Overheard on the street

It’s 2:30 a.m and I’m on my way home. In any other city this would mean the end of a big night. In Barcelona it means, I’m still mostly sober and I left the party early.

Three young American men are walking ahead of me and talking. Loudly.

Boy A: Look! Let’s just go to a club. And if we find some drugs near the club we DO THEM. Okay?

Boy B: Why don’t we go with my journalist friend?

Boy C: Where?

Boy B: She was going to meet some friends in Placa Reial and do drugs.

Boy C: What? Why didn’t we go with her?

Boy B: I don’t know.

Boy A: Dude she didn’t want us to come.

Boy B: No, no, she invited us. She did.

Boy A: She never sat with us in the bar.

Boy B: She was smoking outside okay.

Boy A: Like all the time dude! She did not want to be with you.

Boy B (in a subdued voice): I don’t think she was avoiding us….

Boy A: She was NOT IN TO YOU. You have to learn to read the signs, I’m telling you. Let’s just go to the club and FIND SOME DRUGS OKAY?

 

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Ah youth! So what are the likely outcomes of their night? In ascending order of cost and danger, I think they are:

1. If extremely lucky: They don’t find anyone selling drugs outside the club. Go inside, and are ripped-off buying 8 Euro glasses of nasty beer.
2. If slightly lucky: They try to buy drugs from an undercover cop who busts them and takes them down to the police station.
3. If slightly unlucky: They get robbed by one of the dealers or pickpockets outside the club.
4. If extremely unlucky: They don’t find anyone selling drugs outside the club, go inside and under minimal encouragement from some pretty young thing, start buying 160 Euro bottles of crap cava.