My most cherished memory of La França, one of Barcelona's oldest hourly hotels dedicated to the most ancestral fornication, happened after a splendid afternoon of pleasurable exchange with a slender and insatiable supermom; I had dialed number nine on the room phone (to connect with reception so that a very discreet concierge would take us to the car, and thus leave the establishment without being seen or coinciding with any other client). That afternoon, the usher took a long time to pick us up, and as we went down in the elevator, I routinely asked him: "many people today?" He replied, huffing: "it's after-school activities." "After-school activities?" I inquired, very surprised. "Yes, of course; the kids finish sports and music between six and seven in the evening, and in the hours before that, we have many female clients who take the opportunity to come, before picking up the children from karate, solfège, and so on."
Ah, pure poetry of everyday eroticism! Who knows if that marathon we had the joy of experiencing with the lady in question had been more pleasurable, or the morbid act of imagining this great mother, with an exemplary sacrificial and Kantian spirit towards her offspring, dutifully picking up the children at the music school with her crotch still dripping from me. With this amazon, we spent many extraordinary afternoons at La França, with orgasms overflowing with tears and honest hugs of love; as she herself knew, she was not the only lover with whom I went to the place, not ---or not only--- to satisfy my sexual pleasure (which, as in the case of most men, is something appallingly primary), but to fulfill the commendable task of saving the survival of Catalan family marriages, a mission I perpetrated for many years and for which the Generalitat should have given me a medal.
Not everything was afternoons of peace and ardor, in La França. There were quick vermouths, arranged with ladies for whom sex was practically masculine and who only demanded the check of the climax before eating (very civilized, since screwing in the morning or coinciding with the stomach rumble of midday is a great invention of Mediterranean sexuality, contrary to the disastrous Spanish custom of screwing at night and with a stomach overflowing with gin and tonic). There were also Saturday mornings with young women thirsty for philosophy, where the taste of olives and champagne mixed with that of skin and one left La França with the promise of a redemptive nap. All this cheap prose comes to mind because since the beginning of June our beloved establishment, like everything worthwhile in Barcelona, has changed its essence to become just another tourist hotel in this tedious home.
My dear França, which was not only the hotel where we made love in secret and passionately (that's how you have to screw; without fully giving yourself to the other and even less under the flaw of love); it was also the place where we hid and felt that strange mix of enjoyment and guilt that makes life much more interesting. A city is an endless sum of dialogues, but above all it is an accumulation of secrets. Of the countless times I went, most visits required a waiting time, as the seventy rooms were almost always running at full throttle. This means that, every second of the day in La França, there were dozens of half-truths, excuses, meetings, congresses and snacks with friends that were just a feint for some individuals to feel the vanity of knowing themselves desired again. This, for a city like Barcelona, is more important than the Sijena cards!
Our den of intimacy has now been renamed La França Travellers which, if readers will excuse my rudeness, sounds like a fake hooker name. In fact, I think we are still on time and ---given that the City Council has bought properties in the Eixample just so that its tenants, career civil servants, can continue living in the city center--- I think it would be an opportune decision to convert La França into public heritage; one should pay for the rooms at the usual price, of course, but at least this way we could maintain the grace of the double life of citizens, essence of the Mediterranean and ---as I said before--- solid guarantee of marital continuity! I know that cities are predators of memory and that new novelties are needed that, in a few decades, will become tradition. But La França is part of my happiest years, a time of desire for which I would like to feel nostalgia, but which only causes me great pain and longing.
We are still on time, I insist. Let's save our secrets; let's enjoy our lies; and let's fuck, certainly, because the world is ending.