Bad Boys are, well, Bad...

Location: Madrid, Spain

Saturday June 26, 2010

I woke up pretty late on Saturday morning after that Friday night. I actually woke up around two, a little before I heard a knock on my door from Carmen. She wasn’t there to scold me for sleeping-in, but instead to inform me that we were going out to lunch instead of eating in that day (for the first time that whole summer, I think they eat out more during dinnertime as a family). She said we were going to go out to lunch with her parents (which didn’t end up happening, it turned out just to be us) and asked if I liked Japanese food. I said, of course! Der! She said we would leave the house at four, and I said vale. You know Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation? I didn’t quite understand what exactly was lost in translation in that movie when the lead actor and the lead actress both spoke perfect English. Maybe that’s too literal of a translation, but a better example of things lost in translation would be the interaction I had with Carmen that day. After she told me that lunch was at four (which already seemed like an oddly late time to have lunch, but then again going out for lunch was strange already, so I didn’t question her), I checked Facebook for a bit, and Carmen knocked on my door again. She asked if I understood her and I said, yeah, we’re going out to lunch at four. And she laughed and said no, saying that she said 2:15 and that I should hurry and shower and do whatever shit I needed to do to freshen up. Aw shit, why does the word four and the word quarter (as in a quarter past two) sound the same in Spanish? Haha, but no bigger, despite that language mishap, I managed to shower up and be ready in those tenish or so minutes I had.

The restaurant, Furama, was quite nice and claimed to serve Japanese food. But it really was a fusion of Asian food, because amongst the dishes we had, there were spring rolls, beef chow ho fun, and sushi rolls, covering Vietnamese, Chinese, and Japanese cuisine. My family found me fascinating as I ate my food, as I used my hands to eat the spring rolls (they were using fork and knife) and I used chopsticks to eat the fried rice, because Carmen could not hold or maneuver her chopsticks. As we ate, a new party sat on our left, speaking English with a strong American accent, so Carmen and Miguel commented out loud about how they were “los Americanos,” as if Celia and I couldn’t hear their blatant English already. As we waited for our cups of coffee when we finished the meal, Miguel went to sit by himself in the smoking area to puff at his after-meal cigarette. One lady from the table next to us, told us to tell Miguel that it was all right, and that they didn’t mind the smoke, so that he could smoke if he wanted to sit together with us where we were sitting. Everyone else at the table chimed in, saying that it was not a big deal at all. Yes, that’s right. The lady and all her friends spoke perfect Spanish… oops so awk…

I spent the afternoon visiting Helen Levitt’s, a New York photographer from the early-ish to late twentieth century, photo exhibition, City Lyrics. There were mainly wonderful photographs of working class children at play in the dirty streets of New York, and a documentary-style black-and-white film of characters she met on the street that captured the vibrancy of the poorer district’s street life would have gone unnoticed if it were not for her attentive eye and ready camera.

The night, we started at Shot Shack, a stand with a terraza that stands between the main entrance to Moncloa metro stop and the Northwestern corner of Parque de Oeste. I don’t think it’s official name is Shot Shack, but when you can buy chupitos (shots) for €2, it quickly earned that name from the IES students. I still had that bottle of rum and juice from Simply City that I bought with Lauren (who was in Rome during this weekend), so I brought that from Jade’s apartment and made some DIM drinks as some of the other girls drank kalimotxos from the Shack. And apparently we drank quite a bit, because as we rushed to catch the metro to Plaza de Santiago (before the metro closed at 1:30), all of us didn’t want to lose time by taking a rest/pit stop at Jade’s apartment. This turned out to be a bad idea, because we reeeeeaaaally had to take a whee by the time we got to the plaza to meet up with the boys from last night. And of course, Ramiro and Alejandro was running on Spanish time, the concept that time is fluid and setting up a meeting time for say, 1:45, actually meant 2:15 or 2:30. As we waited underneath a statue, we seriously considered flirting with one of the bouncers of the hotel or the club Penthouse that was across the street to let us use their facilities. But alas, the two boys came, unaccompanied by the party last night. Then we found out that we were actually heading to a club in Serrano, because Fefe (who had much later dropped off Nikita and Jackie’s bags at their house after taking off with them absent-mindedly the night before) really wanted go there and was already waiting for us. In the cab, Alejandro told Nikita and me that he ended up getting two hours of sleep last night, because he had to wake up and get to a family reunion (I think…) at 10 in the morning. He was also disgruntled at going to this club that Fefe picked, because apparently the crowd is old and not-fun there. Alejandro said that our plans were going to mierda that night thanks to Fefe. But we didn’t even have to experience Fefe’s shitty club after all, when Ramiro bad-mouthed the short guy in a black suit working the door (we were unsure what he actually said). In reaction, guy had a power trip and wouldn’t let us into the club.

