Camino Journal Day 15

April 16

At 5am I got a text from an old girlfriend. I’d met Hannah when I was teaching English in Toledo back in 2009. We traveled Spain and the US together, but when it was time for me to settle back down in Oregon for grad-school, to my disappointment, Hannah went back to her home. We’ve never really made it work again after that, but like lovers will, we tortured ourselves with vague and sporadic messages over Facebook Messenger. Each time I would try to tell her to move to the United States. The money is better here, anyway. I let her know I was coming to Spain again to do the Camino and asked if she’d like to get together. At first seeming excited, the prospect of seeing her again faded, and I’d heard nothing from her in almost a year until this message.

“I’m in Spain,” her message read. That was all. No explanation, no place, not what she was doing. Just that she was no longer at her apartment in France. Did she want to see me? I was 38. She was now 43. What was the point after all this time? When we met while I was teaching English, she was only 30 years old and I barely 25. Oh, how time flies. I had hoped to see her this time around, to prove to her that I could do all the adult stuff finally, that my music provided enough money for us to live our own lives and have our own place. I’d written her when I bought my 1/10-acre property and camper to brag about finally owning something, that if she still felt anything, we could try this life together again. For a few months she would FaceTime me after her work. She was teaching in Switzerland. Things seemed to be going well for her too. She’d had another relationship over the decade or so we’d been apart, but I didn’t care. Maybe I could still move to Spain one day and be with her. I tried the ‘go see about a girl’ approach to win her over back in 2013. I did all my paperwork to move to the Canary Islands, got a job there and a place to live, but the Immigration Laws governing travel and tourism to and from the European Union denied my work visa as I’d checked I was coming over for tourism when I left the United States. In order to finish my paperwork, I’d need to buy another round-trip ticket and go to Houston, to the Embassy, and fill out the correct paperwork stating I was coming to Europe to live and work.

“Fuck! I can’t afford to fly home and then fly back to make it work,” I told Hannah as we had begun to see each other regularly again.

“See, I told you this would never work out,” she joked condescendingly.

So, what did she want now? Why was she letting me know she was in Spain? Did she want to meet? I wrote her back with some condescending jokes to pad my pain. I still loved her. I hadn’t really loved a woman since Hannah. She was my intellectual and philosophical equal - and the sex was just right for me. She never asked me to choke her. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out. I closed the messenger app and put on an old graduation speech Kurt Vonnegut gave back in 1998 and hopped down out of the bunk to go get some coffee. I’d paid the breakfast fee of 6 euro and hoped for a decent breakfast and some good coffee. While sitting outside drinking the stale bulk sludge the cooks had made the night before, I listened for the thousandth time to Wear Sunscreen, a column from the Chicago Tribune written by Mary Schmich. I first discovered these wonderful words written in 1997 while I was studying in Barcelona in 2006 and surfing the web with a first laptop of my very own.

“Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts and don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours,” the poem about sunscreen says in my ears while I exhale a drag off my spliff. I really did love Hannah, but what did I know about loving a woman back then? Did I know anything more today? I thought not. I hadn’t had a woman in my life for some time now, and it had been years since I felt in love with someone enough to act like we were going to live happily ever after. What would I do if Hannah said she wanted to meet up? Go behind her as I always had? Leave the Camino and my journey to hole up with her in some hotel room for a few days? No. I couldn’t do that. She’d have to make an effort. My stomach panged with regret and longing for a simpler time. Maybe if we’d gotten pregnant back then it would have worked out. A lotta people think like that though. As a last-ditch effort, I asked her to marry me so I could stay in Spain with her in 2013 as my tourist visa expired. I insisted we could continue to work on the relationship and the marriage could be a simple formality to allow us the time to finally grow our love. Hannah laughed it off. She couldn’t imagine marrying anyone or having a wedding or bringing a boy home to her mother and brother and sister, and an American boy at that, and from Texas!

“Oh no, this would never work,” she said.

