Twenty | Loadstar

Claudio:

Ten days before dying you found a phrase by Millôr Fernandes that said: "Nostalgia is yearning to go back to a place that never existed." I bet that when you read it you didn’t connect it to us or to our lives, because back then there was absolutely no place we wanted to go back to. Our desires pushed us forward and, for you, nostalgia was merely a virus caught by weird people. Everything was new for both of us and every day seemed to emerge with the offer of a virgin or a bottle to be opened. I can guarantee you that what’s left are only the bottles. And it's not my fault because when I got here, the world was already like this.

You believed in social justice, in your girlfriend and in tequila. And despite believing in justice, in a woman and booze, you were still a happy man. Jerk. How did you do it? It was your mistake, my friend, your time ran out way before you found that out. I respected you because you were authentic. And so obviously happy. I insist, jerk, how did you do it? Because you were quite content, yet you were not an idiot.

I rummaged through the drawers of my bedside table until I found the remote control. I didn't find anything worth watching except for a pair of blown-up tits. They were hideous! They were as round and rigid as doorknobs. Beautiful tits tend to be those that fall naturally like a pair of giant tears and seem to stare up at the sky as if the nipples are reaching for the sunlight. It seems that there wasn’t too much silicone back in our days. If I were to tell you that the first time I grabbed some fake tits was when I turned twenty-six. That is six years after laying you to rest.

You missed the experience, and yet you didn’t miss much. Those mega boobs that I got hooked on to, while I was unwilling to open my eyes, did feel like a knee. Something rigid underneath the skin, that felt quite peculiar in my beau ardent hands. I felt convinced that the stroking, the licking, the sucking and the fondling all bounced off the silicone which seemed to have destroyed any genuine sensual feeling. After leaving her house and saying goodbye, after a couple of seconds and before turning on my car I was already convinced that not only her breasts were fake but also her orgasm.

I zapped channels and ran into an episode of El Chavo del Ocho.[1] Why do I still like it?

[1] Translator’s Note: Popular Mexican TV Show that was first aired during the 1970s. Reruns are still aired in many Latin American countries.

I started talking about tits when in fact what I wanted to tell you was that I have spent a multitude of days trying to run away from your soul. So far I've done well. It's been fourteen years, my friend. Fourteen years since I visited with the last flowers.

It's just that suffering got me bored. I was twenty, and that's an age when, even after burying your friends, you still feel immortal and capable of finding an identity, happiness and permanence. You long to find something that will finally make you feel at peace. At peace and free of that feeling of being constantly scrutinized by everyone.

While your body rotted, I turned my mind away in order to be able to welcome the days awaiting ahead of me. I had to face them head-on so that my back wouldn’t break. After a while, I had the certainty that you were running against the sun. What a sad certainty it was, my friend.

You weren't my first substantial loss and that's another reason that keeps me going. No one is truly unique, nor anyone is the last one, and you can call that hope, my friend. No matter what, the world keeps turning, life goes on, as the old tango said, and ironically the one who sang it also passed away.[1]

After your accident, life went on. As for me, I did nothing to stop it. I immediately went on being who I am and I took advantage of my mourning, just as I’ve always taken advantage of any circumstance. I exploited my sorrow. I got drunk at the expense of other people. Ana Paula took me in and Cristina started fondling my hair, something she had always refused to do. Thanks to you, in between sobs, more than one torso was offered to me. And also thanks to the fact that the women I know are vindictive. They want to marry the philanderer, make the greedy spend and force the big spender to save. Finally, what they want is to change you and make you do what you don't feel like doing. I was in dire need of aches, and yet some of them women came into my life to bring me joy. Nowadays, I want to find happiness and they just want to see me in pain.

I don't remember the day I finally convinced myself that you died just in time, my friend. Without a doubt it was one of those moments of ultimate defeat, with two smeared lips shouting goodbye, it turned out to be inevitable. I think you would've gone mad in this world. You were too sensitive and too determined to be happy, your marriages would've lasted less than a tank of fuel.

[1] Translator’s Note: The author refers to the famous tango "Sus ojos se cerraron." (Her eyes closed) written by Alfredo Le Pera and French Argentine singer Carlos Gardel. Gardel died in a plane crash in 1935.

Yesterday I decided to follow your path. I decided to live your final twenty minutes, beginning with a smile as a kind of farewell. Just like the one you gave to those who stayed partying after you left, you drove back to Quito drunk as a skunk. That was the beginning of your end.

For an instant you tightly shut your eyes, and with an incomplete squealed profanity you slammed your teeth on minute twenty. I want to imagine you did it without fear. With no fear and pressing the brake pedal with all your might until you break it. That is how the paramedics found you, according to them.

Your gold chain and watch were stolen. Maybe it was the paramedics, or perhaps it was the people from the area who came in a hurry to reap that which the devil had sowed. They robbed you, maybe when they were conducting your autopsy or possibly in the morgue. Your death was very Ecuadorian: drunk, in love, with the music full blast, speeding, and at a bend in the road which was filled with debris left there by some bastard inefficient bureaucrat. And, as the icing on the cake of Ecuadorianness, they ransacked your corpse without any nor the slightest compassion.

In Ecuador, we have no empathy for the dead or the living. Not even when we ourselves are 'the living'. And you wanted to become President in this inferno filled with ordinary devils, hypocritical angels and supernatural virgins.

I managed to run away from you for years, despite the fact that today's depression had been already in the making. I call it depression, though I'm not sure I'm using the right term. A profound sadness, a spine-chilling nostalgia is what I feel. If anyone was perceptive enough and knew me, they would play Barco a Venus[1]in my honour, but a song is too much to ask for. This anguish is not only because of you. It's a consequence of everything. It's because of the phone call you got and I didn't. It's because of the friends who visit me. It's because of something I need to have the strength to confess. I'm crying over the Life of Pi. It's for the death of my friend Pablo, who with two shots in the back was murdered by his wife while their kids were watching. They said it was a passionate crime. But no, not everything can be that simple.

How long did it take Mariana to let you go from her guts? Though she is a woman, it took her quite a long time to have you turn her into a sombre episode of her life. She says it took her three years. Well, on the day we held each other's hands to talk about you while sitting on the floor of my house in front of the unlit fireplace which I never light because it fills my cosmos with smoke. After listening to her, I’m certain that her mourning was intense and longer than the pain you might've felt when you smashed your soul against that tree. However; just like yours, her pain gradually faded away, embraced by hormones and time.

How long did it take for the person riding next to you to die after the crash? "Instant death", said the autopsy. However; time doesn't matter. If you think about it three years or an instant, they both seem to last the same.

I read the autopsy of your passenger just because I didn't dare read yours. Perhaps it said similar things, but for me, it was a good way to see you without it becoming a synonym for pain. There are many ways to see the sun or voidness without scorching your eyes. I remember that while asking for a copy of the autopsies the nurse at the morgue asked me for the names of the deceased. I hesitated and I just asked for the passengers, and when I read the report I felt like that mythological fellow that had to look at Medusa's reflection on his shield in order to avoid turning into stone. That's how in medical terms, I read about your broken life, as piercing as an ice needle.

Your way of dying is one of my demons. One of those diabolical feelings of guilt. A feeling, a sensation as if you are like a piece of crap stuck to a shoe that's thrown against a wall. It rebounds and it smears you with parts of it, then you fall on a chair and you start writing. Staring at the stain from the corner of your eye you write. You write, hating the chair you fell on and missing the shoe that hit you. You write, hoping that a magical page will come along with the quiet warmth that will enfold the days you'd like to encounter.

[1] Translator’s Note: This song is by the Spanish pop-rock group Mecano (1980s).

And despite it all, as they say, it is all so simple. Tiny, minuscule and temporary, like the Holy Roman Empire. Like a piece of sputum under the sun.

With your demon on my back, clinging like a tick I survive since the night of your accident. I'll be honest: it isn't your demon, that, you took with you. It's something else it’s a devil dressed with the skin you no longer inhabit, that carries an unbearable silence of the laughs you no longer howl. A demon that spreads loneliness on behalf of your absenteeism, and without my approval, now and then, he tells me that it should have been me who died.

I never felt the need to complain. However, the larvae that darkened my soul started to come out. Yesterday I began writing again and carefully re-read what I had written, because reading to myself is like looking in the mirror, it's like finding myself in the news or waking up in jail. Sometimes I surprise myself, and I hate surprises. Sometimes I don't remember what I did. I suppose it happens to everyone who’s unwilling to feel the weight of remorse.

Today with dread I perceived that it might be true that a place where I would like to return exists at all. Millor Fernández might have been right, and it might turn out that today the road I left behind might have vanished. And if this is so, dreams about the people in your past are just that, not a thing, just dreams. Nothing. Like the wrecked ship in which my parents drowned, which also disappeared.

I want to go back to a mother that was stillborn. If Millor Fernández was right, I don't exist. Nor did the places where we toasted to whatever exists, where we talked about so many things that we never even allowed them a different meaning than the one we gave them, nor were we able to see the other side of the story.

And what I'm saying has little to do with the fleeting passing of time. It's not like I'm discovering oral sex. Can't stand that Don Ramon has been dead since 1988, as well as the Witch and Jaimito the mailman. I already forgave myself for discovering Henry Chinasky fifteen years after his death. I can live surrounded by ghosts that did not withstand time. I'm talking about something else, something worse than time and its speed. After all, it's not time's fault. I'm talking about our obstinate incapacity to build a time machine that would make us travel to the past and which is not a crumpled photograph or a blurry video. All the wonders invented by man work for the future. My gut aches when in no time things become obsolete, like a computer or a world champion. Like Sharon Stone's naked pubis which stopped mattering after Pamela Anderson's blowjob.

All man does is abandon his past and invent his immediate future. He creates the prolongation of life, how to cross the oceans, how to breach your privacy, and how to kill with alarming precision and without any risks. Whoever said "To remember is to live again" is truly a jackass.

Man’s pride is notorious; he doesn’t care to relive nor correct his wrongdoings, nor to be a better judge for certain contemplations. We don't look back while we live, we have the contempt of a good-looking slut.

In my opinion, which isn't worth much because of what I have already mentioned, I will only feel that man will justify his existence in this world when he constructs a tunnel that takes us back to the days we want to relive. Only after he does that and we have the ability to embrace a dead grandfather or be able to read a newspaper under the sun after smuggling a cigarette, man will finally be able to destroy its meaningless existence. I think mankind's mission is not about conquering space. Physicists and astronomers waste time trying to understand black holes just for the hell of it. I will tell you, morons: the moment that just went by. That is the real black hole.

Yesterday I decided to follow your path. I chose to live your final twenty minutes, beginning with a smile as a kind of farewell, until I fell into an absurd silence.

I did not give up on the idea of celebrating with friends. Several of them just got here. They came into my house without knocking at the door. They looked like spirits, like ghosts of parties that ended either in murders or earthquakes. Some of them asked me to sing. I laughed in their faces because I was never able to sing. They joined in my laughter with bangs on the doors and bitter exhales that fogged up the windows.

At the party that ended with your death, you came without your girlfriend. To the party that I’m throwing, mine will not come either. I welcome my friends on the bathroom floor because it’s comfy and crispy. I think this is their favourite place. They have never entered my bedroom, nor have I seen them in my living room. The television already did its job, I couldn’t get anything else out of it so I turned it off. I left my bed and approached the bathroom with a bottle in my right hand. I sat down and after a few minutes, the floor underneath my ass was already warm.

