BAT

We went out to dinner, and finally figured out what you're supposed to do. Storm up to a table, fuck everyone else, and plant your ass like you belong there. A waiter will show up nearly immediately to take your drink order. He'll take another 15 minutes to take your dinner order, but at least you won't be shoo'd out.

We ordered a mix of frou-frou drinks that arrived with crazy straws and stabby drink stirrers. Our dinner was croquetas and pizza. I don't really understand how fat europeans don't exist with this diet.

[pictures]

We decided to club up and go back to the fateful square of bad decisions. It takes hours for us to get ready, because one girl will put on eyeliner, and another will see the eyeliner and say, "oh, now I have to do eyeliner!" and it all escalates until we look like hookers. When we left the hotel, we were by far dressed the trashiest of everyone on the Rambla. We decided to just sit at one of the outdoor patios and have a couple of drinks watching people walk by. Keep in mind, this was at, like, midnight. At midnight in Barcelona people haven't even started to come out for clubbing yet. I think we sat there for about 45 minutes, playing the judgerface game ("judgerface, judgerface, what do you see? I see something that bothers me" while others guess what you were judging) or playing "pretty or gay?" (where men walk by and we have to determine if they're straight or gay. 9 times out of 10 it was undetermined). Eventually, the tourist crowd started getting thinner and the all-black short-skirt crowd got thicker and we headed toward the clubs.

We followed the same pattern as the night Bracey Turk broke: March into club across square, leave, and go to the main club. We went to the first club and ordered three rum and pineapples. Tracey and Angie didn't like their rum and pineapples, but I'm a lush, so we stood in a corner and I downed all three while we danced and tried to ignore the groups of men trying to separate the herd.

There was one guy that legit went up to Tracey, bowed, and asked her to dance. THE BITCH SAID NO! He was even cute! I think! I don't really remember, but still. Another guy came up and started thrusting his hips slowly. That's it, nothing else. Just very slowly thrusting his hips. I pointed to his crotch and said, "what the hell is that? That's awful." and I think he tried something else that was equally as bad a dance move. While this is going on, with bowing man and thrusting man, there's a third man behind my shoulder. I try to ignore him, dancing to "you spin me right round baby" enthusiastically, until he can be ignored no longer. He had been slowly leaning into my shoulder over the course of a song until his face was right next to my head. I slurped the last of the drinks, and we marched out.

Angie and Tracey then told me that the guy that had been leaning in was actually dressed in head-to-toe pleather and we had a good laugh-to-make-the-creepy-feeling-go-away session. In the meantime, The hip thruster and another guy came up to talk to us. I don't remember much about what they had to say, but I do remember that they told us madrid sucks, and when we pointed to people getting tickets from police, they mentioned that if you pee in public you get a 200 euro fine. Tracey and Angie laughed and in unison pointed to me. I don't know what I did to deserve to get thrown under that bus, because these delicate flowers have been peeing in public with me since college. They also told us that the tiny little club we came out of (this was Tuesday, mind you) gets so packed on Saturdays that the line goes across the square.

We used the pee topic as an excuse to run into the next club, which was totally empty and sad. I think it was 1:30AM at this point, and apparently the party hadn't really started yet. We got our drinks, and found out that there was another club within the club. We went upstairs to the next club, and it turned out it was an 80's club. An American 80's club. They played Sweet Home Alabama and it was rather surreal to hear all the spanish people screaming "Sweet Home Ala-bam-A!".

We couldn't take the 80's anymore, and checked on the progress of the downstairs club. Somewhere, the bell had rung to start partying, and the place had once again become packed. We squeezed through and danced through some shitty ghetto songs before deciding that the upstairs was the better option.

Once upstairs, we soon noticed that there was a girl that had started doing some breakdancing. Then, another girl. Then! Another! Holy shit! We're witnessing a dance-off! An all-girl dance-off!

The circle of people around the girls grew until it took up half the club, and at one point a guy tried to jump in and dance but was immediately boo'd out. Girls only, buddy.

Unfortunately, no pictures came out of this event, but I assure you, it was one of the greatest things I have ever witnessed: a girls-only dance-off in an 80's club in Barcelona, Spain while oldie American songs played over the sound system. Is this real life?

[shitty picture]

We left the club after that, and Tracey had brought paint pens on the trip to tag windows. This might sound bad, but all of the metal roller-doors in front of shops are covered, and buildings are untouched. We saw people doing it without even a furtive glance while streams of people walked by. Tracey tagged a couple of doors with "BAT" - which is simply Brittany, Angie, Tracey.

[picture of tracey tagging]

Back at the hotel, we hung out on the balcony and lamented our lack of chocolate. Some dude down below walked by and heard us, and just stood down there making a come-here motion with his hands. That's it. Just flapped his hands and made drink motions. I yelled down asking if he had chocolate, and Tracey covered the Spanish translation: she screamed at him, "TU ERES NECESSITO CHOCOLATE!"

She had mean to say "We need chocolate", but what she had screamed at him was something like "You are I need chocolate". Google translate says it is, "Need you were chocolate" which basically means we told him we'd come down if only he was made of chocolate. He didn't care. He started doing hip-thrusts when we went inside.

[picture of BAT]