Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 02:41:10 -0700 From: Benjamin Ashton Subject: Barcelona, Summer 2011 (gay/encounters) Enjoy Nifty. Donate to Nifty. Keep us all going. http://donate.nifty.org/donate.html       BARCELONA, SUMMER 2011       This is a true story. Mostly.       It was the heat that made me initially heed to my friend Charlie's recommendation to visit that temporary exhibit of contemporary art in a large, inconspicuous warehouse just outside of where everything seemed to be happening in Barcelona. Charlie had decided to spend some part of her considerable family funds to « take a year off » from what she saw as her exhaustingly busy life in Boston. Elegantly lodged and socialized, she led a life in Catalonia that had seemed just as busy and exhausting as I had ever seen it during the few months when I lived in Massachusetts and was fortunate to befriend her. I was now visiting her for just a week, treating myself with a welcome break, and after three days at her Gracia apartment, I had indulged in enough wine, tapas, late-night talks, moonlight swimming and multicultural banter to conclude that Charlie was one of those Americans-abroad determined to instigate, stage and live through every cliché known about living leisurely in this gorgeous and vibrant Spanish city.   I had woken up hungover and needed a long, quiet walk. Charlie kept pestering me about this exhibit (« it's more of an impromptu art installation, but, you know, like, large scale », she said with no discernible trace of sarcasm); one of her friends, an insufferable and quite preposterous French snob was one of the artist showcased, and she could get me a free ticket. She did – that is, she stuffed one in my pocket as I was walking out of the door. « Just go, if only for the place, it's astonishing ».   I took a cab and had him drop me off in the general vicinity of the place. I really only wanted to walk, take in the city and its multiple neighborhoods, listen to The Strokes on my iPod and bask in the contentment of the very happy week I was having – for all her flaws, Charlie is a truly fantastic person and Barcelona is a truly wonderful city. But I was quickly suffering the consequences of poor clothing choices made in a foggy and dazed morning: the heat was scorching and I was wearing an old, dark Fred Perry polo shirt, some jeans and a worn pair of Stan Smiths, with dark grey socks. I was miserable. When I did walk by the old industrial building that housed the exhibit, I admit being sucked inside more by the prospect of some kind of air conditioning than by the art itself.   I do like art, and I actually enjoy visiting museum on my own (I’m usually slower to walk through the galleries than anyone who might be accompanying me). I was just dreading a display of pretentious and hollow narcissism. I showed my free ticket to the grim attendant, a visibly bored, acneed teenager, surprisingly pale for a Spaniard. The place was indeed quite amazing. The exhibit took full advantage of the variety of rooms that an old warehouse (factory?) seemed to offer: you walked through a succession of small and large rooms, flooded by sunlight or in almost complete obscurity, neatly redone with crisply white walls or dusty and half demolished. And the air was generally cool, a light breeze passing through the multitude of doors and cracked walls.   There were very few people around and most of those who had made it to this off-the-map location were either striding through the exhibit at a fairly brisk pace, or sitting down cross-legged in front of a specific piece – either copying it on a large sketchbook or discussing it in loud and animated Spanish. There was one other guy, walking slowly alone. He was young and Nordic looking (Dutch ? Scandinavian?), obviously a tourist. He seemed immersed in his visit and I passed him fairly early in my tour.   At some point during the visit, I noticed a door on the wall, next to which was pinned a tag similar to all those signaling and naming an artwork. I think it was called something like « My room is your room ». I pushed the door open and found myself in a large windowless chamber, brightly lit, and all painted in red - walls, floor and ceiling. There was a number of dark little curtains, scattered around the walls. I opened one of them and was suddenly staring at the head of a female mannequin, boxed in an alcove, with fake blood tears coming out her eyes. I started a bit, and closed back the curtain. I tried several others: behind each of them stood a body part of a mannequin (male or female) with some kind of violent act imposed on it. An arm mutilated by a knife, a leg trounced by an axe, a neck stabbed by multiple syringes. I was reaching the end of the room and deciding I had gotten the artist's point, when someone else entered the room. It was the young tourist.   He was scanning the room, trying to make sense of what he was seeing (or supposed to be seeing). I walked by him, on my way out, just as he opened his first curtain. He freaked, visibly if not audibly. He quickly tried to mask his surprise, a little childishly. Our eyes met, briefly. I smiled with a comforting grimace, an « I know, I know, I was surprised too » silently conveyed. He smiled back, a little flustered still and resumed his tour of the room.   