As long as I can help it, this party will not be a failure.

Millor Fernández is an amazing Brazilian, he laughs in order not to cry. However, I want to rebel against the idea that you miss what never existed. I can trust some memories that do border on reality. One day, for instance, in my car we crashed against a school bus right on the roundabout of República Ave. Immediately one of the students got off the bus shouting at us and telling us that he was the President's grandson and thus we were fucked, you punched him square in the face while you told him that his grandfather was a lousy piece of shit as President.

That avenue and intersection are still there, in the center of Quito. The lousy piece of shit, the President is in the recent history books and it is likely that his grandson still remembers your mean punch that cracked his jaw wide open. By the way, as I write this letter, the guys from the district are tearing the rotary apart.

A few days ago I ran into a guy that I recognized as one of your school friends. We met at your burial and we saw each other during the following weeks while visiting your tomb. Since we weren't the widows, we hit it off right away, I saw him again and we greeted each other as if we knew each other.

You ruined Santiago Cruz's birthday. That is another memory linked to real facts. He's still alive, he's an environmental litigator who smashed the face of an asshole who wanted to punch me. I like him much better now that he's protecting birds and not defending people. You wrecked his birthday because the accident happened right the day before and he had to spend it in your living room facing your coffin. I believe he's also a testament of your life as well as of your death.

Because of these memories, I think nostalgia is, opposed to Millôr’s idea, of wanting to return to the only places that truly existed. I have been thinking about it for days and that's why I rush hastily for them, to be able to find those places that spoke to us. Yesterday without getting out of the car, I looked for that tiny bar filled with lousy yet accommodating derrières, Papillon. The bathroom was tiny and smelly, the barman was a hearing impaired Otavaleño and the gringo managers made their fortune out of our need to escape. Papillon was demolished a thousand years ago, buddy.

I also went looking for your house.

Having no life of my own, I decided to re-live your last twenty minutes. They were energetic and filled with urgency and with a soaking desire to be with her.

I know you felt that obscene desire, that aching hormonal yearning to be with Mariana. That is why you left to be with her because you were at an age when you thought that girls would surrender in order to be with you. And we thought that they didn't like sex nor that they had sordid and wet dreams hidden under their skirts. And we also thought they didn't masturbate! Well, they do. Healthy women do love sex. Furthermore, Mariana really enjoyed your company. It wasn’t like she was doing you a favour when she was with you, nor did she make any sacrifices when she hugged you. And since you didn't know that, you, drunk as you were, drove like crazy at a hundred miles per hour to meet up with her, like it would be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make love to her or to feel the affection of such an alluring girl.

You killed yourself over a chance to get laid. And you are dead due to a party you organized in order to please two hundred and eighty dudes dressed up with nineties clothes. The thought of her naked is how you lived your last twenty minutes prior to the crash. You lived them without knowing they’d be your last, instead believing they’d be the first of that night, that would lead you to Mariana’s embrace. You never thought you would end up in the arms of the paramedics.

Looking at it like that, what a bitch life seems to be! No, not even a bitch because with hookers you know what to expect, you pay what they’re worth and on time. You know that if they come into your house they will probably steal a couple of ashtrays or cds. You know if you tease them they'll probably pull out from their purse, where they keep their cheap condoms, a razor blade and shamelessly cut your face. Only when you tip them generously they will remember your face and that will be it. There is no fool who will not ask for free sex, nor a hooker that wouldn't want a tip. The foolish never prosper.

With life, you will never know when and how a perfect second will become a total tragedy. When you see it like that, life is a bitch, how then should I look at it, so at least it begins to look like a lousy friend?

Very soon I will stop talking about Mariana but I want to tell you that years ago I saw her again. I was talking to someone next to a huge stream that allowed us to see the flow of a thunderous river falling into two rocks the size of your house. She stood next to me, hidden behind a wall of a white-painted balcony that had been built to see what I just described to you. When I discovered her, secretly listening to me, my heart fell like a cascade, I felt like a diver that dies in the midst of a jump. Running into each other so far away from Quito made us grin. She was very pretty, much more than the women we grew accustomed to and considered trophies. Every time she walked holding your hand, everybody was envious. It must have been wonderful. There is so much power linked to the presence of a beautiful woman!

Anyway, I ended up saying what I said to the person I was talking to. He was Colombian and I was telling him things about Quito. I liked talking about Quito. About how much I love her. About how much they rape her and break her soul. About how every time I have pissed in her streets I have asked for her forgiveness. About how she gets drunk at the beginning of December in order to celebrate the violent Spanish conquest and she gets drunk again in August in order to celebrate the expulsion of the Iberian audacity. Quito is feminine, my friend, and when she gets pissed she can kick out the asshole who decides to act like a jerk while being President.

Well, I wasn't talking about pissing when she heard me, and when I finished my love story, the Colombian, quite bored, walked away. I turned to make sure nobody else had witnessed his boredom, but then I found her and she said to me, "You speak so beautifully." I was impressed, and I fell silent. There are many words that haven’t crossed my lips since that day, and it’s because of her and because of the way she glanced at me at that precise moment. For several seconds all I could listen to was the water hitting against the rocks. To me, it was an unforgettable moment, my friend. What a shame she was yours.

For silly reasons, we kept seeing each other. We would run into each other in weird situations that would end up leaving us all alone. She taught me several things, she taught me for instance that a woman chooses you way before you have even looked at her. Women have invisible fingers that weave with invisible threads. "We are the god behind God that Borges spoke of", she told me.

I think she might have also wanted to teach me something about socialism, which I'm only beginning to understand. I suppose socialism must be really cool, but with people like us, any ideology is worth shit, I assume.

When she looked at me it always felt as if there was a breeze. Then she told me how the hours leading to your accident were for her and why she had called you. Honestly, we barely spoke about you. But by the time we ran into each other at the waterfall, she had stopped feeling remorse and she deserved that serenity.

10.

Yesterday I went looking for Rodrigo Alegría's farm. I tried to find it but I failed. I got lost amid dirt roads and dry bushes. That's where we saw each other for the last time. Was that where we saw each other for the last time? I retraced our steps, feeling like a jerk who was not even able to find his own space. Not even when I offered my soul to the nearest god did I find it? Did you ever try to sell your soul to the devil or to a god? They're greedy payers.

I got out of the car several times. I asked many people. Nobody knows the Alegría’s farm around here. I was looking for it for such a long time that I even got hungry. There were some limestone hills that looked like the ones I saw when I left the the party, but I realized that a white mountain can move like a cloud if you haven't looked at it for fourteen years. I ended up lost and tired until a man who wanted a ride back to Quito got in the car and showed me the way. It was so easy for him to get out of there. Why can some people easily come out of the darkness?

That man's hands were as thick as logs. Hard and with dry dirt stuck to them. He had a green canvas bag which he gracefully and carefully opened while I discretely watched. He put his hand in the bag and I felt that restlessness that only idiots experience when they pick up a stranger in the road and they feel they're about to be mugged.

I looked at him square in the eyes and then looked at his hand inside the bag, I wanted him to know I was quite aware of his intentions. He pulled out a piece of cloth and quickly wiped his nose. He put it away and coughed. When we arrived at a neighbourhood in the northern part of Quito he said, "Thank you, sir". I’ve never been told "thank you, sir" in my whole fucking life. He got out of the car at the traffic light on Legarda Street.

I think I should’ve looked for that farm where you began to die, maybe it would've been wise to bring along someone who can unwind labyrinths. Someone who would be willing to keep me company in this search. Surely, it wouldn't be any of the people who were at the farm on the day of the party. Maybe I should meet a new friend and ask her for help as if it was something irrelevant, something casual, playing dumb so it wouldn’t be too costly. I should meet a woman who can’t decode me and doesn’t have the time for it, or a friend who I cannot disappoint. Twenty minutes is too short a time to figure that out isn't it, too short to hold my hand or to swallow up a whole bottle. I can tell you that it takes thirty days to get to know me and a bang at the door shut straight in my face.

Goodbyes and door slams have the beauty of extremes and they have a void as giant as incomprehensible. There is no final door slam in a man’s life, which is the same as saying that there will never be a day in the history of humankind without cruelty or hunger. For as long as there is a world there will be blood, and for as long as we’re alive there will be goodbyes. This idea kills hope.

11.

Dreaming is free while you are dreaming. The check comes the day after when you wake up either too far from the dream or too close to the nightmare.

Last night I dreamt that I made love to a hen. Afterwards, the hen tore a hole in my scrotum. Pieces of unlit charcoal came out of my testicles.

Things aren't good right now, that’s obvious. I'm aware that several empty and dark days are ahead of me and I'm not willing to deal with them. That's why I've decided that you and I should meet at the base of that one last tree of your life.

The dream about the hen got me thinking about my destiny. It seems absurd that a stupid dream would make you reflect on what will happen to you, but then it isn’t, especially when your destiny seems like another absurd dream. Can you imagine, I even caught a sort of phobia of the feathers that come out of my pillow, which is similar to the fear I feel when I hear someone knocking at my door. I looked up my dictionary of dreams and started researching. (I have to confess that I have the whole set, besides the dictionary. I keep other unspeakable artifacts. What a loser.)

You would crack up if you knew what it means to dream of a chicken pecking at a man's testicles. All I can tell you is that according to the book of dreams, there’ll be no prosperity, no distant journeys, nor the return of a loved one, that's my future.

I will not argue with a hen.

12.

Yesterday I decided to follow your path. I will not start at the same place, since apparently Rodrigo Alegría's farm never existed. In front of the mirror, I have been practicing a grin as a kind of farewell.

There are plenty of places to be taken into account in the next twenty minutes. The tiles of my bathroom still retain the coldness of that afternoon. The moon starts to reflect itself in the mirror. Gabriel offered to bring a guitar, but I’m not going to sing. Do you remember Gabriel? A warmhearted human being who has dropped by. When he comes he's always soaking wet and his shoes are filled with mud. His best friend died with you. It’s all in the family, my friend.

If Gabriel’s threat of bringing a guitar comes true, I will burn it. It's been quite a while since I've had any wood for my grimacing stone fireplace. The last thing I burned there were some letters that went up in flames despite the fact that I had soaked them in profanity and beer.

I want to see you, Claudio, and I want you to explain to me what is it that you know and I don’t.

13.

Very close to where I live, there’s a blue heart painted on the pavement. It’s a sign that there was a car accident and someone died there. They say that the painted hearts will teach people not to kill themselves while driving. And it will also teach them not to kill someone else.

After I gave up trying to find Rodrigo Alegría’s farm, I looked around for your blue heart. You would be disappointed to know that you're a greatly forgotten actor who doesn't have a star on the Walk of Fame. This stupidity of the hearts only works to cleanse the souls of those who suffer for their own deceased. This letter is my blue heart to you. Instead of a memorial plaque, I will leave this letter in the trunk of the tree where you crashed.

