Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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So after a few days of fun in Buenos Aires, John and I flew back to Chile to spend more time with our friends Carlos and Beth in Santiago.� Our first day back in town we back went to Cerro San Crist�bal, this time taking the funicular up the hill even though it was very smoggy and visibility sucked.�

The first stop was the city zoo which was not the greatest by a long shot, but the animals appeared to be healthy, if somewhat cramped. Situating a zoo on the side of a hill makes for long winding paths and tired legs, though the gangs of elementary aged kids running through the place that day were undaunted by all the climbing and steep trials.� The boundless energy of the young can get exhausting.�

The other mark of the young that day were a few college-aged boys in silly costumes taking pictures of each other in front of animal cages.� I assumed it was a prank or hazing of some sort.�

After the zoo, we rode the rest of the way up to the Virgin monument capped hilltop. On a better day the views must be astounding, but the smog was so think, even the Andes were barely visible in the distance.� Other than the large statue of virgin protecting the city, there wasn�t that much to look at up there.�

Once back down in Barrio Bellavista (the funky neighborhood at the base of the hill), we ate lunch at a restaurant called La Mesa Del Mundo.� It was world fusion cuisine, which has a potential for gimmicky (the menu was a passport), but turned out to be one of the two best meals we had in South America.

We started with an appetizer of Sierra Andina, which were choclo (corncobs) covered in a basil sauce and melted cheese.� It tasted odd at first, until I realized that I was far too used to American corn breed and engineered to be sweeter than candy.� This starchier taste was closer to what corn should be.� John then had a salad, while my main course was Pollo Blue, chicken in a savory Blueberry vinaigrette sauce.� The taste of the chicken was amazing and the sauce pushed it into excellence. Dessert was a couple of tortas, one made with Manjar, the other chocolate.� The entire meal was excellent, and as was the rule, relatively cheap.�

After food, we took a tour of La Chascona, one of Pablo Neruda�s homes.� It�s an amazing set of buildings; a fantasy designed to invoke the feel of life at sea, and named after his wife Matilde Urrutia (Chascona being slang for wild hair or wild women with wild hair, I wasn�t too clear on that).

Tours are priced differently according to language, with English costing much more than Spanish.� John bought us some tickets for the Spanish tour, reassuring the clerk in halting Spanish that we would understand. Afterwards he told me that he got most of what she said, and what he didn�t comprehend, he made up.� His version of the tour was a bit fantastic.� At one point the guide explained that Neruda wrote with green ink, because green was the color of the ocean, and he loved the water so.� John turned that into a tale of intrigue with Neruda smuggling in the only color ink he could get into the ink dry country.� Ah my husband�ya gotta love him.

There were many rooms filled with collections of books, oddities, and Pop Art, much of it given to him as gifts from the artists.� One room had floorboards designed to creak when walked on as if on a ship at sea, which reminded me of the nightingale floors of Nijo-jo castle in Kyoto.� From there we could see a burned out husk of a building next door a couple of feet away.� The guide told us that it had been a discoth�que, and when it caught fire, firefighters stood on the roof outside the window working hard to save a national treasure.� Despite the proximity of the buildings, the disco lay dead while La Chascona suffered no damage.

Fate it seems, loves poets.

more later,
nico

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