up and left and stumbled down the unlit hills until we were among the lights, too.


The next morning, from the tarmac and through my little oval window, I watched dawn break. My view was of a muddy field and a chain link fence.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

A blog makes anybody an author.

Bildungsroman* is a literary genre which tells about the coming of age of a sensitive person who is looking for answers and experience. The genre evolved from folklore tales of a dunce or youngest son going out in the world to seek his fortune. Usually in the beginning of the story there is an emotional loss which makes the protagonist leave on his journey. In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty. The genre often features a main conflict between the main character and society. Typically, the values of society are gradually accepted by the protagonist and he is ultimately accepted into society – the protagonist's mistakes and disappointments are over.

*see also: Künstlerroman

"If what Billy Pilgrim learned from the Tralfamadorians is true,

that we will all live forever, no matter how dead we may sometimes seem to be, I am not overjoyed. Still--if I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice."

- Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five.

Thursday, December 15, 2011

I leave Barcelona in a week.

The city has turned cold and windy. Night falls early. The Mediterranean is not immune to winter, it seems.

The streets are lined with Christmas lights and the commuters leave work wearing balaclavas beneath their helmets and idle their mopeds at the corner traffic light, waiting for the incandescent red to turn an incandescent green. They are eager to get home and out of this cold.

I am eager to get home, too. But the thing is-- I don't want to leave here.

I went to a friend's house for dinner the other night. They live with a very pretty, sweet, divorced psychologist named Elena. Her eccentric, unemployed sister, Conchita, and Conchita's rustic, quiet, and wry husband, Miguel, came as well. Miguel had a heavy hand with the wine and then with the cava and before long Conchita and Elena were standing up to sing an ancient Andalusian gypsy ballad about a bull looking at his reflection in a stream by silver moonlight. Their voices were thin and tenuous and as they sang Miguel shut his eyes and tapped his dessert spoon against his champagne flute. It was beautiful in the strange, ephemeral way of all perfect moments that you know memory will inevitably blemish.

Or maybe the blemish is that memory makes them perfect. Maybe it was silly and maybe they were drunk and maybe their voices were neither thin nor tenuous but simply bad.

Then they were done singing and I was still clapping and laughing and smiling when they asked me to sing a folk song from my country.

But I didn't know any... oh, well, there was that one, but...

And my memory is strong. Strong enough that I will not remember a winter that came late to Spain: no, it was all warm sunny days on the beach, traveling Europe, and four months of a guiltily pleasurable utter lack of responsibility for which I will receive academic credit. But my memory is not strong enough to erase the two minutes it took my voice to crack through Take Me Out to the Ball Game while three Spaniards watched with the solemn respect they felt due of an anthem they couldn't understand.

And it never will be.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

I went to Morocco.

It reminded me of everything I miss about traveling through Argentina. It's too easy in Europe. Nobody tries to hustle or swindle (or rape) you. You get culture, sure... and amazing art and architecture, granted. But in Morocco I had a little girl try to convince me to go into a back alley filled with loitering young men she seemed to know. I was told that I was just like George Bush, "fucking up other countries" (which Bush?), by a toothless man when I turned down his offer to take me to a mosque. I heard "fuck you" every time I refused to buy hashish and was assaulted by a baboon that climbed up onto my head when I told its owner I didn't want a picture... but nobody panic-- it was wearing a diaper.

Don't you see Europe? This is what you're missing: adventure.

I ate tough, chewy corn roasted over open coals. I bought a honey pastry for ten cents and pretended I hadn't seen the bee-sized flies stuck to it. I got lost in a market filled with clucking chickens, bright scarves, and motorcycle exhaust. I ran hard bargains and got ripped off; I bought a hand-woven straw hat that everybody but me finds moronic and a necklace for my sister that she'll love until it falls apart. I saw a man with no legs who walked with sneakers on his hands.

I got yelled at for taking pictures, a lot.

I didn't see another tourist for hours.

I sang "Marakesh Express" on landing and takeoff, and (miraculously) nobody laughed.

I felt vaguely unsafe the entire time.

I went to Africa.




Sunday, November 27, 2011

"Mario,

what do you get when you cross an insomniac, an unwilling agnostic and a dyslexic?"

"I give."

"You get someone who stays up all night torturing himself mentally over the question of whether or not there's a dog.”

-David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

Thursday, November 24, 2011

I am a different person now than I was when I left home in July.

This is natural-- after all, I am a different person now than I was when I ate breakfast this morning—- but still, the scale is different. I’ll be home in a month and it’s strange to imagine that everything there will be, more or less, exactly as I left it. It will be good though. I miss home. It took me this long to realize, feel, or say that.

As for how I am different, I’m not exactly sure. I’m older, I know that much—- and better, too, I think. I have a better sense of who I am and what I want from life and I’m not sure why traveling for half a year helped me to figure that out, but it did.

I was leaving the subway earlier today, riding an escalator out of the subterranean gloom into the bright, early morning light, when I smelled banana block sunscreen. I couldn’t figure out where it came from; there was nobody near me. Still, I smelled it, and it took me back to when I was a kid and I would go with my family to Hilton Head every summer for vacation (crammed into the Volvo station wagon with the boogie boards lashed down against the roof for the interminable drive) and my parents would smother me in banana block so I could spend all day running around the tide pools with my little net trying to catch minnows [to then release] without getting sunburned.

I have this image of myself, I don’t know if it’s real or if I've picked it up from a photo since then-- I'm small and my brown hair is choppy against my forehead and I'm beaming into the camera with a gap between my two front teeth that won’t be fixed by braces for seven or eight years to come. And I don’t know what it is, the eyes I think, but I know I’m in there. I’m still thin—it’s before my chubby stage—and I’m wearing a plain red bathing suit. A silver cross that my grandfather had engraved with my initials and gave to me for my first communion hangs around my neck. Whenever I was nervous or bored I would put the cross in my mouth and bite down on it. It tasted how you would imagine it to taste, but it comforted me. I don’t know what has happened to it since then.

Anyways, after I smelled the banana block that whole picture came back, all of it, and it was strange to think about my childhood—- because that’s what it is now, my childhood. And it’s strange because to call it that implies distance, and the distance means that I am no longer there: I guess I’m not a kid anymore. Things were very different then. As kids we have so little perspective that everything simply is, in and of itself. I don’t think I could look at things that way anymore even if I wanted to (and sometimes I do). There’s too much other stuff that gets in the way-- like experience and manners and paradigms and worry and regret and hope, not to mention an expanded self-consciousness.

But then it was a clean slate. I remember how when we would walk down to the ocean my bare feet would burn against the concrete sidewalk and I would try to spot the little green lizards that would dart around the mulched gardens on the sides. I remember the night I was walking on the beach with my father and we saw the nest of baby turtles that had just hatched and were crawling impossibly slow down towards the white foam of the waves into which they would finally disappear. I remember the time my sister shut the hotel door on my thumb and the nail came off and how looking at my thumb without the nail made it hurt even more. But memory is a funny thing, because I don’t think any of those mental pictures were from the same vacation but somehow, in my brain, they’re all filed away in the same folder which has a picture of me in a red bathing suit on the cover.

So, I wonder, what will I think of that semester in college I spent in Spain? What picture will I see when I remember myself then (that is, to say, now)? There are the places I've been, and the friends I have, and there is definitely a girl involved. There’s the dinner with my host family that dissolved into us trying to catch grapes in our mouths and there’s the guy who sits outside that café on the corner, perennially smoking a cigarette and drinking a beer while he reads his book. There’s that one time when mostly sober I tried to see how high I could kick and fell on my ass. There's the subway I take and the streets I run and my Thursday beer after class with a plate of olives that make me feel sick after I eat too many. There are the beggars I recognize and there's just the right way to jiggle the key to open my lock and there are the thousand other little things that are meaningless in and of themselves. So what’s the cover of the folder? What's the picture of myself-- what will I be wearing and who will I be and will I be able to recognize a part of myself then in the eyes of who I am now? Maybe it’s a kid, no an adult, no a kid, looking into a mirror, trying to figure that question out.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Playboy: If life is so purposeless, do you feel that it is worth living?

