The dreadful situation of the ex all over

Saturday was one of those mornings in which you have absolutely anything else to wear because your clothes are dirty so you decide, after having procrastinated it for weeks, to do the laundry. Half labour, I discovered that the detergent I had left wasn’t enough for the tons and tons of dirty laundry, so I decided to go to the corner and buy some. Since everything was dirty I put on the first thing at hand: an old and rugged little T-shirt, stripes shorts who go with absolutely noting and a cap to cover the morning hair. It was a mixture between Jean-Paul Sartre and political refugee. In other words: terrible. But it’s ok; it’s my neighbourhood and people love me and don’t take those minor details into account. There was no detergent in the corner so I walked for two more blocks, enjoying that industriousness neighbourhoods have on Saturday mornings. And just when I was enjoying a comfort close to happiness, turning around a corner, there it was, in front of me and walking right in my direction: the unmistakable figure of my ex.

It’s not strange that these things happen to me. It is estimated that there’s an emotional accident in my life every 1.5 days so it’s not so surprising after all. If we add that I looked like a Libyan emigrant it’s even more logical. But it still managed to surprise me. Facing the impossibility of turning back (because in case he’d seen me, what would he think? That I run away from him? No way!) I decided that the best thing to do was to confront him and pretend I didn’t notice that I looked like taking out of a container. What I was thinking about? That was not an option! Not with that cap! Raúl: tsunami victim.

Desperate, I got into the portal of the house next to me. It wasn’t a bad idea, after all. I’d wait backwards for him to pass while pretending that I was knocking at the door. But, of course, this would have been too easy. Just when I pretended I was knocking, the door opened by itself, to put the house owner, a black lady in her forties, and me, face to face. I guess I could have said some lie, like I was looking for an address or something, but the fastness of the situation dizzied me so I was clear and honest: “My ex is walking in this direction and I don’t feel capable of facing him looking like that”. She, after a quick, but powerful glimpse to my clothes, opened the door and without saying a word, let me go in, looking in both directions once I did it.

It might surprise you how little took Catalina (that’s the name of my new saver/friend) to let me get in into her house, but the situation of the ex all over is a lot more expanded than you may think at first. It’s not only Jennifer, Brad and Angelina, it’s also the reason a black woman in her forties and I copycatted a scene of a 007 movie. Catalina also has an ex, who left her for his secretary. Now they only see each other at the PTA meetings.

And the problem is that the ex is everywhere: at the movies, at the Malecon, in the line to buy the morning newspaper... He waits for you to relax, and...¡pum!: he’s right there, looking good and with his new boyfriend next to him. Grrrrj! (interjection expressing hatred). 

There’s a golden rule once a relationship has ended: lock into your house and unplug the phone. If you can travel, even better. But Cubans, poor as hell and with severe immigration laws, can’t afford to do that. So we have to play hide and seek with the ex all over the city (who never was so little). Some people have no problems with that: they remain friends, introduce their new partners to their ex and they all become friends, they even go to introduce new people to the ex so they can date. I admire them. Me, on the other hand, I declare myself Neanderthal: if it ended, go back to your cave and stay there. If you move out, leave the country or even die, it would be considered as in very good taste.

At the beginning you have your friends to talk bad about your ex. If a friend of yours, in this critical phase, tells you something good about your ex, he’s a bad friend; you can dump him as well right there and then. But your friends are not there all the time: they have a life of their own and they can’t be backing you up all the time. So sometimes you’re all by yourself walking in the streets with the fear and the incertitude. The city becomes hostile; you wait for him to appear in every corner, in every cafeteria. You don’t go to concerts, movies, theatres, because you know you can run into him. You don’t go out at certain hours because you know it’s the time for him to go or come from his job. You don’t answer the phone without checking the caller ID first. You don’t do anything without the goddam ex in your head. But he knows how to hide.

Until the moment you lower your defences. You start to breathe again without artificial apparatuses, you begin to feel better, you see that life is not that hard and the sun shines again. So you put on your best outfit, go to some disco with your friends, drink a couple of beers...and he shows up. Just when you were about to laugh for the very first time in a long time, just in the place you never expected to find him (he never went there before!), just when you were about to forget him for a while, he appears. Your shitty face is only outdone by the shitty faces of your friends. But they recover in no time: they tell you how bad he looks, that his hair is a big no-no. And you laugh and tell them not to worry, that everything is fine. Who are we fooling? Two minutes later, you’ll excuse yourself and go to the bathroom. To cry of course.

