I don’t want to complain, but I’m sick. Really, really sick. It makes it tough to vacation when one feels this shitty. But here I am, attempting to flourish under less than stellar circumstances and I lost Saturday in a battle against a hacking cough and fever.
But it’s Sunday and I can't miss another day - and today we actually wake up at a decent hour for a change. I’m trying to get my head around this lifestyle in Buenos Aires – folks eat dinner at 10 pm, stay up until dawn, and they wake up…when? Not sure, but considering I’ve never been much of a morning person, I’m thinking I could easily get used to the late nights and the siestas. On the other hand, it was sort of a drag to get over to the museums today at noon to find they don’t even open until 2 pm.
But it could be worse, and since the weather is beautiful today and doesn't feel nearly as unbearable as 86 degrees would suggest, we stroll around outside instead of inside a museum. The bright lavender colored jocanda trees line the Avenida Del Liberator and we imagine this color was probably the reason porteñas seem to love purples so much.
During our walk, we also enjoy sitting for a bit in the shadowing foyer of the Museo del Art Decrotivo and amid the greenery of the Plaza Reublican de Chile, Plaza Uruguay and Plaza Naciones Unidas. Near the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes there's a rather modern, Fountainheadesque monument of Eva Peron surrounded by a stern gate. Klover gives me a little Evita history as we walk and I learn that after Eva Peron died and before they could properly bury her, her body was stolen by rebels. I'm not sure what happened and if it was returned, but this story makes me think that the gate around the monument in her honor might have actually been erected to ensure no one stole even her likeness away.
During our walk, we also enjoy sitting for a bit in the shadowing foyer of the Museo del Art Decrotivo and amid the greenery of the Plaza Reublican de Chile, Plaza Uruguay and Plaza Naciones Unidas. Near the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes there's a rather modern, Fountainheadesque monument of Eva Peron surrounded by a stern gate. Klover gives me a little Evita history as we walk and I learn that after Eva Peron died and before they could properly bury her, her body was stolen by rebels. I'm not sure what happened and if it was returned, but this story makes me think that the gate around the monument in her honor might have actually been erected to ensure no one stole even her likeness away.
We keep walking further down the Avenida del Liberador, and though we move too far beyond the museums to catch them today, we do get to see some lovely local crafts out in front of the Plaza Intendente Alvear. There we spend an hour or so wandering through the stalls, looking at local artisans' wares. We also go inside the large building nearby and find ourselves in a sort of design and home emporium that holds some pretty fancy looking model kitchens and groovy stainless steel bidets.
Ultimately, the day is all about taking it easy and taking in more Evita at the Cementerio de la Recoleta. The taking it easy part starts with a hot pollo empanada and a Coca Light (in a glass bottle, which pretty much made it taste like it was sinfully full of sugar) at a small café outside the gates of the cemetery. Yes, what a strain to sit and watch all the beautiful people go by. There are also a multitude of tour buses, but it's actually quiet and peaceful in the shadow of the cemetery.
Once inside the gates, we become lost within the maze of sepulchral. Some of the crypts are trashed, the glass on the front doors broken and never repaired, coffins turned upside down and dried flowers left in small heaps that are the perfect setting for rats' nests. Others are clearly cared for lovingly – there are fresh vibrant green plants that appeared to be watered regularly, or maybe even a new colorful bouquet in a family crypt full of rows of small ornate urns of ashes.
Klover tells me that Juan Peron had been married three times and both his first wife and Eva Peron, his second wife, died of uterine cancer. Also, Eva’s crypt has “Duarte Familia” written across the front. This was actually the name of her father’s family, though he never married her mother. When Eva was a child, it actually wasn’t uncommon in Argentina for a rich landowner to have a wife and a mistress. Of course, this didn’t reflect badly on the man, but it reflected badly on the mistress and, in turn, the children. And in Eva’s case, though her father initially lived with her mother and her siblings, at one point her father decided to go back to his wife and leave his mistress and their children to suffer their own fate.
