"Love In The Mud" Part 6 - A Camino Love Story

Leon dinner the night of the kiss(es). Red, myself and Hannes.

Ahhh, the first kiss...

My very first kiss of all time was also the worst.  Not only were my palms and pits sweaty, the guy kissed me like a snake; his tongue darting in and out of my mouth as if to catch flies.  I remember thinking to myself, 'Is this it?!  It can't be.  Had all those romantic movies lied to me?  Wasn't this supposed to be a pleasant past time?  Where were the stars and birds floating around his head?  The butterflies wreaking havoc in my stomach?  Who had let the Frog Prince into this fantasy?  Yuck!'  Needless to say, I've had both good and bad kisses since (I won't even get into the infamous 'Teeth Masher' of 2000).  But none as perfect and breathtakingly life-changing as the one on that little wooden bench under the stars by the river in Leon. 

Earlier that day the gang and I stopped into the cathedral to take a look at its stained glass windows.  Hannes had already been inside, so he told me to walk around and explore while he took a moment to sit and ponder.  Look, by this point in my travels I'd seen nearly 1,000 churches and had no longing desire to add another to the list.  I'd been to big ones, small ones, ornate ones, plain ones, ones hanging on cliffs and those nestled in the prairie.  There are as many styles of churches as there are kisses.  And frankly, once you've seen La Sagrada Familia are there really any other churches worth seeing? 

But the stained glass was gorgeous, as Hannes had promised, and that musty smell of aging stone always holds a certain intriguing air of mystery for me, so I went along with his plan and began to walk alone through its kaleidoscope passageways.  Secretly inside, however, I was wishing he would walk beside me.  I didn't know if this would be my last day with him, and I wanted to savor every second.  But clingy I would not be.  So I explored solo for as long as I could muster and then took a seat beside him.  We sat in silence staring up at the light pouring in through rose and moss colored glass.  It felt good to be near him.  Even in the quiet on ancient pews so hard they put my butt to sleep.

After a dinner with friends that evening (and a meal that sent Red into vegetarian hog heaven... is that an oxymoron?), my cousin once again led the rebellion to ditch Hannes and I while our backs were turned so that we could be alone together.  Earlier she had pulled me aside and confessed she'd politely commanded Hannes to kiss me.  He had told her that he was afraid to.  That it would only make separating harder.  'Great,' I thought.  'Over before it had begun.'  At dinner I had tried to read his body language.  He flirted, alright, but didn't attempt to hold my hand or brush a piece of hair from my face like a man in love.  Could I have read him all wrong?  As we walked later alone toward the river, I told myself, 'Ah what the hell?' and put my arm through his.  What did I have to lose?  As a pilgrim you leave your pride aside the first time you wash your girlie underwear in the sink next to a hairy Spaniard's dirty Euro banana hammock.  

As the stars began to peak through the dusky sky, Hannes and I sat on a stone bench by the water, laughing and pouring our hearts out.  I led the topic to dating, first kisses, love affairs...  I didn't know how else to be obvious!  For the love of St. Jacques, was he ever going to make a move?  That quote from "Clueless" kept running through my head: "I don't get it.  Did my hair get flat?  Did I stumble into some bad lighting?"

We moved later to a little wooden bench still next to the river but now in front of a children's sand box littered with lost toys and what was most likely dog crap.  Romance at its finest.  It was more guarded, though, from the wind, and I was starting to get chilly, so it would have to do.  I wondered how much longer I could hold out here in the cold.  I wanted to be with him.  To talk to him.  Make him laugh at my California witticisms.  Bond over our gypsy stories.  But how long could a girl wait?  A few times I even thought he was starting to lean in... but then he'd bend down to tie his shoe or flick a bug from my shoulder, and my heart would sigh a long forlorn sigh.  I almost threw in the towel completely when a cockroach scurried by my feet, but something told me, 'Stick with it just a bit longer.'

