He, who had such a pretty name

“I`m going to write about you”, I tell him, while my left cheek lays on his knee and he plays with my hair. “OK”, I hear his voice. “But don´t write my name. I don`t want to be a small character in a big novel”

Such a shame, because he has a really, really pretty name…But he knew it and so did I: in the long run, we were both going to become a secondary character in each other`s life. After that, just a reference character, and then, an even nameless one. That´s the way life goes, even when you don`t want it to be that way: you can´t keep all the characters you want, no matter how much you like them.

All I have left is thinking that for these three days he is my protagonist in this little story.  

A crappy hostel, if you may call it that way, lighted by 75-watt lights at most. Six British pounds a bed. A room with two dozens of bunk beds, from which I get number 13 (13, always 13…), Belfast, North Ireland. I got here just a few hours ago from Dublin, since I have to quarterly flee the Schengen States, whose borders expulse me every once in a while, tired of my alien presence.

Unable to sleep on the train, I lay down for a while to take my nap, with which I usually begin my stay in a city. Me being a traveling addict does not mean I can keep up with the Lonely Planet.

 Belfast: the stage of this story.

I get up and go towards the kitchen, holding my laptop, after having withdrawn it from reception. This hostel`s low cost restrains its ability to have lockers to save your valuables. Reason why I had to leave my computer in the front desk, tagged with my name, my room number and my bunk bed number: 13, always 13.

I haven’t felt too social for a long time. I have barely talked to people since I got to Ireland. That matches my more and more usual hermit-like condition. I must get used to be alone; I shall not depend on anyone; I shall not trust anyone…Alone, always alone.

Still, when I see him, the wall I have built around me in the past weeks suddenly explodes.

A dark hair guy, with Converse and big hands, probably the biggest I have ever seen in my life, is writing on a notebook, sitting on one of the kitchen tables. “Well, hello!”, I think to myself, while holding my laptop, I stand staring at his tilted head, trying to decipher the color of his eyes, sunk on the paper.

But nothing happens. He continues looking at his notebook, without looking at me. The usual: a handsome guy whom I will own only with my sight. What an eternal punishment must be going blind, for your sight can own anything and everything. Anyway, that´s it, there is nothing new under the sun. I walk like a diva to sit two tables away from his. Alone, always alone. I don’t need this extremely handsome guy to pay attention to me. No fucking way! No fucking way! (literally). I am self-sufficient and independent. I don’t need a man never again in my life. I can do it alone. I am strong. I`m not going to try any more. It`s a waste of time. Fucking useless testosterone only appears to disturb the harmonious peace I am just reaching. No way! I am just going to sit here with my laptop and then I will go around the city by myself. I know very well how to go across the street without clinging from someone`s hand…

The truth is that by the time you finish reading this, I have turned around and gone back to his table, and now I am sitting right in front of him, on a very uncomfortable chair, half sunk, but against all odds, in front of him. He continues to write. Such a weakness for men with dark hair, who wear Converse and have big hands. Such a weakness for men who handwrite on a notebook…I hate myself a little bit. But you know what? I am going to stay here sitting in front of him and won`t move until he talks to me.

He is totally engaged in what he`s doing and I am apparently absorbed in my laptop as well. Once in a while I take a glance at him and try to keep my mouth from watering too much. Still, fortunately, the miracle of he talking to me doesn`t take too long to occur. I no longer remember what he told me, because I was more surprised about how nice, outgoing and smiley he suddenly seemed after looking so serious. The dialogue blended with the pale kitchen walls forever.

Spanish, I bet he`s Spanish, I had been telling myself that just a few minutes before because of his dark hair, his tanned skin, his Mediterranean looks… Oh, yeah! I was right. As soon as I tell him I`m from Costa Rica, he starts speaking Spanish with a Madrileño accent. “¿De San José eres? (Are you from San José?), he asks. Score! Almost no one around here knows where Costa Rica is, and when they think they do, they confuse it with Puerto Rico and tell me that they like Ricky Martin. Now, the fact that he knows the name of the capital… Or maybe I just like his bright brown eyes so much that I`m letting him score as much as possible. “Yes”, I answer. “And you? From Madrid?”. “No, from Slovakia”. Well yeah, from Slovakia. An Erasmus year is enough for Europeans to learn languages as if they had always known them. Anyway, he prefers to go on in English after impressing me with his bilingualism (later I will learn that besides Spanish, English and Slovakian, he of course speaks Czech and Polish). “What is your name?”, I ask a little later. I need to name him so he stops being the handsome-with big hands-handwriting on a notebook-sitting at a Belfast hostel kitchen table stranger, name that, I bet we all agree, is too long to use.

