She got serious with a Scottish lad. They got engaged. Then she hooked up with a close friend of mine. He became infatuated. Instead she fell for a Spanish guy, a young athletic type. But ultimately she chose to honor her engagement to the Scotsman.

She made a real mess of things. But all that time, I kept loving her all the same. It might sound arrogant, but I still feel that she and I had the deepest connection of any of them. Yet we both knew we couldn’t be together, because I was left impotent from a wound I suffered in the war.

I don’t want to drone on and on. If you’re interested in a longer treatment of expat life in Spain, I’d recommend this book about an American named Jake Barnes, who had a similar experience to mine.

If you’ve never read this author, you can get a sense for whether you’ll enjoy his writing style from his short story below:

“For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”

This story is famous for capturing, in just six words, the wrenching saga of two expecting parents, and their dashed hopes when they learn that the shoes they bought for their newborn are, tragically, the wrong size.

In that spirit of brevity, I’ll limit myself today to just one topic: Spanish food. I’m a red-blooded American through and through, but even I have to admit that the food on offer in Spain is far better, and more affordable to boot. If you want to eat out for under $10 in a major US city, the best you can do might be a large, one-topping pizza from Domino’s. Not in Spain.

For the same amount of money in Madrid, you can get a seemingly endless meal of cured meats, aged cheeses, and warm Iberian breads. The particular place I still think about the most even offered an all-you-can-eat option. If you’re ever visiting, the restaurant is called Domino’s Pizza.

Yes, the Domino’s in Spain have an all-you-can-eat option. When I lived there, it cost seven euros. To put that in perspective, in terms of US dollars - I became an expert at calculating the exchange rate off the top of my head while I lived there - seven euros is more, or less, than seven dollars.

Through the sheer grace of God, my first apartment in Madrid was only a three-minute walk from the nearest Domino’s. So I didn’t just go there for food. I also went for exercise.

I still remember the first time I went for all-you-can-eat, with my roommate Luis, from Mexico. If I had to describe the feeding frenzy that took place in one word, it would be “orgiastic.” (Though I have never taken part in a real orgy. Several times I have gotten close to having a threesome. I was only two people short.)

From the moment the first pizza arrived, we entered a flow state. Only one odd thing broke our concentration. When we walked into the restaurant, there was a group of four Spaniards ahead of us who also chose the all-you-can-eat deal. Their first pizza came out the same time ours did. Their second pizza also came out with ours. But then the weirdest thing happened. As we looked up to signal for our third, we saw that they were all standing up to leave. They paid for the all-you-can-eat special, and only ate two pizzas.

People are drawn to the study of the depraved. It feels like every week there’s a new documentary on Netflix about another serial killer: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer. But I don’t wonder about people like Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer ate just fine. I wonder about those people in Spain who were let into the Garden of Eden but left after having two pizzas.

We were on either pizza three or four when I swallowed another slice, farted, and said to Luis, “This is the greatest day of my life.” I don’t recall exactly how many pizzas we ate that day, because shortly after making that statement, I began to experience organ failure.

A few people who know this story have asked if I had an “accident” on the way home afterwards. I can’t stress enough: I was only three minutes away from my apartment. I didn’t come close to vomiting or crapping myself on the walk home, and for the record, I am lying.

When I finally went to bed later on, I slept for roughly thirteen hours, after turning in for the night at 12:30 pm.

There are of course many other restaurants in Madrid, but I’m not going to review any of them, because I don’t feel comfortable writing reviews about places where I’ve never eaten. There are also several well-regarded grocery stores, with choice cuts of meat and fresh produce. I’m not going to go into detail describing them, but the thing that stands out to me the most about these stores is that I also haven’t been.

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I write today to defend the honor of Spain. I had the good fortune to live in Madrid for a couple years in my early twenties, and I look back on my time there with great fondness. It still rankles me when I hear stereotypes about the Spanish people, especially the notion that they lack a strong work ethic. So I was pleased to come across a story of epic initiative by a Spaniard in a book I’m reading.

