I'm So Excited, I Can't Wait To Meet You There

As the quietly room is occupied by cats and sunlight and street sounds and wildlife, I start to forget you. Before the soft and blue substance of these thoughts vanished, I will make my best to maintain you on this secret spot I have been building for the last decade. 

I just can't ignore this calm that invades me. I just can't ignore this atmosphere. It smells like freshly washed sheets and it evokes several cozy ideas on me. It makes me feel like a stupid teenager. It makes me close my eyelids and to travel miles away from my real life.

I almost see myself from my inside.

We are in 1999. 

I'm walking to the swimming pool. 
My parents decided to bring us to these cabins in Cuernavaca.
It's the first time we spend a weekend in this place. 
I can't tell how they find it out, but it's a nice place. 

There are soccer fields and basketball and tennis courts. 
There are twenty or thirty cabins, next to a forest.
There is also a restaurant.  

A few hours ago, we played a soccer game with some tourists. 
We were giving them up a ridiculous beating. 
They were so stupid to play soccer. Most of them were fat and clumsy. 
A moron didn't tolerate the humiliation. He hit the soccer ball so hard that it made my dad bled. I hated him. I'm thinking on revenge.   

I've been also playing tennis with one of my brothers. 
I didn't remember how much I enjoy to play tennis. I even used to watch tennis matches on TV when I was a kid, instead of watching cartoons. I guess female tennis players attracted me. I loved the way the air made their skirts flew thru the court as they ran to hit the ball with the racket. I also loved the shapes of their firm legs. It also surprised me that women seemed fragile and quiet, but they could be so strong and they could scream violently. 

I'm thinking that I barely have the opportunity to play tennis. I think it sucks. 

I'm kind of pissed off. I would have preferred to stay home. 
I have realized that I just find it awkward to be surrounded by my family. 
It's not like our last holidays. We even brought our small nephew with us. He's four years old and seems to be the only really happy one. 

I love my family, but I just don't feel OK. 
I'm just a teenager, pretending to act like an adult. 

The university is on a strike since April. It is a disaster. The last time I went to see how it was goin' –some of my classmates and a few hundred other students, are “taking care” of the facilities–, the School of Psychology was a hotel and the Central Library was a dinning room. The entire Ciudad Universitaria was a dump surrounded by cyclonic mesh. 

It was so creepy. 

Nobody knows it, but it's a pretty stressful situation for me. I'm lost. I'm worried. I'm depressed. The only thing I do, is to be a student. I'm such a coward. 

Why haven't I just looked for a job, to keep my mind busy...? 

I've been obsessively thinking on the uncertainty of my academic future. 
I've been supposedly reinforcing my History of Psychology lessons, but, to be honest, I just cannot tell you about a single topic. I have had difficulties to learn. 

I also have been reading Dante Alighieri's most famous book and I just have had difficulties to enjoy it. I've been daydreaming with my own Beatrice and I've been suffering my own private hell. 

What would happen if I dared to give a 180° turn to my life...?

I could work on Mix up, I could work as a waiter on a coffee shop, if I really wanted to. 
I'm so apathetic. I'm so pathetic. I just can't quit my comfort zone. 

Besides daydreaming with the sudden appearance of my own Beatrice, I read 19th century writers, I write 19th century like-poems and weep and complain.  

The sun rays irradiate my childish body as I walk to the swimming pool.  

“I'm so excited, 

I can't wait to meet you there...”

sings Kurt Cobain inside my head, as my heart beats so hard. 

Though it is the calm part of the song, I'm sure that my heart sounds louder than Dave Grohl's drums and that Kurt Cobain's Jaguar on the noisy part of the song. 

My most precious treasures are an old Aiwa walkman, my headphones and my small collection of cassettes. This time, obviously, I'm listening Lithium. 

Music is so important to me. Nirvana has accompanied me since I started senior high school. It has been sort of a cursed. I am stuck in the past. I know I should listen to different genres and to listen different bands (alive ones?), but even though I have tried, it just hasn't work. 

I've been trying to listening No Code, too. I can't tell exactly why there is something about Eddie Vedder I dislike. This album seems so 1995. 
  
I have a crush. I'm almost sure that I will find you in the swimming pool, like I did the first time I saw you. I'm really excited. 

Suddenly, my legs start to shake.  

Though I don't even remember your face, I feel so enthusiastic about seeing you again.

A few days later, I watched a soccer game on TV. 
Our national team won its most relevant tournament so far. 
The Mexican players beat up Brazil in an exciting game. A young player named Ronaldinho was on the field. TV commentators said he was the next star of Brazilian soccer. He's nineteen years old, or so. 

At the time of the game, it was raining. It had been a hot day. 
At a moment, before the soccer game, I was so bored that I went to swim.

And then I saw you.  

You had a black swimwear. Your natural way of behaving left me breathless. 
You looked so gorgeous. Your brown long hair floated on the water like a living miracle defying the laws of gravity. I would like to write an elaborated thought about each component of your beauty, but I would be a liar. I have to admit it. I couldn't ignore your breasts. They made me feel weak and strong at the same time. 

Immediately, I dove into the water to hide my excitement.
I sort of swim to get close to you. You were swimming, too. 

At a moment, as we stopped swimming, we made eye contact. 
It could be for a second, but it felt like eternity. 

I believed you smiled and waited for me to speak to you.
I sensed it, in the very same way I sensed it in those girls in junior high school I kissed. 

