I was heading for a fall. Thursday night I went to see El pasado, the not-especially-good new Gael Garcia Bernal (from Y tu mama también) movie, and even though I found it annoyingly cryptic, I was very pleased to understand a huge percentage of it, even on a word-for-word level. So last night, I was deeply humbled when I went to see a show with Diego that his friends were involved with. The pre-show scene was chaos--huge crowd waiting in small hallway. I couldn't understand anything (background noise kills me) and everybody knew everybody else which meant--aargh!--comic repartee. They might as well have been speaking Tagalog. The show started at least half an hour late and turned out not to be a play but a band playing songs that apparently have intellectually piercing lyrics, not that I could tell with the predictably lousy sound mix—even the song sung in English went by in a garbled blur. What was left was OK, but a bit heavy on the clowning and circusy beats for my taste. Afterward, of course, more mingling, during which people--rats!--started trying to talk to me. I pulled through, but felt about as exciting as a cardboard box.
So, I was fearful of the group-dinner-after, but it turned out to be lovely because there were just four of us (I'd been expecting a long table of 20, which always makes me claustrophobic after half an hour or so), Diego, myself, his actress friend Alejandra, and one of her acting students, Sergio. We went to El Cuartito, a well-known Pizza joint, and now that I could actually hear people, I fall quickly under Alejandra's thumb. In moments, I become one of her admirers, hanging on her fluid gestures and quickfire expressions, jostling with the other boys for her attention, which she gives generously and completely. She has that way of looking at you when she's talking that makes you feel loved. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I've felt it before with other actresses. Your mind is shouting "Snap out of it, sap—you're nothing special. She looks that way at everybody" but you tell your mind to shut up and think of something clever to say to her. Of course, I'm at a handicap, because she's very verbal and quick-witted. Although I miss huge swatches of her pun-filled banter with Diego, I can nonetheless admire its pace and timing. Even so, she liked at my torcaza imitation, so I'm still in play here. (Good lord, is that me doing bird calls to get attention? So it seems.) Sergio's sitting next to me, facing her, and I don't have to even look at his face to feel his puppy-dog attention, not sexual, but eager to follow her anywhere.
We get to talking more about theater, I'm relaxing a bit more, putting together better sentences, saying things that I actually believe as opposed to things that I know how to say. And voila, I'm now feeling more like myself in Spanish than I ever do. Her energy is contagious and so, apparently, is her self-confidence.
(Here's her pic from the local theater website.)
Still, as if I needed proof that her attention has nothing to do with me, at the end of the meal she orders coffee and is told by the somewhat stiff waiter that they don't serve it. She complains, but in such a charming way that she turns what should be an annoying customer grievance into a playful and affectionate first date. He clearly wants to be indifferent, but he can't. She's doesn't give him the option.
How smitten am I? While she was in the john, the three of us had decided to order a ham and pepper pizza. She came back and preferred a calabrese. They explained to me what that is, but I didn't catch it at all. Still, I'm not fussy pizza-wise, and it was clear that all of us wanted to make Alejandra happy. Turns out, it's got thin-sliced sausage, tomato, and garlic. It was very good. I'm pretty sure I'll be ordering a lot of calabrese pizzas from here on. Tasty, yes, but she likes it, too.
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