Canary Bay

It is an article about the france-band Indochine and how they played the music in a party in a traditional middle class distric from Lima at the 80's years. I was 11 years old and I hadn't ever been in a party. It was the time in where our group lacked of girls, we were actually only boys. The feminine gender was relegated from our vital sphere. Nevertheless, like everything, it was a continuity that would draw to an end soon. A few started appearing with some girls, which were mainly girlies and leading, with exaggerated manners and carping on about everything. The rest stayed stretching studying meticulously the changes in our little universe. Then it was important to play soccer or marbles anymore, the new distinction in the group was getting a girl like friend not to mention a girlfriend. On that account we had to transmute our proper personality and adapted to the apparent taste from these newcomers. New clothes, haircutter, maybe a little perfume, maybe not, cigarettes to the mouths in order to seem older than we were actually. We were In these incidents when we came to know that a party in our quarter would take place, whereupon finished the patriarchy age and started the matriarchy. Of course I had to go there because it was something new and different than former, where could happen everything, a watershed in life, a turn point in the fortune, or maybe only a theme to talk at the table afternoons. In this way, I couldn’t do something off the cuff, I had to get rid of every old fashioned thing from the past and introduced me as though I would have born again. I should exploit this opportunity! I said myself, event though I had no idea what for. I was very youth, it was no the time to toujours un pied dans la tombe, de l’autre faisant des gambades.
In this day, I dressed a leather-jacket ( oh my god, how I could do it, forgive me please, forgive me), and I took a shower 2 times, every arrangement was inadequate and insufficient, I couldn’t make a blunder, I wouldn’t leave blame me for something. In the evening, the music full every corner from the quarter clattering the windows around the neighborhood. What I found at the door from the party was something new too. My buddies, absolutely transformed, it sucked worse than Gregorio Samsa in the Metamorphosis. Almost everyone has a lighted cigarette to the mouth and smoked without the cigarette more than 5 cm from theirs faces, they did walk anymore, they tramped and were more stone than an anvil( only because of the tension, with drugs we had never intention of doing it). Fortunately it wasn’t the unique with a leather-jacket ( thanks God) because, except from one or three, everybody dressed it. I don’t know, but after a couple years from the party I heard that the some boys inserted a sock in their intimate members with the purpose to simulate a generous splendor and magnitude in the size from their penis. I hadn’t to confirm this rumor but I can take it at face value.
The girls came and entered in the party as though they would be in a fashion show and others sat down on the hood of a car chewing gum. They were absolutely extroverted and we so diffident, real shrinking violets.
- Eh Oscar, you haven’t invited your friends, have you? – asked me my brother Miguel – it isn’t a party from the Kindergarten, well, I don’t want children here, ok?
That’s right, I was 3 years youngster and of course my friends were something “youth”. I got in the place where everybody pushed each other’s. We scrambled through the crowd and came to a place where my brother joined up with his friends. I thought, ok, it’s nice, I became part of the party and even better I became part of my brother’s friends.
- Eh you nuts – said me my brother - we go elsewhere, you stay here and have a nice time. See you in a bit.
Fuck, I said for myself, now I’m alone here like a barn owl, like a initiate. I was so angry about it that I wanted to spit mucus everybody, it was awful, I was so shy and biased that I could just barely hide my stupor. I leaned against the wall and left the others take part of the party while I only stared. It was the time from Indochine, a band from France that even was in Peru one time. Songs like 3ème sexe, Canary Bay, L’aventurier, a l’assaut and tes yeux noirs, were actually hits in the final of 80’s years whereupon could suppose that these songs would be the favorites for the people in a party.
And it happened in this moment. While a song from Pet Shop Boys finished appeared a small girl in front of me with almond-shaped eyes and black-brown hair. She played with a boy Fabrizio who aren’t her official boyfriend even though everybody knew that they had a relationship. They played pulling their bodies back and forth, to and fro, in movement softly and languishing. The were hugged and overlooked all the people in the place. Suddenly …
Ouh- ouh ♪♪
Ouh- ouh ♪♪
Ouh- ouh ♫
Ouh- ouh ♪♪
C'est a Canary Bay Ouh! Ouh!
Des filles qui vivaient en secret
C'est a Canary Bay …
When the girl listened the song jumped and started pulling forwards to Fabrizio to dance, but apparently he didn’t want to. He left hold of her and went away. She stayed there, alone like me, speechless, disillusionment, that’s is to say, it was the chance that I hoped so far and the fate gave me it. But I was a coward, I couldn’t say that I had gotten overcome my fears at this moment. At that happened the unforeseen. She found my eyes and with this feline sight she started to singe mine. I wasn’t more at this party, I was in a soundproof room where her sight dominated my will. Her sight said me, or rather, screamed me, take me to dance, take me to dance, but I didn’t nothing, I should have taken her and danced till to float, I should have taken her out to dance, smelling every pore from her body as though I were a night-blind, but I didn’t nothing. Soon, the strength from her sight waned and I was left out in the cold. She turn to another place and went away.
Her name was Erika and after I took on a life of myself I never heard about her again. I knew, that she became the play-girl from every boy in the quarter. But I may not confirm it. Actually, she had disappeared from my memory, until I found a couple months ago a cassette of Indochine in an antiquarian shop. By this song (canary bay) her figure and image assaulted my thoughts and I called up this chronic that you now know. I have in mind that she doesn’t exist more in my world, but rather in the song, jailed in a tide of lights and sounds from these party and when I listened this song again she arose her wings and flight through the ocean of my memories and reveal me again and again how beautiful were the 80’s years.

Oscar Hidalgo Trabucco
El Libertador.