Camino Journal Day 22
April 23
I got not a wink of sleep for the rest of the night after those first two hours. I suspected it was my snoring that kept the room up, although no one said anything directly to me. I’d been in dorms before where there is one ferocious breather that keeps the room up, so the only goal of the others is to keep the snorer awake long enough to fall asleep. The most dangerous snorers are those that fall asleep easily. They are the double threat. I’d waited until everyone was in their beds before shutting the lights of the night before, hoping I’d given everyone ample time to fall asleep and avoid listening to me.
The Frenchman didn’t say much else for the night and could even be heard sleeping intermittently; the only one who could. The excitement of meeting new people, the great dinner and the small amount of alcohol the night before kept everyone tossing and turning. At 5am, I couldn’t take it anymore and jumped out of bed, made a coffee with an automatic pod and went out to the patio with a spliff. The morning was cold and damp, and the forecast called for rain for the entirety of the day. I didn’t want to walk. I was tired.
I’ve learned over the years, making an unwarranted advance on a woman can be unforgivable despite the politeness in which it was delivered. For most of my life, I’ve gotten women by waiting them out. I just hang around long enough, being nice as I can, and since I’ve been blessed with semi good looks in this life, eventually, the woman will make her move. I also get friend-zoned a lot as a consequence. It always gives me a bit of comfort to know that with birds, the male is the one who dresses up and looks pretty, the female the chooser. Once hooked up, birds stay together for life.
In two days, the group would come to a divide in the Camino del Norte. You can go to Oviedo, leaving the Northern Trail, and head for the Camino Primitivo or you can continue straight along the Northern coast through Gijon. There was chatter from the beginning of the trail about heading into the mountains on the Primitive Way. I’d gone for it in 2019 and really enjoyed the small rural towns and steep ascents with little to no amenities, but this year, I’d arrived a little too early, and it was still cold and a little snowy on the tops of the mountains. I’d stay with the Camino Del Norte the whole way through this time. Maga and Cici and Johnny were also going to continue on the North, but Heiko had taken the trail to Oviedo to go over the mountain. Johnny and I had heard from him in the WhatsApp messenger. He was just a day ahead of us. The girl who was friends with Turnpike Troubadours’ guitarist was heading over the mountain as well.
I decided to take control of the Insatiable Monster and made a vow of celibacy for the rest of the walk. Whoever I would encounter I would treat them as a friend and confidant and not project my sexual desires on to them. At least I would gain some control over the situation, instead of performing my “show off” routine, like a blazing red Cardinal attracting the dull, brown and lifeless coat of the female. I mean, if I could just get past my animalist, and even subconscious desire to reproduce, did I even want a partner? I remember Hugo and I’s chat back in Pobena, “Hell, I even have two hands. God gave me sufficient to please myself. A woman? Must be for something else,” he said laughing.
Another Spanish man’s voice rang in my ear from a brief chat at a bar, “If God loves you, he keeps the woman far away.” he says with the glaring eyes of his close-by wife knowing what he’s saying without hearing it.
I’m blinded by my flesh. The Insatiable Worm has acted so many times out of haste. I’m lucky to not have any kids of my own to take care of. I can still decide if I want to do the mating dance ritual like the birds. “Get you a little young thing and let her ruin your life,” I could hear an older friend of mine giving me advice to quell my loneliness. In my 20s, I spent hours in front of the mirror, getting my hair right, touching up my eyebrows, clipping my fingernails and doing all the bodily maintenance of the American Psycho. “You like Huey Lewis and the News?” Bateman says in my head. I honestly have never even heard a song. Christian Bale swings his axe and plummets it into my fleshy gut.
At my age, my father had already paid well over 60K in child support, married twice and swore he’d only had sex with two women, my mother and my stepmother. Generally, when people divulge information without being asked to, it’s because they are painters. They are setting up the foundation for the entire picture. A lot of times with my father, I never understood what the fuck he was talking about, because he was painting in all the parts of the story that I got wrong. At 38 years old, my father had two children he barely spoke to, one he’d disowned. He’d been divorced and had two more kids with his new wife, who had two kids of her own.
