Fall in love with someone you are not yet? #GachupínEyes
It hadn’t been necessary to touch each other as we passed—we’d have felt one another miles away. He, one-ninety centimeters tall, with the most ravishing curls in the world, dressed in white-washed linen and sandals: thirty-seven, an Andalusian, an islander. As the memory of that first meeting flickers, I bite my lips to stifle desire.
—I bet you want to dance with me.
—What?
The deep, full cadence of his Spanish voice makes me turn.
—Yes. We’re late for dancing.
I briefly consider playing hard to get, asking who he thinks he is—but why? I’d never done it before, never liked its implication of power games. If I trust myself in anything, it’s knowing whether someone will hurt me or be hurt by me. From the first glance, I knew the answer. That accent—rhythmic, serious, calm, drenched in confidence, an incantation—could’ve undressed me in the street, no questions asked.
—Yes, it’s getting late, I reply with a inquisitive smile.
He takes my hand, leading us to a bar on Genova Street.
—What do you want to drink?
Just you. Nothing to blur this clarity, I think, resting my hand on his leg.
—Whisky. Neat.
He pulls me close, murmuring in my ear. I ache for a kiss, but he savors the wait. Instead, I twist to tangle my fingers in his long, amazing silver-streaked hair.
We flirt for some time before heading to a salsa club.
—I’ll confess I don’t know how to dance, but I want to do with you everything you like—and everything I like.
¡Madre mía! He wasn’t wrong about the dancing, nor the precision of his words—a trigger, a provocation. By then, I wanted nothing more than to drag him into bed, but the flirtation still simmered on the dance floor. Maybe restraint would amplify the pleasure later. I didn’t understand it—I’d never waited, never delayed. I took what I wanted when I wanted. But this time, I let the tension build.
The city blurred, leaving only the rhythm of his accent, a flamenco pulse in my veins. We stumbled to his hotel, laughing and kissing. I skip like a child, drunk on endorphins, not whisky. He lifts me effortlessly—I’m no slender damsel, yet he holds me like I’m weightless—and we fumble through the door. At the threshold, we kiss exhaustively, mapping each other’s shapes, chasing the dizzy rush of hormones. He carries me to the bed, no urgency, just certainty.
What a frenzy we became! I straddle him, tearing at his clothes. He peels off my dress. His hands—huge, powerful—roam my back, thumbs circling my nipples. I didn’t need to sink onto him, nor guide him—everything aligned, fluid and unhurried, as if we’d done this forever. This wasn’t a typical one-night stand. Lust burned in our eyes, yes—the hunger for sweat-slicked skin, for every unromantic angle, for the taste of all our fluids—but beneath it pulsed a realm where connection was not felt, but known. Heat rises, sweat beads, and the world bleaches white, crystalline, as waves of love flood in.
I arch my back for a second act, but he lowers me gently, tracing my skin while still inside. Wordless, he understands I crave for a different sensation—but he won’t relinquish my face. Instead, he kisses the smallest of my openings, and I bloom like a flower, hard and sweet, wild and tender. I’d never allowed this to a lover—then, tenderness belonged only to Marx Eyes, my communist ex-husband. We move until the white light fades from our bodies and seeps through the curtains, softly.
At breakfast—three in the afternoon—we dissect our lives. My near-twenty-three years old: my work as an editorial designer, the Marxist-Leninist-Reichian commune I helped to build, my love of sex and food (just as a fortune teller with a Spanish accent predict for me when I was seven), my ex-husband and our lovers. His thirty-eight (May 10th had passed—I was his birthday gift), his metal music, his return to Spain after eleven years teaching in England. He locks eyes with me:
—I like you so much. ¡Me has encanta’o!
We tease with words, glances, caresses sharper than affection. He calls me incredible, insists on my choices—what I do, how I think—fascinate him. I demur:
—It’s luck. Who I’ve met. How things aligned. I didn’t do anything.
—But you did. Luck is for lotteries. You—you’ve earned this. It’s you.
He repeats those three words until they change the meaning of everything.
He asks me to move to Spain—not with him at first, but nearby. “Committed but free,” just my style. I refuse instantly. Marx Eyes “emotional body” wasn’t cold yet; I couldn’t imagine life without him. Not love—codependency, though I didn’t name it then.
We continue to meet until he leaves. At nights, we take long walks to play, his hands slip under my dress to grip my buttock, or tease my breasts through my blouse. Weeks later, I bid him farewell at the airport, Hollywood-style. In the taxi, I joke about reuniting as gray-haired strangers on an Asian island, sharing a new first kiss at seventy. I laugh; he doesn’t.
On Skype, I see his anger flare when he realizes I haven’t changed my decision—I wouldn’t go to Algeciras, nor the island. After finally leaving Marx Eyes, he expects me to relent. I don’t. It wasn’t just the relationship—a deeper void. I wasn’t yet the woman he alone seemed to know.
Years pirouette. I became a curator of touch, collecting lovers like verses, yet none transcribed the psalm he’d etched in my marrow. Until Big Brown Eyes—a Marxist-Italian with music in his kiss—mirrored my fragments, not as ruin, but as art. He offered a future, not as a cage, but a canvas. I had never seen a future for me before, not with someone, not alone. I thought he was “a” one with whom I could grow up and keep learning about this amazing woman who once got this beyond stunning man in love at first sight.
Then, the message: “Cielo, your Gachupín awaits.” Madrid in autumn, a rendezvous with fate. Fifteen years, yet the thread remained, golden and unbroken. This time, I arrive—not the girl who fled into the shadows, but a woman sculpted by her own fire. We will meet where time folds, two souls relearning their dialect, hands open, hearts fluent in the language of second acts. Now that I am the one with thirty-eight years old.
Soundtrack*
Whisky sin soda – Joaquín Sabina
Cuando el río suena – Alexander Abreu y Havana D’Primera
Yo marco el minuto – Mala Rodríguez
Tútutu Tútutu – El sombrero del abuelo
I Was Made for Lovin’ You – Kiss
Señales de humo – Juan Luis Guerra
Dos días en la vida – Jarabe de palo
Eros o Barbarie 