When I arrived home from my trip a month ago, I went straight to my parents house. I don’t remember what we ate. I knew that they expected something from me. I had to break the news to them that nothing was going to work out between Hamza and I, and apologize to my mother that I’d be ruining her fantasy of me marrying rich.
I kept meaning to come in here to write, to process, to get it down. I kept writing the first two days over and over and then forgetting or not wanting to forget, and promising I’d reference the diary I kept during the trip to make an immaculate piece of non-fiction. Everything I ate, everything I saw, chronologically. Every conversation when they happened and where and how I felt at the bottom of my diaphragm (cold, nauseous). There was a palace room where I ate breakfast for the first three days and there was a very confusing mural on the ceiling, foreshortened perspective as if the girl, man, and cherub where standing in the middle of the sky and we could essentially see up their skirts. The room was ornate, baby blue mostly, decorative pillars and crowns of leaves. The day that I was alone for breakfast they sat me at a table that the sun poured over and I ate breakfast roasting in it.
A lot of the trip felt like how when I tried to play Halo as a kid and couldn’t figure out the controllers and how to run and I’d end up running stuck in a corner.
3/29
I arrived in Lisbon tired, took a nap, a shit, a shower. Pestana Palace Hotel, Praca Do Comercio, Elevador de Santa Justa, Miradouro de Sao Pedro de Alcantara, had lunch at a place that had cheese, olives, bread, several hams laid out on the table already. I couldn’t tell if it was a gimmick or if Hamza set it up ahead. Of course he set it up ahead. I had two glasses of wine, we ate some octopus salad, some stewed codfish with tomatoes, and got a lobster rice dish, almost like a risotto. Castelo de Sao Jorge where I wanted to watch the sunset from. We watched peacocks fighting. We walked up and down stairs and around the fort. When he held my hand I felt cold. I think he thought it was romantic. The sunset was shitty even though the view of it was good. Boa Vista Social Club where we had smoked anchovies, bread, natural wine. Comida Independente where we had oysters and orange wine. Parra: a crab dip whipped with crab roe, salted anchovies and butter, bread, a chablis. Insaciavel: egg with mayo, chicken skewer with pirripirri, a very weird falafel stuffed with cheese that I hated, sparkling rosy natural wine. It was there that Hamza told me that every time he had a dream where there was a role of a partner, it was me who would be in that role in his dream. I’ve been informed since that this was likely some kind of businessman’s closing tactic. Little did he know it deeply upset me and I went back to the hotel that night and messaged my friends and considered running away to wherever.
3/30
Breakfast at Pestana Palace, it was a buffet. I was usually eating these little pink sausages and a fruit cup every morning with a cup of green tea. Shower, Jardin das Armoreiras where I told Hamza I didn’t have feelings for him and I felt incredibly bad telling him but it wasn’t as bad as having him keep trying to hold my hand. A Marisqueira do Lis where we had barnacles, pig ear salad, a wine, and a very terse lunch. Locals and Nomads Wine: anchovy and butter on toast, a glass of natural red, a glass of orange. Miradouro, ceramics, walking, Alfonsos: bifana and vinho verde. Walk, light blue wool coat from Chi Coracao, “more wine? no dinner?” Pastel de nata, Sandemans wine bar, shoegaze concert at gallery, wine at a square where there were roaming schizophrenics and the city was pruning a tree at midnight.
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