“Hell, I’m not doing too bad,” I think to myself sitting out under the cold patio overhang waiting for the sun to come up. I didn’t want to walk. I was already thinking of how I might avoid walking in the rain today. There was 100 percent chance it would rain all day. Without a doubt.
During my 2019 walk, I was so compliant. I did what the others did. That’s how I got Lena, though. But that’s also how I got involved with Hannah. The night I met her, I’d been out on the town in Toledo, Spain. I was teaching English in a small town an hour away. My buddy David and I were bar hopping, and due to busking the streets all day, I’d lost my voice. Drunk, and in a fit of manly comradery, David and I prowled the streets and bars looking for women. I couldn’t be heard in the loud clubs and bars with my sore throat and had resorted to typing out requests on my flip phone that the girls dance with me or go outside for a smoke.
Some guy got offended and came over and flipped my hat off my head. I turned around and pushed him back, yelling without sound to stop fucking with me. People don’t fight in Spain. The bouncer was there in no time, and David and I were back out in the street. It was just past 2am. There was one other club open until 4 called the Picaro. We headed there. As if by magic, we were greeted upon entry by two beautiful local girls who bought our first round of drinks.
We ended up going back with Hannah and her friend Mary Carmen to Mary Carmens place. I was drunk and having a good time. Outside of the bars and clubs, I could talk and be heard. I had bought one of those tourist wine carriers and was sipping the red wine from it periodically as we all talked around the coffee table.
“El sofa!. Joseph, the sofa!” I hear Mary Carmen screaming at me as red wine dribbles out of the fake leather wine bota and onto the fabric of her white suede couch.
“Fuck! You fucking idiot tourist!. The sofa! The sofa!”
Too embarrassed to continue, I left the apartment and wondered the early morning streets of Toledo. So drunk, I hadn’t a clue where I was, and polished off the Spanish wine boot as I paced the streets, angry I was so typical. Angry I was so easily amused. Angry it was so easy to get laid. Angry that I’d fucked up Mary Carmen’s couch. Angry that I should be back there getting laid with this Toledo girl.
When I rounded a corner, I suddenly hear the pitter-patter of what sounds like rain running from the mouth of a gutter and hitting the pavement. It’s David. He’s pissing from the balcony to Mary Carmen’s room.
“Joe? What the fuck are you doing out here? I thought you were inside with Hannah.” David asks me.
“Let me in. I had to go for a walk,” is all I say.
Thankful I’d randomly arrived through the mazy Toledo streets back to Mary Carmen’s front door, hearing the buzzer unlocking the portal, I go in. Hannah is laying on the couch. No doubt she’d been listening to Mary Carmen having sex all night. She opened her arms to me. “Ven.” is all she said. I got undressed and laid there with her on the couch, sleeping til morning. We went back to my apartment after a coffee and breakfast. Hannah drove me the hour distance. That was the start to it all.
Hannah had been hanging out with her brother in Salas, just a few stages up the way on the Primitive Trail. I thought about changing my plans and going to find her. And as if she heard me, I finally got another message, “Hey Joe, I’m headed back to Toledo today.”
I was crushed again. For the 100th time over the 10 years off and on transatlantic relationship. That memory was from 2009. I became infuriated reading the texts. Why hadn’t she just come to meet me or let me come to meet her for a couple days. I would have left the trail for her. I’d left everything for her many times. Sitting there trying to control emotions, I fantasized back to what my life would have been like if I’d only gotten that damn RV with the swiveling captain’s chairs.