The book talks about the rise, in the 1990s, of universal jurisdiction, the idea that any country could judge and prosecute crimes that took place anywhere in the world. This idea appealed to countries all across Europe, because they think they’re better than everyone.

Universal jurisdiction was reserved for the most serious crimes, things like torture and genocide and crimes against humanity. The mere chance that perpetrators of these crimes might one day be punished explains why, over the past three decades, courts around the world have seen that I have been on my best behavior.

The villain of this book is former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet. In 1973 he led a coup, took over, and went on to rule Chile for almost seventeen years. During his time in office, he oversaw the killing and disappearance of thousands of people and the torture of tens of thousands more. He was, in the words of the late Norm Macdonald, “a real jerk.”

You might have the impression that Pinochet led a lawless regime. That’s misleading. Pinochet loved the law, and wanted everyone to respect and follow the law, especially the 1978 law that he signed into law that made it against the law to punish him for breaking the law.

Into the story stepped Pinochet’s worst nightmare, the enterprising Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. By the late 1990s, Garzón had had Pinochet in his crosshairs for a couple years, trying to figure out a way to hold him accountable for his crimes. Then Pinochet gave him an opening by traveling to London. The British Foreign Secretary at the time made a big fuss about having an “ethical foreign policy” centered on human rights. This was a refreshing change of pace from Britain’s historical foreign policy of “Trade us tea for opium or we will kill you.”

The cooperative British government kept Garzón posted on Pinochet’s whereabouts as he prepared to travel to London to question him. But one Friday, very late in the Spanish workday, a red alert came in from the Brits: Pinochet might leave London the next day. British authorities couldn’t detain Pinochet just so Garzón could question him. Garzón felt he had no choice. He had to issue a warrant for Pinochet’s arrest, to extradite him to Spain to face criminal charges.

This was a big deal. If he succeeded, it would be the first time that a foreign country arrested a former head of state on the basis of universal jurisdiction. Given the late hour, all but one employee (an assistant clerk) had already gone home, and the files Garzón needed were locked away for the weekend. So Garzón wrote the details needed for the arrest warrant entirely from memory.

But he had one seemingly insurmountable obstacle to get around before he could issue the warrant. He had to notify and get the approval of the conservative chief prosecutor, who had opposed Garzón’s investigation of Pinochet for well over a year.

It became a simple battle of who wanted it more. Garzón waited to notify the prosecutor until there was no chance that he was still at the office: 2:58 pm.

It was Friday, and the office closed at three. The prosecutor was, in fact, nowhere in sight. Garzón had it noted that he had been unable to locate the chief prosecutor. A bit after 3 pm, the arrest warrant went off to the UK.

For context, when Garzón got word of Pinochet’s looming departure, and there was only one other employee still at the office, and the files were already locked up for the weekend, it was 1:45 pm. That employee, the assistant clerk, later complained to the book’s author that “it always happens to me, I’m always the last one!”

Garzón then worked on the warrant for almost an hour. Scotland Yard arrested Pinochet later that night. Because nothing is impossible if you want it so badly that you’re willing to work after you’ve had lunch.

Not wanting to defy stereotypes any further, Garzón left the office and spent the night watching a bullfight.

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When it comes to World War II, the soldiers fighting overseas tend to get all the glory. This doesn’t give FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover nearly enough acclaim for handling security threats on the home front. To give just a few of the red alerts that reached Hoover’s desk and required the heroic intervention of the FBI:

In 1941, an FBI double agent broke up a German spy network operating inside the US. The FBI arrested 33 members of the spy ring, the largest espionage case in US history.

In 1942, eight Germans landed on US shores via U-boat, planning to sabotage US infrastructure. One of the eight had second thoughts, turned in the rest to the FBI, and six of them got the death penalty.

In 1943, an old lady in Cleveland called J. Edgar Hoover gay.

Now, there are just a few things to cover before we go any further. This is a delicate topic, so I’m going to be vague, for all the parents who read this blog to their young families before bed.

The first is that some people, below the belly button but above the thigh, have a thing there that hangs off their body. It’s how they get rid of waste if they drink too much Mountain Dew, and it’s used for something else that’s even grosser than that.

