Manolo

We all meet people who we remember for the rest of our lives. They could be a random stranger that we only meet for 30 seconds. They can be a friend from elementary school. They can be someone we dated. For me, it’s Manolo.

I lived in Ecuador from January 2016 to October 2017. I was there as an English Teacher with the Peace Corps. Manolo and I were introduced to each other through mutual friends who were dating. We hit it off right away, and relatively immediately, started dating. It wasn't to last, though.

There have been many times since our relationship ended that I have wondered if Manolo and I’s relationship was a complete farce. It’s taken me a long time to settle on the answer of no. It was a relationship of circumstance. The relationship gave us a steady friend group. Manolo really needed that. Honestly, he needed to be socialized. I was able to do that for him. The relationship gave me a sense of belonging and a place that felt like home. When you live abroad, you always try to tell yourself that you aren’t homesick when really you would sell all of your organs to spend one holiday with your own family in your own home. He and his was a place that I retreated to more and more often as my service continued to disappoint and as I became more depressed. And that ultimately put a large strain on our relationship and on our friend group. I accept full responsibility for that.

When we were together, Manolo was a complete narcissist. There were days where he spent more time looking in the mirror than spending time with me. I make no excuses for him or his behavior. But as much as he was able, he really did care about me. I could always count on him to be there and help when I truly needed it. In turn, I was the token girlfriend for him. I was from the United States, nice looking if I did my hair just right, and extremely supportive of whatever creative venture he thought of next, even if it meant learning how to make balloon animals with him or being his sidekick when he was hired as a clown for children’s birthday parties. While our relationship was seriously flawed because both of us approached the relationship for very secretly selfish reasons, there was genuine compassion, chemistry, and tenderness between us.

My favorite example of our cultural differences and how understanding he really was happened during the Easter of 2017. It had been years since I had dyed Easter eggs, but the more you live in a completely different culture and environment, you really start to miss the activities that are familiar to you. Therefore, that Easter, come hell or high water, I was going to dye Easter eggs with Manolo and explain why we do that. Naturally that would mean that I would have to also have Manolo’s 6 year old nightmare of a half-brother at the table too. I couldn’t stand that kid.

Because Easter egg dying kits just don’t exist in Ecuador, I googled another way to do it, and it involved food coloring and vinegar. That sunny Easter morning, I woke Manolo up and said, “We need to get up and go buy 2 dozen eggs right now”. He was still mostly asleep so he just pulled me closer and nestled against my back. That always made me melt. But not that day. I nudged him pretty hard with my foot and shouted, “MANOLO!”

With that, he opened his eyes and really loudly in a terrible rendition of an American accent, said, “WHAT! I’M WAKE. EGG!”

As he was getting dressed, he asked what we needed all the eggs for. All I would say is that I had a project I wanted us to work on. Manolo was always so good with creative projects. Anything else and you would lose his attention. After a lot of poking and prodding on my end and complaining and grumbling on his end, we were out the door and on our way to the corner store we frequented.

Sometimes, I still think back to the moment that Manolo and I went over the egg section and lifted the top off a bundle of eggs. It simultaneously makes me laugh and feel the immediate, crushing defeat I felt when I looked at the eggs. At this point, I had been living in Ecuador for over a year. I was quite familiar with the food and all its differences from the States. However, in my excitement and relief to be doing something that was so normal for me, I forgot one major detail about the eggs in Ecuador. ALL OF THE EGGS ARE FUCKING BROWN. In case you don’t know, you can’t dye a brown egg fun Easter colors. You can’t dye them at all. In anger meant to disguise my frustration and sadness, I said forcefully, “These 100% will no work. We have to walk to the supermarket to get different eggs.” He didn’t understand but went right along with it. That meant, however, walking 30 minutes to the supermarket.

Once we got there, I burst into the supermarket like I owned it. I was on a mission to find white eggs. I marched right over to the egg section and all of my resolve just crumbled. I burst into tears and between sobs, asked Manolo, “Why don’t white eggs exist here?” He had no idea what I was talking about, but he reached around me, picked up an egg, and said, “I found you a white egg!” It wasn’t white. It was tan. However, with that one tiny statement, my appreciation for Manolo only grew. He was someone who, while 10 years my senior, oftentimes acted a lot younger than me. That could be really frustrating because he was really immature in a lot of ways. However, his childlike optimism and outlook, in certain situations, made my attitude and viewpoint a lot brighter. I had become so cynical since moving to Ecuador that he actually balanced that side of me out a lot. And that was how we spent 2 hours in the mini supermarket comparing shades of brown eggs until we walked away with 24 of the lightest brown eggs. I also had a renewed sense that I was going to dye some fucking eggs.