If your ex was a good boyfriend he’d know you’re in the bathroom crying for him. And if he is a good person, he’d go and lift you up the floor. He’d even kiss you, remembering both how good you used to do it. We should avoid this kind of weaknesses, they can be very harmful. Your friends will rescue you and take you out of the disco, arguing that the music was terrible and the beer very expensive.

And that’s the beginning of something it won’t stop in a long time: the situation of the ex all over. Coppelia, the train station, the grocery store, the way to buying detergent... We try hard to look different for the next time he’ll see us: we let grow a beard, we shave, we lose weight, we exercise...what would it be of the hair saloons if everybody were happy? Since I’m a Neanderthal, I pretend I don’t see anybody. I stare at a fixed point in the universe and let them pass me by. I hear that someone says: “Isn’t he going to say hi?” Because the ex also has friends. Friends you hate, of course.

Contrary to what we may think, the bad taste of an ex doesn’t go away with a new boyfriend. It goes away with another ex. We can’t afford to keep this tragedy with two or more people. Your ex will continue to be your terrible ex until your present boyfriend and you separate, and then he move to occupy that position. Then, if the boyfriend becomes the ex, the ex would become the ex-ex (if someone repeats that expression out there, at least give me the credit). And you don’t hate the ex-ex. He’s like an old friend, one you once hated, but not anymore. It’s not that you love him either, but he certainly isn’t anymore the person you used to cry over at every corner.

I have only talked here about the ex all over. There are a lot of other aspects about the ex we’ll be talking about (what do we feel for an ex? the ex’s new boyfriend...Grrrrj). It’s a passionate subject that obsesses me, corrodes me. My friends are already bothered, you’ll be my next victims.

Catalina opens the door, looks at both sides and says: “All clear”. I, like a very badly dressed James Bond, go out quiet and serious, but before leaving I slightly touch Catalina’s shoulder with my hand. Thanks, Catalina, for giving me asylum. The victims of the ex should remain together. I hope than in the next PTA meeting you look more ravishing than ever. As for me, I’ll go to buy detergent to wash my clothes, shave and wash my hair in order to look good for the next time I run face to face with my ex.

PS: Dedicated to F., whom I never saw again since that night we both decided to stop being boyfriends.

The art of renunciation

In life we should be able to fight for things. Nothing would come to us if we don’t spend part of our time, spirit and skills in creating goals and trying to achieve them. We learn that, one way or other, since we’re little kids. However, not all the time is appreciated in its real essence the true importance of knowing how to renounce to things.

If fighting for things is hard, renouncing to them is even worse. It resembles of a crime. It’s hard to renounce to something, no matter how many bad things it has, because it is always going to have some others that are good and that we may never see again. In other cases, it costs us to admit that we’re wasting our time in something that won’t work, so we keep on trying over and over again, failing miserably every time.

How many of us have been in bad relationships that we know we should put an end to? However, it’s hard. It’s hard because we remember when we first met and how beautiful everything was at the time. It’s hard because at some point we still love them and we know that in the world there are not too many like them. But the truth is that the relationship doesn’t work anymore. And we’re no longer the same that we were when we first met, and unfortunately, we’ll never be those again. It’s time to put an end to it. Yet we don’t do it.

If someone leaves us for another person, we immediately want to die. However, humiliating as it is, our capacity of renunciation activates by itself and our dignity forces us, sooner or later, to let it go. But if no one dumps us for nobody, then, in most cases, we’ll break up, then come back together again when we feel lonely, split again at the first shouting session, come back again on February 13th and so on until nothing remains: love, respect, nothing. That’s because we don’t know how to give up on things.

Some other times, we try to get things from life, no matter the consequences. A scholarship, for example. We say to ourselves “This is my moment”, “No one will take this from me” and all kind of positive mantras that we say any time we begin to plan something and that, however, few times we keep on saying when problems really start to appear. Later, it results that we have to sell our house in order to pay half of the grant (even though is a scholarship), but we say to ourselves that we have to make sacrifices in life in order to get something out of it. Then they tell us that we have to live in a house with 8 more people when we get there, that the course we’re applying to is not precisely in our field of studies and that actually the city in which we’re going to live is not the one we originally thought, but another “only” 200 kilometers far. However, we don’t give up and say to ourselves that probably this is a sign from destiny to prove our strength.

