the edge of heaven, the majestic hotel, barcelona

it seems as if in this city, summer is always there. it forces itself upon you, like that or not. after the letter, i still had three days of work left. three days of sunshine, which was meaningless, the beach felt completely fake, the streets overcrowded with ugly people. i tried some swimming, i managed to do a little money spending, i ate some food. strange city it was to me. if you take a pencil and draw a straight line from Barcelona, you can connect that city with Paris and Brussels. neither of them are cities i feel comfortable in. it seems to be a bad longitude for me.

all around me the tourists were busy doing what tourists do, a vocabulary of leisure completely unknown to me. so i walked the streets. and started noticing that my stiletto heels got stuck in the sticky tar pavements. it felt like i left my footprints all over the city. a good way not to get lost. so round and round i went, repeating the same route over and over, trying to find myself back on track.

late in the afternoon i as i had just sat down for a coffee, two men came to an adjacent table and sat beside me. father and son. they sat for at least an hour. the father must have been around fifty, the son fourteen or so. neither of them said one word. the father ordered two beers. a large one for himself, a smaller one for his son. the boy tried to gulp his drink in as quickly as he could. the father drank his beer in a far more seasoned way, and then another one. with the third beer, he ordered another small one for his son, who did his best to empty this glass as soon as he could too. sometimes the father would light a cigarette, and inhale. the son sat, slouched over, and looked at the smoke dwindling. he seemed like a sensitive boy, the way he observed his father, somehow as if knowing that a conversation was not to be had. i wondered if the father was divorced and if this was his way of spending some sort of quality time with his child. but there was no quality in the actions he took. just drinking. and smoking. i felt so sorry for the kid. he was so lost there. i so had the urge to go over to his table, put my hand on his shoulder, maybe even sit down next to him and hold his hand. i wished i could tell him all would be better once he was grown up. i didn't. first of all i realised that the both of them would be at least completely scared by this action and would doubtless think i was insane.

but a deeper thought withheld me. no matter how much i wished for this boy to give him some kind of consolation, some hope of a brighter future i knew that there was no assurance that this would be the case. probably his life would never get any better at all. my stomach turned. it was sad. this was all there was. the big holiday, the highlight. hereafter he would go to school, if lucky finish it, get a job, and drink alcohol. and be silent. and sit next to his father, or, later, next to his friends. it would be so cruel to tell him all would get well in the end. this fake Hollywood ending which i wished upon him so dearly, was probably way too far a goal for him to ever achieve. there was no promise of good times in his expression, and no solace in the appearance of his father. it was sheer emptiness that lay ahead for the both of them, steering clear of too much trouble and hassle would be enough of an achievement.



I went back into my room. there was a card, R. had taken the liberty of giving me a gift. a massage at the spa on the top floor. i felt strange about that. whenever i would go into his room, to tell the story he wanted for the night, he barely seemed to acknowledge me. he hardly looked me in the eye, just lie down on the bed. and sometimes he would even start rummaging through the room, organising his papers. or walk in to the bathroom, and change his attire. if i would stop in the middle of a story, he would respond immediately saying i should continue. i was passed the feeling he wanted sex or anything by then, i thought he was not attracted by me at all. this gift however, was, very physical, by proxy. the lack of sleep of the night before made me decide to take the massage anyway. i could use some soothing.


when i went to his room that night he sat at his desk, eating a pizza. he gestured me to sit down. "have you had dinner, would you want some?" i told him i was not very hungry. he kept pushing more slices into his mouth, hardly chewing. "so what will it be tonight, have you lost the game of backgammon?" i told him i had. "no more games then, for the time being, how was your massage, i had one too, just after you, great guy, really works your muscles through and through."

I thanked him for the massage, and said it had been nice.

"I want a short story tonight, or a poem, do you know some good short poetry?" i said i felt more like a short story, or i could sing him a song, if he liked, although i warned him my singing voice was terrible. and then i remembered a story about a song, and we settled for that version.

the edge of heaven.

this happened almost 15 years ago, and it didn't happen to me. but every now and then i have to think about it. and i wonder if there is any song in this situation that would suit me.

my friend Laurence lived in Los Angeles at the time, working for some glossy photographers studio, and he decided to drive to Las Vegas to take some pictures there on one weekend off.

he drove through the desert and got enchanted by the beauty of the landscape. the nothingness, the different greyscales blazing in the sun, the solitude, it just got to him. so, he took an off route, and made some really nice photographs. probably he had been out in the sun for too long, minor sunstroke like, for he fell asleep behind the steering wheel. he lost control, and crashed his car in a ditch.

he woke up in the rental car, and was stuck. he couldn't move anything. not one hand, his legs were stuck, he could only slightly move his head. he was not injured, but he was fixed into place between his drivers seat and the steeringwheel. this in itself must have been very unpleasant. but it got worse. the rental car was equipped with the state of the art technology of the late eighties. so there was a cassette player in the car which had the newest tape deck, that automatically would start the tape again, once it had ended. oh yes, we were all so thrilled about that invention back then! i am talking the time when sending a fax would sometimes still take half a day.

Laurence's that time sweetheart had given him a cassette of Wham! with only one single version of the song: "take me to the edge of heaven" on it. it was, as she called it "their song".

in the six hours he was in that car, anchored to the steeringwheel, the only song he heard was this.... 3 and a half minutes of it. the song would slide into his ears, like a thick stream of mud, unavoidable. the tape would: click-clack enter the backside, quietness, only the sound of the spools turning and turning; with every turn announcing the inescapable literal turning point: click-clack. George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley sat beside him in his car, like Beelzebub and son. they were his sole companions, grinning their maniacal words into his ear:


I would lock you up
But I could not bear to hear you
Screaming to be set free
I would chain you up
If I'd thought you'd swear
The only one that mattered was me, me, me
I would strap you up
But don't worry baby
You know I wouldn't hurt you 'less you wanted me to

It's too late to stop
Won't the heavens save me?
My daddy said the devil looks a lot like you

and of course the rest of the song. then it would start all over again. at some point the silence would become the worst part of the tantrum, for in this silence the words echoed more and more deeply into his brain. there was no redemption here, no edge of heaven. Laurence tried to sing other songs he knew. but with every tape turn, he lost the tune and the lyrics of the original. all the songs he knew became corrupted by the hit of the dynamic duo. and the tape would turn once more and wham bang the song would hit him without the least holdback. he tried to sing louder than the tape, to set his mind free from the harassment, to do difficult math, to name all his former class mates in kindergarten, but nothing worked.

the tape would start again and over and again. Laurence just prayed that the battery of his car would die, so that he could embrace his own death in quietude and dignity. for the longer the song played, the more convinced he became that this was the end of his life.

52 times he heard the song, before another car drove by, but this was not the complete release he so strongly needed. The driver of the car got out. knocked on the window of Laurence´s car. "are you ok in there, son?" Laurence sort of nodded yes, as far as the steeringwheel would let him. he mumbled a soft yes. the driver tried to open the car door, but it was locked from the inside. The song started again. the man walked around the car, trying every door, none would open. he walked back to the window where Laurence was sitting. "your doors are locked, must be one of those new models you have here." the man shouted over the song. "you injured?" Laurence muttered a weak no. the man bellowed to him that he would go for help, and drove off before Laurence could ask him to at least try and unlock the car´s battery so that the song would finally stop.

and there he stuck, thirsty, tired, and waited. 12 times more he heard the song before the rescue service arrived at last, and got him out of the car.

you can imagine that whenever Laurence hears this song, he goes slightly insane.

and things didn't work out with the girl either.