When we got back home, I excitedly, but with care, prepared the dyes. I wanted to get on with it but also wanted to make sure everything turned out perfectly. As soon as it was ready, Manolo came over to the table and sat down. I began to explain. “Today is Easter, and in the States, we dye eggs in pretty colors and hide them. Kids then go looking for them and get to keep whatever is on the inside. We tell kids a character called the Easter bunny hid the eggs and left presents.”

Manolo looked at the eggs, then at me, and asked, “Why a bunny?” Rather loudly and nervously, I said, “Ready to start dying the eggs?!” Why a bunny indeed. I had no idea.

The different colors were set around the table along with empty bowls, nails to make holes in the eggs, and the eggs. I showed Manolo how to make the holes in the egg and then blow out the yolk. We saved the yolks for dinner later. After that was done, we excitedly dipped our eggs in the colors. I chose red, and Manolo chose green. When I took my egg back out, I was crushed. It didn’t work. The egg was too brown, and the dye was probably too weak. I set the egg down, put my head in my hands, and just started bawling. Manolo knew how important this was to me, so he got up, came around, and just held me while I cried. “I just wanted to feel like I was at home,'' I said rather quietly into his chest. He may not have understood the egg tradition but he understood the sentiment.

He sat quietly for a little while and then said, “I have an idea.” So I sat up, dried my tears, and got rid of the stupid dye. When I turned back around, Manolo had brought out paint and glitter. He knew how much I love glitter. Without even speaking a word, we began to paint the hollow eggs and smother them in glitter. With one, I stuffed it full of glitter and broke it over Manolo’s head. It led to a glitter war and several hours of clean-up afterwards. Our painted eggs turned out so well, and I remember he kept a couple. In an emotionally charged day that had one failure after another, he honestly saved it by being patient, optimistic, and thoughtful. At this point in our relationship, we were fighting a lot more and growing apart. But I will never not appreciate what he did for me that day.

I can still remember sitting in the bus terminal after our relationship ended a couple weeks later. I sincerely believe that saying goodbye to Manolo will be the hardest goodbye I will have to say to a living person. We had a lot of history. He was a lot of firsts for me. And it’s hard to walk away from that.

That day we finally and officially parted for good was rainy and humid; however, it wasn’t cloudy. It was sunny. We were sitting in the terminal not knowing what to do but also not wanting to just walk away. After all of the back and forth trips between Riobamba and Puyo, neither of us had memorized the departure schedule. Therefore, when we got there, the next bus wasn’t leaving for another 2 hours.

The Puyo terminal is forever burned into my memory. It is one large tiled room. Along 3 walls are the ticket offices for the various bus companies. Workers stand outside of each little office calling out destinations. Along the opposite wall from the entrance is where the buses are waiting and someone to take your ten cent exit ticket. Directly in the middle of it all are rows of plastic chairs bolted to metal tracks. There’s a second floor balcony behind the chairs and ticket offices with food and more people shouting. Several skylights leaking sunshine and rain dot the ceiling over the chairs.

We spent the next two hours sitting in the chairs saying goodbye without actually speaking. Sometimes, there are just some words you can’t actually say. There were lots of tears, hand holding, and hugs. Lots of questions without the words to actually answer them. To share a year of your life with someone is nothing minor. And when that year involves your first time fully being with someone, giving yourself to someone, being accepted into a family that wasn’t yours for the first time, and feeling a strong romantic connection with another person for the first time, it becomes even more mammoth.

I finally saw my bus pull up to the terminal. I knew that if I didn’t put myself on that bus now, things would be so much harder minutes later. I looked back at Manolo. He knew it too. Holding his hand, I asked, “Can I please have one more kiss?” That was the first time I had ever seen Manolo cry. And in that last kiss, there was an outpouring of compassion, chemistry, and tenderness. In that kiss were all the things we couldn’t say but needed to. In that kiss were all the things we felt.

As I crossed the exit to board my bus, our hands slipped apart. I knew better than to look back. And so I didn’t watch Manolo, Puyo, and the life that had saved me in many ways over the past year fade into memory.

To this day, Manolo is someone who is still very special to me. Our paths will likely never cross again in our lifetime, but when everything else was going wrong, he was the right person to have around.