In the end I held up in a pension in the Old Quarter of Toledo for the last month of my visa. Hannah would come to visit me in the mornings and evenings, and we’d have sex. She was kind, but in the end, I realized I was just a fuckboy to her. I’d taken her all over the United States from New York down to Texas and up to Oregon, and introduced her to every family member, friend and acquaintance I had along the way, but still I was just only then realizing what a fuckboy I actually was, now waiting around like a love-struck pup for his master to return and give him the nookie. If I really wanted to move there and try it with this woman, I could have worked harder, earned more money and came back.

I searched Facebook for a few photos of Hannah. All the ones of us together are printed out and in a box in my storage unit. I found one of her and a few of the other girls that used to hang out at my apartment in Toledo. My roommate and I had a basement and used to host Erasmus parties every Tuesday. It was fucking amazing. Those days were the last of Hannahs going out phase. Maybe I was just a stupid fuckboy. At least I had taste enough in women to fall for someone intelligent enough to see right through my phony ass.

I figure Hannah was probably depressed with her life and was remembering that good cunnilingus I used to offer, and nothing more. That’s why she was reaching out. She’d likely not even act on it and was just testing the waters. I ran some numbers in my head. Even if we could get pregnant, I’d be 58 when my kid was 20 and Hannah would be 63. Seems like a lot of risk and a real pain in the ass to have a child this late, especially for the woman. Maybe neither of us deserved children, the cosmos had seen it that fucked up individuals like she and I remain single and alone.

The receptionist allowed me to enter and have breakfast early. It was still a few minutes until they officially opened the dining hall. As I suspected the breakfast was shit. A couple pieces of white bread with margarine or jam. I couldn’t believe to see margarine in Spain. The local milk and butter are so good, there is just no real reason for this atrocity. I toast my pieces of bread and smear them with the “butter” then sprinkle ColaCoa and a bit of sugar on top. Kind of like a homemade cinnamon toast, but with coco instead of cinnamon. As I’m eating, I get a message back from Hannah.

“I'm visiting my brother in a nowhere town with no car.”

She’s in Salas, a town I passed through on the Camino Primitivo in 2019, with her brother.

Hannah’s brother spent his 20s and 30s and 40s “working” with the Zapatista National Liberation Army political movement in Mexico. He had no respect for anyone from the United States, and especially for some fat privileged kid from Texas. Needless to say, I never met him, and I’d be surprised if Hannah ever even mentioned she was seeing a guy from the states. He reminded me of some of the images and fantasies I had about Subcommander Marcos. I tried to make it all fit and understand why Hannah would be so embarrassed to date a Texan. I mean her father was in the military and worked under the Franco regime in Toledo as a civil engineer before he died. My father is a cop. Weren’t they just as privileged as I? Didn’t we have so much in common? When Hannah and I were dating seriously, I would fantasize about she and I moving down to Mexico and living close to her brother. We weren’t indigenous but disenfranchised all the same.

From left to right: Unknown, Hannah, Dina, Luke, Unknown, Martha

In Toledo, Spain at my old quarter apartment.

The shame and rejection I have tied up in my relationship with Hannah fired up my rage motors. I paced around the back yard and smoked another spliff until Johnny woke up and I gathered my pack. Johnny would be staying an extra day at this same place and going to see the pharmacy about the skin-sock loosely fitted to the ball of his foot. We had a smoke out back and I snapped a picture of him. I wasn’t sure I’d see him again, but I was realizing there was more to this “ships passing in the night” thing than meets the eye. Johnny and I had already parted ways once and then by coincidence found each other’s company on the trail once more.

As I made my way to exit the albergue, I see Britta coming down the stairs to enter the dining room. I approach her hastily as I see it my only opportunity to attempt to confront her in private and not have a spectacle. And I didn’t even want to confront her really, just tell her where she could find her proof I walked all day yesterday to make it here.

“Hey Britta! Good morning. Johnny is in the dining room eating. He was with me all day yesterday. You could ask him if I walked it all,” I jumped right in saying and she went from 0 to 60 in no time flat.

“Ah. Leave me be. I do not want to talk to you,” she yelled disappearing into the dining room. I don’t follow and hope she will talk with Johnny, and he will simply say, “Yeah, Joe walked with me all day yesterday,” and that would be that. My honor restored, I could go about my day in peace. I hear Brittas shrill high pitched voice vomiting all over Johnny and him responding so calmly and peacefully back to her in German, and I set off for the trail.

