I went to Madrid in early fall of 2004. Fresh out of college, and without any real job prospects, I'd managed to save a couple grand working over the summer and figured that would last a month or so, get me on my feet.

And what a month it was! I holed up in a two star hostal near Calle Huertas, partied all night and some of the day, made some half ass attempts at finding work as an English teacher. About three weeks in, I realized that with no new Euros coming in, I would have to get out of the hostal if I was to make ends meet.

Which is how I came to Roberto's piso compartido on Calle Atocha. There was one room for rent in a big, spare, three bedroom apartment. For those unfamiliar with Madrid, Calle Atocha is anchored on one end by the museum bearing Picasso's Guernica and the world's most concentrated collection of sex shops on the other. Our piso was by the sex shops.

(On sex shops, I came to find that they are visited by 3 types of patrons. First, your earnest sex-having people who want to spice things up with a toy or video. If you see a couple or a woman in a sex shop, they likely fit in this first group. Second is your standard creepy weirdo who buys 8 DVD's and 3 electric growlers a week. Finally, there is the adult who is perpetually fourteen years old. We come in groups of two or three when we get bored and broke to giggle and guffaw, and generally are not appreciated by management or other patrons.)

I was excited to move in because it was cheap, convenient to bars (though I suppose every street in Madrid is covenient to bars), and required no deposit or questions answered. Also, I would be living with 3 other genuine Cubans. Real Cubans too, not just Miami bred Cuban Americans like myself.

There was Roberto, el dueño, grey-haired and bearded, maybe fiftyish. Roberto claimed to have been a famous stage actor and director in Cuba before was deported to Moscow for his stage portrayal of Caligula with Castroesque mannerisms. He'd managed to move west across Europe until he got to Spain, at which point his wife had left him for a woman and he'd been unable to find acting work. So he rented rooms in this big apartment they owned to make ends meet.

The first room he'd rented was to Pepe and Pepe's 12 year old daugher Griselita ("Little Grey"). Pepe was a tremendous gentleman, salt of the earth. He'd been married to Grisi's mother in Havana when she was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer and sent to Madrid for specialized treatments. For three years, he and Grisi worked tirelessly to get visas to come see her, but the Cuban bureacratic process proved too Byzantine to negotiate. Finally, after three years, they made it to Spain, only to watch their wife and mother die within the month.

Ironically, now that they were abroad they went ahead and defected. Pepe worked as a cook at a cafeteria at the Airbus plant. Food obsessed and generous, every weeknight he'd come back from work with bags full of delicious leftovers and set us up a buffet line in the living room. I loved him.

Grisi was understandably lukewarm about their new life in Spain. Each night they argued over piles of roast rabbit and potatoes. She begged to go back to Havana to live with her grandparents, he'd sweep his arm across the table dramatically, indicating the glorious abundance of their new life.

"Don't you remember?" he often scolded. "We used to eat rat meat!"

Finally, I occupied the remaining room, a tiny little box next to the bathroom with courtyard facing window. A clothesline view.  Three real Cubans, and a fake. A Cuban-American, with an emphasis on the latter. Though I'd grown up a stone's throw away, and immersed in Cuban culture, I learned more about the island from those three than any of the countless exiles I'd known in my 22 previous years.

Our apartment's toilet was often unflushed and the seat adorned with bright yellow droplets, the urine of a badly dehydrated man. Roberto was the culprit. I knew this because I could hear him pissing from my room, and each time I waited in vain for a flush. Also, because those bright droplets were there unmistakable piss of a drunk man, and Roberto was a drunk.

As it turns out, I arrived at precisely the right time to watch his life unravel. His wife's departure and lack of acting work had left him depressed, and he turned hard towards the vodka he'd developed a taste for in Russia.

Roberto was a mess; his life like that movie Groundhog Day where everyday is exactly the same. He awoke with the shakes and poured some zumo into the glass of vodka he'd passed out before finishing.  He'd shake a few drops of pee onto the toilet seat. With a couple drinks in, he'd come looking for me to recite his life story. Everyday the same bullshit. Caligula, Moscow, his wife leaving, etc... If I couldn't shake him early enough, he'd go digging in an old chest for some headshots. In the afternoon, he'd start going on about this jazz club in the city he really liked, and his plans to go there later to recite poetry. Then he'd eat a couple bites of Pepe's feast, drink more vodka, pass out, and do it again.

