On an unusually fine and sunny summer afternoon for Sitka, Alaska I decided to go into the bar due to what I determined to be a lack of a better option. A whole hour early. Eagles made their dolphin sounds unseen in the trees and a light breeze wrapped me up like a blanket and the mountains shone so gloriously I squinted through my sunglasses as I walked through the open door of the Pioneer Bar.
It was dim. Ahhh! And quiet–save for the lower tones of Ray Wylie Hubbard on the juke. Black and white photographs of old fishing boats adorned every inch of the walls. I sat at the bar two or three seats down from a group of guys and asked the old bartender for a lager.
“Thanks, Rita,” I mumbled when she put the beer down in front of me.
“Yeeeuuuuur wulcome.” That’s how she always said it. Like a creaky wooden door and a croaking frog.
I recognized those guys down the bar. Local middle aged tenuously employed fishermen who lived like single high schoolers and beat up their girlfriends when nobody at the bars had the heart to fight them.
What were they talking about?
Two of them were shaking their heads and looking away and giggling.
“I’m tellin’ ya, that’s where they start. Always. They got underwater footage. I seen it. When they start eatin’ dead bodies and shit. Cause’ fish’ll do that, ya know.” John was looking around with dark eyes like a devil-turned pastor.
“Yer bullshittin us John.”
“Underwater footage,” he nodded with severity. “They go for the butthole.”
It’s almost like he thinks he’s Quint from Jaws, I thought.
“Now what in the hell are you guys talkin’ about?” Rita and I, it seemed, were somehow joined telepathically. I was starting to think she might be in my head.
John remained hunched over the bar as he looked up at her squarely and said with that grave, sermonic look still on his face, “that’s what happens when fish eat ya, they always start with the butthole.”
Rita was not shocked and peered over her glasses and into his eyes for a long while. She appeared stoic but inquisitive. “Well, that settles it, I think yer cut off, John.” The gray had almost completely overtaken the red in her frizzy ponytail, but it swung brilliantly over her shoulder as she turned and strutted down to the other end of the bar like an ancient cowgirl. No matter how hard she’d been knocked around, she was beautiful right then and there and I could have kissed her.
“Awww…Rita…come on…Rita…I didn’t even do anything…”
She turned back from down the bar and pointed at him and with her own tone of religious solemnity growled, “John, I don’t wanna hear it.”
The somberness that then descended upon those guys allowed me a minute of silence to reflect. First of all, what was Rita doing in my head? I looked at her suspiciously. Can you hear me, Rita? No. I’m just being paranoid and weird. But I thought I had come to the bar to do something important. I’m a whole hour early for my date and I thought I came here to clear the weed out of my head with some beer and think about some things. Oh yes, that’s right. You dummy. Can’t even keep a straight line of thought anymore. It was that movie.
Before Sunrise. Been thinking about it since the other night. Such a simple love story. The whole plot exists in the span of maybe twelve hours. All it is is two people meeting on a train and walking together all night around Vienna and talking to each other and falling in love. When I first watched it I thought it couldn’t have been more perfect. It was difficult to determine why the connection between the characters, Jessie and Celine, felt so real. But it did. Either from the starry eyed idealism in Linklater’s conversation writing or from the genuine flirtation that comes through in Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s performances. It is so overwhelmingly romantic. And of course I’m a sucker for a good love story. But there was another reason I liked it so much.
When I first saw the movie, it hadn’t occurred to me at all. But the other night when I watched it again, during that scene at the end in the train station when they’re hugging goodbye and all out of breath with grief, I remembered. How could I have ever forgotten? I had had such a similar moment in Spain.
What was her name? I think it was Malgo. That’s it. Malgo. At the train station in Cadiz, me leaving her behind to return home and her continuing on her travels.
We even made the same kind of promise that Jessie and Celine make in the movie. “Let’s meet back here a year from now and we can travel together.” It was my idea.
“Really? Are you sure you want to see me again?
“Yeah of course,” I kissed her. “I’ll go home and save up money and next year we’ll meet back here in Cadiz and we’ll go all around Spain.” I wanted to see her again.
“Ok.” It was almost a whisper, then she took a deep breath as though she wereabout to duck her head underwater. “Ok! Next year for carnival!” She kissed me hard. She pressed against me. She liked me. She wanted to see me again. We would meet back there next year.
But of course we didn’t. And I don’t think I ever really meant to. Not even at that moment. That’s what got me thinking when I watched Before Sunrise again the other night. I remembered how when I separated myself from her and got on that train, I sat down and opened a book and sighed with relief. Alone at last!
