As an author, I love listening to people’s stories and stealing the good ones. As a battle rapper, I appreciate a solid punchline. So a good story that ends with a punchline always gets me. I am going to tell you the best story-punch that I’ve ever heard.
Last September, my finacee Sarah and I took a two week trip around Spain. The coolest place we visited was, without question, Granada. The city was the last stronghold of the Moors on the continent, and it has some of the best remaining Islamic architecture in the world. The hills are dotted with caves where many Gypsies and their cats still live.
It is also the one place where you can buy Alhambra beer. There are three versions of this beer, and when you order it you never know which one you are going to get. One is a light beer that is 3% alcohol. The normal brew is 4 or 5%. Both come in dark brown bottles with paper labels.
Then there is the Alhambra 1925. It comes in an unlabelled green bottle. It is 6.8% alcohol. It is the good shit.
Sarah and I stayed on the hill, in Las Cuevas El Abanico. They are old Gypsy caves that have been fixed up and converted into hotel apartments. Our neighbours in the next cave over were a group of travellers from Northern Ireland – and one Brit. All fine people.
On our neighbours’ last night in Granada, we went to a bar in the medieval Muslim quarter of town. We sat at a table out in the plaza, drinking Alhambra 1925. To illustrate the beer’s potency: our Irish companions warned us about it.
After a few rounds the conversation turned to the subject of lesbians. One of our neighbours leaned back in his chair. He was a large quiet man with a cigarette burning in his right hand.
He said, “Aye. I have a story about lesbians.”
The last summer before leaving his hometown for university, he had briefly dated a girl. It didn’t go well and it ended quickly. After both of them were off at separate schools, rumors began to circulate around their friends back home that this girl was now dating another woman.
At this point in the story, our other Irish friends – and one Brit – were looking at the man with open mouths. In their decade of travelling together, he had never told this story before.
The man continued. Over Christmas break, everyone who had gone off to university and was home for the holidays arranged a meeting at the local pub. Word got around that the newfound lesbian was going to bring her girlfriend. Before she arrived, the man was taking a good amount of shit about turning her to the other side. Since he had been the last man to date her.
Then the door to the pub opened. The woman walked in, leading her girlfriend down the stairs by the hand. Everyone in the pub put down their beers and was silent.
It was another girl that the man had dated.
Someone he had gone out with years before and all but forgotten. Apparently, her and his most recent ex had met at university, completely by chance. They discovered that they both had dated this guy. It was a common subject that they could bond over. And bond they did.
The pub-goers that night had a very long laugh at the man’s expense. As did all of us sitting in the plaza, when he reached the twist.
This is the kind of story that I have to write as a blog post, because it’s not something I can work into my fiction. It would seem too contrived and unbelievable.
The true stories are always the best ones.
