”WASHFEET GEISHAS“ O “GEISHAS FROM LAVAPIES”
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Explanation “A”
 
Ukiyo-e: “Images of the flowing world”, literally. Of those Japanese etches, what attracts me most are their lines. Any of them. They give the impression always to have been there, prior to their iconographic justifiation, prior to the papel that bears their tracks, prior to time.
One day I kidnapped one of them. There are Orientals fascinated with Flamenco, who play the Spanish guitar o imitate Camarón de la Isla. I had no intention of emulating the artists of the Edo period, it would be as absurd as it would be impossible. With the abduction of that line I had the worst intentions, those that unscrupulous captors have: Rape her, beget something with her, but not accidentally. Occidentally.
 
Explanation “B”
 
NEITHER STORY NOR CHINESE
 
Last Thursday, several friends and I attended a projection of transparencies about Zen art. Varios amigos y yo asistíamos el Jueves pasado a una proyección de filminas sobre arte Zen. (Transparencies are slides. Zen is a brand of Oriental Art. Art, I don't know what that is.) Pedro and Gracia, who never stop going to Asia in their spare time, taught us how to say two words in Chinese. Specifically "man" and "woman". They pronounced it equally well as any Pekinese from the centre, and everyone was ecstatic with those exotic sounds. I, on the other hand, who am not fond of travel at all, am surprised that I have been able to live all this time submerged in such ignorance.
 
The next day I went to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant. The food wasn't terribly hot, but the waitress who tended my table was. She didn't speak a word, neither when serving nor when removing the dishes, but she smiled a lot, and when she did, her eyes would narrow even more, almost like Juanito Valderrama.
For dessert, inspired by my newly acquired fluency in the use of oriental languages, although also by a liquor of suspicious gradation and the altruistic cleavage of its bearer, I exclaimed while looking at her (face) and in perfect Mandarin Chinese:
-Woman!
And then the waitress stood up in full. She left the tray on some cushions printed with winged dragons and smiling like a Chinese geisha (Japanese geishas smile in a different way, in a more cosmopolitan way and hesitant, I don't know), she softly raised her Chinese arms, offering me the vision of a stylish body, like a vase from the Acme dynasty (they're made in China and sold at Ikea).
I understood immediately that she was coming on to me, there, in front of everybody and all the spring rolls, and it infuriated me that Gracia and Pedro had not shown me how to say “ Dance?” in Chinese the prior evening. So given my shyness and because I didn't know if the waitress knew the Lambada or the Catalan Rumba, which are the only dances that I've mastered, well I got a little bashful, to be honest, slowly sinking among the soft cushions and amid the general disappointment (lots of people only go to restaurants to see what those at the next table are talking about).
She must have thought that I'm a bore, which is absolutely false, the thing is that I lack vocabulary. She picked up the tray very angrily, placed it under her Oriental armpit (because it was the left one, not because she was from that part of Shanghai), and while she moved away towards the kitchen with very short but very quick steps, I could hear how she mumbled in a Chinese tinged with Lavapies accents:
-Men!
And I understood her perfectly.