We walked, joking and laughing, stopping to kiss every few steps, our hungry hands pressing the half-moons under our back pockets, Pol’s cock pushing against my lower belly, his tongue dancing, teasing, exploring, a matador’s cape inciting my desire. Everything else fell away like an old theater backdrop that crumbles under the weight of time. Only he remained, and the streets of Barcelona opening up like a flower.

Books, booze, and life bled into each other as we carved rites to honor our heroes. We drank tequila and mezcal while reading Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, the writer’s binges absolving our own benders. We frequented Bar Marsella in Calle San Pablo, the oldest bar in Barcelona, which was rumored to have been a favorite of Picasso. There we sat among bottom-rung prostitutes, semi-indigent old geezers, and a smattering of artists at precariously tilted small tables with round marble tops. We ordered absinthe, the drink par excellence of the decadent nineteenth-century French poets. The elaborate ritual of balancing a flat spoon full of holes on the rim of the glass, placing a sugar cube on top, and pouring water on it from a glass decanter had its own charm. The dissolved sugar pared down the blast of the absinthe, its green color muddying in tandem with our minds. Here we were, brother and sister in arms to Baudelaire, Verlaine, and Rimbaud and, like them, over one hundred years later, walking a city for hours on end, capturing its ragged beauty—if not in written verse, in spoken word. Each author blessed a particular brand of drunkenness.

I adapted to Pol’s routine, forgoing my natural tendency toward early mornings to soak into his long-drawn-out nights. I didn’t care where we went, what we did. Sometimes we met with friends; other times we ran into friends. I followed Pol’s lead in our nightly pilgrimage to bars in the Borne neighborhood, always popping with writers, actors, and musicians standing in front of the counter, talking s**t. I was replacing the Catholic rituals of my childhood with the ceremonies of cultivated barflies.

Sometimes on the way home our kisses escalated to fondling, his hand inside my shirt, inside my pants, on my crotch. Once the urge was so acute that we stepped inside an apartment building’s lobby, tearing our clothes off in the dark, him pressing me against a wall. He was already inside me when the street door opened and a guy yelled, “Get out of here or I’ll call the police!” We pulled up our pants and ran out laughing, eager to get home, where the thrust of his body against mine would end up with a thousand exquisite deaths and a lingering in a space out of thought, out of time, out of place.

I had never felt this way before. I’d felt anticipation, tenderness, excitement, and even some pleasure with previous lovers, but I’d never been able to let myself truly go. Now, with every f***, I got suddenly tossed into a black hole and landed in paradise. Our bodies dissolved into one, and everything righted itself in the world.

Foreplay was poems recited, songs sung, dances danced, laughs shared, driving to Pol’s kisses, the weight of his body over mine, his soft skin, his long limbs and narrow chest, his shoulders already a little hunched, as if he mixed adolescence and old age in the wisdom of his flesh. Looking at me without flinching, his wide mouth grimacing, his green eyes tying me to the now, nothing hidden. Him always on top, no frills or flourishes. There was something about our builds that made them fit like a perfect puzzle, something about the vibrancy of our touch that brought me to climax by his hand stroking my arm or his lips brushing my neck while we stood in a bar.

I was now finished with my BA. It was 1980, I was twenty-one, and I had no idea what to do next. Most of my classmates planned to become teachers in private schools or, after taking the entrance exams, in public schools—not much else to do with a BA in literature. A few would continue studying for a PhD. I had ruled out that option. I wanted to work and become independent, but for now summer was here, and I didn’t have a care in the world except what to plan next with Pol.

For the San Juan holiday on June 23, he had a three-day weekend. We decided to spend it at La Escala, a little seaside town. It was our first trip together. We didn’t do much and didn’t need much. Eat, drink, contemplate the sea sitting at a harbor café, walk, and make love. Everything went smoothly, as if the world had rolled down a red carpet so we could glide into a never-ending party.

On Saturday night, we enjoyed the fireworks—on the horizon, coming from another town—from the front-row seat of the beach, alone. As we were returning to the hotel, we heard music. We followed the sound and ran into a little verbena, an open-air dance festival celebrating San Juan, with colorful garlands hanging from trees, a table set with sangría, wine, olives, cheese, and cold cuts, and a few metal tables and folding chairs in a circle around a small stage on which was a five-piece band playing paso dobles, chotis, and other popular danceable Spanish music. It looked like a private event for the elders of the town, but Pol and I joined the couples serenely marching and twirling and drinking punch. They accepted us benignly, perhaps too surprised to scold the city youngsters who had crashed their party and were enjoying tunes from long ago alongside them. Sometimes an open smile is all you need to be forgiven for minor sins.

After a few dances we walked back to the hotel. That night, as we made love, Pol’s slow, deliberate, rhythmic motion seemed to crash like waves over my whole body, taking me with irresistible force to that hidden world only we could enter.

“You are the sea,” I said, caressing his back, bringing him deeper into me with my legs wrapped around his body. “You are the sea, you cover me all, you bring me life, you bring me death, you are the sea.”

“I’m just a man,” he said, bemused.

“No, you are the sea; you are MY sea.”

I gave myself to him, letting the waves crash and cover me, lost in the salt of his sweat, the sounds of our moans, his eyes open wide, his buttocks hard under my palms, the smell of the Mediterranean on his curls, disappearing into that rich blackness where everything made sense.

There was something about Pol that bewitched me—his green eyes, his languorous ease, his ability to simply be. With his ex-girlfriend gone, I was all in, and so was he.

At least that’s what I thought.

Printed with permission from She Writes Press. From Promenade of Desire: A Barcelona Memoir by Isidra Mencos. Available from Amazon and Bookshop.