Month: October 2014

by

_Tengo un agujero en la base del cráneo

[…]

En un momento dado, alcanzo la base de mi cráneo, sobre la nuca. Poso la mano despreocupadamente, no es más que otro gesto de incomodidad social, como cruzar las piernas, como encenderte un cigarro. Noto algo con la palma de la mano, así que deslizo los dedos hacia abajo lentamente.

Tengo un agujero en la base del cráneo. La idea en sí me ha pillado de improvisto y ahora estoy con los ojos como platos tentando el contorno de dicha abertura con los dedos: Es uniforme, será del tamaño de una moneda de 5 céntimos de Euro, aunque podría ser también del tamaño de una plaza de toros, no estoy muy seguro. Los bordes están perfectamente pulidos y el cuero cabelludo y el pelo, continúan hacia la parte interior del cráneo.

Está situado en el hemisferio derecho del cráneo. No me atrevería a señalártelo siquiera, este hueco es ahora mi máxima prioridad y única preocupación. Meto el dedo índice un poco, tan sólo la falange distal sin llegar a la articulación. No duele, no está húmedo, ni tan siquiera me mareo. Giro el dedo en el interior, apretando los dientes, con una mueca de asco que más que asco es cautela, no sea que toque algo que no debería y me quede como un vegetal el resto de la vida.

Pero nada ocurre, sigo andando por doquier y cada X metros recuerdo el agujero y repito el procedimiento, tentando su interior. Trato de taparlo empujarlo el pelo de alrededor en su interior, pero no funciona, el cuero cabelludo se reajusta y el pelo sale por sí solo, no hay nada que hacer. Sé que no funciona, pero intento esto 2, 5, 45 veces, mientras ando en círculos por esa terminal de aeropuerto buscando algo que no he perdido.

[…]

Me despierto y por un momento no sé exactamente qué año es. Después recuerdo el sueño, y aunque intento evitarlo, al final he de comprobar que no tengo un agujero en la base del cráneo.

Exhalo el poco alivio que me quedaba.

by

_Reverence (Letters for her(s) 1 of 5)

As promised, translated and adapted from the original.

Bilbao, 16th of April 2010

Dear X,

Today I understood everything. The entire thing. Today I put you in your place and luckily or disgracefully, by doing so I put myself in my place as well. Today I saw those pictures of yours, the cheerful ones. The ones with the serpentine confetti and the pinatas. A Happy Birthday. Today I saw something which for whatever reason remained hidden for a very long time.

I remember the spring and summer evenings. I remember your smell and you overly high pitched voice tone. I remember your thoroughly straightened hair. In fact, I remember the first time I saw you. The very first fucking time.

At that time I knew already that you were going to be for me, but like a complete rookie, like a moron, I fell in love with you. You went from being my target to my idealized view of love, you were my obsession, and apparently this freaked you out. Obviously. The thing is that from being my obsession you transformed into 12 beers a night. But that is a different matter.

Around that time I was about as lost as I am now. I always knew how to keep people controlled, how to keep them at the right distance. I was the one approaching you and everything burnt like dry tinder in August. We chatted for hours and hours, and we would normally tell each other Our Things. My relationships failed one after the previous one, as I didn´t know how to project you on others. In fact, my desire wasn´t to project you on anyone. My true wish was you, the whole of you, just woken up, barefoot, sweaty, sick, stunning just before a night out, naked among my stinky duvet. It was you what I wanted.

Please accept my apology. I am truly sorry.

But again, I always knew what my league was. It wasn´t Saturday night´s one. Neither Friday´s, none of them. My league consisted in seating on the team´s bench motionless. It´s pretty disgusting to realize that you could have played every match in the Football League Championship and eventually progress to Premier. Or maybe not. But, yeah. When you are 16 you are next to a hormone cocktail on the rocks seeking one thing and one thing only: bodily fluids. Whatever the price. Take my dignity, my values. My entire life. Take it. Piss on it, shit on it if you wish. I don´t care as long as you do it with a smile on your face, even if it´s just a timid one.

