Whimsical, rural and wild

The Chef of the hotel had eloped, mad with love, on a tycoon's boat
(although he later returned heartbroken). Frank Sinatra was furious with
jealousy because Ava Gardner was having a good time with others (there was a famous
slapping), and when I asked my grandfather if at that time he was jealous
of Rock Hudson (admirer of my grandmother's culinary skills), he let out a
laugh and said: Rock Hudson preferred me...

I had once read that children should be given answers on
as they ask questions, and there was one summer when the usual
conversations began to affect me in a different way.
Suddenly I found it hard to ignore adult chatter, to overlook the
details and gossip. I found it hard not to dig into the silences, blushes and
glances unleashed by the anecdotes of yesteryear heard in the living room of
grandparents' house in Cap sa Sal.

Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra was one of the most recurring themes, because
grandfather had always adored her, like the rest of the men on the planet,
I guess. My grandmother was jealous of that adoration, because as she was
so flirtatious, that portent of a female left her unarmed. He would laugh and tell her
something like, "you already had Rock Hudson, let me have a little bit of Ava". "Ya
know that women didn't catch his eye, except to cook at his
side... If you keep Ava, I'll have to comfort Frank," smiled my
grandmother ironically.
Apparently Sinatra and Gardner once starred in dozens of chapters of
a tortuous love story with the Costa Brava as a backdrop. Ava,
who had found in this country an irresistible theme park, with its
bullfighters, its society parties, and its red wine, did not intend to stop enjoying it
without measures, and so she let Sinatra know, who came to spoil her party one
and again. "Spain is like me, capricious, rural and wild", declared the actress,
and the Spaniards surrendered to her ardent look, her generous body and her
ease to live the party until they lost their senses.

My imagination was depopulated with certain topics and it was time to solve.
Why did adults lose their heads like that when it came to
love? Wasn't the years supposed to have endowed them with reason and common sense?
Why had no one ever talked at home about relationships between two
men or two women? Why did it suddenly turn out that love was not for
ever and that fidelity was not an untouchable statute, but rather, a
flexible rubber that was taught as solid, but cheated without any
modesty?

Many questions and little patience on the part of my elders to calm my
sudden curiosity towards these aspects that no longer belonged to childhood.
Coincidence or not, grandfather began to offer me a seat in the car that
brought Benita to Cap Sa Sal every day, and that is where I met them,
my friends, the boys and girls with whom I shared the most beautiful summers
of my life. The waters watched us swim hours and hours in a row, the beaches at
sunset witnessed our talks, in which the
answers to so many questions about love were appearing. I fell in and out of love
several times, with them by my side, and in the end, with one of them, and the sea kept me
tears every time my heart broke a little. There came other
wonderful summers in so many other exotic and distant places, but none like those, where we were still children, but our approach to the world of adults caused us an addictive vertigo. A road of no return towards
adolescence and the adult world, but spending every last drop of what
we had left of childhood.

Marc, Astrid, the twins Sophie and Guillaume, Andres, Mary and Jacob, my
gang, the Super Eight, my companions of adventures, those who
occupied a place in my soul that no one could replace, because those years of
transition left a skin along the way, and created a new one, and they
became my foundation, although, after time and life, I never saw them
again.

I guess this is why they say "never say never", or
never say never ever, because life takes many turns, and the "Never again"
began to blur the day I met Andrés at the market.
Seeing our faces and recognizing each other through the decades of our skin
produced an unexpected reaction and awakened the dormant spirit of Los Super
Ocho. Nothing to do with the friends and old loves that Facebook has
been bringing back to me, but something that deserved to be experienced and celebrated. Something
wonderful was beginning to form in my imagination: Cap Sa Sal would return to
to see us together once again. That would become my new assignment.