Drunk gentleman

   The moment I opened my eyes, I realized how much I had to drink the night before. I didn’t even tried to sit down or stand up; I just opened my eyes and then shut them again. Although I didn’t really remember everything that had happened the night before, I was glad to know I had gotten home and that my cellphone and my wallet were in the nightstand. Those were the most important things to know, that I was alive and ok and in the right place. But my head was spinning so much I decided to close my eyes and try to get some more sleep. It had to be a Saturday or Sunday so I didn’t have to be anywhere or to do anything. I turned around, feeling cozy and warm and then, when I stretched my feet a bit, I felt someone else in bed with me.

 My eyes opened immediately but everything I could see was a head, short auburn hair and a tattoo on the shoulder, that happened to be uncovered, as he wasn’t wearing a t-shirt. I was only wearing my underwear but that didn’t matter, as that was my bed, in my home. Who was that guy? I had no idea and I didn’t wanted to be rude and wake him up just to ask. After all, he was there for a reason. Normally, any friend or friend of a friend would stay in the couch, which was very comfortable. But, somehow, I had decided not to leave him there but instead ask him to sleep with me. I then raised my head a bit and looked at the nightstand again and at the floor. There was nothing on my side that would indicate intercourse.

 Then, I remained still for a moment as I checked mentally if any part of my body felt funny. As I did that, I realized how bad my memory was at retaining any kind of information. Not only I couldn’t remember a single thing from the night before, I had to practically touch myself to know if I had sex with the man that was sleeping beside me. That made me feel like shit, as if I did that kind of thing every time I went out. I then turned around and closed my eyes and tried to think of something to do, a way to know who he was or why he was there. The best idea would be to write my friends and ask them if they knew, although that would reflect very poorly on me. Anyway, I fell asleep in no time because of how tired I was.

 It always happened that, when I had too much to drink, I would have the wildest and weirdest dreams. That time was no exception as in, the probably one hour that I rested my eyes, I dreamt about some strange creatures that I was supposed to kill with a team of others. We were using laser weapons and the guy that was sleeping beside me was there too, covering the left flank. It was like being in a movie, people shooting all around. I was having a lot of fun there but then the dream changed and I was in a room observing two people having a fight. They couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t do anything to intervene. The yelling and their insults made me wake up, sweating a bit.

 I sat on my bed, trying to catch my breath, realizing it had only been a dream. It was a nightmare that always came back, a remembrance of a past I always tried to forget. Then, I realized the guy on my side was not there. For a second, I thought I had just imagined him but then I saw his clothes on the floor and realized he was still around. It was exactly at that moment when he came in with a tray, my only tray. There was some orange juice, a sandwich made in the toaster and a banana. But that really wasn’t what surprised me most. The guy had the body of a model or even better. Instinctively, I pulled up the sheets, as I didn’t wanted for him to see my body, which was very far from his in terms of beauty and acceptance. He had some other tattoos and he was only wearing some black briefs.

 The beautiful man passed me the tray and told me he had already had breakfast. The only thing I could do was to smile and listen to him tell me how had the idea to make me breakfast after all I had done for him and how he had found everything he needed in order to make a somewhat decent breakfast. As I drank some juice, he laughed and said he thought of giving me some cereal but he remembered me saying that I couldn’t drink any milk. Again, I just smiled, as I had no idea at what point I had told him any of that. For that matter, I had no idea in what planet I could have met a guy such as him and why he was “thankful” to me. I just ate my breakfast and, in between bites, asked him if he had eaten something yet and he said yes.

 He looked at me as I ate, which was strange already, never minding those big green eyes, the tattoos and the body that seemed to have been taken out from a fitness magazine. When I finished, I decided to be honest. First o f all, I thanked him for his kindness but then I had to confess that I didn’t remembered much about the night before. I told him I could imagine I had a lot to drink because I really didn’t know where I had met him and why he had stayed with me, even in bed. His reaction was strange as he laughed and looked even better looking as he did it. He looked at me straight in the eye and I have to say I couldn’t hold his look for a long time. His bright eyes hurt a little.

