this, that, then

I've been putting this one off. But my mother is convinced that people—i.e. the three of you reading this—want to read my ill inward looking thoughts about being in Spain, coming from Morocco. For better or for worse, I really did see Western Civ—represented by Spain—in a light I had never seen it in before. But I can only do it in snippets:

1) On the top of the steps of some glass-windowed well-endowed museum, two Moroccan teenagers spread out staring up into the sun. The time of day when Spain empties for its siesta, hard to shake the awareness that we wouldn’t have seen these kids otherwise. Michael and me hear them laughing in Moroccan. Neither one of us has the balls to approach the kids, like they wouldn’t believe us that we have been living in Morocco. A hackneyed observation, but it feels so true—we had just come from their home (there, they come out at night, not day) where they are, well, everywhere; recognized them here, where they aren’t. You had to wonder how many histories aren’t spoken in any given place.
2) The sex toy store. Walking around Granada with an afternoon free (Morocco men my age have free afternoons, too: freedoms imposed by joblessness, though, not wealth)—why not go in? Five Americans with mainly expensive backpacks, mainly looking young. The short rounded girl in pink fuzzy slippers behind the counter, staring aimlessly past a wall of 12-inch dildos, almost dramatically. Neutralized, all business. Lots of transparent colorful candy. I get out; getting turned on, and annoyed. An old couple walks by hand-in-hand. Stops. Prepare yourself for looks of disgust, tssks of shame; really: hope for it. But the old man only squeezes his wife’s plump shoulder and laughs.
3) Flavors for ice cream in no language you recognize. Tootii explosivante and chocohappy bumbum. What? Door-less ice cream stores spilling weird ambient music onto the sidewalk. Girls in short skirts reaching over one another to point to what they want.
4) A small, good-looking bookstore next to the Lacoste. Browsing—or wanting to be browsing, but sweaty, messy, not sure what you are looking for, and experiencing all three realities increasing by the eyes of a watching clerk (clerk is a cold oldish woman with glasses on the bridge of her nose). Suspicion—of course, there’s suspicion in Morocco, too. Of course, of course. But in Morocco there are reasons; there is, at least, poverty (thieves, dogs). Is this wrong? I’m not sure. All I know is that here, in this bookstore, this is suspicion for its own sake. Something to do. It fills the air, and I almost slip a thin book into my pocket. Want to say things like, Bitch.
5) Pressurized water: thank God. Disinfected toilets: Aw, hell yeah. The food in the youth hostel: stale, cold, bland, colorless—would you trade home-cooked meals for clean seats? Would you trade time looking at menus for the chance to wait and not know? Credit card or dig for change? I always have loose coins in Morocco; Spain cleans out my pockets, condenses. Coins are worth something here (ironically, nothing is worthless). More unseen, unfortunately that’s because there is less. E.g. you eat less here; eating little a thing you do here. Less and, to boot, worse, and the coffee is never ever not once fresh, or strong.
6) Unnoticed on the street. Speaking Spanish (and really getting good quick, by the way, though refusing the mythical royal lisp), looking white—but it’s just not my blending in. There is so much else to look at, people aren’t interesting. Look up, in that store window, look down (avoiding shit becomes a preoccupation when your “natural” outside is so sterile). In Morocco, people-watching (and car-watching) is not something you joke about; it is something you do. ALL THE TIME. In Morocco, the main thing you have to spend your curiosity on is other people. Here—well.
7) Why is a 16 year-old girl pouting her lips at me on the bus? Does she really think she has sex appeal to anyone but a pervert? Why I am still looking? Why are two 16 year-old girls pouting their lips at me now? Why am I reciprocating? Is that a Minnie Mouse backpack? A Kit-Kat! I can’t even figure out if she has breasts. I get off the bus before my stop and walk along the highway back to the hostel, breathing (it feels) more exhaust than air.
8) Private busdrivers get impatient easy. Wish they were chauffeurs. Mini-bureaucracies, and hierarchies, everywhere. Suspect you of bringing something on the bus you’re not supposed to; suspect you of having been the one to hold up the group. Refuse to turn on the air for a 15-minute drive. And the bus, with its shoulder seat belts, yellow seats, and curves, is nothing less than out of this world. Beers for sale from a cooler on the bus. Free mints materialize.
9) I have been craving, what, intellectualism. Good juicy exchange of ideas. People who can think in big words for themselves. I get it here. We get Parisian intellectuals at a roundtable—no need for a bullshit title (on the inter-subjectivity of the transnational experience), just, On North African immigrants in Europe. They speak so well; they smell good; they know how to convey the depth of their knowledge with mannerism. And it is nothing more than an industry. The ideas are sapped of their worth by the polishedness of their delivery: they’ve done this so many times. Google Me. (This isn’t how it is at Swarthmore, I swear!) I almost—almost—suddenly want what I have, which is Moroccan academics fumblingly wrongly paraphrasing these very intellectuals. This is an indulgence, sitting here around this round table, listening to ourselves. This is all the normalization of excess.
10) Bear with me. All this sex everywhere creates a serious anxiety in me. It is not so stupid as I am constantly aroused; if anything, it’s the opposite. There is sex everywhere and I am getting less and less aroused. Why is the woman on the ice cream vending machine fellating the King Cone? I'm not kidding! I’d say that I could see every other woman’s cleavage. I am not going any further than this. I am just saying. There is sex everywhere in Morocco, too, mind you; there is sex everywhere everywhere. But in Morocco you are not positive there is sex everywhere; you know, but there’s no hard proof. You have to read eyes; read people. Generally. It’s better.
11) In the youth hostel, a group of women over 65. They are louder than the high school kids who stayed at the hostel the night before. They are screaming and laughing like we are all already in Hell. When I come home, they call me to look at something. A short, very old wrinkled woman emerges from her dorm room and reveals a fake penis, complete with balls. The woman squeal with delight; and when I say Ay Dios Mio, I think that one of them is going to die of squealing. They squeal all night. I time my breathing to it: every half hour, they squeal twice a minute, almost every thirty seconds on the dot.
12) The right of way exists, for good reasons.
13) There are people on segues advertising deodorant. They zoom by you and throw sample packets at you, smiling for pay. I saw this in Casablanca. Why is this a sign of progress, again?
14) Kids playing rebels. Kids plays rebels everywhere, I know. But these rebels are so TV. The dangling cigarettes, untied laces; the girls dressed like prostitutes dress, maybe prostitutes dress like little girls, I don’t know—there’s nothing else to call what they look like. Is that not fair? The boys strutting around so relentlessly seem like motorized cocks, stuck in circles.

There is stuff to say about the al-Alhambra. I’ll tell you when I see you. About hearing Tariq Ramadan, Umberto Eco, and Juan Goystiolo speak, too. Especially Goytisolo. He shut me down the way the Jews in Rabat did, in a way. I waited in line prepared to speak Arabic to him--he is a Spaniard living novelist, maybe their best, living in Marrakech--I was nervous, but so ready for him to embrace me, and I got there and said salaamu aleikum and he blinked at me as if he didn't understand at all...but I know he must have. Understood. I have hard proof, though anyone--this is the worst part--could have done it.

---

---