I could write Infinite Jest length tomes about Roberto's drunken antics. He reversed day and night. Locked himself out on the balcony. Often I would pay rent, only to have him knock on my door the next day demanding rent. Then we would have to walk through the apartment together until we found the money dropped carelessly into a hamper or tucked away in the ice maker.

I learned the hard way about having guests over. One night a guy I met teaching English and I decided to invite a couple girls over for dinner. American girls. I checked with Pepe, and he helped me cook a decent Paella. My friend brought a couple bottles of Rioja. I cleaned the living room before the girls arrived. For a while everything went great. The food and wine was delicious, the conversation flowing well enough. Enter Roberto, who can't keep his eyes or hands of the girls. He offers vodka shots and begins to recite poetry. He invites us to the jazz club. For about an hour the girls seemed amused, then he began to grope and follow them into the bathroom.

The next morning I woke up and was nearly startled to death when I found a pajama clad Roberto sitting right outside the door to my room. I'd brought out my laptop to use as a stereo during the dinner party and left it there. Roberto looked at me and roared angrily "I'm trying to check my email and don't understand this American keyboard!" I glanced at the screen. He had a Microsoft Word document open and was typing hotmail.com over and over.

One night I came home from the bar to find Roberto smirking in the kitchen. He was stirring eggs, naked from the waist down with a shiny erection.

"Moses I've got great news." he told me. "I've hired a prostitute."

Though I hate to mention it, Pepe had a penchant for hookers too. I think, given what happened to his wife, that maybe we can forgive him this transgression. Twice a month, on payday, Pepe would visit the same girl. A chinese woman, he told me. Once started, Pepe could go on for hours extolling the virtues of Chinese prostitutes. They were pretty, clean, so affectionate, and  and oh so appreciative of any extra sexual efforts made by the customers. On his Chinese hooker nights, Pepe would take hour long showers, dousing himself in various colognes and body tonics. Often he even brought his small radio into the bathroom so he could dance in the shower.

One of the last nights I spent in that apartment was a Pepe hooker night. As it happens, he was off seeing his girl when Grisi asked Roberto where her father was. Without any hesitation or tact, Roberto told this poor 12 year old girl that her father was off fucking a Chinese hooker and would be back in a couple hours. She was waiting  outside the building when Pepe got back. She told her father what Roberto said, and informed him she was going to back to Cuba by herself.

Pepe came upstairs enraged. I'm not really sure what he said first or how it started, but a few minutes after I heard the door crash open Griselita  ran into my room crying, begging me to stop the fight.

Pepe and Roberto squared off in the living room. I'd never seen Pepe like that. He was short and stocky but I realized then he possessed a sort of peasant strength. Angry strength. Roberto warned Pepe that he was judo master and could potentially break his vertebrae. He adopted a ridiculous karate stance, with one leg up and both hands above his head. Pepe punched him hard in the mouth. Roberto got up, shook off, and got back in the stance. Pepe socked him again. Crying and bleeding from the mouth, Roberto told Pepe they were evicted. To leave immediately.

I offered to call some friends who could put him up, but Pepe insisted he had enough for a hotel. Within the week, I found a new apartment with another guy teaching English and moved out without saying a word to Roberto. A couple months later, I ran into Pepe on the street and we stopped for a beer. He told me Grisi  had gone back to Cuba, but that he found a new apartment for them to live in and hoped to convince her to return. I thanked him for all the good food he fed me, but he shrugged off my thanks.

Once, before I left Madrid, a friend and I walked past the old apartment on our way home from a night out. I told him the story of Roberto, and as a prank my friend buzzed the apartment from outside the building.

"Si?" Roberto asked through the intercom.

"Si?"

Without receiving an answer, he went ahead and buzzed us in. I imagine he's still waiting for the prostitute to come upstairs.