Come 2am, though, I had the sinking feeling that I, Blackheart, would have to be the one to make the move.  Dread sank in.  I had been a grimy pilgrim so long, I didn't know if I had it in me to play the breathless ingenue.  But I inhaled deeplly, gathered my courage and leapt.  "Hannes?  Do you think..."  I paused.  "Never mind."  I had choked.  I couldn't do it.  But curious, Hannes started prodding me to continue and eventually I tried again.  "Do you think you could kiss me?"  Oh lord, I sounded like some Twihard preteen (not knocking it - I read all four books in the series with gusto) and not the sexy, self-confident woman of the new millennium I thought myself to be at home.  I turned to face him.  Ready for Hannes to laugh or tell me exactly what he'd told my cousin hours earlier.  But no.  All I saw was a smile.  A sparkle.  A look that said, 'Thank goodness.'  "Yes," he told me, grinning ear to ear.

As he began to lean toward me, I was consumed with nerves.  Now, I'm an old kissing pro, and I don't mind telling you that I've been told on many an occasion that I'm top notch.  No, the fear was that we wouldn't be good kissers together.  You know what I mean.  A bad kiss with even the dreamiest of a partner can be a deal breaker.  I silently hoped it would be magic.  Or at least good enough to work with...  But it was more than I could have ever expected.  It was that one perfect kiss you get in a lifetime.  A kiss that sends chills down your spine and sets off fireworks in your stomach and a dull ache in your heart.  A kiss that makes all others fade away into forgotten mediocrity.  And that tells you, at last, here he is.  Your soul mate. 

We pulled away and looked at each other in astonishment.  I knew he was thinking and feeling exactly as I was.  We giggled like nerds at Comic-Con.  WHAT WAS THAT?!  We decided to give it another shot.  Test our luck.  And then another.  And another.  And by 4am with our lips chapped and throats dry and a creepy street cleaner watching us from afar as he sprayed the sidewalks, we decided it was time to part.  I felt like a teenager.  I hadn't made out with someone on a park bench... well, ever.  But I did remember that feeling when you were young and kissing was the coolest thing you'd ever experienced and you could do it for hours.  All night if you got the chance.  I just never thought I would feel that again.  Yet with Hannes everything was new.  Love was as it should be.  Innocent.  Vulnerable.  Full of promise.  And, well, totally hot!!!!

He walked me to my parador, now awash in the shadows of night like a sleeping giant.  The enormous courtyard was empty.  The massive doors shut tight.  The gargoyles on full alert.  I was a maiden in a fairy tale returned to her castle by the prince.  We hugged and said our goodbyes.  "We have to see each other again.  We don't have a choice now," he told me, my face cupped in his callused pilgrim hands.  "No choice," I agreed, watching the stars and birds circle around his head.  (I knew they existed!)  As he began to walk away, and I tried desperately to pry open the 2-ton parador door, we turned back around to catch one more glimpse of each other.  "You're amazing!" he yelled, unable to contain his happiness.  "You're amazing!" I cried back without missing a beat.  "Amazing!"  And I meant it.  'I'm going to marry this man,' I thought.  The girl who never ever in a million years wanted to get married is going to tie the knot one day with this amazing Belgian mud walker.  I couldn't believe the change in me.  What was this Camino up to? 

Even in the dark at a distance I could see his smile and hear his racing heartbeat.  Even in the dark I could see love walking away.

To be continued...

"Love In The Mud" Part 4 - A Camino Love Story

From Fromista I would like to skip ahead (in my dirty hiking boots) just a few kilometers to Carrion de los Condes.  Hannes and I didn't cross paths that day on the road, and the end result should have been a warning that walking with him really did bring good luck.  The Cali gang and I chose the shorter path along the freeway, as many did, and wound up with mouths full of gnats (oh, the gnats!) and screaming feet from walking at break neck speeds to get away from the winged plague.  I looked like a mad woman on the trail, swinging my poles wildly in a helpless attempt to ward them off.  Luckily, everyone was doing this crazy dance - an endless line of jerking, swatting and twitching hikers, which gave new meaning to the song "I Wave My Hair Back and Forth."  Hannes and Juliano had chosen wisely, walking leisurely and without bouts of epilepsy along the canal.

The sunny square in Carrion.