Kubrick: Yes, for those of us who manage somehow to cope with our mortality. The very meaningless of life forces man to create his own meaning. Children, of course, begin life with an untarnished sense of wonder, a capacity to experience total joy at something as simple as the greenness of a leaf; but as they grow older, the awareness of death and decay begins to impinge on their consciousness and subtly erode their joie de vivre, their idealism-- and their assumption of immortality. As a child matures, he sees death and pain everywhere about him, and begins to lose faith in the ultimate goodness of man. But if he's reasonably strong-- and lucky-- he can emerge from this twilight of the soul into a rebirth of life's élan. Both because of an in spite of his awareness of the meaninglessness of life, he can forge a fresh sense of purpose and affirmation. He may not recapture the same pure sense of wonder he was born with, but he can shape something far more enduring and sustaining. The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death-- however mutable man may be able to make them-- our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Prague:

"God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them." -Franz Kafka



Tuesday, November 8, 2011

You have been in cities too long.

You miss the open space of the United States. You miss being able to drive an hour to where you look off the road and see nothing but farm-lands and feed corn growing higher than a man can stand. You miss looking at the tiny house made of dirty white boards with a tractor out front and wondering who lives there. Wondering if he’s always lived there. Wondering if seeing a sky that open every morning makes you into a different kind of man than you’d be otherwise.

From the two-lane-highway as you pass by you will think about what it would be like to stand down there in that grown corn field in that breezy fall air and let your arms rest at your sides. You will think about what the smooth stalks and the rough leaves would feel like on the tips of your fingers. You will think about what the wind would sound like from down there, in the middle of it all.

Then, just once, without thinking about it and like it wasn’t your choice, you will pull onto the shoulder and stop the car and get out and go and see for yourself. You will feel stupid and awkward and strange and when a car passes while you’re walking down you’ll make sure they can’t see your face and you'll be relieved when they don't slow down or stop. It will not at all be how you imagined it. You will be afraid to walk in and then afraid to walk in too deep because you don’t want to get lost and also because you can’t see what else is in there. What could be in there? Nothing. Still, you feel uncomfortable, and you keep spinning around to check.

After a while you relax, just a bit, and decide to lie down. It is colder outside than you thought and the ground is a little bit damp but it is already too late and the seat of your pants are probably muddy. You lean back and first clasp your hands over your stomach but then put them behind your head and look up at the sky and the way the sun is coming through some heavy clouds. It’s later than you thought it was. There will be flies and they will be incredibly annoying—you won’t have imagined them at all because you only imagine flies when it's hot and sticky outside. Swatting won’t do anything and they will make your skin feel itchy even when they’re not there.

At one point a swallow will fly by overhead and then another chasing the first and you will be amazed by how fast they move and turn and dive. You will close your eyes for less than a minute, but then open them and look around again and check that nothing changed while they were closed. You will get bored but not want to be bored and the flies will keep bugging you. You will be chilly and decide the ground is definitely wet and you will sit up and bring your knees to your chest and stay like that for a while. Then you will decide you have to pee and you will stand up and look around another time before you unzip your pants. After, you will shake it superfluously, then you won’t really want to sit back down again but you won't be ready to go so you will stand there another moment and then decide to leave, not having found whatever you were looking for. You will walk back out and feel embarrassed and ashamed and will never tell another soul what you did because they, like you, will not understand. You will unlock the car and drive away.

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

I am 21 now:

an old man, really. All that is left for me now are geriatrics and erectile dsyfunction. Or maybe not- I guess I'm not so old. Come to think of it, I am still very, very young. But I am getting old enough to understand that I will not always be young. My father told me yesterday that all of a sudden when he looks at me he sees a man and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Scared? A little bit, sure, but it's more than that. Nostalgic, nervous? Yes, those too. Excited? Absolutely.

I think about things a lot. Too much, probably. My brain is like some whirring motor that I can't shut off. I think about where I'm going to be in ten years and metaphoric paths that wind out of sight. I think about whether the two-week-long life of a fly seems as long to them as eighty or ninety years does to us since we are each only given two reference points-- birth and death-- and it is impossible to have perspective without a third. I think about my phone call the other day with a friend I grew up with and how he mentioned that his sister, who I still imagine as eight years old, is in highschool now. I think about me and him ourselves in highschool, drinking in parked cars and winning state championships, and I can swear it was just the other week.

It was late at night and clear and cold outside and I was lying on a park bench about to turn a year older when I tried to explain all this-- the way my mind runs and wrings and turns-- to a girl that smiles and giggles and laughs a lot. She thought about it and tried to smooth down a part of my hair she claimed was sticking up.

"I don't get what there is to worry about," she said. "All you can do is what you think you should do."

She furrowed her eyebrows for half a second; I waited.

"And if that doesn't work, well then, you do something else."

Click, like that the motor stops. The quiet is nice.

Monday, October 17, 2011

An Email to my Kantian Ethics Professor:

I thought you'd enjoy this...

Hey Professor Wuerth,

Somebody stole my Kindle on a bus in Mallorca yesterday afternoon. Yesterday night I received an email from Amazon thanking me for my purchase of Crítica de la Razón Pura-- evidently Spanish thieves are well versed in their Kant.

I can still hope that after they read about the categorical imperative they'll decide to return the Kindle to me.

Best, CL.

There's still adventure to be had in this world.

You just have to know where to look for it.


Mallorca:





“At long last he was unencumbered, emancipated from the stifling world of his parents and peers, a world of abstraction and security and material excess, a world in which he felt grievously cut off from the raw throb of existence” (italics mine).
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

On Thursday night I had a knife pulled on me.

I was with a group of friends on Las Ramblas, the principle avenue of the city, when a guy who looked homeless tried to sell us cocaine. One of my friends, who was drunk, told him we didn’t want any. The guy followed behind us as we walked away and kept trying to sell us the coke. My friend told him to fuck off. The guy put his hand on my friend’s shoulder and pulled him back. My friend turned around and pushed him. I stepped between them, held my friend back, and told the guy that my friend was drunk, we were not interested, and that he needed to leave us alone. His pupils were hugely dilated and his breath smelled like stale beer. He reached down into his pocket and pulled out a rusty, ugly knife and held it down by his pocket, casually. I backed away from him with my hands in the air. My friend tried to walk around me to get at the guy but I pushed him back hard and told him that the guy had a knife. That sobered him up enough for us to get out of there quickly. Still, I was shaken up. I kept thinking about how close I was to the guy and how if he had wanted to he could have stabbed me easily: the handle had been short but the blade had been long and thin—like a knife for gutting fish.

Then, today, two men tried to rob me in the park. I was sitting on a bench with a girl watching fall come to Barcelona as the leaves floated down from the trees. The day was cool and sunny and beautiful. A Moroccan (I assume he was at least—they’re all Moroccan here) came up and asked if the street behind us was Carrer Pol. No, I told him, it’s not. He mumbled something else. I don’t understand what you’re saying, I told him. Then everything happened at once and I saw his eyes flick up and I realized what was going on and I turned back to my right and saw a guy walking away quick and calm with my backpack. Then I was up and chasing him and my chest was thrown out and I was leaning back and my legs were pumping and he turned back and saw me and started to run, too.

But I was faster.

I chased him up a hill and then down it and through the park and when he saw that I was about to catch him he threw the backpack down and kept running. I picked it up and jogged back to where I had been. The girl I had been with was standing behind a tree peeking out at the guy who had been the decoy. He was still standing near the bench we had been on. He saw me coming back and started to walk away. I was out of breath and jogged up behind him. I spoke in English:

"Hey asshole, yeah you, asshole. Get back here."

He stopped and turned around and threw his hands up in the air like what, who, me?

"Fuck you man," I said, pointing a finger at his chest, trying not to gasp for air, "you can’t do that to people."

