Little Yellow Shorts, Off
Eleven Spanish summers (revisited).
I wrote this post last July. It was my first Substack summer and it felt appropriate to write something seasonal, especially as summer is such a big deal in Spain. I’m sharing it again for new subscribers and I’ve edited it, too, so it should feel fresh (unlike the weather).
For anyone that has read my essay collection or who attended any of the launch events, you’ll know that for me the line between fact and fiction is blurry at best. I’m more intrigued by story than hard truth (if such a thing even exists), though only when it comes to myself, my own experiences and the myriad ways I’ve lived through them, I’m not getting all The Salt Path on you! I'm not deluding you or myself and, above and beyond that, ‘what else does truth have to hold?’ as Richard Ford said.
All that to say: there may be parts of this post that some of you recognise, words that seem to layer themselves over other words I have written and you may have read. I’m happy about that. I want to disorient you, just a little, lull you into the story, blindfold and kidnap you…
It’s summer in Madrid now. That means: open air cinemas and swimming pools, sleeping on your rooftop if you have access to one, huge street parties. The city turned upside down - stay in all day, take long naps, go out all night. It means: the city half-closed and shuttered and populated by bewildered tourists, as you lie awake in the hot early hours of the morning, listening to the street cleaners and considering asking them to hose you down with their jet washer, like Carmen Maura in La ley del deseo.
This will be my 11th summer in Madrid. Many things have changed over that time. I’m no longer (quite so) obsessed with tinto de verano, I now know which are the naked days at the outdoor pool, I’ve learnt to embrace the alpargata. But, throughout all the summers I’ve lived here, there is one thing that has been a constant: my little yellow shorts.
I bought them in Valencia the first summer after emigration. My sister, Amy, and I decided the most madrileño thing we could do was to leave Madrid, as that was what everyone else seemed to do in July and August. It was our first trip out of the city after moving and it was a little odd. We felt both native and foreign; we weren’t tourists exactly, but we weren’t locals either. We couldn’t wait to get back to Madrid, as it already felt like home. I found the shorts on the day we left, at a vintage shop tucked away on a dusty little plaza in the old town. They were old cut-off Levi’s 501s that has been dip-dyed. I’d never owned or worn anything so skimpy, but I figured that in Spain no-one knew that. Because no-one knew me.
The day after we got home to Madrid, I was walking past the front of our apartment building in my little yellow shorts when I heard a long slow wolf-whistle. I looked up and saw C—, our upstairs neighbour, hanging over his balcony with a big nasty smile on his face. He told me he was a poet. This impressed me greatly, as did his curly hair and general exotic-to-me-ness, and I fell into an intense crush. Later, I would find out that “poet” was how he liked to be perceived, versus what he was in reality, which was a salesman at a multinational energy company. He also had a fiancée, something else he omitted to mention until much later.
The whole summer then became a performance, as even just leaving the house to nip out for bread I ran the risk of bumping into him. One afternoon, I was having a café con hielo outside the bar downstairs from my apartment, when he walked past, arm slung around a girl who was neither me, nor his fiancée. I followed him with my eyes over the top of my book until he spotted me, waved and grinned. The next thing I heard were the shutters on his balcony windows being pulled. I don’t recommend getting involved with a neighbour.
One of the next times the shorts struck was at a Charles Bradley concert, in the beautiful, pink-tinged patio of Conde Duque, one of Madrid’s arts centres. I was there with my sister and my now brother-in-law. And the shorts. My sister claims they conceived my niece whilst listening to Charles Bradley, and her and my brother-in-law jokingly liked to warn people of the power of his love songs to entrance people into the mood for romance. I went with my Venezuelan friend, M—, who was also my fiancé. We were in the process of getting married so he could get his residency papers. But we were strictly business, it was a green card marriage and nothing more.
