Saturday, February 18th, 2012
As if we hadn’t gotten enough Palermo from the day before,
we decided to make this our headquarters for the Carnival celebration,
accompanied by Angela’s “host brother” Andy and his friend Fendu. The only
problem was that we forgot the directions—knowing only that it was somewhere
along Honduras…Honduras and something with rr? But, we didn’t search all that
hard and I would assume it would be hard to miss one of the biggest parties of
the year—but we did. Instead of wandering around aimlessly or trying to ask
somebody, we just went and sat in one of the given restaurant/bars of Plaza
Serrano. While it was only about 8, we decided it was time for a beer—or rather,
8 liters of beer…
As we drank, the conversation ebbed and flowed over too many
topics to tell, and as we drank a little more, the conversation seemed to get
better and better with arbitrary, instantaneous switches from Spanish to
English (though I tried to stay mostly in Spanish mode). In my pocket of
conversation with Andy, we breached the subject of Argentine guys.
Stereotypically, Argentine guys are painted as machismo
womanizers who will stop at nothing to get you to swoon (and maybe a little
more than that…). But to their defense, can’t we agree that this is pretty much
just how men in general are sometimes…? And while I’ve heard things that
confirm this, I think it should also be noted that this isn’t the end of the
story. I got a much different picture from Andy. He indicated that it was
indeed possible for guys and girls to be friends here, as many people are worth
befriending—especially if you’ve known them for a long time, outside of the
setting where you met them in a bar. Argentina now seems to be in a place where
many guys don’t want to be machismo,
but the women distrust this. Andy told me that if, for example, he met a girl
that he thought was funny, he would try and talk to her—not for the sake of
trying to hit on her, but merely to acknowledge that she was funny and worth
talking to (because “before she is a woman, she is first and foremost a human”—says
an Argentine guy!). The woman, however, frequently feels like this is just
another attempt at sex or a piropo in disguise and has what Andy called a “supermodel
attitude” about it—even if you’re just trying to have a conversation, many
girls will assume the worst and blatantly reject you, when really, you might
just be seeking a conversation. Inadvertently, this means that women here are
objectifying themselves by jumping to that conclusion. Sure you might be an
attractive female, but you are an interesting human, too—not everybody is
trying to sleep with you, so don’t let your ego get the best of you. This was something
I’d never thought of before—women objectifying themselves by trying to prevent
being objectified by men. I think every woman has done this at some point or
another.
During this conversation, however, I had to get up and go to
the bathroom, as is the standard procedure when drinking. Things were going as
always until I noticed there was a toothbrush dispenser in the bathroom. Ok,
well, they do stay out late so I can see why a toothbrush might be handy—but these
toothbrushes were different. There were different colors of toothbrushes, each
of them meaning something different, as you can see below. No wonder everybody
is thinking about sex and romance all the time when even a toothbrush has been turned into a romantic fantasy.
After another 8 liters of beer, we knew we were hungry for
some pizza, so we headed to a pizza joint named Kentucky (what!?). While I’m
more of a thin crust person, the big doughy slices went down perfectly and
absorbed some of my sins. But then probably deposited other sins because it’s
not as though pizza is a health food by any means…
Drunk and happy filled with pizza, we laughed our way over
to the stop for colectivo 59 to take us back to Angela and Andy’s house. We
arrived to find that Angela/Andy’s host parents/actual parents were still
awake, despite that it was almost 2 in the morning. We passed the time eating a
squishy coffee/chocolate-y dessert. I began to realize my head was throbbing
somewhat. But in between moaning that we all wanted to go to bed, we
deliberated what else we should do, and decided to take the dog (aka Angela’s
boyfriend…) for a walk. The night air
was thick with a cooler humidity and had a salty air to it as though maybe I were
about to jump into the ocean…or an avocado…I’ll curl up in the void where the
seed used to reside…
And so we did go to bed—but only in the sense that the 3 of
us were merely laying on Andy’s bed while he dictated the music. Being a
proclaimed metal fan, I was surprised when he put on an IDM mix video which
started with μ-ziq’s “Hasty Boom Alert”, which was a monumental song in my high
school years. It kind of makes you wonder what a song you love means to someone
who also encountered the song, but in a completely different context, in a
completely different place. But the incredible thing about music is that has
the overwhelming ability to convey a universal message that we then personalize
into our own lives. http://youtu.be/cUBVPckOr2U
Tired of our music session we somehow found the energy to
walk to Fendu’s house where we ate some squishy Toblerone and basked in the
cool breezes of 4am. By 5 am we came back and not wanting to walk to, wait for
and travel in the colectivo alone, I stayed at Angela and Andy’s. That romantic
toothbrush came in handy after all! Now if only they’d had contact lens holders
in the bathroom too…
:)
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