As I went through my usual routine in the hostel in Carrion, washing my gnat encrusted clothes in the sink (they had drowned in my sweat apparently) and massaging cream into my aching pups, I realized I actually missed Hannes that day.  His good humor.  His smile.  His chatter.  Our thinly veiled flirtations.  His accent (oh, the accent!)  Even Juliano's lessens to him on how to be a proper gentleman... All of it.  Just as I was wondering whether or not to text him, my beautiful new iPhone sang the loveliest tune.  He had texted me that he was in the square, which just so happened to be below our window.  I texted him to "look up," waving to him and his friends laying out in the afternoon sun, drinking beers and picking at a roasted chicken like the ravenous pilgrim animals we'd become.  He waved back, smiling and gesturing me to come down and join them.  Looking at him in his sleeveless t-shirt (if you need help picturing this, he's a lifeguard), I decided applying tea tree oil to my toe nails could wait...

The boys at the butcher.

A few minutes later I was sitting on the bench writing postcards to my girlfriends with lines like, "I am currently sitting across from a hot Belgian drinking San Miguel... jealous?"  Hannes made us all a grand pasta dinner that night (jealous?); about ten of us searching through the streets trying to find the right ingredients.  I looked at him across the table as we ate, and there was something in his eyes, a tiny gleam that told me he had been thinking of me that day, too. 

After dinner, Red talked everyone into ditching Hannes and I as we all strolled through town.  We looked behind us, and suddenly the crew had vanished like Spaniards during siesta.  I felt like a nervous high schooler - her friends trying to hook her up with the cute football player.  Only my football player was wearing a Quick Dry shirt and fanny pack, and this cheerleader was in a dress that she had now worn four consecutive nights with Euros tucked into her bra.  We kept walking despite their prank and sat on stone benches down by the river.  I got the sense mosquitoes were biting the hell out of me, but I didn't care.  Later, Red and I dropped the boys off at their convent dormitory, as the nuns had a strict pilgrim curfew of 10pm.  As I said goodbye to him through the gate, I couldn't help but think, "lucky nuns"... Definitely not a phrase that gets thrown around a lot.

We had decided that night that even though the boys were walking further than us the next day, we would meet in the morning for coffee and then walk together until our final farewell in some hellishly tiny village whose name I have purposely forgotten out of sheer post traumatic stress.  (Yes, I'm referring to the place where the urinals sat next to the sink - me brushing my teeth as a man peed beside me.)  It was a bitter sweet walk.  'So this is it...', I thought.  'The end.  Some good Facebook friends who you chat with time to time and that's it.' 

Once at the village, we cracked open a bottle of cheap wine and toasted to our time together over a picnic lunch.  (The infamous incident when Juliano, looking over at Red covered in and surrounded by crumbs with a huge hungry grin on her face, made the astute observation, "You eat like baby.")  In between bites of stale bread and olives, just when I had prepared myself to say 'so long' and suck it up, Hannes turned to me and said with those damn puppy dog eyes of his, "I'm so happy to have met you."  Like the chocolate bar I'd been carrying around in my backpack, I melted.  Because when he said it, you knew he meant it.  My cousin was so moved she even let out an "Ahhh," as if we were in the studio audience at a live "Full House" taping.  I smiled, made some awkward reply and realized that not seeing him again wasn't an option. 

The 'Adios' picture. Left to right: Juliano, Blackheart, Red, Hannes

We took pictures together, mumbled 'Buen Camino' and gave each other what Hannes said were not goodbyes but "see you later" hugs.  I hoped his words held truth.  Red and I watched the boys walk away down the road, their backpacks bumping along as their poles ticked away into the dusty earth and waved to them for what seemed like twenty minutes, like grandparents watching you pull away in the car.  I had no idea how we'd see each other again, but for now, texting would have to do.  "Did you get a text from your Camino boyfriend?" Red asked me with a sneaky smile later that evening over glasses of Four Roses bourbon.  I had.  About 10 of them since we parted ways.  I took it as a good sign of things to come.  Our conversations hadn't ended on the trail, after all.  They'd only just begun.

But no moment together on the Camino up to that point could have prepared Hannes and I for what happened days later in the city where my belief in magic was resurrected.  The city of the Hostel Pauper and Parador Princess.  The city of our first kiss.  My favorite city in Spain.  The city where we fell in love.  Leon...

To be continued...