We see people brand new people

As I register and tell my name to a woman at the entrance of the auditorium and sign a sheet and she gives me a gift backpack, a folder with several documents and a badge with my name, I sort of remember that I came here, to this very auditorium, almost 20 years ago. Those were different times, I was just an inexperienced guy with a degree in Psychology, months ago I had just graduated from the School of Psychology. The opportunity to start as a teacher of a Motivation & Emotion course appeared out of nowhere. One of the members of my thesis jury used to work at Ibero, and I didn't know it, but then, at some point of the review process of my thesis, I asked him if he knew how could I get involved into academia, that I wanted so hard to acquire experience in teaching, all I had done was to give two or three classes of one of the courses of my advisor. 

I've been exhausted all week, between Monday, Tuesday and Friday I give 12 hours of classes, I still haven't adapted to this new stage of my life. I've also been writing a manuscript, it's a collaboration that someone proposed to me, this manuscript will be the second manuscript I write in 2025. Honestly, I haven't enjoyed the writing process, I am working against the clock, is not fun. I've been so busy that I haven't been able to go out for a run. For the last two weeks I've been waking up very early in the morning and starting to write this manuscript and studying and working for classes, and fixing some demanding bureaucratic issues. A month ago I was relatively free.

As I walk through the auditorium, I wonder how much the university will pay me. I can't stop worrying about money; it's a pain. I'm a Level 2 National Researcher, which isn't easy; I should receive the salary corresponding to this distinction, but all year I've been looking for an opportunity; I sent almost 15 applications for full-time permanent academic positions to almost 10 universities. None of them saw my potential.

Anyway, I look for a spot, find it, sit down, and have a flashback. I remember that Saturday, it must have been January 2005, I was completely different from who I am now, the only person who'd ever loved me had just sent me to hell, I didn't know how to teach a course, I was so näive, still lived at my parents house. 

I take a deep breath, I should be writing this manuscript. 

Then I see you. You're in the front row, your straight, horsehair-like hair drawing me in. It's so hypnotic and shiny. As if sensing that kind of mental empowerment, you slowly turned your head to the left. I sat to your right, and our eyes make contact. You're smiling at nothing, wearing magnifying glasses. I can't help but glance briefly at your breasts, and I'm shocked. I'm stupid. I shouldn't be thinking this. I wonder what it would have been like to meet you 20 years ago, I wonder what it would have been like to have sex with you. 

I'm sure I'll continue writing this manuscript when I get back home, but I'm sure I'll drink a couple of Jim Beams and also write a story about us, about how we met 20 years ago in a frivolous world, while academia is collapsing and we're listening to this Iggy Pop song about humans being like ice machines.

I Cannot Remember My Own Sanity

I hate myself, I cannot control myself. I like alcohol. I like to smoke. I like women. I can't help it. I'm a monster. I'm just a liar when I keep myself out of trouble, when I tell you “I ran 6 kms today, I drank water, I avoid junk food on a daily basis”. 

When I drink alcohol, I become a monster, and I forget everything, and I say silly things, and I insult people, and I become an animal. You should keep out of my way. 

I cannot stop thinking about this song of The Vines, and flashbacks of the last Thursday appear out of nowhere, and I'm paranoid. I try to focus on my own thoughts, but I feel someone's spying on me. I also feel nauseating and dumb, and I think of Jack Kerouac and the guy I was before I met my wife, and I feel guilty –I'm just an animal–, and another flashbacks appear and I barely remember what I wanted to do when I was totally drunk, and all that I could have done if my wife hadn't been there to take care of me. 

I'm a monster. Never invite me to drink wine.

Can't Let You Roam Inside My Head

I met you almost fifteen years ago in a literary workshop.

You started to read a poem. 

It was about a woman and a man having an affair. 
She was on her knees and the scene described her in a position on which she was about to give him some sort of pleasure. The man was on his feet, looking at her breasts. 

For days I couldn't get rid of your poem.

The image persisted in my mind. 

It followed me day and night.

I thought it was a poem about you and me.
I could not stop thinking about you on your knees.
I could not stop thinking about you a seconds away from giving me pleasure.

I wondered, on my darker moments, when I was so exhausted of being lonely, about to close my eyes, what kind of pleasure would you give to me.

Once we went to a party. 

It was December. A few days before my birthday. It was cold. 

It was on a big house with fancy walls made of red bricks. 

We sort of slept in a couch. 

We were drunk. Another guy from the literary workshop was in the same couch with us.
He had a crush on you. 

As I closed my eyes and I sensed you by my side, trying to get some sleep in that awkward position on the couch, I remembered your poem. 

