A sheet of ice-cold water, the station’s outline appeared much too suddenly, bringing me back to my senses. For the past few hours I had been traveling absentmindedly submerged in a world of my own…a world without any of the pain I had been carrying inside me for years, without any uncertainties, malice, or shame. Now, however, face to face with the station’s imposing structure, I am fully aware of the importance my next step might have on the rest of my life.
    The brakes squeak, the train comes to a stop. On the other side of the window, the empty platform begins to swarm with life—the passengers are rushing towards the exits. Separated from the rest of the world by the train window, I wait, savoring the last moments before I’ll leave my old life behind and enter the city of hope with a clean sheet, pure as a newborn. For the past few years, I had viewed my surroundings as if separated from it by glass; today, however, I no longer have the luxury to feel that way. My past, now over, is forever left behind like the sunny beaches and glamorous resorts I saw while passing through the French Riviera. Gone like the bottle of Italian wine I uncorked on the train—consumed and absorbed. And while the wine will leave me on my next bathroom break, I cannot quite piss my past away in the same manner—it will forever remain a part of me—a callous shell protecting my vulnerable inside.
    I collect all my earthly belongings—two bags of clothes, a few books, a camera, and I head for the door.
    The first step of my new life! The soles of my boots firmly set on the hard concrete slab, I look back at the train. Two days ago I had walked up to it from the streets of Rome, and now I am standing on the Iberian Peninsula saying goodbye. It is an early February evening and Barcelona is welcoming me with open arms. I hope she will be everything I want her to be—kind and mothering, a haven, a place to call home.
    I enter the foyer.
    The night is mild and dark. A strange charge in the air seems almost hostile. Escalators, police, bums, vendors, and steps. Thousands and thousands of footsteps resonate throughout the concrete building. Cigarette smoke mixes in the air with human sweat, coffee vapors, and bad breath. Dirt, mucus, and spit on the sidewalks, and yet, somehow a magical atmosphere prevails in this place of man.
    Lugging my bags, I head outside. My hair dirty from the trip, the small braids tangled, a cigarette hangs from the corner of my mouth, and half a bottle of Ballantine’s rests in my pocket. I’m tired. Dragging my exhausted torso for a few blocks, I hope to find a place to rest for the night. Before me lies an empty street, a heartless street…cars and trash line the sidewalk, and there is no friendly light of a hotel as far as the eye can see.
    I turn back and head for the train station.
    The buzz is starting to get to me, so I take a couple of hits from my dear Scottish friend, before heading towards the tourist information booth. In broken English, the best way I can, I ask for directions to a youth hostel. Youth hostels—a great place to stay if you don’t have much money to spend. Usually a lower class accommodation, sometimes a room with bunk beds, but as long as you are under thirty, you can stay for less than five dollars a night. There is always music and friendly folk, booze, and joints…quite simply, it’s an easy-going place to take a break from the open road. The cute little Spanish girl at the info booth gives me a map with a couple of places highlighted and then shows me how to get there. “The easiest is downtown Barcelona,” she says. “Take the metro down to Liceu station, there are three hostels within a short distance.”
    My first encounter with a Spaniard—a pleasant one to say the least. Alright then, since it is all the same to me, I decide to take the subway and head downtown.
    The subway feels different. It’s not necessarily clean, and it doesn’t smell of roses, like in most cities, but there is the small-town feeling that makes the ride easier, more enjoyable. I look at the map above the door. Strange places, strange names—a language I don’t understand. Just before each stop a mechanical voice announces the upcoming station over the speakers. Same as any other subway, but this time it sounds exotic. Spanish—a wonderful language—somewhat sexy yet relaxed. While traveling through the French Riviera, I enjoyed listening to the announcements in French—sexy—but more uptight.
    Finally I hear: “Proxima parada, Liceu.”
    That must be my stop or close enough. I don’t really care; all I want to do is to lie down and relax.
