Location: Madrid, Spain
Thursday July 1, 2010
Everyone in our class thought our art history final was going to “easy piezy lemon squeezy” (in the wise words of Sebastian Diaz from spring semester 2009) until our professor dropped the bomb that we had to identify his given paintings by name and date. Now, dear sir, where did all this come from when you yelled at us to ignore each painting’s placard to focus looking at the painting every class? I guess we were all suppose to magically know that he would go the traditional route with his test when he went completely the opposite way during his class sessions. Ay yi yi, I hoped he liked my on-the-spot made-up titles!
Jade, Lauren, and I decided on a last picnic together poolside at Lauren’s building complex since we were all busy the next (last) day. All went fine until some nosey middle-aged lady decided to make the lifeguard kick us out for having food in the grass by the pool. What’s up with these squares? It’s not like we’re eating our chorizos while doing the breaststroke… The teenage lifeguard came over later as we were packing up our food to say that it really didn’t matter to her, but older ladies don’t have anything better to do with their lives but to be rule Nazis.
Jade came with me to meet (Harvard) Alex to botellon a bit on the street in the eastern part of the city as we watched some break dancers practice. Always up to dance, Alex made me perform with him a bit of the choreography from Telephone by Gaga featuring Beyonce music video on the street for Jade, who wasn’t there to see Alex’s lesson to me on the Valencia beach a few weeks before. Some of the break-dancers were staring at us after our little show, but most of the passer-bys looked on unphased. When we headed out to meet Alex’s señora’s grandson, González, at another metro stop, Jade left because she wanted to get sufficient studying and sleep for her grammar final the next morning.
González, and his friend Alejandro (unrelated to previous bad boy Alejandro, it’s just a popular name, ein’t it?) took us to a hookah bar to start the night and meet up with a group of girls. The four gorgeous seventeen-year-old girls arrived in mostly black going out clothes with impressively high heels, chattering loudly in Spanish. It was my first time really talking to and hanging out with Spanish girls, because usually Spanish guys are the ones who are eager to help American exchange students practice the language, while Spanish women just scrutinize us unabashedly on the metro. Even though all the girls just finished high school and the boys were college-aged, it felt strange hanging out with such young people. We had gotten used to hanging out with an older crowd and meeting older people whilst going out.
I fell in friendship-love with the girls, who were all warm, loud, and friendly. They were very curious about our American-ness and what we thought of them Spaniards. One girl kept taking pictures and declared that the photos would all show up on Facebook the next day. Two of them insisted on teaching Alex and me bad words, claimed that they were going to be virgins until marriage, and then laughed rambunctiously afterward. Meanwhile, I tried pinpointing González’s sexuality to help out (Harvard) Alex, who thought he was cute. Upon entering the bar, González acted extra friendly with the owner who was smoking at the bar. But González was also all over the girls as he was drinking. Alejandro even yelled at him to get off Maria, his girlfriend, at one point. I didn’t believe Alejandro at first when he said that Maria and he were together, because they weren’t lovey-dovey at all. He then explained that he didn’t like PDA, which was total news to me. They were probably the only couple in Spain with that idea. Anyhoo, gay or not, González was definitely working it, because he got a big fruity drink and a strawberry-flavoured hookah on the house for us.
When Alex came back from the bathroom, the girls put their hands together and wiggled them. He laughed and shook his head no. Seeing my confused expression, he told me that they just did the Spanish sign language for making out. Apparently, González had pulled him off to the side and asked him if he were interested in making out with the old bar owner who had taken an interest in Alex. Disgusted, Alex denied his offer, but ended up regretting it when he realized that he could have gotten free drinks otherwise. What a whore. Haha.
I was having a good time talking with the girls as we headed out of the hookah bar to go to a terrace rooftop bar. According to the Spaniards, clubs were not safe to go to on weekdays, because only tourists and gang members/shady-people-all-around go. The kids said that there are at least a few stabbings a year at Joy, the club that we visited the week before. Good thing we found out about this at the end of our program, huh? Going out to Alejandro’s car, we were trying to decide who would ride and who would take a cab to the bar, when they got into an argument. Alex and I definitely wanted to take a cab, because Alejandro already seemed a bit tipsy before we started drinking at the hookah bar. Yet, even though the numbers would work out if it were only us riding in the cab, we needed a local to ride with us since we had no idea where this next place was. So Maria volunteered because she wanted to spend more time with us. Alejandro got unreasonably angry that his girlfriend wasn’t riding his car and jumped into his car and drove off. Well, that’s one way to dramatically storm off. The girls ran after him, and he stopped in front of the next intersection to show that he was the one with the power. González then wordlessly walked away to the metro station. Alex and I were both at a lost at what to do, since there was no clear communication amongst anyone. We ended up running after González who was actually leaving. He said to never mind his friends, because he wasn’t going to hang out with Alejandro when he had such bad manners. He said Alejandro was being a douche and that even though they were besties from childhood, he couldn’t stand him when he acted like this. We asked if we should let the girls know that we were actually leaving, but González said that they would be fine. Once they realized that we were gone, they would continue to have fun at the rooftop bar. Geez, what drama llama… I just wanted to hang!
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