EPISODE III
“Love is an excellent reason to cause things to fail.”
Eclecticism: A way to proceed in which an assessment together with an appraisal are made to attain the Middle Path, moving away from extreme solutions but at the same time admitting their fairness.
Valentina stayed more than a week in Bogota, whereas the Loser Titan, from the third to the twenty seventh of December 2017, remained in Rosario with his family. Cards had been laid out, the die was cast, Valentina and the Loser Titan were now geographically separated because of their trips, but via WhatsApp they kept in touch during the whole month. Every day without fail he sent to Valentina long messages accompanied by note voices while her, when possible, answered them with few words (depending on the circumstances, future lawyers can be concise or beat around the bush, as of the Argentinian she considered there was no lethal menace yet, there was neither a trial to start out nor an accusation to conduct, they were at the beginning of their mutual recognition, naïvely creeping snail-like forward). As long as no one stood nearby, Valentina sent him note voices too. However, she did not want to be seen recording messages to a stranger, so communication was mainly based on text messages.
Rosario, Argentina, December 2017, from 3rd to 27th
The ongoing stay of the Loser Titan in his country was as relevant as it could be imagined; days were shiny, diaphanous due to the adherence of Valentina to his soul. What attracted him most of life were spiritual, traveling, comic and cosmic matters, numerical matches and the mystic which involves passion. At very short notice the Colombian lady joined in his crew member list, and by unrespecting the entire line of hierarchy she reached the captaincy, vacant until then. The Loser Titan was told by Valentina that she regarded herself as a spiritual being, on hearing this he chuckled to himself, for it raised the philosophical dilemma as of how could the exuberant vanity of a model be reconciled with wiping the ego off the map, a basic issue to tackle at the beginning of any seeker´s path.
The Loser Titan presented in Rosario, on December fourteenth, the book he published in France. Yet unexperienced in the shifting sands of public speeches, he counted on Valentina´s remote support nevertheless, so the book launch went by genuinely smooth. La Muestra, a bohemian bar located in the centre of the city, was the place where the Loser Titan addressed an audience composed of ex-lovers, friends and university colleagues, to whom he was tied since the nineties, before becoming a wanderer backpacker. Prior to stepping on stage, The Loser Titan went to the toilet to follow the sacred ritual of evacuation of the stage fright, but in no way he allowed Valentina to be evacuated, as she was his spiritual fuel. While flushing the toilet, relieved, he reminded of the Kinks song Lost and Found. He was thereby ready for the show. The event was a resounding success; all books he had brought from Colombia were instantly sold. To The Loser Titan the looseness with which he behaved before the public should be attributed to the gut feeling of having been freed from a toilsome mission. It was evident that this green-eyed, healthy-like bold individual, felt he had achieved his goals in life: on one side the artistic, market-oriented, pertaining to the material world, the launching of his book, on the other, an evolving experience irrelevant to the marketplace, but undoubtedly more significant to his Self: the arrival of Valentina to his life.
Trapped in a labyrinth ornamented with kaleidoscopic tiles, The Loser Titan did not care much about anything, and despite the disorientation he kept on losing in disoriented fashion, with fanatic devotion. Unlike to what it seemed, Valentina did not intend to disorient anyone at all, it was unscrupulous Gods that acted through her. The worst reaction possible for males was to seek for legal counselling, since any defence strategy would be broken up by her hegemonic beauty. The development of facts went on with the serene Valentina treading the tracks of life collecting wedding proposals and courtships, which meant a living death to attentive candidates. No men would ever cast their wounds off, even though their hearts still bled. There was no coming back for the Loser Titan, a one-way ticket so far. Perhaps, the transparency shown by The Loser Titan made Valentina give priority to his, over any other male message exchanges.
On December eighteenth, after listening to a note voice from the Colombian where she expressed her joy for his upcoming return to Cali, the Loser Titan started to write opuscules on a daily basis, which dealt with varied mystical topics. He spent a good time on this inspiring orgy but also in yoga sessions, swimming and running. The writer carried out his tasks as Financial Manager mostly at dawn, when his relatives were still in bed. “There´s time for everything” –he told to himself The Loser Titan-, it´s just a question of a proper organisation.”
