Emiliano Mancilla

I was feeling wonderful, I was even feeling kind of pretty since it was the first day I felt I didn’t have my post-wisdom-teeth-hamster-face. I took some “stories for the gram”, showing my peaceful face in the middle of the ocean followed by a view of the buildings, and went back with Julia who didn’t join me because she forgot extra underwear and the wet swim suit would wet her dress in specific areas, exposing her once we were going home. 

She had this tendency of making her ballerina stretches at any time, any place, and there was one in particular that made me feel weird, not sure if it gave me the shivers but definitely made feel uncomfortable, where she would point her feet side to side, and stretch her ankles forming this kind of oval with her legs. 

“Ahh when you make that kind of stretching it looks as if you had crab’s claws instead of legs” I said

“What are you talking about? It’s just a normal stretching, and it feels wonderful”

“Ohhh I’m sure it does, but I just keep imagining Mr. Krabs when I see you doing it” 

“You are weird” 

“Hahaha no I’m not, think about it, look at your feet in that position, it’s like a claw ready to catch its next prey haha”

“No it doesn’t haha, where do you want to eat?” 

“Uff we need to go to Portillo’s, get the famous sandwich and more important, the chocolate cake milkshake afterwards” 

“Okay, but before I want to go to Zara and get new clothes” 

“All right” 

We stood up, went to the pavement, cleaned our feet and legs from the sand, put our shoes and headed to the clothing store. 

“I know I’m not being responsible, I already have too many clothes that I don’t even use, and I’m wasting all my money in clothes that I don’t need” Julia said

“Well, we could go skip the clothing store and go straight to Portillo’s” I replied

“Yeah I should know better…” 

And we went to Zara where she tried everything in the store and bought 2 skirts, 1 dress and 2 tops. 

We went to  Portillo’s afterwards and I got my sandwich and my milkshake, where it took me by surprise how challenging was to put the sandwich in my mouth as my atrophied jaw had been closed for too long, making me try to open my mouth with one hand, and push the food with the other. The milkshake was glorious as always. 

I was staying in a hostel and I had to check in and take my stuff there, so once we finished we agreed to meet in 3 hours. There’s this thing with some big city hostels, that are too big to have the friendship vibes and the warm coexistence, and they just feel like big hotels with shared rooms, and usually not full of travelers but common people minding their own business. And the one I was staying, even though it had a big social area full of pool tables, felt like one of those. Fortunately, I was not looking to make friends there as I already had plans with Julia, so I arrived, took more pills, a 2 hour nap, a shower, and headed to Julia’s place which was 3 massive blocks away from my hostel. 

I was insistent enough in going to a blues bar to convince Julia, I though that as I was now a musician, I needed to be surrounded by as much music as I could. We were going to a bar called “Blue Chicago” which was supposed to be one of the best blues bars from the area. I wanted to have some drinks while I was at the bar, nevertheless the pain started to be so aggressive that I had to take my pills and hope for the best while we were on our way, besides that, it was always beautiful to be on the tram and feel like I was in a Batman movie, as Christopher Nolan used the city to film it, there’s nothing that motivated me as much as The Dark Knight Trilogy. 

Then we got to the station, started walking and in a few minutes we could se this blue neon light pointing at our destination. We paid the cover and got into the tight woody place, asked for a Soda and got this mix of feelings when I was herring the musician play. 

And the thing was that it was so perfect and carefully played that I couldn’t identify the “one thing” that I like the most about music and life, being this, those lapses of uncontrolled potentialized emotions, those peaks ruled by pure instinct that provoke goosebumps, that thing that divide us from computers. And they were so perfect, that made feel a slight dissatisfaction inside the happiness I felt by being in other part of the world with that friend that quitted her finance path to follow her passion, that friend who was my inspiration to do the same.

There were two bands in the line up, the first band was leaded by a guitarist that looked like Dave Mathews, dressed with fancy clothes and a careful hairstyle as if someone was in charge of his public image, who was talented and one of those guys that you can notice they invested lots of time getting the right guitar, amp and effects to reach the “perfect clean tone”. The band also gave those academic vibes, that vibe of professionalism that sometimes make’s the music feel flat. 

The second band was leaded by this energetic chubby black lady in a Captain America costume, who didn’t sing great but sang loud. They seemed to be the default band of the bar, with a guitarist that was in my opinion better than the Dave Matthews fella, he was fat as fuck with big old clothes and a defeated face. The greatest part of each of their songs was when he played a solo. 

I spent the rest of the concert avoiding making eye contact with the lady singer, fearing that she would try to talk to me. Finally we got out and went home. 

It was too late to take the tram, so we walked home, which was nice as we had a lot of things to talk about. Suddenly we found ourselves crossing the river and got caught in the alluring view of the giant buildings while we were in the middle of the bridge, and spent 10 minutes in silence, appreciating the clairvoyant palette of colors emanated by the congregation of night, water and lights. 

“The ineffable” Julia said.