As I stepped outside, I found myself pleasantly stirred by this briefest of exchange. Whenever I visit a museum or a gallery, I entrench myself in a private bubble, rarely pierced by outsiders – except for the occasional cruising that is not uncommon in these venues. The flash complicity between me and the sexy tourist felt like the jolt of caffeine I still lacked that morning, waking me up to my senses and to my actual, delightful situation: I am a young American, on holiday in Barcelona, strolling through an art exhibit and sharing that mostly empty space with an attractive stranger. Walking alone in the next room, I barely paid attention to the aggressive sculptures surrounding me. My brain was finally registering the fullness of his appeal, the magnetism of his presence in this eerie place.   He was taller than my 6 feet 1, something less common in Spain than in the US. He must have been around 25, with blond hair and blue eyes. He had thin, tall legs in full display: he was wearing loose shorts in burgundy linen, tall grey All-Star Converse with visible black socks. He had a white deep V-neck t-shirt, a little stained and worn, revealing a hairless, tan chest. He was wearing a backpack, and was visibly as warm as I was. Had he come in to get some breeze as well? I couldn't imagine him getting a ticket from one of the artist or reading about the show in whatever guide he was using to discover the city. And why was he alone?   I was snapped out of my stillness by his stepping out of the red chamber. I noticed him noticing me, recognizing me as the guy who had caught his startle earlier. Nothing was exchanged, he went closer to the sculptures and inspected them as an engineer studies the entrails of a complicated machine. I moved to the following room, leaving him behind. There was no clear flirtation, let alone any indication that he was gay. I did not want to get carried away by the sudden wake of arousal. I had never been an aggressive cruiser, even if I do reciprocate stares and attention paid by attractive men obvious enough to avoid any misunderstanding, yet just subtle enough for the exchange to be sly and enticing.   I entered the next room, with the artwork of yet another artist. My mind was still trying to blur the image of the young man next door and it took a few seconds to realize that I was facing a wall essentially covered with porn. With some kind of a political message, granted, but still porn. It was a collection of framed pictures of teenagers in various state of arousal, all crudely lit in a very 1990s early internet porn era. Porn has a history today, doesn't it?   Yet, every boy's face in each frame was superimposed with a roughly cut, black and white picture of another man. I recognized the face of Franco, the former dictator, of the King of Spain himself, of a conservative prime minister voted out of power just after the Madrid terrorist attacks. Most of the other men depicted did not look familiar to my non-Spanish eyes, except the very last one in the series, somehow the most disturbing : Rafael Nadal's contorted face had been applied on the body of a hairless teenager spewing cum from a very tiny dick. There was an obvious message to the whole thing, but it appeared so tedious and overwrought that I couldn’t care to think about it much longer. I moved on to the other side of the large room, to look at tiny glass sculptures of frogs copulating.   I noticed from the corner of my eye that the young tourist had entered the room. He was looking at his phone, reading a text or an email. He pocketed it back, raised his eyes and found himself straight in front of a picture of a young skinny eastern European boy fingering himself (and covered with the head of an unknown Spanish dignitary). I saw him blushed, and I saw him turn towards me instantly. I looked away, both weary of getting caught following his every move and of having witnessed yet another moment of disarming surprise for him.   I stared intently at the glass frogs. He walked past the porn pictures at a pace that seemed to be designed to keep any onlooker (in this instance, me) from thinking he was either too absorbed or too prude. He stepped out, neglecting the frogs, and moved on to the next room. I couldn't quite possibly follow him so soon. We had by now obviously noticed each other and could not pretend oblivion. Like in an airplane, train or at the dentist's waiting room, someone very close to you could be completely non-existent (and you to him), until something happen (a look, a brief exchange, a joke) that suddenly pushes you so close that the proximity almost feels invasive. At 34, I loathed being the dirty old man following the innocent, straight 25-year old prey. Not me. Not now. Not for a long time. Please.   