 He showed me his hand and told me his name was Steven and that we had met in the bathroom of a club where we were both having some time with friends. Steven said that, when I entered the bathroom, I seemed to have been drinking for a while already so he had no idea what I had done before he met me. Anyway, he wasn’t there alone but with another guy. He said that guy was someone he had met at work and who was very obsessed with getting high and drunk. As I came in, he was apparently trying to convince Steven to get high with something he was keeping in a small bag, but he didn’t told me what it was. I apparently went to a stall and they kept arguing outside.

 Things got pretty bad as the guy who was with him started to scream and push him. Apparently, Steven had opened the little bag and thrown all its content into the drain. The man went crazy and he punched Steven on the face. He bled a bit and it was then when I came out. According to Steven, I just went insane when I saw him on the ground bleeding. I went straight for the guy and told him to get the fuck out, the guy pushed me and then I punched him hard in the face. Two, three, four times until he could stand up. I even kicked him in the stomach and we just left that place. I didn’t even tell my friend or anything, we just left for my place and I told him I would take care of him for good.

 Steven smiled as he remembered all of that. He knew I was just being nice and maybe my reaction was due to the fact that he was a very handsome man. And, without any hesitation, I told him that that wasn’t the case. Yes, he was beautiful, but I reacted like that because I had seen too much violence in my life to let people keep doing that to each other. I guess my answer wasn’t the best way to solve it, but that guy would probably think again before punching someone like that just because they wouldn’t have some of his shit. Steven just smiled as I said that and I realized I had talked very passionately so I decided to thank him again for the breakfast. He took the try back to the kitchen and I used what little time I had to put on my t-shirt.

 He reentered the room as I put it on and he asked why I was doing that. He told me that I was in my house, so it was a bit strange that I decided to cover myself as if I was doing something wrong. I told him the truth that I felt little ashamed to be next to him. I had a belly, I had no perfect body like he had and it would make me feel less weird if I wore the t-shirt.  I pulled it down and sat on the bed, waiting for something although I didn’t know what it was. He was doing exactly the same thing by the door, just standing there like waiting for something to happen but not knowing exactly what. It was a bit uncomfortable.

 Finally, I decided to get into the bed again and pull up the sheets. Then, he walked up to the bed and lay down too, this time with his face towards my side. I was looking up. We stayed like that for a good while until I decided to take off the t-shirt and turn towards him. He smiled again and I just got closer and kissed him. I wasn’t going to meet a guy like that ever again. We kissed for a long time and he told me, between kissed, that I had been a gentleman the night before, as we talked in the taxi and in my living room. We had already kissed but because he had leaned forward. Now, it had been me.

 We had sex afterwards and starting going out rather frequently. But that story and its outcome, will not be told here.

Sex sells

   Because it does, doesn’t it? When Michael had the idea to make his own website, every single person he knew thought he was going insane. But what they weren’t thinking about was the time he had wasted on so many other projects that had only failed one after the other. He had gone to law school but he had never been hired by a proper firm, only as an intern and they had told him, in very few words, that he should be as far from the word of law as he could. It was a bit brutal back then but he understood what they meant. In any case, he had tried to make anything and everything in order to be his own man and have a life of his own, to make his parents proud. Because what he wanted was to repay them for all their efforts to raise him.

 Michael opened a cupcake store, which had to close only a month after it opened because absolutely no one bought anything. He had learned how to bake for several months and it all when to the trashcan in a matter of days. Then, he decided to team up with a buddy from college and open a dog walking business. They did everything an owner could want like bathing them and walking them, doing exercises and so on but they failed miserably once his partner let one of the dogs escape and the owner sued him for it. Michael had also tried to make it in the call center world but they told him in the interview his voice was not the right one for the job and in a Burger King they told him he was tall enough, but they failed to tell him what his height had to do with anything.

 So many tries and failures had made him a little bit bitter and more of a loner that ever before. He had never been the kind to go out a lot or something like that. He would prefer to stay home and watch movies. So maybe that’s when the idea came to him. Like any man his age, he watched porn from time to time, when being specially aroused. He had never really paid any attention to the movie as such, only to the act they were performing. He must have been really bored that day because he remembered thinking it all look so fake, so prepared and too rushed for his taste. It was gay porn by the way, for reasons not worth explaining as they explain themselves.