I walked up to him-- I was deciding if I should punch him. I’ve never really punched anybody before. I was bigger than him and decided that I had the right. Then he reached down into his pocket and kept his hand there where I couldn't see it or what he was holding. He looked at me and I looked at him and a second passed and I thought of the knife the other night: I turned around and walked away quickly. When I got to the girl I looked back and he was gone-- I tried to hide that my legs were shaking.

“Well,” I said, “at least we got a story out of it.”

Her eyes were opened wide and she was blinking a lot.

“I can’t believe that just happened,” she said. Then, after a while: “what was in your backpack?”

“My homework,” I said, “and my lunch.”

She looked at me like I was kidding.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

"Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting."

-Haruki Murakami

"If you want to be happy, be."

-Tolstoy

All is well.

I am content and my Spanish is strong and getting better and I go running up the mountain that is behind my neighborhood. At the very top there is an old abandoned fort that is falling apart and I sit on its roof and stretch and rest and look out across the entire city towards the ocean with Spanish kids my age who show up on mopeds to drink beers and smoke cigarettes. I don’t know if the spot is a well-kept secret but I discovered it myself and won't tell anybody where it is. It is the type of place that is good to take a girl you want to impress, although she will probably get tired on the walk there and not have worn the right shoes.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms:

“Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again."
"Hell," I said, "I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me?"
"Yes. I want to ruin you."
"Good," I said. "That's what I want too.”

Monday, October 3, 2011

Dear Father and Mother,

Let me start by being candid and forthright in my reasons for writing the two of you-- to thank each of you for your admittedly increased patronage of me as of late and tell you both why you should continue to pump capital into me. More than that, I also want to explain a little bit about why I think this support is a good, healthy thing.

Okay, fine, you’re right. The skeptics will say that this was prompted by the recent purchase of a round-trip, weekend ticket to Mallorca on the Visa Debit Card into which the two of you jointly deposit a monthly allowance, but you know what I say? Fuck the skeptics. Let’s dream big here, people. Let’s go for the gold. And anyways, plane really was the cheapest way to go. It was 60 Euros round trip, which if you stop to think about it isn’t very much at all. But the problem is that I just got back from Paris which I flew to at very inconvenient times to save money but still costed 110 Euros, which if you stop to think about too, really isn’t that much for me to get a chance to see Paris again now that I’m old enough to actually appreciate it. But it just adds up, you know? And then there was the train police, who told me that I had to pay a 40 euro fine because I didn’t have my ticket stub which I really had purchased, but also had thrown away before I got on the train because I figured it was only used to get me through the turnstile. I put up a fight with the train police guy, a valiant scene-causing one, because forty Euros is a lot of money-- that’s like sixty bucks-- but he said he’d get the real cops at the next station and let them handle it and even if I had done that and given myself a chance to get out of it I also had a flight to catch.

But I get it, I really do, you guys are very good and generous with me and I do realize it and I cannot thank you enough. I actually feel very guilty about it because you two have provided me with such a good and solid and happy upbringing, a part of which was founded on money. And it’s not that all or even most of that upbringing was founded on money, but sure, realistically, some of it was. You paid for great schools when I could have gone to good ones for free and I never had to ask if I could buy a book and my friends could always take whatever they wanted from the fridge. The scary part is that now a part of me feels like someday I need to provide my own kids with an equivalent standard of living, and that’s hard because each of you has done well, and it’s a lot to live up to. But it’s even scarier because already I feel like my choices of careers are narrowing down and my decisions are growing limited because to guarantee that I am able to give the standard of living that you have given me...well, that's a lot to guarantee. And I don't know if it's completely fair either, because in the field of science I think each of you was able to be what society defines as successful without compromising a whole lot on what you wanted to do for the world. For me I don't think it's that easy and I don't know if I can have both. So what if I want to do something where I can’t guarantee that success? Am I being selfish? Neither of you ran off on some strange tangential path and risked what I would later receive. For that matter, neither of you received half of what you would go on to give me. So why on earth would I have the right not to put myself in a position to give to my children at least as much as I have been given?

I don’t know. I still haven’t figured that one out.

So then, logically, I should break free right now, this second, because by accepting this kind of money from each of you I am encroaching on my own liberty since everything in this world, in some way or another, has to be paid back. And I’m not saying that has anything to do with either of you asking for anything back but I just mean it’s a weight in my stomach and I know and remember that it is there and I will for a long time, maybe forever. But breaking free monetarily isn’t that easy either, because money also means freedom and I want to be young and do things like go to Spain and Mallorca, where, by the way, you can do this really amazing thing called deep water soloing where you free climb up a cliff face that leans out over the ocean and if you fall you just fall into the sea. But I don’t know... It’s hard and I want to be independent but then I see a book on the kindle that I really want and will read and will learn from but it’s 11.95 with just the push of a button.

And I work, summers at least, I have since I was sixteen, and the job pays well and isn’t hard but somehow this last summer I was bored with it and being unhappy to make money I wasn't then using didn’t seem all that important; but I'm certainly using it now. And I made some, I did, but it ran out quickly, more quickly than I paid attention to, and then I really wanted that camera that would let me take photos to put on the blog, which I also think was a valid and useful and constructive purchase that came at a great time but that shit’s still expensive, you know? And these other kids, I’m looking around and not all but some planned better than I did, and I feel bad about that, really bad, but what should I do now that I'm here? To get a menial job now would undermine the investment you have already made in sending me here because the education I receive abroad is technically inferior, yes, but there are other sorts of education that are just as if not more important that have to be experienced and seen to be learned. So I'm working on learning those things but I'm not going to learn them washing dishes. And I'm not saying that there's nothing to learn from washing dishes but I am saying that it is a different lesson that even if, someday, I do end up having to learn-- now is not the right time for it.

I don’t know. I owe you each more than I can pay back anytime soon and there is still a lot of semester to go. So I offer my collective birthday and Christmas loot as a minor down payment on this loan of yours-- and really, there is nothing I would like more from either of you than being here, but still, that doesn’t quite do it. You shouldn’t even be obligated to give me those gifts so I shouldn’t be leveraging against them. That’s what caused the bubble to burst, right-- people investing their Christmas gifts before they had them? Is that what a derivative is? But it just shows that this is all a part of a bigger and more important realization-— you’ve been investing in me since I was born. Feeding me was an investment. Housing me. Clothing me. Educating me. You did all of those things, every single day for so many years, and I’m really only figuring it out now. How am I ever supposed to pay that back to you? I don't think I ever can and I don’t think I am ever completely meant to. Like I said, I'm supposed to pay it forward and perpetuate the human race and maybe even our relative wealth (because that is the easiest way to ensure survival and comfort and even some freedom in this world) but more than that, I think you really just gave it to me for me, to make me happy and secure for when you wouldn’t be able to do so for me anymore. It was an investment for the good of the investment itself. But how can I ever put that same stock in myself, that same faith, that same willingness to wait and watch and pour in more and more without ever seeing the numbers come out of the red or knowing that they will? That's a lot of pressure and I've felt the weight of it in every thing I've ever done that I didn't do for me.

So how do I pay you back if a literal compensation is not what either of you are after? That's a hard question and I've thought about it a lot. I think the answer has something to do with what I’m doing right now. This getting out. This freeing myself. I don’t think I’m going to live a prototypically normal life but I think it has the potential to be an interesting and maybe even special one. That’s not a normal opportunity and it was you two that gave it to me by giving me these experiences and the background to understand them (and a pretty clean slate as far as inheritable genetic diseases go) and teaching me how to think and challenge authority and ask questions. I wasn’t going to wander after college, I wasn’t going to be one of those kids, I was going to make money and be successful and get you a return on what you put in as quickly as I could so that every Christmas I could come home and show you the quarterly reports that my eighty hour weeks had brought you, but I’m not going to do that now because I've decided and or figured out that you invested in me and not what I would do; so now it's my job to figure that second part out.

