I look at them and I don't know which side to take. If theirs, if the others' (and is the others' mine or do I not have a side?). They are together, sitting on the stairs of this square, Orwell Square, which is known, popularly and for reasons not worth dwelling on, as La plaza del Tripi. I remember that in the time before the pandemic (Is it a time? Can we call it that?) when there was summer without a mask and shared sweat (it seems like an eternity, doesn't it?) it was said that the dog of one of the bars in the square was crazy because it licked too many "tripis" from the ground. The crazy one, in reality, was the owner.
They are doing "botellón" (street drinking), but they had already done that before the pandemic. It was already illegal. But not so much. There were can sellers, mojito sellers, and drug dealers everywhere, and we all knew they kept their merchandise (sometimes empanadas or sometimes hashish) in the trash cans. Everyone sat on those stairs and ate falafels, pizza slices. And everyone wore tank tops and flip-flops not suitable for many of the bars, then open. And the police would come and evict them. And the next day, in that square, we would see plastic cups with lemon slices (an out-of-place luxury or a convention impossible not to take into account) empty gin and tonic bottles, and remnants of potato chips and "fantasmitas" and "ganchitos."
Now more or less the same thing happens, but the feeling is different, because of the pandemic. The police come and evict them. There are more of them, because the bars are closed and looking, looking, looking and looking again, and approaching someone who has looked at you, everyone likes it and now it can't be done, and no one can be eternally on the balcony applauding. They appear on the TN, because they are unsupportive, because they drink in the street, because they dance and they can't stop doing it. It is also true that the fancy dinners of six different bubbles in private homes with a hired chef don't appear anywhere. And I don't know where to stand. I could dance, I could not dance. I could be the most sociable, I could be the wildest. I could need everyone, I could need no one. I could get by with a piece of bread and cheese and I could not get by without a wonderful meal.
I observe my daughter and her generation. They were born in 2007, the year of the Golden Pig, they would tell me in Chinese restaurants when they saw me with my belly. It's a lucky year. All of them, now teenagers, are developing a surprising laziness for "hanging out" with friends and classmates. They prefer to talk on WhatsApp. And that I certainly don't forgive the pandemic for.