During Charles’s incredible rendition of “Lovin’ You Baby” I looked round to see M— had tears rolling down his handsome face. We smiled at each other. He grabbed my hand and kissed it. Later, walking home through the hot sticky night, he told me he loved me. The next day, when I told my sister and brother-in-law, they just looked at me, like: ‘We did warn you’. Personally, I think it was 50/50 - shorts and Charles.
V— was a colleague, but I didn’t meet him properly until he had already left to work at another company. When we still worked in the same building, I would watch him as he moved from one side of the office to another, my gaze apparently no longer under my control. I thought he had a beautiful nose. A few months after we got together, we went on a summer holiday to Alicante. He had been invited by his new colleagues. I didn’t like them very much. I found them boring and a little snobby, but V— was desperate to gain their friendship and I, also desperate, followed him.
One day, I convinced him to spend the day by the pool, just the two of us, away from his colleagues’ strict summer schedule and native accents. He lay on his towel, playing games on his phone, largely ignoring me. After an hour or so, I said I was going to stand in the shade for a while. It wasn’t only shade I wanted, however. I went and stood under a tree directly in his eyeline and leant against a low wall. I pulled the little yellow shorts up at the legs and unbuttoned them a few notches at the waist in the name of cooling off. I wanted his attention. I feigned reading a book, whilst keeping my eye on him, vigilant behind my sunglasses. Eventually he looked up and flashed me a lascivious, but fleeting, grin before returning his attention to his phone. With V— I learnt that sometimes you are most invisible when in plain sight.
In the summer of 2020, I was still able to work from home because of the pandemic restrictions, so I went to spend two months at my parents’ house in the southeast of Spain. It was one of the most summeriest summers I ever experienced. In the mornings I worked in the patio, then in the afternoons I hopped on my bike and pedalled over to swim at the local pool. I wore the little yellow shorts all that summer. I barely ever put on proper clothes. And I had a tan for the first time in my life.
At some point I decided to take a trip. My parents live fairly close to Valencia, so I took the shorts to see their native city. I stayed on a boat in the marina next to the beach, I had breakfast on the roof deck each morning, read all day and went for long walks on the sea front in the evenings. I picked up Mark on one of the walks. He was from New York, turns out the shorts were bilingual.
I don’t know why, but I didn’t wear them last summer, and I’m not sure I will this summer either. But they are still there in my wardrobe, now faded and less brightly coloured than they used to be. Even if I never wear them again, I probably won’t be able to get rid of them because they also hold a wider significance for me.
When Amy and I first moved to Madrid, one of the big things we found confusing were relationships. They seemed to be both a huge grey area yet and also defined by clear divides whose edges and borders we were unable to grasp an understanding of. Something which was further obfuscated by language. As well as standing for girlfriend and boyfriend, novia and novio also means bride and bridegroom. Making having a relationship something more serious than the more informal iterations of girlfriend and boyfriend that we had been used to in the UK. In turn, that made anything before reaching novia or novio status into a free for all (unless you were C— in which case everything was always a free for all). It took us quite a while to figure this out and reframe our view of things. In my case at least, that meant going through a few humiliating moments.
In this way, the shorts could stand for my entire emigration journey, from clueless and gawping in the early days, when they were more in control of me than I of them, to surer of myself and of my place here. And their place, too. Be that on or off.
Me again, speaking from the present day. In case you missed it, here is an interview I did on RTVE, Spain’s “BBC”, speaking (in English) about my essay collection A Line Drawn or Printed: Six Routes Through Madrid. Listen and play ‘erm’ and ‘like’ bingo!
I love these little yellow shorts, even without having met them. Reading this again made me think of the Sweaty Betty campaign for "Wear the Damn Shorts", which I think you should do. Let them have more adventures!
What a unique approach, memories via clothing. I'm racking my brains, trying to remember if I've read anything so inventive.
A lovely, touching read and I'm diving back into the old memory banks in an attempt to recall my Madrid summers. I remember spending an inordinate amount of time at the local pool on the American housing area and occasional trips to Casa de Campo. But that's about it - what a waste of a summer!