027 By the time I reach the Hotel hall, I’m drenched in BLEACHED drops! They are highly corrosive and my skin reacts accordingly: I have rashes all over. The press manager sees me and knows instantly that I’m not a hotel customer but the early late journalist. “Oh my goodness!”. She can’t help but look at me in horror. I catch my reflection in the gigantic mirror, by the huge piano: I look like a resurrected Chernobyl casualty. “Shuarma is not impressed with your sense of timing, let me tell you. Nora has taken your spot. You are next. Are you okay?” “Fucking thriving, thanks.” The room is filled with half of the music journalists of the city, around twenty guys, most of them sporting glasses, no hair and wooden faces. None of them would ever smile except for Nora. She is slim and young, and writes for a fashion magazine whose existence seems to deny the fundamental identity of the band as blatantly as the PLATFORM I’m writing for. At least she might get paid to do it. Nora says hello, offers me her seat and makes a grimace. “Be careful, he is dead serious,” she says. I take her seat while she slips a business card in my pocket, winks and says: “This is Victor.” “Hello,” says Shuarma. “I have been waiting and I don’t like to wait.” “It is the first interview of my life, my dearest apologies. I was so anxious that I took the wrong subway.” “What the hell happened to you?” I feel like Dennis Hopper’s nostrils after a Colombian bender. I confess that I was in Saint Petersburg after the gig and mention the bleach incident. As it turns out, the whole room, staff included, seems incapable of NOT staring at me. It might be difficult to understand that a man in the shape of a tiny lobster can breathe or move —let alone conduct the first interview of his life. I take my seat and place the recorder in the middle of the table. My bleached skin and bleeding tattoo kind of disguise the fact that the tape is not rolling. Shuarma could be Rambo if he hadn’t eaten in his entire life. The laser of his eyes could melt all the Himalayan snow in just one blink. He says it is the first time he has seen an interviewer drinking at work. I say I’m glad it’s his first time. I have no idea how the beer has landed on my hand —let alone my throat. “Cheers anyway,” I say, smirking. “Welcome to Barcelona, the most intoxicated city on the planet.” Shuarma looks at the press manager, points at me and says: “Is this for real? I have my heart in my mouth. It is a polyglot heart that can talk non-stop. I say that in Spain, the transition from dictatorship to democracy was a narco-operation to decimate the rebellious populations of the North. I say that the story is akin to that of England and India. I wanted to say between Ireland and England, but it is my racing heart speaking. Shuarma stretches his back, cracks his fingers, and grimaces in utter disgust. He asks me if I’m going to ask any question. I only have a sense of humour left. “I’m the one asking the questions here.” Not that funny, so it seems. I ask about the band and their activism: “What came first?” He wonders if I have done my research. I ask if he likes the climate of Barcelona. “Are you a meteorologist?” I ask what element their music would be. Fire? Earth? Air? Water? “Do you write about horoscopes or what?” I confess that I have been asked to write horoscopes for a women’s magazine, and I don’t mention that I have no fucking idea about astrology. “Technically you are deflowering me,” I say. He would never look more unimpressed. “Are you going to ask me any damned question?” It is 1995, 15 years before THE WOKE UP, and I have already asked three unanswered questions. Then my heart says: “Okay, if your music were a colour, what colour would that be?” Shuarma inhales deeply, looks around, clicks his tongue, rolls his sleeve and before he forms a fist, I say: “It wasn’t a rhetorical question, just a little poetic licence.” My speech stops the punch, if only for a moment. Shuarma considers his Mister Proper right arm, looks at the table, and only then the postcolonial horror unveils. He grabs the recorder, realises that it isn’t rolling and checks the batteries. “Are you fucking joking me? Get the fuck out of my sight. NOW!” ¡Voilà! It is the first answer of my journalist life, at least the first that is not a question. It’s a fucking order indeed. I obey; I’m great at it.
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