An old notebook of mine, and a love story at the end of the world.

Revisiting an old notebook of mine, I found what seemed to be the first lines of a short story that for some unknown reason, ended up not being written. I would, then, like to share it, regardless of its incomplete status.

It is still untitled (no wonder)

Thus, it begins:

Let’s imagine some kid living in some forgotten place – the name of such a place does not matter, as it rarely ever does, for the older I get, the more I see the similarities between places, rather than their differences. So, call it what you want, and that small city will have no other choice but to accept the name. Again, in this nameless city, or now, the city known by the name of your choice, that kid we were talking about grew up to become a man. He is now a scientist. He loves how vast the cosmos is and because of this passion, he invented the fastest way to exchange messages across space ever created. It was so fast and could reach so far that it would be pointless to write the distance using numbers. Now, my reader, I need you to indulge me a bit more and accept the existence of this unimaginable machine, the same way you have accepted this town and this kid who grew up to become a man. A scientist of all things. Now think about this: even with this invention, our scientist was always behind or ahead of the sender of the messages he got, never on synch, for in this scenario distance is time; it was always too soon, always too late.

I stopped here. There. I mean, there are no following lines. Time passed and I stopped writing about it. This came to my mind, however, after I finished watching Omar Zúñiga Hidalgo’s Los Fuertes – The Strong Ones; a beautiful movie about the desire to be seen, to be touched, and above all things, to belong somewhere, and if we’re lucky enough, with someone. In a sense, I think that this is what makes stories so compelling for us; in one way or another, they are all about belonging or wanting to belong. It is as if we were writing different versions of The Odyssey, all of us attempting to return to a place that may not even have been found yet.

Lucas (Samuel Gonzalez) has left his home. He is a gay man and this narrative has no place to happen close to his parents; so, he left. From Santiago, Chile, he begins his odyssey towards Canada; he is now looking for a home where there is none. “Where are you staying?” Asks his brother-in-law at some point. “At a friend’s house.”, he replies. Symbolically enough, to depart, he had to sell his apartment and burn an important bridge that connected him to the place he was used to calling home.

Antonio (Antonio Altamirano), on the other hand, lives in a remote town in Southern Chile where he spends most of his time working as a boatswain, looking after his grandmother, and acting in some sort of reenacting of Chile’s independence from Spain. He is grounded, he is fine with living there, however, he is lonely. About this loneliness two moments must be highlighted; the first, when his boss talks to him about his late father and how much Antonio is now like his old man. The second, when we realize that there was something sexual between Antonio and a fellow boatswain, but things went sour as they often do. Against what some may say, Antonio, born in an even smaller place than the one he is now living in, is an island himself. He is surrounded by water and by the tasks and jobs he keeps taking. He is there and yet elsewhere, he is yonder. These narratives must collide, and they do, all because Lucas’ departure takes him to this small town where his sister lives. The same town where Antonio spent his whole life.

Another digression:

When the movie ended, I picked up the same notebook where I wrote these words and attempted to write something. I could write nothing more than a few lines that did not end up becoming a text. I would like to share them anyway:

- I would like to believe that Lucas designed a boat for Antonio;

- I would like to believe that Antonio got his boat and that it floated just fine;

- I would like to believe that, for them, sailing together might be a way to deal with their urges to stay and to leave at the same time;

- I would like to imagine that they said “te quiero” to each other.

- I would like to imagine that they danced again to “Mío” by Paulina Rubio;

- I would like to imagine that the “gay cinema conventions” if one can call them like that, have a point. They are as listed below:

. Sharing/wearing/stealing a piece of clothing from the one you love, and using it as a token of a love that changed the course of your life;

(Lucas wearing Antonio’s sweatshirt in Los Fuertes)

. Resting your head on your lover’s shoulders in a car/bus/train ride;

· Taking your love to a train station or airport;

· Making out inside a public toilet;

· A simple shot of the lovers’ hands touching each other.

It is curious how fiction, like meeting someone new, might be a different way of life holding a mirror in front of us. Books, films, paintings, etc, are all dangerous because art is dangerous: it gives us a glimpse of our deepest selves in a different context. Art is were “what if’s” and “might have been’s” reign. Touching is also a way of not only recognizing this other but seeing ourselves through them. Drawing from Sartre, touching is shaping, and we are never fully complete or done. There is always room for shaping and reshaping. Always room for recognition. Lucas and Antonio were wandering through their lives and it was by meeting each other, touching each other, fucking each other that they could know more about themselves.

Now, as I prepare to finish this text, I listen to a Björk's song that goes like this: “I wake you up in the middle of the night /To express my love for you / Stroke your skin and feel you /Naked I can feel all of you /At the same moment…”, and suddenly, I remember a scene in which Antonio pulls Lucas back to bed and ask him to just sleep with him. Naked. Skin to skin. Side by side. Then, the song goes on… “Every single touch we ever touch each other /Every single fuck we had together / Is in a wondrous time lapse / With us here. here at this moment / The history of touches / Every single archive / Compressed into a second…” now Lucas is asking Antonio to cross the river with him so they can stay together a little bit longer. And I, on the other hand, as the song and this text finish, I wonder who is the strongest person, the one who left or the one who stayed?