My dearest friends, for a moment consider the life of an average person who has the horror of being from a city that has been pegged by the lighter-skinned part of the world as a “party-town”. In the Western Hemisphere Cancun comes to mind, Asia has its Pattaya and Phuket, and Europe…..let’s just say there are many. Imagine being a foreigner in your own country, necessitating the use of a non-native tongue just to tell a drunk not to punch you in the mouth, side-stepping broken glass and vomit on the way to school, and the subsequent irony of being forced into an industry that caters to the very party tourists who have made your life hell since birth.
Yea, film that. This way you will know what happened when you wake up
Let me tell you about one of these places. One flooded with youth pursuing repetitive techno music, cheap liquor, and permanent loss of the memory of their vacation: a rocky outcropping straddling the Atlantic coast on the southwestern tip of Europe, swarming with English people who as infants, sucked in pints with their mother’s milk and Australians who came out of the womb with long, saltwater-bleached blonde hair, washboard abs, a perfect tan, not many brains, and a complete innocence of the “shirt” as a garment.
The Australian courting ritual
Lagos, Portugal: the Cancun of Europe. Well, truthfully, Ibiza is probably the Cancun of Europe, but that place looks like you could die from airborne syphilis or get a heart attack from cocaine absorbed through your skin after touching anything. But Lagos isn’t far off. Especially because all drugs are decriminalized in Portugal. But don’t book your ticket yet! Decriminalized is very different from legal. Which is why I had to do a special knock to enter my hostel’s room, and most of my roommates stayed in there the entire time with a bunch of mirrors.
If Portugal is supposed to have Portuguese people living in it, nobody told Lagos. Here’s an idea: I’ll make a scavenger hunt for a $100 prize and the only thing on the list is ONE Portuguese. Care to take me up on it?
All you see is groups of Brits and Aussies, stumbling down the street sans shoes between hostels with names like “The Rising Cock”. Apparently the morning rooster is an important symbol in Portuguese culture…but let’s not kid ourselves. This place’s marketing team has to be made up of 12 year-old boys. The hostel’s breakfast was crepes with “cock jam” and they even advertised a sister restaurant with pizza so good the sauce will, “spray all over your face.” Get the drift?
I wasn’t lying!
That’s where I met Norris. I had always imagined expats as retirement age (unless they were criminals on the lam, of course), but Norris embodied all of that spirit in his 21 year-old self. He was every bit the sun-loving Brit who renounced his rainy Yorkshire hometown for warmer climes, his fumbled words in Portuguese somehow maintaining that sludgy Geordi accent he grew up with, as thick and mealy as whatever pie they make up in Newcastle from all the organs you are not even supposed to eat. Maybe Norris was trying to reclaim a centuries-old birthright, his dark hair and eyes echoing the bloodline of shipwrecked Mediterranean sailors from the defeated Spanish Armada, yet those same features belying his pale skin, flushed pink in seconds under the summer sun.
Segue: Now THAT’S how you market a haircut!
To use a word like “reclaim” would imply that he actually did something. But just like every expat, the extent of his daily activities was lifting a beer bottle to his lips and lounging in my hostel’s common area, watching movies, even though he didn’t even stay there. Nevertheless, he was a jovial guy, which is why we would invite him to come with us to stroll down the main street, drink, and ogle Australian girls.
Don’t fight over the beer!
On just another of those nights, lost in a sea of bro tanks where messages-in-[beer]-bottles floated in the crashing waves of long, teased hair under backwards hats, each message reading, “Drink me till you vomit…then repeat”, I spotted Norris across the crowd. Norris was short and not very distinct, but I couldn’t miss him after just scanning the crowd with my eyes. In this tumult of smiles, laughter, and shouting, Norris was standing, hands in his pockets, eyes wide and head hanging like he had just seen a ghost sitting on his toes.
Beer in hand, I started swimming, eventually reaching Norris on the opposite side. With a big smile, I clapped his bare shoulder (of course he was wearing a bro tank too—standard issue for Lagos), and yelled over the music, “What’s wrong, man?!” He sat still. I asked again. “Well…” he whispered, “I just saw a girl I slept with a couple months ago….She came up just now to tell me she was pregnant….”
Call me a dick, but all I could say was, “Lame.” I managed to come up with something semi-reassuring, but it only took a few minutes before I had to walk away, convinced I would only be enjoying the night, and not him. Nothing I could say was going to perk him up. The rest of the night, Norris floated with the current on his miserable piece of driftwood after he was shattered by that internal shipwreck, doing his best to tread water and not drown in the excited swells of the crowd.
The famed common room
One hungover morning later, I stumbled into the common room. Norris was there, watching movies again, with the same look on his face as the night before, the daylight somehow making him look more pitiful. I glanced up at what he was watching: Knocked Up.
This was too much. I began to laugh hysterically. Doubled over, nearly falling on the floor, and squeaking out between laughs, “Stop torturing yourself!” My uncontrollable laughter managed to at least provoke a wry smile.
The day I left, Norris said bye with a look of relief. He had just booked a “romantic vacation” with his mistress up to England, where their first stop would be a clinic.
Uhhh, does anyone remember what these buildings are for?
Lesson learned: Stay away from party spots, especially if you aim for an experience without hordes of people from your homeland. You may just make a mistake in a super Catholic country where doctors can still legally refuse to perform an abortion.
-Mark (Birmingham, England), partying hardy with the bros in Lagos, Portugal