 The thing was he watched the same clip, which was about fifteen minutes long, like ten times. He watched every single part with detail and then realized sex sells. It was that easy and he had never thought about it. But then he realized he hadn’t thought of it because of how people perceived pornography, no matter if it was between two men, two women or a straight couple. If you said that you worked in porn, must people would think you’re a pervert or that you just want to be having sex all day long and that’s not what it is and that was something Michael understood that night, when he decided to properly investigate.

 So, must of the films done in the country were low budget and that’s why their production was such garbage. He knew the video he saw must have been made with a handheld camera and some sort of small microphone and not much else. He investigated further and found out these productions companies, which normally only made very few clips a year, sold what they did to larger companies in the United States and there they were marketed online or, not very often, in sex shops all around that country. But that had to imply to movie was good because if it wasn’t people would make it here and just sell it here or upload it online or something. The thing with all of this was to win money and to make it a proper business, to make it a proper job with everything correctly labeled.

 The next thing for Michael was to find the money for it. He had some savings from his earlier jobs and knew he could convince some of his friends but before that he had to have an idea in order to sell it properly. He came up with a film called “The spy”. At first, it seemed like some ridiculous thing but then you realized it had everything a person would want in a movie: sex, drama and even a bit of romance and comedy. He wrote it with the help of a friend that went to film school. His name was George and he was the first person to tell him how insanely great his idea was. He promised to help Michael with cameras and lights and so on if the movie got made but, as a student, he had no money to share with him to do the movie.

 Michael decided to pitch it to every person he knew, no matter if the movie was gay porn or if he want it to do it in a way he had never seen porn being made. Most people just looked at him as if he had turned insane in mid sentence. Others were interested but only because it seemed like such a crazy idea. And the only people that were on board, two men and a girl from George’s film school, told Michael they could help with the production and give only a small amount of money. It was a beginning but they needed much more in order to make the movie as such. He tried to remove things from the script and George got the cheapest but best camera he could find at that price and they still weren’t close.

 Their next step was to go to the local production companies and offer them a place in the movie if they had money to invest. But all of them were very harsh; telling them you just couldn’t get in into an industry and try to change out of nowhere. They told them they had to have experience and a way of doing things that wasn’t too out there because in porn, differently than in movies, people just wanted the same thing that they had always seen and no one would invest in a movie that, in appearance, seemed to be more like an art film than a porno. Michael was disappointed but George told him most people in cinema were just like that, as they hated competition specially when the competition was good.

 Their last resource was to get financing from abroad. So Michael wrote hundreds of emails and sent them all the same day, hoping to be shooting the movie soon. In the mean time, they had created profiles for the characters and, to make things cheap, they had decided that everyone in the crew would appear on the movie but without getting paid, only their names on the credits. One month passed and it was a long wait. Michael was beginning to lose hope but George always tried to cheer him up, trying to make him focus in things about the movie they had not yet thought about like lighting, costumes, makeup and so on.

 Finally, when all hope had been lost, Michael received a letter, a proper physical letter, from one of the biggest production companies in the United States. They had agreed to finance the movie but only if it was done according to certain standards they had, mostly things they could agree on easily on a contract. The next month, it was all about flying to Los Angeles and signing the contract. There, an executive told Michael that his vision for pornography was very interesting and that, if the film was a success, they could be thinking about working with him again. They were so happy that day, that George and Michael had a nice dinner to celebrate and, at the end of it, they shared their first kiss ever. They realized right there; they had feelings for each other.

 But production started days after that so they put all their focus on the movie. They got some good looking but different guys to participate in the movie as actors and they shot it in the streets of their cities, except the sex scenes of course. For those, George’s friend Alexa had a thing for everything related to art direction. She transformed a room in an old house owned by Michael’s grandparents into a perfect replica of what Michael had imagined for the movie. It was supposed to be the place were the two lovers escaped to be together, away from all the looks. The scenes when they had sex were incredibly easy to film and they even got some money from a condom company because they would show a close up to one of the wrappers.

 Filming lasted for a whole month and, at the end, they had a great party to celebrate their success. They announced that a friend of George’s that had already graduated was going to make the editing of the film. He was very good and told George he wanted to be part of the film. The production company sent a guy to monitor their progress and everything went as planned. Another party was held when the movie was displayed as a “new feature” on the website of the production company. In only one week, a million people paid to see it. The movie was an absolute success all over the world, making the actors stars and the crew simply heroes.

