It was Poppy.
It's pretty brutal making friends in Barcelona. Most foreigners who live there are on a journey (destination: themselves), so they're really fucking annoying, and most Catalans who live there are really fucking annoyed.
I clung to the few friends I had my first year. They saw me through escaping from a witch's house in El Born, being kicked in the shins by a noseless sex worker, getting pinned up against the subway doors and groped by a bag man and being in a fictional relationship with a professional model and skateboarder who was actually neither.
But they were also with me through some hard times.
The problem was that I was at the particular point in my annoying journey where no one else I knew was.
I arrived to the OG party late because, like I said, I was very busy trying to convince a homeless man that he was my boyfriend...and not a model. And that skateboarding was a hobby if you don't get paid, but once I got there, I never left.
My first party with the OGs. I have to put this here, so you don't
see a chicken head on Facebook.
The OGs changed everything about Barcelona. The city I'd been fighting so hard to accept me suddenly did. I dug deeper into her neighborhoods, wore the soles out of many pairs of shoes, became a regular, saw a lot of sunrises and looked absolutely ridiculous the whole time. It's weirdly painful to be so happy and in love with a place you can't stay. I think we all had a similar feeling but didn't talk about it even though we spent nearly every day together.
I would not have made it another year and a half without them, but by then the OGs had given me their best gift, and I decided it was time to bring him home to my family.
But who is this chicken named Fluffy?
Now scattered throughout the world, the OGs and I have again found ourselves at a point in our annoying journey where we need each other courtesy of a global pandemic.
Our Zoom meeting was comforting, cathartic, hilarious and over when Poppy told the group made up of many vegetarians that she needed to excuse herself to execute Fluffy who'd broken her leg because she was so fat. She said she'd send pictures.
The next morning I woke up to this:
Poppy, "I did it with so much love. I hugged her and calmed her down, I prayed and thanked her. She was very peaceful, and it was quick. Haven't decided what I'm going to do with the head yet."
I asked her what other people do with chicken heads.
Poppy, "I have a friend who feeds them to her pet flesh eating bugs and keeps the skull, but I don't have any useful pets like that."
If you like the sounds of Poppy, she hosts my favorite radio show from Castelmaine, Australia called Beats Without Borders. You can listen to it here: https://mainfm.net/shows/beats-without-borders/
I hope everyone has some friends to lean into hard during this fucked up time. Find me if you need me.
A more recent party with the OGs. Clockwise starting from us: Kansas, California, England, Australia, Spain, Albania.