Rejected, we walked to Las Posadas de Las Animas, where the crowd was older than the club we were the night before. People in the twenties and thirties stood around in nice clothing, drinking and shouting over the loud music. There was no one dancing, which irked the other girls, because what’s a party without dancing, right? After having the best whiz EVAH in the restroom, the boys took us upstairs to the curtained bar area, away from the dance floor. The other girls headed to the bar to get their drink that came with the entrance, but Alejandro held me back, telling me that if I had a little patience we would be drinking in a classier manner, and that we wouldn’t need to do that free drink thing. He led to me to a table that a bartender had set up. As Ramiro shelled out two €50 bills and a fistful of €20s, the bartender set down the bottle of rum, bucket of ice, cups, and a dozen little glass bottles of coke. I wonder why if the boys were so generous about buying us alcohol and a table, for at least €200, why didn’t they step it up and pay for our little (in comparison) €12 cover-charge, as well? C’mon! Or am I just being ungrateful? Valentina got quiet and said she felt bad that the boys shelled out so much money, suspicious of their motives. But I told her not to feel bad, because none of us ever asked them to do that, and they seem to party extravagantly anyways on a regular basis, so it’s not anything new to them.

My guess was right. Alejandro told me, as I stayed behind to talk to him while the other girls went out with Ramiro to liven up the static dance floor, that they usually get a bottle and table when they go to a club so they can hang out and drink comfortably. In fact, he was planning on taking us Penthouse that night, which is why we met at the Plaza de Santiago. He said the super posh nightclub would have been great fun and a good place to go for our last full weekend in Madrid. I think I would’ve just made the lavish dress code that night of the club that’s owned by Cindy Crawford’s husband. And it was definitely popular, as we saw the long lines of people trying to get in. Alejandro said that getting a bottle there would’ve been the same price as getting one in Posadas, plus we would’ve gotten a bed to sit/lie on instead of a table to sit at. So SATC, right? He said he didn’t like Posadas that much, because the table atmosphere was usually dominated by rich, retired fútbol players with their twenty-something gold diggers. Exhibit A: across the way, as we watched two young glitzy Spanish girls hang off of an older mid-fifties in a light grey suit at their table. Fefe, who, according to Alejandro, is the flake of the group, dragged us out to Serrano, because his cousin knew some girls who were clubbing at the club, but they didn’t even have a mobile, so it was impossible to tell if the club was even worth going to.

Alejandro and I found out that we’re pretty much opposites in everyway, as we talked about what we did (I go to university/he never went to college but instead “works” for his parents’ company), religion (I’m atheist/he’s Catholic on some days, not every day), politics (I’m left/he’s right and hates the awful “Communist” Spanish government that’s in power right now, although, I have a feeling right in Spain “right” actually means moderate in the US-context).

He accused me of being bookish, probably because he wasn’t studying anymore and because I go to Yale. He said he wasn’t interested in school after being kicked out of six different boarding schools. When I asked if it was because of grades, he immediately got defensive and said of course not. But he didn’t remember all the reasons why he got kicked out, saying that six times were too many to remember. He said it really was just bad luck (uh-huh…), because once he got kicked out of the first school, the teachers of the following ones watched him like a hawk, waiting for him to slip up so they could kick him out, too. My only knowledge of German schools is from Spring Awakening, so I warrant that Alejandro might be telling the truth (because, you know, musicals teach you all the important things in life). He said once was for having alcohol (surprise…) in his dorm, and another time was for stealing the key to the girls’ dormitory from the cleaning lady. Oh, so that’s why Hogwarts has gender-targeted sliding staircases leading up to the female dorms. Now that makes a good story. His parents got understandably angry at first (I mean, my mother would flip ape shit, flog me, and then throw me into maximum-security house arrest if I got kicked out of 6 schools), but as he got kicked out of more boarding schools, his mother (whom, I gathered, he was closer to) started sympathizing with Alejandro, telling him that the German teachers were crazy and part of the Gestapo anyways. I think somebody turned a messy divorce into full-on prejudice against the German people…

When the girls came back, Ramiro and Alejandro left the table as we chatted. Nikita and went to use the restroom a bit later, and Nikita received a text from Ramiro in English, saying something along the lines of “Hey, we had to get out of there, because we ran into some trouble with the police in the bathroom. We’re at the station now. Have a good night.” Our first reaction was to give them the benefit of the doubt, so we texted him back, “Are you guys okay? Do you guys want us to meet you somewhere?” But when we got back to Valentina and Jackie, we grew more and more sure that the boys wanted to leave and stupidly decided come up with the most far-fetched lie possible. I mean, we were at the restrooms, like, ten minutes after the guys left. There was no police anywhere in the club, as far as we could tell. Even if there were, the Spanish police doesn’t give shit what you do. Needless to say, they don’t give a shit what you do in the bathroom of a club. Even possessing a small amount of drugs for “personal use” is legal. We just didn’t see how they would have gotten in “trouble.” As we walked to the metro (we had half an hour before it would start), we discussed how strange the whole situation was. The more we talked about how ridiculous the lie was, the angrier we got. So Nikita sent a text telling Ramiro to think of a better lie next time. Of course, we didn’t get a text in reply the whole night. Hearing about Alejandro’s antics that night, I shouldn’t have been surprised at what he did, but I was surprised that Ramiro agreed to leave us at that rando club. When I told (Harvard) Alex a couple of days later about that weekend, he said that seeing how unexpected that entire weekend was and how crazy the guys could be, he wouldn’t completely dismiss the whole police thing as a lie. I guess we can never know for sure.