6. Potomania

Poto was a fish. Poto was a happy fish until he realized that the world he was watching from his crystal-walled palace was nothing but a tiny fragment of the known universe. Luckily for Poto, his memory didn't last enough to be worried more that a few minutes. After that, Poto was a happy fish again.

If I knew I was pregnant right now, I wouldn't be worried about many things. I wouldn't be worried about all the weed I smoked in Amsterdam, one month after the last time I had sex. I would worry about all the tobacco, it honestly wasn't that much in comparison to what I used to smoke when I lived in my planet. If I found out, right this instant about me having a four-month foetus jamming my guts I wouldn't even be worried about that late night in Joe's about a month ago, when I thought it was a good idea to share a few lines of Magical Powder of Bolivia with two total strangers on top of the toilet paper dispenser. I wouldn't care at all that the father would be a French guy whose name I barely remember -and if I do remember it, it's actually because it reminds me of an historical character whom I admire. I guess I always dreamt about being a single mom, like Jenny Fields, with nobody to disagree about the raising of my progeny. I wouldn't mind about the money. I have money now, not a lot but enough to not be in a very sad position with a baby in my arms.

What I would worry about, if I found out I was pregnant right now, is that in the past month I have consumed enough coffee to fill an Olympic swimming pool. And yes, I write this while I'm having a coffee.

Anyway, I'm not pregnant. I thought I was for a few day, but only because I haven't had my period in a few month and I'm insanely fat, but apparently that's for other reasons... Now that I think about it, coffee might have stopped my hormonal cycle, that wouldn't surprise me at all, not after the amounts I've been injecting in my blood.

Having a coffee is not a reason to be ashamed these days... It's actually quite fashionable. Alcoholism, on the other hand, is so out. Cocaine is very "nineties" but, as you know, everything comes back and the nineties are starting to be cool again. I don't really mind being addicted to coffee, but it's starting to cost me a lot of money. It would be easier if I was just addicted to water, like that stupid arsehole was.

Daniel was addicted to water. Apparently the doctors told him it was called potomania, what he had, accompanied by an acute anorexia. This was before his homeless period, and after his cocaine period. He was laughing about it when he told me, of course. He told me one day he decided he wanted to drink a lot of water and for a few month from that, he couldn't stop drinking. He was always carrying a bottle with him and, of course, he wouldn't want to eat, but only drink water.

"The funny thing," he said, "is that my parents were happy for me. They kept on having cold water specially for me on the fridge, since they always saw me drinking it... we never kept water on the fridge before that. They thought I was being healthy, that it was a good thing."

He could have died.

Like so many other times... It's quite impressive that he's still alive, now that I think about it, specially after that time his brother tried to kill him.

5. Montage

Like lots of people is this ultra-visual world, I like to think of my life in cinematographic terms. An ingenious remark makes me immediately think "Lovely dialogues"; a boring and undefined person makes me feel like their character has not been quite well constructed; a heart-breaking sunset is a mental applause for the Art Director. Regarding the script, the meaning of life, and etcetera, my theory is that the most annoying and decisive parts -those slow processes that really take your story where you want it to be-, are never properly shown in films. Yes, I am talking about the '80s montage sequence: sports training, studying for the big test, getting organized and getting a job in a Survivor's track time. In the real world with the real humans -stupid humans, I hate them-, we are not prepared to actually do those things.

Whatever genre we choose, we are still in a movie. For what we know, getting fit only takes a strong resolution after a moment of crisis -lets say eating a three-thousand-calorie Swiss chocolate bar... not that I have ever done that, specially not last night while watching Archer (season five)- and three to five minutes of sandwiched shots and catchy rock music to reach destination.

Trying to figure out what really happens in between shots would be an accurate description of my life right now. I'm in the employment decisions moment. Until now, I thought this moment didn't even existed. I blame London.

