Mi Casa

First, a little about where I am living.

The street is called Valverde. From one end, the end from which I took the picture, it is quite lovely. The other end, however, is peppered with sex shops selling “love toys,” as advertised from the outside (among other things, no doubt). Also, there are a number of prostitutes on that end of the street. When I say “a number”, the number I see is along the order of 15 or 20.

[I would like to point out that this is really my first “experience” with prostitutes. I’ve seen one or two women that I’ve suspected of being prostitutes in Paris, and one or two “confirmed” prostitutes in Nantes. But needless to say, I never saw throngs of them, never up close and never every day. Any previous knowledge I had about prostitutes came from Hollywood movies. So I was shocked to find that they don’t all dress particularly provocatively, they don’t all wear a lot of make up, and the greater majority of them on my street stand in doorways mindlessly cracking open pumpkin seeds with their front teeth (chucking the casings on the pavement) and drinking fruit juice. Jackets, flip flops, pumpkin seeds and fruit juice? This isn’t at all what I had pictured]

The apartment itself is really like an upscale dorm—there are eight of us who live here, all in our 20’s. Each person has their own private bedroom, but we share a lounge area, kitchen and three full bathrooms. The entire place is immaculately clean, white and quiet. The décor is very VERY minimalist—there is little furniture and little decoration, and everything is white. The entire place is situated along one long narrow hallway, the lounge in the front, the rooms in the middle and the kitchen and bathroom at the end. The hallway has high white ceilings, halogen light, white walls, white wood floor. All of the sounds echo and resonate through this space, so everyone has taken to stepping lightly and to speaking in hushed tones. In fact, one of the girls here says that no one should stay more than two months in this apartment because it so resembles a mental institution that you will necessarily lose your mind to fit in to the surroundings. I don’t know if I necessarily agree, since I happen to love clean, quiet spaces. I won’t find out, of course, since I’ll be leaving after two months.

My immediate neighbor is quite peculiar. It seems he is Swedish and has been here since October. Perhaps he has gone mad months ago. No one knows what his name is. When I say “no one,” I am referring to a Mexican girl (Regina) and a Venezuelan girl (Maria) who are the two residents I am friendly with, and the only two who are very social. There used to be a beautiful Italian guy called Franco, who was social, but he’s gone back to Italy. He didn’t know the Swedish man’s name, either. General consensus is that he is very odd, our Swede. For one thing, he must have every season of Married With Children on DVD box set—before work in the morning, he watches an episode, and as soon as he comes home at night from work, I hear him nearly running down the hallway, fumbling with his keys, and turning it on the second he gets in the door. “love and marriage love and marriage…” The first few days I was here, when I wasn’t going out very much, I toyed with the notion that perhaps that was his cell phone ring since I heard it so often. But one evening while I was trying to sleep, I noticed that it came, in fact, about every 40 minutes and that he never spoke afterwards. And so in this way I ruled out the cell phone theory. He presumably watches the show all evening long, until about midnight, only breaking to make himself some dinner (as every time I come in or go out I hear the theme song or Al Bundy). Another, and final, detail about him: he eats microwaveable meatballs every night.

The room to the left of me is occupied by an Indian man from England (judging by his accent that I hear through the wall), whom I’ve seen only once. But I hear him most nights talking to his girlfriend over the internet (she’s in medical school in London and wants to drop out), and watching Bollywood movies.

Next to him is a young Mexican girl, according to Regina from a very small town, who spends the entire weekend making (and subsequently eating) corn tortillas from scratch with eggs and green chile sauce.

It’s quite an interesting bunch…