And one day, when our partner finally makes us something irreparable or we are informed that is required for the scholarship the birth certificate of the mother of the aunt of the grandfather of our sister, which is in Greece, we can’t help but feel that our nostrils stop working and that we really want to kill ourselves. The situation reaches a point in which it is impossible for our friends to recognize us when they see us walking in the streets, because we’re angered, sad and disappointed. And we discover that before, we were single and scholarshipless, but we weren’t disappointed. At least we had hope.

We have to be able to know how to renounce to things, even though it’s not easy. We have to build up the courage, take it all, the good and the bad, put it in the same bag and throw it to the nearest river. We’ll suffer by throwing out the good things, but we have to do it. We can’t have good without bad, and unbearable boyfriends and fascist scholarships are killing us. We have to be grown-ups about it: throw it all, give our backs to it and walk home, even though while walking we’ll feel something in our chests and in our throats. When we’ll get home a weird pace we’ll possess us: the peace of knowing that despite we feel temporarily bad, we did the right thing.

We have to see renunciation not as a defeat, but as an act of courage. Life will prove us in short time that we did the right thing, and some other love and scholarship will appear. Or maybe they won’t, but we’ll walk in the streets with the hope they’ll do appear, and hope is always better than disappointment.

The evil professor

Today I had classes with a professor that hates me. Don’t worry, it’s reciprocal. Actually, our history goes back to many years before when we hated each other just for the sake of it. Then he stopped being my professor, he left the faculty (not that far, though) and I kinda forgot him. True, any time someone mentioned his name, my face, always Jim Carrey-alike, couldn’t help to do a disgusted expression (I’m guessing he did the same). But then, with the years of absence, I started to forget our antipathy and even at some point I considered that our feud was mainly due to a conflict of interests and maybe to some immaturity on my part. That’s why when they told us yesterday that he would be our professor starting today, in substitution of our beloved usual professor, I didn’t bothered. But today, after arriving in class and receiving the first attack only 8 minutes later, I discovered, not only that his hatred for me was as intact as ever, but also that I had my post for the day: the evil professor.

To be noticed: I don’t say “bad”; I say “evil”. The evil professor (we’ll call him Snape from now on) is not necessarily a bad professor. The thing is he has decided to use the black magic in class and not precisely as a way of teaching things. There are some, of course, that are both bad and evil, but not Snape; he’s not bad.

The evil professor looks just like the others and the girls in class, who know nothing of the wickedness who lives in the world, like him. But the bright and clever student, with a future ahead of him (we’ll change his gender and call him “Hermione” out of modesty) smells the real essence of Snape right from the start. Anyway, he doesn’t lose a minute to confirm this very first impression. And being the professor, he’s got it easy. If Hermione raises the hand, he doesn’t pick her, and if she doesn’t raise it, he says she doesn’t participate in class. If he asks if they think Osama is really dead and she says that she does, he tells her she’s naïve; if she says she doesn’t, he says she’s incredulous. If some other professor says that Hermione is really good in French, Snape makes and expression of repugnance and starts to make allusions to students in the past who were far better than she is (I’m guessing Voldemort). If the rest of the students applaud Hermione after a presentation in class, he tells them, to (please) do not applaud, that they’re practically running out of time.

The evil professor uses the numerous entries in his passport to make feel to his students that he’s brighter than they are and that he’s a citizen of the world. Hermione’s passport is empty, so she can’t say anything and when a conversation about the world arises he always wins it with something like “When I went to France last year…” Hermione, who has never left Vedado, can’t argue, despite the knowledge that the one who travels the more is not necessarily the brightest but the one who knows best how to fly broomsticks.

The reasons for the hatred of Snape are unknown. Maybe it’s love, after all. Or maybe it comes from the fact that Hermione, belonging to a much younger generation, has opportunities that he never had back in his youth (like stepping out of the closet, for example). But that’s just me guessing. The truth is that the real causes are unknown. But what it is a fact is that there’s war.

Even though Snape hates all of his students, he has no problem agreeing with any of them if that means proving Hermione wrong. Everybody knows about the reciprocal hatred, so they advice Hermione to do or say nothing and to do not be angry, remembering her that in case that something happens she is to lose. But someone has to tell Snape he’s a son of a bitch. But well, not Hermione. She can’t get into that. She’s a good, clever, charismatic girl and she has a blog to write.

Snape never looks into the eyes of Hermione. He knows she has a very bad temper and that she looks right into the eyes of people. But Snape is not a fan of direct attack, he prefers irony and sarcasm. But now always: in that occasion that Hermione was selected to represent the school instead of the student he had selected, he got hysterical, took out his wand and yelled everybody (even to Dumbledore). When he finally realised he couldn’t do anything, he looked poor Hermione from head to toes and made an expression of despise. That way, on a Tuesday afternoon, a professor looked with pure hatred and despise to one of his students in the middle of a hall and in front of everybody. Unforgiving.

