Chapter Eight
Joaquin was settled into first class on the Air France flight from LAX to Barcelona; there was a stop-over in Paris of course, but he would not have to de-plane there and could get onward to Barcelona within another hour.
He was anxious and nervous and thrilled and frustrated: he missed Ross of course, you somehow never get over a loss like that. Those who say "it takes time" should have an alarm clock shoved up their ass.
And he also missed Felipe Marquez: he missed the sex, which was amazing, but he also missed the companionship, the joy of being with someone, the wonder and excitement of being with someone new, and he missed exploring the terrain of Felipe's body, his smile, his tears, his frown, his laughter, and his magical sky-blue eyes.
Mostly, he finally had to admit, he missed being married. Marriage to Ross James, THE Dr. Ross James, the sex machine from New Jersey, the international legal and financial consultant, the Beverly Hills bon vivant, was not without challenges.
Ross was all ego: he was not an insufferable arrogant asshole, he was just so good at what he did, and was so knowledgeable, that being around him was like having a walking Encyclopedia Britannica at your fingertips. It always amazed Joaquin that whenever or wherever they traveled, Joaquin might point out something and Ross would always reply, "Oh yeah, that's ...blah blah blah..." and he was always on point. It became a game for Joaquin after a couple of years.
Felipe was different: he was a farmer, had never travelled further than Madrid or to the shrine of St James at Compostele, but he was also not stupid or uninformed. He was simply different.
He knew the land, he knew the grapes, he knew and respected the seasons and the weather and the cycles and quirks of Nature, and he loved all of it. He was a farmer because he chose to be, not that he had no other options.
Joaquin had discovered that Felipe's family had come from money, ancient money before the Franco regime took it all away. Felipe was proud that way, not of the money, but did not think it was important to talk about or to show off. The Marquez family had been on this land for centuries: they had served the ancient crown of Catalunya, vassals to the Carolingian French kings until the 1701 Constitution of Catalonia.
As a result of that important document, Catalunya had been the seat of one of the oldest European parliaments, operating since 1283, long before Christopher Columbus wheedled money out of Isabella and her cousin/husband Ferdinand. Catalonia, or Catalunya, was relegated to a simple feudal province of the newly united Spanish empire forged out of the former kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre under Charles V, the newly crowned Holy Roman Emperor who gained that title from his grandfather, Maximilian I in 1519.
Felipe's family were united with their Catalan neighbors in the Revolt of 1641 but were defeated in 1652; the Catalan counties were ceded to France for a short time under the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 by Philip IV of Spain, but reverted to Spanish rule in 1716 under Philip V. It was a lot of history and it made Joaquin smile.
Joaquin's family, the Mendez de Concordia family, transplanted to Spain in the 16th century following unrest among several factions within the Catholic church in Italy; originally, they had been a principal family of the Diocese of Concordia, a subdivision of the Archdiocese of Venice.
Settled in Spain in the region of Asturias, the Mendez family, generally in and around the village of Celanova, had been keepers of the traditions of the Catholic church and the crown. It was no surprise, therefore, that Joaquin's father had been a justice of the Supreme Court of Spain under Juan Carlos I, who abdicated in 2014 at age 76 in favor of his son Felipe VI.
Europeans are weighted down with history, Joaquin thought, as the jet was landing at deGaulle airport in Paris. He wondered if that history kept them from viewing life as a happy gift, as it seemed Americans did. He also thought about taking the train through the vineyards of central and southern France and over the mountains to Barcelona. It was a beautiful journey, but not for today: he wanted to get to Barcelona, or to the village of Porrera, as quickly as possible and begin the romantic task of repairing his relationship with Felipe.
He badly needed a nap; he had not slept on the flight from LAX and was wired from the coffee and the travel and the anxious energy of the task ahead of him. He had not asked Felipe to meet him at the airport in Barcelona and had arranged for a car. It was approximately 130 kilometers from Barcelona to Porrera; he could make it in about 2 hours. There was always time to sleep later.