    A real staircase, not an escalator, takes me to the street. I am starting to like this place. I light a cigarette. The night remains mild, but is no longer dark—there’s a buzz everywhere I look. I am standing in the middle of what appears to be a promenade. With my back arched against the wrought iron railing that encases the entrance to the subway, I pause, enjoying the smoke. Hundreds and hundreds of people pass by me, relaxed, laughing. It is a cold February night in Central Europe, while here people wear just sweaters and light jackets.
    Only a couple of feet away from me a flower stand demands my attention—the scent is all around me, the colors vibrant. Countless little blossoms, the likes of which I have never seen before, dazzle my mind. Lost in the sea of colors, exhausted, I instinctively know I must rest. Right in front of me is a hotel; I recognize it from the tourist office map. I walk in. No vacancy—reads the sign above the reception desk. So much for convenience!
    Across the promenade is a small square lined with cafes, and there, lost in a corner, is another youth hostel. I head down and find that the place is available, but I don’t like it. All the decent rooms are already taken, and I would have to settle for a bunk bed in a room of ten. Not the kind of rest I had in mind. The front desk clerk points to a building only a few doors down. “There is a small pension, maybe they have some openings.” His voice is as impersonal as the rooms he had to offer. Still, my desire to start afresh, in a clean way, prevents me from uttering any snide remarks. Instead, I thank him and leave.
    Growing tired of dragging my baggage around, I want to lie down. The receptionist comes across friendly, after all, why wouldn’t she? As far as she is concerned, I am just another traveler checking in. I have my bags, I am wearing comfortable clothes…the earrings dangling from my ears don’t seem to bother her. Frankly, I am nothing that she hasn’t seen before. She takes my passport and hands me a key. “Up the stairs and to your right,” she says and then adds, “Good night.”
    “Good night,” I reply as I pick my bags and head for the stairs. Her smile remains behind me, suspended in the thick mystery this city represents to me.
    The room is bright and clean: white walls, white curtains, white sheets and towels—two small bottles of shampoo in the bathroom. I lock the door and sit on the edge of the bed. What am I doing here? Why Barcelona? There is no one to answer me, so I take my clothes off and get in the shower. The water smells different than what I am used to, somewhat salty.
    Refreshed and in clean clothes, I no longer feel like sleeping. My mind races chaotically, bouncing thoughts off the sanitary surrounding. Why, what, where, how…an unstoppable line of questioning one can only impose on oneself. Maybe something to eat will calm me down.
    From my window I can see the cafe right below. Small circular aluminum tables and plenty of people around them. This is it…this will help me to sleep. The last meal I had was at the train station in Italy, and that was almost a day ago. I order Spaghetti a la Carbonara and a beer. Slowly chewing the food in my mouth, I roll the bits of fried bacon around with my tongue—what a nice change after consuming only pizzas and sandwiches. As I eat, time loses any importance and meaning, and I am slowly drifting to that peaceful place for which I have been searching a long, long time. I don’t have to look over my shoulder anymore; my shadow is sitting right here with me.
    The next morning the noise of the street cleaners awakens me. I look around, only to realize that I am in my hotel room. The best way I can describe it: serene and sanitary. The lack of personality is striking. I look out the window and light a cigarette. The plaza below is calm. The absence of the crowd plays a sharp contrast to what it had been last night. There are benches all around the perimeter, with palm trees in between. A small fountain in the middle quietly bubbles away, occasionally ejecting water streams into the air in perfectly timed periods. Kind of a nice place, I think to myself.
    But what am I doing here? Not here in the pension, but here in Barcelona. Why did I come? Questions I have no answers to. I am a nomad. As I stood at the Termini station in Rome, I saw a sign: Barcelona, 160,000 Lire. I didn’t even have to think twice about it. I had nothing else to do anyway. I went to Italy hoping to find a job, to settle down for a while, but not being able to speak the language kind of gets in the way of things. Seeing that sign, I said to myself, “What the hell…let’s go to Barcelona.”