So yeah, I know, the end of the line is coming soon, and it should. I’m getting a little too old to mooch off you two in the way I do. I respect and realize and accept that, because it’s a part of the investment too. It’s a part of teaching me to figure this stuff out on my own and if I talk about money like it doesn’t mean much or anything or everything then why don’t I really try to live without it for a while? That’s fair; that's reasonable. And when that day comes (and I know it’ll come soon, too soon, and that scares me) I will. I try now but it’s too damn hard to do when you have money that you can spend because, as you can clearly see, my thoughts are noble but my will is weak and I really want to go rock climbing in Mallorca, for which a 60 euro flight seems exceedingly reasonable. I have money that I can spend because you two are good and sweet parents that want me to have fun and grow and be safe and I try, I really try not to be expensive as I do those things but it is hard and I struggle and I am working on it. I feel like a fat kid who eats a big bowl of ice cream and enjoys it like they don’t enjoy anything else in the world but the whole time they're eating they feel guilty and gluttonous and they aren’t sure if it is even worth it but it's just too hard for them to stop while that silver spoon is still in their mouth.

Lots and lots of love,
Your son,
CL.

I was in Paris this weekend.

It is a city only like itself. I ate pigeon and saw paintings and on Saturday night I wound up at a bar that was far too much of a ‘scene’ for me to enjoy or fit in. I met a Swedish architect who didn’t seem to like it either and was a little bit crazy in a good, unfiltered way. She worked for a famous architect (who I had not heard of but the others I was with had) who she said was an asshole even if he was a genius. She wanted to leave Paris as soon as possible and were it not for her work she would have already done so. She said the city was dirty, its people arrogant and smelly, and the unnecessarily socialized infrastructure generally inefficient. She told me the other places she had lived, which were many, and gave me a reason why each one of them was better.

The next person I met was an Australian fashion designer who had moved to Paris six months ago to start her own fashion line. Admittedly I had met other people after the Swede and before the Australian but they, like everything else I exclude from my memories, do not immediately suit my simple and basic literary intents. Anyways, the fashion designer was dressed very fashionably and I asked if she was wearing clothes from her own line. She told me no, that what she designed was much fancier, and then she wrinkled the end of her nose just enough to tell me she was displeased with the question. I asked her how long she was planning on staying in Paris and she said forever. That’s a long time I told her, which I thought was a pretty good answer. She said that since she was a little girl playing dress up she had always dreamed of living in Paris and now that was actually doing it her life was like that dream. She said it in the way that a bad actress reads a line in an okay play. She asked if I spoke French and when I said no the look on her face made it clear that that was the last straw. I said bye and left before she could do the same.

Then I met some Wharton Business School guys. One was from L.A. and the other was French. The French guy seemed like a sleazy French guy and the one from L.A. reminded me of that kid in elementary school who would always buy the old toy the day before everybody else brought in their new toy. As a segue to talk about his salary, he asked the French guy about the appropriateness in France of discussing salary. The Frenchman said it was completely off limits and then promptly told his. They seemed awfully young to be so boring. For that matter, they seemed awfully stupid to be so rich. They gave me friendly, warm goodbyes and invited me to meet up with them at the club where they were headed. I said I’d maybe see them there but first I had to see about some things. Then I took the metro and walked up a hill to stand with all the others who had already done the same and look and watch and smile at how the city lit up at night.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Last night I had my first run-in with the Barcelona police.

I mentioned to my host brother that I was going to meet up with some girls I wanted to impress and he offered me his moto for the night. Needless to say, I obliged his hospitality and accepted. He gave me the keys and a goofy helmet and I was gone. I left ten minutes late and tried to time it so that I would make a grand entrance: while I was puttering my way there I was busy imagining whipping off my helmet to gasps, squeals of delight, and maybe even a little bit of applause.

However, before I can go any further with this story I need to explain how and why I am currently in possession of a magic token. Four or five days ago my host mother presented me with a buckeye nut. It is brown and smooth and shiny and feels and looks exactly like a magic token should. She told me that her father (who is 91 and she visits every day in the hospital) used to always give her buckeye nuts to carry, saying they were good luck. In and of itself, her giving me one was a very sweet and thoughtful gesture. The strange part is that when I was little my Argentine grandfather would give me buckeye nuts as well, and he also said they were for good luck. Actually, he would say something in thick, heavy Spanish that my mother would then translate, but regardless, the nuts were for luck.

What makes it weirder is that these nuts are one of the few things I actually remember about my grandpa. I remember the thick, heavy accent and I remember how he smelled old (in retrospect, I think it was his aftershave). I also remember how his drooping mustache reminded me of a walrus and how his whiskers were as stiff as the bristles of a toothbrush and would scratch against my cheek when he kissed me.

But really, more than just about anything else, I remember the smooth, brown, gnarled, shiny, hard buckeye nuts he would give me before he smiled his toothy grin, like they were a secret just between us.

Because of this, when my host mom gave me one and I held it in my hand, I was both thankful and a little caught off guard. It reminded me of whiskers and aftershave and I started carrying it in my pocket because that’s where it seemed like it belonged. Then I promptly forget it was there.

Now we get to the night of correfoc, where I had foolishly taken my camera. Not only did I have the fire to contend with but I also had to watch out for an endless mob of Barcelona (city with the most thieves in the world) residents out to enjoy the night. I eyed up suspicious characters; I shielded my camera from the fire with my body; I held it like it was a baby, and an expensive one at that.

In short, I was vigilant and responsible, and after correfoc we went to a bar for a beer to celebrate our casualty free fire-run. My friends put their jackets down in the corner where we were playing darts and I hid my camera under them. When I got my beer I talked to bartender for a while because I recognized his Argentine accent. I introduced myself, tipped him well (tipping is not customary in Spain and I don’t normally do it), and left. We finished our game of darts, my friends grabbed their jackets, and we went on our way. When I was already across the street I heard somebody yelling my name: it was the bartender and he was holding my camera.

I thanked him hugely, shook his hand many times, and gave myself a minute to contemplate how phenomenally stupid I am-- it was hardly enough time.

God had I been lucky. What if anybody else had seen the camera first? What if I had gotten a different bartender? What if I hadn’t tipped, or hadn't asked his name? If I were to play the scenario out a thousand times more, I’m not sure I would ever get the camera back again.

Then I remembered—the nut!

I pulled it out of my pocket triumphantly and showed the girls I was with (and would later feel inclined to drive a moto to impress). I explained how and why the buckeye was lucky and gathered two things from their reactions.

First, they clearly didn’t believe that the nut was actually magic.

Second, they definitely thought it was weird that I carried it in my pocket.

I handed it to one of the girls and told her to hold it for a little while. When I took it back I said that now, if she looked for it, something lucky would happen to her in the next couple days. I didn’t know if I was kidding and neither did she.

The next night when I saw her she was excited:

“The nut,” she said, “it works!”

She told me she had been in a cab with her friend and had left her phone in it. The cab driver had heard her call the friend she was with by her name so when he found the phone he had looked up the friend's name in her contacts, called her, and promptly arranged to meet up and return the phone. Now that's service.

“Told you,” I said to her.

So, back story established, let's go back to me puttering along on my host-brother’s moto, dreaming big dreams about small things. Then there’s a forgotten turn signal, and a siren, and two cops asking for license while I try to casually figure out how the hell the kickstand works on this god-damn-good-for-nothing-going-to-put-me-in-Spanish-jail moped.

I decide my chances are better if I don’t speak Spanish. They ask me if I know what I did and I answer with the name of the street where I live. They ask me if I know where the turn signals are on the bike—-I don’t-- and I tell them that I’m. a. student. at. the. University. here. to. practice. my. Spanish.

They exchange glances and it seems to me like they’re in a hurry.

They have no idea what to make of a Delaware driver’s license. They ask me if I have my passport—I don’t—and I hand them my credit card.

They look at each other again.

Have you been drinking one asks me, slowly, leaning in to smell my breath.

“No, sir” I say, and it’s the truth.

“Have you been smoking?” the other asks. He brings his forefinger and thumb together, holds them to his lips, and inhales.

“No, sir” I tell him, holding eye contact. That's true, too.

