20 years ago today – Day 50

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Monday, April 22 - Alicante

Burquita insists on providing our meals, though both Mike and I want this to be a two-way friendship. She also put through a load of laundry for us while we were out. I didn’t the heart to tell her that I had washed everything three days ago so it wasn’t necessary to wash everything. She and Jacinto have refused our offer to take them to dinner tonight, telling us to save our money instead. We are humbled, but grateful.

Our first responsibilities after breakfast are our chores. I pick up a city map from the tourist office, then go to the post office to mail home a package of film, maps and guides for places we have visited and my Portuguese/English dictionary. Mike sent home a package too. It was a very long, involved process that I am afraid Mike got stuck doing. There are sometimes advantages for not speaking the local language, and disadvantages for knowing too much.

After the post office, we walk around downtown. We pop into the cathedral but there is a service going on so we don't stay. We stop for snacks at a pastry shop and Mike calls home just long enough to give his family the phone number for the Gonzales'. Then we return to the Gonzales' for lunch as Burquita had asked us to.

Montse, their youngest child, still lives at home and joins us for lunch. She's 20, a full-time student of Arabic and works part-time as a translator. She is fluent in Russian, German, English (almost), French and Italian too. She's also a vegetarian and, as young people often are, is very strict and self-righteous about it. She believes that anything bad for you should never be eaten and that which is good for you can be eaten in large quantities up to 1 kg. I advise her not to try that with almonds.

Burquita sighs that she and her husband are frequently subjected to a wide-range of Montse's criticisms about having fluids with meals, drinking coffee or eating desserts. I feel for them.

Mike leaves to see the city on his own and I go out later. I climb the long hill to see the Castello Santa Barbara that hovers above the city. The climb is steep, up a road with a series of switchbacks. There is an elevator but I prefer to walk and take pictures along the way. I meet Mike at the top. He has taken the elevator and offers me the return ticket but I also decide to walk down. We arrange to meet for dinner at 8 and go our separate ways again.

I only have a couple hours before I meet him for dinner but I use this opportunity to go to the gay sauna in town. I was a little hesitant to spend another 1000 pesados that would lead to nothing, like what happened in Murcia, but I am lonely and feel a strong need to be held by another man, even briefly. This time I am not disappointed. The hallways are filled with reasonable to good-looking young men prowling around. I get a locker and join them. The saunas and steam rooms are dead and most of the cute guys had no rooms, so I sit in the video room. A ruggedly handsome fellow, 30-ish, sits beside me. He has a taught, defined body and my heart starts racing. He casually rests his naked knee against mine and that’s all it takes to get us started. We don’t even need a room. Others stop to watch but he is so tender and personal in his love-making that they keep their distance. Before it is over, I have come three times and he has come once – better self-control, I suppose. I feel so nourished and replenished when we are done. I try to speak with him, to thank him, but he speaks no English. Damn that Genimi side of me that always resists anonymous sex.

I race to meet Mike but I am fifteen minutes late anyway. He is writing an aerogram, something he always saves for the times he is kept waiting. We find a cheap place for a paella dinner (I am hooked on paella) and then walk back to the Gonzales’, stopping for a pastry and so Mike can call a potential host in Barcelona. We already have a Servas host lined up in Valencia for three days from now.

Burquita and Jacinto are watching television when we arrive back. They switch it off and spend another hour asking us more questions about Canada. For some reason they have lots of questions about phone bills and the phone system. I suppose they expect to call home a lot once they are there.

PHOTO 1: Monjas-Santa Faz Square
PHOTO 2: Alicante town hall
PHOTO 3: Basilica Santa Maria
PHOTO 4: Jorge Juan St
PHOTO 5: Castello Santa Barbara from base of mountain
PHOTO 6: part way up the climb to the fortress
PHOTO 7: Alicante harbour from Castello Santa Barbara
PHOTO 8: interesting brickwork on the way down
PHOTO 9: Alicante street near sunset