 They would be hired again for more movies, one of them being a proper sequel to “The spy”. George and Michael began dating and eventually got engaged. They never moved to the United States, even at the insistence of their job. They knew what they did was special because it had another scent to it, if you will. Michael was proud of his achievement and shared it with everyone. Some people left his life but others were just proud of him too, even his parents who wouldn’t see the film but celebrated it all the same.

Life in the alley

   The club looked larger and even more filled with people from the second floor. I had just being there for less than an hour and I already felt a little claustrophobic, even though the place could fit a large plane inside, without the party goers of course. Most of the people were dancing, or their version of dancing, while some others tried to talk over the music on the second floor. People went up there because it was the lounge section and it was supposed to exist in order to mingle with others and just have a great time only drinking but the sound was too loud, even though it shouldn’t be. Anyway, people did their best to talk but I was too tired of trying to understand anything so I decided to go to the bathroom.

 I gave up to that fast as the line for the bathroom was very long and some people ere saying guys were fucking or something there so I just decided to exit, pee in the back alley and then come back in. I had a seal on my hand to do so I crossed the sea of dancing people on the ground floor and reached the door fast, as I felt more and more the need to go and pee. I finally went through the door, after having to push some guy flirting with this big hairy man, called bear in the gay slang.

 The day had been a very hot one so the night was very refreshing, not excessively hot nor cold. Just a nice weather to go to where the dumpsters were and pee. I closed my eyes for a second; wanting to concentrate on not drinking any more liquids but then I heard something. It sounded like a moan or some kind of complaint. I finished peeing, put it all away and then stopped and made no noise. There it was again, someone sobbing or something. My first thought was thinking than some guys had decided to take a trip to the back alley and have some fun but if that was the case, I would have heard some other moaning or at least two people breathing and I could only hear one. I walked away from the main entrance of the club, to where many bags filled with people, others with other type of garbage, had been put into a large pile. Then, I saw who had made the noises and felt really guilty about thinking those were sex sounds.

 As I had my cellphone with me, I called an ambulance right there. As I waited, I got closer to the guy: he had been beaten up pretty bad and was lying on the dirty floor, sobbing, incapable of saying a single word. Apparently, he was in a state of shock and couldn’t do more than just complain and sob. I tried to pull him out of the pile of garbage but he complained louder so I decided not to do anything. Then, I saw the light of the ambulance behind me and I stood up fast towards them, in order to tell them where the victim was. In no time, they had him on a stretcher and in the ambulance. I was about to turn around when of the paramedics told me they needed someone to go with him to sign papers and son. It could be anyone. So I went with them.

When we got to the hospital, I had to call my friends to tell me where I was but no one answered the phone. Of course, they were still inside the club and no cellphone, unless in front of their faces, would be noticed. A doctor came out to talk to me and told me they had to get the wounded guy to surgery. Apparently, the beating had been worse than imaginable and one of his lungs had been punctured. He had many broken ribs and was now hallucinating, babbling something that no one could really understand. I had to sign some papers saying it had been me who found him and that I had to be responsible for him for the time being. It felt like the right thing to do and, to be honest, it had been too shocking not to be both concerned and pissed about it.

 I stayed in the hospital all night. A nurse called Anita was kind enough to give me a quarter in order to get a coffee from a machine. I talked to her while I drank it, telling her I had just found the guy in an alley and had no idea of who he was. She told me that he wasn’t the first gay guy to come in like that. At least five in the last few weeks and it was rumored to be a very violent gang who also assaulted immigrants and prostitutes. Every victim had survived except for the youngest one, who had died only a week before. I thought to myself that, those guys in the club, most would never live through that. Guess they were the lucky ones.

 When the clock hit six in the morning, I was about to fall asleep right in the waiting room. I had nothing on me except my cellphone and wallet but nevertheless I had always been careful not to fall asleep where someone could take my things away. And after I had seen that night, I doubled my efforts not to fall asleep, even in a hospital. Thankfully, the doctor came out again and told me the surgery had been a success. He had to stay in the hospital to get better but he had been one of the lucky ones: other had been more brutally attacked and had tougher recoveries. The doctor also told me they had tried to locate his family and they had ben successful but they lived far away and, apparently, wouldn’t travel for their son.