Of course, he’s not that bad all the time. Sometimes he has problems at home and doesn’t say any irony because he’s passing through a bad time. And Hermione pities him. But the next day he comes back and says something wicked, and everything begins again. Some other time, Snape needed Hermione to translate something for him from English (he only knows French), which Hermione did in very good terms, so he thanked her with genuine good spirit, leading Hermione to think that the war, after all, wasn’t that bad. Silly. One week later, ha gave her a C- in a report of 700 words for the misuse of a single preposition.

But Hermione is intelligent and knows that a lot of her growing as a magician is due to Snape. Hatred being an important impulse, she has become perfect only to bother him. Of course, he says she’s far from perfect and that she never will be, but she knows it’s not exactly like that. She knows he hates her more every day and if he does it’s because he knows she has an awesome future in the world of magic. In addition, Hermione, with the time also turned into a professor, tries not to do the same with her students. Of course, her bad temper sometimes arises and says something wicked, but never reaching the point of looking from head to toes to any of them and making an expression of despise a Tuesday afternoon in a hall in front of everybody. That’s unforgiving.

Snape will always hate Hermione, but it’s OK. Maybe that’s what keeps him alive, after all. What would it be of him without that hatred he had probably kept from immemorial times to any Hermione-alike? So let’s not pity him: his corrosive odium makes him happy. Let’s not worry about his health: being wicked guarantees him to live for many years. Let’s not try to change him: he’d die out of sadness. Let’s accept him like he is and admit that his function in the world is to help Hermiones all over the world to become perfect. Merci, Monsieur.

Are you already thinking about (virtual) love?

Back in the 80’s we had in Cuba a little book inherited from the Soviets (surprise, surprise) called “Are you already thinking about love?” (actually it should have been called “Are you already thinking about getting laid?” but let’s not go through that now) Few of us actually managed to read it but our bigger brothers tortured us with its existence. The descriptions of corporal changes to come and the drawings of men and women in bold positions made of this little book a bestseller in these communist prairies.

I don’t know if it’s still published or if it has the same effect it used to have in teenagers, even though I doubt it (in this digital era those kids have seen a lot already). But what I do know is that, in case of its ongoing publication, a new chapter should be added about that new battlefield of Cupid called “the Cyberspace”.

At some moment it got into our lives. Before, you could ask a couple where they have met and they answered things like “At the movies”, “At Coppelia” (the biggest ice cream shop in the country, thus the most popular place in the island) or even (very popular in the 70’s and 80’s) “I called a wrong number and we stayed talking”. Now it’s not weird to find answers like “We met at the chat” or “Facebook suggested him as a friend”. And that’s fine: it’s always good the increase of places to nurture love. What’s the matter if there are movies, ice creams or “I like it” buttons involved? But careful: even though the virtual area is special in so many ways, it has intrinsic characteristics that we should know in order of not falling in its traps.

It all begins one day in front of a computer connected to the Internet. You might be surprised but such computers are actually less than 2 percent of the total computers in the country (you were thinking about moving to Cuba? Well, you can start to forget it now). One day that we go to school to make a report or to a friend’s house to check our mail. Contrary to the normal places of finding love already seen, in order to provoke a good first impression, at the chat it doesn’t matter if your shoes are good or even if you have washed your face (It sounds good, right? Chat 1 – Coppelia 0).

All the sudden someone (for the pedagogical effects of this post we’ll call him Andrés82, but it could be Alina65, Yuri26 or whatever) “clicks” on you and surprises you with a warm “hi” (90% of the times with a little “h”). Instantly – don’t try to fool yourselves – we add ideal characteristics to Andrés82 only for having read one single word coming from his mouth (or keyboard). He’s young, gorgeous, athletic, not exaggeratedly strong, but not skinny either. He has light eyes and he wears a 45 in shoes (and we all know what that means). He wears glasses, but only for reading and that makes him seem like an intellectual. He has a love past, of course (if he hadn’t that would be weird and pathetic), but it’s not important. Nothing he can’t get over…with you. Andrés82, a.k.a THE IDEAL MAN.

