danceislove

What Really Happened When I Arrived In Madrid

Chapter 1:  Canned Tuna

Alexander shows up to Rosa’s birthday party at the studio at 10:30 on Friday, near the close of my first day in Madrid.  In the early part of the evening I trained myself not to look up each time the studio door buzzed.  Instead I immersed myself in the Spanish experience among Rosa and Carlos’s students.  Two beats after I hear Rosa exclaim, “Hola, Alexander!” I look up and he’s in the doorway, wheeling his bike, carrying his helmet, wearing the olive green Mike Doughty T-shirt.  Carefully I make my way over to him, through the small crowd of snack-munching dance students.

We squeeze each other, and there’s a kiss, very brief: he is stepping back to look at me, saying, “How are you?”

Most people say, “How are you?” when they haven’t seen each other in a while.  Alexander says, always says, “How are you?”

I answer him, somehow.

The gal Luz, one of Rosa and Carlos’s students, is beside us, apparently having recognized Alexander from previous dance classes.  I think she is saying it is fortunate Alexander has shown up because now he and I can communicate in English.

“Gracias,” I say, giving her the biggest smile I can manage.  She is standing to my right.  Her cute top screams pink against the white floor and pale mirrors.

Rosa wants Alexander to wheel his bike through to the patio.  The crowd makes way for him.  I meet him at the back and we chat.  He wants to now how the last couple of months have been for me.  I can never sum up such things, so I decide to tell him about my lindy hop students.  Then I talk about my blog.

“I’m sorry I haven’t read much of your blog.”

“Don’t be sorry.  I know you have a TON of stuff to read.”

“Those thick packets I showed you when we talked on Skype - that didn’t even include the textbook reading.”

“I know.  They were just the case studies.”

“I’m gonna celebrate at the end of the term on July 4th,” Alexander declares.  Then he looks at me again and says, “Jet lagged?”

I shrug.  Sometimes it’s hard for me to figure things out while standing next to him.  This is one of those times.

“You look tired.”

“I do?” I say, with alarm.

Carlos appears with Rosa’s camera in his hand.  I put an arm around Alexander but he reels me in with such aplomb that I am glad when the camera doesn’t work right away.  The top of my head slants against his cheek, the muscles in my side feel the muscles in his side.

At last the camera clicks and we relax apart.  I say, “I know you are exhausted.”
“I’m really exhausted.”

“We don’t have to stay here.  We can go somewhere else.”

“Like where?”

“Your place?”

“Do you have a bag here?” he asks.  “Like, stuff to crash?”

It’s a little while before we go because first Alexander eats some ham slices.  I’m glad, because he looks thinner even than usual.  Then one of the dance students hands him a cracker spread with something.

“I just ate tuna from a can,” Alexander reports, half-smiling.

“Oh my god.  Are you gonna die? Or explode?”

“Maybe.”

Canned tuna is the one food Alexander will not go near.  One night in Boston we walked by cans of tuna stacked inexplicably on top of a light box.  “Someone knew you were coming,” I joked.

That was a bitterly cold night late in March, the last Saturday night before Alexander’s departure.  We waited outside the building where his friend Veronica lived in the Back Bay.  Despite the glamour of the facade - smooth steep stone steps, beveled glass refracting soft overhead light from the vestibule - the buzzer did not seem to work.  Veronica did not answer the phone and neither did Karen, another close friend of Alexander’s.  We stood there on the narrow top step, facing each other, on either side of the heavy glass and wood door.  I laughed a little.  He had no jacket on.

“Sorry,” he said sheepishly, from beneath his eyebrows.

“I don’t mind,” I smiled, even though my toes were numb in their chunky high heeled boots.  Truly, I didn’t mind.  I could stand there and look at Alexander.  I started with his shoes, black matte leather, square-toed.  My eyes moved up over his slim hips and barrel chest.  A recurring complaint of his involves the difficulty of finding shirts and jackets that fit his narrow waist and are long enough for his arms.  I reflected that some of my dimensions were analogous to his, with my ample chest and long waist and small butt.  We’re both lean, he more than I, yet each of us have put on a pound or two recently, and when I’ve felt around to his stomach in bed, noticed just a little softness there over the otherwise hard abs.  My belly feels similar: the new weight has gone to the analogous place.

Alexander called the gals again.  Neither answered.

“We could go up to Boylston for a drink,” I suggested.

Down the steps we came, and two blocks in the opposite direction from the river.  At the median of Comm Ave we encountered the light box with three cans of tuna stacked on top, and I made my joke and we kept moving.  It was good to keep moving in the cold.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm and is filed under What Really Happened. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.