In the movie they get on their trains and are shown staring out their windows with dreamy delusional expressions as though they’re both reliving every minute they had shared together. But when I sat down I didn’t think about Malgo at all. Other than that it was really nice to finally get away from her. God, I sound like an asshole. I did like her. I did. Really. She was sweet and smart and cute. And she liked me. She liked me. She liked me for no other reason than thats who I was. But we had been together for almost two full days and frankly it had become exhausting. I needed air, man! That’s what I told myself. But look at yourself you heartless dickhead. You needed some air from that sullen attitude is what you really needed. That girl was great. Don’t you remember? I know you saw her. The way she looked at you with those sparkling big grey eyes outside the old Roman auditorium and played with the little curls in your hair. And what did you do? What did you do? You sat there frozen, annoyed, you hoped that if you ignored her long enough she might stop touching your hair. You were trying to talk with that fellow from Belfast about Korean dramas and her displays of affection were embarrassing you. Isn’t that right?
It was right. But I can’t remember why I had felt that way. The way I had acted it may as well have been some old lady who was playing with my hair. Leave me alone, I’m talking to my friends! That’s what I had wanted to tell her. Like she was my mother. And I was a child. I wish I could go back to that moment and shake some sense into myself. And ask myself why. Why are you acting this way? You are not a child, that is not some strange old lady: you are a young man, and that is a beautiful big breasted Polish girl. She loves you. Can’t you see that?
Grey eyes with little bits of fallen stars in them and tiny pointillist freckles and short strawberry blonde hair. Little upturned nose. Dandelion dress. That’s what I remember about her now.
I was drunk when I met Malgo the two nights prior. She came up to our table on the rooftop of the hostel with snacks and a bottle of wine. She may as well have danced or floated up to us. This fairy queen with wine and strawberries. We had known we would need more wine soon, but we hadn’t known we needed the strawberries. For that we worshiped her immediately. And we laid on the roof in the bright yellow Spanish sun together like satyrs. Moroccan hash and delicious two euro wines and those wonderful strawberries.
She was next to me from the moment she arrived smoking her cigarettes with the kind of dainty innocence that the anti-tobacco campaign long ago drained out of the U.S. There was no sense of rebellion in it for her. No outcast eyes or dirtbag pride. She smoked cigarettes the way girls from America who don’t smoke might eat a piece of cotton candy. Pure childish delight. I really liked that. Girls who smoked were hot, obviously. But the girls I knew who smoked were pretty rough around the edges. They could be bad tempered and at times combative. Unpredictable. They were Angelina Jolie in Girl, Interrupted and she was Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
We got on right away. Though I don’t quite remember why. Actually, I can’t remember a single thing we talked about that first night now except for showing her where I lived on a big map hanging on the wall. I don’t know if she showed me where her place was. But I don’t think she did.
Anyway, we stayed up late talking about whatever it was we talked about until everybody except some guy from New York who was probably twenty years older than us had gone to bed. He was interested in watching a movie too, he had replied when she suggested that we watch something. He had been very nice to me, but I recall glaring at him with a horrible, primitive malice.
“Is it okay if we watch La La Land? I was in Canary Islands with no wifi when it came out and I have been really wanting to see.” The way she asked was so cute and imploring. I had no choice but to concede. And I didn’t really care much right then about watching a movie anyway.
I must have said something like “sure, I LOVE musicals,” because I remember a kind of enthusiasm in the air when we were pulling it up.
The older guy from New York figured out soon enough what was going on and he put himself to bed. I was thankful for that. Even more so that Malgo and I didn’t even make it to the first singing scene before we started kissing. Then we didn’t watch any more of the movie. We used it as background noise and let things move along naturally there on the couch in the hostel until we realized that neither of us had a condom and it was too late to buy them anywhere. At which point she brought me into the bathroom just beside the couch and took off her clothes and took mine off me and lowered herself to her knees and began to perform what would be the greatest blowjob of my life. It sure felt like I loved her then, with a fistful of her hair in my hand and her tits against my knees and those charcoal eyes looking up into mine as she daintily and innocently swallowed the full length of my penis.
What a beautiful, perfect night. We ended it by kissing silent goodnights and getting into our own beds in the same ten-bed-mixed-dorm room. It must have been one of the best nights of sleep I’d ever had.
I don’t remember the exact point at which she began to bug me. I just remember that she did. We would amble the streets and laze on the beach and drink calimocho in the bars with our new friends from the hostel. We were inseparable from that first night on until I got on my train two nights later. I felt massively inhibited. It was like I couldn’t be myself, and I was supposed to be myself wasn’t I? Wasn’t that the whole reason I was traveling alone? Suddenly I didn’t have the option to get up and leave whenever I wanted to. And do my own thing. My own thing. No more emergency eject button. Even if I didn’t need it, losing that option felt horribly restrictive. It was causing me massive anxiety the entire time. I was riddled with fear. Fear. And anger. You only have two days left in Spain. You were going to go to that little village a couple hours away. Why are you with this Polish girl anyway you dumb alkie? You pathetic disgusting drunk. Go ahead, raise your ragged flag. Beat your chest and bear it to the wind and howl that this is who you are and must be. You don’t even remember half the things you talked about with her. Do you remember any of it? What kind of music she likes? Like the songs she can't help but sing along with or doesn’t know when she’s humming them. What about what she likes to do when she’s all alone? Or what drives her crazy? What drives her crazy. She was driving me crazy. She kept touching me. Gross! And she was more interested in saving the world from climate change than in seeing it. SO self-righteous. Who the hell’s too good to take a damn airplane. You allowed her to corner you because you were drunk and vulnerable, that’s why this happened. You fell on your own sword again, old boy. You’re stuck with her. Now you’ll never make it to the magical white city in the hills.
