Out Among Humans Notebook

“Love Whomever You Love.
Madrid Loves You.”

MADRID —You see this poster on almost every corner.

It’s surprising that a country that endured iron-fisted religious and political repression late into the Twentieth Century came to recognize same-sex marriage before we did.

After all, championing individual rights is one of America’s enduring points of pride.

New rights take time to root. Challenging the values of the past is met with passion and outrage, especially when it involves the loss of power over others.

The people who wrote our constitution knew that things would change in the future so they gave us the Ninth Amendment. It says we have rights they couldn’t begin to imagine and didn’t mention in that document.

The end of slavery, voting rights for non-whites and women, the right to remain silent and have a court-appointed lawyer all came about because the Founders left us a living, breathing constitution.

We can’t see into the future any more than those geniuses could.

There may be rights our children come to recognize that we haven’t — the right to medical care, for example, may be one of them. (Our Spanish friends agreed on that years ago.)

Baffled expressions are Teresa’s bread and butter MADRID — She’s part actress, part standup comic.

She’s a mime who uses her body to explain things that don’t translate. She’s an etiquette coach and a world-class diplomat.

Teresa Hernández López is a language professor who sensed early on that she would teach. As the second of five she helped attend to the education of her siblings.

She herself is a remarkable scholar — she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship by the US Department of State which she pursued in Scranton PA, where she later taught at the university level. “Have you seen ‘The Office?’“ she’ll ask.

Teresa’s not extroverted by nature, she uses the English word “shy” to describe herself but she becomes a different woman in front of students.

She conducts classes totally in Spanish, hiding her mastery of English even though it was her major — she graduated knowing more about our language than her own. She has since tackled her native Spanish with that same determined rigor. Portuguese is next.

Teresa teaches at a boutique language school built around a walk-in curriculum with no entry requirements. (It offers a convenient excuse to be in Madrid.)

Some students stay for weeks, others for months, many earn credits that transfer back home. A surprising number learn Spanish because of romantic interests. Teresa is fascinated by students from non-western cultures who have fundamentally different realities built into their languages.

She grew up in the traditionally Spanish way, her family living on the first floor and her ‘abuela’ on the fifth. She left her home town of Segovia to make her way in the Spanish capitol.

Entertainers and public speakers find nothing as terrifying as a room full of blank stares. But for Teresa, baffled expressions are bread and butter. Tortured pronunciations are music to her ears.

The old fool experienced exquisite pleasure along with the pain. It was simply too much for the old guy to resist.

He was weak and defenseless in its grasp. The Spanish language had become a dominatrix who imposed discipline and demanded submission.

She dominated him completely, forcing him to study hours a day.

She made him read in Spanish on the left page with English on the right. She forced him to crawl on all fours, going word-by-word, with a translation app wedged between his teeth. She corrected his conjugations and humiliated him in public.

But of course the man experienced exquisite pleasure along with the pain. He discovered that certain expressions have unexpected beauty and extraordinary powers in the language he was learning.

He devoured J. K. Rowling in Spanish and was amazed at how quickly her fair-haired British townsfolk became Hispanics. He laughed out loud when they cursed. This new language offered figures of speech he could steal and use in his own feeble attempts at writing. And who would know?

One year passed, then two, a third followed suit. When it was time to consent to yet another, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.

You may find it hard to believe but during those years of submission and domination, the old fool never thought to create a safe word. It never once occurred to him that this language thing was getting out of hand.