In Van Vechten’s search to satisfy his permanent, albeit aimless and directionless greed, nothing could have suited him better than my suggestion, or what he perceived as my temptations, that of being introduced, with the help of a guide or an initiate, into the wild, youthful life of the day. He didn’t really need me, because the times were so effervescent that suddenly everything seemed permissible and normal in contrast to the leaden decades under Franco, although those days had already died a good five years before the dictator’s actual physical disappearance, or perhaps we had merely decisively turned our back on them. People of any age felt free to go anywhere, as though everyone were trying out new habits or perhaps a new youth. Those who, not long before, and because of their age, had felt they weren’t ‘authorized’ to go out several nights a week and stay out into the small hours, now had a sense that nothing prevented them from doing so; more than that, the general buzz and excitement seemed to be urging them to venture into places that would have been deemed inappropriate for someone of their age or position, for someone who had for so many years behaved with a certain dignity and composure. Despite all these possibilities, all these stimuli, it was not the same as having a real twenty-year-old taking you to all the fashionable bars and clubs and introducing you to his friends and, so to speak, giving you permission to approach any girl in his circle as an equal and allowing you the illusion that you were part of a kind of privileged band. It was a time when almost no one slept in Madrid, because after a night on the town, with the exception of students and artists and professional layabouts, every night owl, unlikely though it may seem and at a remarkably early hour, could be found at his or her desk the following morning. I was and so was Van Vechten, who never once missed a day in his consulting rooms, and it was the same with Muriel and Rico and Roy and Beatriz and Gloria when they stayed out late, as they all did now and again; no one could entirely avoid the nocturnal ferment of those anomalous years, which, if you had a bit of money and however wretchedly unhappy you felt, were celebratory despite the political unease and the uncertainties of all kinds. It was not unusual to find traffic jams in various parts of the city in the early hours of a Wednesday or a Monday or even a dull Tuesday. On some nights, our cold, sentinel moon must have blinked its one somnolent eye in disbelief.
I get them mixed up, the bars I used to go to in 1980 and those I went to shortly before and shortly afterwards, but in addition to the places I mentioned earlier, I think I took Van Vechten to the Dickens, El Café and Rock-Ola, to certain street cafés in Recoletos and to the Universal (on second thoughts, no, that was probably later), and to various discotheques, where, of course, I spent far too many hours, whether with him or on my own, I can’t for the life of me remember, places like Pachá and Joy Eslava and others whose names escape me, one near the river (La Riviera?) and another next door to Chamartín station, and another in Calle Hortaleza and yet another in Fortuny or Jenner or Marqués del Riscal (Archy perhaps?), times and people tend to get confused, alcohol doesn’t exactly clear the head, although cocaine does for as long as its effects last, but not a posteriori; someone would offer you a line of coke now and then and you took it just to be able to keep going a little longer and sustain the bellowed conversations that you somehow kept up in a losing battle with the surrounding hubbub. I didn’t go to all those places with the Doctor, and I only did so for a short time, getting rid of him as soon as my mission was complete. One place I definitely did take him to was an updated, refurbished nightclub called Pintor Goya (the name it was given in its antiquated origins), in the street of the same name, that is, Goya.
Just as on that earlier poker night, when his simultaneously chilling and greedy eyes had been repeatedly drawn to Celia and her friend, so now they were drawn to women of almost any age (those places were fairly ‘intergenerational’ at the time, within reasonable limits), and even to the transvestites who were beginning to display themselves provocatively and brazenly on the Paseo de la Castellana near Calle Hermanos Bécquer, and who gradually spread out, eventually invading all the adjacent territory too. I always found their popularity odd, and the fact that their clients were mainly heterosexuals, many of them, apparently, married men: however convincing the transvestites were as women, you would have to go through a whole mental process, a form of self-deceit, that I find hard to comprehend, to convince yourself that they really were women, and that, in the middle of a transaction, you weren’t going to be put off by the sudden appearance of certain inappropriate and dissuasive genitals. Whenever we drove past the transvestites in Dr Van Vechten’s flash car, he, I recall, was always adamant that they couldn’t possibly be men on hormone treatment or who had undergone surgery, or perhaps half one thing and half another. He would glance at them out of the corner of his eye while he was driving and make as if to turn to me or to my friends.
‘What do you mean? How can they possibly be men? They’re obviously women, and I should know. Look at those breasts, those legs. You’re having me on.’ And he would smile his becoming smile, half-amused, half-bewildered.
‘Look, Jorge, most of them are too tall. Were women ever that tall when you were young?’ I would say. He had insisted I call him ‘Jorge’ and not ‘Dr Van Vechten’. ‘Their legs are too muscular. Their tits are too hard. Some of them have suspiciously large hands. And most take at least a size eight in shoes. More importantly, if you look closely, they all have an Adam’s apple.’
‘How can I look closely from this far away and travelling at this speed?’ On the long home straight of the Castellana, late at night, you could go like a bullet, although he always slowed down slightly when he reached the transvestite zone, for they clearly aroused in him, at the very least, great curiosity. ‘I can’t see a single Adam’s apple from here. Don’t talk nonsense, they’re clearly women and pretty spectacular ones at that. The race has improved over the years, that’s why they’re tall. Or perhaps they’re foreign — for example, there was a real stunner of a mulatta back there. You’re all mad, and you want to drive me mad too.’ His remarks betrayed the fact that he came from a much earlier generation. And he occasionally used very dated expressions; no one of my age would have used the word ‘stunner’.