    A few weeks ago I ran away from home. I had just turned nineteen and circumstances forced me to move back in with my parents. That alone was a mistake. Their prejudice and unhappiness became a constant reminder of what I did not want to become. The absence of decent paying jobs in my town only made things worse. I was never cut out to work on an assembly line. I got a taste of it once when I tried to work in a brewery. All day long sitting in front of a fast moving belt, watching beer bottles pass by. They call it quality control, but at a rate of over one hundred bottles a minute, you can forget about the word ‘control’. After a while it all seemed like one straight line. My father tried to get me a job with one of his friends. I declined—that would be the end of me.
The nineties had just begun, and the grunge movement, that so much resembled the sixties, was already doomed by a fate similar to what the hippies died of. I didn’t want to be caught in the middle of the drugs and the collapse of a dream. The bohemian life was over, drowning in the stream of commercial vice. So I left.
    One morning, as I woke up, it all came to me. If I stay here, I will die. Whether that death would be physical or emotional was not important. I got up, ate my breakfast, thinking of what would be next. I packed a small backpack: a few books, a pen, a notepad, and some clothes. As I was leaving, I ran into my mother. She looked at me, suspecting something was out of the ordinary—normally, I did not take the backpack with me to work. I kissed her and said, “See you later.” As I walked towards the train station, my brother passed me in his police cruiser—he waved. There were two major train stations, each about fifty miles away from the tiny one in my town. Without saying a word to anyone, I took the first train leaving for one of those.
    During the trip I thought of what to do and where to go. I was alone in the world, unable to share my feelings, afraid that no one would understand. Sometimes the burden we place upon ourselves is far greater than the burden placed upon us by others. Society is mean and cruel, but the fear we have of society is punishing in itself to a far greater extent. At the train station I looked at the schedule. The next train was leaving for Vienna. I knew someone in Vienna—Michael—perhaps it was a sign. With a couple of hours to spare before departure, I decided to call Hannah, the girl I was seeing at that time. She picked up after the third ring.
    “Heeelloooo?” She had this way of stretching her vowels that I always found to be rather cute.
    “Hi,” I said, “it’s me, Rudy.”
    “Hi baby.” She sounded sleepy, as if I had just awakened her. “Are you coming over tonight?”
    “I can’t…”
    “Are you going to make me come there?” she interrupted. “You know I don’t like sleeping over at your parents’ house.”
    “No, I am not.” I lit a cigarette. “Listen…do you love me?”
    “Of course I do. What kind of a silly question is this?”
    “Never mind.” I exhaled. “I’m leaving and…I want you to come with me.” The smoke lingered around my head, suspended in the stiff morning air.
    “What do you mean leaving?” She no longer sounded sleepy. “Where are you?”
    “I’m at a train station,” I said, “I just bought my ticket to Vienna and in two hours I’ll be on that train.” I paused to take another drag.
    “Are you insane!” She jumped right in. “What are you talking about, leaving!” Her voice trembled. I wasn’t sure whether it was from excitement or anger, or both.
    “Calm down, please,” I chimed in before she got too worked up. “When I woke up this morning, I realized that I can’t stay here…that I can’t do this anymore.”
    “Do what? What are you talking about?”
    “To live like this. Just look around you…I don’t want to end up like this…I…I can’t be like the people around me.”
    “Like what?”
    “Dead,” I said as I blew a cloud of smoke. I looked around. Two or three people in the waiting room stared at me, listening. It was just like my hometown: busybodies sticking their noses where they didn’t belong. I hated it.
    “Rudy,” she started sobbing, “have you gone completely mad? I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”
    “C’mon Hannah, you know how things are…we’ve talked about it. How many times have we talked about moving somewhere far away from this place?”
    “Yeah, but that was just talk.”
    “No it wasn’t!” I raised my voice. “I’ve had enough! Enough of living with my parents again, enough of looking for yet another dead-end job, enough of having to hide who I really am. I can’t keep drowning myself in parties hoping that something will change.” This outburst certainly didn’t help to subdue the attention I was already getting.
    “Things are not that bad.”
    “Yes they are.”