Blue hearts? What a terrible idea, only octopuses have blue hearts due to their lack of hemoglobin. A blue heart can’t describe the pain. If maybe somebody could draw the way your mom’s hair turned gray out of sadness, a brain cell might clinch seeing the process. Not mine. I saw her suffer and, in spite of that, thirty-something days after your accident, I got drunk on the terrace of the house of the guy who called me after you crashed. I’ve never driven as drunk as I was that night. Lights, as never before, made me terribly dizzy. I had been driving for over fifteen minutes when I suddenly realized there was a curly blonde lying on the seat next to mine. She was drunk. Chunky but cute. I tried to buy some coffee to wake her up. I tried to wake her up. She couldn’t remember her name. Not too long ago I saw her on the escalator at a shopping mall. It seemed like she had eaten quite a lot of hamburgers, brother.

We stopped outside a fast food joint. And in order to get in, you had to walk up a step from the parking lot. I left her in the car and got out to buy some coffee. They gave it to me and I went back and in that step half of the coffee spilled in my hand. It burned like hell. The clerks laughed. The blonde slowly started to drink it and I thought of slyly touching her breasts. She grunted. It's not a good idea to annoy a woman while holding a cup of hot coffee. I went back for more coffee. The cups were made of very cheap styrofoam. I went back three times for more coffee, for the both of us. I spilled the coffee on each trip while walking down that step. Because of my inebriation, I had no sense of balance. I turned the engine on again and she said, "Thank you, Xavier." I'm not Xavier, I mumbled. Her eyes popped wide open as if I had shoved hot coffee up her ass. She quietly started sobbing to avoid upsetting me. I think she thought I had kidnapped her or something along those lines.

Do you know who I am? We went to college together, I won't hurt you, I apprehensively told her, the last thing I needed in those days was to be accused either of kidnapping or rape. She quit crying and asked me to stop the car so she could throw up. She opened the car door, put her head out and vomited something translucent. Her stomach was brimming with alcohol, carouser. She excused herself for throwing up. I told her it was quite normal. I asked her for her address and then she began to cry again.

“Do you remember where it is?", I asked her laughing. "Yes, of course, I remember but my dad is going to kill me if I come home like this." Then you can sleep at my place", I said, loving thy neighbour as myself. "I can't get home later than three in the morning", she said. "It's four", I said. She shrieked like a baboon. She gave me her address and we flew to her place. She took a piece of soap out of her pocket and ate it.

Waving goodbye, while chewing soap she got out of the car. It was a green and white striped soap called Nordico. They no longer make it, I think. While trying to open the front door she threw up again. I got out of the car in order to help her put the key in the lock. I opened the door and she stopped vomiting. She bit another piece of soap and slowly closed the door. Her dad would not fall for her lies, though he would surely value her effort. There are always jerks who believe fear is the same as respect.

14.

Mariana would hate the idea of painting blue allegories on the streets. Instead of looking down at the pavement in memory of a dead friend, she would say, “Such is life."When her grandfather died she said to me, “Such is life." Much of that indifference probably had to do with the fact that the old man left her mother when she was very young, and he reappeared many years later. And on top of that, he didn't have a penny to his name, he was ashamed, ruined with nothing to his name except remorse. And remorse without money is as useful and as welcomed as hemorrhoids.

You can cause great remorse, and you can also give them hemorrhoids (for lack of lubricant, for instance). This person will communicate that pain in one way or another, and then you could probably worry. But definitely, it will be someone else who heals those wounds.

Mariana surprised me when she spoke so coldly about her dead grandfather. I didn’t want to discuss it back then, but now I think it might be good to have a reason to resent those we love so much in order to be able to forget them with ease and to avoid the immense pain their death causes. We nitpick every single flaw in everyone that surrounds us. I have been generous and coherent, that is why I have given those who know me enough reasons to resent me. When I die they will say “Such is life" and I will have done them a grand favor by not allowing them to mourn me.

You, besides dying, for a probable fuck that never even happened, and for a party filled with souls that have already forgotten us. Why did you fuck with me, Claudio? And I ask you in order to have something to hold on to, and be able to tell you to fuck off for dying, I need to exercise my own right and I need to free myself from your demon.

I was going to write that I never gave Mariana any reasons to ignore my death, but the truth is I did. You never gave her any reasons. That's the reason why she drowned herself in tears that tore off pieces of her soul like a terrible blow. After you, anything could happen to her. In every possible way, you made her a woman in ways that you can break something, and those ways make you irreplaceable. True love is a dirty job and I ask myself who could be the dirtbag that would benefit from your masterpiece.

15.

I paused and walked in circles in my living room. I randomly picked up a magazine with pictures of half-naked women from a table, and I read a short story. It was the story of a couple of friends who try to escape life. It seemed funny to run into a story of friends while I was writing about us and our friendship. A friendship that got fucked because you didn't understand death and I didn't understand life. The author is someone who doesn't have the slightest clue about the meaning of written words. The title of the story is "Friendship" and talks about the significance of having friends once you turn forty when you don't have the slightest idea of how you should deal with life as you ought to so that life doesn't keep constantly sticking its horns between your soul and your balls.

I don't want to be a character in a story like this. I don't want my failures to turn into false hope in order to go on. I don't want to buy a black marble floor just so I can have sex with the saleswoman. I don't want kids so I can visit them every fortnight under the supervision of a brainless old bat. I wouldn't know how to advise my children to take the right path. Nor do I want to admit in front of them that they should do the exact opposite of what I've done, because it would be shameful and also because that wouldn't be the answer. I am sure that with a little bit of luck and goodwill, my actions will give me better results than those that life has given me. I know that nobody else knows it, Claudio.

16.

Yesterday I decided to follow your path since there was so much that we shared. I'm not sure I will be the best company for you but I can assure you that I will not have a blue heart stuck in my memory. I think we could've had long conversations like the story of the forty-year-old friends. Though we were only kids filled with speculations and sweet dreams. Today, we would probably share stories of black marble floors and love adventures. If I had a son and you were alive, my kid would call you uncle and you would only tell him nice things about me. Mariana might be the auntie or maybe you would have forgotten her by then. My wife-to-be, whom I haven't met yet, would definitely consider you a great influence except for your love of tequila, and she would surely want me to wear my tie the same way you wear yours. I'm totally convinced that you would have the access and the right criteria to be quite close to the actual President. And you would certainly be a great influence on him.

But a tree changed the world.

Have you tried selling your soul for what could've been but never was? They scarcely pay, I now know that.

Friends keep visiting. Gabriel, as usual, left mud on the floor of the house. I threw a towel at him so that he could dry his soaking curly hair. While the towel flew across the room, someone broke a bottle. There were applauses. In Quito, it is raining cats and dogs but it seems that the rain wants to kill humankind.

The rain in Quito washes away the colour of the walls as the colour of the few trees that have been planted. It looks like a watercolour-painted canvas washed away by a stream of water. Through the streets and the sewers, you see the colours disappear the same way you see blood washed away in a slaughterhouse. Everything seems old, whitewashed, blurry. Some day the woman that becomes mine should mandatorily feel depressed with rainy days. I distrust women who like rain. They have a colourless soul.

While I saw the pieces of glass moving across the bathroom floor, like panicked spiders, I remembered that your wingman to eternity broke a bottle at the beginning of the party we threw that June 4. He was pretending to be a sexy bartender when the bottle broke. It's amusing to see a man bring forth his inner desire to be like a superhero. His name was Gustavo and one day I saw him in the park with Sofia. They talked while observing the metal playground games. Gustavo wore glasses and his best friend was Gabriel.

There's a lot to say about Gabriel, too. Besides the fact that lately, he comes to visit me all soaked up and with his shoes filled with mud. For starters, he likes rivers and rocks, and the rocks in which the water crashes. Right now he's standing next to me, trying to read what I'm writing. Light browned curly freak, Gabriel, didn't grab the towel that I gave him so that he could dry himself off.

17.

Due to the blue hearts, I began to think of you and I noticed that it had been over fourteen years since I brought your last flowers. With you stuck inside me like a ghost, I suddenly stopped in order to recall every single detail of that night from so many years ago, everything was so real and so vivid, and yet I still want to believe that none of it happened the way I remember it, this lousy memory of mine has betrayed me as often as a bright woman has abandoned me.

Even if I don't want them, the memories are still there. The memories of how at the beginning of college I made some friends and you, perhaps, were the one closest to my overindulgences. You were the one who laughed at my jokes. The first one to grasp my cynicism. In those years just like today, the world brewed hatred and retaliation, but you were the last one to fall for such excesses. You let me know that my girlfriend who I was in love with was dumb, and you told me that there was another one, with a better derrière, who would be willing to love me. You were right. That other girl indeed had a better ass.

You got angry with Father Reyes when, in his loathing, he forged the number of my missed classes in order to fail me. You got angry at another priest, the oldest one in the faculty when he failed me because I told him that right before dying Jesus got scared and that's why he cried "Father! Why have you forsaken me?" Honestly, you were my main support system. I'm convinced that if I had had the balls to organize a secret squad in order to kill the hundreds of jerks that needed to be killed in this country, you would've gotten the bullets, the ski masks and the booze, so that we would have the balls to go through with it. (Fourteen years ago, there were a hundred jerks due to be executed. Today, there are one hundred and seventy-something and counting).

By the way, today I look at Father Reyes with pity, equivalent to the contempt I once felt for him. The asshole altered my grades in order to destroy me. But he never realized that the faculty’s secretary was a good gal who hated priests because she was the daughter of one. She told me she had caught Reyes cheating so the both of us changed the grades to what they originally were supposed to be. We did it the day after the end of the semester, and to this day he doesn’t understand how his academic devilish sin failed. A tanned-skinned priest, with a very modest background, who managed to study in Germany thanks to the deplorable power of the Church, and thirty years later still pretends to have a German accent. "Yaaa, Yaaa, Yaaaaa", he kept repeating. A douchebag who would instantly abandon God if only Neptune could change his lineage. His self-esteem was so low and he knew I despised him. He had a niece. Or was it a daughter? She was probably his one exception to the holy vow of chastity. Or maybe his vaccine against pedophilia.

In the United States, the Church has paid thousands of millions of dollars as amends to the victims of pederast priests. Maybe they go mad because their heads get filled with semen, or is it that pederasts choose priesthood in order to have children close by? Or do they choose priesthood knowing they're monsters and they need to have an exorcist close by, or maybe because they believe that during confession their amoral sins will be forgiven every Sunday? Are there any pederasty nuns? I ask because my inner child is still alive and my freakiness should come in handy, at least for cases like this.

Okay, let’s leave holy men alone. It was because of that habit of yours to support me when I proposed to organize a huge party with our faculty friends and you agreed. And you got that skinny and poorly shaved Rodrigo Alegría to lend us his parent's farm in the outskirts of Quito. Shit you asshole! Why did you listen to me? It was sanctimonious. To party with a bunch of strangers so that we could get their vote for the faculty elections. Because of that, you're dead, my friend. For pretending to be politicians in a school the only thing you had to do as student president was to fill a book with mediocre articles; hold a party for the anniversary of the school’s foundation; hold a good soccer tournament with real referees and hold the typically and disgusting freshmen event. And that's the reason why you have almost been dead for as many years as you were alive.

Dying here, in Quito, it's somewhat strange. People can kill you so that they can steal ten bucks from you, yet there are no Islamic bombs or Jewish missiles. Politicians and corrupts never hire hit men, instead, they hire judges. They can shoot you in the head if you steal someone’s wife and within six months the man who killed you will want to canonize you for any given reason. A furious volcano eruption might annihilate us, yet our stomachs kindly shelter bacteria that could wipe out the entire population of Norway. So, the best way to die in Quito is to truly understand what happens around you, then you will surely die drowned in hopelessness.

