Palmones & Love

Algesiras, July 1986

My dear Alb,

I guess this letter will be quite long, since this trip was a surprise for Colin as well as for me. Because he’s leaving for Berlin, and that he will settle there at the end of the summer; parents decided to give us a holiday in the sun, maybe the last that we’ll spend together all four.
It was done by an exchange of houses, this is the way we can afford travels abroad for several years. They found this family of Andalusian teachers, and this house near the beach of Palmones from where we see the rock of Gibraltar all lit up when evening falls and where we met the group of revelers Colin has been hanging out with for three days.

I don’t think I have ever been so hot as on this car ride, when some cars have a thing called air conditioning… we spent our first night in a hotel north of Madrid taking showers in turn with Colin. So we all got up a little late, and we couldn’t do otherwise than to picnic in the middle of Mancha.
You know, when people say the air trembles with eat, well, there it was not even on the horizon, but just around us; we felt like hearing the stones crack and split , and I found it wonderful. While the parents were a little further away, Colin and I settled in the approximate shade of two olive trees. And we spoke really well at that time, he told me his fears about next year; about his roommate with people from his school that he hardly knows. He says things would have been so much easier with you, but also that mum told him “He’ll watch over your little sister”. Do you believe that? Despite all the maneuvers to watch me, she may have always been on our side …

We arrived very late at night on the coast, dad desperately looking for our house on the seafront where people were savagely driving; while we were upsetting him by singing “Here is the House” every time we thought we were in the right place, and even when we realized that we were wrong.
Colin quickly found a party companion in the person of the neighbor’s son; but it would have been easy anyway, young people here seem to live on another planet where speed dance and drunkenness determine without any possible dispute the tempo of existence.
It’s even strange to see all these cities which seem to have emerged on the sea only for the parties.

I didn’t like Marbella that much, it’s a nice place ; but the music played in the clubs just gives the impression of molding itself on the body of  partying people. You know it by now, I love that my body becomes the music , and not the reverse. That’s why I do not share the enthusiasm of others on some “arranged” songs.
You would be glad  here, people breathe , drink , and may be more… on New Order. But what is this remixed version of “Subculture” however? You no longer feel the youth and the stumbling, inspired intonations of Barney in it. It has become an accompaniment to fluorescent cocktails and to sequined bikinis which has lost all its charm (at least for me) . I no longer see him beating his sole in the park and almost improvising by walking this rhythm of a sweet melancholy.

I think I’m not made for this manufactured sense of rejoicing, and even less for this thirst of fun at all prize.

I just kicked Alejandro out of my room, he asked me maliciously if I wasn’t bored too much.
They’re next door with Colin and Pepita, “The girl who loves Stripped the most in the world”.
 I will stick to my role as a lookout to warn them if the parents come up. It’s funny after all.

But I just want to stand on my balcony , listening to the real
I like talking in my sleep
When people work so hard
and watching the laughing moon on sparkling sand, with the citadel of the rock which beckons to her with all its glittering lights …
Read you soon my friend…

With all my hugs !

Epo