Instead of thinking about you on your knees, the first thing that came to my mind was your breast. 

So far, I hadn't thought of them.
Dunno why I thought your boobs were a couple of tiny pears.

In the morning, as we left the house and moved to our own places, we took a bus and the subway. 

You told me that you had noticed that I could not stop watching your breast since you had read that cursed poem. You were convinced of it.

I told you it wasn't true at all. 

Days later, on my birthday, I invited you to a party.
We slipped from people and you told me that you desired me. 
We had a strange thing. 

It was sad. I felt so abusive. 

No matter what, you insisted to repeat the experience.

The second time, it happened on January.
That day we had been drinking on nasty places. 

I just dreamed about you. 
I haven't seen you for almost fifteen years. 

In my dream, we were on an academic meeting, in a round table. 
You spoke about the possibilities of your career. 
You said that a person studying Literature could get a job as an economist and crazy non sense things. 

Then we took a bus. 

It seemed Ciudad Universitaria. 

I felt so sexually attracted to you. 

You wore a black and white turtle neck stripped sweater. 
It made your breasts looked so clear. They seemed a small pair of shy fruits.

You were by the exit door of the bus, about to walk out. I was by your side and we said good bye and we were about to do it kissing our cheeks. 

We accidentally kissed in the mouth. 

Your lips felted like velvetine. 

It excited me. 

I felt guity. 

In my dream, I had a girlfriend and she was on the bus, too. Obviously, I didn't want that she notice that we had just an accidental kiss. 

I felt guilty and excited at the same time.

You smiled and I couldn't stop thinking about your breast. 

Why did I dream of you?

Sometimes, dreams are so meaningless. 

Sometimes, they're not. 

We're In A Dream In The Happy House

Still remember the way you kissed that stranger. 
He told you that he had found you pretty and he asked you if he could kiss you.
You agreed. 

I wanted so bad to be him, but your friend was so obsessed with me. 
She thought I was a weak guy with mental issues. 
I found her sort of cozy. 
I couldn't tell her that I wanted to be with you.
I was so lonely and confused. 

It started by accident. 

At 13 o'clock or so, I was walking thru the alleys of your school and then I unexpectedly found your friend. She was so happy to see me. She thought I was looking for her. 
It was awkward. I wanted to find you. 

You appeared half an hour later. 
You were sort of angst and bored and proposed us to drink a bear. 

Dunno why I accepted. 
I really needed to save money. 
I was supposed to buy tickets for a Sonic Youth show. 

It was almost 15 o'clock but we were already drunk. 
Still remember what you said about that stranger when you came back to our table.
I felt dizzy and jealous. 

Then, we moved to another bar and we never stopped drinking. 

Later, we moved to a really cheap and sordid place. 
At noon, we moved to a tavern full of elderly men. 

We kissed at the end of the journey. 

The entire day I had been thinking about kissing you.
I told you that I desired to kiss you. 

We were really wasted. 
I barely could stand up.

You saw me and you held my hand.

We kissed. 

My first feeling was that your warm lips were like an open vibrating sore. 

Then you murmured: "I didn't kiss you just because she's my friend..."
(Or so I remember.)

For days I was thinking how precise were my memories about this affair. 

Now, it seems another life. 
It happened almost 15 years ago. 

We are completely different.

You're divorced, you have a child genius and you're sort of a freelance writer.
I'm married, devoted to neurosciences (or so it should be) and happy. 

Sometimes I wake up from a crazy dream about that kiss. 

I still feel your warm lips like an open vibrating sore. 

Happy House, a song by Siouxsie & The Banshees on Spotify

The Same Post, But In Spanish (Details Included)

Mama's Little Pills Spilled All Over The Floor

It was about to dawn.

We were inside of a dark small apartment, standing in front of a window.

We were in silence, watching the city.

Our shadows reflected in the glass of the window in a dismal way.

Our reflection reminded me of the most popular scene of Fight Club, except that we would not see how a bomb would make an enormous building fall to pieces. 

The sky looked like a giant mouth about to yawn. 

The clouds looked like an army of violent waves about to invade a warm ocean. 

The walls in the apartment were all painted in red and they reminded me of the excess of wine in my body. 

She just wore underwear and a T-shirt. 

She stared at me.

Her eyes were sad and tired.

She looked younger than I thought she was. 

Her long black hair shone in the form of an ambiguous cascade.

Somehow, it made me to experience a group of brief vertiginous images.

These images appeared in intervals in my fuzzy brain.

Soon they adopted the form of a headache.

Her long black hair also reminded me of her shadowy naked body. 

For a moment, I almost smelled the secret perfume of her skin. 

