summer, and
summer, as every year, is time to come back home. A sweet and sour feeling is
with me when I first step on my island every year. My little town, the place
where I grew up, looks quite the same for the last twenty years. The old
friends have the same old habits. They go to the same old bar. They have the
same old jobs, and the same girlfriends. However, I see everything different.
There is a new feeling about every single people, about every single place.
They are the same, but the feeling perceived is different. The change is inside
me, and it is irreversible.
After some days of peace, getting adapted to
the new time zone, I have to start the worst of the modern day mind engagement.
I have to return back to my seasonal stupid work as a waiter of a hotel. As
every summer, the season starts on June, and I start working, cancelling any
chance of exploring my inner self in order to get spiritual peace. Call it
mental peace or sanity if you want. There, I let the days pass by fast while I
serve rivers of draught beer and vodkas that flow through my hands and leads
into the thirsty mouths of the inebriate tourists mostly coming from the United
Kingdom. It looks like a never ending story, every day the same. It is kind of
funny how most of the people tells me how lucky I am to live here. They always
tell me that I must go to the beach a lot; they always think that I must party
hard every day in those clubs full of chicks, drugs and deejays. And they
always say that I must fuck a lot, when I say I am from Ibiza. Nothing is
further from the truth. Often, I go to the beach a couple of times along the
whole summer. I don’t go to the big clubs unless I get paid for doing some job
in there. And about sex… let’s say that I’m too busy for that while I’m
working. My perspective of this internationally known as “the party island” is
completely different. For me is the work place. Never happens something
exciting to me when I’m there. Summers are just for work, that disgusting
operation that has to be done to extirpate the tumor of poverty that grows on
my bank account along every winter tripping around Asia. Every day here is like
the copy of the previous day, sometimes hotter.
This summer -I wander why- I have started
being more talkative with the clients of the hotel. I used to be the least speaker
waiter of the world. I used to just speak the minimum amount of words needed to
execute my task. But I’m acting different towards the people this year.
Something had change, and isn’t about them, but me. Having some conversation
with the people makes my days lighter, and gives me the impression that the
summer is going to finish earlier so I can take off sooner. I speak with John,
the family guy, about the profitable business he has in Scotland. I speak with
Jane, the aged lady, about the book she is reading. I speak with most of the
people about how they are enjoying their holidays or some other trivial
conversation that I don’t really give a fuck about. But is entertaining to
listen, as a bad song playing on the radio, it makes the time smoother. Until I
speak with Jean or she speaks to me; to be more accurate. She was with her
friends, giving the last farewell to the single life of one of them, and
getting drunk, of course. She is an interesting person, looks nice. And she has
a perspective of the world that I like. She has something more in her head than
bullshit deejays and parties. And she works on the world of cinema, one of my
many frustrated vocations. She is the one of her friends coming to the bar to
buy all the shots. The conversation flows a little bit every time. I can feel
like every shot she drinks, she is a step closer into my mind. The first shot
she tells me how long they will be partying in Ibiza, the second shot she tells
me about her work, the third shot she tells me about the kind of movies she likes,
after the seventh shot she tells me how interesting she thinks I am. I notice
she likes me, not because I’m good at that, but because she is giving me
indications with lighting arrows. She can’t help herself and tells me to go
with her behind the bar because she wants to tell me one thing. I have to say
that she is drunk as fuck. She asks me to go with them to the party somewhere
where I’m not interested to go at all, and I am to sober to go, so I kindly
refuse her invitation. Instead I offer a meeting the following day, the both of
us, after my work. She accepts giving me a long kiss on my lips as a sign of
the deal. That escalated quickly. I have to interrupt her kiss in order to be
able to continue working. I’m sure some client could see that, and it could
result as problems for me.
The next day I buy a bottle of red wine and I
go to work. I am nervous, I’ve never done that before. Never with a client,
never with a so unknown girl. When I see her, I ask if she still remembers that
we have a date. That drunk she was, that I wouldn’t be surprised if she says
that she doesn’t remember, or that she changed her mind. But she says yes, with
a much shier smile on her face. After work I go to have a quick shower and I
pick her up, who is waiting at the bar. It is a little embarrassing for me the
fact that all my coworkers see me with her. Is the first time I have date with
a client.
I drive my car to a remote beach where we
drink the wine together, we talk, we laugh, we kiss and then we have sex with
the waves of the sea as a background soundtrack. We enjoy a good time together,
and suddenly my work is not so a bad thing. At the second round she says she
feels sour at her legs, she is having a hard time to keep them opened for so
long, so we have to change position. No one said something like that to me
before. I realize that flexibility on women is an important skill for sex. It
feels good to have a special night like that. We have some nice time together,
and I drive her back to the hotel with the first lights of dawn.
The day of her departure we say good bye with
a big hug. We exchange our emails. I would like to keep in touch, maybe have a
new friend. But probably she thought something else, because she never answered
back my emails. After some time had passed, I thought that she might had a
boyfriend back home, and I was the crazy night in Ibiza. Quite sad, but anyway
I feel thankful for that special day which made my summer less charging.