I waited a decent amount of time before moving to the next room and was relieved to find it empty. I was also glad to find it filled with art much more interesting than what I’d seen so far. There were paintings from a British artist from the 80s, who apparently died very young. Colorful, weird, a little hypnotic, they caught my eyes and attention longer than anything else that morning. I resumed my walk. No sign of the tourist. There were a couple of people who passed me, whose pace was apparently faster than the one I had settled in.   At some point in the exhibit, we had to cross a courtyard, before reaching a back building. I found some shade, sat on the floor and lit a cigarette. A couple of minutes later, I saw the young man walk out of the back building and retracing his steps, back into the rooms he must have visited before. And it happened. He looked at me. He looked at me the way every gay man knows they've met a fellow traveler, a comrade in struggle, a brother in arms. I held his gaze, trying to hide my surprise and sending back the expectant, sultry signal I had just unexpectedly received.   Barely a minute later, he came back out. He also lit a cigarette, but stayed up, pacing around the courtyard. He was doing the little dance I had seen enough times to be comfortable with : glancing at me while pretending not to, turning his back or checking his phone while making sure my eyes were still on him. I knew the dance and I knew how to dance along. He was parading in front of me and I was the silent, aroused, falsely distracted audience.   I stood up and went in the back building. A single huge painting covering a whole wall was the only artwork displayed. It was actually stunning. A Jackson Pollock-ish composition, with fewer colors and less neurosis. I sat down on the leather bench in the middle of the room, looking at it with slight awe.   The young tourist came in, walked slowly, as if showing respect to the massive picture, and stood right behind me. He said with a soft voice « It is beautiful, yes ? ». He had a strong accent, confirming he was from somewhere in Northern Europe, though his English sounded surprisingly poor, compared to the stunning ability of most young Europeans north of Paris to master the English language with little accent and impeccable flow.   « Yes, » I replied, « it is quite beautiful. » I moved to the edge of the bench, as if making room for him to sit down. The bench was large enough to sit five people, but the gesture was more an invitation than a gesture of courtesy. An invitation he slowly, listlessly, accepted. He moved around the bench and sat on its opposing edge, never looking away from the picture.   I slowly turned my head, to get a better a look at him. He had a beautiful face, tanned (his nose and his forehead were a little sunburned) with striking blue eyes. A long thin nose. His cheeks had very little facial hair, he had some on his pointy chin, his mustache and below his sideburns. He had very blond hair, quite long on top and short in the back and on the temples. Locks of golden hair kept falling over his eyes, he kept pushing or blowing them away. His forehead and neck were misty with sweat.   « Where are you from ? »   « Sweden. You ? You are from America ? »   « Yes, I am. »   « You not look from America ».   « Well, you look like you're from Sweden ».   A couple of Spanish girls with dreadlocks entered the room and we fell silent. They commented on the painting, one of them getting particularly vehement about something. The other just shrugged and walked to the next room. The first girl muttered something angrily to herself, before reluctantly exiting.   He straightened his long legs silently in front of him, putting one ankle over the other. His calves were really tan, with golden hair shining with the bright light of the room. There was silence, except from noises coming from the two Spanish girls in the other room. We were both looking straight ahead at the painting – which by that point didn’t have many secrets left to offer us. I didn’t really want to talk. I certainly did not want to small talk. Knowing what city he was from, what he did for a living, what he was doing in Barcelona seemed fraught with mood-killing banality. I could feel a tension growing, an expectant shiver passing between us. I wanted to dwell, making it last.   He was becoming a little nervous, furtively glancing in my direction. I was calm and trying to be comforting.   “What is your name”, he finally asked, in a soft, hushed voice.   “Ben”, I replied looking straight at him, making him fluster just a bit.   He looked away. “I am Joakim”. I asked him to spell it. I needed to visualize it, to hear him utter each letter with his strange accent. His voice was deep, hoarse and masculine, even if his syntax was boyish.   We fell back into silence. A group of three German hipsters entered the room, quickly and distractedly scanned its content and moved on.   I slowly stood up and just as slowly moved towards him, before sitting back down right by his side. He looked at me questioningly, then reverted his eyes towards the painting. I looked at him, at his shoulders, at his biceps and arms coming out of his sleeves, I peeked in the plunging V-neck of his loose t-shirt. His skin looked so soft, a bit sticky from the heat. I could see a hairless nipple, pointing and hard.   