One of the great adventures that Americans enjoy when visiting other countries, especially rural places like the mountainous towns and villages around the Mediterranean coast of Spain, is the opportunity to see and experience rural life and farm life as it must have been in the old days: that was deeply frustrating to Joaquin, who wanted to speed along the narrow roads to Porrera. He was stopped: literally, by slamming into a herd of goats filling the entire road about an hour outside of Porrera.
The cost of a dead goat is highly debatable in Spain: to the farmer/goat-herd, it is extremely valuable. To the driver of the car whose front grill now holds a goat as the hood ornament, it is worthless. Somewhere in between, or at about €200 Euros, the value was settled between Joaquin and the goat-herd. But it cost him time. And it would cost him even more money, when he returned the rental car to the agency. A goat horn stuck through the radiator was going to cost a lot more than €200.
When he finally pulled into the gravel drive of the ancient vineyard, the car was loudly hissing steam and Felipe saw it and laughed.
Felipe had been preparing for days to be angry and to sulk; the steaming radiator dissuaded him from his plan, and he could not help laughing. Joaquin got out and looked supremely frustrated, and they collapsed into each other's arms. When they finally stopped laughing and kissed, and then kissed some more, longer and harder, the car belched out a final huge gasp of steam and died. Felipe laughed again; "I guess you are stuck here Señor."
"Good." It was all that Joaquin could muster; he was frustrated at the goat-herd, and especially at the goat.
It was mid-day, nearly an hour before the time for the traditional siesta, so Felipe suggested they drive into town in the raggedy old rusting pickup truck and have lunch and then take a nap. Joaquin was easy to convince of that plan; he especially looked forward to the nap.
Spanish cuisine is nothing at all like the cuisine of Mexico that Americans have adopted as their favorite foreign culture (or the abomination called Tex-Mex): Spanish menus always include croquetas, (croquets) jamon, (ham) bacalao (cod) in béchamel sauce, morcilla (black sausage), tortillas, (buttery potato cakes) and bravas (chips).
The hot sauces and pico de gallo and Chiles famous in Mexican cuisine are absent in Spain; while the Spanish menu is milder, it is not boring.
Joaquin had not realized how much he missed the food of his homeland; he was a dual citizen, holding both Spanish and American passports, had spent two-thirds of his adult life in the US, but this moment drinking fresh red wine in the taverna with Felipe brought him back a hundred years to the ancient country of his family.
He noticed there was grilled baby goat (cabrito) on the dinner menu; he laughed and thought "Got you back, evil goat".
Spain is one of the countries in the world that American doctors need to recommend to their patients who are suffering from stress: the pace is much different, and the ambience is conducive to re-gaining a proper balance between what is important and what can be ignored or set aside for a day or two. Especially the mountainous region of the village of Porrera, close enough to the big city of Barcelona and the Mediterranean coast, far enough from the mega-cities like Madrid and Paris; a calming atmosphere settles on you immediately, Joaquin noticed.
That calming atmosphere gripped them when they retreated from the taverna and went to Felipe's little casita for a nap. It took almost an hour for them to fall asleep: the hour was not wasted, however, as there was three months or more of distance to recoup. Which they did immediately, a naked, sweaty, athletic, and energetic hour: Felipe made it clear that he was going to "top" Joaquin, who graciously acquiesced; there would be time enough later to take turns.
Joaquin fell into a deep dreamless slumber; the trip from LAX had taxed him, and the wine had relaxed him, and the sex had taken off the final ragged edges of urban life that clung to him. He was awakened hours later by Felipe, who was up and showered and dressed for a night on the town.
The village of Porrera had no nightclubs, but Taragona had more than a dozen clubs where they could dance and drink and party until dawn. And they did; the raggedy pickup was not a party car, but it served to transport them to clubs and back to the little house in time for early morning coffee and bocadillo (sandwiches).
The farmer was up and awake again before Joaquin, as usual; it was already time for lunch when Joaquin was able to force open his eyes in the bright Spanish sunlight pouring into the little room.
Felipe was laughing again; Joaquin was experiencing one of the very few hangovers he had had in the past dozen years. Did this man ever stop laughing? Was nothing reverent to him? A hangover is serious business and required a lot of attention, like more coffee, more breakfast, several doses of aspirin, and several more doses of alcohol.
