Ravishing Afternoons with The Bad Girl

For weeks now, my main occupation is to drive I. to school, then take him home everyday. Perhaps my ambitions were less mediocre when I was younger, but for many reasons achieving this one is just as rewarding. Those reasons belong to a lengthier, fuzzier, web of reasons and stories. I'll introduce the the first one. It happens between the hours of driving him to school and driving us home.

It begins with the Bad Girl. Between the hours of 1pm - 3pm in coffee shops around the Timog Scout area. The bad girl soaks up the ravishing beauty of the afternoon. I consume it like an after-lunch love affair. I give it a loyal following the way maids, housewives, househusbands and seniors follow their afternoon soap operas. It was most delicious in the afternoon, when lust boils at its best and the surging heat fires up your life.

Llosa's book take us to Miraflores, Paris, London, Tokyo and Madrid. He drops heavy names: Lacan, Derrida, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Neruda in a story where so much cunnilingus happens. It sets pivotal events on the background - political, sexual and intellectual revolutions amidst this romance. With a detached main character who's an imbecile for love, I fell for it like a millennial getting free tickets to a music festival.

The critics will say that the novel has its low-points in terms of technicality. The reviews describe it's lack of psychological depth or dub it a second-rate Madame Bovary. I won't challenge the reviews, as my reading is often more emotive instead of technical. Perhaps I read it at the right time, at the cusp of positive developments in my life. It's 1pm and I'm in a coffee shop reading a book, liberated from so many worries. I truly felt alive. I read it in coffee shops, but the pervasive feeling was that the beach must be a stone's throw away and that drinks by the beach is in order late this afternoon until evening.

Except that I didn't even need to go the beach.