Things about Madrid I Will Not Forget
Things about Madrid I Will Not Forget
So many sex workers. South of Gran Via, the women are mostly white, north they are mostly dark, or trans. A melon is called melón but a watermelon is called sandia. In the morning, when the day is fresh, I love running shirtless along Gran Via and all around Retiro Park.
Given the wrong drink and too shy to ask the muscle waiter to change it. Tinto de verano, con limón. In a plaza chanced upon one night, Chinese schoolchildren kicking around a football and speaking Spanish, of course. Which of them will be the next David Villa? Which the next Lorca? Who will come first? Woken up at 4 am by the cigarette-edged talk of kids outside the club opposite my apartment.
The dark pearl on the outside of razor clams. A cruise club called Organic, equipped with a cross, resting horizontally, and revolving, on one leg. Goya’s Black Paintings.
¿De donde eres? The same younger Asian with the older white man sighted in Buenos Aires, London, Paris, and Tokyo: somewhat shameful still, that. A white man in his forties begging outside a tourist hotel. No, he’s not disabled or ill. I pass him on my runs. Liquid siftings in my favorite beige shorts from Embajadores to Valverde, after a bad lunch.
Yesterday, at Mercado San Fernando, I bought Elogio de la Madrastra by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, and paid for the secondhand book by weight. It cost only 2.20 Euros. In English, it’s called In Praise of the Stepmother.
So many sex workers. South of Gran Via, the women are mostly white, north they are mostly dark, or trans. A melon is called melón but a watermelon is called sandia. In the morning, when the day is fresh, I love running shirtless along Gran Via and all around Retiro Park.
Given the wrong drink and too shy to ask the muscle waiter to change it. Tinto de verano, con limón. In a plaza chanced upon one night, Chinese schoolchildren kicking around a football and speaking Spanish, of course. Which of them will be the next David Villa? Which the next Lorca? Who will come first? Woken up at 4 am by the cigarette-edged talk of kids outside the club opposite my apartment.
The dark pearl on the outside of razor clams. A cruise club called Organic, equipped with a cross, resting horizontally, and revolving, on one leg. Goya’s Black Paintings.
¿De donde eres? The same younger Asian with the older white man sighted in Buenos Aires, London, Paris, and Tokyo: somewhat shameful still, that. A white man in his forties begging outside a tourist hotel. No, he’s not disabled or ill. I pass him on my runs. Liquid siftings in my favorite beige shorts from Embajadores to Valverde, after a bad lunch.
Yesterday, at Mercado San Fernando, I bought Elogio de la Madrastra by the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa, and paid for the secondhand book by weight. It cost only 2.20 Euros. In English, it’s called In Praise of the Stepmother.
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