Dog. Walk.

I don’t know how, but I always manage to get myself into these kind of situations.

I was in the small park behind my building, watching Ace playing with a black Shiba-Inu named Paco. He runs to me and then straight to the water fountain. I go, turn it on, let him drink. Before I realise what’s happening, weird noises start coming from his throat and in a matter of seconds three puddles of vomit are spread around the playground.

Meanwhile I see Damian, whose name I didn’t know yet, approaching the water fountain while Ace was still circling it. I hear him asking if he can use it and I say of course, still startled from the fact that my dog just puked around the park.

Damian is old, I would say around 70. He’s wearing a blue shirt, dirty on the chest and I can see the sunlight passing through his long white beard. He’s bold on top of his head, but his sides are as crazy and as white as his beard. I see his eyes and I recognise something in them. I realise now that I probably saw someone who wanted to talk. He has a few grocery bags, which look like have been reused multiple times. He leaves them on the bench next to the water fountain. Normally I wouldn’t have thought much of it just by the looks of him, but the moment he came closer I could feel his smell.

It is not the smell of someone who spent all day walking too much in the sun and needs a shower to clean all that sweat and dirt gathered from the day. It’s a smell that accumulates from many days walking the streets. The unmistakable scent that doesn’t leave fabric or people. It’s not just sweat, it’s time.

He starts talking to me and I start listening. Everyone that knows me, knows that I have a weakness for old men. They just love to talk and I just love to listen. So I listen. Or rather, I start answering. He starts with the basics: ‘is your dog okay?’, ‘ where are you from?’, ‘oh, Romania?’ then he starts listing some random Romanian cities: Timisoara, Bucuresti, Ploiesti.

I look at him surprised. Usually the only thing people know about Romania is Dracula. But he knows more, he tells me of course about Vlad the Impaler (real history for once, not just vampire myths), we talk about movies and how Hollywood sells sex. How a vampire always needs too bite a young attractive woman and not an old relic that probably only cataract would love. I laugh. He’s right though.

We talk about Ceausescu and how he built the second largest administrative building in the world. And the most expensive one. I told him I saw it a few times but never truly impressed me. I wonder why though.

‘So did you come to Barcelona alone?’

I answer him that I moved here with my ex-boyfriend. He laughs.

We keep talking about me and Ace keeps vomiting a couple more times. Asks for more water. Vomits again. I start to get a bit worried, but Damian tells me ‘Look how he wiggles his tail, he must not be that bad.’ I look at him and he seems happy, except for the upset stomach and undigested chunks of dog food from last night.

So I asked, ‘what about you? what’s your story?’

He laughed. He said he never really liked work. He told me about his father that had a jewellery business. They weren’t rich, but had enough. He told me how he was cheating on his mother with his secretary and how she knew of it all. And it’s not that she didn’t care, but she didn’t want to lose the comfort of her home. The stability this type of life offered her. She didn’t want to be alone. Like this, she still had her family, or at least the illusion of it.

He told me how his father spent half of the day at the office working and what was left of the night, at dinner with his lover. How it was not much time left for his mother. I didn’t ask him how he felt about it.

He told me how he was working for his father but how there was no pressure. How he actually could do whatever he wanted with his time. He told me about ‘these people’ who fight to get what they want, kindly suggesting that he might not have been one of them.

He told me he lives in the same apartment that his father rented more than 50 years ago. I don’t know if that’s true.

He told me how he is not bothered by loneliness. How much worse it is to feel alone while being with someone else. He said he doesn’t need all that, he’s happy with his solitude. I wanted to believe him. I think he wanted me to believe him too.

I told him that I’m scared of ending up alone. That it scares me more than death, loneliness…

At this point, I had to get going. I told him I hope to see him around again. He made a comment about my name.

‘Oh, Alexia, we have a football player here with this name.’

I told him that I knew, but that my name spells with an S not with an X.

Then he made another comment, I don’t remember what now. It was insignificant, but I knew it was because he would have liked to talk more. In some way, I would have also liked to talk more. To know more about him. To listen on his perspective, to understand if it’s loneliness or solitude what he’s feeling.

I wish I could have photographed him. He had a beautiful face to photograph. But again, if you know me, you know how much I love old people.

He thanked me for the conversation. I thanked him as well. And as I was heading back home, I thought one thing: he certainly made sure he never ended up like his mother.