It gave me the chills. 

I was so angst and confused. 

I felt so dumb. 

What we had done?

http://www.ifccenter.com/films/fight-club/

She came close to me and made me hug her from behind.

As we still watched the city, I felt her skinny body.

It was like an open vibrating sore. 

Her body was so tiny and soft that it reminded me of a porcelain doll. 

I felt pity of her. 

I barely could stand beside her. 

I was dizzy and about to fall asleep. 

Also, I wanted to throw up.  

She was so stoned, too.

I looked down and saw a lot of pills on the floor. 

Somehow, I knew those pills were antidepressants.

She was on treatment 'cause she had tried to commit suicide in the last year. That's why we had started to get closer.  

We had started by watching movies each Friday. 

I just wanted to be supportive. 

One thing had led to another. 

Nonetheless, the pills spilled all over the floor made me think that maybe she was addicted to meth, too.

It also gave me the chills. 

What if I had just tried meth for the first time?

I was so drunk, tired and sleepy. 

The apartment was so quiet and warm, but my mind was a fierce storm.

I felt abussive and I wanted to kill myself, but I had the feeling that she was too vulnerable and that it was not an appropriate moment.

I was terribly ill and tied to her suffering. 

I just woke up. Still feel so guilty. 

At times, dreams are so revealing and scary. 

Sweet Young Thing Ain't Sweet No More

I Wanna Fly With You

It was spring. It was Friday. An undergrad wanted to be accepted in the lab. 

A few days earlier, my advisor had asked him to prepare a seminar about anorexia nervosa. 

I was an advanced postgraduate student and I had an experiment at that precise time.

Even though the talk was so damn boring, I didn't want to be a pain in the neck for my advisor –meaning I didn't want to provoke his typical rage–, so I had to switch between the experiment and the seminar. 

Now that I think about it, I really enjoyed performing experiments. On those days, I'd been performing some experiments with the passive avoidance paradigm. The idea was more elaborated, but in brief: since in my most recent published paper of the time, we had shown that an endocannabinoid acting in the lateral hypothalamus increased REM sleep for almost 24 hours, I was evaluating if an inhibitor of the synthesis of this molecule could block avoidance learning. Then I had a couple of published papers as first author and a couple of manuscripts in preparation more. 

Though I had proposed to my advisor this experiment and another one which ended up in NeuroReport, a couple of weeks before this seminar he had yelled at me in front of the undergrads.

It had been so annoying. He'd said that I just followed his instructions and that I didn't have ideas. 

Obviously it pissed me off. 

Now that I think about it, that's why I acquired an aversion to perform experiments. 

Each time since then, I remember those days and I feel like an idiot. 

Well, that Friday I would have like to focus in the experiment, but I didn't want to piss off my advisor, so, at a moment, I had to cancelled the experiment. 

 
After an hour or so, I was really bored. 

The undergrad didn't know how to explain the brain circuitry responsible for food intake regulation. 

All I wanted to do was to get away from the lab and to get drunk. 

On those days, I was really stressed, and I drank and did some other drugs basically from Friday to Sunday, to deal with my stress problems. I used to get wasted and to return tired and unhappy to the lab on Mondays. 

Alma Delia was an invited professor at the lab. She was about ten years older than me. 

She was kind of pretty, but a conflictive woman. All the undergraduate students worked for her and she didn't recognized them. My advisor trusted her in a pretty sickening way. 

I had the impression that she was responsible for the sickening environment we suffered at the lab, when my advisor experienced his worst times. 

Four years earlier or so, when I'd arrived to the lab, I had a few hours as a half-time professor at the School of Psychology. Alma Delia immediately looked at me in a pretty hostile way. 

Maybe she thought we would become enemies. I dunno. 

Then she used to dressed up in blouses with a pronounced neckline. Her nipples were visible all the time. She even had a nickname. The older postgrads called her “Miss Nipples”. 

Her nipples were so impressive. They looked like a couple of tough craters. 

At the beginning, when we toasted for the end of the year or the end of a congress or the end of a symposium, Alma Delia got wasted. 

She became a crazy sexual woman. Sometimes undergrads had to take care of her. 

She used to loss her head and to make sexual comments that other researchers found like a proposal to get involved with her. When I saw her drunk for the first time in a party, she even told me some sort of joke about she giving me a blowjob. It was so sickening.  

As the undergraduate student tried to decipher the opposing roles of leptin and ghrelin in anorexia nervosa, my need to get stoned increased. I had a seat beside Alma Delia. I could watch her and she could watch me. 

She dressed up a tiny skirt. Her legs were terrific.

