NOWHERE-NOW HERE, HECTOR CASTELLS TRAVEL JOURNAL – CAPSULE XV

BEFORE SUNSET I HAD A DREAM

The relocation is completed. I wake up inside a filthy coconut bowl ploughing through the water thanks to the unreal strength of its master and commander. His name is Binh, and we don’t share any known language apart from smile and barefoot language.

I identify the fluttering red flag with a yellow star on the edge of his dinghy, but it is unclear if we are in the country of the flag. The shore is close by. Binh points at it and says, “HOME,” the only word we will ever share, something I still ignore when I ask.

“Where is home?”

Binh smiles, shakes his head and keeps pointing at the shore. It is full of palm trees, white dunes, wild dogs and tons of rubbish, so I guess it also could be the home of the infamous Marcos’ and bastard offspring, and definitely NOT the shore of the country that invented emojis, the latest place I remember to have been in.

It is definitely not K-Pop motherland either

The obnoxious backpack lies under a raincoat, and I’m wearing a stripped T-shirt, a strapping in my fucked knee and the shorts of a dead friend that I have no recollection whatsoever of having borrowed. It totally feels like back then—when we hadn’t any recollection whatsoever of having anything.

I guess home is where your dead friends live, where you have no recollection whatsoever.

Home is also Binh’s hand vertiginously approaching my face. He knocks me down with a big smile on his face, and I have a reading dream.

Rubber Cowboy. Dublin, July 2019

Selby is a female. We are in the same house we used to live in. Everything shapes up in utter, digital kind of accuracy. I don’t ask Selby if he has swam to the other shore of binary gender overnight. I’m just at awe at his reversed beauty when he asks me to draw the curtains open.

The sky looks like cotton soaked in blood.

“We might have been sprayed overnight again,” Selby says.

Then he starts roasting the coffee. I will miss it badly in the years to come, not that I know right now. I feel like the over stimulated macho licker in all the coffee ads. Selby could be the woman smiling and bubbling up the foam.

The grains are imported from a remote continent. We pay 400 dollars and get 23 kilos lasting three months. The electricity bill is also a joke. It is always winter here, so the amount rarely changes. It provides us with an equally metaphorical sense of warmth that rarely lasts over two hours, and undeniably brings us on the verge of collapse many times daily.

We both love the thrill before crumpling.

Rent Girl-Boys

It is the same story with the rent. You feel alive the day of the month you pay it. It is the miracle that keeps you smiling while dying.

Selby is an exploited insomniac, but his relentless labour dignifies most tasks he embarks on, including murdering shady politicians. I’m not allowed to write about that. It could become my last line overnight. And it will.

He seldom closes his eyes: sleeping is a miracle that mostly happens on Sundays, like old miracles.

He says, “Shut up, and enjoy the coffee.”

We start kissing. I’m off to Japan tomorrow.

He asks: “Where are the condoms?”

Good, extraordinary question.

They are nowhere to be seen. We have been together for eight years and he refuses unprotected sex since day one. He is consistent, solid as rock.

Selby says that he doesn’t want to get pregnant while I’m away —neither while I’m around.

My jaw drops, I press him against me, slide my tongue inside his mouth and unzip his fly. It feels like the end of bakery and bananas. The treasure hunt is hard-on I, and pearly on Selby: she has swum the transgender shore overnight.

I feign absolute normality and totally agree. Fuck kids. It’s a no-go. I will never get you pregnant, dear. You either need assets or millions in order to fuck their tiny futures lesser than the rest. It is a No-Go.

Life is a miracle, and Selby doesn’t want to get pregnant, something unconceivable last morning. It all makes perfect sense. We just want to fuck.

“I’ll go to Tesco’s and get the rubber,” I say.

Selby smiles. There is hope

I leave the house with a hard-on.

I park the bike outside, get into Tesco’s, and only then I check my pockets. I have a ten-euro note.

I see them hanging before the cashier, next to the last-minute guilty pleasures. The cheapest ones are tagged at 10’70€.

Fuck me —although probably not.

Cheap rubber

I start magical-thinking about pharmacies and cheap rubber.

I get carried away enough to forget that it is Sunday and I’m in the country that invented Jesus and prohibited rubber.

I cycle to the closest pharmacy. Condoms lay beyond the shatters. I stop thinking about Drugstore Cowboy later than expected.

I could cycle home, but it feels wrong to do it without the rubber in my pocket.

Sticky Tesk

I stick to Tesco’s. I park the bike and walk in again.

I randomly grab a package of whipped cream and a bunch of spring onions, and sneak the condoms in my back pocket.

It is a Sunday afternoon and the queue is sad enough to kill David Foster Wallace by proxy.

I hold my breath, reach the cashier ten minutes later, scan my items, and leave.

On my way out a bouncer says, “Not that fast. Come with me.”

He orders me to follow him to the back room. I wonder if he wants to use the rubber. It is a room with cameras in it, none of them filming us.

He asks to empty my pockets. I take out the condoms. He looks at me disgusted and asks if I want to have sex.

I’m about to ask if he is a fortune-teller when he assesses the items I just have purchased.

“And what is that for?” he asks.

He is holding the spring onions and whipped cream.

“Not for sex, don’t’ get carried away”

He smiles. Me too.

He says I have to wait for the police. I say my boy-girl-friend is waiting at home. I say please, please, I’m young and horny. He grimaces.

It is the end of smiling, the start of “You are a whipped cream, spring onion pervert.”

I offer the ten-euro note. It is not enough to purchase the three items, but I can do without the whipped cream and the spring onions.

No-go.

He calls the local police on the day of the Lord. The answer goes as expected. I can hear the laughter at the other end, and I can’t help the chuckling.

“What are you laughing about?”

We don’t need Einstein or Marie Curie to explain the reason.

He lets me go condom-less.

I will forever remember the last time we almost had sex.

Now Here, The latest shore, March 2025

I wake up lying on top of the obnoxious on the sand. Binh is nowhere to be seen. There are a few dogs running around me in circles and I have a plastic sealed bag with a new phone and passport in it. I check the phone. It flashes up:

“Welcome to Nowhere again. Your next mission is to find the fiddle player. And remember: thinking is your enemy! We will be in touch soon. Enjoy the music. It is always the answer.”