“Love is an excellent reason to cause things to fail” –one afternoon during that December the Loser Titan had debated this proverb with his younger sister, the psychologist.
“Was it love what he was experiencing and unsponsored building?” Clear enough, he agreed to himself, the building rose up unguided; from the ground upwards the construction led itself to a utopic fate.
Ignorant Valentina as to their creation, opuscules continued to see the light. Meanwhile, the boss of the Loser Titan put him to work on the qualification process of a subsidy to be accorded by the European Community to companies interested in setting up a representative office in Brazil. “No market research was made there but even so he wants to set up an office. My boss is losing his mind. “ –protested the Loser Titan, as he looked out through the window in search of a reasonable explanation. As well as absurd, the task was definitely inopportune, taking into account that he was on leave. Anyway, The Loser Titan was unworried about his boss´s eccentricities, he was busier wondering where Valentina would be, what she might be doing, whether she was happy or under distress, and so forth.
“All trains will take you on to the gate of my lips, to the temple of my lips, to the grave of my lips” – eschatological connotations did The Loser Titan give to “Bendito Infierno (Blessing Hell)”, from Argentinian musician Iván Noble, one of the most stirring songs of his album “Intemperie (Outdoors), whose lyrics the writer had modified for Valentina´s sake. The Loser Titan perceived that Valentina had never lived in the open; she must have been sheltered by her friends, professors, the walls of the school and church, as well as by the double top of her narcissism, layers that protected her from idlers, curious and loving grenade launchers. From the eye of the storm The Loser Titan bucked the system, and violating social codes he indiscreetly began to launch loving grenades to Valentina -despite the ongoing world´s disarming trend- in the hope bombs would quench his thirst for insurrection. By force of habit Valentina welcomed the grenades, but after a soft manipulation so as to prevent detonation, she deactivated them: when she attended a boy´s scout camp for responsible of future men´s folly infatuations, Valentina had learnt to handle minefields.
One day before getting back to Cali, on December 27th, The Loser Titan wrote his daily opuscule, summing it up to the logbook of undying sayings; after that he went to the cemetery where his mother was buried, in the village of Funes, nearby Rosario. Once there he stipulated on oath touching the coffin at one of its edges (he remembered her mother´s head position within) and promised her to engage himself body and soul to Valentina up to his last breath, regardless of external circumstances. Whatever it may happen he will. Kneeled at the family Pantheon, tears rolled down his cheeks.
Cali, Colombia, December 2017, from 25th to 31st
The self-possessed law student took the encounter of the airport with a grain of salt, always responded the Loser Titan with short phrases, like a ruffian getting on in a foreign language using the necessary words to introduce the illicit merchandise into an unspoiled neighbourhood. She intended –like with anyone else- to give him hope but remaining unengaged, making him suspect that within her silence she hid the best.
Valentina studied Law in one of the most prestigious universities of Cali, where she put admirers off by efficiently administering them homeopathic doses of her sweetness, leaving them at their own device, which fostered, in the corridors of the faculty, her fame of sighs-provoker.
Although she did not like to live alone, everything was relative, because from now on she will have The Loser Titan´s dedicated book along with her, the fourth gifted in her life. It was useless to deny that she was keen to play the piano for him, as she had promised the Loser Titan at the airport, but she gave no clues of it: she will make him wait.
Valentina stands the same 173 centimetres tall as the Loser Titan but usually wears high heels, which worried her face to the proposal of date he had made her. “Of course I agree on meeting you upon your return from Rosario” –she had said to him via note voice, a piercing announcement cause for anxiety, anxiety that locked The Loser Titan´s clarity of thought in a grave.
Valentina kept her Indian ancestor´s traits intact, slender with jet black long hair and flat stomach. Less careful of junk food and much of brief affairs, she had gone through a tragic love story with an ill-mannered youngster in secondary school. Still unclear on whether she had overcome that sentimental defeat, she will make sure not to fall into the same hole again as well as not to cast pearls before swine from now forth. Never ever again a footloose around her, he who shows willingness to conquer her heart will need a lot patience, he would have to fall at her feet, to sweat blood and be tested hundreds of times so to convince her about his pure intentions. Then only might she think of letting the river of love flow and form a couple for the rest of her life. A trace of her broken-heart still stayed alive in the memory of Valentina, which reminds her not to set an eye on young prospects. Yes, she was beaten in the past but at the same time had learnt to look for shelter in older men; to her astonishment the Loser Titan met her target profile.