 

Sometimes, when she got over bored, she stretched her legs and then leaned her back against the back of the chair. Her breast was exposed on plain view. I just couldn't ignore her.    

She did so, several times. Her legs were terrific. They made think of a story of Bukowski and Bukowski made me desire to get wasted. I couldn't focus on anything else. I couldn't stop watching them. I believed I understood why Bukowski was mad about legs. 

At some point, she discovered I was watching her. 

She smiled to me for a few milliseconds. 

Her smile was sort of diabolic. Alma Delia made me have insane thoughts. It made me analyze if sometimes she was flirting on me. I guess we were all stressed out. As I'm about to get wasted, I put this song on my iPod and I kinda remember that I did the same on that Friday, after the boring seminar ended up and I got home. I would have love to write something about Alma Delia and Bukowski, but I just got wasted. 

Starla Dear, I'm All Alone

They were already drunk. Their eyes looked like rat eyes: red, scary and dangerous. Their bodies looked like if they were vaporizing like nightmare fog. 

So I tried to convince my brother that I really was there for taking care of him, but I just wanted to see Starla, a beautiful friend of him. She was almost eight years younger than me, but she looked older. 

People talked about drugs and music. I found out Starla and walked to get close to her. Immediately, I started to hear my heart beating like a wild animal. I had met her at another party where we ended up kissing, and I guess I wanted to kiss her again.  

She was in the middle of a conversation and ignored me. I felt dumb and I tried to get involved in the conversation. Among those silly pretentious teenagers, she finally spoke to me and told me to take her out. I told her that I had just arrived to the party and she said "At least, take me to a more private place".

Then, we started to talk and continued drinking. 

I fall asleep and drunk somewhere in time and woke up feeling stupid in someone's bedroom. The bedroom seemed to belong to a woman 'cause it was painted in pink and the walls were full of photographs of Brad Pitt, Lorenzo Lamas and Jason Priestley. 

The bedroom also smelled like bubblegum, and I was starved and exhausted. Vaguely, I remembered someone was taking care of me as I wanted to threw up. I kinda wanted to think that my brother or my friend, had taken care of me. It would have been so embarrassing, if Starla had been the one who took care of me. 

Stopped thinking of it.

Starla walked in and sat in the bed. She looked at me, and she told me that we were about to have sex when I fall asleep. I remembered she was a little bit liar. She smiled and got closer to me and kissed my cheeks. Her scent reminded me of some things. While I was about to fell asleep, she started to touch my hair, my face and my hands. I fought to keep myself awake, as I thought of her eyes as made of honey dripping into my skin and as I thought of her hair dangling like a heavy medal trying to hypnotize me. 

Then she told me "It was the best thing that could have ever happened to me..."

I didn't understand why, but I realized everything when my brother told me later that he had a crush on Starla.

Starla

With Animals Staring At Your Cleavage

Last weekend, I drunk too much alcohol.

Each time I do it, weird things happen. 

One of these weird things consists in starting to talk to strangers.

Another weird thing is that I say what I really think about them. 

The last weekend some friends came to my place.

Someone invited a chubby girl. 

I had seen her at another parties. 

It's impossible to ignore her. 

She's a big breasted girl and she usually wears blouses with cleavage. 

Someone told me that her dad had died a few months ago. 

Supposedly her personality changed a lot. 

When she arrived, I was kind of drunk, having a conversation in the living room. 

I was talking about the Mexican soccer team and its limited opportunities to transcend in the next World Cup in South Africa. 

As I spoke I sensed that Antonia was incessantly looking at me.

As usual, she wore a blouse with cleavage. 

As she seemed to want to make eye contact with me, I couldn't stop thinking of her cleavage. 

I tried to focus on the conversation, but it was so impressive. 

At some point, I stood up.

I took another beer from the fridge. 

When I closed the door, Antonia was there. 

She scared me. 

She smiled and kinda bit her lips in a pretty suggestive way. 

I shrugged my shoulders and offered her my beer.

She accepted. Again I opened the door of the fridge and then I took another beer. 

As I was doing it, I couldn't stop thinking about her cleavage. 

I had seeing it briefly as I gave her my beer. 

The boiling image of the abyss between her breasts exploded madly in my brain. 

I was really drunk.  

We sit face to face in the dinning room. 

I took a sip of the beer and I closed my eyes. 

I felt so excited. 

I had that boiling image in front of me. 

When I opened my eyes, I felt dizzy. 

Antonia started to talk. 

I made my best to focus on her face. 

She studies at the National School of Plastic Arts and she's a big fan of mac Operative System. She also likes to take photographs. 

I had nothing to say. 