I slowly raised my hand and put it on his knee. I caressed his thigh, pushing his shorts up by an inch or two. I felt him tense up, just a bit. And I saw movement in his crotch. He was either wearing thin boxers or no underwear at all, as the outline of his bulging cock was clear and slowing changing shape like a little animal woken. He was breathing heavily and I pulled my hand away, which made him shudder and turn towards me, confused, maybe scared. I stood up and motioned him to follow me. “There’s still some art to see, Joakim”.   He slid a lock of hair back with his hand, stood and readjusted his cock in his shorts. The following room had no one in. I could not possibly concentrate on anything else than him, but I was dutifully going through all the motions required of a visitor. I looked at the paintings with a concentrated look, checked the cards to see the name of the artist, stepped back occasionally to ponder appreciatively. Joakim was following my lead and we walked through the next couple of rooms together but separately, taking different routes, spreading our artistic attention to different pieces, crisscrossing, brushing against each other. It was a mating choreography mostly for our own benefit, as no other visitors disrupted or witnessed our silent rain dance.   As he stood, unmoving, in front of a strange metal structure, I came right behind him, pushed his backpack down from his shoulders to the floor, and pressed myself gently against his back. I took each of his hands in my own and squeezed them. He didn’t move, except for a slight push designed to get more his long back against my chest. He squeezed my hands. We held that pose for a long, beautiful time. I placed a kiss on his neck, untangled my fingers from his and moved along. I saw him readjusting his cock again, putting his bag back on and following me. He caught up with me from behind, right in the middle of the room and slid his hands under my polo shirt, moving them up until they both rested firmly on my pectorals, which he grabbed and rubbed. My messenger bag was between our two bodies, but I could feel a moist heat radiating from him.   I was getting very hard and my cock felt constricted in my briefs and jeans. I really wanted him and I knew the room we were in was almost the last one of the exhibit.   I turned around and, looking straight in his piercing blue eyes, I told him: “I want you. Where should we go?”   There was no way I could bring him to Charlie’s apartment, where I had been assigned the couch, in the middle of a small living room that was probably currently filled with brunching people – possibly including, gasp, the French artist whose work I had failed to spot in the exhibit.   He looked at me quizzically for a brief moment. I reached for his cock, easily available for grab in his loose shorts. I stroked him a couple of times, enough for him to mumble that we should go to his hostel.   We hurried out, him reassuring me that it wasn’t far, me walking briskly ahead until I realized I had no idea where we were going and needed to follow his lead. He shared a room in a youth hostel nearby, he said, with three of his friends. There were spending a couple of weeks together in Barcelona, enjoying the beaches and the nightlife. His friends had gone for the day, to see the Dali museum, some miles away. We’d have the room for ourselves.   The first part of the walk was silent, which suited me fine as I was contemplating from behind his beautiful legs and ass, and what I could see from his back that wasn’t hidden by his bouncing backpack. He may have grown uncomfortable with the quiet, however, as he kept glancing back, as if to check that I was still there, I was still for real, I was still following him to have sex with him.   “You play rugby? Hockey? American football?”   “No, I play soccer.”   “What is soccer”?   Didn’t everyone know that by now? “It’s European football”.   He seemed a bit puzzled. “You look like you play rugby.” I didn’t and had never been told that. “I play volley-ball”, he said.   I really did not want the conversation, if any had indeed to take place, to go down the and-what-are-your-hobbies route. I decided to shake him a bit, hoping that his US vocabulary, which apparently didn’t include ‘soccer’, had at least been permeated by porn, the great international equalizer.   “Do you jerk off? You look like you jerk off.”   He laughed coarsely, gutturally. “Ha ha, yes. But not often the days now. It is difficult with my friends.” He laughed some more, apparently at the very idea of jerking off with his friends at the hostel.   “Your friends are not gay?”   “Oh, no. Even if gay, we shall not jerk off together, yes?”   “I don’t know. It happens. But, hey, Joakim, you are gay, right?”   “Yes, I think so. I have girlfriend; but she knows I have confusion.”   I have confusion. I will always remember that. Oh the men I’ve met who “have had confusion”. If only they had been able to express it in such simple, genuine, matter-of-fact, sweet, crooked way. I have confusion. Well, don’t we all, sometime.   