This is one of those stories that, though amusing, doesn’t have much of a point to it and so didn’t make the cut for “Three Days in Madrid“. I think you’ll get more out of reading this if you’ve already ready that article.
Mitesh and I were leaving the Parque del Buen Retiro with Nico on our first day in Madrid when a good-looking girl, about 18 years old give or take, ran up to Mitesh waving a clipboard. “One sign! One sign!,” she shouted.
Mitesh waved her off and kept walking, but she persisted, thrusting the clipboard and a pen into his chest. “Speak Engish! Please! One sign!”
Laughing, Mitesh attempted again to brush her off gently. “No, no, I’m not signing anything.”
She continued more aggressively, stepping in front of him every time he tried to walk around her. Finally, frustrated but feeling playful, Mitesh did a full-on (American) football rush, faking left and then spinning right to circle around and run past the girl. As Nico and I laughed, he ran a few steps down the sidewalk, spiked an invisible football, and started doing a touchdown dance.
The girl stared angrily after him for a moment, then turned and started to walk away. Hearing our laughing, though, she looked back over her shoulder and shouted “Fuck off! Suck my pussy!” in her broken English, which only caused Nico and me to laugh harder.
“Are the women in Madrid all so charming?” Mitesh asked Nico after rejoining us?
“No, you must be special,” he joked back.
—–
The next night, I caught up with Nico on Skype from our hotel room. After exchanging pleasantries, the first thing he asked me was, “Did Mitesh get any more propositions?”
“Actually yes,” I told him. “When we were walking home tonight, a strip club promote started following us. He didn’t even try to talk to me, but he walked with us for three blocks telling Mitesh how he had pretty girls and we should come to the club with him.”
“Haha, Mitesh just has something about him, huh?”
The same thing actually happened almost every time we walked through certain neighborhoods at night. The promoters always targeted Mitesh for aggressive sales pitches and never even tried to talk to me. Maybe it was because he was Indian, maybe he looked like the Decider among us, or maybe he looked more or less pathetic than I, but he was always the one they talked to.
——
Nico already had Soeren with him when picked us to go to the casino on Saturday morning. After introducing Mitesh to Soeren, I told him I was glad that the two of them would be able to hang around Madrid together when they get bored of watching the tournament.
Without missing a beat, Nico added, “You must be careful, walking around the city with Mitesh. He will get you into trouble.” The three of us laughed hardily, while poor Soeren had no idea what he was in for.
Wow, I hadn’t thought about Mitesh in about a decade until I read your reports. You remain a great writer, Andrew, and I’m glad to see you still cranking out content even after Gray Friday.