Saturday night fever

I knew just from looking at the Internet and pictures of the street I'm living on that it was the gay district. I mean, there’s a gay cruising and glory hole joint called Boyberry right across the street. That wasn’t what made it noisy last night (which was Saturday night). It was all the people going to other places in the neighborhood—discos, bars, other such cruising joints no doubt. It was noisy to a very high degree and it didn't stop at 2:00 a.m., or at 4:00, or even at 6:00.

When I say noisy, it was just people hooting and speaking loudly. Mostly men, but lots of women too. I was able to sleep from midnight 2 about 2:45. Only then did I put in my earplugs. They worked very well, but I couldn't get back to sleep. Around 4:30 I finally got up and decided to take a walk in the cool night air.

As expected, I saw knots of people gathered around any place that was open. In addition to the clubs and discos, they even gathered outside any tiny bodega -- the kind of place that sells mostly soft drinks and ice cream and candy bars and so on. Some of them are open all night long. As long as something was open, it attracted knots of people.

By that late hour, plenty of people on the back end of their nights—drunken, drugged, sobbing, arguing, and generally not having what looked like a good time, though I'm sure all those things were precisely what they came out on Saturday to do, or at least accepted them as part of the gestalt.

But the other interesting thing about the neighborhood was how truly quiet and almost lonely it was away from any people. I could walk 100 yards without encountering anyone, or at least anyone who wasn't walking fairly decisively in the opposite direction, before coming to another open establishment with people outside it.

Back at Gran Vía, the scene was even more interesting, and more lively. Dozens of young people who had made their way out of the Chueca neighborhood were congregating. Some of them were in line at the all-night McDonalds, some were deciding whether to call it a night or try to meet up with other friends, and many were just killing time before the Metro opened at 6:00. (By now it was after 5:30.) Also, there were prostitutes.

By this time I had accepted Anna’s suggestion. “If it gets so bad that you can’t sleep,” she said, "get a hotel room someplace outside of town. It’ll be worth it.”

I went online to find a place. I almost chose a town called San Lorenzo de El Escorial before I read the description. That happens to be where Franco is buried in a gigantic mausoleum. No, not more fascists, I groaned, and chose a different place.