La típica película de amor

 Esto es la típica película de amor en la que chico conoce a chica, chico se enamora, chica le ignora, chica se enamora, un mal entendido le hace pensar que está con otra y se dispone a coger un avión para ir a vivir a otro país, o a otro estado norteamericano, mientras, desolado, chico habla con amigo en común, el típico amigo gracioso, y le hace entender porque chica se va. Entonces chico corre, cruza la ciudad, y tras un par de escenas de tensión, se reúne con chica en la puerta de embarque justo a tiempo, ese lugar en el que en realidad no te dejan pasar en los aeropuertos si no tienes la tarjeta de embarque, y, o bien ella no se va, o bien él se va con ella. Así, sin reserva ni nada. Y viven juntos felices para siempre. Leído esto ya os podéis ahorrar ver la mayoría de las películas de amor de los noventa y principios de del dos mil. Ahora bien, éste es el argumento de las películas americanas, si la misma cosa sucediera en la vida real y en otro lugar geográfico, el asunto sería muy distinto.

Hasta el punto en que chica está a punto de coger el avión todo sería mas o menos igual. Solo que con un toque extra de dramatismo sobre actuado digno de los dramas asiáticos. Estamos en Bangkok. Cuando chico se entera de que chica en realidad le quiere y decide largarse a raíz de un malentendido, salta del sofá y echa a correr por las abarrotadas calles de la metrópolis. Esquiva carritos de comida, turistas borrachos que sostienen una cerveza Chang a las diez de la mañana y pesados conductores de tuk tuk, que bien sabe, como buen habitante de la cuidad, que utilizar sus servicios le haría perder más tiempo que ninguna otra cosa. Llega a un taxi, que se niega a poner el taxímetro y le pide una exagerada suma de dinero por el trayecto por lo que para al siguiente que baja la calle, el cual si accede a poner el taxímetro pero sin embargo escoge una ruta mas larga para el trayecto, a pesar de las palabras que chico ha pronunciado al entrar: “Al aeropuerto, lo más rápido que puedas”. Por si fuera poco, el taxista tiene que parar a los pocos metros debido al tráfico. Los coches apenas avanzan por la calle y en la acera ve como los peatones avanzan a más velocidad que él. La chica, por su parte, está a punto de embarcar en el avión que la llevará al otro lado del mundo a iniciar una nueva vida. Consciente de ello, el chico agota su paciencia y decide correr hasta la estación de metro. Exhausto, chico se desespera al ver la cola de gente esperando para comprar el tíquet, y colarse, con los seguratas que vigilan siempre junto a las puertas, no es una opción. Frustrado, se pone a la cola.

Mientras tanto, la chica embarca en el avión, y despega.

Ya en el interior del vagón, chico mira la hora y decide que ya no hay nada que hacer, así que baja del tren y se sube en el siguiente que le lleva de vuelta. El vuelo de su amada ha despegado. Un día, decidirán aclarar el malentendido hablando a través de mensajes de alguna aplicación del teléfono móvil con muchos emoticonos. Pero ella ya está en otro país y la vida sigue. Ambos vivirán sus vidas por separado, vidas normales y corrientes, con sus altos y sus bajos. Fin.

PROJECT MAYHEM REJECTED FILES II: Singing Birds Of The Ultimate Suffocation

Sir:

  Peak season arrived to Ibiza Island, famous to be the place where money can get you whatever you wish. And with it, all the tourists who thought nothing changed here, and everything is still about parties, beaches and bitches. And we gave them a big surprise.

  At the ‘Sea Beach Club’ a highly overpriced bar at the shore which can be only reached by boat, big parties with Arabian sheiks, top models, soccer stars and big business men happen along the summer season all the time. But this time is going to be different. The party is going to be enjoyed by the ones who used to be at the bottom: the service workers, the no ones, us, the space monkeys.

  First, let me tell you about the attendants of the day of the ultimate suffocation. Among others I will tell you about Abdullah, who last year bought a 3000 bucks champagne bottle, shook it, and poured all the content over the beautiful dancer of the bar, just for fun. I will tell you about Leo Renaldo, a soccer star considered a kind of human god by a lot of people who still think they are their fucking khakis. He used to get high on cocaine and alcohol, and have fun dropping bills to the floor so he could laugh at the humiliated waiter who got to his knees for those useless papers. Humiliating the staff used to be his favorite hobby. Then Doris Hilton, international top model who used to throw the glasses against the waiter if she considered that her gin tonic had too much gin, or not enough lemon. They are a kind of money built gods who are worshiped by many people, whose icons are not in churches, but on television, which is more popular and convincing nowadays. Those three are just a small example of the kind of arrogance and disrespect shown by the customers of the ‘Sea Beach Club’, and the staff used to accept for money. All those three individuals, among others, showed up the day of the ultimate suffocation.

  All the staff one day agreed to don’t work once the bar was opened. The arrogant rich clients were shocked to see that there was only one thing on the menu: Rize or die. When Abdullah asked for his champagne bottle, the dancer who was humiliated herself brought it, shook it and shot all the expensive liquid over the sheik. The soccer star started to cry when no one accepted to serve him, tried offering big tips, but his money was not valuable for us anymore. The scared top model, Doris, ran in to the boat and tried bribing the captain of the boat to bring her out of the island, but the captain showed his hand, and there was a lips shaped burn signal there. He was one of us, the Singing Birds Of The Ultimate Suffocation. At this point, and for first time in their lives, the gods fell to the ground, then they realized that they are nothing more than us but with money. So now we don’t want their money, we are over them, and the fallen gods asked us what we want to let them go out, what if isn’t money? Money, money money. Everything is about money for them, so boring. Then I said:

-          We want a fight

-          A fight? – Asked Leo Renaldo incredulous

-          Yes, a fight – I confirmed

-          So, if we win, you will allow us to go away, won’t you?

-          Win? Is not about winning or losing, that doesn’t matter, in a fight we all win, and the rules are the following. The first rule of fight club is…

And you all know how it continues. The fights were awesome, intense. The ungodded TV gods and the waiters fighting each other, showing that we are all the same, that we all bleed. Sometimes we won, sometimes we lose, but it didn’t matter. At the end of the day we let them leave, and they were gone with the feeling that they are no more than anybody else. May any of them join the project mayhem? Only time will say. 

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.