Gonzalo Torne - Divorce Is in the Air

“I’ve got forty euros, take a spin for that price and end the trip on Rocafort. The Adam nightclub.”

“Sure. Are you an actor, by any chance?”

“Do actors ask you to do that a lot?”

“You see a bit of everything at night around here. Are you a musician? Trying to calm down? I can suggest better places than that. You seem like a man of good taste, sir, are you one of those five-star chefs?”

“Warm. Are you from here?”

“From Barcelona? No — as if. I’m a transplant. My parents are from Zaragoza.”

“The one and only. I had a friend in Murcia, he worked for El Adelantado or La Atalaya , something like that. He didn’t want to come to Barcelona because he was scared of the Catalan. How silly, has anyone ever gotten out of your cab because you didn’t ask where they were going in Catalan?”

“Well now, truth is they haven’t.”

“The language, the sardana , those nationalists are always going on about the same shit. But no one warns newcomers about the real dangers in this city. I told him: ‘Pedro’—because my friend’s name is Pedro—‘if you like girls, welcome to paradise.’ ”

“But that’s a good thing.”

“Do you mind if I speak frankly? Taxis are perfect for confessions. What this excess of women leads to is lust, amour fou , and that emotional turbulence is dangerous. There are some great books, scientific and literary ones, about this. It’s hermaphroditic species that are the advanced ones. Let’s take another turn.”

“Should I take the Ronda?”

“As you like. Are you married?”

“Divorced.”

“So things haven’t gone well. Perched in the back here like chickens I bet they look so pleased with themselves, showing off their youth and beauty as if those qualities were theirs forever, and not something they have to gradually trade in. When they feel your eyes on their little bodies, and that hair they work so hard on and soak in so many chemicals, and their carefully exposed curves — you can’t deny that we men are more elegant and discreet about our attributes — they seem so distant, raised up to a higher plane, like they’re the ones in the driver’s seat. But you know what you’d find if you looked closely, if you penetrated their little moral consciences?”

“Well, when you put it that way—”

“What did you do this morning when you left the house?”

“I went to the store to buy a pack of—”

“Then I’m sure you’ve seen her. I mean the cashier who in the middle of an order turns a furious face to the mirror just to be sure the crust of makeup is thick enough to hide the craters in her skin. I’m sure you saw one or two of those old women — they’re like noxious warnings, covered with wrinkles and folds. The young girls see them, too, but do you think they identify with them? Not a chance. There you have them: painted, dressed, fixed up, hair done, fighting to hold one more gaze for a second longer, their heads teeming with local and international contests for the house and the car, for the best ass and the second home and the bank account, going up against their cousins, sisters-in-law, neighbors, and colleagues. And they always hitch their wagon to the same donkey in all those races: the boyfriend, the lover, the husband, the hometown idol. This afternoon, after closing up at the practice, I crossed paths with one of them, clutching her protector’s arm. She looked at me with those dreamy little eyes I know only too well — they’re all the same species, you can ask any geneticist. They notice only the breadth of my shoulders, my full head of hair, and when these impressions are transmitted to their brain, they trigger the primitive response that identifies me as a healthy inseminator, fit for the daily struggle, and they fill my splendid carcass with their fantasies. In this city, if you’re over five foot eleven and you keep your waist down to a thirty-four, you’re going to be lusted after every day by women who don’t know you, and who haven’t learned to detect in you the same habits (messiness, procrastination) that make them badger their men at home nonstop. The youngest, the ugly ones, the ones who get old (OK, they all get old), they’re all united by a common force: the dream of attracting a man, of being courted and enticed with gifts. They’re convinced that the love they feel for themselves can spill out over other people, to dominate them and win their favor, that the trick of love will be enough to control life. Has controlling life ever occurred to you? Why would we ever think about controlling life?”

“Hang on, I’ve got it…psychologist?”

“You’re a real sage, very perceptive.”

“Like I said, you see it all in the taxi.”

“But you didn’t quite hit the bull’s-eye. I’ll give you a clue: in my line of work we see only the one thing, over and over, though of course it’s the most important thing in creation.”

“Physicist?”

“Gynecologist. Doctor Bicente. Gay clubs are the only places I can take a break from my work — they’re philanthropic spaces.”

“I understand, sir. My name is Carlos. I like girls, too.”

“Intimate and professional contact with the Mystery has changed my relationship with life, Carlos. People, even married people, forget that every woman on earth has one, that they all carry around that little oven for the seed to go in, and nine months later they expel little people. Little, live people. You see that girl who’s about to fall off her high heels? She’s got one, and that woman reaching her hand in her bag for some cosmetic minion, she’s got another, and those two crossing on the red light, assuming you won’t speed up and run them over, they’ve got one each. From the moment they’re born until they die they all have a model for peeing, for fucking, just to have it and do whatever it is they do with it: their personal care, their hygiene, their bleeding, wetness, dryness…they’re even contradictory in that. When you are forced to think about it professionally, when the cunt becomes, so to speak, your office, your perspective changes, the way you approach life. If you aren’t careful you can go crazy.”

“I understand. But it seems strange. At the stand, while we wait for customers, we talk about a lot of things. Sometimes we think about other jobs, and yours has always seemed like a fun one.”

“Fun? I’m sure when you’re with those brutes you use different words, but I appreciate that you don’t want to hurt me.”

“You can’t deny that you must have moments…”

“No, Carlos, forget about the women you cart around, they’re irrelevant. What do you think they are? Women. Just women. There are three billion of them, for the love of God. They didn’t decide to be women, they don’t think about it. The amazing thing is that open wound in their flesh, its design. Have you ever cut into the lobe of a dog’s ear? It ends up with a hole in the skin, a crater. It’s the same concept. Evolution may be lazy, but it worked with some sense of beauty. The important thing, the relevant thing, isn’t the organism that surrounds it and has a name, the nature of all that blah blah blah; the important thing is what’s seething inside them as soon as you move aside the labial sucker, all those bacteria, defenses, fluids, and ruptures.”

“I don’t know that we’re on the same page, boss.”

“You know what happens when you look at one closely, concentrating all your faculties? Doctor Bicente will tell you the truth: some strange edges like flaps surrounding the void, a dark pipe from which the skull emerges first, then the trunk and the little legs and the feet with those sad baby toes, a complete ensemble all covered in a nourishing mucous. A child is an organ, Carlos, an organ that has come from the mother and slid out through the wetness to claim its independence. Have you ever seen a chicken farm? Don’t miss it, man. Take the kids to one this weekend, or whenever you’re free. The chickens are in their pens, narrow little cages, and the poor things must think they were put there to see and to live life, but that couldn’t be further from the truth, their mission is to lay eggs, white or brown ones, all of them dirty. If you put those chickens next to some Bozeman forceps — the idea of the chickens next to the idea of the forceps, you don’t need to bring forceps to the farm — you’ll never think of a city the same way again. Look out the window, what do you see? A city infested with lights, theaters, restaurants so ethnic they’ll start allowing cannibal dishes as exotic cuisine any day now. Jewelry, champagne, that’s how we distract ourselves. Think of the pregnant women who get into your cab: flesh wrapped in flesh. Cities are giant birthing grounds, human-being farms, nurseries where some genes are incubated and others expelled so the species can continue apace, so nature can safeguard consciousness, its little mirror, its favorite toy, much more elaborate than the tortoises and chimpanzees. You’ll only hear this from a gynecologist. Only someone like me could know. That’s why they don’t invite us on TV: we are reality tutors. Even if it hurts, a gynecologist will always tell you the truth.”