Johnny and I - Santillana del Mar, Spain

I open my phone to put on some devotionals to go along with my walking and see another message from Hannah,

“Don’t know if you can come here to visit, but you can visit me in Switzerland after you’re done walking,” it reads.

“Okay. Keep me posted,” I replied coldly.

Should I go out of my way to see this woman? She’s merely a couple hundred kilometers away at the moment and could easily make the detour for a day with me. Was I worth it? I was beginning to suspect I was, but angered even more all the same and raced on down the trail with my Rage Machines burning into my thighs like the spurring of a racing horse. I always wanted to go to Guanajuato, or Tampico, or to Mexico City or the Yucatan. When I started learning Spanish it was with the cooks at Macaroni Grill. I fell in love with stories of Mexican life and the kindness and ease to the culture of mañana. There’s always tomorrow for more work.

I worked the closing shift as a waiter and spent a lot of my nights out drinking with the cooks. We’d gather in the parking lot there off Western Center, the first cook cut would go and buy a case of Corona beer and return, opening a fresh one for each employee let off from their shift in succession. We’d stay out there and chat for an hour or so and on the weekends, they’d take me to the Mexican clubs off Beach Street on the east side of Fort Worth. My workmates would order me Tequlia shots, one after the other, and push me out into the arms of the desperate fat ladies who were rarely asked to dance. Burying my head into their voluptuous bosoms I let them lead me around the dance floor in a drunken stupor while holding on for dear life.

My few words of community college Spanish got me by for many a night of good times, but I never got laid, and none of the women ever gave me their number nor showed any interest beyond the good times of a late drunken night. Somehow along the way, I phased out of the Mexican culture and as I grew away from the restaurant industry, I found less and less opportunity to practice my Spanish, and little to no entry into the Mexican or Chicano/Texan culture at all. At the same time, the university studies moved everything I knew about Spanish from Mexico to Spain. Instead of Vicente Fernandez and Los Tigres del Norte, I was now reading Gaberiel Garcia Lorca and Antonio Machado. Instead of Ustedes, it became Vosotros, and instead of thinking to study abroad in Mexico at a University there and closer to home, the programs offered at Texas Wesleyan were all over in Europe. On one of my last nights out with the cooks before I was leaving to go study, one of them asked me why I was going to Spain.

“Man, come to Tampico, güey. It’s so nice there. You can get by. I promise you. My family will help you. Don’t waste your time on the madre patria, those sons of bitches,” and he spits on the ground, “trust me compadre. You wanna go to Mexico, not Spain.”

“I’ve already signed the papers and been accepted to study at the University of Barcelona,” I respond.

“Ah, güey. That’s cool. La UB, huh? Not bad for a crazy mother fucker from the barrio,” he says.

“Vatos locos forever, carnal.” I say mimicking a Chicano flick from the 1970s Blood In, Blood Out.

Since then, everything has been centered around Spain for me. I thought about if I’d listened to him, I might have fallen in love with a Mexican woman who wanted to move to North Texas and be with me. I could have missed all the heartache and expensive airfare of a trans-Atlantic love affair. Here I was again in Europe, in Spain. The day passed nicely and with good weather. My blister wasn’t bothering me, but I let my feet air out on each break just to be sure.

“I’m just so western,” I thought to myself. “I got no perspective,” I think recalling my 23 & Me test results: 99.8 percent white European.

Passing many albergues along the way with signs on their doors reading “Closed for the moment”, I also started noticing how many places were for sale. It was like half the town in every town was up for grabs. High prices, just like back home, but none-the-less, vibrant small-town centers were now laced with FOR SALE signs that hung in front of every other shop like a giant string of prayer flags. I enjoyed the company of the many farm animals along the trail and stopped and offered handfulls of grass to the donkeys, cows and horses. Some of them approached me and we enjoyed a moment together, their silent contemplative eyes saying it all.