You, however, died without understanding reality and without wanting to die under the weight of hopelessness. You died without seeing a judge in action or a politician secretly hugging a pederast priest. You met death with a pure heart and in love. You died at your best moment in life and I still cannot understand if one’s best moment is the right time to die or to keep on living. I don’t know, and deep down it's no use knowing that, but I feel that at the precise moment when you clenched your teeth and cursed while your spinal cord cracked, rationality was raped by an almighty god.

18.

The truth is I don’t talk or write ironically. I talk and write about losses. That emptiness of life escapes from my guts after accepting the fact that there are too many things in life that I cannot comprehend. Mine are short statements of havoc that sprout like weeds after a crystal clear and revealing moment. There are moments of unquestionable circumstances when names and happenings seem to be screaming at my ear. Then I realize what surrounds me and I feel at a loss. Oh, I wish I were an idiot! I need to understand what I cannot grasp.

And so it is dear absentee, you were not the first one to appreciate my ironies. You merely anticipated my defeat, the absence of spirit that drowned my lungs and spread through my veins. Yesterday, I decided to follow your path. I decided to relive your last twenty minutes. And when I stepped into your shoes, I finally saw what you saw in me. Makes sense that, that afternoon you asked someone else to drive my car a few hours before you killed yourself. You loved me enough to see my future and to be able to understand at nineteen what I only understand now at thirty-four, and that's why you knew that death was following us. Since you didn’t let her kill me, the bitch took you. Come to think of it, you stole her from me.

19.

We organized a huge party. We, of course, bought tequila, lots of rum, scotch, and tons of beer, few were cold, dozens of women came, and few were pretty, but by the end of the afternoon we were able to find the beauty in all of it, and everything had a different flavour because it was warm, many girls needlessly uncovered themselves, it was all the same. And the beers were useful too.

Daytime and dusk went by without a decaying rhythm. We Ecuadorians are party animals, and partying is the only way we can run away while staying still. Ecuadorians run away from everything, except for the fear of fleeing. Throughout the party, I wore a black hat which wasn’t mine. That's all I can remember. Some meaningless laughs, some screams, more laughs, those were joyful laughs, gossip, music that was coming out of some huge speakers and the music started to replay since back then there were no MP3s. I think that three seconds after I got bored I heard you saying. “Come let's have our picture taken, we're the ones to blame for this mess", you screamed laughingly.

From left to right: Tatiana, Jaime, Raúl, you and me, you and I hugging and absolutely happy. You were wearing your green shirt and blue jeans. Me, I had none of the weight that I'd put on which slows me down. With your right hand, you were pushing Tatiana’s head and she was laughing and screaming. I was looking straight at the camera.

After the picture was taken, I felt bored. It was always hard for me to feel like I was at the right place, my friend. You were aware of that. Besides, none of the girls, neither the pretty nor the ugly ones, were grateful for being invited. I tried flirting, I was really quite close to a couple of mini skirts, but they all slipped away. Women have a sixth sense, buddy, that is why my true love is silence and my lover is that hysterical scream that comes right before slamming the door.

20.

Without knowing, you agonized while your car sped into oblivion. This time there will be no pictures of the party organizers since I’m doing it on my own. Did I tell you there are pieces of broken glass spinning on the tiles of my bathroom floor?

My mirror reflects, the moon wiping her face with the branches of a palm tree. I told Gabriel to watch the moon wipe her face, he liked the reflection so much that he quickly left the bathroom as if walking through the walls in order to see her up close.

I perceive reality in its true colours, the rain washes away lies and wipes all fallacies towards the Machángara. That's why the Machángara is the most polluted river in Quito. It's not because of all the shit that comes from the homes, offices and the stadiums. Shit, ultimately, is an organic prelude to what we become with the passing of time, and all of it breaks down in the water. The river is polluted from receiving all the anguish, the blood from the slaughterhouses, poison despised by rats, history books and religious literature. It happens in all the cities of the world. The waters of the Rhine, the water course in Buenos Aires, the Mahananda, it doesn't matter what river you choose.

I’m not an idiot but I’m something much worse. I cannot name it. What would you call the feeling that you are immersed in a shithole, to feel what crap is really made of, the fact that you're there and recognize that the hands that grab you by the ankles and push your head into the sewage are your own, and despite knowing all this, be absolutely unable to look up into that light that shines over every single well in the world, and be able to scream the name of that one person who is willing to throw you a rope to get you out?

There are more things in common between the two of us than what you think. I'll explain it to you because you've lost track of me for the past fourteen years. I’ll tell you later. I’ll do it bit by bit because, finally, what I’ll be telling you will be a confession.

21.

I had told you that I took advantage of the commotion after your death. For instance, I made out with Ana Paula. You might remember Ana Paula who had the best tits in the whole faculty. I’m not exaggerating. And now I know that because besides being well put, her tits were the real thing.

I read in a magazine that certain breasts secrete a bitter liquid due to excitement. When the feminine glands go from zero to a hundred and fifty in six seconds they become bitter. That bitterness reveals that which the women don't confess. It's an indiscreet taste that betrays them as if it were their best friend. I thought that her nipples might've been either sweaty or dirty. But at that age, a nipple to me was perfect if it was in between my inexperienced mouth and teeth.

Anyhow, Ana Paula didn’t even look at me in the faculty. Remember that? In the hallways, she would walk ahead so she could enter the classroom without running into me. One day I asked her if she owed me some money or what was her deal, but she looked down scared, so I gave up sending my mating signals for a month because fear didn’t excite me. During the party, there was little I could do in order to attract her and kill my loneliness. Hers was the sixth and last attempt of that afternoon. They all escaped alive, but not back to the stables, they went onto other enclosures. A woman should never think that she’s freed herself from joy and then repent, my friend.

But you killed yourself, my friend, and the following Monday Ana Paula approached me while I was looking out the window, opposite to the sight where you crashed. We were on the seventh floor. We were looking south. You crashed in the north. As you can see, I had then already begun to abandon you.

Someone put their hand on my shoulder. I turned around and it was her. It didn’t surprise me, (and I think I wasn’t interested in sex because of all the grief I felt) until she pressed her tits against my back. It was then that everything got fucked up. I know she was trying to comfort me, so we started a relationship that she preferred it remain secret for reasons I never questioned.

22.

The best thing about my age is finding out that women are not doing us a favour when they have sex with us. Even though that is the way they try to portray it, they say the right things and move the right way so that we fall for it, that’s not the way it is.

I don’t know if it's still happening, but in my twenties, women used to say that sex was a mortal sin that would take them straight to hell. A couple of seconds later, they would spread their legs wide open and close their eyes. A couple more seconds and, after coming, begin the regrets, the sobbing and the guilt. That’s when they want to convince you that it has been your fault the fact that they've lost their soul and they're headed straight to hell, and so, you're left with an enormous debt. We men are quite guilty because we're unable to accept that they don't have our same sexual principles. That is why women pretend to be virgins in order to feel accepted, and when it's evident that they're not they claim that they've never before experienced an orgasm; and since they can’t prove that, they will tell you that with their ex’s they've never had as many orgasms as they had them with you. And all the drama works because, except for Mandingo, a huge black dude with a cock the size of a baseball bat, all men doubt the size and efficiency of their own dick.

Honestly, I don’t miss at all that horrifying sensation of teenage angst that we had when we held a woman in our arms. Do you remember? It wasn’t just guilt, it was that desire that seemed to belong solely to males, under those circumstances, what mattered to me was to have the skills in order to seduce them, to be able to do what they didn’t want to do. When honestly they wanted it as bad as we did. And we would go around, sweating our asses off, buying them greeting cards, teddy bears, cheap wine bottles, fake pills to synthetically get aroused and, on the verge of ignorance and desperation, we would even bring them serenades.

I don't miss all those hours I spent trying to interpret their gestures and words. How I struggled to turn a farewell letter into a love message that undoubtedly meant goodbye. How I searched, with magnifying glasses soaked in despair how to read some positive messages in between the lines. How I desperately wanted to believe that they were afraid when in fact what was lacking was their love.

I never managed to understand them. For a while I tried at least, to imagine their intentions and what I realized is that almost all mental thoughts derived from a human being have an ulterior motive, what we call spontaneity is nothing but a flying unicorn. So I gave up trying to figure out their intentions and impulses out, instead I began to justify them. There was a funny and tiny gal that would screamingly tell me she was a virgin after fucking with me and, on top of that after having told me she had lost her virginity at eighteen with a guy called Hernán. "I’m a virgin! I’m really a virgin!" she would tell me. If by that she meant to be romantic, I didn’t grasp it. If she was inviting me to be part of her lies so we would feel naively happy it didn't work. What do I know, my missing Claudio, except for the fact that neither Hernán nor myself, not even with a Jack Daniels bottle inside me, were ever able to comprehend her, much less anticipate her farewell call while crying and choking in an ocean of confusion. You would’ve also gone crazy with a girl like this.

This is why I value it so much when I learn about those bitter secretions that mean feminine excitement. That's why I value so much everything that I can learn about a woman who conceals her sensations and feelings. Anything that might mean commitment and sincerity. Or at least sincerity, I can settle with.

Can you, wherever you are, be able to read a woman's mind? If you can it's because you went to heaven, jerk. But you went hopelessly mad and your balls surely got stuck in San Peter’s gates.

23.

Women are vicious, Claudio. My friend Pablo got shot twice in the back by one of them. Pablo was quite big, he was an orphaned red-haired who was sweetly kind while he forgot he was going through puberty, like the rest of us. Maybe it was true that she still loved him while she was shooting him point-blank. She was not quite a pretty blonde, had a hoarse voice and shiny bright eyes. Everything is possible, especially sorrow. There are a million ways to lose and few ways to gain. There’s only one way to give life and yet many ways to take it away. That’s how the world works, buddy, just beware. There’s way too little goodness for the amount of pain that exists.

They said that Pablo killed himself. Bullshit. She died too, and it might've been true that he adored her and while they bled to death, there was such sorrow due to the amount of violence that existed between them. Jardiel Poncela said that everyone would kill themselves if they could only live again. Undeniable. The things we want the most are those that are impossible.

I was at the movies when I heard about Pablo. And the first I heard, was that he had shot himself. You won't believe it but next to me was a guy whose mother had blown her brains out just weeks before. Death surrounds us more than we expect. I can't remember the movie I saw, though all this atrocity happened just a few days ago. I went to his house, just like I went to yours. Hoping it was all a bad dream. With great sorrow, I drove there through different streets than the ones that lead to your home, my friend. I felt the same chilliness you feel when you are going to encounter death. It's like part of you dies when you approach a scene like yours or like his. And just like when I arrived at your place when I got to his, there were people gathered outside, looking at the floor, and crying due to the fact that his death was a fact. Two shots in the back, fired by the love of his life. And his two kids had been looking.

Pablo practiced male sports. One day, I saw him destroy with two karate kicks at a total idiot because he refused to be respectful of his unusual size and his unusual politeness. He was as honest as a kindled fire. He never bullshitted. He was good at video games and perfectly bilingual, which was admirable since we struggled so much to learn English.

