I don’t remember when was the last time I celebrated Valentine’s Day with one of my partners. Currently, I don’t give a damn about this date. This February 14th I woke up at home with my friend Paloma because every Monday we watch ‘The Island of Temptations’ together. The next day, she tells me that she prepares me, that her husband has booked five people to eat, including my daughter, to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
We went to eat at a new restaurant in Madrid that is on Augusto Figueroa street. Upon entering, they seat us almost at the end of the room and, suddenly, Arantxa de Benito comes to greet me (I don’t know whether to say ‘my friend’). I was happy about it, although I want to give her a slap on the wrist because months ago I called her and wrote her about a topic from her company and I never received an answer. I never understood why. I was sorry because the two of us have spent very nice moments together. Going back to Valentine’s Day. At one point during lunch I went out to smoke and something happened to me that I never thought could happen to me. I put you in background. Many years ago, before meeting my daughter’s father, I had a relationship with an Asturian man named Juan. I met him in 1996, when I went to New York for a New Year’s Eve with Belén Rodríguez and my friend Rafa Lorenzo, who worked as a screenwriter for many years with my mother. I will never forget how cold he was. That New Year’s Eve we went to dinner at Juan’s house, who was a friend of Rafa’s, and then they took us to Cindy Crawford’s hairdresser’s party.
At one point, we got overwhelmed and decided to go back to the hotel. A journey in which Juan accompanied us and told us that he was studying Film directing. Imagine how the road was, full of ice sheets, that we even had to pay 20 dollars to be allowed into a place to warm up. Some time later, Juan and I began a relationship. At that time, I worked with my mother at Telecinco. On Fridays I took a plane to the US and returned to Madrid on Monday at 7 in the morning. I did that several months of my life. In total, I went about five times. On those trips, some pilots invited me to see the snowmelt in Alaska and even land in the cabin at JFK airport in New York. The round trip by plane cost me 87,000 pesetas at that time. Juan was special in my life. He discovered a world for me in some aspects that I did not know. The last time we met, I had an argument with him at his house, took my suitcase, went down in a graffiti-covered elevator, got into a taxi, and went to the airport alone.
I have always been very dignified, although I don’t know what it has served me to be like that. I don’t know how to speak English well, but I told the taxi driver that I had to go to Terminal B of the airport. I was in a schizophrenic state because I just left my boyfriend’s house. The taxi driver tells me something but I don’t understand it. I only know that a few kilometers later we stopped somewhere and someone opens the trunk and I see how a man takes out my suitcase. I fly crazy, alone and scared to death. So I start yelling at the taxi driver asking him: “What happens?”, or what is the same, “what is happening?”. It was one of the few things he knew how to say. The poor taxi driver explained to me that he had already told me that he could only take me up to that point and that another colleague would take me to catch my flight to Madrid. The other taxi driver, as there was a traffic jam, enters the Bronx, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in New York, so fear once again seized me. When I was safely at the airport I gave him a $100 tip.
With the passage of time, I realized that my relationship with Juan was exciting. He was an extremely liberal man while I was classical, conservative and even old fashioned, as some consider me. He took me to places that I would have been unable to go. The relationship is over. I am not going to detail the reasons, because they are of no interest to anyone and, furthermore, they would bore you. Do you remember that before I told you that I went out to smoke on Valentine’s Day during my meal, right? Many years later, Juan and I met again on that street in Madrid where I was eating on Valentine’s Day.
Suddenly, my head thinks: “What is this? Is it coincidence?” We see each other and melt into a very affectionate hug. She told me that she continued to live between New York and Madrid. I asked him about his parents, who were always wonderful with me. The first time I went to Gijón to meet them, his father told me: “What year were you born?” “In ’65,” I replied. They brought me an exquisite red wine from the year of my birth because they had a wonderful cellar. Juan has not been just any person in my life. I recognize it. Maybe I didn’t behave well with him. At his side I learned many things, places and aspects of freedom unknown to me at the time. I learned many things with him. During that brief chat I introduced him to Alejandra and we exchanged phone numbers. This is how we met again many years later, me with my remains from the shipwreck and him with his hair and his gray beard. It was something magical! So we will have to meet one day to clear up so many things and so many years of our lives.
