The International Language

Teaching the Irish Male a Lesson Using a Figure of Speech

The past week has been if nothing else educational and cliche ridden. Three Nice Catholic Irish Boys Abroad, initial linguistic fumblings, Passionate and Resolutely Catholic South American Women (worry not, oh mother), ill advised poetry, relentless ridicule by and of various of the aforementioned.... oh, how we laughed.

Our aim was true and pure; to study Spanish in an effort to understand and converse with the local people thereby enriching our trip in multifold aspects. Unfortunately, our teacher did not fulfill expectations. Alas, she was not the mistress of yore clad in brown overcoat with questionable taste in hairstyles and a penchant for Women´s Own reverie between lessons. Instead, we got the statue-esque Carla, a 24 year old Cusqueña. Neruda could have written Cuerpo de Mujer as an ode to her, had the two been contemporaries, and had Chile not been bombing and pillaging Peru at the time of its composition. Suffice to say the following lines describe her with some justice;

Cuerpo de mujer, blancas colinas, muslos blancos,
te pareces al mundo en tu actitud de entrega.
Mi cuerpo de labriego salvaje te socava
y hace soltar el hijo del fondo de la tierra

It is difficult, on occasion, to concentrate on the task at hand. While trying to conjugate ser and estár our collective conciousness ambled unthinkingly towards las blancas colinas y los muslos blancos. We became giggling truant schoolboys, making translatory and linguistic jokes (mi corazon, mi corazon) and the occasional genuinely funny mistake. In describing my job, I said in broken Spanish "mi trabajo es muy difficle, y soy mas duro porque". "Mas duro", it turns out, does not mean "tougher". It means something altogether different.

Whoops.

Teacher´s Pet

A word of warning to the wise; do not become romatically involved with your schoolteachers. In some cases it will be illegal, and in most just plain awkward.

South American woman are passionate, beautiful, and really quite brilliant to be in the company of. But they have rules, rules which must be obeyed by all and comprise:

1. Romance. Do not love you neighbour, under any circumstances, unless your parents are in accord and you have received a papal dispensation.

2. Kissing. Kissing is a socially acceptable pursuit which may be used in the following circumstances:

a) in a nightclub
b) to annoy your older sister
c) as a statement of affection for a significant other
d) to further Irish-Peruvian linguistic relations
e) (special case) as a statement of affection for 24 year old Irish male doctors fulfilling the following criteria:

i) must be 6´1"
ii) must have curly brown hair
iii) must have googley eyes
iv) must be on a 6 month trip around the world to "find himself"
v) must have one parent from Cork and another from Galway, preferably Moycullen
vi) must have facial hair of questionable taste
vii) must have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the following subjects:

a) Bob Dylan
b) World War 2 Tank Technology

viii) must suffer from near-total self obsession

3. Behave in a manner fitting that of an woman in 1950s Ireland. Each man you meet is potential husband material and must be assessed as such

4. He pays for everything

5. Thou shalt absolutely by all means covet thy neighbour´s husband. Remember, she could be getting ahead

Much to my surprise, our dear teacher started kissing me in a local nightclub. I walked her home, got her number and bid her bueños noches with a promise to call.

First Person Singular, Presently Tense

In conventional dating architecture, it is my understanding that you wait at least one or two days before contacting your significant other. It allows romantic rumination, digestion and so forth. A little hiatus to think matters through and make some semblance of a decision, and a plan of action including get-out clauses. Though this may seem cynical, it is a logical and useful strategum, for romantic love is a cold and ruthless science in which the heart, and its damned offspring, emotion, play a limited and frankly meddlesome role.

Obviously I write this in jest but it does make sense to allow a little time for one´s feelings to duke it out . You can imagine my surprise when Carla, accompanied by a friend, turned up at my hostel on a beautiful Sunday afternoon, exactly 12 hours after our previous liason. I will admit, I was a little shellshocked for the first few minutes, thinking:

What are you doing here?
How did you find me?
What is all this?
WHO THE FUCK IS SHE?

We went out for a few hours, her friend regarding me suspiciously all the while. One cafe con leche and a sickeningly sweet peruvian chocolate confection later, she asked the immortal question, the ruination of many relationships, and a particularly terrifying one after only fourteen hours of courtship;

"Would you like to meet my parents later this week?"

What could I say? Having only three days of Spanish, a muddled head, and sick stomach I summoned the only phrase of the language that I knew was effective and subtle enough to politely refuse the offer without hurting her feelings. A perfect poetic phrase, a masterful construct of language, beauty and discretion personified;

"No"

To which she replied;

"Okay. Perhaps next week."


I Won´t Share You

Despite my bluntness, we arranged to meet again. The following night, in fact.
On this occasion, another rule from the Peruvian Woman´s Handbook emerged:

3428. You are the only woman in the world. All others must be purged from his memory.

After calling me her "Irish Angel" (diós mio!), she asked me in a rather straightforward fashion if I had ever been in love. I admitted that I had been so, a number of years ago, and explained the circumstances in what Spanish I could muster. I impressed upon her that it was all in the past, that I had gotten past it, and (warned by her facial expression) wasn´t it great that we had met and weren´t we having a wonderful time?

She stopped talking for a full ten minutes. I tried to coax speech out of her using every trick I knew, puppydog eyes and all. I reiterated that I had forgotten about the other woman, that it was not important, that it was over. Eventually, pouting like Angelina Jolie mid-workout, she said;

"I have a problem"

"What?"

"You are thinking about her"

Oh for fuck´s sake.

The Current State of Affairs

As if the situation were not complicated enough, our new teacher is hugely attractive, engaging and not an adherent of Peruvian Woman´s Handbook.

I like her.

And I think she likes me too. The trouble is, she is a friend of Carla. I know that she knows about me and Carla, and I know that she knows that I know that she knows. In the end result, I would rather like to cruise seamlessly from one relationship to another with the minimum of conflict and then leave Cusco unscathed. Unfortunately, Carla´s father is a member of local government here and is on the state policing board (a fact she proffered very early in our courtship) so any form of messing about is ill advised. Hence the Richard Kimble reference.

My next date with Carla is Wednesday night, and I suspect it shall all come to an end at the fountain in the Plaza de Armas in central Cusco. By the time you read this, I shall be a hunted man.

So you quote love unquote me
Well stranger things have come to be
But let´s agree to disagree
Because I don´t believe you

(The Magnetic Fields)