Then she asked me random things about monkeys and science. 

As a lot of people do, Antonia believed that science's goal is deciphering why laziness and bad temper are related to high IQs. 

She even told me about a supposedly journalistic article on which some researchers found that obesity is related to bad relationships. 

She also believed that monkeys were some sort of funny primates. 

Dunno remember what did I tell her, but certainly she was surprised. 

Suddenly we were talking about music. She loved The Doors and she couldn't understand why do I like Nirvana. For her, Kurt Cobain was a terrible composer and musician. She pissed me off. She barely knew Nevermind. This album was her only one reference.  

She asked me too many things and she took advantage of my drunkenness. 

Despite I was drunk, I could sense that she was talking to me in a very sexual way. 

She continued bitting her lips and smiling. 

Maybe she was drunk, too. 

At some point, I realized I had stopped looking at her cleavage. 

Then, I watched it again. 

I felt I was like a thirsty vampire and I decided to talk about it. 

She laughed and reacted as if what I had said would have flattered her. 

I told her what kind of photographs I like. 

Obviously, I told her I love the ones with cleavages.  

Later, she left my place. 

Now, I feel so stupid. 

I feel so sorry and confused. 

(What the hell was she trying to do?)

[So Alone-Lou Reed]

This Is Not About Love

What was that? What was that you had that drove me wild? 

Though it happened too many years ago, I still think of you once in a while. We shared a few memories but they were so intense. At least, I think so. 

I still remember the madness of meeting you. 

Out of the blue, while I was bored and sad, when Silencios Incómodos were about to play, you approached to me and you asked me if I could light you up a cigarette. 

I was smoking and I gave you my Zippo and then you lighted your cigarette. Meaningless seconds elapsed and you returned it to me.

A few songs later I wanted to light another cigarette, but I couldn't find the Zippo. 
I thought you had kept it for mistake -I was a little bit drunk- and I looked for you.
When I found you, I asked you for the Zippo. 

Then I saw you in detail, under the dim lights of Foro Alicia. 
Dunno why -maybe I was drunker than I thought-, but I liked you a lot. 

As your closed eyelids reveal some kind of devotion, your lips tasted like youth.

They were soaked in alcohol and they were simultaneously tender and aggressive. 

A week later, we met in a park. 

Honestly, I didn't like you under the daylight. 

I felt abusive and stupid. 

You were several years younger than me!

We talked on the telephone for several months.

I got used to your voice. Guess I knew you and got interested on you, in this way. 

Sometimes you were the only person I heard all day long. 

I remember smoking pot one night and thinking about you. 

I was listening to Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine. 

I started to read a letter that you had written to me. 

It turned out to be one of the funniest experiences I ever had. 

Your words where so innocent and reflective at the same time. 

It seemed that you were just playing the fool. 

On that letter you said that one night before you were about to sleep. 

You were brushing your hair in front of the mirror and then you felt excited for an unknown reason. Then you took away your shirt and started to look your naked breast. 

You said that I could see your breast, though we were not closer friends. You wanted me to ask you to be my girlfriend. 

As the piano sounded on my bedroom and Fiona sang This Is Not About Love, I become obsessed with your breast. 

Had it been necessary that you had specified on the letter that you were wearing 36-B bras...?

Sometimes you were so direct and I was so stupid.

I used to feel terribly guilty.  

Another night we went to a bar to drink a beer.

We sit face to face. 

You wore a blouse with a neckline. 

The blouse was green and the neckline was amazing. 

I drank beer after beer. It was impossible to not sink into the abyss of your breast. 

Nonetheless, sometimes you were so cruel. 

I guess you got tired.

You were willing to do what I wanted, but I did not do anything. 

You said that I was too polite and too respectful and too different from the guys you used to hang out with, but you also incessantly said that I was a real bad kisser. 

I guess you just said so to provoke me. 

You wanted me to be a little bit disrespectful, but you got bored of my endlessly politeness and then you started to hate me and then you decided to ignore me. 

Our relationship finished. 

It was easy for you to broke with me, even though you were not exactly my girlfriend. 

They were another guys interested on you. 

Immediately, I felt so ill and I tried to write about you.

It was too recent and everything I wrote sucked. 

I started to care a lot about you. I wanted you to be my girlfriend.  

I wanted so bad to be with you, but you just rejected me. 

All the songs I heard were about losers and guys in love with wrong people. 

Each time I heard Extraordinary Machine, I felt so sick. 

I wanted to threw up. I wanted to stay in bed all day long. 

I thought you deserved more than words. 

Now I can write about it. 

[This Is Not About Love-Fiona Apple]