Flashing Lights

We have been in Madrid for a week now, and for the most part it has been an uneventful week. Now I know the negative connotations that the word "uneventful" carries and I need to dispel those with all possible. It has been deeply satisfying to sit on our asses all day every day, a welcome break from the busy pace that we had been keeping.


Regardless of how you feel about the word "uneventful", Friday night fucking shattered any notions of that particular adjective having anything to do with the city of Madrid, and after the shattering, the tattered pieces were swiftly crushed into a fine dust. The dust was then jettisoned into the furthest reaches of space, never to be seen or heard from again.

We decided to go clubbing.


Madrid is an optimal destination for the raccoons and vampires among our readers (Vampyres? Jon?) in that it really comes alive at night. In the downtown area the streets stay pretty much packed from about 11PM till 5 or 6AM. Amidst the pedestrians that fill the streets there are countless solicitors, patient vultures who perch on corners with fliers and eager eyes, ready to preach to you about whatever club, or brothel, has employed them.

Their efforts were in vain however, as Adam and I had done a little bit of research earlier and already picked our destination for the night. The five of us could not be deterred as we walked steadily downhill to the club, Joy. When we at last arrived, we hung out near the entrance for a couple of minutes, debating whether or not the it was full enough to be enjoyable(No pun intended, I swear that shit was an accident).


We decided against entering at that moment, as it was only about 12:30. So we continued our walk down to Sol, one of the many plazas that people gather at when the night comes. There was some strange event going on there which I still don't understand. About sixty people had formed a circle around a few attention starved jackasses that were parading around with thongs on, wielding dildos, and pretending to engage in lewd sexual acts with each other.

It wasn't funny.


The thing that the people didn't realize was that no less than 20 feet away from them something truly hilarious was happening. Some enterprising bum had apparently grown tired of endlessly degrading himself asking people for change, and realized that payphones had tons of change idly resting in their depths. It was determined that the optimal tool for obtaining said change was the payphone itself.

This money hungry son of the gutter was maniacally smashing the receiver against the box with every ounce of force he could muster. I wouldn't imagine that such a man could muster up much force, as I'm sure his feeble diet consisted of little more than bread crumbs flavored only by the stench of piss surrounding him and bingo tickets with ketchup on them. But he wanted that fucking money and he wasn't going to stop.


While I was watching this, Brock was being befriended by a couple of questionable Brazilian fellows that kept offering him free drinks that they concocted right there in the plaza. I was weary of these gentlemen, but they had gained the attention of the rest of the group, so I entered in the fray, offering up my meager knowledge of Spanish, meeting them halfway with their substandard English.

We told them what we were up to, and it seemed as good of a time as any to go to the club, so we began the short trek to Joy. When we got their we learned that there was a guest list. This brief moment of panic was remedied when the Brazilians offered up another location. We didn't know any better so we agreed.
We got to the door and paid fifteen euros to get in, a steep price partly due to the free drink ticket it included-useless to me for obvious reasons. We climbed the stairs and upon our entrance to the first room, this club was immediately disappointing.


The lights were impressive and the music was decent enough, but the room was filled with people who at the very least were a decade older than ourselves. The small dance floor was populated with thirty and forty somethings gyrating mildly in a last ditch attempt to masquerade youth and vitality. We all exchanged "What the fuck?"s for a couple of minutes before slipping into one of the many side rooms.

We posted up in this room for a bit, wondering what to do next, and soon enough the Great Goosby had attracted the attention of some chick. They talked for a bit, and I think it was during this time that Joel wandered off further into the depths of the club to see if he couldn't find something more suitable for us.
Joel returned with a fervent pitch insisting that he had found a satisfactory room. We followed him, as anything had to be better than the room we were in, and he was absolutely right. We had finally escaped from the geriatric shuffling of rooms past, and found our home. Glenn eventually followed with his new friend in tow, and we were introduced to her friends, a handful of lovely girls from London who were on a trip for a Spanish class. It turns out the girl Glenn was hitting on was their teacher, and she was 27.


We stayed with these girls for the rest of the night, and I have to say it was much better than our clubbing experience in London. The only problem was that the club was playing mostly Spanish club tracks, which often break down into a series of clicks and clacks just barely resembling percussion, severely reducing the low chances of us not looking like jackasses when we were dancing.

Also, while we were at the club we met a couple of guys, Chris and Jonah.




That's right, fucking McLovin and Seth.


Superbad had premiered in Spain a couple of days earlier so they were there doing promotional stuff. We would go over to the area that were hanging out in throughout the night and check up on them, talk for about fifteen minutes then go back to dancing. The funny shit was that Chris (McLovin) is pretty much the same person in real life as was in Superbad. Honest to God, his voice actually sounds like that. They were completely willing to sit around and talk shit with us, even though I would imagine that it wasn't that exciting for them.


So there you have it, we danced all night long with some cute British girls, hung out with McLovin (fucking McLovin!), and finally went home at 5AM. When we were half a block away from the hostel Joel stopped to piss in some alley. I sat on the steps of the metro stop waiting for him, and some enchanting Spanish girl said something to me that I didn't understand.


I pleaded her to repeat it for me, but I still didn't comprehend whatever she was trying to convey. She walked off into the night as I tried to decipher the message, but it was no use.

Joel finished pissing, I still wondered what she said, and at last the night was over.