He was one of those people who made you think that they’ll always be there for you, he'll toast at your wedding, he'll watch your kids grow up and he'll grow old with you. With his death, we lost a reliable human who would have helped us reach peacefully our forties.

We shared hilarious moments, like the time when he stood in front of the whole class and said that a fart in other countries was a sign of good manners. He said it when he was defending our God-given right to fart during Mrs. Ruth's annoying philosophy class. We were fifteen, or maybe older. It’s been twenty years since the day we all laughed while Mrs. Ruth cursed at us, clenching her yellow teeth and her tiny titi monkey hands. I remember him straightening up his glasses while talking with a laugh that would seep through his sentences. I admired him and wanted to be his best friend. Because of him I also carry this unbearable weight. Tell me such an aberration cannot be true! They buried him yesterday. And once all who remember him pass away, he will not have existed at all.

24.

Without shifting her position in bed, Ana Paula suddenly spoke to me:

–My favourite writer, who's nothing like your writer, Iñaki, says that we run into our twin souls in all the lives we live. Don’t get all catholic on me with this thing about lives, because what I'm telling you is absolutely esoteric.

–I can't get all catholic because all the brain cells I have left will die– I replied.

–He also says that you can recognize your twin soul when you can see a light over their shoulder, sort of like a star. Maybe I didn’t see the light over your shoulder, but I remember that when I was fifteen we ran into each other at the movies and I could tell right away that you were different than the rest of the people around me. I could tell right then and there that you would somehow be part of my life. Ana Paula went on telling me this, while she placed her hand between her navel and her pubis.

–I don’t believe you. At the movies when you were fifteen, that's impossible -I replied, hoping that she would start touching herself a little further down.

–See. I’m the one with the special powers you handsome.

–I have a question– I said and I couldn’t help but wonder if at that age her tits were already that beautiful. If at fifteen you already knew it, then why did it take you so long to kiss me?

–You were too old and I was too young. But time has gone by, I grew up and eventually, everything fell into place in order to have what we now have.

–I bullied you at that lousy party and so you never gave me a chance, I replied, somewhat angry because I felt she was lying to me.

–I was nervous, Iñaki. When it comes to you, things are not that easy. I had dreams about some of the things that were about to happen to you. Your grandfather's death. In my dreams, I went to your parents' house way before you invited me over. Days before the party I dreamt there would be an accident and I saw you crying. So I knew the time came to get close to you because what happened that night was terribly impressive.

At that moment, dear Claudio, I started considering the idea of not getting close to women but instead allowing them to approach me. And I started feeling this high anxiety and fear when her words in my head resounded like permanence and destiny.

Let them come to me, I decided. Ana Paula did it quite well. And even though I don’t believe in the "twin souls" theory, I glanced at her shoulder and though I didn't see a star, she did have some very cute freckles. Which seemed like a much better reason to stay together.

I never saw her again. And she practically didn’t care at all. Maybe she'll wait for her next life, where I will evolve and re-incarnate as a pearl necklace that she'll probably purchase at some pawn shop.

25.

At six thirty in the afternoon, when the moon appeared to take over what was left of our lives, I started the long farewell process of saying goodbye to all the drunken pals to whom I never again greeted (a fourth of them are thieves now, did you know that?) I arrived at the farm's house after walking through the long backyard, and suddenly for the first time, I observed the humongous eucalyptus trees, the limestone hills and the intense green pastures where I was walking. Twenty ghosts went through me, while I steadily walked with my right hand in the wall. The ghosts of the indigenous people who were buried in the tolas[1] surrounded the property. Each one of them went through me blissfully. They mumbled cut-off sentences which I didn't understand nor had any idea of what they meant; however, it seemed to me that they were talking to some soldiers who were standing in line, too scared to accept the fact that they had been blown up to pieces about twenty feet away. When the last one of them passed, I stood there with my left hand grabbing my stomach sensing that metallic ice-cold feeling that comes with death, and suddenly I had the feeling that pieces of flesh and guts from these soldiers, would splatter all over me. They were still unaware that they had been blown up.

At six thirty in the afternoon, all of Quito has thirty minutes till dusk. When the night has fallen in Quito, during the first fifteen minutes, the volcano, which reminds us that there can always be tragic days, becomes a black mass outlined in the west. There are other mountains whose outlines can also be seen, but they're not important because it's the Pichincha the one that can kill us, like it happened to the clueless inhabitants of Pompeii. When they find us, in a thousand years, as lava statues there will be some man scratching his balls wondering what happened. It will be like a monument in honour of our Mayor.

[1] Translator’s Note: Pre-Hispanic burial mounds.

26.

At the same hour, six thirty, Gustavo was drinking his tenth bottle of beer while he allowed the wind to wash away the tears that sprouted from his broken heart.

Meanwhile, at the same time, in Quito, your Mariana wasn't sure if she was going out partying because she wanted to go with you and not alone, and you had promised to spend the night at the farm because you wanted to be at the party until the end in order to take care of the inebriated. Most importantly, you swore not to drive back to the city because we all knew, –Mariana included– that you’d be totally drunk.

Gustavo drank as if his soul had been broken, a delightful derrière had totally ignored his love poems. Next to him, a girl pouring his drinks desired to get her hands on those poems. But Gustavo was totally unaware of her needs.

If only he had seen it from a different perspective, if only he had seen her with the optics of testosterone and not serotonin, then he would have gone straight to bed with her, instead of jumping into your car and from there straight to the calmness of a coffin. There are guys who kill each other in order to grab a piece of ass, but in this case, he died for a lack of desire to grab one. I think she might not have done what was needed. If only she had been clearer and more specific about her intentions, if she had candidly grabbed his balls, Gustavo would've forgotten about his broken heart. Not always, not necessarily, but an ugly drunk and a penniless dude with just two or three lays on his résumé could be considered a sexual beggar, and as the saying goes "beggars can’t be choosers".

Gustavo in other words was killed by the absence of caresses or a lack of libido. Because withering or blooming kisses, those chased for, or the ones given; let me tell you this as if I were talking to my own kid, they're all the same. And I talk to you as if you were my kid, because you have been dead since you were nineteen, and I’m already thirty-four and there are things that I've unfortunately learned.

27.

I decided to re-live your final twenty minutes.

I can picture you and that candid skinny passenger of yours chatting. I lack passengers, though I'm inhabited by some unwanted ones. I agonize like the rest of the planet, but that makes me a superior being because I am aware of my agony. There are painful, shameful, undignified agonies that can last months or even years. But yours was perfect.

You were listening to Héroes del Silencio[1]. I know that because, several days later at the junkyard, I rescued the tape that was left in your white Citroën. It seemed to me like a stroke of luck the fact that they had not yet stolen the car’s radio, and when I pushed the eject button, the tape I'd given to you popped out. "So you know what's good music", I’d told you when I gave you a copy of a copy that I’d gotten from Spain. Perfect music to speed too, you jerk. Excellent music to die to, but not you.

I’m missing something quite important from your last minutes. The freezing wind coming through your car’s window while driving at a hundred miles per hour, I don't have that. The air that comes through my car’s windows is constrained. I don't have either the headlights beaming straight into my face, or my hands fixed to the steering wheel. Just a moment ago I was holding on to the toilet seat, but it’s not the same as driving.

Though everything else I do have.

[1] Spanish rock group popular from the mid-80s to the mid-90s.

28.

I took a couple of steps and I saw you teasing Tatiana, while cracking up. She was laughing too, I never saw her angry but I did see her because of you. Until, she had a dream about you in which you mitigated all her guilty feelings. Me, I’m still waiting for you, buddy.

“I’m leaving” I said, and you chuckled with a huge laugh. You thought it was a joke because it was too early for me to leave. There were still several hours left of partying, yet I was the first one to leave. Even though the idea of throwing the party was mine, it wasn't the first time I bailed out in the middle of something.

Did I tell you that you could spot my frustrations before anyone? Well, that’s what you did. The party had overwhelmed me. In no time you had noticed that I felt trapped in a dull labyrinth to which I didn't belong nor found myself steady in. My kingdom was not of this world, buddy, and you knew that. “I’m leaving” I insisted smiling straight into your eyes.

“You’re wasted, Iñaki, the road is a shitty road. Just wait, there’s a guy who wants to leave and he doesn’t have a car, let him drive you to the city” you replied, and I through your concern I was able to feel that affection that nobody else had been able to give me.

I don’t know why, but I allowed you to help me. A drunkard who doesn't make a show when he's asked to turn in his keys is just performing a mediocre show. Today, thinking about it, I welcomed your help and easily surrendered my keys because there were no witnesses. If any of the girls I wanted to impress and make them tremble had been present, I would've been quite dramatic, convincing and stupid enough as to charm some naive student. Pity sex was welcomed.

Tatiana had walked away because she didn’t give a damn about me leaving. She was a smart one. For a while, you and I, Claudio and Iñaki, where alone. You were standing in between my desire to escape and my scrutinizing eyes. I didn't intend to leave you worried about the lengthy road that laid ahead of me. I submissively allowed you to take care of my life. Being dramatic with friends is very queer, allowing your friends to help you was a macho behavior . So I behaved like a macho.

Three minutes later you showed up with a guy called Alberto and, after hugging and thanking you, we got into the Mustang, the one we used as a motel in the middle of the looting catholic, apostolic, roman campus parking lot. Alberto fulfilled the quest you set him for, and through out the whole trip we didn’t exchange a single word. I always regarded him as an asshole with no attributes, until he married and got cheated on.

I think I hate him for granting me the hugest most unwanted courtesy of my life.

29.

I got into the car and closed my eyes. I was car sick but I didn’t want to throw up in front of that jerk of Alberto. From the Alegría farm to the main highway that would take us to Quito, the road was a dirt road. I only managed to tell him to be careful because the brakes on the car were a bit faulty. I didn’t open my eyes when I told him that, so whatever facial expression he might have made was as useless as the rest of his gestures.

At the beginning of the ride, I couldn't fall asleep so my eyes weren't completely shut. Cows, trees, the dark red under my eyelids, more trees, green pasture fields that seemed dark due to nightfall. the dark red under my eyelids. Limestone hills that looked like shadows. An old lady wearing a hat hauled her husband who carried a bundle of wood on his back. His hat, too. The old man was tired but wasn't cold and seemed fearless. Who wouldn’t want to be like him?

Everything was sort of okay until Alberto turned on the radio and Arjona came on. His lyrics felt like a frog in my belly. I hurriedly rolled down the window and with half my body out of the window I threw up. Alberto hit the brakes and, while I vomited, the old man carrying the wood and his menacing wife caught up with us and passed us like shadows dragging their feet. "Turn off that shit!" I shouted. All upset, I grabbed a tape and shoved it into the sound system. And suddenly it became peaceful again. "Are you all right?" he asked. "Yeah. Step on the gas and don’t touch the sound system again", I replied. We were about nine miles away from the highway. The cars going and coming from Quito drove by with their lights on. The night was still young. It was as if you could smell blood. The red tail lights of the cars flowing by like an extended laser river disappeared after a curve where people sell chirimoyas[1] during the day.