When he was finally feeling like he could be civil enough to hold a conversation, he told Felipe that he wanted to go down to the Taragona provincial capital; founded in the 5th century BC, it has an ancient vibe that is present only in certain places in the world. On the way, Joaquin described a rudimentary plan he had for selling or leasing the vineyard and wanted some professional advice.
He also wanted to take Felipe to California for a visit; he was apprehensive at how Felipe would take that news. He decided to wait until the evening when they had a chance to eat dinner, have a lot of wine, relax from the day and partially recover from the night-clubbing, and then he would bring it up.
He remembered his thoughts during the landing at deGaulle airport, about Europeans being weighed down with their own history: it was a bloody and romantic and violent and magical history of fairy tales and chivalry, intertwined with tribal and racial and factional and religious jealousies and rivalries over territory, treasure, and resources, and would probably never be free of the repressed memories of the wars between competing cousins for the ancient lands.
For those reasons, Joaquin was afraid that Felipe may be solidly tied to the farm, may not want to go with him to America; or if he did go, Felipe may not want to stay there.
There has never been a war won on the ancient Iberian Peninsula that succeeded in completely subjugating the natives: the ancient tribes of what is today Spain and Portugal still celebrate their roots that reach back millennia. The Basques, the Greeks, the Romans, the Celts, and lesser tribes crossed the Pyrenees and settled the high plateaus of Spain and Portugal long before Caesar and Jesus.
Felipe was a product of that march of history; he may not want to leave it behind, he may never give up his hold on the land that birthed him and his family.
Joaquin, however, had done so; he had no regrets and loved his life in California and the freedom of thought and action that it allowed him. He was not weighed down, as he silently accused the Europeans, by history. He was deeply torn about the question: what if Felipe said no?
Then he remembered his long life with Ross: always an adventure, always a willingness to jump into any challenge, any moment that held new horizons, new visions; `que sera' was their motto.
Life is full of do-overs', second chances, he remembered. He had no choice: he had to at least ask Felipe. If he was turned down, well, then, que sera'.
There were no wrong turns, there was only a new path to drive along.
People do not fall in love. Falling in love is less frequent than getting hit by lightning. The movies and the books and the fairy-tales all conspire to make us believe that falling in love is pretty automatic: boy meets girl, girl falls in love, boy proposes, etc., tra la, tra la. But it's all Hollywood crap; none of it is true.
People calculate their steps towards making it possible within a certain set of situations to be able to fall in love; the chemistry must happen first. We calculate the physical attractiveness, the morphology, the smile, the hair, the eye color, the race, size, personality, and a million other tiny little adjustments in our secret mental template on the way to falling in love, which, sooner or later, will happen if the two can get past the chemical trials.
Maybe that is why there are so many divorces in America; people don't do the proper filtering through their personal templates, they get in a hurry, they fall in love with the idea of being in love, they make illogical compromises, and then they can't figure out why the marriage crashes and burns as they sit there in the cold ashes crying and feeling victimized.
Joaquin contemplated all of that in his rush to figure out a reasonable explanation for Felipe as to why the two of them should fly off to Beverly Hills and live happily ever after. Hadn't he and Ross lived happily ever after?
Well, not really; they lived with compromise, argument, temper tantrums, getting angry, making up, regret, forgiveness, and learning all over again every day at breakfast how to communicate better.
If Joaquin could last all of those years with Ross and they had never taken a kitchen knife to each other, maybe he and Felipe had a chance.
Joaquin recalled what Ross had taught him about how to get along with each other: The Four C's. Never compare, never criticize, never complain, never control. He would try to keep that in the forefront of his mind in the process of `falling in love' with Felipe.
Dammit, he just wanted a chance; he was ruined, he had been domesticated, he needed a partner, a companion. He wanted Felipe to be that companion.
They left Taragona in the late afternoon during the beginning of the siesta; it was a leisurely drive back to Porrera, and by the time they reached the village the taverna would be open again and they could stop in and have a bottle of wine. Joaquin loved Spanish wines, all of them, from all of the DOQ's: red, white, rosé, sparkling. He was convinced they were much better than any French wines.