What Daniel and my lovely hippie life in Silver City taught me, was that there was no decision point, that you could change your mind as much as you wanted, that there wasn't much in the bet anyway, and that having any job is good enough... as long as you have time to enjoy your life, drink your beer, friend your friends, do your art, and smoke your weed. I still feel that way, I feel it strongly. But, I also must admit London is having an effect on me, and all that competitive, non-rewarding and ass-raping system is making me truly afraid of not having money, not having a job, not having enough education (meaning academic education). Since Daniel is gone, I'm having a hard time balancing my socially-fit side with my fuck-the-system side. I'm lacking a little bit of the latter. I am ashamed to admit that I have been thinking long and much about money: the money I'm saving, the money I don't have yet, and the things I could do with it. Of course, they are Felix-like things to do with money, like opening a coffee shop, or raising a baby, or dedicating myself to write.

I reached a point in my concern when I desperately needed robot-mum advice. Should I continue to study? I don't even think that's possible, even if I wanted to, not without the money and references. Should I find another job? I'm not sure I could afford a rent and continue to save money. Should I travel? First I should solve that problem with my credit cards, probably -I promise I will call today-. What should I do, Mamma?

She was, as usual, kind of neutral, kind of directive. I think she would prefer me to study, but I don't think she actually knows the variety of impediments on my way for that. She tells me I can be a writer, work in magazines and publishers. Thank you! That's what I wanted to hear. That's what I've actually been saying for the past year or so: "What I really like to do is writing for magazines". So, I had already decided what I wanted to do... I just didn't remember.

On our last weeks of friendship, Daniel was convinced he wanted to go to Bolivia to live with and defend a local community of people. I say "local" in order to avoid terms as "aboriginal" or "Indian". After all, I don't hear people around here saying things like "I'm going to Amsterdam to smoke ganja with the aboriginal Dutch", or "This aboriginal English peoples sure know how to enjoy a greasy breakfast!".

He was more like a radical character, always extremist, always wanting the big change, always wanting to be completely different from everybody. Daniel couldn't just bare the idea of being normal. He wasn't normal, except for that strong urge of being abnormal, which is actually very normal... specially these days. I hate to admit, even I have it, and the smartest way I found of being abnormal is pretending I don't mind being normal. You can find it all over my speech, for example in the first sentence of this chapter "Like lots of people...". I just find it fake and "normal" to say "Hey, I'm different, am I the only one who feels his life is like a movie?". I don't think anyone older than fifteen falls for that.

I am writing this to understand the characters in my movie. Eventually, my character. Who am I? What do I want to... etcetera.

When I see some interesting catch phrase in the characters around, me, I take it, I make it mine. For example, the "etcetera" thing. That's Daniel's, of course. Most people use it to avoid listing obvious and boring things, after they've made their point clear. Daniel used it when he was saying something really important.

I can tell where most of my expressions come from. I have many from Julia, lots from Daniel, some from Harry... all above a base that's basically my mother's way of communicating my father's way of thinking. That's good for a start, for defining myself. I really don't feel like a have a core concept, a centre of feelings that are only mine. I think I'm more like a permeable robot, who's been programmed by different people surrounding me. And I am totally OK with that. I don't feel empty. I feel full, of cookies. And that's all that matters to me.

4. Dog Days

My theory is that the mystery of Daniel's unusual mind relied on the fact that he was a dog.

He wasn't, of course, a proper dog, with a happy tail and furry skin. He was, in fact, the hairless person I ever met, male or female. Daniel was technically a human being, with two eyes, a nose, a mouth and a belly button. But I know he was canine.

Myself, I am a four-eyed monster with tentacles instead of legs, one anxious right hand and a horrendously-drawn left hand, covered in glitter, with honey earrings hanging from my carrot ears and a titi monkey as a tie.

Daniel was a dog. He actually liked to bark, specially to police officers.

One day he told me about the occasions in which he got arrested. He's not my only friend who got arrested. In a beautiful summer night in Cordoba city around a fire, my friend Cortés told me and the rest of the travellers of that time he spent a night in jail being a nerdy seventeen-years-old, for hacking public telephones with an even nerdier friend, in order to make free phone calls. Police made the two of them spend the night inside a shit-hole where they barely had place to stand, surrounded by old dirty drunk dudes that were in for robbing or murder. Next to them there was a cell were some guys were threatening them with raping their asses and killing them, just for the laughs.