I felt like dozing off. I had the feeling that the party had not been helpful in getting us the votes in order to win the election. Evidently, it didn’t work because months later they kicked our asses three to one, and losing three to one in elections is worse than losing them in soccer. I woke up a few minutes before arriving in Quito, Light of the Americas. I woke up because Alberto swerved in order to avoid some construction debris left on the road by the Municipality. I opened my eyes in the same place where you closed them later, while dying. I didn’t think anyone could die there because we Ecuadorians are already used to hardship. We're quite aware that a sheep could cross the road when we least expect it. We know that a bridge might fall down because the maintenance budget was spent on whores and field trips. We know that there are potholes the size of craters waiting to sneak up on us and make us fly through the air. Nothing surprises us anymore, nothing bothers us, we have practically gotten used to adversity and we ride on it as if it were an old yet kind foal.

I never imagined that the curve we swerved would symbolize the schedule of my luck to be alive. Ever since that day, there are places I observe closely like a coffee shop, a corner with a phone booth, a beach or a scorching sidewalk, and I can't stop thinking whether tomorrow my life will end in any of those places. Seemingly innocuous places where the world could any time start spinning in the opposite direction.

Alberto was a good driver, but an asshole, aware of the misery and ready for adversity, with the absurd logic that at nighttime in Quito the souls get filled with killing devils. While he was driving, three more boxes of booze arrived at the party. Thirty-six bottles of alcohol were enough to inebriate a whole Irish battalion. You welcomed them with a smirk, like a hitman who gets ordered to end the lives of thirty-six relatives. Your essential enthusiasm was not yet drunk nor gone.

We played the whole tape in my car and then we restarted it again. Alberto made a comment about the length of time it took us and about how slow traffic was. I didn’t reply.

Will the day come for us to do the same, dear departed? Will we turn around? Will we begin again?

Just like the tape, the soundtrack would be exactly the same.

[1] Species of fruit native to Ecuador, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia.

30.

My girl won’t come to the party. You know how magnificent I was when it came to alienating women. The greater the love, the further the space where I shove them. I turned out to be an emotionally intelligent genius.

Now that she is not around, I mentally track her in order to recall her stories and figure out ways to bring her back. So for instance, I think where she could've been on July 18, 1989, or March 12, 2003. Where was she when my appendix was removed or when I caught pneumonia because I got naked with a gringa in the garden at four in the morning? If she had any fears, I never asked. She must've had some issues, but I was so in love that I didn’t find any faults in her. Where was she the day before meeting me?

I would like to know what she's thinking right now that I have sworn that I wouldn't call her, and what would she say if she found me surrounded by friends that walk through walls, and play on the bathroom floor with sharp shards of broken glass. She’s oblivious to the fact that I’m expecting her adoring phone call, like the one Mariana made you that fatal night so that you'll pick her up.

I ask myself about her life the same way a blind man immersed in shadows might ask what his growing son’s face looks like. What colour are his eyes? When he smiles, how many teeth can you see? Is it true that when he cries his face turns red and he looks like his dad? At least the blind man would get some answers, a yes or a no. Maybe they will lie to him, but at least he gets answers.

Could you, wherever you are, put your heart aside and whisper into her ear while she sleeps? Could you tell her a thousand times in her dreams, to urgently call me? Tell her that, unlike the phone call you got from Mariana, this phone call would allow me to live.

31.

Mariana would tell me stories and a couple of times she quietly sang for me, like a recital with the enormity of a whisper. She sang only one song. One that I found to be somewhat fast, but yet very sweet. It had catchy lyrics and a really strong chorus, the kind of song that gets into your head and stays there for the rest of the day. Afterwards, I taught her other songs, and I made fun of her for not knowing many of my favourite songwriters, she seemed like she had grown up in a different world. And honestly, I did notice a very gringa attitude in her taste and ways. Nevertheless, I forgave her, and during the months that we were together, she quit singing in English.

When she sang to me it was in a very low voice, she was quite a tender woman who seemed to be on the verge of extinction. She made me feel that loving me wasn't right; that singing to me would be punishable; that allowing me to undress her would be a total sin, not in the eyes of God since, among many other attributes, she was an non-believer, but to the world and society which is what mattered most to her. I would twist and turn in bed, filled with remorse and tried to cry in order to comfort her.

Quietly as a confession, as a secret code, it felt when she sang for me the first time. The song was "Paint" by Roxette, a song that at that moment had already been going around for a while. The first time she sang it to me, she kept her eyes closed, as if embarrassed. We still hadn't kissed. I begged her to translate every single word no matter how insignificant they were.

Afterwards, not singing, but whispering, she said:

"I've got a hot chilly feeling I don't understand.

I've got to run through this minute like a hurricane.

I've got to tighten my wire from the sense to the soul.

I find my back to the wall when it's time to go.

I've got to know is that your heartbeat?

Paint...me right?

Can you feel the heat in me tonight?

Oh I, I'm the pearl...

Paint your love all over my world."[1]

And, if the melody and her voice had taken my last ounce of consciousness, the translation was the coup de grace. It was like getting high and then shooting yourself right between the eyes and then reaching for God’s womb to scream out of happiness.

She was letting me know that she loved me and it turns out that, women use several languages, dialects and gestures to say what they don't have the guts to say. She was telling me that she loved me right then and then there was no question about it, I felt the same way as her, and it's only when people feel the same that words have the same meaning.

That day I couldn't kiss her, nor could she. We knew that the following day we would dare kiss. Deep down, we enjoyed the agony, the lethargy of our story, of what surrounded us, as well as our disloyalty. We would be highly criticized and a lot of gossip would start from what happened to us. I think she enjoyed it much more than me. I didn't enjoy going against the current yet I was willing to drown while she wasn’t. Women that enamoured me are smarter and it's because of their intelligence that makes their brains immune to love.

You didn’t have the time to find that out. There are things about the naivety of the age you had when you died which make you a fortunate being, as a blank slate which seems desirable compared to a shit-stained piece of toilet paper. Everything you didn’t know made you so much better than me. Nevertheless, all that I know and all that I've read is still not enough to face myself.

[1] Translator’s Note: “Paint.” 1989. Written by Per Gessle. Performed by Swedish pop duo Roxette.

32.

Not too long ago, I ran over three lads with my car. I did it while holding an honest job. I swore to never do it again. Working honestly is threatening.

I was driving back on a darkened road far away from those places that give you a sense of security. It was midnight and I saw several shapes descending from some rugged trees. I was looking for bears so I wouldn’t fall asleep. I was driving with the window opened so the wind would keep me awake, but the air was warm, thick, and almost psychedelic. Next to me was a German dentist, old and very white-skinned, he snored with his mouth wide open, probably trying to forget his attempt to cross by land all of the Americas, from Alaska to Argentina. Everything went well until he got to Colombia and he was a little kidnapped in Ecuador his luck was worse because he ran into some customs officers who became quite enthralled with his never-before-seen jeep. He slept, and possibly he was dreaming of the well streets in the port of Hamburg, which he told me all about it before falling asleep.

No one had been down that road in days. The lights of my car didn’t reveal any tracks. Insects were buzzing crazily, monkeys were howling and I was about to fall asleep. The humidity smelled like the ocean was close by or of a thousand bodies that had been split in half. The huge plant leaves pointed out that we were in the tropics. Behind, the dust trail turned red because of the tail lights. It was like we were leaving a trace of dark blood that enveloped the road we left behind.

An animal with big black wings flew over the hood of the car, placed his feet and then kneeled on it. Scared I pressed the gas, the car tumbled along the road which was filled with big rocks and potholes carved out by the rain. I rolled up the window. I wanted to wake the German up. I thought it would be better to concentrate on the road. I had an overwhelming desire to pee, several empty bottles of water were on the back seat. On top of that, the German guy had terrible diarrhea of intergalactic proportions due to the fact that he wasn’t vaccinated against our magnificent third-world food.

After an hour, the black-winged being was still perched on top of the car. Five or six guys with naked torsos and machetes appeared at a crossroads that also had huge rocks. "You come with the Devil!", they yelled at me. I stepped on the gas and held on tightly to the wheel. Two guys fell under the front tires and a third who tried to open my door was dragged off for a few yards until he let go and was run over by the back tire. When I drove over the first two I felt desperation. With the third, I felt repulsion. The German’s jeep just swallowed them up. The other guys disappeared, and in total fear they ran away, then the black-winged animal got out of the car and started licking the crushed skull of one of them.

With all the screaming and bumping, the German opened his eyes. He looked at me absently and fell asleep again. Minutes later, he was calmly snoring and I was glad since he could've asked me to stop the car because he wanted to take a dump. For the rest of the trip, I didn’t feel the desire to either sleep or pee. Doctor Broda, that was the dentist's name, didn’t ask at all about the screaming. I suppose that for him that was the end of his high-risk adventures.

It's obvious that there is someone in Ecuador who hates me for those deaths. There must be some orphans somewhere, those men looked old enough to have lied and ejaculated irresponsibly inside some tramp. Inside one of those women who then forced them to kill in order to feed them. There must be someone who feels like telling people about the nostalgia and the void left behind by those guys who tried to ambush me, without even knowing me. It is hard to believe that a young and good-looking guy, who writes a letter to a dead friend, could've killed three half-naked guys without feeling an ounce of remorse. It is baffling how some people's nights collide with somebody else's days, and how blood has woven an invisible net that may unite all the inhabitants of the planet.

Anyway, who cares about unrevealed deaths? There's always someone else for that, who is in charge of mourning them and then forget them.

33.

I decided to follow your path, because, maybe, without the intention and induced by the despair of this absurd life, yesterday I found an explanation that will crash both of us against a wall at one hundred miles per hour. The world is wide and big and at this very moment, forty people have been killed and you and I will never know their names nor their reasons for being murdered. It’s been a thousand years of life for millions of totally anonymous human beings. And what is becoming extinct on this planet are the most beautiful animals and also the most amazing ancient trees that are unrecoverable.

If tomorrow I become President or a Nobel Prize winner, the universe will not budge an inch either down or to the left, and children who have been destined to watch their souls die at the hands of a pederast will still feel their souls perish. Tomorrow, we all will be forgotten and nothing would've changed. Tomorrow, tigers will become the most beautiful dinosaurs, and yet there’ll be a billion people tied together by an invisible and infinite blood cord. Just imagine, amongst the lack of environmental beauty and such excess of humanity, you and I, all of our efforts and achievements will make no sense. However, if anyone on this planet tomorrow becomes President or a Nobel Prize winner, the world will not budge an inch either up or to the right. And I say ‘however’ because humanity is a guarantee for total stagnation.

Anyhow, I was telling you that I slammed my face with an explanation that would shatter us against a wall. The issue is that we your friends, are thirty-something and we have at most forty or fifty years left. Forty or fifty instants. You’ve been wherever you are for over a decade, but you exist more than me because I still have no one. Those who took care of me are no longer alive and those who know me will never look for my grave except to pee on it and sigh with relief. Half a million hours, or fifty years can go by in a single breath and that is my one consolation.

Meanwhile, I’m untouched by humanity, motionless and devoted, like a castaway surrounded by sharks and rain. I like to be rational and that is why I don’t budge. At least no one is forcing me to shake and move. No one is looking for me, though I sometimes feel like I'm being chased. But today, as I write to you, they’ve left me alone.

34.

One day, I took Mariana’s mother to the airport. She never loved me the way she loved you. As a matter of fact, she didn’t love me at all, you jerk. She said you were a gentleman and then kept quiet. She was supposed to say "like you", or "you are also a gentleman". She refrained from making me feel welcome. Yet still, on Mariana’s request I gave her a ride to the airport, she needed to visit a sister who was going through a high-risk pregnancy. Her sister wasn't young, she was over forty and that was why her pregnancy was hanging from a wire.