“My name is…” he says. Oh my God! What a beautiful name! I had never heard it before. I repeat it, tasting it, feeling its richness in my mouth while I say it. “Nice to meet you”, I answer. No doubt, of course, so, so nice to meet you… “Nice to meet you too, Andrea”, he answers. And I was like, “Oh man, how does he know my name if I haven’t said it? One of my fears is that someday I will run into a person who`s able to read my mind. You never know! The fact that one doesn’t have telepathic powers doesn’t mean other more fortunate don’t have them. How embarrassing! If I have finally run into someone who`s able to read my mind, he already knows I have even imagined what color boxer he`s wearing… “How do you know my name?”, I ask, stupidly surprised. So he points at my laptop case, which has my name on it, my room number and my bunk bed number, 13, always 13. Thank goodness!

So it´s him and me. He, the guy with a pretty name, and me, Andrea, for the next three days.

That night we go out with a girl from Uruguay who was staying at the hostel. She ended up with us by accident, you know two`s a company, three is a crowd. As soon as she heard us speaking Spanish, she joined us for some Monday beers in Belfast.

On our way back to the hostel, after an incident that I`ll describe in more detail in our next chapter, we (he and I) had a cigarette outside, in the smoking area, a garage inhabited by a dove who shits on all who blows smoke on its beak.

A mural, an awful mural that I could have drawn, acts as the only decoration on the wall: a guy holding the Titanic on his thumb.

Culture note of the day: Belfast was the city where they built the Titanic, nautical achievement of which people from Belfast seem to be really proud a century later, even prouder than of all the other hundreds of boats that they built and never sunk.

Yes: that's the way Belfast defines itself.

We take our time to smoke. No rush. Especially me, because even though we have spent a good while together, I still don’t know if he likes me. “If he`s going to kiss me, this is the time”, I think, while we go on talking about more things I don’t remember. He´s so handsome that all the dialogues get lost in his eyes, I have already told you. And I, for a change, as it usually happens in these moments, can`t stop talking. I talk, and talk, and talk, and talk, and talk as if I preferred having my mouth busy with any other thing but his lips.

It`s late. He has to work tomorrow. He got to Belfast just a week ago to work at a call center where they were looking for someone who spoke Slovakian. Midnight has long ago gotten lost in these North Irish streets. What a shame! Oh well, go ahead, just go to sleep. He tries to make me feel better and asks me to get together tomorrow afternoon to hang out. All right, I settle for that consolation prize for now. There`s nothing else I can do. It was foolish of me to speak so much, as much that I think I sank the moment with a huge Titanic full of useless words.

“OK”, I think, pretty much giving up. And while I am pointing at the front desk door with my right arm, I go on: “I sleep in the room in front of the reception, I think I might be there tomorrow or maybe in the kitchen, you know, internet here is bad and there it`s easier to…”

And suddenly, it occurs. While I am still pointing with my right arm, he gives me a kiss, a short, quick, and impulsive kiss that takes away all the phrases.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist”, he whispers. No. Don’t say you`re sorry. Don’t resist it, just hug me, kiss me like there´s no tomorrow, kiss me against the wall, tangle your hands with my hair, carry me on your hips and take me to that sofa over there, abandoned in the middle of the hostel parking lot, no matter if it`s cold, late or if tomorrow you have to go to work, no matter if you don’t get to be the protagonist of this novel and even if I lose one of my Converse in the garage, as the only trace of you kissing me here once.

We feel the evening falling over, as we lay down on the grass, in a little park in front of Saint Ann Cathedral. We smoke and drink beer, slowly, with our legs tangled, nothing matters. We know nothing lasts forever and that it doesn’t make any sense to save face only to become a memory in the mind of others, that in the long run will also be only memories in the mind of others that won`t get to meet us. Who cares, then, that my hair and his sweater get dry grass all over. The only face that seems to matter is that we both look as if we were a couple that had known each other all our lives.

St. Ann's Cathedral. No, sorry: no pictures from this guy available. You have to picture him yourself.

Just a little while ago I was chatting with you. Lately, it seems you decide to appear when I`m waiting for another guy in a hostel lobby to go enjoy the last sun rays of a day that is about to end and will never come back. You seem further and further: Since a few weeks ago, I took you out of that spot surrounded by walls that you never wanted anyway. I got tired. I got tired of seeing how other men were always crashing against that wall, that wall that was there only to protect your endless absence. So, this evening I said good bye in a rush, closed my laptop and went with him to lay on the grass. You only fit in my laptop, which can be easily closed and left at the front desk, tagged with a number 13. That is your place. He, on the other hand, is different. He is here playing with my hair, the same hair you don’t like.