Around lunch time I met with Heiko at a cafe for a small snack. I was planning on letting the Rage Machine push me on to San Vicente de la Barquera this evening and was making great time with an above average pace of 3.6 miles an hour. I was flying down the trail. When I meet with Heiko he’s there with a Mexican guy wearing biking garb. After making acquaintances and ordering some anchovies in vinegar with a large Shandy I asked Heiko’s new walking buddy,

“You biking?” I ask him in Spanish.

“Nah. I’m walking, same as you,” he responds in English. I couldn’t get over the outfit then, but was so embarrassed to ask him why he was wearing it then. It was skintight and had the logo across it with a few colors like a racing biker might wear. I wanted to see him get up and check if he also wore the shorts that had the extra pad on the ass where it touches the seat while you ride but refrained from asking him to stand up.

“Heiko says you’re going all the way to San Vicente today. I’ll join you if that’s okay.”

Before I could answer, his lunch is delivered. It’s a giant bowl of fabada and the largest salad I’ve ever seen along with an order of French Fries. My modest anchovies scale in comparison.

“I don’t know if you’re gonna wanna do the next 7 miles on full stomach. It doesn’t look like you’ll be going anywhere,” I say, “except to a nap.”

The table gets quiet while we all enjoy our food. I roll a spliff and share with Heiko, who seems quiet and contemplative and asks for periodic drags.

“You’re putting a filter in it? But is it weed?”

“Yeah. It’s good hash. But too much tobacco for me, so I don’t mind losing something with the filter,” I say back.

Heiko sighs conformingly and takes a few more puffs and starts dazing off, staring out into the sky like a toddler eye-chasing butterflies in the outfield during a baseball game. I attempt some conversation in Spanish with the Mexican guy, and he only responds in English.

“Why you do me like that even in Spain,” I suddenly break a little from the calm pleasantries.

“What do you mean? Because our friend Heiko doesn’t speak Spanish.”

“I’ve walked with Heiko and listened to him speak German and it never bothered me. I don’t understand why Mexican guys don’t talk to Texan guys in Spanish.”

He looks at me caringly and super confused as if to say, “You wanna have this conversation right now?”

I’m the privileged white male, after all, who had it easy to get here. And I’m a rare breed that actually speaks Spanish beyond asking for the bathroom or ordering a beer. I really didn’t want to have that talk. I just wanted to be bilingual. I was promised such a grand future if I were only to be bilingual. Everyone said when I was in school that in 20 years all jobs will be bilingual. Oh, the hope and idealism of the 80s and 90s. We figured we’d be like Europe by now, a multi-lingual, multi-cultural society with more than one official language.

Feeling a little wrong for drawing attention to the language barrier between white males and Mexicans, I went in to use the bathroom and pay my tab. As I was grabbing my pack the waitress was over at the table and the Mexican guy flagged me to hurry back over to the table,

“Did you pay for those two beers you brought us when you came?” he asked me in English. I looked at the waitress, who now also perturbed that he didn’t keep the language in Spanish and let her say again to the man, “No he didn’t invite you to those beers, he only brought them out.”

I smiled and waved good-bye. I’d likely see Heiko again but was glad to not walk any further with the other guy. I imagined he’d be napping somewhere anytime now with that belly full of beans and blood-sausage. I traveled on through the beautiful scenery and small ancient towns, traversing highways and trails and little paved sidewalks. I was having a real ease of the day and as long as I kept my anger in my legs, I wasn’t thinking about what bothered me. It was more than just Hannah contacting me, or the Mexican guy not wanting to speak to me in Spanish. The irritation was deeper. All these monsters were deeper than just instinctual traits. They are learned behaviors. They are survival behaviors. When you’re surviving, everything is a blur. I could see why I used to be a fuckboy and not know it. I’d say anything for love and affection. I’d promise the world to women only to leave them to find out I hadn’t a penny to my name, and my only aspirations was to be an “artist”. God, I imagine they day they realized I was going nowhere and regretted the time they’d wasted on me. “I’m glad at least he gave good head,” I could hear them rationalizing to themselves.

Here I had been a pretty boy with daddy issues all my life, gifted woman after woman in a fruitless succession at attempted love, now aging with the baggage of a single unmarried man over 35. I was no longer young enough for the cougars, and no longer cute enough for the 20-somethings. My only option at this point was to try to love myself. I tried to take a look within. What was behind all these monsters, these behaviors, failed love affairs, nightmare jobs and so, so many enemies? Could I see anything?

