¡b! ¡a! ¡i! ¡l! ¡a! ¡m! ¡o! ¡s!
pop pop pop
we were playing ping pong at Emi's friend José's house, or well, they were
when the girls showed up
Yanina is José's girlfriend; they make an attractive couple.
José has nice eyes, and a sweet smile, which somehow combine to give him a vacant-ish expression.
Like, duhhhh.
Yani has the cutest little nose I've ever seen, and a "th" instead of "s" lisp1. Yeth indeed.
Vicki, whose sweater somehow managed to be low cut, was practically canoodling with this guy
(who, it turns out, is her cousin.... god this Argentinian touchy-touchyness!).
We talked for awhile--a couple hours? I didn't keep track.
"We're going to a boliche2 where they play cuarteto3. Do you guys want to come?"
The other foreign girls were like,
Keiko--No, I'm going to Malin's party.
Katie and Frida--No, we're tired.
I was like,
oh hell yeah I'm totally coming.
Passing up an opportunity to do as the romans do,
and to make friends with some hot Argentinian chicks? No way.
Walking out to the taxi Vicki was putting her sweater back on and stepped right into a hole in the driveway--
BOOM--
down instantly, pulling Yanina down with her.
Both of them squirmed around on my feet for like a full minute, laughing too hard to get up.
The taxi driver, smirking, asked me--Do people in the US fall down like that when they go out?
We didn't pay a cover to get into the club
because, apparently, Yani and Vicki use their hotness to make useful connections.
The music was loud and the dancehall, packed packed packed.
Have you read the definition of cuarteto3 yet? It's important for what comes next.
At first the dancing felt as foreign as I felt 2 weeks ago
I mean, we don't dance with our hips in the states
at least indie rockers, punkers and ska kids don't.
The Argentinians have that latin suaveness in their blood, they can totally groove.
But anyway, the girls showed me what to do
and as I began to get the hang of it, I was less of a fish out of water.
In fact, it was ridiculously fun.
Me miming their sillier moves, all of us making faces at each other, everyone cracking up.
Men roam the club like packs of dogs, hunting down pretty girls to dance with,
they grab at your arms, desperate as vendors in a third-world market.
I conceded to 3 of them. They were, I am sure, looking to get some.
One left when I wouldn't let him put his hand on my waist. DE-NIED!
Another left, bored, after a couple songs.
He was a gentleman though, excusing himself with "Well, it's been a pleasure."
Another just danced and danced and danced and danced and danced and danced and --
THANK GOD for Yanina and Vicki, who saved me by peeling my hands away from him.
I loved dancing with Vicky's cousin, who's tall and goofy, and kept monkeying around to make me laugh.
José has a lot of style when he dances, also a blast to dance with.
I could get used to the way Argentinians interact, that overt physicality, the way they touch each other on wrist, or thigh, or small of the back when they talk to one another. Born and raised in a more reserved culture, it seemed at first pretty uncomfortable to me, but when I let myself get swept up in their friendliness I become 2x as animated and outgoing as I usually am with strangers. I just know I'm going to come back to the US all touchy-feely, confusing everyone I meet, and kissing everyone helllo on the cheek. I'll kiss them and say Chau when I leave, and they'll be:
...wha?
Yanina knows about high fives, but she didn't know how to say "Gimme five!"
so I taught her. "Dame cinco!"
She thought that was hilarios. "Dame cinco!" she'd shout over the noise of the music,
giving me a high one and collapsing into hysterics.
She flung her arms around me, throwing me off balance with the weight of her hug.
Best hug I've had since I left my Richie.
We didn't leave until the club closed and all the lights came on at 6am.
Between the alcohol, spinning, heat, and not having slept, I was pretty friggen disoriented,
walking around in an ocean of silence; ears so full of cotton they couldn't even ring.
I washed away the awful halo of cigarette smoke I'd accumulated. Surrealist shower I've ever taken.
Slept from 7 to 8, got to school for class at 9am. Yes, on a Saturday.
Only to discover that no, no class after all.
Yes, hello, Department of Philosophy? Right, I'd like you to please SCREW YOURSELF.
But it's all good, because I danced all night, and I loved it.
1They make fun of her, saying she's Galiciana.
2What dance clubs are called down here.
3Spanish for "quartet," though it isn't a quartet at all, but rather a genre of music popular in (and, I think, native to) Argentina which could be described as, like... a mariachi band gone dancey, with a BOOM-da-BOOM-da-BOOM rhythm. To dance cuarteto, you do kind of a lazy salsa with your feet (each beat you shift your weight to the other foot--and you do it with lot of hip. This is, after all, latin dancing....) You can dance alone, or with another person, or with 2 or 3 other people if you want. As a pair, you loosely hold both hands with the other person, do that lazy foot salsa, and give each other twirls--the same twirls as you'd find in swing dancing. With more than 2 people, everyone forms a circle by holding hands and, again, everyone gets the chance to do a twirl now and again.
aGalicia is a region of Spain where c's and z's are pronounced as th's, giving the impression that Galicians speak with a lisp.
......................