the healthcare conversation

It’s a commonplace that going abroad makes you think more about your own culture, but I thought I had already had my fill of that before I even stepped foot in Spain. I had studied and lived in France, and I had taught English to people from around the world. In short, I thought I already knew what I thought.

And what I thought was: every country has things wrong with it, and America’s no different, and probably better than a lot of places. I thought that way coming here, and I still do. Instead of what I thought about America changing, it’s how I felt about it that changed.

Before, the U.S. had always seemed like a pretty good place, even if it did have some gun violence, missing healthcare, and inequality. But the more people asked me about it, the more I began seeing my own country from the objective view of someone who doesn’t have to live there. I began to see it from their perspective, even when they couldn’t see it from my perspective. And America began to seem like a distinctly unforgiving place, where economic priorities were more important than making sure people were taken care of. When I thought of it, I thought of the wild west, a place where people occasionally help others but mostly fend for themselves.

One time I was talking to my tailor, whose wife had just gotten a new kidney, and the conversation turned naturally to healthcare in America. He asked about what happened to people who didn’t have insurance because they were poor. “What, do you kick them out on the street like garbage?” Well, not exactly, there were some provisions for helping the destitute, but I hemmed and hawed. When someone puts it that way, you don’t want that phrase to be anywhere close to an accurate characterization of your people.

The new legislation passed yesterday doesn't make healthcare perfect, but it makes it a better, and the country I will be going back to doesn't seem quite as heartless a place. I will still have to hem and haw a little in the future when people ask, but less so. For that, I am thankful.

what kind of bike would a ladybug ride?

If you want to think about how arbitrary categories can be, think about this: one little top tube is all that separates men’s bikes from women’s in the United States. (The “top tube” is the metal tubing that runs from the head tube to the seat tube. Google has informed me that, technically, it is referred to as…“the tope tube”.) When I arrived here in Zaragoza, however, I noticed that there were guys riding around with what I considered women’s bikes. I consulted the high command of the Roommate Council. Indeed, they said, it would be acceptable to ride a bike with no top tube. But was there anything I needed to watch out for, some tell-tale sign that my bike “a woman’s bike”?

Yes. A basket.

My roommates aren’t often terribly serious, so we joked around a few more minutes about how unmanly I am in general (I am called mariquita -- “ladybug” -- a lot in my house, which is kind of like being called a pansy boy, and have taken the mantle up with pride.) Then, as a kind of summary statement, David got a little quiet. “No, seriously, the only thing you can’t do is have a basket.”

He looked at Fernando. “I think he’s going to come home with a basket on the bike.”

I didn’t get a basket, but I did get a bike that would be a “lady’s bike” in the U.S.

that looks like it hurts

On Saturday night, I went with some friends to El Plata, a restaurant/bar that is well known in Zaragoza for its cabaret show. It was, in a sense, a greatest hits of Spanish attitude – both funny and sexy all at the same time.

First, the sexy: although it didn’t always quite hit the “erotic” register, there were definite moments, including a woman who belly-danced walking around through the crowd with a sword balanced laterally across her head. Then there was the woman who picked out men from the crowd to take body shots off her, before she did a good ol’ striptease. It was sassy, not cheap, and it really was sexy.

I feel like I need to stop here and defend the distinction between “eroticism” and something that merely arouses you. Just think of the difference between mainstream actors doing a sex scene, especially one that has psychological overtones, and porno. One is erotic, one just gets you off, and this show was the former.

I have to admit, although intellectually I can understand why you might enjoy eroticism, I’m not terribly interested in it myself. My reasoning is, If I’m not going to have sex, why worry about the aesthetics of it or think about it in anything other than an analytical mode? This is why I don’t understand why men go to strip clubs.

Anyway, besides being sexy, the show was also genuinely funny and creative, or some nebulous combination of the three. For example: the young guy who slid around on rollerblades skates with his penis all out and exposed, eventually going into a spin, and, later, grabbing onto a harness that pulled him into the air as he spun. Later, a pair of woman who were almost entirely in naked, including all the rated R stuff, did a little dance to “I Love Rock ‘N Roll”. Then the song turned into “Yo Amo El Jamon”, the Spanish version that goes to the same tune, but with the lyrics swapped out for an ode to jam with tomato; the girls each took a big leg of pig and pumped it in the air over their heads, much to the audience’s delight.

And then there was the naked break dancing.

the curse of the contaminated hand

An incomplete list of restroom experiences, all drawn from recent experience:

1) A bathroom where the urinal is so high that I, a man of 5’8”, can barely fit my diddle over the lower edge of the thing, and if I can’t, what are short guys supposed to do?

2) A bathroom stall where the door lock is broken and the light only works when the switch is pressed down, all of which requires me to practice door/light switch yoga while I do my número dos.

