CRAZY, CRAZY NIGHTS

I've just been out walking the streets, enjoying the 3am Sunday night peace of Madrid. Why? The same reason that I was startled by my flatmate as I tried to creep out without putting the lights on. She was lying in the dark on the sofa - unable to sleep in her boiling bedroom. It's the beginning of the crazy season. Outside, a thermometer on a bus stop (yes, it's a normal fixture here) read 29C. A mistake, I was sure. The next one confirmed it.

Now, just rewind a moment. It's TWENTY-NINE EFFING DEGREES CENTIGRADE AT THREE IN THE PIGGING MORNING. It's one thing to see people sleeping in doorways. It's quite another to see (and smell) them in their underpants, because otherwise they can't get any kip. Down below in the plaza right now there are a number of people using the payphones - probably for much the same reason I was going for a walk - no doubt calling people back in South American countries where all this may seem more normal. And of course in a few hours the sun will come up...

But last night the insanity was of another kind, in an air-conditioned room. It's amazing I'm still functioning at all, considering how little sleep was available. I was in Collado Villalba, a town outside Madrid, close to the mountains, which sounds romantic, but it is in fact an urbanisation vomited up out of necessity without love or planning. A clash of highways, superstores and ugly accommodation, without centre or form, adorned with shabby streets and cracked pavements, as if in the aftermath of an earthquake.

I was with E. and we were staying in the only hotel in town, which boasts a surrealy mistranslated English website, worth a look if you're in need of a smile. We arrived, surveyed the room briefly and then a hormonal rush swept down, full of sweat, cries and transgressive pleasure. We awoke entwined, surprised to find we had slept and realised it was time to get out and accomplish the thing we had allegedly come to do.

As the sun dipped, the traffic locked and streams of figures crawled across the shock zone, drawn to the town's sports field. As we got closer, the voice was unmistakable. Dammit! The unthinkable had happened: a Spanish concert had started exactly on time, catching out half the audience. That voice. Call it a groan, a whine, tuneless even, but you know it's him as "Yes, the times they are a-changin'" bounces off a car showroom.

The Mona Lisa's smile seems transparent set alongside the profound mystery of Why Does Bob Dylan Keep Touring? He can't need the money. He doesn't seek the fame. It's unlikely to be the groupies. So why does the grizzled, pale, 65 year-old fucker keep plugging his way around the world? I'm just glad he does, as is his audience, which seamlessly straddles three generations. Some people are literally with their grandchildren.

It's my fourth encounter with the Old Groaner (as my mother used to call him) and definitely the most intimate - just me and no more than 4,000 close friends. For a Bobologist such as I the set is frustrating - three tracks from Highway 61 Revisited, but nothing at all from between 1970 and 1990. I have no more interest in hearing Mister Tambourine Man again than he does in singing it. Yet he does. Then the contrary bastard catches you unawares, singing a beautiful song that I felt sure was one of his new ones, until something about the lyrics seemed familiar... It was only later that I realised it was one of his earliest acoustic compositions, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, wonderfully rearranged for this new band. Nobody re-interprets Dylan like Dylan himself. That's the pleasure of seeing him live.

Surprisingly he chose not to play the guitar - a wise decision given his musicians' talent in this department and his lack of it - contenting himself to play the organ throughout, at the centre rather than front of his tight, bluesy band. E. was frustrated that her good English wasn't enough to follow the lyrics. "Listen," I reassured her, "I know all the words to most of these songs - and I still don't understand what he's saying. If you can catch a few phrases, it means he's particularly enjoying singing it."

We laughed, snacked, danced, drank a chilled Albariño and thought about the return to our room. Back at the hotel we had a couple of beers and chatted about how we had reached this strange point together. A close, open connection with a kind of sexual nuclear fission, and yet not a 'relationship' - a word, a concept that makes us both wary. We both have our reasons for keeping several steps away from it, but we know that the times are always a-changin'.

In the room again, the attraction is overwhelming. She strokes her lovely breasts against my back, literally pleading to be tied, to be used, wanting pain with her pleasure. There is no way to deny her. Later we are end to end as she practices the deep throat techniques she has begun to learn. She's a dedicated pupil and leaves me shuddering. She kisses me, happy "I swallowed it all". I'm consistently amazed how much she can swallow of me - in every way.

And then, for the very first time, we sleep side by side, curled, touching, moving through the night. The small amount of morning light that filters through the blackout curtains awakes and arouses. She nestles against me as I stroke her, kiss her, grow into her, a gentle penetration becoming a storm. We consume each other with insane energy until she tells me, in all seriousness, that her body hurts all over and she can't do any more of ANYTHING. I start laughing - she thinks I'm laughing at her, but it's not that. It's been a long time since I slept or woke like this, and I like it. Also there is almost an absurdity about two people, far from teenagers, taking themselves to such a physical limit because of their obsession. Like many deeply erotic moments, it´s funny too.

We shower, breakfast, clear the room (which now resembles a bomb attack in a brothel), and shuffle in the searing heat to the bus, which takes us, happy and dozing, back to Madrid and to a life that, for a short time, ceased to exist.


YOUR POSITIVE FEEDBACK ENCOURAGES ME TO KEEP WRITING - ALTHOUGH I CAN´T PROMISE THAT YOUR CRITICISM WILL SHUT ME UP. PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT.