Married-ish for a Week

One week ago I came to Barcelona, and I still for the life of me don’t know what a fucking Spanish person looks like. I’ll see somebody on the street and be like, “THERE’S one!” and then they’ll start speaking Chinese.

The one thing I CAN say with absolute certainty is that I am in love.

Let me repeat that:

I. Am. In. Love.

Love’s a funny thing isn’t it? You can love people, places, material goods. Hell, you could even love a cardboard cutout of your favorite Jonas Brother (mine is Daryl, for the record).

In my situation I suppose I’m in love with a few things.

The freedom to wake up, and do whatever I want. Freedom from a job, a boss, the news, a smartphone. I am liberated to the max.

Also: Barcelona. An amazing city. I’ve had an epic day every single day I’ve been here. I’ve never had a higher propensity for adventure in any city, ever. Sure, I can attribute that to the city itself, but that would only be half the story.

For almost every single one of those days, there was someone joining me on those adventures. Multiple people, actually, but one person remained constant in my life.

A girl. A girl not from this city, nor familiar with it. A traveler, like me. We had a lot in common, her and I. But what set us apart was one major factor: at the end of the week, she was leaving. I wasn’t.

If you are a true OG, and you’ve been reading my writing since I started blogging back in Southeast Asia, you may remember a blog titled “Married for a Week”. I may have revived that piece by the time you read this.

In it I detailed the chronicles of me and a girl I came to view as a short-term wife. She was Korean; I was American (but just as pale). We had met during a Full Moon party on the islands of Thailand, and supposedly—I found this out firsthand long after the Moon—we had made out somewhere on the sand of the beach. When she found out that I lived in Bangkok, I told her she could stay with me a few days before flying back to Korea. She took me up on that offer, and next thing I knew I had a girl staying with me, and for all intents and purposes, we were no different than a married couple.

That was over 7 years ago. And, by god, it happened again.

As I mentioned in my blog last week I met a girl who loved my favorite DJ just as much as I did. We saw him together and afterwards we went and did naughty things together outside in one of Madrid’s biggest, most royal parks. And then she was going to Barcelona the next day. I already had plans to go there the morning after that. “See you in Barcelona,” we said. Whether or not we would actually meet there was anyone’s guess.

My first night there we did not. We didn’t even talk that day. This was a Monday. And then as Tuesday rolled around, we agreed to meet at Casa Vicens, the home of the famous Spanish architect Gaudí. I went there and waited. And waited. And waited…

At some point I remembered that she was Latina and told myself to be extra-patient and sure enough, shortly after she showed. We spent the entire day walking around exploring. Getting yelled at by security guards, infiltrating medical school libraries, registering at cannabis clubs, making fun of Chinese people, and eating ensaimadas. To top it all off, we ended the day banging in public, once again, this time at the beach.

We were constantly at the center of excitement. Things happening around us left us both incredulous and in frenzies of laughter. On Tuesday alone we saw a dog escape its Asian owners and go on a rampage on the street, ignoring his owner’s pleas and sniffing anything it pleased. We saw a guy being chased by three security guards, taunting them and claiming that they robbed him, while he led them on a wild goose chase all over the beach. Everything happening around us had a story. We just happened to be smack dab in the middle of it.

And by the time Wednesday rolled around, the sights and scenery changed but the excitement never let up. It didn’t let up once for our entire time together. Some days were, on paper “less exciting”—such as Friday, when we met for lunch at an Italian restaurant and ate something different every hour for the next six hours, before ending with dinner at a place called Mexico City (which we only went to because its shares its name with the city she lives in)—but it was still an adventure. A food adventure. And let me tell you, when you get a girl who can eat just as much as you and can maintain her curvaceous figure without the curves going to her belly, then you may have found something special.

What really stands out in our time together was that she was just as curious in the world as I was. Maybe more so. We’ve both traveled a ton; some of our international destinations have overlapped, and some no. She lived in France for school, whereas I’m sitting pretty on the fact that I’m a brief, cheap flight away.

