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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On occasion, people need yelling at...too bad that at my best I sound like an asthmatic frog

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More much, much, much belated write up of the summer vacation:
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Our day started off with a smooth and uneventful cab ride to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, which revealed that the cab driver from the previous day took advantage of us when he took us to Recoleta cemetery.� From the front steps of the museum we could see the park where the cemetery was, yet this ride cost us much less.� Of course, this was in Argentine pesos and it only amounted to about a half dollar in difference.� That was the origin of my rule that the more chatty and friendly the cab driver, the more likely something was wrong.�
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This driver barely said a world to us, while the guy who took us the cemetery was outgoing and full of stories of his relatives in America and how it was the land of silver.� Silver being the deal in Argentina rather than gold.� An extra little silver coin being what he got from us as the result of what we now recognized as an overly long and twisted route.
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I didn�t mind that so much as a driver we dealt with the next day.� He took us back to the guesthouse after a night out, and when asking us for what route we wanted to take, I accidentally told him the fastest, rather than the most direct.� We flew down streets. Rather than diverting his attention and risking all our lives by asking him to slow down, I kept quiet.� Eventually traffic thickened, our speeding turned to a manageable jog, and he turned chatty.� That was when he turned onto side streets saying he knew a quicker route.� By then, I knew enough of the neighborhood around the guesthouse to know we were looping around it without actually getting closer.
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I paid him when we finally arrived about a dollar later then it should have been, and after a quick movement of his hand the ten-peso note I gave him somehow turned into a five.� The additional charge for the extra mileage I could deal with, but the out and out theft of switching money pissed me off. My voice may be weak, but it it didn�t stop me from railing into him. That and the look of bloodthirst I gave him was enough that he suddenly found the ten-peso note I gave him in the first place.�
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But that was a different day, and from everything I�ve heard and read, very uncommon, so anyway, the museo.� To say it was impressive is a huge understatement.� After entering, we turned a corner and there was a Picasso, then another one, then a room of Degas, then another room of Rodan, then Matisse, Klee and other famous artists by the bushel full.

Like Recoleta cemetery, the museum stands as a testament to the excesses wealth can bring, though being a museum, this was somehow less ostentatious. Unfortunately like Recoleta, the museum (that is, the physical building) has seen better days. A room filled with a traveling collection of European religious art was also filled with water stained walls and moisture meters. Not a very reassuring combination.

The second level of the museum was devoted to modern/contemporary Argentine works. Several were interesting, or at least very large, but I suspect if we gone upstairs and seen them first, I would have been more impressed.�

We hadn�t planned on visiting a huge tourist shopping mall near Avenida Nueve de Julio, but our wandering around the city after museum to us in that general direction.�

After the museum, we walked by grand buildings, meandered through small parks, and crossed Avenida Nueve de Julio, noted as being the widest street in the world, and movies, always the site of a protest rally. Eventually we ended up on Florida Blvd., a pedestrian street filled with shops and for some odd reason, throngs of middle aged German tourists buying everything in site rather than waiving political banners.
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At one of the stores John bought himself a couple of cashmere sweaters for a price that people who know about such things found obscenely cheap.� I didn�t but any because they all looked like �old man� sweaters to me, and if I was never going to wear them, what was the point?
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The shop owner seeing that I was just hanging around not spending money, came over to me and asked what it was that I wanted, and when I jokingly answered food, he brightened up and started into a sales pitch about how he could get John and me into a parilla (a traditional style Argentine grill serving steaks along side broiled internal organs and sausages made from things I�d rather not think about) that just happened to be owned by a friend of his.� He was also certain that he could get us a great discount on the included Tango show.� Instead of blaming John�s vegetarianism, or explaining that I had no interest in either chewy cow organs or tango, I lied and said we already had other plans.� The owner frowned at this and was obviously not pleased, but John had finished shopping by then so we left.
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There was a tourist mall a couple of blocks away, housed in a large building of some sort of historical significance.� The building was very nice.� The mall was�well, a mall.� It had a few stores I had never heard of before, but mainly consisted of storefront after storefront of names I normally associate with high prices.�

This is not to say that there weren�t good deals, just none that I�d be interested in. Finding a three thousand dollar big name/mass branded designer suit for a mere one thousand is great. �Except that my version of Murphy�s Law as applied to clothing and accessories is that the more money I spend on something, the quicker it gets ruined. � Against all logic and expectation, my uber cheap Old Navy clothes last for years, while if I spend more than twenty bucks on a pair of sunglasses, I�ll loose and or break them within a week.� If I bought a thousand dollar suit, it would spontaneously combust five minutes after leaving the store rather than be worn by me.

Not that I�d buy it in the first place because A THOUSAND DOLLARS??? �I don�t even own a suit, and if I needed one, that much money is not going to be involved in the transaction of purchasing one. �I could care less about designer names, and it seems that�s what the tourist mall was all about.

We didn�t stay there for long. �Tourist malls suck.

We walked around the pedestrian street for a few minutes trying to decide if we should stay or leave. We left, but not fast enough. It was early evening and the street was getting more crowded by the minute with tourists, hawkers, shabby street Tango shows, and worst of all, people who�s job it was to hand out business cards to crappy, tourist trap, overpriced, set priced restaurants with tango shows. � I got tired of the constant thrusting of things into my hands so I finally smiled at a woman doing so and said �No gracias.�

No gracias is apparently the worst curse imaginable because she started yelling at me, calling me cruel and obnoxious, which instead of making me apologize, and accept the card, just pissed me off.� After a day of talking I was hoarse, but that did not stop me from yelling back that I DID NOT WANT TO GO TO THE SHOW! SO LEAVE ME ALONE! �

She was still spitting venom at me when I walked away, much to amusement of everyone around us.

Tourist malls suck as do the pedestrian tourist streets surrounding them.

After we got back to the guesthouse that night, the hosts asked us about our day and grimaced when we told them about Florida Blvd.� In their opinion it was terribly tacky.� We went up to our room, and looking at our booty for the day, John had dress shirts, cashmere sweaters, and an overcoat (that despite looking very good in, he will have little opportunity to wear as Southern California rarely gets cold enough to warrant it), while I had some t-shirts, a couple of sweat shirts, and some underwear.� There�s a truth about the two of us somewhere in that sentence.

More later,

nico

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