3) Lots of bathrooms without toilet paper. This is especially dispiriting when one has already ordered a bocadillo at a bar, only to find that the men’s room is out of toilet paper (and, one suspects, has never had any), leaving one without any good options. Probably the only thing worse than Contaminated Pants would be a Contaminated Hand, especially if one has to consume a meal after contaminating it, and have an already-incredulous-looking bartender eyeball one while one eats with only one’s left hand. One can only speculate about the women’s bathroom, which one suspects is stocked with toilet paper out of some sexist sense of decency, but one is too self-conscientious to peak in.

4) A restroom where the male/female symbols are half-rotted away so that the only way to tell which bathroom you’re entering is to wait for somebody to come out…and what if they got it wrong? Plus you look like a pervert expectantly staring at everybody coming out of the bathroom.

5) Lots of bathrooms where the lights automatically turn off after just a couple of minutes, meaning I have to press them several times for what I consider to be a normal-length throne session.

6) Lots of bathrooms without hand soap. I found this out the hard way once at a gym I used to go to, when I had already produced a duce and tidied up back there, only to find that there was no soap. So I did a workout with a Contaminated Hand, something I will never, in my heart of hearts, be able to forgive the owner for, no matter how many perfume-laced Hallmark cards he sends me.

(The only thing worse than no soap? Faux soap, a phenomenon I recently discovered. The translucent pump appears to be holding a good centimeter of liquid soap, but, when you already have a Contaminated Hand and there’s no turning back, it turns out that this was merely a film of soap which cannot be pumped out no matter how hard you try. And then you cry.)

Finally, a bathroom sign that isn't afraid to tell it like it is.

'til the break of dawn

I’ve been meaning to write a post about how late Spanish people stay up, and I think a breakdown of Thursday night would illustrate it nicely.

11ish I leave my house, where my roommates are pre-partying and planning to go out later. I bike to Bull McCabe’s, an Irish bar in the center of town where they have a language exchange night every Thursday. The place is still packed at midnight. It’s true that tomorrow, March 5^th, is a holiday, but I was here last week at the same time, and the place was packed then, too. I end up staying until 2ish debating the merits of strong leadership with a Venezuelan.

2ish A Spanish friend of mine texts me, and half an hour later I’m at Erasmus, which presumably steals its name from the European international student exchange program.

3ish We finish up at Erasmus…and head to another bar.

3:15ish The next bar turns out to have a cover, and it looks my group is going to break up and go home, but my friend has someone visiting from Madrid, and he says they’re going to stay up until eleven the next morning. The truth is, I don’t know if he’s joking or not; in Spain, this is not an entirely unreasonable proposition.

3:30ish My roommate finally texts me to tell me what bar he’s at, but I’ve already decided to go home, where I hit the sack at 4:30 so I can wake up at 9:30 to make a 10 am private lesson.

7ish I am woken up from a deep sleep by my roommates, who are chatting about as loudly as church mice in the living room, clearly making an effort not to wake me up, bless their hearts, but failing. I am immensely irritable. I want to tell them off – What kind of hour is this, anyway? Shouldn’t they be in bed? – but they are within their rights and have effectively outvoted me.

Moreover, there’s a cultural component to the situation. For Americans, even if you’re a partier, chatting in the living room at seven o’clock in the morning is stretching it. For Spaniards, though, it’s totally acceptable, even normal. I probably realize this fact, but, then again, I’m a man who’s been woken up at what feels like an unseemly hour. Abstract notions of multiculturalism are taking a backseat to indignation, which is ultimately a very comforting emotion.

Now my problem is that I have to go to the bathroom, which means seeing the people who are irritating me, and I’m in little mood to put on a friendly face. So, I as slip from my room into the toilet, I compromise: I give Fernando a dirty look and a kind of abbreviated Bronx cheer, the combination of which is probably, more than anything, simply ambiguous.

I go back to bed and put in my earplugs and promptly fall back asleep.

9:30ish I wake up from a slumber so deep that I’m woozy getting out of bed. Somewhat better rested, I reconsider the Bronx cheer. Whatever the questionable merits of my case, my roommates are quite thoughtful people. They’re easily the best roommates I’ve had since freshman year of college. One night years ago, I couldn’t get to sleep on a weeknight at one in the morning because a roommate was talking at full blast a few feet from my door. I screwed up my courage – I’m terribly timid about this sort of thing – and asked if he could quiet down or something. “Sorry man, I can’t help you,” he said simply.

To put it more hyperbolically: I have been traumatized.

I slip a little note apologizing to Fernando and slip it under his door before I leave.

3:30ish After a nap, I run into Fernando, who is going back to his pueblo for the night, and he apologizes in turn for waking me up. We are right again, and he says, wrapping the matter up, “It’s no big deal if roommates get in a little dispute. Just like any married couple.” My thoughts exactly.