I chose the bigger of the two mandarins sitting in the middle of Nick and I. It was difficult to peel and inside it was spoiled. I knew immediately that I had made a mistake. I decided to gift it to the street dogs and threw it out of the car window without tasting it. Littering be damned, the world would soon end. I was feeling especially nihilistic.
I then reached for the smaller mandarin, Nick’s mandarin, and began to peel it. It was perfect and delicious, its sweetness eclipsing its unimpressive size. I had now used both mandarins and left nothing for Nick. We didn’t speak about it. Maybe he noticed; maybe he didn’t. We continued to drive in silence.
Spain is the country of citrus, Nick had told me.
At the time of the mandarin incident, we had been on the road for about two weeks, and I started to realise that I was becoming a terrible person. It had been consistently raining for the past five days and the ocean had become a pool of misery, rather than being the purpose for our travels. We were on a surf trip, after all, but were spending most of our time hiding from storms inside of the van we had rented back in France.
We had found the van’s owner, Charles, on the internet, and had convinced him to let us borrow it for a month in exchange for some cash. He agreed, but failed to mention that it was being held together with duct tape, and that once the side door was opened, it was impossible to close again. Nick had spent the past year on exchange in Brighton, and had naturally transitioned into a mindfulness and yogi devotee. He convinced me to embrace things for what they were, rather than for what they weren’t. The van was beautiful to us and we loved it immediately.
Nick and I were also being held together with duct tape. We had both recently experienced our own versions of relationship breakdown and had decided that a European surf trip would soften the blow of lost love, or perhaps cure us entirely. We pledged to find remote and beautiful surf spots and drink wine.
A simple plan that I could see no obvious flaws in.
I had only briefly known Nick in Australia before agreeing to share a bed with him for a month in Europe. We had both lived in the same town and he was a frequent customer at the café that employed me. I found his country-boy excitement and dedication to consuming coffee endearing. Nick would sit in the café for hours, reading and talking to strangers, pretending to enjoy the room temperature froth-monsters I made for him. When there was nobody around, he would talk to me, and we shared stories over the counter.
We made loose plans to go on a trip together. He would go to the UK to study, and at the completion of the semester, I was to meet him in France.
The trip began like any great road trip: with the sharing of our current musical interests. Nick liked to listen to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and could recite lyrics when they were appropriate to our circumstances. Somehow, he managed this without ever coming off as pretentious. I found this to be startlingly impressive and decided quickly that Nick was the wisest man I had ever met. Despite myself, I had recently become obsessed with Video Games by Lana Del Ray.
Our taste in music was reflective of our ways of dealing with heartbreak. Nick was considered, wise and always seemed to be pondering the meaning of things. I preferred to imprison myself in a painful orb of romanticism and self-loathing. This usually involved imagining myself as the main character in pop songs.
Both respectable and effective tactics, if you ask me.
It was comforting to know that Nick and I were going through similar things. We could speak freely about our relationships and feelings, and we knew that we would be heard and understood. #ModernMen.
Still, the first couple of weeks passed slowly. We were spending most of our time locked inside the van, waiting for storms to pass.
Occasionally, we surfed. Our main hobby, though, was sitting in the front seats, silently eating whatever scraps we had left. This was usually a bowl of cold-oats-and-water soup.
Although this was strangely appetising, I found its repetitiveness uninspiring. Somewhere between my third and fourth serving, I was struck by arrows of deeply philosophical and unanswerable questions. Could one survive from oatmeal consumption alone? Why, in a country that selflessly gifted the world paella, were Nick and I exclusively consuming bland cereal? And why, more pressingly, did I now live in a clapped-out metal box with an unusually large man that I barely knew?
One morning, I realised that my toenail had fallen off. It had blackened and become weak from stubbing it on a rock a few weeks earlier. It was hanging in there, somewhere between life and death, but it chose that morning to succumb to its fate.
At the time of separation, I feigned indifference. Life is long and cruel, and a toe is destined to lose a nail or two before a final bond is made.
As time went by, however, I noticed my toe hurting in places that it usually didn’t. I was unable to philosophise my way out of it – I had to accept that for now, my toe was without protection or security, and even more disturbingly, that I was in pain.
Was this the end of the relationship between my toe and its nail? The future cannot be predicted or held, but my naked and vulnerable toe would have to survive on its own.
I hated the way this felt. I decided that without a nail, my toe was a useless, ugly, disheveled blob of flesh.
In my mind, I had become my toe, so I called my ex-girlfriend. We slowly began to reconnect.
I felt the need to hide this from Nick. Our trip had begun as a surf expedition, but had transitioned into a healing getaway for broken-hearted boys. I felt like I was betraying a secret and unspoken pact of abstinence.
I succumbed to feelings of embarrassment and weakness whilst Nick remained undeterred, quiet, and aloof. He remained dedicated to the trip, and for a while, I played along. I tried to convince myself to be invested and present, but I was clearly happier after receiving contact from home.
Nick had enforced a screen ban, which obviously made things difficult. I overcame this obstacle by hosting secret phone conversations whilst I was supposed to be taking a bush shit.
It was around this time that things had begun to pick up. The storm had passed, the waves were good, and we had finally found our remote and vividly beautiful location. Galicia.
The sunrises exploded from the horizon as if freed from a lifetime under the rule of smog and city, and made all previous dawns seem dull. I am coming, the sun would announce. The day will soon begin. For those of you watching, I will now turn the land pink. But only briefly, so savour the moment.
Unfortunately, I started to feel fantastic. This was intolerably annoying because I had only recently decided that my happiness could not be found in any exotic place or activity. I had instead left it behind in Australia in the form of my ex-girlfriend.
I diagnosed myself with chronic confusion and spent large chunks of time perched on a cliff face, manically shifting between feelings of euphoria and heartache. I was, in hindsight, becoming an unhinged and self-absorbed cliché that failed to recognise the immense privilege of surfing a deserted and strikingly perfect Spanish beach-break.
One morning, I felt that my brain was too scrambled to surf, so I decided to pass the time by taking a nap. I sent Nick to the ocean on his own. When I woke up, there was a wild goat waiting for me outside of the van. He greeted me by ramming into my shin and shitting on my towel.
This goat, I quickly realised, did not give a fuck about anything. He had no business living on a remote beach in Northern Spain. He was defying the life that the modern world had planned for him.
This goat was a maverick. A staunch nonconformist. This beach made him happy, and that was enough. He cared not for the systems that bound the common goat. He was obviously thriving.
Inspired by the energy of this horned and glorious mammal, I resolved, finally, that I was happiest and most content when in contact with my ex-girlfriend. We made plans to meet in a couple of months’ time.
I looked at my toe. It was still mostly without its nail, but it was beginning to heal.
I confessed everything to Nick. He was understanding and supportive, and informed me that he had already been suspicious of my feelings.
I was annoyed at myself. Not only had I created an imaginary incel anti-girlfriend group, but I had also failed, unforgivingly, to realise that I was on a surf trip in Europe and that life was not merely something to be tolerated.
We stopped at the nearest town and I bought a bag of Spanish mandarins. We shared them and talked about surfing. They were completely delicious.