I didn’t make it. Because Malgo refused even to get on the bus. “What is it to dedicate your life to something you know from the start you can never have?” Thus began my merciless interrogation into her most sacred personal ideology. “How can you limit your own experience to try to save something the rest of the world has already condemned?” She just couldn't take a bus to the white city, she said, it didn’t matter how serene it was or how exceptional the culture and the food were supposed to be. She had taken a philosophical stance against fossil fuel transportation. It never occurred to me to ask her how she had managed the trip from Poland to Spain without the luxury of oil. “It’s already fucked though. It’s over. Dead. Or at least dying. The world doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter if you do. They’re bigger than you. They eat you. And drink your milkshake. If you really cared about the world wouldn’t you want to see as much of it as possible before everything either dies off or gets paved over or bought up by the Californians?”
She hadn’t wanted to answer. She said I wouldn’t understand where she was coming from even if she did. It didn’t seem at the time like she was mad or annoyed or anything. Just real quiet.
All in all, I think I kept it together mostly. And I think I was an asshole in my head more than anything else. Because we still had a good time together for the most part; two amazing nights of debaucherous drinking and desecrating hostel bathrooms; two hungover mornings on the beach in the sun; two afternoons full of beer and tapas and Spanish guitars. And the final romantic goodbye in the train station. Seems perfect, right?
But the fact of the matter is that I didn’t want to be with her. I had to fake it. That’s the important thing.
In Before Sunrise they walk together through their cobblestone streets, sit on their balconies and in their parks, with their own cloyingly naive conversations, and their own grand and beautiful “so long.” Just like Malgo and I had done. But they meant it. They were genuine and earnest and looked right at each other and didn’t want to be anywhere else. They were outside time. In the farther reaches out there somewhere where only the two of them can say how long its been, or how to get back. Where the laws of physics and Albert Einstein never had any authority in the first place and love and death and music and the stars mix alchemically into something we don’t know or understand. We can only observe that it does exist, and recognize that something happens to us there.
They were outside time, and I was in it. Now and certainly when I had been with Malgo. Ah Malgo? How can I ever tell you that I’m sorry now, when we’re worlds and years apart? I hope you didn’t think I was horrible. It sure didn’t seem like you did then. At least I don’t remember it that way. And that could be my problem. I used to think that as time went on I’d forget things and that what remained would be clear and permanent and when I got old I’d have this one straight track I could look down and see all the places I went and the things I did and the people I met along the way. I wouldn’t forget the parts that really mattered. But it doesn’t work like that, Malgo, does it? I bet you always knew and just kept it a secret. I wish you’d told me. That details fade in and out and grow in proportion and shift in contour. In my mind now you were perfect. You loved me. I didn’t deserve you. But maybe I did. Maybe you hated me then the way I hated you and you skipped off away from the train station to buy more wine and strawberries and give your glorious mouth to somebody else and you never thought about me ever again.
It terrifies me to think about it. That I might have forgotten the most important details. Or altered them irreparably. And what if you did too? If we both forget the way it actually was when we were together, where does the truth go? If it’s lost, are we liars? I wonder sometimes if somewhere deep in my brain, somewhere I don’t have any conscious access, there might be a kind of reservoir, or maybe just a cardboard box–like a lost and found–, where all the important truths that have ever been erased or modified by the defects of my memory remain in their unaltered original state. I wish I could know what that place would look like.
But do you think I’d still be me if I did? Maybe the only reason I am who I am is because of those little memory imperfections. I think everything I know and everything I think I am is probably based on them. If I saw the way all my memories had really happened would it destroy me? Would I realize that all I’d ever known and ever been was a lie? Or would I just be slightly off? Insubstantially. That would be a relief. To find that I’d been pretty close most of the time. That would be good enough for me.
Anyway, Malgo, this is the sort of thing remembering you makes me think about, and I think it calls for another drink. You wouldn’t want me to be all melancholy and pensive like this on my date would you? You know how much fun that is. So I’d better pep up a little before I act all Woody Allen type sulky in front of another nice pretty girl who for some reason agreed to meet me for a drink.
This is supposed to be the beginning of something great, right here, this date I’m supposed to have. That’s the kind of attitude I should be bringing to the table at least. You have to be Bogart, don’t ever forget that. If there isn’t a smile on your face when you sacrifice yourself, it isn’t much of a sacrifice now is it? It becomes something else. It becomes another misguided mistake. It has to be the beginning of something great.