Despite all our efforts to make it clear that we own a neocortex, we're still mammals. 
Our brain has evolved, but we still need water and food, to survive. Our brain has evolved, but we still need sex to perpetuate our specie. Our brain has evolved, but we still have to cut it off when we're starved, no matter if we have to interrupt our most sophisticated cognitive abilities. Hormones, olfaction and sight remind us that we are still animals. It's hard to be exempt from our nature.  

Of course, I didn't speak to you. 
 
                              

Though I barely saw you then, I couldn't stop thinking about you. I have felt like a confused young, like I think of Marcel Proust when he wrote how he idealized mysterious women on his vacations on Balbec. 

(In fact, as I am pounding the keyboard and trying to capture you on this secret spot, I see myself as the main character of In the shadow of young girls in flower.)

Since that hot day, your presence has been haunting me. 

I closed my eyelids this morning, while I was in the shower. 
I had impure thoughts about you. I also thought about your eyes and your beautiful hair floating in the swimming pool. Yesterday, as I fell asleep, I started to have hypnagogic hallucinations on which you allowed me to watch your naked breasts behind that black swimwear. It was so exciting. The images left me breathless. For a second, as I woke up, I had no reasons to consider that dreams aren't better than life. 

I finally arrive to the swimming pool. 
I sit in a chair, a few steps from the water.
I sense on my face the reflection of the summer sun diving into the water.  
My lungs are penetrated by the singular smell of chlorine. 
I'm so happy. 

I turn on the volume of the walkman. I focus on Kurt Cobain's voice. I focus on Dave Grohl's cymbals and snare drum. I focus on Krist Novoselic's bass. 

I take a deep breath. 
I look for you. 

There you are. 

Lithium

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. 

Restless Soul, Enjoy Your Youth

A friend of mine told me about the most recent album of Pearl Jam.

It was the summer 0f 1995, or so, and the album had just came out six months ago. 

He had bought Vitalogy at El Chopo, the most underground market of music at Ciudad de México -you could find out punks and the most unaccessible music, there-, and one day he lent it to me. 

I really loved the music and the fact that it was a pretty recent album. 

All I had heard then was old. Nirvana was my favourite band of all times, but since Kurt Cobain's death it had elapsed one year and the last studio album of the band would be Unplugged In New York. 

It was sad to realize that Nirvana would never play again. 

I had heard Ten and I kinda thought Pearl Jam was the opposite to Nirvana, that they did not have the same anti-commercial attitude of Nirvana, even though they'd just had sued Ticketmaster.

Pearl Jam wanted to be fair with their fans and they hated that Ticketmaster elevated the cost of the tickets for their shows and the fact that the company was the only one able to sell the tickets. 

I had read alot of interviews in which Kurt Cobain expressed his animadversion to Eddie Vedder. He said Vedder was a fake guy and he hated that Vedder pretended to be a nice guy with a high social consciousness, but I think it was more related to the fact that Kurt Cobain saw a bad reflection of himself in Eddie Vedder. 

  

I was really touched by the album, when I met a girl named Nancy. 

She was younger than me and she looked really beautiful and happy.

She was blonde and overweight. 

Except for her overweight, she looked like a girl I felt in love with when I was in elementary school. 

Veronica was from Aguascalientes and she was a tiny girl and the blondiest girl I ever met.  

Veronica left elementary school so soon -her family went back to Aguascalientes- and I couldn't get close to her.

Nancy had a sister and they used to wear the same clothes. 

It was pretty funny 'cause one day Nancy wore the clothes that her sister wore the day before, and so on.

I spoke to her once and asked her if we could meet. She did not understand why, but was nice and agreed. I realized she had green eyes, just like Veronica, and I felt so happy.

Obviously I wanted to make her my girlfriend. 

via GIPHY

We spoke several times, but soon it became pretty evident that I was not attractive to her. 

I don't even remember in what she was interested on, nor what we talked about.

I just remember that I gave her away a cassette with my favourite songs and that she started to hang out with and older guy who was some sort of dealer in the school.

We has so old, that he was a bearded guy. I always suspected he was "un porro" -a term we use in México to refer to the guys that the autorithies of the schools buy to get rid of troubles with the real students-, but I have to accept that he was also a pretty good looking guy and that alot of girls were crazy about him.

Sometimes he played football or basketball, but he sucked.

He was very clumsy. 

One day, I was having a good time with Nancy and he suddenly appeared and stared at me with a very hostile look.  

Later that day, I was in the high school gym watching a basketball game. 

It supposed to be an important game, between the school team and its worst enemy, or something like that, and this guy was sort of controlling the crowd -as I mentioned, he was kind of an employee of the school authorities- and someone in the crowd pushed me and I fell  on the floor of the court, just a millimeters away from him.

He was sitting but got up immediately and looked at me with his characteristic hostile look.

Dunno why I felt so strong and angst -maybe 'cause he was dating Nancy- and I stared at him with a very hostile look, to. 

He approached me, walking like the rough guys of Michael Jackson's Bad music video, and I just told him:

Are you sure, you want to have troubles?  

Dunno where that sentence came from.

Obviously I was not looking for a fight. 

My words surprised him and he pretended that one of his friends calmed him and he went back to his place in the high school gym.

via GIPHY

While doing it, he persisted in staring at me with his hostile look.

I felt stupid and contagious, and, since we were a teenage crowd in a high school gym, I thought it had just been pretty similar to the Smells Like Teen Spirit video of Nirvana.   

It was so cool and dumb, but funny. 

Every time I hear Vitalogy -and particularly, Not For You-, I almost smell the parfum of Nancy's blonde hair and wonder why would she think about me right now. 

Would she still believe that I am not enough for her?

This Is Not For You!!!