Jeffery DelViscio

I got a message from some kid on CouchSurfing.com asking if he could stay at my place for a few nights because he was broke and stranded in Barcelona. He had spent his first night at the train station and needless to say, it being November, it is cold.

Broke and homeless, I thought, that’s a definite no.

And then I caught myself. If I’m not going to give someone who’s broke and homeless and in a foreign country a place to stay, then who?

The other night I got into a taxi after staying out late, drinking with some friends. The taxi driver was in his 50s, silent, as most taxi drivers here are, but listening to a rather lively radio station; there was some Abba, some Queen; and he was singing along to it. Very softly, but singing nevertheless. I usually spend half the taxi ride home trying to guess where the driver is from, and the other half chatting with him. This time, faced with his curt hello as I got into the taxi my first guess had been that he was Catalan, but now that I heard him singing I changed my mind. If Spanish, he was probably from the south, or maybe Madrid, one of those places where people are more extroverted than the Catalan. When I asked him where he was from he bounced the ball back in my court by asking me where I thought he was from. I said I hadn’t a clue. Where was I from, he wanted to know. I told him. “The most beautiful women!” he exclaimed, “always the most beautiful women!”

We talked about poetry, travelling. He was a little surprised I had spoken to him, most people, he said, just sit there like lumps until they arrive at their destination. But I like taxi drivers, and I like hearing people’s stories, and anyway, I find it unnatural to share a space as intimate as a taxi and not speak to the driver. It’s like knocking on someone’s door, stepping into their house and then settling down on their sofa to stare out their window.

The driver still hadn’t told me where he was from, so I reminded him. “Did you ask me because I was singing?” he said. Actually yes, I laughed. “Well, I’m from here, from Barcelona.” I was surprised and didn’t bother to hide it. He agreed, people thought he was strange for singing, but he sang everywhere, he sang because he was happy. He glanced at me in the rearview mirror. “Nobody sings anymore,” he said, “people are crazy. When people look at you strangely because you’re singing, you know the world has gone crazy.”

I don’t remember what exactly my friend P. and I had been talking about earlier at the bar, but at some point P. - a lovely girl, vibrant, intelligent, warm - had responded to a comment I made about some book by laughing indulgently and saying, “Yes, but literature is a lie.” I was taken aback. I don’t know P. very well, but thus far had come to the conclusion that she and I shared a similar worldview. And I honestly didn’t know what she meant at first. Then I realised she was referring to the discrepancy between the way people behave and the characters drawn in books. But what could describe the absurdity and injustice of Guantanamo better than Kafka’s The Trial? The irreconcilable struggle between freedom and love than Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being?

I told P., “Literature doesn’t lie, the way most people live their lives is a lie.”

My first instinct when that kid asked me if he could stay for a few days was a lie. We’re constantly adding two plus two and coming up with negative five or two hundred and seven. Anything but four, four seems too simple, too elementary. The kid’s cold, hungry and without any money. My first calculation led me to the conclusion that that made him the worst CouchSurfing candidate to host.

I’m not Mother Teresa, I don’t want to tend to lepers and feed the starving. But I am on CouchSurfing, and I am open to hosting people in my house for a few days. Why then would I choose someone who can probably afford to stay in a hotel but is trying to save a buck over a kid who didn’t let the fact that he didn’t have any money stop him from diving into an adventure headfirst, heart and mind open? Why is it that a lie was the first thing that came to my mind and the truth - that I want to be open to the world, to live without limits, to explore without prejudice, to fight for what I believe is right and help when I can - something I arrived at only after some consideration?

Why don’t I sing whenever I’m happy?

As the driver said, the world has gone crazy, indeed. And he should know. Turns out, and I shit you not, his name was Jesus.