March
I really felt the nonlinear-ness of time this month. I felt like every time I thought of something that happened yesterday, it had in reality occurred a week ago, as if all the separate moments that comprised March collapsed into each other to form an amorphous blob, making it impossible to distinguish one day from the next. In reality, though, nothing substantially memorable happened; the month just floated away on days and nights in which fleeting moments of fun passed.
I managed to get some pants tailored, to find a new health food store, to have more exclusive art bestowed upon me by the kids I teach,
and to receive my first “te quiero mucho” from the little girl I babysit. At some point early on in the month, I saw that one guy again when he came over to smoke a little and watch TV. We also watched the sunset at the beach, which had been so sparsely populated that all we could hear were the squawking of the seagulls and the wind lightly delivering the waves to the shore; we passed the time finding animals and shapes amidst the wispy clouds and blue-and-pink painted sky, fully embracing the heavy lethargy of Playa. It was an indisputably serene and enjoyable scene, but I felt a growing awareness of our little dalliance’s impending expiration date, a feeling invoked by his impressive talent of reducing general statements into spiritual aphorisms. He might have been experiencing a similar effect of disillusionment over something he may have noticed about me, because we haven’t seen each other since that day. It’s a shame, considering he thus far remains my favorite Spanish boy.
The following week, I found myself with too many shots of cassalla in my system and with an Alex who might have had more in hers. The club we were at bore witness to our drunken blunders, which had been blissfully buried in the crevices of my blacked-out subconscious and were only recollected the next day when I saw the plethora of videos and photos I was featured in. Apparently, Alex and I led our friends on a goose chase throughout the club as I held my own (or at least I think so, okay) against boys in a strength competition in the club’s arcade section; as I sang “All Too Well (10-Minute Version)(Taylor’s Version)” in the bathroom, which I doubt was a major hit in a Spanish club with no shortage of girls desperate to pee; or as I followed Alex every time she effectively forgot about the boy she was in the middle of a conversation with in order to talk to whichever new one she had spotted from across the club. It had been a ridiculously fun night, and the rest of the weekend had relaxingly passed on the coattails of that successful outing.
But it was what the next weekend offered that we had been prepping for, because it was Las Fallas, an annual celebration throughout the province of Valencia in which large, extravagant, satirical art structures known as “fallas” (literally means failures) showcase the faux pas of the last year before they are eventually burned down as a way of welcoming the fresh, new Spring season. It’s a two-week celebration filled with fireworks and drinks and I’m sure many nights like the one I’d had the previous weekend. Of course, because I have work and a desire for some degree of sober lucidity, I only celebrated during the three-day-weekend we had been gifted as a little Fallas treat. Unfortunately, the week leading up to this promised weekend of fun and drinking and culture marked the beginning of an unrelenting storm that brought heavy rain for nearly two weeks straight, making it difficult to properly gaze at the fallas positioned throughout the streets.
Because it was raining so heavily, the fireworks show meant to signal the start of Fallas weekend was canceled in Gandia, but it was the first Fallas in three years so nothing was going to stop all the falleros from partying at their respective fallas. So for that first night, we just followed the booming music the DJs were blasting from the tents stationed outside various fallas and snuck into the parties we saw. The second night, we went to a house party thrown by our friends and admittedly were having too much fun (both with dancing and with being warm and dry) to leave on time, so the party tents were dying down by the time we emerged. To be fair the time we emerged was a horrendously evil time to start partying, so it was definitely best that we just braved the rain and went home.
It was the third night, anyway, that was the true culmination of the festivities, and for that we went to the heart of Fallas: la ciudad de Valencia. I wish I was in a better mood to have more fully enjoyed the crowds and the fireworks shows and the parties in the street; but I’m not made for three days straight of partying with little sleep, and was just so exhausted and cranky that I left my friends as soon as the last falla was burned so they could celebrate without my dark mood hovering over them.
And, finally, the month ended with a lack of a bang: I went on a date with a guy who was supposed to be amazing on paper (super attractive, nice, smart, teaches yoga, plays music, etc.), which is probably why he was… wanting in other areas. If I was only interested in talking about yoga or learning about science, I might be seeing him again, but unfortunately this is not the criteria that must be met in order for me to tolerate a new man in my life. It’s honestly difficult to write about the date any more than this simply because sharing any further details might be misinterpreted as me bullying, so just know we will never purposefully see each other again.
It feels weird contorting this month into a cohesive chronology, because it felt like March could have lasted the blink of an eye as easily as it could have lasted a year, but I guess that’s natural for a month I only wanted to get through so I could get to all the traveling I have planned in April. I am worried that the blurring of time might be a symptom of homesickness, which has been increasingly strengthening its hold on me, but I’m choosing to enjoy being in Europe so I don’t have to ruminate on that headache.
