Bubble Gum (3/3)

Suddenly the relationship (it took them almost years of not knowing or meeting anyone else to call it that way) had begun to settle down in a sort of process of compensation between the memories that she gathered and the delusion of being together; as the first ones were collected, the second one was wasting away. He had promised to buy a new one, (the idea to lend his own was out of the question), but he never did, nor even tried or excused himself. The toaster, she means. She can recall it now, she had never remembered the promise. In fact, it was a waste of time when, one morning, one realizes that more than hearing a few gentle words or more promises, what one wants to hear is the very sigh of relief when listening his keys locking the door on his way to work, to not return until late.

The natural became unnatural. What once had been new, it became old, unmatched, even random. Whatsoever she wanted to feel, it wasn't what she was living at the moment. The obligation of buying books for Sant Jordi's day, the incessant necessity of tracking every single object they owned to avoid losing it in the other's personal world of stuff. The futility of emotions such as jealousy or guilt. The colors had changed and she was aware of that, how the perspective of the places in which she had been was now different once she had seen them with him. They were hurting each other in such a distorted but silent manner that it was hard to realize that the only thing that kept them from happiness was to share the same perspective of the world. So he decided to change it... Change her. They were no longer 'here' and 'now'.

The particular smell of apricot hit her cheeks like a whip. The bus was about to make a pit stop and she wanted to go to the bathroom so badly, she only gave herself five more seconds of trying to reckon what just happened, while she removed gum stuck to her lips. Was the nostalgic snap worth it? Probably she should buy more gums to resume the trip. Although, and despite how, she had no intention to remember all those years all over, she felt the desire of listening to that San Francisco Bay song again.

Bubble Gum (2/3)

Back in 2008 it seemed as if everything was easier for her. Living, for example. Caring. Listening to this guy she barely knew talking about how badly he wanted to visit the bay of San Francisco because of his father's favorite song that turned out to be his favorite one after years of detesting it. The guy that ran into her asking for directions one cold Saturday morning, the month of October, maybe... Usually, she played the "Sorry, I'm not from here" card, but it felt like the right place and the right time to start feeling part of the city already. After all, she had been there for almost six years at the time. It wasn't an instant reaction, but deep inside she knew the guy would be important in her life, although not completely in a good, nice, healthy manner. Something odd, ruffling in her stomach, swallowed the strangeness of the foreboding. Without realizing, she started to gather bills, tickets Her wallet was always full with papers with numbers on them, numbers that had shifted from 30€ to 50€ at the supermarket, from 1 movie ticket to 2. Drafts on napkins in cafes and tea shops with her face on them, because he liked to draw, even when he knew he was not good at it. And all of a sudden everything was happening without a reason, with no rush. Perhaps what disturbed her was the awkward sensation of not recognizing the feeling, the simplicity of the process.

Her own body kept her from knowing where the orgasms were hidden, and with him they started the game of finding them. She could never picture that an act so violent against her body would give her so much pleasure. And, quite frankly, she had never, and will never again put herself in such a contingent position with someone. As the months passed, things started to run up in this way: all the trains she took were from where she lived to where he was, the restaurants they went to were thoroughly chosen accordingly by his taste and preference, and the funny thing about these little details was that she didn't even notice, or in the case that she did, she did not care at all. The 'thing', almost physical, that they were creating started developing its own motion, growing up faster than she had thought it could. And as it was getting bigger, it started to become thinner. In fact, exactly like a bubble of gum.

To be continued...

Bubble Gum (1/3)

Pop! The sound came first, but it was the smell, the familiar smell that surrounded her after the sonorous pop!, the one that took her flying from the –not-as-uncomfortable-as-she-thought- bus where her bones have been resting for the last couple of hours to her kitchen. Or was it his? It had these yellow spots all over the wall she suspected were from splashed oil; she could definitely remember that, so it should be hers, because his kitchen was sky blue and of a clean almost clinical. Scorching toasts in the frying pan, not by choice, but because her toaster had suffered the crowning accident of a totem built out of the washing machine, microwave, a little oven and on the top of the sculpture, the toaster. He hated to cook at her place, it had not space enough for both when he wanted to prepare gin-tonics in the middle of the day, after spending the whole night watching Lost episodes one after another.

In the evening, around seven o'clock in the afternoon, she used to hug him and in doing so she felt inside a Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrel song. To hear him mutter was like feeling the hum of the rhythm, although she never knew Tammi and Marvin's lyrics by heart. He closed his eyes, falling asleep a few inches from her face and the image always turned blurry in spite of her trying not to lose focus. In these moments, sometimes, she discovered something new. The wrinkles of his permanently furrowed frown, his front teeth, separated by a measly millimeter, barely visible at first glance. Or even his earlobe, a different temperature, in discordance with the rest of his head. Cold. The thickness of each of his dark hairs.

It was funny how at the time she used to fear forgetting his face, although it was not his face exactly, the panic lay in failing to recall the feeling of it, the noisy song of partying floating in the air every time they shared the same room all along. And, yet, there she was, surprised of how she didn't mean at all to forget him until the exact moment the chewing gum popped. In fact, it turned out being so easy...

 

To be continued...