They turn towards each other and talk deliberately quickly. One asks the other what they should do. He says they should fine me: it’s 200 Euros. The first says he doesn’t even know how to fill out the paperwork for somebody with my license. The other agrees, and says it will be a pain since I don’t understand what’s going on and they will need to bring in another cop who speaks English.

I nod and smile the smile of the good natured but dim foreigner.

They're quiet for a little while, look at each other again, and then nod a nod to one another that lets me know I've gotten off the hook. Phew.

They turn towards me and speak very slowly:

"This was your first and last free pass," one says.

"Drive safe," says the nicer one.

I keep nodding and they turn and walk back to their car.

“Buenas noches señores,” I yell, a little too excited, but my grin is real now.

They look back and smile at me like I'm funny, get into their car, and drive away. I wait until they’re through the next traffic light before I start the bike up because I still have no fucking clue how to work the turn signals.

I reach into my pocket and touch the buck-eye to make sure it’s still there. Of course it is: I’m too lucky to lose it.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Last night I went to correfoc.

In Catalan corre means run and foc means fire. Together, in English, they mean fire-run. It was part of the closing day of the festivals of Mercè, a celebration of the patron saint of the city that is said to be the wildest weekend of the year. There is no way correfoc would be legal in the United States. There is no way it should be legal here.

I wore shorts and carried a camera because I did not appreciate how crazy Catalans are: I was spectacularly underdressed and underprepared. Everybody else showed up wearing hats, scarves, hooded sweatshirts, long pants, and ski goggles or sunglasses. Floats decorated like dragons and people dressed like demons went up and down the street shooting off fireworks and giant sparklers. There was loud music. People screamed. There was a lot of fire and at least as much running. It was a bizarre and exhilarating experience.

The sparks burnt my bare legs and a couple times strangers brushed smoldering embers out of my bird’s nest head of hair. When it was all over I realized how many holes had been burnt through my shirt. I also realized I now had a way cooler shirt.


Sunday, September 25, 2011

I’ve conceded, decided, and realized that both the quality and quantity of my posts has decreased since I’ve come to Spain.

I believe this is because I am no longer truly traveling. Rather, I am living in another country. I have a mother here who cooks me nice, hearty meals. I have a brother whose Macbook charger I sometimes borrow. I have a university where I take classes that except for the language difference are much the same as the classes I take back home. Really, I am enjoying myself immensely.

I read a lot. I practice my Spanish. I write some short stories. I drink coffee or a beer outside cafes in the late afternoon and watch the people who walk by and imagine who they are. I’ve become used to girls in high heels that drive mopeds and the noise in the streets when Barca has a soccer game (sorry, fútbol). It is all very charming and interesting but I don't know if I'd call it thrilling. That’s okay. That’s fine. Actually, that’s great: I’m having a safe, enriching, and wholesome intercultural experience. But in having this, in being here, I am in no way unique or, for that matter, particularly interesting.

I’m a college kid whose parents can afford to send him abroad (speaking of which-- mom, dad: thanks!). I can write, but I need something to write about.

So, where does this leave us? What exactly am I saying? Am I quitting the blog? Bowing out early? Going all Bjorn Borg on you guys?

Not quite.

I just want to be candid with what my intentions are moving forward. When I started this, there were a couple things I wanted to get out of it.

First, I wanted to let friends and family know what I was up to. When you could all read and experience some of what I had seen and done, it made me feel like you weren’t quite as far away, and that felt good.

Second, I wanted to document my travels and practice my writing. The public nature of something like a blog encouraged this. I was motivated to keep writing because people kept reading what I wrote, so thank you all for that.

Third, I wanted to see if I could make this any more than those first two pieces-- and in some ways I think I have. To all of you I’ve never met in countries I’ve never been to: hello, I’m Curtis Lee. It took me a while to show a picture with my face on it not because I enjoyed anonymity (I did) but because I didn’t want you all to realize how young I am (almost 21). I thought it would invalidate the whole enterprise but so much for that I suppose.

Still, I haven’t come any closer to answering my question: where does this leave us? What’s going to change?

Not much. So far this has pretty exclusively been a travel blog (of sorts) except for that awkward pubescent stage when it was a quotes blog (of sorts). Now, it’s neither. It’s just my blog. Hopefully I’ve written enough interesting things that you all trust me to keep doing so, and if this means changing the focus a little, I hope you can deal with that. If you can’t, I probably never entertained you much anyways. I’ve been writing some fiction so now and then I’ll be tossing that up here—something I already tested out the waters with a couple days ago. And absolutely I’ll keep writing about when I travel or experience something interesting and different. And then, just to give myself more than a little liberty, I might also write about just about anything else: how I’m feeling, a thought, a quote, etc.

The title Wayward Gentry is not supposed to be an idea or a style or a clever disparate combination of two words. Rather, I think it describes a certain group of people. I would like to think and certainly like to say that money does not mean a whole lot to me, and it doesn’t. But I’m silly and naïve and plain stupid if I think that I could be where I am right now, writing what I am, if I hadn’t had parents who were willing to invest the capital to cultivate me to do so.

There is a strange paradox between wealth and freedom. Having money grants you liberty, but in order to gain the liberty that comes from being able to buy yourself a little chunk of land where you are autonomous enough that you can tell the rest of the world to go fuck itself, you have to sacrifice a lot of that freedom and go out into the world to make enough money to buy the chunk of land in the first place. Here’s where the children of wiser parents who have already confronted and compromised and done something with their lives come in: the kid only gets plugged into half of that equation, at least until they’re self-sufficient. This is why it is so damn easy for us (us being the kids) to talk about ideals and values and how we’re going to live our lives—we haven’t lived them yet; we haven’t had to compromise ideals; and we haven’t had to blemish our values. We stand on a hill in a flood and yell about how people should be bailing water.

It’s hypocritical and stupid, yes, but it’s also exactly what we should be doing at this age. Because if we don’t, if we don’t question the system and how it functions and who pedals the million little bikes that makes the one great wheel turn, well then, we’re just going to buy into the whole thing in bulk without choosing which ideals we are not willing to compromise and which values we are unwilling to blemish.

That is exactly why it’s important that we are wayward, that we get out and see the world and begin to understand how different and the same all of it really is. It makes us question and think about and decide which ideas and beliefs truly belong to us and which are just a part of what we’ve been taught and told and taken for granted. The two are not the same (unless you attend Vanderbilt University, zing!) and it's up to each of us to figure out where they're different.

So, if you were wondering, that’s what I think of the title to mean-- the name is an oxymoron and difficult to reconcile but then again, so is a lot of growing up.

Sunday, September 18, 2011

Maybe What Will Be Once Was

It had started as a sort of joke, a dare even. After the party had wound down and everybody else had either left or passed out, after he had kissed her once, and released the tension that had built, making everything obvious and exciting and new, after all that, he had looked her in the eyes and told her that they should watch the sun rise on the beach.

They were sitting on the counter amid the ruins of half full red cups and spilt beer, passing back and forth a bottle of cheap champagne they had found hidden in a cabinet. When he had popped the plastic cork the champagne had foamed up and overflowed and he had tried to drink it as fast as it came out while she laughed at him in a way that let him know he had already won. He had to be careful not to hurt this one; she was sweet.

“Okay,” she had said, grinning, “let’s”.

So they waited and talked and drank as the night grew late and they grew tired and then it was almost time and they woke up some because it had become clear that it was no longer a joke or a dare but something that they were really going to do. She had become a little drunk and they were still on the counter, side by side, legs touching and shooting sparks and warmth through each of them, and she looked at him sincerely and studied him, furrowing her eyebrows in a way she wouldn’t have if she were sober.

“What?” he said.

She turned straight ahead again and smiled to herself. She kicked her toes up in the air and brought her heels back against the cabinet beneath her so softly they hardly made a sound.

“Oh, nothing” she said.

He reached around her with his left arm and tickled her stomach where it met her hip. It was firm and smooth and she giggled.

“What?” he said again, but he already knew what it was and this was part of the game, too. She grabbed his hand tight to make him stop and then wrapped her fingers around his.