Her mother, as I said, would have given anything to have us trade places. She wasn’t that old, but she had the wisdom of her age. Mariana’s body shape and crooked nose will eventually look like hers. She won’t be like her as far as raising three kids and giving up working. I drove to the airport without muttering a single word. I fell into a giant pothole on the street and she shrieked. Ashamed, I closed my eyes but Mariana cheered me up with some amusing comment. The Mustang had zero opinions. When we were minutes away, Mariana and her mother started chatting about their worries regarding her sister. They absolutely ignored me, they talked as if they were in a cab. At one point, Mariana tried to include me in the conversation and her mother said; "let’s change the subject since my sister’s situation is way too painful for me". You know, I think the reason why I didn't strangle her mother was because she had a lovely voice. When she sang it felt like a caress. Once, I cried for three seconds when I heard her sing. I would've accepted if she had been willing to adopt me, I was prepared to be loved by her too, but no transcendental love has ever been returned.

For the mothers I tend to be Prince Charming, I tell you, because now that I remember, I used to have a girlfriend whose mother, an old lady, as attractive as the devil, did everything in her power to tear us apart. One day, while in my girlfriend’s car, we were riding up a steep hill and the engine was having trouble. The vile woman twisted her lips in a horrible frown and said, "There are too many people in this car". There were only three of us in a car built for five! How about that, huh!? A genuine Prince Charming.

Going back to the ride with Mariana’s mother. Quito, as always, was full of billboards and scummy buses that as usual raced against each other, embellished with their dark and poisonous exhaust pipes. Streets filled with beggars of all ages, electoral propaganda of old and new shitheads, dogs poop as well as archangels shit. It was when we saw a bunch of people hanging on to a fence while waving goodbye with their backs hunched, that we knew we had arrived.

I stopped the car and like a giant dork walked, carrying the missus small bag. I was kind, I did not want to be blamed for not trying hard enough. I said something about the aircraft and then something about how medicine was so miraculous nowadays. The woman just made a gesture with protruding teeth and puckered eyes. It was obvious she didn’t want me there, in that place at that moment and so close to her daughter. She made that same face one afternoon when Mariana showed up on a horse she had rented after having an argument with me. They were at a country inn and I joined them without waiting for a proper invitation. So, Mariana arrived galloping in style, and when I saw her I shouted, “Did you trade animals!". That was the first time Mariana’s mother gave me that eloquent look. There were seven of those looks, I counted. What an idiot I was wishing she was my mother, too.

Outside the airport, she opened her bag and took out two books that were ready to come out. She gave them to me with quite a polite smile. I uttered a "thank you” and she thought it was too excessive. She hugged Mariana and kissed her on the forehead. Grabbing my face with both hands, as if regretting her hatred towards me, she kissed my forehead too. It was as if she was begging me not to hurt her daughter, she had not yet recovered from your loss. A way of asking me to disappear for God's sake.

I never saw her again. After many years of trying, her sister lost the baby. Mariana never cried for the infant but she cried for her aunt. The books, I left them in your grave, because they were very good and in the end, most likely that's what she would've wanted.

35.

While Alberto was driving, without conversing, Mariana was getting a phone call. It was from her friends. They were asking her out. They were urging her to have fun. Some girls can’t stand it when men are having fun elsewhere. It doesn't matter, like in this case, if the male was someone else’s, or maybe what offended them was the brotherhood.

Mariana wasn't too eager to go out until she got the call from those lonely bitches. If only those sluts had not been lonely, little do they care for Mariana. But, you were the only visible male for that little pack of wolves and it belonged to you the fact that they felt jealousy for your happiness.

It took them no time to convince her to go to a nightclub. The excuses had not been too elaborate it doesn’t take much to kill a man. "It’s Friday, girl, why are you staying home, locked up, doing nothing?" they said. Surely, talking about you without saying your name, despite the fact that they all liked you, because you bought them drinks and drove them around on weekends. What they did is what you generously can call, sending someone to hell, my good friend.

Before getting that damned phone call, Mariana was reading, watching TV and sorting out her pictures. She was thinking about you and that was enough for her, wasn’t it? No, my friend, no, because nothing is ever ‘enough’. Walking down that one-way path that paves life, you can feel it when you reach that which is transient, contingent or incomplete. That's also why you killed yourself. Because nothing is ever enough.

Hail to the one who listens to her jealous bitchy friends. Idiots are those who are jealous of males that don't belong to them. They will fare worse than those who listen to the promises of affectionate pigs who desire their girlfriends' friends.

36.

While the jerk of Alberto was driving my old Mustang, Gustavo and Gabriel were talking (the one with the muddy shoes who walks into my house every now and then) about a girl with a genetically gifted ass who wore some badly cut pants. Gabriel, in a moronic act of goodwill, encouraged him to go ahead with his flirtation, as if this could change the way a woman thinks. As a token of his brilliant emotional counselling, he gave him a gift card from a mariachi group so that he could bring her a serenade.

The loud music from the party forced them to talk into each other’s ears, intimately. Someone walked by them and teasingly accused them of being fags. There were some laughs, may they rest in peace. The afternoon was turning yellow over the limestone hills. There had been plenty of food and it was quite good. Booze was rampantly multiplying and Jesus looked down from the crucifixes hanging in some girl's necks, who had already been smacked, with envy and perturbation. The bathrooms had collapsed so it was better to take a piss in the bushes.

Gustavo doubted while playing with the card in between his fingers, but Gabriel offered to keep him company during the serenade. In two nights they would go, with the mariachi group, to sing under her window. "Pal, no woman is immune to serenades", Gabriel assured him. Gustavo smiled with a hint of sadness and some hope which crossed his face like a barbed wire. He pictured himself arriving on that cold and foggy Quito night. He pictured himself stopping the car just a few blocks away from the house of the genetically gifted assed girl, so as not to wake her up and ruin the surprise. He would drink a small bottle of spirits in order to clear up his vocal cords and have the balls to sing. He would stride steadily, looking at the trace of his enamored breath flaring up like smoke, that disappears the same way as life vanishes. "No woman is immune to serenades", he convinced himself. One might say that Gustavo lived his final hours with hope. And he died that night, in the company of a stupid belief. As far as Gustavito goes he probably died at the right moment because serenades are welcomed only when given by the truly desired man. When they are given by any other jerk who hasn't been previously selected, like a dog at a pet shop, the serenade will be, at most a musical anecdote, sung on a sidewalk by six guys dressed as Mexicans and one drunk fool completely in love and freezing his ass off. And the friend of the infatuated drunk will also be there freezing his ass off, his mission will be, to tell the world about how the longing and sexual intentions with the lady in question failed.

From a man, you can get hundreds of stories filled with speculation and little or no logic. If Gustavo had survived his first death, he would have gone singing at what’s her name’s balcony. She wouldn’t have even bothered to turn on the light, much less allow him to take off her clothes. This phony Romeo had only two options. The first one was to turn into stone until the next woman fucks with his emotions. And the second is to have a shot of drain cleaner.

If Gustavo had turned to stone and he had run into one of those women, that usually I run into, he again would've had two choices. The first one is to become as resistant as a diamond, and the second one is to have a shot of drain cleaner. And he would've had to do the same over and over unless he finds Cupid and shoves his arrows up his ass, tries to become gay or simply slits his wrists, because the shot of drain cleaner only leaves you eating through a feeding tube, but it doesn't guarantee your death.

As he stands next to my bathroom mirror, Gabriel tells me that he meant well when he suggested the serenade, he says he wasn't being an asshole. Gabriel should've told him what you used to tell me. "There are others, there are plenty more, there is a bunch of women".

Women who don’t need songs.

Because they have already chosen you.

36.

Women who don’t need songs.

Because they have already chosen you.

38.

That night, after learning about your death, I fell asleep again and I had a dream I cannot yet recall. I apologize for giving up on my teary soaking wet pillow, but I was still drunk. There was nothing I could do but cry, and crying makes me sleepy so that's why I fell asleep again. Today I have insomnia and it's due to the fact that I never cry. I also have no reason to feel tired or anyone to wake up to.

In the morning, it all seemed like a lie. Why not? Isn't everything a lie? The ability to forgive, the promises of a candidate, the way a blonde who wears sunglasses looks at you, the tits on the past fifteen Miss Universe, the shitty cell phone coverage, viagra, cocaine, war, eternal and non-eternal life? My hope for the future lies in the fact that not all that is unwelcoming can be true.

You had sworn that you’d spend the night at the farm. We all had some experience handling our drinking binges, it wasn't irrational that you slept there, it was our insight behind that decision. Spending the night over was something you were supposed to do. While I dressed, I thought that the dead person should've been me, or maybe someone you lent your car to. I prayed that the other person who died in the accident would be the butthole brainless Cristian Páez, but the people I want dead are never the ones that die. I left my house convinced that it wasn't you who got killed at four in the morning while I was dreaming a dream I yet can't remember. Perhaps at the morgue, it was someone else who looked like you but not you.

I went to your house and I ran into a whole bunch of people, a bundle of your parents' friends, tons of students from the faculty and your school classmates. The nightmare was authentic and there were a hundred witnesses that could testify that the world as we knew it, in a split second, had become hell. You were a nineteen-year-old starring in a horror movie, and I, a twenty-year-old cleaned the disgusting toilets at that movie.

39.

It must've been two days between the wake and the burial at the graveyard, the floor was covered with huge brick stones. Those were days in which I wandered with people I had never meandered before, people who fed me and who put me to sleep. Devoted women allowed me to gently touch them with my hands and my pain. To lay down with your clothes on and with your heart torn apart, hugging a woman is almost like a heavenly feeling. There's nothing like pain to feel alive and awake. There were moments where my sentiments were confusing, and between the embraces, the women and the enormous pain of your death, I thought I had fallen in love. I felt boastingly alive, my whole world was exposed and I was overwhelmed and thankful to be alive and not in your coffin.

Close to your house lived Chiri, a nice lad. After the first hours of your wake, I fell asleep in his living room. We had left your house in order to make room for other people, especially your family, who obviously were more entitled to be there than us, with our frenzied desire to suffer, a longing that disappeared way before theirs. Chiri woke me up, he had cooked me some scrambled eggs with diced tomatoes. I still remember the taste of it and sometimes warm tomatoes remind me of a kind gesture of a good man, and some other times, they remind me of the profound anguish I feel. Diced cooked tomatoes can be the road that leads you anywhere. Next to me, Cristina with her slender body and dark hair, hovered. I'm convinced that at that precise moment, she was the calmest one of all of us. Tatiana who was sunk next to me, on the light-coloured couch and had no appetite, blamed herself for throwing the party, she had no interest whatsoever in taking advantage of her pain. I ran into Chiri not too long ago at a shopping mall where his mother has a bookstore, and we spoke. We promised to see each other again, but since you wiped your ass with your promise of not drunk driving that night, none of us your friends, kept our promises.

During those days, I thought about quitting drinking because it was easier to blame booze than to blame you. With time, I was able to accept that what killed you was something else.

