The Tourist
Four days in Barcelona
If you walk to the base of Montjuic - a hill overlooking the city of Barcelona - and pay 10 euro to a young, officious woman in a glass booth, you can take a cable car all the way up to the summit. From the top, you can look northwards to the Sagrada Familia, a church that has been under construction since 1882 and is due to be finished in two years’ time. It is one of the tallest buildings in the city and looms more like a piece of displaced ocean coral than a cathedral. Turn around, and you can enter the Castell de Montjuic, where the first president of Catalonia was shot by fascists. In the perfectly square cobbled courtyard of this fortress, all you can see are the brick walls around you and the perfectly blue sky above you. You could be anywhere in the world. It is here that you learn how to be a tourist.
For my part, I have come here for the same reason as most tourists: to temporarily escape my own life. The perfect square of blue sky above the Castell de Montjuic courtyard is unbearable. I do not want to be anywhere in the world, I want to be somewhere that is not home. I walk briskly back outside to my friend, who is looking over the castle walls at the industrial docks that sprawl southwards, seemingly forever. I try to tell him about the courtyard and the patch of blue sky and its anywhereness but I can’t put it into words. He points out a cruise liner sitting in the harbour and the thought of a cruise makes me feel ill - nothing but blue sky and blue sea with nothing to ground you, day after day, and you lose yourself.
No, I want to be grounded - there is a sensuality to being present in a place, especially as a tourist who is here to try a different life like putting on new clothes. This sensuality finds a home in the streets of Barcelona’s old Gothic Quarter, with its narrow winding streets and tall, imposing apartment buildings. Laundry hangs out to dry from balconies, white sheets blowing like sails, and music plays from somewhere a few streets away. If you do not know your way, it is easy to get lost. Perhaps half of the shops are for tourists, selling t-shirts printed with I <3 BARCELONA or, inexplicably, I <3 MILFs, while the other shops and cafes retain their primary market of local residents. These shops sell artisan goods and local food, and, in one, I am bought a hot chocolate with an iceberg of clotted cream floating on top. In London, I would say this is too sweet but in my new life as a tourist, I drink it until my stomach hurts, saying to myself like a prayer: God, I love sugar.
Later, I say another prayer to myself. This time it’s God, I love sex. I’m touching a man’s skin like he’s the first man I’ve ever touched, like he’s a marble statue I’m bringing to life with my hands. In London, sex has been difficult lately - a car-crash of unfortunate events has led to a fear of intimacy. Here, though, I am the tourist and I want intimacy like the desert wants water. My thoughts are all metaphors when this man touches me and I’m driven half-mad, writhing under him like a snake grabbed by the neck or someone being exorcised. He calls me a slut and I think yes, I am, and it’s wonderful, and I wish I was always this way, and I wish I could always be under you, and always a tourist. When we are finished, I fold his clothes and make him a cup of tea. The kettle boils and I remember that I fly home tomorrow.
Landing back in London feels like a little death, regardless of the fact that my life here is generally enjoyable. This is the grief of the tourist, who has temporarily lived a different life and now must mourn its end, and who must return to themselves like a dog with its tail between its legs. The blue square of sky above Castell de Montjuic exists in a different world than the grey skies of London, as do the winding streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. Their sensuality lingers, however, like the sunlight seeped into my bones while I wasn’t looking. It is important to hold onto this, I believe, and it is important to hold on to who we are when we are elsewhere. Between these two states, it is briefly possible to see everything you could be.
Looking at Porn is written around my full time job. I hope you enjoy it. You can follow my Instagram here and you can email me at robinccraig@gmail.com if you like. I recently(ish) wrote a piece for Vittles on the role of food at the end of life, which you can read here.