“Nothing,” she said, softer now, “I’m just trying to figure you out.”

He smiled at her.

“And what are you coming up with?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“Maybe there’s nothing to figure out,” he said.

“I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“Shut up,” she said, “you do too.”

“Do I?” he asked, moving his hand in hers, his fingers around hers, through hers, like a person following a light out of a tunnel. “And what would that be?”

“That you’re not like other guys,” she said.

He waited.

“You’re different,” she said.

“How am I different?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just different.”

He took another swig of the champagne and finished it. He turned sideways, felt sideways, and looked at her.

“Maybe you don’t know the right guys,” he said.

“I know enough,” she said. “They’re all assholes.” She scrunched up her nose. “Or little boys.”

“And I’m an asshole?”

“That one I’m still trying to figure out,” she said.

“You are?” he asked.

“I am,” she said.

“I’m not a bad guy.“

“I know," she said.

They were silent and looked at each other and he leaned in and kissed her, gently, running the fingers of his left hand through her hair. He bit down softly on her lower lip and pulled away while her eyes were still closed.

“You’re still sure?” he said, grinning.

“No.” she answered, with a little shake of her head, “but I like you.”

“Well,” he said, “the asshole likes you too”.

“Stop it,” she said, raising her voice and leaning into him. “I only meant that I don’t know what to make of you.”

“Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because you’ve never met a guy like me before.”

“And how do you know that?” she asked.

“I just do.”

“How?”

“I just do.”

“And what makes you so sure?”

“The fact that you ask me how I know like I’m right.”

“Asshole,” she said, but she was smiling.

“At least that’s better than a little boy, right?”

“Who said you’re not a little boy?”

“Me.”

“So you’re a man?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you a man?”

“The fact that I comport myself like one.”

She paused. “What does comport mean?”

“It means act,” he said.

“So you think you act like a man?”

“I know so.”

“And how do you act like a man?”

He waited, looked forward, thought.

“You act like a man by being soft in the right places and hard in all the rest.”

She thought about it. “I like that,” she said. “Maybe it’s the opposite for a woman.”

“Yes,” he said. “Maybe.”

They were silent for a while and then he leaned over and kissed her again.

“So,” he said, “Am I still an asshole?”

“I’m going to go with yes,” she said.

“What makes me an asshole?” he asked.

“Well, first, you seem awfully concerned with being one, and second, you’re cocky.”

“I’m cocky?”

She smiled. “A little, but it’s a good thing. Girls like cocky guys.”

“I’m not cocky,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I’m confident. There’s a difference.”

“Fine,” she said, leaning in to kiss him. “You’re confident.”

He leaned back, keeping his face just apart from her's.

“And I’m not an asshole because I’m confident.”

She leaned towards him, over him. “And you’re not an asshole because you’re confident.”

He lay all the way back on the counter.

“Good,” he said.

She brought her nose against his.

“Good” she said. “Now kiss me already.”

He pulled her down into him and kissed her until she breathed in deeply through her nose and grabbed his shirt and pulled him up towards her and kissed him hard.

When they stopped, he had a big smile on his face.

“See?” he said, “I’m not cocky, I’m just very good at this.”

“Yeah?” she asked, “What’s this?”

He looked at her like he couldn’t believe she didn’t know.

“Seduction, of course.”

She laughed. He liked the way she laughed.

“Oh, really? Is that what you’re doing?”

“That’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“I wasn’t aware,” she said.

“That’s because I’m subtle.”

“Don’t forget modest,” she said.

“You’re right,” he said, “and modest, too.” He put a hand on her knee. ”Now, let’s go to the beach.”

He saw her furrow her eyebrows for the slightest of seconds before she leaned over, pecked him on the cheek, and hopped off the counter too.

“Okay,” she said. “Let’s.”

So they walked out of the sleeping house into the quiet streets, bringing blankets that they dragged behind them for a cold they didn’t feel. It was a couple of blocks but it felt like a long way and she reached out and held his hand and it seemed to each of them that they had known the other for a long time, or at least for longer than the night.

When they got to the wooden bridge that led out over the dunes past the scrub grass below and down to the beach they kicked off their shoes and left them there, feeling the cool sand between their toes and the coarse boards underfoot as they walked towards the sound of the ocean.

The feeling had been there for him before, when they were inside, but now he knew and recognized that it was gone, like it always was by now, even if it had lasted longer than normal with this one. That was something at least, he thought. So he pretended, which was almost as good but also entirely different. He looked at her in the dark and she was beautiful, yes, but also simple and untroubled and transparent in her dreams and in that moment he knew he would eventually destroy her. He saw it all in a flash: he would be good to her and reciprocate the love she gave, a love of the sort she hadn’t been able to give away before and a love of the sort it would take her a long time to give away after, and she would give more and more of herself, not knowing she was taking back nothing in return because he had nothing in return to give, and he would want to reach out and save her but his throat would be dry and no words would come— he would be hoarse and sputter and try to find the right sounds to let her know—but it wouldn’t be enough and it would be too late. He would be numb and apathetic and she would grow to understand he had always been that way and that it was this in the end that had broken her. She would hate him for it.

He wanted to change it, to run, to save her, but he knew that it had always been like this, that it would always be like this-- there was never any choice involved, and there never would be.

But then the flash, which was more of a feeling, was gone and there was only the cool night air and the stars overhead and her hand in his, looking for something that wasn’t there.

So they walked down to the waves, their blankets erasing their own footsteps in the sand as they dragged behind them.

They came to the water and the sand became moist and cold and hard. He waded out to his knees; she stuck a toe in.

“It’s freezing,” she said.

“It’s nice,” he said. Then, after a while, “the ocean reminds me of eternity.”

She didn’t know what to say.

He lowered his hands to where his fingertips touched the water. The two of them were silent and each listened to the waves, apart.

“It’s cold and huge and indifferent and it never starts or stops moving,” he said. “And it’s beautiful too, but that has nothing to do with eternity because what we call beauty is a part of us, not it.”

“Why are you interested in me?” she asked.

“What do you mean?” he said. He didn’t turn around.

“You’re smarter than me, and I’m not that pretty, and I’m not going to sleep with you anytime soon... especially not tonight, in case you were wondering.”

She watched his silhouette against the sea as the waves rolled in and out.

“It looks like the ocean is breathing,” he said.

He bent over and slowly lifted his hands through the black water.

“You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for,” he said.

“I’m complicated,” she said.

“That’s okay,” he said. “Me too.”

“I have problems trusting guys,” she said. “I’m a lot of work.”

“That’s okay, too,” he said. “I’ll win you over.” He craned his head back and looked at the night sky and pointed. “You can see the moon through those clouds over there.”

“Why are you so sure you can have me?” she said.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just feel like we’ve done this before.”

She felt the air go out of her chest.

“You’re strange,” she said, “you know that, right?”

She was almost crying and she didn’t know why.

“I know,” he said.

He turned around and walked out of the water and she spread one of the two blankets out up and a little away from the line in the sand where the rolling water stopped. As she was lying down on it he suddenly pushed her and she thudded down and he lowered himself over her, holding himself up with his arms. He kissed her and she pulled him towards her with his belt loops and lifted her hips against his and wanted him and wanted to tell him no all at the same time.

After a while, he moved over onto his side and rested on his elbow and brushed a strand of hair off her face with his other hand.

“You’re very pretty,” he said.

She bit her lower lip.

“Stop,” she said.

“No,” he said, and leaned over and kissed her forehead.

The waves rolled in and out. To him they sounded like a mother calming her child. To her they sounded like whispers.

“Please don’t hurt me,” she said.

They were silent for a long time and he tried to think of something to say but nothing came. He rolled onto his back and put an arm underneath her head. She laid her legs over and across him.

“Stop thinking so much,” he told her.

“I can’t,” she said. Then, after a while, “how much longer till the sun comes up?”

“Soon,” he said, “soon.”

“Good,” she said. “I’m tired.”

With that, she curled herself up against him and fell asleep.

