Psychogeography

The Art of Lobster

On the expansive balcony of the Hotel Arts, overlooking the Barcelona port area, I listen to the following conversation: ‘Today, sir, can I recommend the seared tuna steak, which is very excellent?’

‘Look, I gotta tellya right off: I’m from, like, North Carolina, and if there’s one thing we have there it’s the best goddamn tuna in the world; so, I’m, like, tuna sore, if you know what I mean.’

‘Certainly, sir, I quite understand.’ The waiter is impeccably neutral. He looks Belgian — all the staff here appear Low Country. They wear understated uniforms, baggy khaki trousers, striped linen shirts. They also all look as if they have degrees in art history, which is no surprise given that the whole shtick of this luxury hotel is its collection of fine art works.

‘Do these lobsters come from, like, Maine? Coz 150 euros is a helluva lot to pay for a lobster.’ It’s only because I’m actually reading a sensitive, humane, funny and fiercely intelligent novel by an American friend while I listen to this clod — with his ‘Buttons Hawaii’ baseball cap and his black and maroon ‘rising sun’ motif shorts, and his nonce connectives — that I don’t, like, collapse into rabid, internal anti-Americanism. There’s this, and the fact that I myself hold a US passport.

‘I’m not sure, sir, I will check with chef and see what he says.’ The doctoral servitor pads away. O! The Hotel Arts, with your sun-drenched terraces and your rooftop garden full of palms; with your whispering, air-conditioned corridors and your elegant lobbies crammed with the toned and upholstered bodies of the rich! Why is it that I feel about as relaxed in such environs as a scrotum with a razorblade poised beneath it? Luxury — I just don’t sit well with it. Comfort I can broker, but luxury is non-negotiable. It’s the way that I can’t open the picture window in my room that really alienates me. This sets up a fundamental antinomy between hotel/not hotel, that renders the whole experience nauseating. The Hotel Arts could be anywhere — orbiting Uranus even. It certainly isn’t in Spain, with its international staff and nouveau-riche clientele.

It probably doesn’t help that I feel compelled to watch rolling news on plasma screen TV in my room. The juxtaposition between the pulverised villages of southern Lebanon and the brushed aluminium, smoked glass and leatherette fittings is grotesque in the extreme. I decide to film the whole scene with my digital camera in the hope that by doubly distancing myself I will somehow dock with the hotel and thus enter a secure orbit around my own hypocrisy. No dice. As I pan and zoom into the bathroom — which is the size of a Hezbollah bunker — I catch sight of my mad, Anthony Perkins rictus in the full-length mirror. Damn it! If things continue like this, I’ll stab myself in the shower.

It didn’t help that on the way here, while changing trains at the Plaça de Catalunya, I was looped in by a peculiarly efficient beggar. He performed that unearthly trick street people have of projecting his voice into my inner ear as I paced along the platform, chatting to my daughter: ‘It’s great to hear an English voice,’ he said in a rusty Mancunian accent; and had me in that moment, for I stopped, turned and engaged with him. Whereas, had he encountered me straight on, I would’ve been on guard against his sweaty baseball cap and moribund khaki shorts.

He set out his spiel with a stallholder’s efficiency as I stared into his eager, bloodshot eyes: there was a baggage handlers’ strike at the airport — we better watch out! He had to get back to work, so his brother had bought him a Ryanair ticket out of Madrid. There was only one problem — and this came after some minutes of chitchat, so I was completely gulled — he needed another 10 euros to get there. I gave him twenty without demurral: in my experience commerce renders public space domesticated, so we were huddled together in his front parlour, rather than forming a small, Anglo-Saxon baffler, around which the Hispanic multitude flowed.

‘I’m not a bum!’ he protested, taking the note. ‘Give me your email address and I’ll make sure you get it back!’ But he most certainly was a bum — and I never would, and besides I was already striding away, daughter in tow. ‘I’m not a bum!’ His cry came back to me now as I sat, sipping my tonic water and munching my cob salad complete with half the dratted lobster. The waiter closed in again on the bum from North Carolina at the next table: ‘They’re from Maine, sir,’ he said.

‘Wossat?’ The bum looked up from romancing his girlfriend, who wore Dolce & Gabbana sunglasses and pearly-pink lip gloss.

‘The lobsters, sir, they are from Maine.’

‘ — and undoubtedly off,’ I put my oar in, ‘given that there’s a baggage handlers’ strike at the airport. .’