In May 2010, my contract with the Spanish Crown had ended, and I’d also been accepted into the graduate program at the University of Oregon. Hannah and I had been seeing each other regularly for the last 8 or so months, and I thought I was in love with her. Unbeknownst to me, she saw me for what I really was, a fuck boy, or in psychological terms, a compliant. She probably stayed with me so long because of my skills in the arts of cunnilingus, and I’m not bad to look at, and I was 5 years younger than her. All these factors abled Hannah to overlook the fuckboy fact and carry on with seeing me. I’m sure she even considered coming to live with me in the USA and having a serious relationship. Mary Carmen had only seen David the one time. Sometimes I wish I was as smart as people like David.
Despite never wanting to be seen with me in Toledo, Hannah agreed to go cross country in the USA, “if you get us one of those vans with the sillas capitan”. I promised I would, and hoped that our adventure would solidify my place in Hannah’s heart, and she would stay with me in Oregon. We’d live happily ever after while I got my PhD.
When it came time for her to meet me in New York, I was broke, and couldn’t find a van for us to buy. I also couldn’t rent a car, as I didn’t have a driver’s license. Hannah wasn’t too happy about it when she met me, and we rag tagged across America, staying at every relative and friend’s house along the way. I introduced her to everyone, and instead of it being a nice trip, it was just a hobo’s journey. This Toledana was way too refined to be drug across a continent in this manner. I was outclassed.
When we arrived to Oregon, Hannah was done with me and despite the rain, left the apartment early to go to the bus stop and back to her home. Standing in the Eugene drizzle at the bus stop as she begged me, “Just go, Joe. Just go.” I went. She got on the bus, and I quit grad school a year later.
Sitting there in La Isla, I fantasized about how it would be if it all had worked out. We’d have married around the time I got my masters. As I began my PhD, Hannah would be writing and taking care of the farm animals we’d bought. She studied to be a veterinarian, and after having to put-down countless dogs, she buckled and hated her choice in career path. I imagined us loving all the animals, allowing Hannah to blossom into the loving nurturer she is. We’d become friends with the professors, and Hannah would even start studying American Literature. She was in the middle of On the Road by Kerouac the week we met. As our professor friends had children, so would we and in year 5 of the marriage we’d both finish our studies with high prospects of good tenured positions somewhere in the Northwest. We’d have a baby, maybe two. We’d publish and critique other writers at fancy universitarian dinners and posh cigar smoking get togethers. Hannah would smoke cigars too, and have a snifter of the hard stuff from time to time.
We’d let our kids grow up with the kids of our friends. Maybe we’d start a Zine or a publishing company. A translation company even. Hannah and I would have bought a little starter home out by the coast and put our kids in a private Montessori school and then let them attend university for free where we teach. They’d go on to be better than us.
It was stupid to think like that, I told myself hearing another pilgrim stirring inside. I was 38 now. Hannah was 43. A lifetime ago I was 25, and the prospects of a life with children were so grand. Now it was but a dwindling hope. If I were to have kids, it wouldn’t be with this woman. She’d be 63 when our kid was just 20. Tic-toc. Tic-toc. It was now 6:30am. Some others were up. I hastily texted Hannah, “Don’t contact me again. I don’t know why you even let me know you were in Spain.” and put my phone back in my pocket.
I fixed another coffee. Like the dreary overcasting sky, I was feeling sullen and a little nostalgic to think about Hannah. Could I really let it go? Compliance comes with this issue, that one is condemned to go forever behind the other. What a life wasted. And not to sound high and mighty, I’d tried to find other relationships along the way, and I’d slept with other women, but I still loved Hannah. I stuck the dagger into the heart of The Husband and immediately felt lighter as he perished there on the floor, bleeding out of existence. I didn’t need a woman. Hannah wasn’t a loss in my life, but a beautiful experience that I can remember.
My inner voice spoke up as I was preparing my pack to leave the albergue, “You done good, brother. You done good. Slay those monsters. Conquer the self.” That line felt good. “Slay those monsters.”
