So Jill isn´t the only feminister in Europe right now. I´m here–on this continent–until December, bumming around and painting. Right now I´m in Madrid, which is absolutely gorgeous. My city began life as a mining town, and burned to the ground one hundred and one years ago, so we don´t have any old buildings. I´ve been doing a great deal of sketching and watercolor, and I´m finally starting to make peace with linear perspective. Sorta. I´m horribly embarrassed not to speak any Spanish, particularly since I´m from California, but people have been remarkably kind. A lot of people in Madrid seem to believe that if they speak a little bit slowly, people will mostly understand them anyway; maybe this is a result of polite nods or maybe it´s because of the other Europeans who just speak their own Romance languages in the hopes of being understood in Spain. They´re not altogether wrong. I´ve also noticed that few tourists even bother to say Hola and Gracias, so I´ve got a very low bar to hop over.
I get a lot of compliments, too. I get to be part of what makes Madrid so picturesque. Sometimes people even snap photos, like with the living statues. (This is flattering and annoying at the same time. Shouldn´t they toss me some change?) My first day in Placa Mayor (I don´t know this person, but these pictures are just right; here´s a picture of a painting by a bad painter who does enormous picasso-esque oils and talked to me yesterday evening for a few minutes about his personal philosophy of art, I think), this little brother and sister came up and watched me work. She tried to help me out by dipping some found kleenex into my water jar, and he kept up an excited running commentary: “Look, you´re painting! You´re painting the tower! That one! No, that one! That´s water! Lots of colors! So many colors! That´s orange! You´re using orange! Now you´re using red!” etc. And then a little toddler who was chasing the pigeons ran right up to me and gave me a big hug and a really sloppy kiss and shouted at me with joy. (Children travelling might be my favorite part of Europe. There was a little boy with his parents on the train to Saxa Rubra from Rome one afternoon. He was cranky and they kept trying to cheer him up by getting him to say hello to every one in Italian: “Jiao! (Sniffle) Jiao! Jiao! JIAO!”)
But later that same day, this guy–maybe my age, not much older–wouldn´t leave me alone. I was sitting on the cobbles in front of the clocktowers, trying to figure out how to paint the mosaics. Behind me was a tall lamppost–Madrid has a great talent for lighting up its landmarks at night–and he was sitting on the bench underneath. I was absorbed, really. I have no idea how long he was watching me. The square was bright and full of people. He called out to me, and I think he meant to say, “What´s happening?” but it came out, “What happen?” and I thought, Does he think I need help? Whatever. I will ignore him. He didn´t say anything else. Half an hour later, when I´d forgotten about him completely, he came back and set an open beer and a new bottle of water down in front of me and said, “Hola.” Ah! I thought. He´s hitting on me.
So I said, “Do you speak English?”
“Little, a little.”
“Okay! Go away. Leave me alone. I don´t want to talk to you. I don´t want anything to do with you. Go away.”
And he made pat-pat motions and said, “Sorry, sorry,” but then he sat down next to me.
And so I said, “Go away.”
But he didn´t. He kept talking to me for two solid hours, as the shadows climbed up the courtyard walls and the sky turned pale and then blue again and finally indigo. I can´t speak Spanish, but I speak and understand some Italian, and I understood most of this. It went something like,
Hey, what´s your name? What´s your name? What is your name? What´s your name what´s your name what´s your name what´s your name? You´re painting, huh? You a painter, an artist? Artist? Are you studying here? You study here? You like Madrid? It´s a beautiful city, huh? Spain is a very beautiful country. I love Spain. Why won´t you talk to me? Why won´t you answer me? Answer me, huh? That´s a very beautiful painting, very beautiful. Have you been painting here for a long time? I´ve seen you painting here all day. You won´t talk to me, huh? You won´t talk to me. Okay. Okay. That´s fine. That´s just fine. You´re tough, huh? Strong, huh? Okay. It´s a competition. You are a very tough woman. You´re very beautiful. You´re a very beautiful woman. Very sexy. Why won´t you talk to me? You won´t talk to me? I brought you beer. You like beer? You don´t like beer? That´s a very beautiful painting. Stop. Stop there. Stop now. It´s finished, it´s enough. It´s finished. This is a very nice painting too. Very realistic. It´s that one right there, right? That tower? You did the paintings, the murals, you know what murals are? Why won´t you talk to me? What is your name, huh? What is your name? Where are you from? Are you American? English? Irish? Where are you from? You´re a very tough woman. Why won´t you talk to me? It´s not very nice. You´re really a bitch, you know? You don´t like me? Fine, it´s fine. It´s nice to sit here with you. It´s nice to watch you paint. You won´t talk to me. Fuck! Women! What´s your name, huh? What´s your name? What´s your name? What´s your name?
For two hours, maybe more. How pretty I was, what a bitch I was, how pretty I was. I didn´t say a word to him after telling him to go away. I just sat and painted. He didn`t touch me or shout at me. I told myself that if he did I would hit him. It was a strange combination of mulish fury and fear that kept me sitting there. If I don´t leave, he can´t follow me. And I wanted to finish my painting, which turned out to be one of the best watercolors I´ve ever made. If I don´t leave, he can´t ruin my painting. Of course, there was also the feeling that if I spoke to him, he´d have exactly what he wanted. If I ignore him, he can´t win. I don´t think I even realized how pissed off and scared I was getting. Rendering is meditative. I finished the painting with a last wash, a dark cobalt to bring the building down from the sky, and picked at the details until it had dried. Then I started packing up my stuff. It was a relief, really–I was thinking that if he tried anything I would be able to do something. He started saying, “Take the water. Here, take the water,” and I kept ignoring him. He followed me across the square back towards my archway, and he managed to jab me twice in the shoulder with the bottle before I wheeled around, grabbed it out of his hands, threw it at him (didn´t hit him, unfortunately), and shouted, “Get away from me, you asshole!” As I left, I could hear him in the background groaning, “Fuck! Women!”