    “Rudy,” she said, breathing heavily into the receiver, “you are serious about going, eh?”
    “I am.”
    “Can I do anything to change your mind?”
    “No…I can’t stay here.”
    She started sobbing again—short, violent sobs. It felt as if her tears were rolling out of the handset.
    “There’s no need to cry,” I said, trying to stop the emotional stabbing. That was not what I was looking for when I called her. “Come with me…please.”
    “When is the train leaving?”
    “In less than two hours. You’ve got plenty of time to get here.”
    “Why are you doing this to me?” she asked, “Why this sudden need to leave?”
    “Hannah, this is not about you. It has never been about you. Please don’t pretend to be shocked.”
    “How can I not be?” she screamed, “You call and out of the blue you are asking me to get up and go with you God only knows where.”
    How dare she be shocked! To hide behind an excuse like sudden need? There was nothing sudden about it. Her reaction only reaffirmed my notion that no one really cared, that no one took the time to understand. We had shared our bodies in the most intimate way, and yet she knew nothing about me.
    “Listen,” I said, “I am not telling you what to do, but I am leaving. If you want to join me, I’ll do whatever it takes to take care of you. But if you don’t want to come, that’s fine.”
    There was a long pause. Still, deadly silence. The eyes of the busybodies were following my every move, while from the receiver came only the sound of her breathing.
    “I’ll come,” she finally spoke, “but I won’t be able to get there in time. We’ll have to take the next train.” Her voice was different now—no longer surprised and vulnerable, she came across as insincere and calculated.
    Instead of jumping with joy, I became alarmed. I’d have liked to believe her, but I knew her long enough to know when she was scheming something.
    “Are you sure you want to come?”
    “I am, Rudy…I am. What time is the next train?” She emphasized the I am part a little too much.
    I looked at the schedule.
    “Four o’clock.”
    “Just stay there and wait for me, I’ll be there in time. Okay?”
    “Alright.”
    “Thanks baby,” she said, “I’ll see you later then. Love you.”
    “Love you too.”
    “Promise you’ll wait for me?”
    “Yeah.”
    She hung up. I lit a cigarette and went outside.
    Strolling around the parking lot, I must have replayed our conversation in my head a dozen times. The ending was just not right. When did she make the leap from feeling powerless to sounding so reassuring? She was lying, no doubt about it. By now, she had probably already called my parents and who knows whom else, and they are on their way here to stop me from leaving. I looked at my watch. My train was departing in less than ten minutes. I grabbed my backpack and went in. How could she? I thought as the train left the station with me on board. I was better off alone.
    There were no decent jobs for me in Vienna. To make things worse, Michael was not at home. For a few days I washed windshields at intersections, making just enough to start moving again. The road was calling me—in order to retain my sanity, I had to obey. From Vienna, I hopped a train to Verona, Italy, and while the info booths were full of summer job prospects, there was no work to be found then. From Verona to Venice, Venice to Milan, Milan to Pisa—I don’t know what I was chasing, staying for one night and then moving on to the next town. One town at a time.
    But then I arrived in Rome…oh, the magnificent city. I immediately fell in love. I spent a couple of days walking around the architectural treasures, absorbing the history into every pore in my skin. I dedicated an entire day to the Coliseum, drinking wine, meditating. In the end, I knew that the best chance I had to find a job would be back in Austria. I had a return ticket to Vienna, but then, just as I was about to board the train, I saw the sign for Barcelona. Something inside me said: “Go for it.” And so I did.
    I bought a return ticket and a bottle of wine…the train ride was going to be long. Fortunately for me, after a couple of stops, two girls came into my coupe: Italians from Udine. We drank wine, smoked, and laughed until they had to get off. Nothing meaningful took place; no important discoveries were made—just a wonderful time. It was exactly what I needed after the past few weeks of chasing my own tail without success. The rest of the way passed quietly, in certain serenity. The train gently rushed through the Italian countryside, then Monaco, the French Riviera, and then finally…Spain.