Hopefully you still remember that, in one way or another, we actually had something. The problem here is that girls like you say “I love you” to boys like me and fuck boys that aren´t like me at all. But regardless the absurd that I had to endure daily, regardless all that, I still wanted you.

I don´t know how to carry on with this letter. Thousands of images and situations go past my mind. I recall the summer in which I gave you one of my wristbands and how you never wore it. You gave me one of yours as well, one that you wanted to get rid off (apparently you forgot the time when you told me that you didn´t like it anymore). I called you several times during that summer, but it always seemed inappropriate. Things improved slightly when we went back to school in September. We were back on our outdoors drinking, making the most of the remainder of heat from the fading summer. We sneaked in bars and clubs but I was never much of a dancer. I would just drink and smile, whilst every single tear you dropped felt like a kick to the groin.

That guy playing defense in Conference South scores. Everyone cheers. I am still sitting on the bench.

This is just some sort of simile to explain myself. Yep, back then it was just about the score, but I didn´t care about that. Knowing that I was able to see you every day was more than enough. Wake up and smile. I don´t recall it happening too often since.

I am certain that you remember the time when in a spare second of clarity I finally understood everything. I understood what I was capable of, I finally figured out where exactly was I positioned. I GOT it. I looked for you around Bilbao´s Old Town, I found you, I took your hand and walked you away and I kissed you as if someone was going to put end to my life shooting me in the head right after. You reacted and followed my lead, pressing our tongues together hard, reaching in every single space of our bodies, every corner. All of it. You wanted it all just for yourself, you craved it. And I had the rest of the night and the rest of my life to give it to you. All the time in the world was focused in a single spot somewhere within the kiss of 2 drunks. I somehow managed to read through all your body with my hands, I touched your back under your shirt. Your face, I collected it in between my hands as if it was The Most Fragile And Valuable Thing Ever.

As if someone was going to put end to your life shooting you in the head imminently.

And all that, that wonderful scene which was slowly helping me become the happiest person on Earth, the yearned dream turn into reality in a stinky alley in the Old Town, all that, finished in about 10 seconds.

And I am pretty sure you remember that we said a couple of random things and then you told me:

– You can kiss…

As you looked at me.

I replied:

– I also like how you kiss very much.

We then had to get back to the main street as your friends might be imagining God-knows-what, or so you told me. We held hands to walk the last 20 meters that lead to our forever apart ways. It was the opposed as a walk to the altar.

Right before your friends were about to see us you let my hand go and never looked at me again. Well.

Then everything became hellish, you know that. You struggled to understand yourself. You know it. Suddenly, it looked that without any previous warning there is this guy willing to take you to the cinema, out dinning, hunting bears or deers or koalas, and even to meet your parents. And you are in the very same spot as last night, just sober and thinking: what have I done.

And my dopamine levels are over the top and I reckon I might pass away of happiness every time I breath. God damnit.

In the end we started talking again, remember? I gave you my suit jacket by the end of our Prom so you wouldn´t freeze to death. You complimented my hairstyle. I told you that you looked stunning. We even looked like grown ups, just with the advantage of having someone to prepare breakfast for us the morning after, and still with a few bottles of alcohol hidden somewhere to keep on drinking after they asked us to leave the bar.

But this was nothing but a patch. I guess that you needed to leave that burden behind. I cannot blame you. You knew that we were not going to see each other again. I still desired you secretly but I finally learnt, after many years, how to swallow those feelings. And so I nodded to everything you said and hugged you.

Surely you remember when we saw each other again, a couple of years ago. I was walking in that park with my current partner, and so were you. It was somewhere everyone walks past but noone stops. We stopped. And the other two looked at us slightly confused wondering why were we looking at each other that way.

Now I know that we are each other´s perfect antithesis. You will end up using 6 sets of cutlery per meal. I have eaten cold frankfurts in the supermarket itself to avoid paying for them. You like bars where drinks are 10+ euros and pay for it quite happily. I sneak a plastic bottle full of rum down my pants before coming in any bar. You will give birth to at least 3 children and you will possibly use it as a catalyzer to transform the disgust or hate you will have for their father when you no longer love him. I will most likely never have children, and even if I ever do they will never understand what their stupid father is talking about.