Cali Fair inaugurates on December twenty fifth and lasts till the beginning of January; it is the city´s most popular rumba style annual celebration, an amicable and friendly plan –both for families and flirty people- that starts with the traditional parade followed by the world famous spectacle of professional salsa street dancers. Among the public it should be counted a significant group of international tourists who come to stuff themselves with Ron and also to look for someone to bid farewell to the old year with, surrendering then to horny big-breasted afro-descendant women. Nevertheless, Cali Fair meant to Valentina nothing but a fruitful work period as a fashion model, for which she was hired before Christmas. Despite her youth and excellent physical condition, when she came back home Valentina suffered from foot pain. She described her feelings to The Loser Titan with these following words: “you have no idea how tired I get after the time at the Fair is through, so much so that I find myself lying in bed almost fainted, ashamed to answer your messages next morning. End of story”. The Loser Titan loved the way Valentina pronounced “End of story”; put it into the mouth of a television host would have sounded bureaucratic, a trite word, a secret agent in his commonly pre-seasonal preparation, it would have seemed an expression of a volunteer fireman when fighting a predictable fire forest, while in Valentina´s mouth it depicted the highest phonetic peak of softness. Every day it passed Valentina turned The Loser Titan´s more valuable priority, even though he admitted to have no ability to drive along such alchemical dimensions. On the other side Valentina sensed the high priority that was being given, she really appreciated it, but still she won´t give in, not a word on the subject was ever to be shared with him … What to say when it was all already said?
Valentina professed the Roman Catholic faith, attend mass every Sunday with her parents and sister. Her prayers during Sunday´s homily mostly deal with getting a good image from the mirror, with having a long life and make her available lots of candidates, she prays God for her sex appeal to go shake-handed with an impenetrable vanity. She also prayed for her vanity to create a shield in order to prevent against insincere prospects approaches. Then, when the moment of the greeting of peace came, she thanked God to be alive; she thanked Him to have met the Loser Titan, to whose lifelong commitment and patience towards her specially commissioned to the All Mighty. She requested God to help the Loser Titan to get used to putting down strongholds provided that he dared enter her life. Because she had decided to make him run against the wind for five years to see if he could thrive on stress, and if the loser Titan proved her his battling attitude in adverse conditions one day he will be able to see the sunrise and envisage better times to come.
Yet far from a literary insight, the model thought about the writer once in a while. She used to think about him when she, like a frozen statue, repressed her foot pain in front of the stand “Ron Viejo de Caldas” which she watched over at Cali fair. She thought about him in the frame of their next encounter, how to reach the Middle Path between talkativeness and wise occultism. Needless to deny it, there was no point in lying to the mirror, it was true that she wanted to call the Loser Titan although she never would; apart from her daddy Valentina had never phoned any other man. She knew that by refraining to do so she cumulated magnetic power over his victims and, incidentally, she gave them candles for their funerals. As far as she could see, The Loser Titan seemed different from other boys she had met, maybe an assessment on his courage will demonstrate his distinctiveness and he, she speculated, would deserve her heart. His endurance to unwelcoming weather should be tested nevertheless, she reckoned with a wide smile. As she upraised his efforts to come closer to her, Valentina amused herself in silence. Still, hesitations grew into Valentina´s spirit, like any other teenager exposed to endless nights clamouring for foot massage. She knew who her masseur should be, but to request him his services was out of question, as he would come, like an Exocet, to her apartment at any time whatsoever to get down to the job. Sometimes Valentina was tempted to give the Loser Titan –in absence, of course- the title of her official masseur, however life was calmer being away from him. “Life is supposed to be safer without men” –she thought. ¡Jesus!, how much joy Valentina experiences in the game of increasing and reducing distance with the male universe.
