An Afternoon in Gibraltar (a short and quick romance)

An Afternoon in Gibraltar
((and along the Costa del Sol) (12-1997))


“All right. Yes. Now will you let me tell you what I want to do?” I told the young lady.
Now that I look back I don’t even recall her name. She was sitting on the bus; we had combed the Costa del Sol that is along the coast of Spain that connects to the Mediterranean Sea. There were twenty-seven of us on the bus. She sat by me during two days of the trip, we talked, she was pretty, about twenty-eight years old, I was forty-eight. No expectations. She was from Bucharest. And now she was sitting with me in a little pub, on a cobblestone street in the land of Gibraltar, a British annexed state, with its own kind of sovereign; her with a glass of wine, me with a glass of coke, and both of us eating a sandwich each.
“Now that we have come this far with each other,” she laughingly says, “as you were about to do, tell me what you want to do the rest of the afternoon, I think that is on your mind—something tells me you decided before you got off the bus to climb that rock (The Rock of Gibraltar).”
We were, for the most part, on its bottom rim.
Her dark eyes penetrated my blue, and she must had been reading my mind, because that is exactly what I was contemplating, and about to suggest if she wanted to keep me company, and I did suggest this to her, and she more than willingly took this as a fill- in for the rest of the afternoon.

We took the taxi as high as we could up the big rock, considered one of the ‘Pillars of Hercules’. Then I said,
“I’m going to climb into the cement cage like area on top, with that cannon extending outward from us, you see, it’s there is a little tree by its side?”
She looks, a sign on the highway fills her view, a little further up the road (she looked at the sign, the little tree, said), “It says Dennis, no trespassing.”
“Yes,” I replied, “but I am no prisoner of course to such rules, they are to protect the uncurious, or better put, the unadventurous.”
She looked at me as if she was a shocked salesgirl, and then my face changed to: chose which way you want to go, up or down, but I’m going up, and I started climbing up the rock’s side, and it was straight up, up, up!
“I’ll beat you up there,” she said, and she started immediately climbing.
These of course were the wrong words coming from a woman, and I had to meet the challenge, and she was wrong, I beat her, and the taste of victory was good, she gave me a kiss on the cheek, and we strolled about the World War II, vintage tower of sorts, overlooking the area below. For the moment we both were contented, you see, it was perhaps the best view on all the Rock of Gibraltar. Below you could see the small airport they had, small as it was, the Tram that came up the Rock near us but not near enough to protest we were there, if indeed an official was on board, the winding streets leading up the Rock were visible, a few of the residential monkey’s were being fed by the tourists, below, they looked like peanuts, but a few had climbed nearby, they were really all over the mountain, as the legend goes: “When the monkey’s disappear, so will the people (something like that).”
Then my friend from Bucharest said, “That tree,” pointing to the small tree, “I can climb it higher than you,” and the bet was on. And she climbed it to its tip, and it swayed with the wind, matter-of-fact, the wind at this level was a bit noisy, loud, which only told me we were next to the clouds. I looked about to see if the police were anywhere, and we were safe.
“Your turn Dennis,” she said. Then a second, then quickly, she slid down the tree to a standing applause.
She now had stopped speaking, reaches her right hand out to the tree, as if to say: your turn, unlighted eyes, two arms, legs and eyes standing like a soldier waiting for me to climb up the rainspout looking tree, thin, almost as thin as wheel spokes in a boy’s bike at its very top, not really that thin, but towards the top, and the bottom was not really all that thick.
Now I was taking into consideration the dimensions of the tree—and I foresaw a red-light when I would near the top. I started to climb, and in no more than a few feet I could feel the tree swaying with my weight, thus I remained idle, looked down at my Romanian female friend, calm with a smirk she stood, less excited, as I remained hanging onto this bony tree, almost like being suspended twenty fathoms deep in the Mediterranean, and then I knew I was defeated, lest I climb to its top and allow the tree to break into, and that would be a sin, it was the only tree on this side of the upper part of the rock.

What did I learn that afternoon I ask myself, perhaps not a thing about me or climbing, or Gibraltar per se, for I had learned all that before I got to Gibraltar, out of books. But nevertheless, I always like looking at that part of my life trips; I think what I may have discovered at such an odd age, is that this new generation was competitive, challenging and perhaps underrated, they could have fun with older men, without crushing too much of their ego, she was cleaver, and perhaps that was an asset, as long as it was under control.


Written 5-30-2008