When she awoke he was lightly, barely, tracing his finger up and down the inside of her arm.

“It’s starting,” he said.

And it was. At the bottom of the sky, where you couldn't tell what was air and what was sea, the first rays of pink and purple were slowly bleeding together into the darkness of the night.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

My room is very, very hot.

I wake up every night drenched in sweat. Then I make my way to the subway station where it is nearly as hot and much more humid. When the train comes down the tunnel it pushes the cool air out and over me and for those five seconds I believe in God and hyperbole. But then the train stops, and I get on, and the people next to me are sweaty too. I don’t think Spaniards believe in air conditioners-- my house has one but I am afraid to turn it on. That would be a very American thing to do.

It is considered inappropriate for men to wear shorts out at night. This is a silly and antiquated rule that I have started to violate. I don’t care if I stick out; I can’t do it anymore. If it’s this hot people should be able to wear shorts and that is that, so there, Spain. Inside the clubs that thump with music that reminds you that you are in Barcelona the city is at its hottest, even in shorts. The girls dance and move and glisten but I do not think I glisten. I just sweat and the back of my shirt glues itself to my shoulders. Drops fall off my nose and when I try to talk to the glistening girls I look like a leaky faucet.

I could go on but I am sure that you are cool and comfortable as you read this and thus it must bore you like a war story with too much detail and blood and repetition—I am sorry for that. To make up for it I will tell you about the guy in the wheelchair. I call him wheelchair-man. He was severely debilitated and rather than seem smart and look up what was wrong with him I will say what I would say if I was talking to you and not writing for you: he had that Stephen Hawking thing going on. His head was pressed down and towards his shoulder and his arms jutted up against his body awkwardly. His right hand controlled a small joystick on the armrest.

I saw him near the beach where I was watching a fun Brazilian band playing on the street. They made a lot of noise and yelled a lot and jumped around and smiled while they sang. I was sitting on a curb watching them and smiling too when wheelchair-man started to pass by behind them. He had a large bottle of water attached to the back of his wheelchair and I remember wondering how he got to it. Could he get out of the chair alone? He went a little ways past and then he stopped. He slowly turned around towards the band, making a half circle with a four or five foot radius. He stopped and stayed like that for a while, watching with his head stuck to his shoulder, and then he pushed the joystick forward and came a little closer. He listened a little more, and then came a little closer again.

This went on until he was near the rest of us watching. People in the audience were stamping their feet and some were up and swaying but a lot were just sitting down and watching too. The Brazilian guitarist, every now and then, would jump up and run through the crowd. Wheelchair-man started to fidget with his joystick and shake the chair back and forth a little and I couldn’t figure out what he was doing. Then he did it a bit more, and he started to rock his body back and forth in the chair too. Another song came on and he kept going and then he wasn’t shaking the chair back and forth but driving it around, turning it, spinning it, and doing figure-eights: he was dancing, as best he could at least.

He kept rocking more and more and it wasn’t graceful or pretty because he couldn’t move his body and I was a little afraid he would fall out of the chair but the people in the crowd started to notice him. It seemed to me he was the most earnest man I had ever seen and that all he truly wanted to do, or ever wanted to do, was dance. He was very concentrated. He was smiling too, or making what seemed to me like a smile. The guitarist went over to him and jumped around him and wheelchair-man spun around in circles and now it was clear that he really was smiling and the music was playing louder and another man in the band was yelling into the microphone and it was a moment that made me smile too and I was happy to have been there and for him to have been there and I was happy that he was happy, for whatever that is worth.

I don’t know if there is anything deeper than that in the story, I don’t offer it as a parable or a positive example. It is only something that I saw just off the beach in Barcelona which is a place strange enough for it to have been real. After a couple more songs I got up and left, but he was still there, spinning and dancing, sweaty and thirsty looking.





Saturday, September 3, 2011

I am in a small beach town a couple hours north of Barcelona.

I flew in, took a shuttle to the bus station, and hopped on the first bus headed north they had. I did not know where to get off because I did not remember the name of where I was going. Still, I found my way to an old fisherman's port called Llafranc (whether it is where I originally set off for, I cannot tell you). Tourist season is over and it is very relaxed and beautiful. The sun and the wind play off the water and the bleached white houses. I have my hostel to myself. The owner, a leathery faced man named Enrique, gave me a double room with a balcony for the price of a single. He teaches me which words I learned in Argentina do not translate in Spain. The word I've been using for vagina, for instance, means sea shell here. Thank God I cleared that one up.

I spend my days reading on the beach. At times, if I feel so inclined, I sleep on the beach. The women are mostly topless but I think I prefer my clothed American beach ignorance: all the women who I would normally think have nice boobs have weird nipples here. Maybe normal nipples are not as normal as I thought-- maybe what I consider normal nipples are actually exemplary nipples-- the boob shaped house of cards I've spent my life so carefully building is suddenly crashing down around me.

The sand has too many pebbles in it and the water is a little cold but it is a beautifully clear turquoise that turns to a deep blue as you get further out. I am not a good swimmer and when I get tired I turn onto my back and float easily in the salty water. The water clogs my ears and I can't open my eyes because of the sun but I kick my legs and bow my arms and shoot across the surface like a water spider: I am at one with the sea; I am like foam; I am indestructible and intangible.

I must look silly from the shore.

Yesterday I rented a kayak and went out too far. The man who I rented it from came out on a speedboat and yelled at me in a friendly way. For whatever reason, he was convinced I was kidding him when I said I wasn't German.

Last night I got bored and walked into the the lobby of a fancy hotel because it had an interesting portrait of Dali hung on the wall inside. I struck up a conversation with a nice British couple at the bar and the man offered to buy me a drink. I felt bad having a stranger buy me a fifteen dollar drink and declined.

No, really, he said, what do you want?

I paused, thought, then said a whiskey and coke.

You're learning, he told me.








Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Hurricane Irene is coming.

The rain is supposed to start tomorrow evening, around seven, and heavy flooding is expected. If Leigh’s flight hadn’t made it in this morning it would have been cancelled but it did and he is here. This dinner is for him actually—a sort of welcome home celebration. It is also a goodbye—he leaves for Spain on Wednesday. His mother is in town to see him and she has convinced his father that rather than fight over who gets this first night back they should share it, everybody together. With Lauren and her kids, and Leigh’s sister taking the train in from Philadelphia, the reservation is for seven. They have never done anything everybody together before.

Both of Leigh’s parents are still members at the club and as he drives there, no more than half a mile from his father’s house, he wonders if the reservation card on the table will read his mother's or father’s last name. He is in the passenger seat and Sam, his younger stepbrother, is driving. Colin, his older and larger stepbrother volunteered for and now sits in the cramped backseat: the car is a two-door coup and to get out of the back you need to fold down and climb over one of the front seats. Leigh interprets and appreciates this concession of the comfortable seat as a sort of “I’m happy you’re home” gesture.

Sam has just gotten a new subwoofer, or rather gotten Leigh’s old subwoofer repaired and put in his trunk. He listens to rap music loudly, with the bass turned up until the windows rattle, and because of this Leigh does not like to drive with him. Leigh wonders for whom and why he plays the music at such a ridiculous volume but at the same time recognizes that at Sam’s age he used to do the exact same thing, albeit with slightly better and less black music. Yet this is the first time Leigh has heard the repaired woofer and right now it is presumably thumping for his benefit. They turn in and pass by the big rock and the Greenville Country Club sign at the entrance to the parking lot as Leigh unbuckles his seatbelt and gets ready to get out.

“I really can’t do this here,” he says, “turn that shit off.”

Colin laughs, Sam pulls into a spot, and Leigh is already out the door.

“Wait, wait, wait,” says Colin, folding the passenger seat forward, “don’t you shut that door on me.”

Across the parking lot Leigh recognizes Mr. and Mrs. Stewart standing with his father and step-mother.

“Hey,” yells Mr. Stewart, “What’s with the music, dudes?” He starts laughing. He has bright white teeth.