When I heard that, my heart shrunk. I felt so bad for the poor guy, all alone in a hospital with a family unwilling to move from home for their victimized son. But, yet again, it wasn’t such an uncommon thing. I decided to go home and rest. Then, in the afternoon, I would visit him again. When I got home, I realized I had no keys so I had no other option than to wake up my flat mate. He was a weird guy and didn’t even say a word when he opened. He just went straight back to bed. I did the same, getting naked fast and into the covers, falling asleep in a heartbeat. My last thought went with the guy in the hospital, broken body but still alive. Was he awake? Was he wondering why that had happened to him?

  When I visited later that afternoon, he seemed to be much better than the night before. And I felt very guilty about thinking this, but when I entered the room I almost choked, as I hadn’t realized how beautiful he was. He had short blondish hair and green eyes. He was tanned and very tall. Maybe that was why I couldn’t really move him from the garbage. He was very nice and thanked me for what I had done.  He recognized, very openly, that his family was not coming and that he was going to try to get better fast in order to go back to his own place soon. He worked in a hotel as a lifeguard, also teaching tourists how to surf. His name was Michael but he told me to tell him Mike, so I did.

 I visited Mike every single day for the following week, until he got better. We chatted for hours, even making nurses come to shut us up. He didn’t share the room but apparently we were too loud for a hospital. The saddest moment came when he confessed me that his main attacker had been a guy he had liked in the club and that he had tried to flirt with him. That’s why they went to the back alley and the other guy surprised him with two more guys and beat him up. Kicks, punches, insults… It all flew towards him and put him on the floor. The really sad part was that he told me that after the beating, the guy that he had flirted with had tried to rape him but that the other guys decided it was best to leave so they did.

 It is very awkward to see a beautiful person sad or crying. I know this sounds bad but that’s what I thought after he told me his story. You just never think about someone that looks like a model in such a situation. Yet there was Mike, a short way from male perfection, beaten up by life. Anyway, we also chatted about nicer things, like our jobs and lives in general. As it happens, we had some people in common and he even recalled having seen me before but I had never seen him, I told him I would remember. Mike went red with this statement and told me that if I continued that way he would believe anything else I said. So we joked around with that and just became friends.

 When he was released from the hospital, I drove him to his house and had him installed. One of his arms was in a sling and he couldn’t walk a lot or very fast but he was alive. That day we ordered chines food and I realized I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing. If it went on like that, I would fall in love with him or become obsessed or something and it would be uncomfortable for the both of us. So I decided to be a friend and nothing more. Sure enough, we did exactly that and in a couple of weeks he was dating some big muscular guy he had met at the beach.  I was happy for him, mainly because he looked really happy, and it was the first time I saw him like that.

 Me, I went on with my life too. No, I didn’t met anyone and no; I wasn’t in love with Mike. That would have been too easy. I just wondered, every time I looked at him, about some many things in life. My first thought was to ask myself why would anyone do that to another person? Is someone’s existence so unbearable you have to kick them and almost kill them? But then I also thought about me, about how alone I was and how easy it was for mike to just get back on his feet. It seemed unfair somehow that life and people favor some over others just because of their looks, for good and bad. My conclusion: it was all a tragedy.

Un bar

 En un bar pasan demasiadas cosas al mismo tiempo y hay mucha gente, en especial las noches de fin de semana. La persona más notable, porque es quién más se ve y quién tiene que dar la cara por el sitio es el barman. Normalmente son tipos atractivos, que puedan venderle lo que sea a un hombre o una mujer. La idea detrás de su trabajo es simplemente impulsar el concepto del sitio y hacer que la gente consuma tanto como se puede. En el caso del bar Endor, el nombre del barman es Augusto, quién prefiere ser llamado Gus. Y así lo pone en una etiqueta sobre su camiseta para que quienes vienen a pedir tragos se sientan más en confianza y lo perciban a él como un amigo y no como un simple empleado. Gus es, como decíamos antes, el típico barman: un tipo atractivo que cuida de si mismo y sabe vender.