This perfect landscape becomes quickly cloudy. Andrés82 lives with eight other people, he has frequent appointment with the ophthalmologist because he’s losing sight and he makes a spelling mistake every three other words. But still – don’t fool yourselves, we‘re optimistic by nature – we ignore all that and try to focus in the positive things. And the fact is that the euphemism is loose over the Internet. Nobody is black anymore, now they are “light brown”; fat people are substituted by “nor either fat or thin” and ugly define themselves as “with a special face”. I say all the time I’m “slim”. Starting today I will go with “thin”. (This blog is starting to have a positive effect on me; bravo).

And then, after some time of banal conversation in which Andrés (uff, he already lost the last name, we’re getting closer) talks to you about his family, the weather and his passion for abstract painting, one of the two of you pops up the question that would change forever the course of your relationship: “hey, do u have a pic?”. And then, after an exchange and download of files and a flattering comment by Andrés82 about how good you look in your picture, you find yourself face to face with the so long awaited image of the man of your dreams.

Ok, this is an awkward moment. Andrés82 is nothing like you imagined. And he is in a good picture (because we all send our best pics; God bless digital cameras: we erase the photos we don’t like, we keep the good ones and we trick ourselves into thinking we look like that). In that moment you remember he told you his female friends tell him he’s good looking. What kind of friends are those?

But then you remember you’re not perfect either, that your solitude is big and that streets are hard. This guy likes abstract painting, how bad can he be? And suddenly you realize that to his “What do u think of the pic? If you don’t like it, just say it” you’re answering with a “You’re just as I imagined”. That – don’t try to fool yourselves – it’s a fat lie.

And all the sudden, you decide to know each other personally: he’s not far, in the same Vedado (if he were a hunk, he would be in another continent). But not Andrés82, he is right there, so you two decide not to delay any more the moment of knowing each other and choose a spot to do it, generally in the intermediate distance between you two and with a movie theater, a park or a school as a point of near reference. You wait impatient, asking yourself about your clothes and your hair, when all the sudden Andrés82 appears. He’s 1.52, how could he forget to mention that!!!! And he’s even worse than in the picture because he has been working all day long and he’s sweated. Suddenly, your hair or your clothes are no longer an issue: you feel you’re Brad Pitt.

“It’s time for this to end”, you say to yourself. But you have been well-raised and you know you can’t just say it out loud just like that. So you two sit in a bench and you pray in secret for no familiar faces to pass nearby. You speak of banal subjects such as his family, the weather, his passion for abstract painting… Fuck abstract painting, that’s the reason you’re sitting there with that elf! Finally, you look at your watch and say that your aunt is waiting for you, your cat hasn’t eaten and that you have a lot to translate. He, used to it, nods and says it was a pleasure to meet you.

In that moment, you can’t help to feel a little tenderness for Andrés82. After all, he’s not bad. And it’s not his fault if he’s far from being perfect physically. Probably he has more important virtues. And then you remember when you were yourself Andrés82 for some other guy who considered himself as better than you are and said to you the same phrases you just said to this one. And you think of your last partner, and how when you two were together the physical factor was never an issue because there was something else. And then you feel bad, lonely and pathetic. That’s because you didn’t know the rules of virtual love and you would have wanted that a goddam book would have taught them to you when you were a teenager. But it didn’t happen.

Of course, it’s not always like that. I imagine that there are people who get married and live many years alongside someone who met at the web. I like to think that there would be little kids shouting that their parents fell in love in the cyberspace and they lived happily ever after.

But those would never be us (or at least not me). So, after spending some days avoiding computers to forget the incident, one day we go back to our school or to a friend’s house, and after making the report or checking our mail, we open the chat and wait patiently for someone to tell us “hi” with a little “h” to think for a minute – don’t try to fool yourselves – that we’ve found the right person. And then, it all begins again.

Of how everything began, of blogs and of how “stupid” actually means the opposite

I guess that everything began that Friday afternoon over two decades ago when all the students of Ciudad Libertad interested in the arts were told that that particular day we wouldn’t have classes of our specific fields because we had to participate in a writing contest. Ciudad Libertad being the biggest school in the country, we were a lot of kids in one single room. Those in the theatre department (me among them) were put in one corner, lying in the floor, next to the ballet dancers and not far from the painters, with a single sheet of paper and the exaggerated time limit of one hour. Those studying writing were nowhere to be seen; they were probably on the upper floor comfortably seated and with their usual professor analyzing all their grammar moves. My mates from the theatre department, currently tramps and hobos of my native Marianao, didn’t do a thing other than write down their names and maybe add something like “Once upon a time...” I, always a very dedicated student, wrote a story about a messy little boy that all the sudden discovered the necessity to be conscientious with the world. Of course, I didn’t use the word “conscientious” at the time.