Not only did we teach other a ton, but we learned a ton together. Especially about the city of Barcelona. It was as simple as, “Hey, what’s this building? Oh, I guess it’s some sort of museum? Let’s go inside.” The simple process of questioning something and investigating it was prevalent our whole time together. And in my mind, a solid relationship is built on two things: a sense of humor, and a sense of curiosity. Not only did she laugh at my jokes but she joined me on all of my conquests.

Our sex-life was far from normalcy and that’s another thing that made everything feel so fresh. Due to the (sometimes) burdensome life of a traveler, having your own space/room/bed is not always an option. Like me, she had been staying exclusively in hostels and with Couchsurfing hosts. So we never really had a chance to be intimate in our own little setting. In fact, we only had sex in a bed once. Everywhere else was in an unstable and/or risky environment. Outdoors, in the park, on the beach, etc. On Sunday, our last day together, we went for the gold in audaciousness, and by god we hit the platinum.

She was flying out of the country at 11:30 PM, but our time was more limited than that. I had a Real Madrid futbol match to catch at 8:45, and it would take at least an hour to get there. I set 7 PM as my departure time and vowed not to break that time under any circumstances. After a relatively tame Saturday night we agreed to maximize our last day together and that we would wake up at 8 AM on Sunday to do just that.

We met for a coffee and devised a plan. A picnic, from the mirador, the lookout point from the mountains of Barcelona. We picked up a couple of bottles of wine, a cornucopia of snacks, and then made the bus trip up the winding and exhausting mountains until we made it to the top.

The experience at the mirador was perfect. We drank, ate, and chatted about our lives completely candidly, with nothing being held back. We made loose plans to meet at some point in the future, while being careful to understand that a second meeting was far from a guarantee. No matter what happened this day onward, we should always cherish our 9 days together. Then we snapped a few pics from the top, smoked a joint/drank matte with a Brazilian girl, cheered on a skateboarding chick until she landed a trick, then we came down the mountain and leisurely ventured back to the city.

There were only two hours left until 7, and we had plans. There was a cat cafe we had seen earlier that morning and I needed to play with pussy. With time winding down I had all but given up on my plans to play with the non-feline type of pussy.

That is, until we walked by a sign on the street. The sign said “mi casa es tu casa”. It was propped outside of a hotel called Casa Gracia. I made some remark about how it sounded like gracias without the ‘S’, which is what a Peruvian would say, since they tend to drop the final ‘S’ in their conversations.

…And then I got an idea: if they really meant that, then they wouldn’t mind us treating their hotel as if it were our own house, right? They wouldn’t mind us doing the same things we’d do at home in their home, would they? The hotel was not open to outsiders but we slipped in the front doors right before they closed as people were walking out. Then we went upstairs to take a peek and a pee—well, ostensibly. While she was in the bathroom I took glance around the floor and realized that it was unmanned enough that we could get probably away with being in the bathroom together. Once the door opened and she started coming out, I pushed her back in and we made whoopity-doo-dah in there, loudly and longly, in a very ornately designed bathroom in a very nice hotel, while others scattered on the floor, reading books and newspapers, had no idea what transpired just a few feet away from them.

I’m not this kind of person. I’m not an exhibitionist. I’m not someone who bangs in the presence of others. But I became this person for this girl because it just felt so right.

Is it possible to love someone after one week together? Is it possible to love that person knowing that you may never see them again? I’d argue yes. I don’t know what else you would call it when every single moment you’ve spent with that person is pure, unadulterated fun. When it is filled with laughter and joy, mischief and mayhem. When you are being yourself and someone joins you in being their self and you don’t have to make any compromises in who you are or how your day goes. I believe that’s what love is, and what we all strive to achieve.

So am I in love with Barcelona? I am. Am in love with newly having moved to Europe? I am. Am I in love with my every day here, even post-departure of my adventure partner and my… dare I say… “wife for a week”? I am. But boy was I lucky to find something as special as what I had with the girl I met in Madrid just over a week ago.

Not all of us are lucky enough to feel love, and for the ones that do, keeping that feeling going day in and day out can be a brutal challenge. I was married for four years and by the end of it, things just fucking erupted into a hot molten mess and became everything but love. But love does not have an expiration date, nor does it have a minimum time requirement. If you are lucky enough to feel love in your life, hold onto it and make sure to experience it to the fullest while you have it. Don’t take things, people, or your own life for granted.