I began to sense the real difference between my first Camino and this one. I was presented clearly with all the conflict that comes with my trauma behaviors. I was allowed to identify a sense of self through accomplishing the walk, and through reflection, I realized I had some real underlying problems that must be dealt with. This time around, the Camino has allowed those problems to manifest themselves as to be dealt with.
Johnny and I started out down the way. There were no services for the first 3 or four hours. And then after that, the bars and stops were sparse as well for the rest of the stage. It would be a hard day. Johnny was determined to walk no matter what. I had reservations from the get-go. I knew I’d need to get through this first five-mile staget. When we arrived to Colunga, I wouldn’t be compliant, and Johnny wouldn’t be a controlling manipulator. Things should go well. I’d tell him I didn’t want to walk anymore and that would be that. I’d stay put and see how things went. And he’d go on.
There was little to no chatting on the trail today. The constant pitter-patter of raindrops hitting the synthetic pack covers and the clomping of our boots through rain-soaked trails and patches of mud were all we heard. The temps outside didn’t get above 45 degrees F, and to put it lightly, all was fucked. I envisioned myself sitting beside a nice toasty fire smoking a spliff and watching a movie. The trail passed quickly, and we were in Colunga.
Johnny and I have a snack and something warm to drink. I decide I’ll try to keep going. It’s not raining too heavily at the moment, but I stop off at a little shop on the way out and purchase a small umbrella for 16 euros. I’d abandoned my poncho days ago. Johnny and I set out on the way again, the sun slightly peeking through the clouds and for the first time today there isn’t a drop of rain falling on us. Almost skipping, we rush to get out of town.
Up ahead we see Maga and Cici, also hurriedly taking advantage of the good weather. I yell out to them, and they wait for us, greeting us with pleasantries and small talk about the shit-day. Out of nowhere the wind picks up and the rain is back on. We are about 1000 meters out of the city. I open my little umbrella and the wind immediately turns it inside out, breaking the frame and shoving the synthetic material into my mouth and over my face. I fight the thing to get it under control and close it up. What a piece of shit. Johnny and the girls didn’t notice anything and are now a few meters up ahead of me.
I turn around. I told myself I wasn’t going to walk in the rain, so I’m not going to do it. I made a bee line back to the shop and showed the owner the broken umbrella. She happily exchanged it for a new one. I stowed the umbrella away and went back to the bar and ordered another cafe con leche. I sat out there and changed into my last dry clothes and smoked a spliff at the patio table under the overhang. I didn’t care anymore about people smelling the hash. They could always say something if they had an issue with it. I’d just keep to myself.
While I was sipping my coffee, a couple of German pilgrims sat down opposite of me. It was a couple. They were super fit, and I’d seen them back in Orio. They stayed to themselves and didn’t speak to me back then.
“So how far you are going today?” the man asked me.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just call it now. I don’t really wanna walk in the rain,” I reply cordially ignoring the air of superiority with a question he could plainly see the answer to.
“And your partner? Where is he now? Were you not walking with the Danish man, Johnny?” I hadn’t realized he knew that.
“Oh yes. He went on. He likes pain.” I say to lighten the mood. The guy was kind of grilling me. Like a vampire sucking the last remaining marrow from a victim’s bones, fuel for him to use to carry on walking in the rain.
“That’s funny. And you? You don’t like pain?” he says sarcastically. “But you carry a guitar. That’s so much weight. No wonder you don’t want to walk today,” he jabs his fangs into the victim.
“I’m spreading my music. It doesn’t weigh too much,” I say reaching into the top pocket of my pack to pull out a sticker and a card to hand over.
“Oh, we’ve met you already. You gave us a sticker back some time ago. We’ve seen that you’ve been putting them on the signposts along the trail.” he glances at his girlfriend as if to reference an earlier chat about my stickers. He seemed to disapprove of this tactless mass marketing tactic.