Anyway, I still feel that there is something left for us to finish. I still feel that I would take you anywhere, I would make you laugh forever until you begged me to “please stop”. I know it. I knew when I saw you again, even if I don´t find you attractive or pretty anymore, even if I think that your chest is too big and I reckon you put too much make up on. I would. Because I got to places inside you that I doubt no one else had reached before.

And you know that.

You know it.

Best,

Y

by

_Rearrange, cihsoeon.

Today it´s the day we fade away, oh.

I wonder, from time to time, how will it be like when Mankind disappears from Earth. Will we be wiped brutally within milliseconds, for our foremost joy? Or will we just fade, slowly.

I wan´t to watch the fade occur, the buildings collapse, the bridges decay, I hope for nature to take over its landmarks and spread rainforest through crops, through parks, through graveyards. I need to be certain that whoever, whatever lands on this rocks in the future to come, is absolutely incapable of telling what the fuck happened.

We deserve no better.

by

_Bilbao

This was originally written in 2012 to be included in the unpublished #6 of Estertores. I revised it last July, and then forgot about it. Until now.

– ¿Estás orgulloso de ser de Bilbao?

– Pues claro que sí, me cago en la Hostia.

– Yo es que no tengo orgullo de ser de ningún sitio.

– …

 

Nire adopziozko hizkuntzan idatzia.

I don’t want to do anything. I just want to stare at this screen, crack beers, neck pints without worrying about anything else. To be honest, I don’t want to live anymore. That is what he said. That is what you thought.

You aborted me.

You threw me out of your body through your purple vagina like a failed fetus. How can anyone fail before even being born?

It was that bad.

You dismissed my expectations, referred my failure to the imbecile, to the illiterate. You based your judgements on facts solid as air. You based your veredict on plain nothing.

You neglected me.

Behind the smiley drunkard, there was a sad existence. Nothing else. Stupid, silly boy. Lying in the slope next to the main line’s tracks, so fucking drunk that he is just incapable of looking. Incapable of seeing. All that he has is a mild stare that resembles a question mark.

That bad it was.

You restrainted me.

There he was, the kid. Angry then, sometimes. Hey, I’ve got about 300 pesetas. Buy me a couple of tequila shots. Man, it is like 10 pm. You parents will probably kill you. Fuck off, asshole. I told you, buy me the drinks. Here is the money. They won’t serve me anymore.

After every single sentence, another thousand came, but of course you were not aware of this. You were long gone in your fall towards nowhere.

You constricted me.

There he goes, the drunk bastard. Peeing in the alleys. Puking in the passages right under the suburban estates. Fuck everything. Fuck me. Drown your fingers into your throat and tear out whatever you find there, all the dirt, all the nonsense. All the shame. Your shame.

You convicted me.

Funny and pitiful. Is this you or is it my own self? Indeed, we don’t know. Nor you. Nor me. Fuck all of us, does it really matter who takes the blame? Answer: it does not. In fact you want to take it anyway. Well then, GRAB IT, and GET LOST.

Lose yourself in filthy dives. What a moving way of getting wasted. I can still see the smiles, with all the drunkenness behind as well. Drink to be poetic but hey, just don’t let the dramatic quality of it aside. Is too valuable and convenient. Yeah, keep it. It might be useful.

And it was. Apart from booze, you could get – and did so – get drown in female fluids as well. Totally drenched. Maybe it was just vomit. You are still not sure of that. What you know for sure is that you were always covered in shit soon enough. Oh yeah. Stinky pussy juice filth. Divine tragedy. Unavoidable guilt.

You loved that. Everyone did. It was what they expected.

You betrayed me.

Suddenly it was just not enough.

White bathrooms, loud rooms. Loud bass cabs, 10 x 4 inches of fucking low Hertz values.

Again pale brown bathrooms and stupid promises and situations. Sad situations.

Nothing was enough, and it was so unfair that you had to wake up every morning to keep the lie alive. Oh my goodness.

