MIDSUMMER TALE

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.