 Pero para la gente que lo prefiere, está la sección VIP o para personas que pagan más que los demás. En el bar Endor la sección a VIP es una sala apartada con algunas mesas y bastante espacio para bailar y charlar, así como el mejor surtido de licores del lugar. Mientras en la zona común solo hay unos cuatro tipos de licor, en la sala VIP se puede ordenar virtualmente lo que se quiera porque chicas como Alicia se encargarán de encontrarlo para el cliente. Ella ha trabajado en Endor desde que lo abrieron y sabe como son los clientes de la zona VIP: normalmente niños de papi con dinero para gastar y gente para descrestar. Y Alicia sabe muy bien como manejarlas sin que ellos se den cuenta.

 Finalmente está la persona que se carga del asea del lugar. En el día vienen dos mujeres de una compañía a limpiarlo todo y dejarlo reluciente pero de noche, cuando el sitio está lleno, el único que se queda es Raúl. Su único trabajo es quedarse en el lugar y estar pendiente de los accidentes que ocurren con frecuencia. Cuando hay gente que ha bebido de más, siempre hay charcos de algo en algún lado. Más que todo se trata de alcohol en el piso o en los asientos, cosas que se resuelve en un abrir y cerrar de ojos. Otra veces el trabajo se torna más asqueroso, porque la gente no solo tira sus copas y además tiene a su cargo los baños del lugar que son seis: tres para hombres y tres para mujeres.

 En el momento que inicia la fiesta un viernes por la noche, entra un grupito de amigos que viene a relajarse y a iniciar a uno de los integrantes en el alcohol. Se trata de Valentina y Lucía: la primera quiere que su amiga del trabajo por fin decida tomarse algo ya que nunca en su vida ha probado el alcohol. La familia de Lucía siempre fue muy conservadora y nunca celebraron nada con champagne o vino. Siempre se servían de bebidas gaseosas o incluso de agua. Con ellas venían el novio de Valentina y un compañero de trabajo llamado Pedro. Pedro sí que salía mucho pero este no era su tipo de bar.

 Gus le sirvió un trago a Valentina, que de hecho era para Lucía y luego empezó a revisar su teléfono celular. Había demasiado ruido y obviamente no iba a llamar a nadie pero estaba esperando un correo electrónico que debía llegar por esos días. Era tonto, pero la gente no creía que Gus tuviera algún problema de dinero y la verdad era que su situación era delicada. Se había mudado a la gran ciudad para tener un mejor futuro pero apenas podía sobrevivir. Y estaba esperando ganarse una beca para estudiar en Australia, para así tener una mejor educación y tal vez tener la oportunidad de vivir en otro país donde le pagaran lo justo. Hacía unos tres años, él había estudiado química en la universidad pero simplemente no había podido ejercer y la prioridad ya no fue desarrollarse como persona sino ganar dinero y ahora quería cambiar eso.

 En la sala VIP, Alicia entraba con un grupo de cuatro personas que tenían cara de tener mucho dinero. Ella sabía leer no solo el lenguaje del cuerpo sino también darse cuenta que tipo de ropa usaba cada uno de los clientes que entraban a su área. Con esa información, podía saber que productos ofrecerle al cliente y como hacer que hiciera una pequeña inversión en el lugar. Con este grupo era fácil: dos parejitas de dinero. Les ofreció cocteles con ginebra y un plato de sushi para acompañar. Pero lo malo fue que rápidamente se dio cuenta que uno de los dos hombres no era precisamente agradable y su novia era su versión femenina. Nada les gustaba: pidieron cambio de mesa, un rollo diferente de sushi y cócteles con más pepino porque el de ellos estaban mal rayado.

 No era muy tarde y Raúl ya había barrido tres charcos de alcohol del piso y ahora estaba limpiando su trapero en la llave que había en el cuarto de servicio. Era el único lugar privada del lugar y le gustaba quedarse allí seguido. Cualquiera sabía que lo podía encontrar allí y el podía fumar su marihuana en paz, sin molestar ni ser molestado. Pero estaba apenas armando su cachito cuando una chica entró sin golpear. Su maquillaje estaba corrido y parecía haber estado llorando. Llevaba además los zapatos en la mano. No se dijeron nada. Ella solo se sentó y empezó llorar más fuerte y el siguió con lo que estaba haciendo, como si nada.