Defensively I give my explanation to deaf ears. He sees he’s startled me. He got his pint of blood and turns around as if he’d never spoken to me in the first place. About that time a German woman who’d stayed at the albergue with us in La Isla, showed up and sat in the space between me and the other couple. They talked in German, and I smoked my spliff. The couple takes another pint of blood from the woman, sewing doubt in her plans to carry on in the rain today, and as they get up to leave, the man looks back at me and says, “We see you later. Or probably not, though. You go a bit too slow for us.”
I sat chatting with the German woman for a bit. She was successful and had money. Fiercely independent with ferocious energy radiating from her. She was very sporty and talked nonstop about nothing at all, really.
“So, you’re not going to walk?” she asks me. “Come on. Don’t be a cheater. Walk with me. It won’t be so bad.” She coaxes, “I love your singing. You can sing for me if the rain gets too bad.” She smiles flirtingly. She’s just being kind, but I spot the church across the street with its door open.
“Look. A church that’s open. Finally,” I say with excitement. “Let’s go in and I’ll sing for you there.”
“Oh. no no no no. I don’t go into those places,” and she makes like her skin is being burned, “Me and God, we don’t get along.”
“Well, God’s probably not in there,” I quickly say. “These old churches just have amazing acoustics. I doubt a loving God would be hanging around a decadent gold adorned pedophile protecting religion,” I say smartly to provoke a reaction and get her to agree to go in.
“Hanging around,” she repeats and laughs hysterically. “No. I’m good. I’m going to continue walking. the rain doesn’t bother me so much.” And she was off.
I finished my spliff and coffee as I watched her disappear around the bend. I gathered my pack and walked across the street and stepped inside the church. It was a pity so many of them were closed. In 2019, the churches had served as an anytime-refuge out of the elements with the greatest sound system the world has to offer. I got comfy and played for a couple of hours. I love to sing. It makes me feel so good, and in some ways, sitting there looking at all the gold and ancient adornment of the alter, I tried to sing to the imaginary figure in my mind that I call God. How much it had changed over the years, from a big old white bearded guy in the sky, to a nothingness, to the universe, to this, to that. How did it all fit? How was it that I was here?
I sang until the spirit left me and then checked the bus schedule to get to the next town Villaviciosa. I would head over by bus, secure a hotel and check in with Johnny and the girls.
When the bus arrived at the route stop outside the church, there were about 20 other pilgrims who’d got the same idea. The weather was shit. We crowded into the bus with the two or three locals heading to the big city. I sat in front of a young German guy I’d seen back in Santillana Del Mar. He seemed to be in happier spirits.
“You’re taking the bus today, eh?” he asks as I sit down.
“Yea, fuck this rain, ya know?”
“Hah! Fuck walking, I say!” he loudly proclaims with a thick German accent. “I’m so fucking over it, man. I don’t want to walk another day.” he confesses.
I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want to encourage him either way, and I felt like he was baiting me into conflict.
He continues, “I mean, what the fuck are we doing out here anyway? I’ve just been taking the bus every day and going albergue to albergue. I still get to meet the other pilgrims, and it’s much more enjoyable to me.”
He has a confused look on his face. I don’t want to ask too many questions. I didn’t care what he did or who he was. I didn’t want to meet anyone new or bring anyone into my circle. I was content to be left alone. However, when we got off the bus, the kid followed me talking non-stop about home life, school and girls he wanted to be with. He was in love with Maga. Now that I think about it, he’d been at a few other albergues as well, and was just so quiet and removed that I’d hardly noticed him, but he was def into Maga. Like googli-eyed can’t control himself, might be a rapist, into her. I could see it all over him.
I had booked a room at a hotel before getting off the bus and not wanting this guy to know where I was staying, I ducked into a cafe, to which he followed. I ordered a Kalimocho and he got a tortilla.
“This is my first tortilla of the whole walk. I’m glad to finally see them being served,” his words rang in my head like the theme song of the Twilite Zone. What the fuck was he talking about. There was tortilla everywhere and every day. Nothing but tortilla on all sides, and this is his first one?
