a spanish inquisition
The first few days spent here in Barcelona were not met with the rapturous touristic embrace I'd imagined. Here was a city, a people and a culture, I'd earlier hypothesised, that I already adored before I stepped off the plane. For those reasons alone it should be the ecstatic sojourn that Prague was, not the nonchalant intrigue I was experiencing. Then all of a sudden one night, for no special reason, it clicked. When I visited Prague I felt as though I'd stepped into a European fantasy; a dream of gothic spires and romantic bridges all with a emotional history you could simply feel as you wandered the alleyways. But as always with a dream, it was a limited and temporary thing. I knew it was for just a few days, and perhaps that made it all the more exciting. Here in Barcelona, I suddenly felt so comfortable, so at home. It was so easy to feel this way with my spanish friends in London, but now in this labyrinth of modernist architechture, narrow alleyways full of balconies an arm's length apart and wonderful spanish people, I felt it completely. I feel like I've come home to a city I've always lived in. It doesn't feel like Sydney, but I feel the same immediate love for it.
So now plans are being made. Whispered ideas of the past few months are turning into rigorous drunken dinnertable discussions. If I had asked for a sign, the oppurtunities laid before me would be proof of a higher power. The next few weeks might have me moving here permanently..
But lets not get ahead of ourselves. I arrived here exactly a week ago and its been so wonderful. Leaving London was a long-awaited delight, but for the first time a little sad. After five months of hair-tearing, manic depressive experiences, life had fallen fully into place within those final few weeks. The weekend before was Pride London, which was beyond funny. Arriving at 10am in the freezing drizzle, Hamit and I expertly prepared our Pimms stall, and our costumes, for the torrents of fags and dykes that were to flood our bar for the following 18 hours. Soon the place was packed and Hamit and I had done so much coke we pretty much forgot where we were and danced the day away - as if we were spending a night at Fire but somehow wound up serving drinks. After a solid 10 hours we collapsed downstairs in the kitchen, only to be plied with wine and a lot more coke, before being hurried back upstairs to work behind the bar again. I spent the rest of the night with my wonderful sisters, Lukas and Manu, and soon the dreaded 18 hour shift had passed and we were in a taxi on the way to Fire, dropping pills only to peak and comedown in the woeful queue to get inside.
Meanwhile halfway through the Pride shift Mario had arrived and we'd had an ecstatic and rather speechless reunion outside MacDonalds on Oxford St. Screaming and dancing around each other like over-excited puppies, we briefly caught up and I sent him back to my place to sleep. When I returned from Fire the next morning we chatted for hours and it was as if five months apart had never occurred. The rest of the week saw me playing the part of underwhelming tour guide to Mario's hyperactive London-lover. As always though, it turned out to be nice to have someone see your city for the first time, it gives you an excited new appreciation for the space you take for granted. So while he cruised galleries and exhibitions by day, I showed him the London I love by night. Monday saw a coke addled night at durrr, while tuesday, as always, was "ladies night" - basically involving Manu and I getting the messiest drunk you can imagine at G-A-Y Late and wondering why we aren't meeting cute guys as we slur our words and drool a little bit to Rihanna's "Umbrella". Glamorous. Mario had a fantastic time, and it proved to be one of the funniest and best ladies nights we've ever had, expecially since I managed to seduce Eric, a French friend I'd been jonesing after for months, mere hours before he jumped on a plane back to France the next morning. Didn't live up to the French reputation, I must say, but was certainly a nice resolve to an electric and sexually charged relationship.
More drunken nights followed, with a few stoner nights for good measure, in which highlights included my falling asleep on the nightbus (a one hour walk, four buses, two trains and fucking five hours later i was home - the less said the better), Mario getting drunkenly lost at 3am just around the corner from my house, and me and David's impromptu discotheque in the living room after too many Sambuccas at the Joiner's. Nothing could beat Fire on Saturday night however, and it happened to be one of the best nights there we'd ever had, so I was so glad Mario had been there to experience it. Great music, sublime pills, not too crowded and glamorous times with Hilton - it was perfect. Mario set sail for Paris that monday night, while I had various spontaneous farewell lunches on tuesday afternoon with my sisters and yet another curious french boy, and arrived in Barcelona that evening.
The humid sea air greeted me as I stepped off the plane onto the tarmac at Barcelona airport, and I couldn't stop smiling. My absurd infatuation with everything Spanish has relished in the week spent here so far, it really is a wonderful city and a place like no other. You can venture through the various zones of the city and come across anything. Fabulous bars with tapas and lethally alcoholic drinks in warm secluded squares abound, with restaurants everywhere for gluttonous late lunches and dinners of delicious spanish food. Clubs hide in various corners of the city with beautiful men and amazing drugs, and an unrivalled inhibitionless atmosphere pervades them. Art Nouveau Gaudi buildings scatter the skyline and atop mountains sit Greek ampitheatres showing bizarre plays and theatrical experiments, open for only two months of the year and surrounded by dreamlike Victorian Castle gardens of hedges and mazes. The flat duneless beaches are littered with bars, live music and arabic men selling cold drinks or small asian women offering massages. These beaches surround the city and next to the touristy main beach are nudist or gay beaches (usually both at the same time). Some of the most wonderful times of the week for me have been spent here; looking into the gorgeous Mediterranean as tan lines deepen and cigarette lighters bubble and burst under a burning sun in a cloudless pale blue sky. One day saw a visit down the coast two hours to Vilanova, where Marc and I basked in the sun, ate an enormous lunch of piella and wine and smoked joints with his friends. It was one of the happiest moments of the year so far for me; lying on the beach, quite stoned, I was so content and all worries seemed to dissipate. The train ride back to Barcelona sailed past the rocky shores of the Mediteranean through my calm stoner haze, and it was a sweet time with Marc as we laughed and attempted Spanish and Catalan lessons which often found me out of my depth and shouting "Puta!".
Just as my experience of Prague and Barcelona was of a dream and a comfortable reality respectively, the times with Marc in these places have followed identically. What was a blissful fling in Prague is now an actual relationship, which has been both good and bad. In some ways its wonderful, we know each other more with each day and that comfort is so nice. But at the same time the flaws in the relationship have been exposed. I realised a few days ago the perhaps false nature of the relationship. The love driven firstly and obviously out of passion and interest, was now normalised to reveal motivation. I suppose he is in love with the comfort, the affection and the attention that I provide, he can be so needy at times. For me initially he was a boy I loved who happens to be spanish. Now, rather crushingly, I guess it´s the spanish I love, who happens to be a boy. The culture, the accent, the language.. I love it all about him and when he's needy I sometimes back away, realising he's a real person and questioning if thats really what I signed on for. But then there are those times.. Lying on the beach. Kissing in a club. Looking into those sleepy brown eyes as he wakes from a siesta. Its in these times I wonder if I'm too damning, too analysing, and that the little bubble of subtle detatchment from Sydney and from anything and anyone I come into contact with here in my travels is clashing with any part of me that is trying to seriously connect.
I was supposed to leave for Benicassim music festival yesterday. Erin, who pulled out at the last minute, apparently sent my ticket off last week but its yet to arrive. If its not here tomorrow, it looks like no Benicassim for me, a worrying thought considering how much I've anticipated this event for the past four months. However after the week so far, I'm not as worried as I expected. If it comes, then so does Benicassim fun for the rest of the week. And if it doesn't, well another few days in the arms of Marc as we peer out of his panoramic breezy window doesn't sound so bad either. Whether I could do it for the rest of the year.. Well, we'll have to see.