    So now I sit in my hotel room, staring at the plaza below, smoking a cigarette, and all this rushes through my mind. What am I doing here?
    The next two days I spend walking about the city, enjoying the many treasures it has to offer. I sit and eat in small cafes, reading, writing poetry. The city has a nonchalant way about itself; it is a pleasing experience. And before I know it, it’s time to leave—it’s all over. My return train ticket has a date on it, and I better use it. Maybe one day I will come to visit you again Barcelona…maybe.
    Walking up from Plaça Reial towards Plaça Catalunya, it is just after ten o’clock in the evening. After checking out of the pension, I had decided to take a last look at the glowing lights of La Rambla. After today, I will probably never return to this city. I am walking up, away from the seashore towards the hill, where the shining monument of Plaça Catalunya, with its bright lights, shows the way to the wandering tourists.
    Just past the Liceu subway stop, it hits me again: the strong, spicy smell that can only be found in this part of Barcelona. It is making its way in through my nostrils and every pore in my body, all the way into my brain, altering my senses, making me drunk with pleasure. It’s a wild mixture of fragrances, evaporating into the atmosphere from the myriad of flower stands, street vendor’s sweat, fried dough, roasted meat, Arabic bread, sea breeze, sweets, tobacco, and the perfumes of the ever-present prostitutes. It’s the kind of a smell that remains forever encrypted in one’s mind. I sit down on a bench, partially hidden under a tree branch, put my bags down, and light up a cigarette. A feeling of peace begins to fill me; I am a part of the entire world, all my worries and sorrows drift on the ascending cigarette smoke to a place far away. I am left in a moment of enjoyment.
    As quickly as the peace descends it dissipates. I feel the sharp edge of a cold blade pressed against my throat as someone’s hairy hand covers my mouth.
    This is not happening…why would someone want to rob me? I do not look wealthy nor do I have a lot of luggage. I am pulled over deeper into the bushes, my face pressed against a tree. I can make out two men’s voices. They are whispering something in Arabic. The hand still firmly over my mouth, I cannot argue, call for help, or cooperate. I can hardly make out the men’s shadows.     Suddenly, I feel my trousers being pulled down.
    Are they going to leave me here naked?
    Then I realize their real intention.
    I feel hot breath on my neck, smelling of fish, cheap wine, and cigarettes: the odor of death and desperation. Only the desperation is mine, and the stench nauseates me.
    Two strong hands grab me by the ankles and split my legs apart. My throat lets out a silent scream; the hand covering my mouth doesn’t let anything escape. I can hardly breathe. Suddenly, there is a burning pain between my legs…a pain so intense, as if someone were sticking a heated iron up my ass. I feel the force with which I’m penetrated…my face rubs against the tree bark…my intestines are a throbbing inferno. I want to collapse—feel nothing—but the cold, hard steel of the blade keeps me in place.
After a couple of minutes, I stop fighting back—all resistance has become futile, my punishment is to be carried out in its fullness, and there is nothing I can do about it. My attackers are obviously enjoying themselves. The hot breath bouncing off my neck becomes feverish. I am trying to dull my senses, to black out all I can, and just when I think it’s over, they switch.
    As suddenly as they appeared, the two men are gone. There is nothing pushing me against the tree anymore. I fall onto the ground. Something hot is running down my leg. I reach down, dipping my fingers in it. When I lift them up, close to my eyes, I can see it is blood—my own blood, running out of my own ass. I realize, perhaps for the first time, what had just happened.
    Less than one hundred feet away from the bright lights, less than one hundred feet away from the busy diagonal highway that cuts the city. Less than one hundred feet away from the cops—it happened.
    I want to scream, to shriek like a wild, wounded animal, but all that comes out of my mouth is a muted sob, and then I fall unconscious.

KSHM Project Presents: Four Vignettes

KSHM Project Presents: Waiting

KSHM Project Presents: The Phone Booth

KSHM Project Presents: Elusive Realities

KSHM Project Presents: A Stocking Stuffer