And then, a month later, or maybe more, in another congregational meeting Friday afternoon, they announced that the winner of the compulsory municipal writing contest was no other than me. I remember my excitement when I heard my name followed by the last name of my father and that of my mother. Even though I don’t longer have that flaw, I was a very modest child. So me and my distinctive big teeth got there to get my presents. They gave me a lot of things (small but a lot) that I shared with all the kids in the theatre department, who were even happier than I was. I need to say that even though currently unemployed or prison material, they used to be very nice kids. That was a happy day.

I would love to tell you that it was the beginning of a beautiful love story between me and literature, but it was not. It was the only incursion of my life in that genre, even though I consider it as the biggest of all arts. I went somewhere else, I vanished, I considered I had the talent for other things and I let writing for others. Always a reader (of absolutely everything) but not a writer. Some monologues I wrote later, when I believe I was an actor, and in college I did more than one good essay in both English and French. But that was it, nothing more than trying to earn some applause or get an A.

And then the blog era arrived. At some point in our lives, writing a blog became one of the basic duties of the human being, alongside marrying a good woman, not stealing and having a job. Everybody seems to have a blog. Even in Cuba where no one has Internet access. According to Wikipedia, there are currently 156 million blogs in the world. That’s a lot of blogs. So I said to myself, after reading some and doing some research that why not? I could put together mi good sense of humour, my bad temper and my lack of Spanish grammar mistakes and make one.

But what would I be writing about? Languages? Movies? Sex? Myself? A lot of things get my attention, that’s for sure. And finally, one day the decision came along by itself: I’d write about anything I want. Anything, anytime, anywhere, anyhow. Actually, I think that all blogs are the same, but I needed to establish some ground rules. That’s how “El estúpido escribir” was born last May. And since then, I haven’t been able to stop writing. I have no complaints about my blog: it exorcises my demons; it’s kinda popular and has given me the impulse to begin writing more “serious” stuff.

And then one day, I decided that I wanted that people from other countries would be able to read my thoughts and anecdotes as well. Of course, this is another kind of blog. It might be the same stories and the same person, but the way to address foreigners can never be the same as that of address the people who live (or has lived, giving the fact that a lot of my Cuban readers no longer live in the island) near you. But I still could say a lot, so I think it might be interesting. Will it be as popular as the Spanish version? I don’t know. And being honest, I don’t care. Writing is like oxygen to me now, so between one post and any other novel, I could write some posts in English, or translate some of my Spanish ones. Anyway, I just quit my job two weeks ago, so I have free time.

However this wonderful idea has a major problem: language. Sure I can speak, understand, read and even write in English, but what about being witty, passionate, delicate, offensive, and harsh in the language of Shakespeare as I am in that of Cervantes? But what the hell, I have nothing to lose. You are warned, though: sure I’m going to make mistakes and maybe not reached the high moments I do in Spanish, but the promise is this: it’s really me who’s writing (and not a born and raised in Washington D.C translator) so you need to see through that and let yourself get carried away.

Why “stupid”? Well, I’m a perfectionist, that’s why I never do anything. So by calling it “stupid” I allow myself to write a lot without having the necessity to think it has to be perfect (what could take me three months to make a single post). If you add that English is not my mother tongue this could be easily renamed “the VERY stupid writing”. But I’m not going to have someone to revise it for me before posting it, because in that case we should name it “the very tiring (and still stupid) writing”. So I’d prefer the risk to make some mistake every now and then.

So it’s official: the boy from 20 years ago it’s back. Now sitting in front of a computer, a little bit more cynic, in a foreign language and with a lot of stories to be told about messy little boys who all the sudden discover the necessity to be conscientious with the world. I don’t expect to win any award now (as I didn’t expect it back then) and I don’t even expect you to read it (even though I’d love to). I promise to be myself and not to change a single word in order to gain some random readers. I want to prove to myself that I can write in other languages, as I already proved to myself that I could write at all.

I’ve written this and I’m already convinced of keep on doing it. Maybe having a blog is one of the duties of the human being that I could actually perform (since the others…), maybe it could help me to be a little less cynic (but not that much) and maybe it could make someone laugh, cry or think, and by that this writing wouldn’t be that stupid after all.

PS: I dedicate this first post to all my friends from the theatre department of twenty years ago, whom I never saw again, and whom I discovered, by writing this, how much I loved them.