A new favorite town (Malpica, Spain)

(I wrote this last night but have internet this morning. I was just at the docks -- the night boats didn't come in! They went to La Corunha instead. Now I will go look for percebeiros along the coast!)

Oh woe! Morpheus has forsaken me! The past few nights have been somewhat sleepless (or somewhat semi-sleepless, which is even more frustrating -- lying in bed in the wee hours and drifting into and out of conscious thought processes, most of which culminate in: "Irene! You need to go to sleep!"), and tonight the wakefulness continues. Agony! I must suffer more than anyone I know. (I just finished reading "Middlemarch" -- I'm channeling Rosamond.) But don't worry -- I've decided to fight back by staying fully conscious and writing in my blog! I know. It is a pretty great idea.

I'm incredibly happy to be where I am right now! During most of this trip, my "favorite town so far" has always been the one I find myself in, for obvious reasons (I'm closest to my most recent good-hearted acquaintances). However, my stay in Camarinhas wasn't as pleasant as I had hoped it would be. I can think of several reasons for this:

1) The port was devoid of relaxed old men standing around holding fishing poles and shouting things at each other. In fact, the port was mostly "empty" when I tried to hang around and make friends. I put the word "empty" in quotation marks because there were people -- secretaries and port authority officers behind desks in the buildings, and, at the auction in the late morning, a small group of women and men who were selling their clams -- but very few of them seemed interested in answering any of my questions. Since the fishing takes place mostly at night, I only first met fishermen on Monday evening, and even then it was just one crew (an extremely friendly crew, though!). (Side note: My theory about the lack of old fisherman community is that, since the port is fairly new, and sardine fishing fairly boat-contained, retired fishermen don't have docks to go "back" to, nor are their services sought out by working fishermen.)

As I had already planned to leave on Tuesday morning (and I was a little bit desperate to), I ended up feeling that my visit to Camarinhas was largely unproductive. Positive Irene would say, "No! You did get a sense of the place! You thought a lot!" But Irene Who Worries About Squandering this Opportunity, who can talk at least six times louder inside my head (she has learned to project), would lock Positive Irene in a closet.

2) I felt a lot like a tourist after having spent the first two days hiking along the coast and walking through town wearing my conspicuous adventure backpack, Fabio, and I think that people already saw me as one of the many landscape-admiring passers-through by the time I started loitering (first at the docks, then in other social spots).

3) One homophobic remark, directed at a man whose long hair was gathered into a pony tail. It wasn't particularly hateful (as far as such things go), but it was completely unnecessary (as all such things are), and it ruined for me what would have otherwise been a nice meeting with a nice group of nice old men -- it turned into a disappointing meeting with a suspect group of prejudiced old men.

During the weekend I had noticed this (adjective-free) group of men sitting on some benches under the ceiling of an unfinished building along the main street, and had decided to sit on one of the benches early on Monday afternoon to chat up the first ones to arrive. My plan worked! Francisco was the first to show up, and he sat next to me and told me about his life in Camarinhas -- he had been a farmer, and now that he was retired and had little else to do, he spent every afternoon sitting on these benches with a group of men he'd known since childhood. They'd been at these benches for three years; for thirteen years before that, they met at a road crossing near a soccer field a ways up the hill. He had five children, nine grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, to which Manuel, the next man to arrive, said, "Now you can die happy!" Manuel had been a fishermen and a farmer, and had spent some years working in construction in Switzerland -- he occasionally rubbed my head like it was a dog, and he told me what kind of man I wanted for a husband (thank you, Manuel). He was also the man who made the homophobic remark; and shortly after he made it, I said, "Well I'm going to go take a nap!" and left.

I think that I reacted strongly (in my head) because I have been feeling the pressure of heteronormativity since arriving to Galicia. Especially in the small towns that I've been visiting, there are no signs of queerness anywhere, and I've been hit on by many men under the age of forty and given love advice by many men and women over the age of forty -- all of whom assume that I am interested in men! (I'm not!) I know that this is Most of the World, and that I'd have this shock going from my Pomona bubble to just about anywhere else -- but I'm having it here.

4) PMS. Really. Starting to cry a few seconds after turning on the news should have tipped me off. This, combined with NO CHOCOLATE FOR TWO DAYS (a lot of Nutella, but that doesn't count), probably threw all of the chemicals in my body out of whack and may also be responsible for my entire "mood" regarding Camarinhas -- maybe I was just seeing things through PMS-tinted glasses!

5) Anxiety regarding my living situation in Mexico. Where will I live? How much will it cost? Shouldn't I know this by now?! (This last question is the killer.)

Goodness! So far this entire entry has been a complaint! You'll be relieved to discover that I'm in an infinitely better mood tonight (even though I know that I'll be groggy tomorrow morning), and that I would only use positive adjectives to describe my first impression of Malpica and my experience here so far. The town is beautiful -- worn down but colorful, with some houses built on the edges of cliffs -- and, by far, the most vertical one I've been in so far. There are narrow alleys everywhere, most steeply inclined, and long flights of stairs serve as shortcuts in some places instead. The port is full of boats and, more importantly, people! At the fish auction today, where I saw several species I'd never seen before, many of these people smiled at me, and some even talked with me! When the fish auction was over, I sat through the entire goose barnacle auction (highest price 74 Euros/kilo, lowest 14.25/kilo), and a woman who was chewing on them raw noticed me looking at her and gave me one to try! The point of all of these exclamation points is: human contact! The point is not: raw goose barnacle. That may well be my only sample of goose barnacles, cooked or uncooked, since they are prohibitively expensive both ways, and I'd be fine without seconds. I do hope, however, to see people collecting them along the coast. Low tide is at 11:00 tomorrow morning, and I was told that if I start walking west at 9:30 am, I am bound to come across some percebeiros. That is my morning plan!

My living situation is also ideal. I'm staying in a comfortable room above a restaurant in Seaia, which was probably once its own town but is now an extension of Malpica. It takes me about twenty minutes to walk to the port (downhill) and thirty minutes to walk back (uphill!), which is great! A disincentive to take an afternoon nap! And a reason to spend many an uninterrupted hour at the docks.

Now I just have to fall asleep. Morpheus!