I stood utterly alone in Sants Estación in Barcelona, clutching a handful of condoms, and praying with every ounce of my being to be spontaneously imbued with the ability to disappear.
Sixteen years of life had not prepared me for the sight of my ninety-pound mother trotting away, having bid me farewell to the disconcerting tune of, “Be safe!” I thought I had bargained for this experience: I sweated through July lines in the non-air-conditioned Spanish embassy, painstakingly explained to the Connecticut police that a parking ticket would not delay my visa, and packed four hundred pounds of my life into luggage sure to bring down the plane. For the first time, my ceaseless confidence was shaken to its core. I stared desperately at signs in Catalan, trying to recall anything at all from my two rather drunken months spent in Barcelona when I was fifteen, and, quite understandably, failed since none of them read, “Un chupito de tequila!” Petrified of what lay ahead I began to seriously wonder if I was insane—I had chosen to leave the high school I loved, move across the Atlantic Ocean alone, and willingly subject myself to a school of sixty over-privileged teenagers set loose upon Zaragoza, where female mullets and male capri pants are obligatory.
A seeming eternity later I took my first tentative steps in my new country and was promptly mowed down, and later disillusioned, by an angry businessman and his rolling suitcase. His gaze turned from apologetic to confused as his eyes settled on my unorthodox parting gift. As his now lecherous eyes rose, almost high enough to afford him some mercy, I narrowed my own and mustered all the dignity my mother had left me when she stuck five condoms in my hand to eloquently spit, “No Gracias!” I stomped away, filled with a fiery new conviction. Convinced that my journey had begun as successfully as possible, the only question that remained as I boarded my train was, “Why five?”
I spent the age of seventeen living in Zaragoza, as much a Spaniard as a white blonde girl from the suburbs could hope to be in a city of tan and dark-haired people. Zaragoza taught me many things both about the world and about myself—and those five condoms became a sort of monument to the lessons I learned. After all, they were technically a gift from my mom…because that’s not creepy or anything.
Condom number one: El Rollo. For the first few weeks, Zaragoza perplexed me with its smells, its stares, its unending supply of jamón, and its dirty, dirty clubs. This was the period of my life during that year that was somewhat analogous to puberty: a little bit ugly, supremely awkward, and grappling for sure footing in a new world. I think because we sixty Americans inundated the six or seven dirty clubs of El Rollo in the beginning, it was hard to see through the smoke and tequila that the “sandy bar” was covered with sawdust to mask the vomit, and the “hot Spanish men” were actually fifteen-year-old boys whom we were, technically speaking, raping. Well, that trend got old and inappropriate fast, and we allowed El Rollo to return to catering to its pre-teen clientele, picking up the scraps of our dignity as we stumbled away.
Condom number two: Miguel. Let’s just say that Miguel did not find me in El Rollo- I had struggled through my Spanish puberty and emerged unscarred. Miguel was never “that guy” for me—he was never someone I was going to go back to again and again, never someone who ever had my whole heart—but he was an Armani model, he was in law school, and he was supremely charming. When I met Miguel I had finally made real Spanish friends, the kind you call on Tuesday for coffee. When I met Miguel, I met his hips. Not because I was sitting or we were dancing, but because he was about five thousand meters tall (translation: 6’2”). Until recently I never believed that Miguel taught me anything very important: he didn’t make me fall in love, he didn’t break my heart—but he did teach me something. He taught me how to enjoy everything slowly, be it the beauty of the old part of the city, the best portabello mushrooms on a stick I’ve ever tasted, or a futbol game in Madrid. Condom number two is a memorial to Miguel because he neither took nor destroyed my heart- he simply led me along, and there is a lot to be said for that. And he was a hot, hot Spanish man.
Condom number three: La Zona. I believe that, in some way, La Zona led me to Sarah Lawrence. The night before the S.A.T. I wasn’t locked up in my room, I was dancing on a bar in “Moda” to techno-pop, and loving every minute of it. That night my study guide was draped with my bra and the one earring that made it home, and I sold my friend (in the form of English lessons) for a glass of tequila. The next morning, I spent five lovely hours bubbling. The point here is not that I did poorly on the S.A.T. because I was a stupid American teenager (I actually did well)—but more importantly, I realized that I simply could not dedicate myself to some place that valued my bubbling skills over my enthusiasm to take every experience and run with it (to put clubbing in the most flattering terms). I’m not sure if I found Sarah Lawrence or if it found me, but in Moda, glass of tequila in hand, I realized that life was about more than tests.
Condom number four: the naked French soccer team. When you become part of someone else’s family you gain an enormous sense of responsibility—all of a sudden you feel obligated to be a better daughter or sister than you ever really were. Then the barriers break down: maybe you have your first fight with your host mother, or steal your host sister’s jeans, but it’s not a real fight—you yell but you never say anything truly hurtful. It’s hard to explain how being 95% of another family feels, but some days it can feel like work. So we got a hotel room—a crash pad, an escape every once in a while. Then there came the French men. Why they were naked? I don’t know. I don’t speak French. But there they were, wet and in towels in our hallway, having appropriated our oasis and turned it into a gauntlet of slightly too old men. The night of the naked soccer playing French men taught me that I was no longer that scared girl standing with a handful of condoms in the train station—I physically kicked four soccer men out of my room that night, and either scared or insulted the rest of them back into their rooms. Did they think I was a psycho American? Most likely. Does it matter? Not really. Thank you, wet rowdy French soccer men, for showing me how much stronger I had become since that first day in the train station, along with some not-to-be-mentioned body parts whose images I have left, for the better, in that hotel.
Condom number five: leaving Zaragoza nine months later. There were some points during that year when I would have willingly bid farewell to the cold weather, the zealously religious and impeccably neat host father, the constant shouts of “chúpame guapa!” (suck me beautiful!) at inappropriate times (…I’m sorry, is there ever an appropriate time?). But when it came down to it, suddenly I was again left paralyzed. This time I sobbed, I clung to my sometimes blonde, sometimes purple-haired host mother, I blubbered all over my host father, and I found myself entirely incapable of boarding the bus which would send me on my way back to the United States. Nine months ago I had been paralyzed by fear of the unknown, but this time as I remained unable to move I found myself an entirely changed person. It didn’t happen in school, or in a club—it happened in between, almost without my notice. I tried to absorb everything all over again, to relive my year in ten minutes, to find some tangible evidence of my experience. But at three in the morning, at the end of my experience, all I had left to physically hold on to were those five condoms. “Be safe,” she had said, but I didn’t listen—I lived.