Iberia

My bags are packed. I’m ready to go. Well, almost…everything except my shower.

I’m leaving for Barcelona in a few hours. I’m joyfully anticipating seeing friends, walking the streets, drinking the coffee, eating the lovely tapas, enjoying the moderate temperatures, which are forecast to be in the 70s and low 80s. I also intend to practice voyeurism, which is one of the behaviors I had perfected over nearly 25 years of living in New York. Here in the Dakar suburbs, where everyone lives behind walls and no one walks anywhere, I’ve lost the knack for looking like I’m lost in my own daydreams when I am actually eavesdropping on the couple at the adjacent table or the couple that’s fighting in the Sheep’s Meadow where I sunbathe in New York or the family that’s having a major row about what fast food the kids are demanding.

Unlike the other trips that have taken me out of Senegal this summer—one to Amsterdam and one to Warsaw—this one has no purpose but pleasure. I intend to spend time reflecting on the past five months and thinking about my return to New York. I intend to walk and walk and walk. I intend to listen and talk, listen and talk because too many thoughts have been lodged in my head with no outlet. My feelings need to light and air…I think best and understand myself best when I think out loud.

My friends Connie, Alicia and Helle are great listeners and wonderful talkers. We’ve been friends since 1995, when I visited Barcelona on a cruise, and the girls led the nightclub tour of Sitges. I swooned over Connie—and with good reason! She’s absolutely lovely. Pedro Almodovar would cast her in a hot second. With Alicia and Helle, Connie owns Spain’s most respected LGBT bookstore. They have also built a thriving publishing company that has discovered many new LGBT Spanish writers and publishes the old English LGBT standards.

Here we are 15 years later…visits to Barcelona, visits to New York, letters for the first five years, then email, and now Skype calls. It’s been wonderful to experience the evolution of this friendship and I’m delighted that this retreat will be spent in the company of such smart, intuitive and insightful friends.

I also admit that I have mixed feelings this evening. I’m very aware that the next 10 days will pass quickly, and that the three weeks after that—the remaining time that I will share with Seal, Nathalie and Paul—will fly by. In some respects, I think this trip to Barcelona is practice for the last time I leave.