My last day in Buenos Aires turned out to be, well, mostly not in Buenos Aires, and not really my last day at all. It all started when I was invited the night before by my Colombian friend from the hostel, who everyone calls “Juanito” (“little Juan”) to come on a day trip with him to Uruguay the next day, which was his day off from working like mad as a chef in a restaurant. I knew that I had to fly back to Lima in the evening the next day, but after looking at boat schedules online, we concluded that I would be able to get back just in time to get to the airport. So, the next morning at 6 am, off we were to a different country.
The boat ride took about 2 and a half hours, and when we got there we realized we had made a huge mistake: that day it was some kind of national holiday (I think everyone gets a day off of work for father’s day…crazy Argentinians), and for that reason the boat schedule was different from normal weekdays. The evening boat back would not leave in time for me to make my flight, and the only other boat back that day left at 12:30, which was exactly an hour after the time we had arrived. We realized that we had no choice but to go back on the 12:30 boat, leaving us a mere hour in Uruguay.
This realization happened after customs had taken a full 10 minutes to search Juanito from head to toe and ask him a bunch of impertinent questions. “They always do this to Colombians,” he said as he was summoned to come behind a white curtain. He told me afterwards they had asked him why he was with an American and where he had met me. They also asked him, of course, if he consumed any substances. He gave them his usual answer: “Yes.” “What do you consume?” “Oh, I love to smoke joints. But I don’t have any on me now.”
By the time we had rented a car, realized about the schedule change, and gotten our money back for the car, we had only a half hour to walk around Uruguay. Juanito had told me that the air is just different in Uruguay, and it was really true. It’s amazing how different it felt from the city just across the river, simply because of the lack of pollution and hustle and bustle of the city. It was profoundly peaceful, and full of bright pastel colors. That was all I could gather from walking just a few blocks, but it left me with a strong impression.
When we arrived back in Buenos Aires, we decided to have lunch at a “parrilla,” a traditional Argentinian restaurant that specializes in grilling up giant portions of various animal parts. We got a humongous plate of meat meant to be shared between two people, and could not finish it all. It included chicken, sausage, blood sausage, kidneys, intestines, ribs, and something that was apparently from the neck region of some animal. It tastes better than it sounds, but not something I would want to eat every day. Juanito requested that the waiter bring us a “penguino,” a hideous white ceramic pitcher shaped like a penguin, from which to serve the wine. I have to say that the wine was probably the best part of the meal, even if it was poured out of the mouth of a penguin.
After lunch we walked back to the hostel and I arrived just in time to frantically pack up my things and jump in a taxi to the airport. I was in a happy state from the wine and under the impression that everything had gone relatively smoothly; despite the fact that we couldn’t stay very long in Uruguay, it had still been a very interesting and eventful day. However, upon arriving in the airport and being asked by one of the airline workers what flight I was taking, and being given an incredulous look, I immediately realized my mistake: the flight time on my ticket was 20:10, which was not 10:00 as I had idiotically thought, but 8:00. “Oops,” was the single thought that popped into my head.
I changed my flight to the next morning and staid the night in an airport hotel. Then, at 5:00 in the morning, I woke up feeling really nauseous and soon turned into a vomiting machine. I don’t know how my body always picks the most inconvenient times to become sick: in the jungle, in a remote rural community with no way of contacting the outside world, and now just in time to miss my second flight to Lima. A doctor came and prescribed me some antibiotics, but when I still wasn’t feeling so hot in the evening I decided that, having also missed my flight from Lima to Cuzco, I might as well just stick around in Buenos Aires for a few more days. Of course, as soon as I decided that I immediately started feeling better. And everyone at the hostel was very surprised and happy to see me. It was almost as if I had planned it.
On a less pleasant note, the night I got back I witnessed the most homophobic and masogynistic behavior of my entire stay in Latin America thus far. In Peru, the idea of actually being gay and actually admitting it just seemed like an absurdity to most people, but since I never met anyone that seemed even close to being gay, I never witnessed anything incredibly offensive. However, I started talking about the subject with people here because of Juanito, who speaks with a lot of body language and in an expressive way that could be construed as a gay affect. Everyone in the hostel is constantly joking about it and doing impressions of him, which I at first laughed along with because the impressions were so accurate and seemed to be in good fun, but after seeing one of these impressions practically every five minutes the joke started getting old.
Anyway, when I got back to the hostel I found that apparently Alejandro, the crazy Argentinian man who lives by night and does nothing with his life other than drugs, had evidently decided that it was unacceptable for Juan to have gone with me to Uruguay but not made a move on me. And he was not at all afraid to express this opinion in front of both of us. It was late at night (I hadn't been able to sleep) and Juanito had just gotten back from working at his restaurant. I forget what context it was in, but at one point he said, "Where are my things?" and Alejandro responded by pointing to me: "Here is your thing. She's sitting right here. Why don't you do anything with your thing? Why don't you be a man and do something with her?" He said this in a tone that was not at all joking but rather, accusatory, glaring at Juan as if he had done him a personal offense. At the time I was so stunned that all I did was laugh nervously, but the more I think about it the more angry I am at having not only been used as a means to insult someone else but at the same time being called a thing. Juanito shot Alejandro an intense glare that took me by surprise because I never would have imagined a look like that coming from him. That didn't stop Alejandro though. A few minutes later he said to me, again in front of Juanito, "Naomi, you should give your man a back massage. He just got home from work and you have to make him feel better." Again, an uncomfortable silence.
Thankfully, things eventually took a bit of a humorous turn. A little later that same night the three of us were looking at photos on my computer, and every time Alejandro saw one of my female friends that he thought was pretty (at least half of them) he would say in English, "Who is that girl? Why don't you bring her here so I can make her a happy woman?" We eventually came upon a photo of one of my male friends with his hair done up in a goofy way as a joke. "Who is she?" asked Alejandro. "Bring her here." This was the moment of his downfall. Juanito and I both jumped on the opportunity to torture him the rest of the night by pointing to pretty much every male in my pictures and asking, "Do you like her? Do you like her?" This prompted an incredibly defensive response from him, also in broken English: "Listen me. I like women. I really like women a lot. I don't like men. I not like that. I like women." It is moments such as this that almost make you believe that there is justice in the world.
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