Another friend of mine, El Don, was also one night in jail with three other friends. They were driving to a David Guetta show, outside Buenos Aires. Of course, they were carrying drugs. The police knew how it was going to be, so they were waiting in the road and stopped my friends, and two other cars. The car in front of them -blond tall botox-filled woman and rich guy- had LSD, ketamine, pills, weed and cocaine. My friends had only five joints... a normal healthy breakfast. Obviously, they had only five joint because they couldn't get any more drugs. Otherwise, they would have had more than that. But they didn't. Not only they had five pitiful joints for the four of them, but also they got arrested for that. They spent the night in jails and -again- sharing the room with people that was in for murder. One of my friends got actually robbed inside the cell (a brand new jacket specially bought for the show). The funniest part is that, in all those hours when they were waiting alone in the cell, they actually managed to smoke some weed some other guys had on them.

For Daniel it was different. Every time he was in jail, it was because he was "walking shirtless in the street" or something like that... and if you are a non-white young guy with dirty clothes and no shirt, you are definitely a danger to society. And if you try to ask the police why they are taking you to jail, they will beat the shit out of you.

"What do you do when they start beating you?," I ask.

"Well... there's not a lot to do, really," he says calmly. "Just shouting them to fuck off and biting them until they get tired of kicking the shit out of me".

When I met Daniel he was convinced he was an angel.

Before starting to write about him, this morning, I thought of using a different name, but I couldn't think of one that would fit his personality appropriately, so I googled "Daniel" to find the meaning and maybe get some ideas from that.

"God is my judge". No way to change that.

During all the years I knew him, during his cocaine addiction, his homeless period, his weed-smoking in public, his psychopath laughing for no reason, his barking... In all that time, other human's judgement never affected him. Not a little bit. Not in the outside or the inside. He knew human judgement existed, he could try to analyse that. He knew the basic stuff to be allowed to walk in the street (like wearing trousers) and to be -kind of- accepted in society, but there's no way he cared about other people's judgement other than that.

He wasn't like that because he was "oh, so independent and careless and free!", but because he was a dog, a winged dog. And he believed in God. At first, at least.

Aceite

-Al contrario -dijo sonriendo-, creo que las personas felices pensamos en la muerte mucho más que las personas tristes. Tiene sentido. La muerte no nos asusta, el suicidio parece una situación práctica y fácil ante los problemas cotidianos. Nada es tan dramático.

-Yo diría que sos un tipo muy particular de persona feliz, entonces.

-Quizá tengas razón, sí.

-De todas formas, no veo cómo un "problema cotidiano" puede afectar a alguien al punto del suicidio...

-¡No! No al punto del suicidio. Sólo digo que a la gente como yo no le da miedo pensar en eso. Y cuando hay una pila de platos para lavar, el dulce anhelo del descanso eterno es una imagen innegablemente dulce.

Los autos marcaban patrones imperceptibles. Rojo, azul, azul, rojo, gris, celeste, gris, azul. Alguien, en ese mismo momento, en otra esquina del universo, estaba inventando una máquina que generaba automáticamente fórmulas determinando la series generada por los colores de los autos transitantes un miércoles a la mañana.

-¿Qué fue lo que pasó? ¿Qué te hizo pensar en la muerte hoy?

-Nada, sólo salí a tomar aire.

-Jaja... Vamos, Miranda. No creo que sea el momento más adecuado para ese tipo de chistes.

-Bueno, si de verdad querés saber, fue el aceite.

-¿El aceite?

-Sí. Quería hacer papas fritas. Pelé las papas, las corté. Exactamente siete centímetros y medio de largo por dos de alto por uno coma siete de profundidad; ochenta y cinco papas. Cuando las quise hacer, me di cuenta que no había aceite.

Rodolfo sonrió. Era verdad que eran el uno para el otro.

-Adiviná de dónde vengo.

-¿De dónde? -preguntó Miranda ya apunto de saltar.

-Del súper -dijo Rodolfo. Miranda soltó una carcajada.

Se tomaron de las manos y abandonaron la cornisa por la ventana detrás de la cual los esperaba su viejo y querido departamento. En el suelo, junto a la puerta que Rodolfo había dejado abierta en el apuro de salvar a Miranda de saltar del séptimo piso, estaban las bolsas del súper, donde dos grandes botellas de aceite mezcla sobresalían con esplendor.

-Nadie me entiende como vos -dije Miranda abrazando el aceite.