Somehow, I have honored my promise and your memory, because never again have I had a drop of tequila. But I’ve been unable to quit the rest. Bottles more often than not are closer than people. Tough there's always someone willing to keep you company. Bottles of booze will never criticize you and, frankly, I’ve never bumped into one that lies straight to your face. They're also quite useful when someone who starts talking about God approaches you and you need to smash them into the TV screen. It doesn't matter whose God it is.

I've only liked one explanation about God. It’s Isaak Luria’s theory of Zimzum. He says that God retired and in his voidness, the creation of the universe occurred. I completely agree because there must be something that started it all, and it is also true that that "something" is not around anymore being responsible for His creation. We live surrounded by idols, temples and deities, and, just as credible as anything else, we live in a place where God no longer lives, we live in a place that He abandoned. By the way, I didn’t learn this on TV, though it keeps me company and I rather keep it on, so I don't have to listen to myself. It's better to keep your enemy dormant, my friend.

I just remembered a movie I saw when I was a child. An ugly hunchback slit one of his wrists to let a few drops of blood drop into a coffin. Smoke came out of the coffin and a vampire appeared the first act he committed was to murder the person who donated the twenty drops of blood that brought him back to life. If I could hold my already lacerated arm over your coffin, there certainly would be no smoke, but I would totally understand if you killed me upon waking. I wouldn't refuse if you wanted to do it, I wouldn’t accuse you of betraying me. The traitor was someone else.

40.

There are things I’ve begun to remember in those two days of your wake, and also of the nice dude that died with you. Rodrigo Alegría played a song with a melody that says, "You are my soul brother, my true friend". Those of us who cried wept even harder, and those who needed a little push to start wailing were pushed. Now I think it was an absurd self-flagellation show. And I think that self-flagellation without a sexual connotation is ridiculous.

Negro Pontón used to say "We are nothing", and he was partially right, a human body going at tremendous speed and hitting something as solid as a tree trunk results in the nothingness that becomes zilch. It's the beginning of a journey to become zero.

Gabriel, when he cried for Gustavo, complained about his loneliness. The thing is, that you stole the limelight and so it seemed that Gustavo had never died, what happened to him was the same thing that happened to Lady Di's driver. When you die you do need to be lucky and have a sense of opportunity. Gabriel suffered what was handed to him, that lack of good timing. He didn't dare talk about Gustavo. Months later, when I asked him to write something about his friend, he couldn't do it. It was then, that his profound sadness could be seen in his eyes.

Here goes a story that will crack you up: I read a line for you, at mass, in a church, with a microphone, in front of everybody and next to a priest, it was a phrase about your soul. I was six feet underneath a huge figure of Jesus. That Jesus had the perfect facial expression. He sort of had a frown of disappointment and a look of profound knowledge, like the one of a father who ends up accepting that he has incompetent children. If one day He decides to come back, he’d only say, "There's no way on earth that I'll die for you guys again". He would probably become an insurance salesman.

With a microphone in hand, I said that the time we had together was too short to be able to totally enjoy your happy spirit and that you parted too soon, amongst other things. I felt weird. You do too many senseless things before assimilating the blow of death. Where does courage go? I would've loved to have had the guts to stick a grenade in the mouth of a priest who suggests that we'll find consolation in the miracle of resurrection. How about that, huh?!

You do some messed up shit when you lose someone you love, Claudio. Like serenading a woman who doesn't need nor likes you. Like calling the same stupid girl at three in the morning and having her new lover pick up the phone. Like writing poems with simple meaningless rhymes, like taking flowers to a tombstone or refusing to donate organs of a recently deceased. You become totally incoherent, and the worst of it is the horrible spasms of pain you feel the moment you bury those who die, when we, the ones left behind in this revolting dump, should be the ones being buried.

A week after the accident, someone was claiming responsibility for having thrown the party, others swore they’d never drink again. The Faculty of future cheat lawyers sucked, they rejected me like an unwanted pilgrim as if I was the one to blame for your death, that's why I quit and never returned. I never returned! I abandoned my law books so rats could feast on them. I abandoned my desire to flee the emptiness by studying for a doctorate that would never belong to me. I abandoned that which I always should’ve abandoned, and your death gave me the final push. Yesterday, I abandoned myself, and so I will abandon myself tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. That’s eternity, the capacity of letting go of infinite pieces of yourself without looking back or ahead, until someone else abandons the last and best fragments of your memory and, in doing so, leaves a piece of his, next to yours.

What the fuck did I just say?

I think I'm drunk.

41.

Yesterday I couldn't identify that vampire tree that appeared that night to kill you, though I know that a huge chunk of its bark was gone the moment your soul got tattooed forever in his trunk. When I went, it wasn't there, I wasn't able to find a tree with a scar the size of the huge piece of bark you tore away. Therefore; my mistake and nostalgia really is yearning to go back to a place that never existed. Millor Fernández was right.

The beautiful tree that killed you never grew there. Your accident never happened, among other things, because you never existed. I'm wondering if the childhood friend who vanished under an avalanche in Mount Oblivion was you or Tom Sawyer. I know that if you could hear me, you can't hear me because the dead are dead, you’d smile with a veiled sarcasm and I would be able to smell your fear. This time you wouldn't make your funny jokes, since nobody knows us any more. It’s been so long since we went through the faculty, it's been a while since they wiped clean the walls and tore down the boards where the teachers pinned our bad grades. The space is still there, but our space, the one we lived in, never existed, just as the stain I left on the wall where I pressed my forehead to cry for you, it never existed.

There were many ounces of tears and not one single drop of blood. Today, when I lean against a wall it's the opposite. Lots of blood and no tears.

You used to ask me what were my thoughts about my own life, and I used to ponder in long nostalgic and confusing replies. You didn't like my answers, you were essentially quite a happy man. Right now, after all these years, I would give you similar replies. What I have managed to achieve is a resolute wish that I'd never been born. I always disregarded who I was and today I doubt if this life was ever supposed to be mine. I sense I fell into this body by mistake. I dropped into a situation and a social security number that's about to turn thirty-something years old.

This letter, like everything else, doesn't explain anything; everything I do is aimed at dead people or very distant people. You will not read it. Who am I writing it for? No one who’s alive, this letter is for those who are trying to rule me. These are letters that travel inside the numerous amount of bottles I've emptied and haven't yet managed to throw into the sea. They are letters as meaningless as the last heart with warm nipples who swore to love me forever.

All is unwell. 'Disease' is a familiar word, and one that is embarrassingly easy to place next to me. How I wish I could talk to you and listen to your reply, maybe now you could tell me who I am or who I could've become as opposed to this fatty shit with a destroyed liver who has a porn channel as a lover, that is whom I've become.

All is unwell, yes. But at least I managed to understand that I'm not an addict. Is that good? I don't care. It's just a fact. I’ve just been told that if you're in bed with a six hundred-carat woman and someone knocks on your door to offer you a drink or a hit, just as she's about to open her legs, and you choose to leave or to get her out of bed so you that you can get high or drunk, then you are an addict. I would never abandon a woman with her legs open. I'm just dependent, not an addict. But I don't feel happy or proud, because being an addict wouldn't make me unhappier. What could be worse than a lacerated arm, see how the colour of your life goes down the drain.

41.

There were many ounces of tears and not one single drop of blood. Today, when I lean against a wall it's the opposite. Lots of blood and no tears.

42.

I'm starting to feel really cold and Gabriel who's pale and sort of greenish, and is very near me, smiles at me. His lungs are filled with water. All of a sudden I’m quite scared of following your path. Regardless of how sad and desperate I might find myself, a common man clings to life with desperation and I am, after all, a common man. Regardless of how life is, it's as good as the farts we let go and we enjoy their smell. When in need, without any issues we stick our hands in our own shit. Life for many is the same, crap, but to whom there’s no other choice but to hang on to it. In the same way, we cling to what's ours, without even asking for it, like our flaws and weaknesses. Also, I’m afraid of following your path, because not even my mother would buy into the absurdity of eternal life next to God Almighty.

If I cannot live my last twenty minutes as you lived yours, there will be no poetry. And I worry because she hasn't called me, nor has she asked me to meet her anywhere where I can risk my life on a highway built by murderers. No one is calling me, Claudio, and I'm still sitting on the bathroom floor, surrounded by shards of glass from a broken bottle. The friends who dropped by, come and go through the walls and the ceiling. Except for Gabriel who is constantly watching me, waiting for the moment to put his arms around me and get me out of this misery, like the lifesaver he then needed. I wonder who made him responsible for picking up whatever is left of me? I question Gabriel on so many things, yet, his bluish lips never utter a word. With all the waiting, a puddle of tepid water has formed around his feet, it is from the river where he drowned.

You lived your last twenty minutes thinking about being next to her so that you could hug her, and surely she would have corresponded more enthusiastically than you. I am also thinking about her.

43.

Would you want to live again? I would, even though sometimes I feel it would be useless. Perhaps we would do the same things, you would crash against a tree and I wouldn't know how to let you go. It seems to me that a constant repetition is not the same as eternity.

Mariana cried her eyes out for you, but then she forgot you, exercising her right, she fell in love with someone else. I think, that if needed, she would forget you again, and I would even help her. Don't be upset.

Today, after all these years, I understand that I was also able to love with desperation and resolution. I lived the same urge as yours, of running out to find her, even if I risked losing it all.

We should both end the same way, Claudio, scared shitless and incapable of knowing how to return to that body we left mutilated inside the car. Watching from above as they ransack our corpses amongst mockery and a couple of Hail Fathers. Together, because when friends share the same tragedy, they can laugh together, either by sitting on the same cloud in heaven or the same pit in hell.

I remember the both of you looking deep into each other's eyes and playing with each other’s hair. Both your hair is blonde and straight. Sometimes you looked like siblings. She put your hair behind your ears, you did the same and in the meanwhile nothing else mattered. I don't want you to think that I risked the memory of our friendship for a sudden whim. My love was willing to do everything and anything. But she didn't want to be with someone whose mental health would be detrimental to her wellbeing. She left me just like I left you. Except that, I was still breathing and still had things to offer her.

With the passing of the years, you have both come together inside me, seeing you in my delusions is like seeing her in a throbbing pain multiplied for the both of us. That's why I want to join you so that you can teach me how to get her back. I want to join you so that you can tell me the things I didn't find out about her. I want to be with you so you can tell me things about her that I never knew. I’ll welcome your teachings the same way I accepted the fact that you saved my life the day you died. What I’m trying to say is that I need you to rescue me again. After you share with me the path to her soul, that only you were able to discover, then, I will come back and look for her. I’ll make it back, Claudio. I will walk back, not in hallucinations like ghosts, nor in white noises or frightening regrets.

While I have strength, and for what's worth, I beg you to forgive me for something even worse. I chose her, Claudio. One minute, one hug. If I had to choose, god dammit, buddy! I wouldn't doubt it for a second. If I had to choose between you and her, I would bring you flowers, again.

With all your knowledge about her, and what I now know about life, my heart will beat again and I’ll be wiser managing my tongue. In her arms, my heart will beat again. She has to come back. Before the twentieth second that by choice belongs to me. She will find this body still warm, lying on the floor. She'll spend long hours kissing my wounds. And when she listens to my breath she’ll wipe the blood from my cold bathroom floor, the same way the rain in Quito wipes colour away.

And I’ll forget you again, Claudio, maybe for another fourteen years.

Iñaki

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