“Oh, they are very good. They serve them everywhere.” I say nonchalantly disagreeing with him.
“This fucking rain, huh?” he says trying to make small talk and ignoring my resistence to his tortilla delaration. He’s cringe worthy. Everything about him is forced. He’s probably psychopathic.
“Here, take this umbrella,” I say giving it over to him.
“Oh, no I couldn’t,” he refuses.
I convinced him it was an extra, “Take it. It will make walking around the cities more enjoyable.”
When he accepts, I pay our tab and leave without much more of a word. I get settled into my hotel room and contact Johnny. The room I have is just gorgeous and has two full beds, a private bathroom, a sitting room and was on the top floor with a beautiful view of the surrounding city and landscapes. Johnny agreed to pay half and showed up a little haggard and soaked. The day’s hike had taken it out of him.
While lounging around the room and waiting to go eat, I suddenly hear the tinkling of coins hitting the pavement on the street below. Naturally I get up and look out the window down toward where the sound came from. There’s a taxicab driver searching his car for what I presume to be the coins. I watch him for at least 10 minutes before he gives up and drives away. I hurry down the steps to see what the treasure is. I’m thinking maybe it’s a couple of 20-centers, but no! It’s two 2-euro coins and a couple 50 cent pieces. they were hidden just out of sight of the man. I put the coins in my pocket and went to the hotel bar and ordered a celebratory Orujo before going back up to the room.
After a couple hot showers, Johnny and I headed to the laundry mat to do our clothes. We also luckily got a table at the best spot in town for lunch and would be feasting in never before fashion. Between first and second plate, I hustled to and from the laundry mat and moved the clothes to the dryer. Johnny was dead tired and even looked to be having a fever. He wasn’t hungry, as he should have been, and wasn’t happy to have to eat stuff he didn’t particularly like even though I assured him it was a great Spanish meal, and he needed the nutrients.
Between second and third plate I went and got our clothes. When I returned, Johhny was already halfway through his pork shoulder, which he said was the best thing he’d had on the Camino. I was happy he’d gotten something he liked. We had dessert and coffee, which were included in the price of the meal (15 euros with a bottle of wine) and went back to the Hotel to pass out. I was tired and stuffed and instantly went into a food coma as my head hit the pillow.
After a 3-hour nap, Johnny and I went back out to the nighttime streets and had a Fallafal Kebab and some Orujo. I smoked a couple spliffs and Johnny smoked a couple of cigarettes. He was feeling better, but the walk in the rain really did take it out of him.
We sauntered slowly back to the hotel and as we were going in, we see the woman from Boston and her husband from Madrid pulling up in a taxi in front of the Hotel Rey Carlos the First. They are either astonished to see us because we don’t look like we can afford this place, or embarrassed because we’ve caught them taking a taxi to the very door of the end of the daily stage. Either way, cordialities are exchanged, and Johnny and I disappear up the four flights of stairs and into our room.
I stuff a towel under the door and roll a spliff. I take a few puffs standing by the door while Johnny recaps his day, “There were no services, Joe, you would have hated it.” he says. “But thank you for getting the room for us. I’m glad I didn’t have to deal with anything when I came into the city. That was nice of you.”
I felt good to do something nice for someone simply to do it. Not because the Helper Monster was begging me to. And it felt good to be appreciated for doing it. Johnny began snoring first this time, his body so much more worn out from the long days walk. I’d done in total 10 miles and Johnny double or even a little more.
I laid there for a few minutes thinking how well things went. I made decisions for me today. I did what I wanted despite what others said, and I bought and consumed the things I wanted as well, “including this fancy hotel,” I said to myself. “Good job, Joe.” I fell asleep.
The James L West Telescope was slowly opening, now having completed the majority of it’s 300 failure points. It would soon begin to look so far out, it would actually be looking within.