It was that cruel.

And then. Then it happened.

You wised me up.

You undressed me. You stripped me, ripped my clothes off and I was left right in front the tumult with no protection whatsoever. I ran to the alleys, ran to the bars, ran to the bathrooms, ran to the stages. But there was no puking, no sex, no drinks served, no drugs, no adrenaline.

You didn’t understand anything. You looked at the growing CLUMP of idiots that would just stare with this funny face, without saying a word. Eventually they would take another sip and look elsewhere.

But.

BUT.

Some didn’t. Some did actually strip their own clothes, or maybe they were already naked. Probably, yes. This naked morons sat or maybe threw themselves onto the ground, around you, next to you. One had a few Voll Damms. Others had some fags. Others had brains, in fact all of them did and do, and you just laid there naked, drunk, pathetic covered in self made misery and mistakes until it started.

You protected me.

That was the sign, that was the hidden watchtower that you couldn’t see from your ignorance. You were, in fact, not alone. All the past shit, was a ridiculous excuse to gain the attention of these people.

That was it. That was what you thought.

But you were WRONG. Again. Idiot.

You cannot hide a tower. You hide it yourself by looking somewhere else.

You ADOPTED me.

I kept lurking alleys, bars, bathrooms, stages. My heart kept beating, harder than ever. You were “tap tempoed” by these geniuses, and after all…

I escaped you.

40 years ago, I escaped you. I took the drunken bastards, not physically with me but I did in some way. And I left you behind.

Somewhere in my mind where I loved you, and still do. At least as much as I hate you. Because after aborting me, constricting me, convicting me and betraying me, you chose to protect me. And I had to protect my loved ones and myself from you. Because that protection, was nothing else than a leash, a way to control me. A way to control YOU. CONTROL you. Me. Us.

And you better be fucking sure of what are you doing when it comes to my drunken mates. Because I am not taking any bullshit regarding the ones that actually saved me from your misery.

I will finish you up.

by

_mini

– De todas formas, también me gustaría ir a visitar a la camarera del [REDACTED] o como demonios se llamara aquello.

– Cada día está más buena. ¡Es de locura…!

– Joder, que estoy en el trabajo, tío. ¿Ya has hablado con ella alguna vez? Debería sobrarte con tus dotes intelectuales y sociales para dar cuenta de los babosos y poder ser tú el Baboso Principal. Piensa en multi-tasking. Y en Krav Maga.

– Sólo una vez. Nos quedamos hasta cerrar el bar ya que haciendo uso de mis dotes intelectuales me pillé un katxi 5 minutos antes de que quitaran la música. Así que me dejaron terminarlo mientras limpiaban.

– ¿Y bien?

– Es muy maja y muy tímida, lo que me dejó descolocado.

– ¿En serio? No parece.

– Mientras sirve, te ríe las gracias, o te manda a la mierda. Saca molla la tía.

– Igual se vio desprotegida sin la música. O igual le follaste el cerebro.

– No sé, no creo. Después vino su novio.

– De ese me encargaré yo, no te preocupes.

– Bueno, su novio .Su colega, su idiota. Las diosas no tienen novios. Tienen esclavos.

– Pero… ¿ella es buena persona? ¿O mala?

– Eso no importa.

– ¿Cómo que no importa? Eso es el 100%. Lo único importante.

– Es como las diosas Bactrianas, que si tenían sexo quemaban a los hombres, por enamorados que estuvieran ambos.

Pausa.

– Las diosas no son mi liga, lo sé. Pero si lo fueran, no tendría miedo. Sólo hay que tener miedo a uno mismo.

– El miedo te mantiene vivo.

– No. El miedo te mantiene alerta. Estar alerta constantemente no es estar vivo: Es estar pendiente de algo que igual nunca llega. Prepararse para lo inescrutable sin motivo o razonamiento alguno, “por si acaso”, prepararse para la noche del baile de fin de curso y descubrir que no hay parejas. Estás sólo. Eres la reina del baile por descarte.

– Madre mía. Me has tirado de la silla. Voy a por café…