The Write Thing

So the story should be simple, but for one reason or another it is not.  Meet J, the owner of an unconventional gym in the city of Houston.  We agreed on a 5.30 pm appointment, which I was early for.  I grabbed a quick cup of coffee while the15-minute interval between arrival and meeting passed, and only delayed my appearance at his door by five minutes.  By then, he was already on his smartphone, having a peculiar and revealing conversation with a friend or client…who knows?  My girlfriend has by now given me extensive training on the boundaries of privacy in America (at least by her own standards), so I know better than to eavesdrop on other people’s talk.  However, what can you do when you are standing on the sidewalk waiting for an Asian-lookingman the same height as you to walk you through his gym and he is on the phone singing himself praises?

By the time he was done — about ten or fifteen minutes after I had arrived and stood silently before him counting clouds in the Houston sky — I had finished my coffee and was holding the plastic to-go container in my right hand, glancing around me for a garbage can which I would fail to find, even after our one-hour interview.  He introduced himself — or maybe I did, because he probably thinks he needs no introduction — and he sent the first missile.  The whole thing (mind you, still on the sidewalk looking into the gym) was Russian KGB with almond-shaped eyes.  What do you do? Where do you live? Where are you from? Of course he had been in the oil and gas industry as a business development manager.  He could not stop speaking about himself and how cool he was, even when he was 50 pounds heavier and a drinker and smoker back in the day when he probably was happy.  He had been certified in all areas known to man, had sucked up all the books you might need to read in a lifetime to find out when to eat beans, and was of course the only person in the world who knew how you should exercise.  He had tried all other gyms which, of course, could not compare to his barebones warehouse in a trendy area of town.

I knew it was a bad idea not to tell him that I had a severe case of loose sphincters and needed to go home, or that perhaps I had a plane to catch I had completely forgotten about.  We went inside the gym, which was indeed a warehouse with tires and no equipment, just hand-made rubber elements that you may use to exercise but did not look like you would.  The place was a Les Luthiers for body-builders, and he showed me around until we got to the coolest place in the whole warehouse…the restroom.  He claimed he strove for excellence and he was pretty confident he succeeded at it.  If people did not join his gym, they probably were not worth it…

In a forty-year life span,  if therapy and being an Argentine citizen have not allowed me to lead a better life, at least they have given me tools to read addicts and people who are too much to deal with in any environment.  It is my duty to put up with them at work, but my choice to have them in my extra-hours.  J may be the coolest guy on earth to people whose self-esteem is either higher than his or so low that they won’t notice he is a fake.  At least, my self-esteem is about average, and I know he is an addict.  You can pick your addiction…wine, cigarette, sex or workouts.  I think when you switch addictions, you become a purist of the impossible, and life becomes a boring succession of days in which you are not addicted to what society praises…a major reason to think you are indeed cool.

Yes, I admire J, because he could replace addictions and get a few people to buy his time for $300 per month to attend a gym with no equipment and just a restroom.  I admire him because during the course of a full hour he was unable to offer me a recycling-friendly bin where I could throw my empty coffee cup.  I am sure he is going to do well in a society where success is all that matters, even if it is a lie and underneath the surface you are as dysfunctional as the fat guy next door.  It is always good to be the living example of The Biggest Loser and boast how you beat the odds and stayed outside them.  However, when you close the door of your expensive high-rise  condo at night, switch on the energy-saving lights of your living room and pour yourself that glass of Evian…isn’t there something missing?

My birthday passed like the month that hosts it. It takes place at the end of August and I love the feeling of completion that a celebration at the end of the month can bring. I guess one could say the same about opening a month, but I’ll just imagine myself privileged for the sake of my self-esteem. She invited me to Seattle, and we were there sharing the sights, the sounds, the beauty, and the love that synthesizes perceptions. There was dinner at a French restaurant, which was funny because the escargots were nothing like those you’d have in France, although the poulet roti in a way compensated an evening in which you were edgy after two days in a row of living with an inverted daytime, in the cruel shifts society imposes on your profession.

Then came another distance, a couple of weeks in Houston for me before my conference in Rio and then playtime in Buenos Aires, where you joined me and where we confirmed — as if there was a need to do that — the foundations of whatever it is that we are building. We can name it love and that would be all right. I loved having you meet another friend of mine there, someone whose loyalty and trust have given me hope and made me believe that sometimes there is no vested interest bringing people together. It is funny how some of us do perceive the truth about this cruel exercise of life, in which we are born and die alone, so the only form of happiness is finding the sidekick to seal that unspoken pact with us, be it as a friend, family or lover, to know that it is OK to trust, because what is out there is what there is and if we are loved, we must be loved for what we are.

There were Freddo ice-creams, asados, alfajores, my mother’s home cooking bringing you an arroz con leche that gave you back some of that lost childhood. There was your friend sharing with us, being a funny accomplice to the game of teasing you, like two people who love you in different ways. And I loved your shyness around me, the way in which your body tentatively sought mine when we were walking or standing near. I loved the stealth kisses and your happiness, your wholesomeness, the real you that emerged in an atmosphere of simplicity and cool spring chaos.

Now I’m back to Houston, with a book by C.E. Feiling that my uncle gave me without knowing that he perhaps owned a collector’s item. I’ll be reading that, and I’ll get back to the life of office work and odd interruptions from you in those days when you work late or not at all. I’ll get back to the waiting time that has now become a staple in our dynamics, the longing for you that feels like a pang in my stomach for a few more days until I see you again at the airport and I give you the inevitable kiss. Then I will lead you to my car, to my place, to us and everything will be all right for a treasured moment, for now.

Hurricane Alex, humbly downgraded to Tropical Storm only minutes before it hit the Galveston shores, made it to Houston. It is the first major weather event in Hurricane Season to happen in June for over 45 years, which suggests that this season is going to be heavy on mother earth anger and last-minute evacuations. I will think about that later, once I need to get ready to load the car, grab the dog, close the house and leave for a more benign Austin or wherever north begins to look like an option of well-being.

Because of Alex, Houston was flooded today. It happened much in the same way as it does in Buenos Aires when it rains heavily. Here the rain amounted to 6 inches or more, and it went on for a full two days, more heavily today.

I went to work, but was wise enough to return home before the rush hour began. Part of that was my need to pick up the dog from his grooming appointment, which he hates. So at some point we found ourselves in the car talking to the woman I still love and eating a sandwich a few blocks away from the apartment. It was good to get home earlier, as recommendations on the TV by the time we arrived were to stay wherever you were and wait it out.

So Houston treated me to its bad weather reputation today and, interestingly, it was not much different from some things I have already seen: cars stuck with water almost reaching the roof, people wading through heavy rain oblivious to whatever lies underneath their knees, well-buried in the water.

By the way, a difference is indeed that the Mayor spoke on the radio and she was later on TV, but at no point was her administration questioned on account of a storm, which is a weather phenomenon and not a capricious human decision. I could not but feel this was a more pragmatic society than mine, which expects her to do her job without blaming her for absolutely everything, such as the weather or World War I.

I personally cannot defend any single Mayor of BA I have experienced in my several years of life there. They have all at some point or another failed me or others. However, I have always been kind of alone defending the point that, if it rains heavily and the city floods, it is not totally a person’s fault…it is the weather. There are no subsidies on offer here for those who got their cars stuck in the water, or whose shops got flooded. You knew that it would happen when a heavy storm came, so you are on your own if Houston’s climate does not suit you.

This is America, right or wrong. This time, scary as it may seem, I have the feeling it is right.