We reached the hostel and it was everything I remembered youth hostels to be. A little run-down, a bunch of lingering unshowered very young people (with the occasional senior backpacker in sandals and socks), a general atmosphere of carelessness, happiness, dopiness. Joakim walked up straight to the third floor. We were both sweating profusely from our walk and my clothes felt very sticky on my skin. He turned the key into one of the doors and led me inside a room darkened by drawn shades. It had a double bed pushed below the small window and two singles each crammed against a different wall. With large, open backpacks on the floor vomiting dirty socks, t-shirts and underwear, you could barely walk in the tiny space. The air was heavy, it smelled like dirty feet and damp towels. There seemed to be a bit of beach sand everywhere.   Joakim locked the door behind us and sat down on one of the single bed. He quickly worked on his Converses to take them out and kick them away. He pulled his socks and threw them towards a corner of the room joining an existing small pile. He lifted his shirt up and pulled his shorts down. In a few seconds, he was naked, but for his boxers, faster than the time I needed to get my bearings. There was to be no slow undressing, obviously, and Joakim’s clearly visible erection signaled an enthusiastic, albeit silent, impatience. I undressed too, finishing with a push down of my briefs, which slammed my hard dick against my stomach.   “You have penis like me”, Joakim said, somewhat quizzically.   I frowned.   “I have fucked with two American boys. They had Jewish penis. You have penis like me.”   Gotcha. I’m uncircumcised. As he was. I wasn’t ready nor willing to launch into the lengthy explanation of my mother’s Feminist era and her then-views on “barbaric puritanism”, a period long enough in her sequence of philosophical dalliances to have left untouched the foreskins of her two sons. I just smiled at him and pulled down his boxers.   His dick was hard and quite beautiful, matching the softness and blondness of his body, but for the fact that it was not as long or thin as you may expect in a man of his figure. It was a perfect average and the smooth texture was nicely complemented by a round mushroom head, half bulging through his foreskin.   “Why did you take the small bed? Shouldn’t we use the large one?”   “That is the bed of Magnus and Erik. I do not want sperm everywhere on their bed, right?”   This was lovely and humbling. I was reminded of the clichés on Scandinavian sexuality: liberated, clean, healthy. Blond hippie Vikings strolling around naked in poppy fields with daisies in their hair.   Picking up a tall, masculine, Swedish prince for a quick fuck could easily have ignited the kinkiest streak within me; I could be ready to finger him in a back alley, to fuck him senseless in his dirty stuffy room like there’s no tomorrow, to cum all over Magnus’ and Erik’s pillows for them to unknowingly snore and drool onto for the few nights left before they take their low-cost flight back to Stockholm. But Joakim had picked up a tall, masculine American to fuck and all he needed was to kick off his Converses, display his eager erection in its full glory and stick to the bed that was his.   I was suddenly eager to know more about him, to hear him talk about the Americans he’d fucked with, about sex with his girlfriend, about him “having confusion”. I wanted to hear about his first time, about his turn-ons, about his masturbation. I now wanted more, more of him, more of his burgeoning and overflowing sexuality. He had seemed hesitant and hypnotized at the art exhibit, which was a great turn on then; he now seemed completely at ease, ready, serene and impatient, which was even sexier.   But before I could ask anything, before I could figure out what simple English words to use to start that kind of conversation, he grabbed my cock to pull me towards him, to drag me on the bed, on top of him.   It was so hot in this airless room, we were both already drenched in sweat. It made our bodies slide against each other; my kisses on his upper lip, his cheeks, his neck, his ear tasted salty. He then voraciously French kissed me, his tongue lashing out and his fingers clenching my back. We tried to roll around a few times, but any movement was made difficult by the small size of the bed.   I was lying on my back when he raised himself, turned around on all fours and took my cock in his mouth while positioning his directly in front of my face. I started to suck him eagerly, while he lowered his torso on mine, trying to rub them together, our sweat lubricating every movement. He tried to take all my cock in, but couldn’t. He kept gagging, but trying again, playing with my balls and jerking me as he bobbed his head up and down.   I let his dick out of my mouth and pulled his crotch lower, so I could lick his asshole. He was clean, except for, again, the sweating which was musky but powerfully aphrodisiac. He stopped his sucking, bucked a couple of times and moaned loudly. He didn’t seem to be used to rimming and obviously enjoyed it very much.   