 Valentina miraba a Lucía con atención, percibiendo cada pequeño gesto que la mujer hacía mientras tomaba un sorbo de vodka. La mujer se sacudió un poco pero dijo que no sabía tan mal como ella pensaba. Valentina se emocionó por esto y empezó a tomar bastante, llegando a estar borracha en menos de una hora. Su novio estaba un poco apenado por esto y solo encontró a Pedro, el compañero de trabajo, para hablar. Lucía solo tomó una copa y luego se fue a casa, cuando se vio que Valentina no se daría cuenta de ello. Los chicos se quedaron cuidando a la chica y, a gritos, empezaron a conversar y a formar una amistad.

 Gus servía y servía tragos como si no hubiera un mañana. Pero cada que podía miraba su celular y rogaba para que hubiera alguna respuesta. Se emocionó por un momento cuando vio la lucecita prenderse y era solo uno de esos mensaje promocionales. Trató de distraerse, cosa que no era difícil porque muchos de sus clientes le decían piropos y querían tomarse foto con él solo por su aspecto. Augusto era un hombre muy guapo pero a veces se aburría de recibir tanta atención por lo mismo. La gente pensaba que solo le interesaba verse bien e ir al gimnasio y, por alguna razón, alimentarse sano. Muchas chicas le contaban lo que ellas hacía para mantenerse en forma pero a él eso la verdad era que no le importaba. En el momento solo rezaba en su mente para que su deseo se volviera realidad.

 A la décima queja del tipo y su novia, Alicia estaba más que cansada. Ya había tenido que cambiar virtualmente todo lo que había alrededor de esa gente y seguían molestando, como si no tuviera ella nadie más a quien atender. Así que cuando el tipo se quejó por el sabor del cóctel de su novia, Alicia le dijo que si lo deseaba podía buscar al administrador para que hablara con él. El tipo se puso a la defensiva y le dijo que era una grosera que no sabía atender a los clientes importantes pero ella le dijo que los clientes más importantes eran aquellos que se comportaban de manera ejemplar. Así que tan solo se retiró y fue a la oficina del administrador que resultaba ser su tío. Él zanjó el asunto cuando el tipo indignado dijo que pagaba y se iba por la mala atención y el tío de Alicia le aclaró que no podría volver al establecimiento.

 Raúl, cansado del chillar de la joven, le preguntó que era lo que la tenía tan mal. Le contó entonces que había descubierto hacía un par de minutos que su novio la había engañado con una de sus amigas. Raúl se rió y ella lloró más pero él le aclaró, para terminar el lloriqueo, que era una tontería que llorara por un hombre y, peor, un hombre estúpido. Le pasó el cachito terminado y lo encendió. Entonces siguió una larga conservación, sentados sobre baldes, acerca de cómo la gente espera demasiado de otros, incluso si ellos ya hubieran hecho algo similar en el pasado o lo harían sin pensar.

 Valentina se había quedado dormida y para su novio era ya hora de irse pero la verdad era que no quería. Hacía mucho tiempo no conversaba de manera tan agradable con nadie más y Pedro había resultado ser un tipo muy simpático y bastante versado en multitud de temas. Habían hablado de política, religión, asuntos sociales y demás y habían descubierto que sus opiniones eran similares pero no idénticas. Algo culpable, el novio de Valentina tuvo una idea: llamó al hermano de la muchacha y lo hizo recogerla y llevarla a casa. Él se quedó con Pedro y siguieron bebiendo y hablando y riendo hasta que el sitio cerró sus puertas.

 Gus tomó su chaqueta y cuando estaba a punto de salir asustó a clientes y otros empleados con un grito. Había ganado la beca y se iba para Australia. Sin pensar, besó a la chica que tenía más cerca y ella quedó más que contenta.

 La policía llegó pero no por una riña ni nada parecido sino porque el niño rico los había llamado reclamando violación de sus derechos. Alicia tuvo que explicar todo lo sucedido pero la policía obviamente no había venido a escucharla.

 Raúl y la joven llorona se quedaron hasta el cierre fumando el cachito y salieron contentos y como amigos. La sorpresa más grande fue cuando Raúl le dijo a la chica que la llevaría a casa pero que tenía que orinar primero. Al entrar al baño de hombres, oyó gemidos de placer pero los ignoró y salió del baño sin más. Nunca se dio cuenta que era Pedro y el novio de Valentina que se habían caído más que bien y habían descubierto algo más que tenían en común.