At first my mind told me there was nothing there. That it was all imaginary. “Everything is fine.” Look around you. Look at the beautiful scenery, the travel. You’re walking the Camino with money you made playing music. How magical is that? “Just 10 years ago you couldn’t even tune a fucking guitar,” I say to myself.

But I knew deep down shit was not alright. I pulled back the curtains. It’s a scared little boy. It’s me. I’m 5 or 6. Hunched over, alone and crying. I try to approach him and reach out. I ask if he’s alright and everything goes black. It was like a lurching monster of darkness closing the curtain back around him. “Why won’t you talk to me?” I ask.

“You don’t love me.” was all the reply I could hear. Only a peek was allowed. “What’s wrong with me?” I feel tears welling up in my eyes. Why don’t I love me? I do all these big and wonderous things. Things no one would think a boy from Azle, TX, being raised by a single mom, could do. But it’s never been for me. I didn’t love me. The boy behind the monsters is right. My rage ensues once more, and I drove myself onward. Up to this point I had the suspicion the monsters were there to protect me from the world around me, survival mechanisms learned through trauma to help me get through, but no. The monsters were protecting me from me. I was my own enemy.

I knew what I’d done. I’d taken all the negative opinions about me from others and threw them onto this little boy. This little boy who felt alone and left-out, forever trying to prove to everyone he was worth it. He’d failed me. He had never been able to attain the sustained attention of those wishful admires I so desperately sought. He only wanted the admiration of me. Not of my father, not of my mother, not of anyone around, but me alone. For me to love me. to stop listening to others’ negative opinions of who I am or was supposed to be. Was it that simple?

Like a sugar high, the rage waned, and I felt a relief realizing some of things about the little boy. The Camino gives you your therapy and helps you to see you and what you need to learn about yourself. The release gave me a sense of weightlessness, but with a huge fatigue, almost like the feeling of relief after sustained physical exertion. I sat and enjoyed some water and spliff with a Kalimocho just a few more miles from San Vicente. Tomorrow was Easter. I planned on going to church in the cathedral on the hillside.

Sitting there I looked up hotels for my two days stay in San Vicente. I’d take a rest day and do some busking. There was nothing around for less than $100/night. I decided I would book a schwanky place overlooking the sea with a large meadow out on a cliff with tables and chairs. It was about 3 miles from San Vicente square. I got checked in and spent an hour showering and doing self-care. How do I begin to love myself beyond just normal maintenance? I treat myself like a machine. I’ve got to stop doing that. Even though I was enjoying using these Rage Machines to push me down the trail, I knew that was not good and that acknowledging the anger was only the first step to getting rid of it. I didn’t want to learn how to use it.

Since I was dressed as a pilgrim, the rich people stared at me with gross eyes and the waiters took their time to serve me. It’s hard to admit that they treat other rich people like this as well, but I still take it personally, and I was a little out of place. Didn’t I get the memo? “Fucking Pilgrims.” I think and head out to the overlook and to my surprise there is a fog so thick one can barely see five feet in front of them. I almost bust out laughing at the irony. And to think the people have waited two years to come out here. “For the views. For the views,” I hear echoing in my mind.

The patio and garden are littered with rich Spanish families making the most of their now worthless, but quite expensive, seaside view. There is an air of displeasure over the entire crowd of people and the muggy wet air hisses from everyone’s throats as they breathe in and out.

I make my way to the bar. There’s a line of about 6 people. The bartender couldn’t be moving slower. This is where I wish the tips were better in Spain. They’d work faster. After a few minutes standing there these two Spanish guys in front of me start laughing and chatting loudly with each other. One of them is super drunk and keeps making comments, slapping his friend on the arm, turning around to look at me and then laughing uncontrollably with his friend. Were they laughing at me? My rage once again ensues. I’m boiling. My hands ball into fists and I step out from behind the men and over to the other side of the bar where I can hear and make eye contact with them.

