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