After a bottle of rosé, they both spoke at once: "I need to speak with you". Laughing, Felipe said "Go ahead please, you first."
"Oh no, after you Señor, please tell me what is on your mind" offered Joaquin.
Felipe, hesitating, began "Well, then, this may be very rude of me to ask this but please listen. I know that you want to sell this vineyard, or lease it out to someone, and that has made me think about doing something different with my own time."
"I have always been a farmer, I have made grapes grow, have watched them and have nurtured them, but then every year we sell the grapes and they go away and I never see them again, and I have always wanted to see what happens to this beautiful fruit and how it magically becomes wine." Felipe was out of breath.
"You want to be a wine maker?" Joaquin asked him.
"I do not know yet, because I do not know anything about the process; I want to learn all about the process and then decide if that is something I want to pursue." Felipe looked concerned; he did not know if he had over-stepped, but now that ship had been set to sail, it was going to be interesting to follow its progress.
They were both silent for a moment; Joaquin was considering something; Felipe grew concerned and reached across the small table and grabbed Joaquin's hand: "What's wrong? Did I say something wrong?"
Joaquin smiled, and gazing directly into the sky-blue eyes of this amazing and beautiful farmer, he said softly, "No, I think you may have solved a dilemma for me. I wanted to ask you if you would come to California with me, and I was afraid you would resist, but now I see a way to make that happen for us."
"Really?" Felipe was dumbstruck.
"Yes; consider this. There are hundreds of wineries and vineyards in California, and this small vineyard here in the hills of Porrera is tiny compared to the tons of grapes grown in California."
"I am not saying California is better, but what if you come to California with me, and we find a place for you to be an apprentice in a winery, and learn the craft for a year or so, and see if you like it and see if you want to become a wine-maker?" Joaquin was smiling; he could see a shining path that was beckoning to them both.
Felipe was puzzled and amused and curious; he was tied to the land here, the mystical land of his ancestors, but did not really have a future here other than to stay on this tiny farm nurturing the vineyard. To fly away to the even more mystical land discovered by other ancient Spaniards, and live there, possibly with this new lover, and learn a new craft, was a huge opportunity and temptation and enticement, and scary.
"Yes."
"Yes? You will go with me to California?" Joaquin sounded tentative; he was not yet convinced that Felipe was committed to this major leap in his life-plan.
"Yes." Felipe reached across the table with his other hand and took both of Joaquin's hands in his rough farmer-hands, and looked back, deeply, into Joaquin's face. He saw awe, and puzzlement, and confusion, and joy, and hope.
"Yes" he repeated, "take me to California."
Joaquin let go the deep breath he had been holding; his mind was tumbling with all of the arrangements that he suddenly needed to put into motion.
They left the taverna and drove the short distance to Felipe's casita where they made love; it was the first time for them.
They had fucked like crazy, many times, but this was the first time they had made love. Joaquin was energized by this moment; he was a true lover, he enjoyed sex, he was talented at sex, and he fucked as good as he got fucked, but this was the first time since the death of Dr. Ross G. James that Joaquin had made love, had committed his heart and mind and cock and ass to another man whom he loved, craved, needed, desired, and admired.
Long after the sun had set, they walked down the hill toward the taverna and ordered tapas; grilled octopus, tortillas, fresh fruit, wine, grilled lamb chops, more wine. It was nearly midnight when they returned to the bed they shared: it was too small for both of them to sleep comfortably, but with enough wine and enough sex it fit just fine.
Joaquin awoke in the late morning and saw that the farmer had left; he saw a note that said only `Momentito' and laughed; the message was brief but filled with meaning.
He found the means to fix coffee for the two of them, not sure when Felipe would return, but eager to hold and kiss and caress the rough sun-burned Spaniard.
He was also suddenly eager to get on the road; he had a long list of tasks that had to be completed in order to get both his very fine ass (he was still TMGM after all) and Felipe's equally fine ass on their way to La-La Land.