Leigh rolls up his sleeves as he walks towards them: three crisp folds from each cuff. “No idea,” he says. He smiles and shakes Mr. Stewart’s hand. They are dressed similarly and it is a good firm handshake.

He walks inside, in front, with Mrs. Stewart. She is a dry, sarcastic woman. Leigh has known her since his parents joined the club when he was in kindergarten and they were young. Each family is now considered part of an old-guard of members. Mrs. Stewart is pretty and Leigh likes her. On lazy summer days he used to go up to the parking lot from the pool to smoke pot with her son.

“How’s Clay?” he asks.

“Good, good” she says. “He goes back to school tomorrow. I’m ready for him to get out of the house. He has an apartment with some other boys this year so he’s excited. When do you go back?”

“Well, Wednesday, but I’m actually going abroad.” He says this like he’s apologizing. The delivery is perfect.

“Ooh,” she says, wrapping her lips around the sound. “Where are you going?”

“Barcelona.”

Mr. Stewart is walking up behind with Leigh’s parents. Colin and Sam walk behind them.

“Barcelona?” says Mr. Stewart, joining the conversation. “What’re you going to Barcelona for?”

“Well,” says Leigh, “My school offers a program there so I’m going to study.”

“To study?” says Mr. Stewart. He turns to Leigh’s father. “You got roped into paying for this?”

“Actually,” says Leigh, “Barcelona is paying for me to go there.”

“Oh, really?” says Mrs. Stewart. She has one eyebrow raised.

“Yep,” says Leigh. “The mayor’s already sent me the key and everything.”

Mr. Stewart starts laughing and squeezes Leigh’s shoulder. When he laughs he throws his head back and shows those bright white teeth. Come to think of it, he reminds Leigh of an energetic Golden Retriever. Leigh thinks his wife must have him whipped. She is always very calm.

They have arrived at the door to the foyer of the main dining room. Leigh steps in front of Mrs. Stewart and starts to open the door but Colin is already at his side. He takes the door from Leigh and holds it open as the group walks inside.

“Thank you” says Mrs. Stewart.

“Thank you” says Lauren.

“Yeah, thanks man” says Sam.

They walk through the foyer past the plush red arm chairs next to the big fireplace and out onto the back terrace.

“Ah,” says Mrs. Stewart, “they’ve already taken the canopy down for the storm.”

“Evidently” says Leigh.

They take a right, pass through the gardens, and come out at the patio where they will eat. Leigh sees Mr. Martin at a table and turns around to wait for the others to catch up. Mr. Martin wrote a letter of recommendation to the head of Dartmouth’s alumni relations for him. Before he wrote it he had asked Leigh if he was certain he’d go there if he got in. Leigh said yes, got in, then didn’t. Since then he has tried to avoid talking to Mr. Martin whenever he can. The rest of the group walks up and past him and out onto the patio. He sees his mother and sister already sitting at the far end. He starts to follow Colin towards them, eyes straight ahead... he's almost past...

“Leigh, you’re back! How was Argentina?” It is Mr. Sauer, sitting with Mr. Martin. Mr. Sauer is younger than Leigh’s parents and extremely fit. He wears aggressive looking sunglasses. Leigh and Mr. Sauer have won the club’s doubles tournament twice but this year Leigh couldn’t play because he was away.

“It was great.” He reaches out and shakes Mr. Sauer’s hand, then across the table and shakes Mr. Martin’s hand. They are drinking draft beers.

“Mr. Martin” says Leigh.

“Leigh” says Mr. Martin.

James, Mr. Sauer’s fourteen-year-old son is at the table as well. Last summer, Mr. Sauer paid Leigh more than he deserved to hit with his son for a couple of hours every week.

“Hey there James, how’s it going?”

“Good” he says, looking out from under the blond hair that falls over his eyes. He had been shy in the lessons as well.

“So, you guys were out playing?”

“Yep” says Mr. Sauer, who has asked Leigh to call him Mark and told him that if he wants an internship at his asset management group he can make it happen. “Us two, and George (George does Leigh’s mother’s taxes), and then this guy over here filled in as our fourth.” He reaches over and tussles James’ hair.

“Ahhhh, hanging with the big dogs now? Huh?”

“That’s right,” Mark answers for his son. “Hanging with the big dogs.” He says the phrase like he enjoys it and emphasizes each word.

Leigh laughs. “Well I gotta run but it was good to see you guys.”

“Absolutely” says Mark.

“Yep” says Mr. Martin.

“Bye” says James.

Leigh puts his hands in his pockets and walks away. He looks down at his loafers. They have started to wear through on the front left toe and Leigh likes them more now.

“Hola Leigh, que tal?”

He looks to his right and it is Mr. Crowe. He nearly answers back earnestly in Spanish before he realizes it is a joke.

“Ah, muy bien. Re bien” he says. “And you Mr. Crowe?”

He reaches out and shakes Mr. Crowe’s hand then leans down and hugs his wife. It is only after he is hugging that he debates whether he knows her well enough to be hugging. The way she hugs him is what makes him think this.

“Good, Leigh, I’m good.” He is a short, sturdy man who used to be second in command of the FBI before he retired to work for MBNA (where he would eventually deplane with a golden parachute). He has all white hair and is older than his wife who in turn looks older than Leigh remembers her.

“How was Argentina?” she asks. She speaks with the same slow southern drawl Leigh remembers. She is from Tennessee and very blonde and her hair is always perfect even when she gets out of the pool. Leigh does not know how she knew he was in Argentina.

“It was a blast” he says. “How’s Andy—back at school yet?”

At this point, Leigh has probably talked to Mrs. Crowe about Andy more than he ever talked to Andy but this time, like every time, it seems the simplest conversation to have: a well worn rut that the words fill easily, smoothly, and without thought.

“Yep. He drove down to Charlottesville yesterday morning.”

“And Billy?”

It is almost as if their parts are rehearsed.

“He’s taking a gap year. To be honest with you, he just wasn’t mature enough for college this year.”

Leigh nods. He knows that Billy was expelled his last week of high school. Mrs. Crowe knows that Leigh knows, but they have never spoken of it. In the same way, Leigh is certain that she must know that he himself was expelled during the final week of his own senior year. That’s why his response is important: he wants to say something helpful, uplifting. He wants to tell them it will all be okay. He wants to be funny and light.

“To tell you the truth, I’m still not mature enough for college.”

Yikes. That wasn’t it.

Mrs. Crowe looks up at him. She has crinkles and sunburn around her eyes. It looks like she is peering, at what he does not know. Leigh decides to leave because the Crowe's are no longer providing for a compelling narrative and because this place is as good as any to break the fourth wall, jump off the stage, and slap a member of the audience across the face: nothing I tell you is true, everything I tell you is true!

“It was good to see you two, tell Andy I say hi.”

“Will do Leigh, good to see you as well.”

Leigh sees the table with his mom and sister and everybody else already seated. He goes over and hugs his sister.

"Hey Katrina."

She stays seated and puts one arm around him; he hasn't seen her in two months.

“You left this in my car today” his mother says. She is holding out a small brown leather notebook. It is a gift she got for him in Italy and gave to him at the airport when she picked him up. She is very proud of the notebook. “You can write an unfinished, vaguely factual account of this dinner in here," she says.

“I don’t know,” says Leigh. “That sounds like a lot of work..." He pauses. "And anyways, mom, you know I hate it when you do that thing where you come alive and meta-fictionalize my stories without even asking me first.”

“I know, I'm sorry honey, but it’s perfect, don't you see? Write about how bizarre and fake it feels to be driving around these freshly paved roads and past these perfect lawns and mammoth white houses with golf carts parked out front to run to the mailbox. Talk about how nothing feels the same after being away. Say that you’re starting to understand just how absurd the town you live in is. Even better—show it! Let them see how boring and stuck up and dead everything and everybody is, and how boring and stuck up it makes you too. You can even do something cool with the hurricane, you know, that idea of a tension… of something coming?”

The table is quiet. Leigh spreads butter on a roll. The night is heavy and humid and still. "Yeah..." he says. "I guess so."