January 25

1/25

This evening, after dinner in town with my increasingly-distant former roommate, I went to my room and painted my face for the camera – i.e. whorishly as possible. Eyeshadow, two kinds of mascara, contouring, the works. It brought back memories. I spent much of the last year I was jailbait scamming shady Tunisians on Bazoocam, so I'm probably more confident in front of a webcam than I am anywhere else.

I worked on my Doctor Faustus notes until Christopher came online. He asked me if I wanted to do video or voice call. My heart was racing illogically and I could have opted out right then, but I wasn't going to waste my mascara. He is just another Tunisian out to see minou, I told myself. So, “Here goes,” he messaged, and a second later his face spread across my screen, only slightly worse for the buffering.

“Now tell me about Barcelona,” I said. “I have an hour before I have to go out.”

So he poured some dark red wine into a coffee mug, and then he told me. He told me about the discotheques where he danced in clouds of smoke until escaping bleary-headed to the street in full daylight (on good nights) or waking up in a pool of vomit in an alley full of prostitutes (on worse ones). He told me about taking trains with his friends everywhere they could think of: France, Italy, Germany, so much traveling he became jaded with the concept.

“I don't want to travel,” he said. “You know, see the sights, eat the food, all that. That's not real. What I want to do is live. I want to experience everything every place has to offer, the underground, the dirt, get to know it in a way you can't from a package tour deal.”

“Yes,” I kept saying, “that's exactly what I've always thought.” But my favorite story was the one he told me about the castells at the Feast of Our Lady of Mercy in September.

The castells are human castles, he said, stories-high piles of people standing on each other's shoulders. Each neighborhood has their own team, and they compete to see who can build the highest tower. Of course, you need a good base to hold up that structure, said Christian the architect, so everyone in the crowd gets involved. They press up together, one solid mass of flesh, and help each team in turn as they build their tower. “Everyone was so emotionally involved,” he said, “like a hive mind. It was one of the best experiences of my life.”

I had set the hour limit at Marie Claire's advice, but an hour passed before I noticed, and then another. He tried to get some stories from me, and I told him a few from my graduation trip in Paris, but for the most part I asked questions. He always thought before he answered, sipping at the wine in his mug, and then gave me long, difficult responses, decorated with gestures of his beautiful hands.

Almost three hours had passed before I decided my imaginary task really could not wait any longer and I said I had to sign off.

“But we didn't even start talking about transience,” he said, “and it was just me talking the whole time. I feel like you know a lot more about me than I know about you now.”

I asked him for some final thoughts, like they taught me in tenth-grade Journalism. He thought as usual, then said, “Take every opportunity you can get, and never have regrets, and don't try to be too happy.”

“Thank you,” I said. “Until next time.”

“Yes. Until next time,” he repeated, with an emphasis that made the stock phrase seem meaningful and important.

Then I went to bed.