He resumed his blow job for a little while, then pulled one of my knee close to my chest. He licked and kissed my thigh, biting at the hair, massaging my muscle. He licked my calf, then bent my leg as much as he could, grabbing my foot. He sucked on my toes and licked my foot all over. I love men’s feet, but have never felt much when a fellow fetishist feasted on mine. But Joakim’s eagerness, the tingling sensation and my continuing French kissing of his hole were a perfect combination.   He then stopped, moved around again, stepped out of the bed and had me sit down on its edge. He kneeled in front of me, took my cock with both of his hands and started sucking again, with renewed feverish energy. He kept uttering the few words he seemed to know in English “nice”, “good”, “great”, “beautiful”. I was resting back on my hands, my back arched and my head tilted towards the ceiling. I could feel sand under my naked feet on the floor, enough to remind me nicely that I was being blown in a youth hostel.   He wasn’t touching himself, but his cock was throbbing and hard. I made him stand up in front of me and took it in my mouth, slowly licking and kissing its shaft. He took the back of my head with both his hands, silently expressing his will for me to go faster and harder. I did. Again with the moans, again with the “nice”, “good”, “great”, “beautiful”.   He then pulled out and looked at me intently, with a hungry smile. “I have condom. Yes?”   “Yes, what?”, I asked, chuckling.   “Yes, we fuck? You fuck me?”   “Yes, I fuck you. Absolutely”. I stood up and kissed him deeply, cupping his cheeks.   “Do you have lube?” I asked.   “Like Vaseline?”   “Yeah.”   “No. With women, no need.” He laughed. “And for masturbation, skin on penis and shampoo is enough in the shower.” He laughed again. I kissed him some more, imagining him jerking his uncut dick in the shower, using his shampoo to lather it up.   “I’ll tell you what, why don’t I make you cum and use your jizz as lube?”   He looked at me quizzically, rehashing in his mind the words I used. He suddenly got it, but looked both bemused and perplexed.   “It works?”   “I think it can.”   Joakim went to find, deeply buried in a backpack, a string of condoms, of which he ripped one out. He tore it open with his teeth and came back to slide it on my dick. I had him lie down on his back and worked on his cock again, sucking it while rubbing some of my saliva on his hole. I had two fingers quickly and easily in and I had barely rubbed his prostate a couple of times that he tapped on my head a few times, an international expression of imminent orgasm. Indeed he came in my mouth, quite copiously. He must have not jerked off in the communal showers that morning. I immediately spit it out in one cupped hand and started smearing his hole with it, inserting a large amount as well. It was an incredible sight: fresh, very white cum covering his own asshole.   I lifted myself up and started to push my cock in. He was staring at me, with a wide grin on his face. I was surprised to be all the way in within no time. He must have some practice, I thought. I really want to know more about that, I thought too.   I started to fuck him somewhat slowly, pushing his thighs against his chest. He was absolutely, perfectly, movingly beautiful at that moment. I was tempted to lower myself down and kiss him, but I couldn’t get enough of watching him, and he seemed intensely satisfied with being fucked, smiling at me. After a while, I motioned to move him around and fuck him on all fours, but he stopped me. “Continue like that. It is wonderful”, he said, in a hoarse whisper. I did. I sped up the pace, then slowed. I wiggled a bit, to have my cock rub him inside in all possible angles. I would pull out, just leave barely an inch in and slam back it all inside him. I never stopped looking at him and he never stopped looking at me.   He then moved his legs out of my hands and wrapped them around my back; he took one of my hand and forcibly stuffed it between our stomachs so I could jerk him off. I had to find my balance and I did. I had stroked him just a few times when his eyes widened, his whole body tensed, his ass clenched my dick. And he came, again. A smaller dose, for sure, but still thick and extremely white. He rubbed some with his fingers, which he then brought to his mouth and sucked each finger, one by one, still looking at me. I had to pull out quickly, to rip the condom out of my dick before I came in violent bursts, spraying all over his neck and chin. He laughed. “You shoot far. Nice!” Then he seemed to crash, his whole body suddenly limp, his eyes closed. I didn’t want to lie on top of him; we were so hot, our bodies touching would have been burning up. I tried to slide down next to him; he moved to take me in his arms, hugged me, kissed me in the neck. He laughed and, in a half-shout, half-whisper, he said “It is so hot here!”   He took his t-shirt off the floor and wiped us clean, or as clean as we could get. I wasn’t sure what to do next. He saw me waver and said “Let’s have cold beer in fun bar, yes?”.     Yes. Yes, Joakim, let’s. And tell me your story.         Comments, suggestions, reactions are welcome: benashtonvilla@yahoo.com