“Yes, tio. He’s one of them. One of those butterflies,” the drunk one knows he’s got my attention now and gets louder and more provocative. They don’t really fist fight in Spain. Granted, it’s happening more and more in the schools and clubs, but it’s not like the Stockyards on a Saturday night. These two would have already had their asses whipped from walking around smirking at strangers. I was filled to the brim with hatred and disgust. Why the fuck were they laughing at me. “Fucking Pilgrims,” I thought, but no. This was something more. Over the hum of the rage growing inside me I could hear the little boy yelling out in a faint and distant voice. “Don’t do it Joe. Stay calm. Please please. Take the highroad.” It was the first time I’d ever heard it. His small voice of peace and guidance. Still, it was too faint, and I was drawn back into the drama in front of me.

“Look at him, tio. The little maricón looking for someone out here.”

I’d had enough. I couldn’t believe he was saying this shit where people could hear. Where the fuck was I? This wasn’t some po-dunk bar in Cleburne, TX. This was a rich place with well-dressed mild-mannered Spaniards on holiday. Had things changed this much since the Spain of Almodovar? Was this another town full of old men raising the hand for Franco and yelling “VOX” at each other? Fuck, I thought and pinched my earlobe in a nervous twitch noticing one of the pair of diamond earrings I wear was not there. I only had the right one in. My stomach sank thinking I’d just lost $250 worth of my pirate burial money. I then also realized that back in the day, gay men used to only pierce one ear as a discreet way to signal they were out. Which ear was it? I didn’t know. Maybe that was what they were laughing about, I thought to myself racing across the yard and back to my room to hopefully find my diamond in the tub there near the drain.

“Those assholes barely missed an ass beating,” I say to myself slipping my keycard into the hotel door, “I don’t care if I am in Spain.”

As I scour the bathroom for my 1 carat diamond, a purchase I made for myself in celebration of saving my first $5,000, I ran through scenarios in which I fight those two guys out there at the bar. What could happen? I was certain I’d go to jail. Like I said, people don’t fight in Spain, and it wouldn’t be like back home where everyone just walks away like nothing happened. It would be a spectacle.

River Rage on the way to San Vicente

“So what?" I said to myself, lifting the streets and blankets up, all three layers, and throwing them to the side in one go. “I’ve got the money to bail myself out. I will not tolerate the attack on my dignity to be laughed at like that!” I sit down on the bed where I’d bushed my hair out and sure enough there in between my feet was my diamond earring. “This aggression will not stand, man!” I laugh thinking of the Dude. I felt much better about everything having not lost the diamond. I took the other one out of my right ear and put them both in a safe place in my pack. Tomorrow I’d by another back for it at a jewelry shop in the city. Who knows how long it could have been dangling? And I’m so glad it didn’t go down the drain. I was certain the apostle was with me now. Maybe the earring was just a way to get me away from the drunken buffoon who wanted to mess with a Texan guy. Could you tell I was a Texan just by looking at me?

I went back out. This time to the front bar and ordered a red vermouth. I drank a couple of them with a spliff before calling a Taxi to take me into San Vicente, 3 miles up the way. I went to the grocery store, did my laundry at a coin operated laundry mat, and drank a few more vermouths while smoking spliffs and writing in my notebook.

I shoulda met a girl from Argentina
She’d of changed her name for me to Christina
We’d fight on the weekends, I’d tell my friends, you should of seen her
I shoulda met a girl from Argentina

I called the Taxi to pick me up and was back in my hotel room by 9pm. I hung out the window smoking a goodnight-spliff and then booked Sunday and Monday night in San Vicente. Easter Sunday was $70 and Monday was only $30. It was a two-star hotel right on the promenade in the city center off the plaza. Hotel Big Light. I thought maybe this was a sign I was becoming illuminated. Pity illumination doesn’t guarantee the lips of wisdom will open. To see something isn’t the same as understanding it. I figured I loved myself enough to spend a couple hundred dollars on a few nights of pampered hotel life. Was this true love or just me selling it all to myself again?

The pillows were soft and the sheets cool and fresh. I left the window open for the cool night breeze as I was a little tipsy from all the vermouth but slept beautifully. I’d walked 21 miles for the day.