Monday, September 11, 2006


On the periphery of Buenos Aires' sex trade...

I'm just going to give the general rundown of this past weekend. Many people ask me, "Steve, what is your typical weekend like in Buenos Aires, Argentina??" If you are one of these people or if you hadn't really thought about it until now, but now you are really interested in the answer, here is the answer! This is how most of my weekends go.

Friday night began at 11:45 pm when after texting 7 people from 10-10:30 pm, I got one affirmitive response from Tim Hallowell. Cell phone calls here don't happen cuz it's like 1.5 pesos/min. Tim, Greg, and I decide to check out The Alamo. I had no idea what type of place was, other than it was a bar. I arrive at 12:15 am and discover that it is an ex-pat bar. Important features:
  • 90% of clientele are American college students
  • both of the bartenders are American, which leads to funny epiphanies when "oon zheen ahnd toe-nick" is met with "So you want a gin and tonic?"
  • Tequila shots are 4 pesos ($1.33) for ladies and 7 pesos for guys
  • They show ALL NFL games
  • Sunday lunches have all you can drink beer.
At about 1 am, literally 40 COPAs roll in. Let me say this: COPAs are superior to all other Americans in Buenos Aires. We're smarter, more intelligent, and morally superior. Just saying.

Jesse lives-around-the-corner-from-me Rogers' friend was there, and this friend is a promoter for various clubs in BsAs. This particular night he was promoting Mint, so a bunch of COPAs got 20 peso passes that let us jump to the front of the line (instead of waiting for an hour and paying 50 pesos). We head out at about 3:30 to go to Mint. Mint has two floors - one that plays techno so loud that the soundwaves can fracture ribs, and a hip hop floor with a more reasonable sound level. It's a buena honda and I think that I've mentioned it before. Anyway, at 5:30, the bouncers close the doors between the two floors. Then, everyone on the hip-hop floor (including me, obviously) gets corralled by bouncers out of the building and onto the patio. Once everyone is outside, everyone on the patio gets corralled off of the patio and onto the beach (which is no longer Mint territory) and gates are closed. We realize that we just got kicked out. 400 of us. Apparently they were over capacity and we have to go around and wait in a line to get back into the club so they can control how many people go in at a time. Hey geniouses, isn't that what you were supposed to be doing in the first place? Me and the three people I was with decide that this was just as good as time as any to test out our cross-language chewing out skills. I think it was the first time I correctly used the phrase "concha de tu madre." Mad props to me. Two of us had jackets at the coat check, so after a few min of fighting with the bouncer, he lets one of us go retrieve the coats. Thanks, ass.

We decide to bounce.

We grab a cab, and it's the first female taxi driver I've had. Cool, man. First we have to drop off Jasmine. Jasmine lives on the corner of two avenues, which means that all taxi drivers know where it is. Jasmine is a native speaker, so there was no miscommunication. (At this point, your foreshadowing detectors are undoubtedly tingling. Just a few more sentences.) We are driving down Avenida Cabildo. One of the subte lines runs under it, so it's a pretty well-known street. We pass the last subte stop on the line. Jasmine is talking on her cell (ok, so sometimes people talk on cell phones). We go twenty more blocks. Jasmine realizes that we are pretty much no longer in the limits of the city of Buenos Aires because we passed her street 30 blocks ago. (that's the feeling of release for the reader, cuz we finally got to the point of the foreshadowing). Another chance to practice chewing out skills! All 4 of us at once! We tell her to pull over and we get out without paying, cross the street, and hop on a colectivo to get back to civilization. Jesse lives-around-the-corner-from-me Rogers and I hop in a taxi and go home. I get to my house at 6:30. 6:40 my 31 yr old host brother comes stumbling in and says "Steve, I have an awesome place we should go to right now. Let's go." I politely decline. He goes into his room for about 5 minutes and then goes back out. 6:45 I get into bed and go to sleep.

2 pm my alarm goes off. I shut it off.

