The Clown

I moved into my apartment a couple days ago, but Rose, the 40 year-old woman I'm living with, was out of town working on her thesis about Leprosy, so she had some of her daughter's friends taking turns staying here and watching over the dogs.

The first day there was a girl named Rosita (which is confusing since my roomie's name is Rose) from La Mancha who is about to leave Spain for a year and travel through Mexico and South America. Yesterday, she randomly disappeared and was replaced by a really hot guy whose name I don't know. I assumed he was Rose's son - she has a couple kids in their 20s.

I came back from dinner last night and was sitting in my room on AIM when he came and knocked on my door to see if I wanted to have a glass of wine with him. I didn't want to be rude, so I went and sat with him for a little while and talked about where he's from (Barcelona) and how he knows Rose (his girlfriend is friends with her daughter). I finished up my glass (after a lot of really awkward pauses where I would just look around the room to see what the dogs were doing) and was about to get up when he quickly poured me another glass. I asked him what he does for a living, and - I shit you not - he's a professional clown.

I understand that it's possible that this kind of thing can get lost in translation, but I had him clarify multiple times and he is definitely a clown. It's even called "clown" in Spanish (and all over the world, according to him). He went to three years of theater school and at the end was finally allowed to take clowning classes. He asked me to come to his street performance on October 20th in Poble Nou. I asked him if there would be other clown-friends assisting his act and he said only one - it's a really tough gig to get, apparently.

I think he misinterpreted my genuine amusement in his clown-ness (I got up to go to the bathroom at one point and came back to him playing circus-esque music on the piano) as interest in him, because he started asking me if I have a boyfriend, and trying to talk me out of my plans ("You don't REALLY want to go to Barceloneta, do you?"). I asked him if he had a girlfriend, even though I knew he already did, to see if he was going to pull some sleazy story-switching. He responded "Yes, but she's living in Holland so it doesn't matter."

Although this is by far the hottest Spaniard I have met so far, there is no way I'm going to toss my morals out the window and do anything with a guy who has a girlfriend. There is also no way I would do anything that could get back to my roomie who I haven't even lived with yet. I also think it's wrong to fool around with clowns. I left and went out to Barceloneta and by this morning he had already been replaced by some new dog-watcher.