Everyone who doesn’t have a gross thing has no thing, just a hole. And on the back side, everyone has a hole, regardless of whether their front side has a gross thing or not.

The next thing to know is that sometimes, when your eyes come across another person, you become filled with lust. And some of the time, when that person looks back at you, the emotion they are filled with is also one of lust. So you lie down next to each other, and you don’t stand back up again until you have relieved your lust.

The key thing here is that any two people can feel lust for one another. One person could have a thing and the other could have a thing. One person could have a thing and the other could have a pair of holes. Or the two of them could have holes galore.

The final thing to know is that a long time ago, before World War II, there was a couple named Adam and Eve. At first it was just Adam by himself. But his landlord said, “It is not good that the man should be alone,” because he wouldn’t stop playing with his thing. So Eve became his partner in crime. Eve had no thing, just holes. They got along great, probably because they were both super laid back. Their motto was: “No shirt. No shoes. No problem.”

Eventually they got evicted for violating the terms of their lease. But their landlord didn’t stop there. He put a curse on the land they used to grow food, and vowed that Eve, during childbirth, would experience harrowing pain. (For context, this took place before the tenant rights movement.) Eve gave birth to two sons, one of whom grew up to murder the other.

Americans in the mid-20th century knew this story well, and concluded from it that couples should only ever consist of one Adam and one Eve, due to how successful their relationship was. And if you preferred to be in a couple with two Adams or two Eves, people got really mad.

Take, for example, the case of Frank Kameny. He was an astronomer with a Harvard PhD who worked for the Army Map Service in the 1950s. He got fired, and barred from working for the government. This happened because his stance on the things-and-holes issue was that if having one thing around was good, two was a party.

And it wasn’t just people’s jobs at risk. If the police got wind of two Adams behind closed doors doing the dance with no pants, they would barge in and say, “Stop! Too many things! You need more holes!” The police, I’m sorry to say, did the same to those who just wanted to enjoy a rousing course of holes galore.

That, finally, brings us back to J. Edgar Hoover and the old lady in Cleveland.

The saucy old trout was at her weekly bridge match, when another biddy teed her up by noting that J. Edgar Hoover was a bachelor. The blabby old bag replied that he was no mere bachelor, and told the group what he liked to do with his thing when he was randy.

At this moment, the war with Germany was hanging in the balance. It would only take one of these chirpy old birds to send a letter to the front with the rumor of Hoover’s thing-loving. Then the news would spread like wildfire, and soon the entire armed forces would hear how Hoover likes to do the hanky panky. The soldiers would shake their heads in disbelief, lay down their weapons, and surrender.

Then the leader of Germany would win the war and take over the world. And trust me, you wouldn’t want this guy in charge. He was bad. If anything, that might be an understatement!

Fortunately for all of us who don’t like the German guy, the hostess of that week’s bridge match reported this incident to her nephew, who worked for the FBI. When he learned about the tittle-tattle happening between the old broads at the weekly card game, he alerted an assistant director of the FBI. The assistant FBI director considered the gravity of the situation, and notified J. Edgar Hoover himself.

This is not the type of incident where there’s time to waste. So the FBI already had a plan of attack ready to neutralize exactly this type of threat. Before giving Hoover word of this menace, the assistant FBI director, following standard procedure, ordered a Special Agent in the Bureau’s Cleveland office to return fire.

The Special Agent summoned the mouthy old bat to his office to give her the business. He expressed his distaste for her “malicious and unfounded” statement. She gave her heartfelt apologies, and vowed to set the record straight the next time the old ladies met for bridge.

And the nation escaped a moment of great peril.

Postscript: This was unfortunately not the last crisis that Hoover faced. In the coming years, the owner of a beauty salon, a guy at a party, an American in London, a prisoner in Louisville, and a budget examiner for the National Labor Relations Board all made similar remarks about how Hoover liked to get raunchy. Each received a surprise visit from the FBI.

This post has two main sources: 1) James Kirchick’s book Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington, and 2) a video I watched in a middle school sexual education course.

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