When it starts getting cold and darker, and there is not much sun left to brighten the scene, we decide to go to the university area for some beers. Today I have walked like crazy; I had a glorious moment when, after having walked for around 45 minutes until finding the murals of one of the Peace Lines in Belfast, I realized I had left my camera memory card in the laptop, far away in the hostel front desk (yes, that place, your place) so I had to go back, and come back right away. To make it worse, I had the great idea of wearing my Converse, taking advantage of the fact that I have both of them back. Unfortunately after a while walking on them it feels like walking barefoot. The university area is far away, and honestly I felt tired to walk there, but when he stands up and reaches out his arm, I can´t say no. I can´t say no, even though it`s difficult to keep up with him (me and my weakness for tall men, who usually stride along), I can´t say no even though my feet hurt; I can´t say no even though I am several blocks away from the next beer because I feel so well walking along holding his arm… I have come to the conclusion that happiness is stupid. No wonder why they say that laughter abounds in the mouth of fools. Such simple and stupid thing makes me happy: walking around Belfast holding his arm and going across the street; who would have thought that just yesterday I was saying I didn’t need anyone`s hand to go across a stupid street.

The bar (very Irish if you look at the front, even though British might disagree) has an alley in the back that pretty much works as a terrace. Since I come from a extremely rainy country, where the sun goes down at 6 pm all fucking year long, I prefer sitting outside, where the sun is still shining, even though it is already 10 p.m.

As some very loud music is on, we talk. Well, actually, I put him through the usual questioning that all men I go out with go through. I`m not going to reveal the questions just in case any of the readers of this blog has to go through it someday, you never know. What I can tell you is that part of this famous questionnaire includes finding out whether the questioned subject has been in love. I don’t want any more stones on the road.

I have the feeling that this guy, with such a pretty and Slovakian name, has never been in love and that his life has been actually full of secondary characters. I was not completely wrong: despite of the fact that he has been in love sometime, he doesn’t want to fall in love again. He doesn’t want to have that feeling of “almost dying for that person if necessary”, as he himself defines it. “I have built a wall”, he finishes, while he takes another sip at his beer. I had figured this guy had a wall too, like mine, like yours, like the one everybody I have met on the way has. Walls. Walls, like the ones in the Peace Line of Belfast: walls that divide catholic and protestant neighborhoods, and which gates close at 5 p.m. so they don’t get into a fight. Yes, as stupid and sarcastic as it sounds, with that dumb and disgraceful little name of Peace Line, well into the XXI century. As stupid and sarcastic as his walls, and mine, and yours and everybody else`s. Walls that are built to protect ourselves from other people´s love and to stay in peace, but in the end, all we keep is fear.

“But when we walked on the street holding each other´s arms I was happy”, he tells me.

Well, not bad, at least for a while, we were both happy.

Me, at a Peace Line in Belfast. Another wall...

Then, we went to the hostel and at night we stayed talking about random stuff basically. I say a random phrase like “this is a shitty hostel” or “the house is falling apart” so he translates them to Slovakian as we sit down on the top bed smoking and letting the smoke vanish rapidly through the window, like this moment that is also vanishing through the curtains.

Then is when I realize, between phrase and phrase, that further than acquiring some basic Slovakian knowledge that I will never use , I haven’t asked him his last name. “…”, he answers. For me it`s a difficult last name, even though he assures it is fairly common in Slovakia. I will probably forget it. I will probably forget it, as well as I will forget his voice, his smell, his looks, his hands, him, until it becomes nothing more than a memory of a memory.

That night I fell asleep in his arms, saying his name.

The sun rises. His cellphone alarm goes off. I open my eyes. “Did you sleep well?”, asks a kind graffiti on the top bunk bed board. Fucking cheap hostel. The bunk beds are so old and run down that the graffiti on them is as old as the one they found in Pompeii, about which I wrote a paper on their translation as an assignment for the university, long time ago, for my Latin class.

He gets up and takes a shower. I turn around and keep on sleeping, taking a last glance at his Converse that await to take him away from me. Well, actually, mine are taking me away from him: this evening I return to Dublin.

I am falling asleep. It`s not time to wake up early to go to work yet. I still have a week before going to Germany, where I will work in a dogs ‘hotel for a month, in a little town in the northwest, near that city that doesn’t exist, where once you learned how to speak German.

I doze off. I close my eyes again and suddenly I am dreaming. I´m dreaming with other things that have nothing to do with him, that have nothing to do with you. Alone, always alone. I don’t need anyone. I don’t trust anyone. I don’t believe in anyone. The wall. Always the wall.

After a while, he wakes me up to say good bye. He hugs me good bye. He asks for my e-mail and wishes me well in Germany. He says it`s been a pleasure to meet me. He goes on with all those phrases that I do remember, not because he said them, but because I have hear them before and I will probably hear them again, from many others. Second characters. Protagonists? No. I barely pay attention to him, I am too sleepy and I just want to go back to sleep, I love to sleep, even though the sun is trying to peak through the badly arranged curtains.

And just like that, with my eyes half open, half asleep, I barely see him going out the room door. First his back, then his Converse, and then nothing, just the door. He walks away. He stops being a protagonist and a secondary character to become a memory. He vanishes, with every steps he takes, with every stair he goes down, with every street of Belfast he crosses, until he becomes a blurry memory, like a sort of memory after a dream, when you wake up in the morning. A simple dream, confusing and pale, that was never intended to become true and simply vanishes.