3.30 pm I wake up, check facebook, go into the kitchen, and make a turkey sammich. 4.15 said host brother wakes up and comes into the kitchen to join me. I begin to inquire about his evening. He proudly tells me that he had one of the best nights of his life the night previous. He and 5 friends went to a whorehouse. He chose the girl from Warsaw. His other options were a german, an austrian, and some argentine chicks, all between 20 and 25 years of age. I am assured that all of the women were knock-outs. Unfortunately, they charge a lot for their services, which is why he returned home at 6:30. He had spent all of his money between 12 am and 6 am and had to come home to get more and happened to invite me to "a great house party he knows of." He got back home for good at 9 am.

Start my day Saturday by being 15 min late for a thing at the Plaza de Mayo that was pretty lame. Went to Subway. They don't have chipotle sauce here, which means I'll never go to Subway again here.

Saturday dinner we went to a middle eastern place with 8 others. We decided to meet at 10. I got there at 10:10 and was the second one there. By 10:35 everyone was there. Food was terrific, company was exquisite, service so-so. There was a dog wandering around the kitchen. We paid the check at 1:45 am. We part ways, and Greg and I go to a house party hosted by a German chick where the COPAs Ben, Raul, and Alejandro are. The hostess won't let us in cuz it's too full, so Ben, Fernando the Spaniard, and Marcos the Argentine decide to leave and we walk 5 blocks to a bar. There's a huge line, which pisses off Fernando. He really needs to pee and drink a beer. He also would like to follar. After waiting an hour in line and we are 3 feet from the door, Fernando gets fed up with waiting, so we get in a taxi and go to another boliche "that is wicked sweet." Greg parts ways to go to where his Harvard friend Mia is. The 4 remaining go to a birthday party in the function room of a snazzy hotel downtown, but the doorman doesn't let us in cuz it's too full. Get in another taxi. Marcos knows a great club. The bouncer doesn't let us in cuz we're 4 guys and it happens to be a
swingers' club. Marcos argues with him. We're told to come back on a Wednesday by ourselves cuz we'll get in and the cover is only 30 pesos instead of 60. Or comeback anytime with a girl. For those who are unfamiliar with what a swinger's club is, I offer you Marcos' explanation (which he explained in English):
So you go to this club with your girlfriend. And you go to someone who looks nice and you say to them, "you fuck my girlfriend while I watch?" And then some guy come to you and he say to you "you fuck my girlfriend while I watch?"
Just for the record, Mom, never once did I even consider going into the club, even if the guy would have let us.

After this last rejection, we finally found a place that would let us in. Cell phone says 4:45. It's a nice place near the Recoleta cementary and it's playing Bon Jovi's "Shot through the heart" and Journey. It's gunna be a good night.

5 am, they change format to Argentine national rock. Similar, except with 75% less awesometude. 6 am they change format to merengue/salsa/brazilian. 6:30 we bounce and Ben and I go to the 24 hour McDonald's across the street. A group of 6 girls at the table next to us hears us speaking English and starts joking about us, so we let them know that we speak castellano. They comment on how cute we talk and join us. Me and Ben are pretty much celebrities and everything we say is the most interesting thing ever.

Cab, home. Sleep at 8 am.

Wake up at 4 pm. Go with Fede to watch the Boca game at Grandma's house cuz Silvia has the ladies over for tea since my host dad is in Oregon for his 40th high school reunion (he was a foreign exchange student).

9 pm the whole extended fam comes over for dinner cuz it's Auntie Cachita's bday. I always love big family functions. I'm a family-oriented kinda guy. As ususal, the conversation turns to how Americans are fat and Argentines are all crazy and have body image problems, and everyone puts me to shame with their in-depth analysis of every good American film, none of which I had seen. I translated some of the notes in Eduardo's yearbook for the family. Lots of laughter. Yes, everyone in America gets a yearbook, Argentina. I come to the conclusion that Argentina is the only country where people still like Americans. Or, just as likely, the only place where the people don't have the balls to tell Americans to their face that we suck.

Either way, it's 12 am at this point and my weekend is technically over. Everyone goes home.

Congratulations if you read this whole post! It's 3 pages in Word, single spaced, size 12 Times New Roman.

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