In the process of making coffee, long before it was ready to drink, Felipe returned; he looked very sad and distraught. He slumped in a chair and reached for Joaquin's hand; Joaquin was standing in front of him caressing his neck and head, waiting for the news of whatever had saddened Felipe.
When he finally spoke, both of them were holding their coffee, and Felipe gulped and began "I have spoken with my mother."
Joaquin thought "Oh fuck, there goes everything." He had not yet met the family; he was sure he would at some point, and just like every other tiny village the world over, everyone in town knows your business probably before you do. Joaquin was sure the family had heard about him, the crazy California artist.
He waited. They silently drank the coffee. Felipe finally put down his cup, and reached for Joaquin's hand and said "She demands to meet you and speak with you."
"Oh fuck" Joaquin thought again, although he did not say anything to Felipe. There is another thing on his checklist he forgot to include. He knew there must be some family somewhere, but he did not know where or who. Now it was time to push them up to the top of the list.
"So we must go right now" he volunteered to Felipe.
"No. After siesta, and we must take gifts, and dress as for church, and stay for dinner, and be very humble."
Joaquin was not unfamiliar with the family rituals; Spain was not appreciably different in family obligations than any other culture, Hindu, Jew, Muslim, Mormon, Shinto. He quickly checked off in his mind the contents of his carry-on luggage to see if he had a white shirt and tie. Probably not.
They spent the rest of the morning in restless energy cleaning the casita, then drove to the vineyard to see that the water taps were sufficiently feeding the drip-lines for the rows of grapes. They went to the bodega and bought jamon, sausages, wine, flowers, and several scarves and shawls. By the time it was necessary to go to his mother's house, Felipe was sweating, as was Joaquin. It was not hot; they were nervous.
Joaquin was introduced to Señora Marquez; he bowed slightly as he took her hands. She was seated in a large woven wicker chair and was not smiling; this was going to be harder than he anticipated. Felipe was burdened with the gifts, including the flowers and ham and scarves and shawls.
The madre looked at Joaquin and smirked "Did you think you could bribe me? You brought me flowers to pay for the hand of my son?"
Joaquin was stunned; he did not know what to do or say next and wanted to bolt out the door and run all the way to Barcelona. But he stood there, cemented to the spot in front of the woman; she was majestic even in her aged condition, and he noticed a twinkling in her eyes, even though she was not smiling.
"Señora," he began, "allow me to introduce myself. I am Joaquin Antonio Mendez de Concordia. My family has been in these lands for many generations, and it would be a great dis-honor to my family, as well as to you and yours, if I were to appear one day and steal your son."
He swallowed and continued "It would be a great honor if you would allow me the opportunity to join our two families because, you see, I cannot steal your son, he has stolen my heart, and the only way I can recover is to spend the remainder of my life proving myself worthy of his love."
It was a huge gamble; Joaquin had no idea of the effect on the woman, but knew that at this moment his entire future was in her small wrinkled hand. She broke her stern glance.
Joaquin wanted to relax, but she grasped his hand even more tightly, and she said "You may not have him. You may take him for a moment, but I will need him to return every year and report to me on the quality of your love and your ability to keep your promise." And then she smiled.
Felipe was the first to laugh; Joaquin smiled as well, although he was not yet relaxed enough to be fully engaged in the moment. He still wanted to bolt and run; this woman scared him. She was a great deal like his mother's mother, who was buried in the convent of Concordia in Italy. Buried or not she still held a great power over her family.
Felipe poured wine, the three toasted and drank and toasted again and drank again, then settled down to the bits and pieces of the food the two men had brought as well as the salads and fruits the woman had prepared. There was a housekeeper, Joaquin noticed, who bustled around serving food and clearing plates and pouring more wine for them.
It was past midnight when they left; Joaquin had made many promises to Señora Marquez about the safety and security of her son and his commitment to him.
He further promised to bring him home to Spain frequently to allow her to measure the veracity of his promises.
Late that night they made love once again in the narrow bed; Joaquin now knew that he was in love, but he was also eager to get home to Beverly Hills and his spacious queen bed.