Of course, Eva then became Evita, so what a fate that turned out to be - but it seems to me that Eva's father's name shouldn’t figure so prominently in her legend or on her crypt. Klover and I worry this idea as we wander past the ornate family plots, the decorative sculptures, and the small mausoleums draped in fuchsia Bougainvillea.
Of course, Eva then became Evita, so what a fate that turned out to be - but it seems to me that Eva's father's name shouldn’t figure so prominently in her legend or on her crypt. Klover and I worry this idea as we wander past the ornate family plots, the decorative sculptures, and the small mausoleums draped in fuchsia Bougainvillea.
Klover also tells me that she’s read that after Juan Peron died, rebels snuck into where they were keeping his body and they cut off his hands from his corpse. Clearly everyone wanted a piece of the Perons - and this makes me think about the lack of respect for the dead and how helpless the bodies of the dead are, left on Earth and to the mercy of those who live on. It also makes me consider San Francisco’s own history of removing - in a very haphazard way - its city cemeteries and their contents. Those people, just as the families who purchased plots and sepulchers in the Cementerio de la Recoleta, were looking for something that would last forever – a permanent resting place for their loved ones to lay their heads. And, as in Recoleto, they thought these beautiful little shrines in the cemetery would house their family members until the end of time.
Eva Peron was only thirty-three when she died in 1952, and yet the flowers on her crypt remain fresh and bright to this day. We realize this once we find her – not hard to spot once we follow the steady stream of tourist groups all heading in one direction. As we look at her resting place, we find ourselves surrounded by over two-dozen Chinese tourists and their leader who talks about Eva over a small bullhorn. I stand nearby for a while observing, and a few tourists ask me to take their photo. “Please include the plaque that says ‘Evita,’” one Italian man asked. I take Klover’s photo, too.
It’s hard not to talk about death when you’re amidst the dead. Klover’s mother died when she was 53 – far too young. And Klover tells me that when she dies she’ll be laid to rest in a family plot in North Carolina that her father bought for the entire family when she was just sixteen years old, and only beginning the long process of recovering from the loss of her mother. Looking at the coffins in Recoleta, Klover says she doesn't like the idea of being laid in the ground and all that happens to bodies in a cemetery after someone dies, but she knows this is her future and she can't help but think it's sweet that her father was trying to take care of her and her sisters.
My father also died at the age of 53. By contrast, his body was cremated. I still remember the feel of the box that contained the remains of his body in my hands when my mother and I picked it up from the crematorium - it was plastic and black and it seemed like it might be a bomb of some kind that a special agent would place within a wheel well and strategically activate for a grand explosion. When I held it on my lap during the car ride home from the crematorium, I noticed it was surprisingly heavy – a whole life in one small box – and it rattled slightly as we drove along the highway.
It would be a few months later before we put my father's ashes to “rest” – Scott was on tour at the time and my mother wanted him to be there to attend the memorial, so she delayed it a bit. Eventually, we had the final goodbye with a couple dozen close friends on a houseboat in the California Delta. My father didn’t specifically ask for us to spread his ashes in this place, but he liked the water and cruising the Delta’s sloughs in the summertime, and my mother knew he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
On that day, we ended up stopping somewhere in the middle of the murky green delta water, a great distance from shore where the sun was so hot and bright it was blinding. As my mother lightly tossed my father’s ashes into the water, there was a sudden gust of wind and my father’s ashes blew right back toward us – we were just standing there in shock with our mouths and eyes open wide while we looked into the distance where we thought we were sending him. But then I felt a fine grit on my lashes and tongue – and though it’s macabre in some ways, it seems only too perfect that my father's final resting place wasn't just the delta, but actually somewhere in our eyes and lungs and our hair.
After visiting the Cementerio de la Recoleta, Klover and I walk down the pristine Avenida Calleo in Recoleta, arching our necks to look up at the tall apartments that line the street, reminding us of the Upper East Side in New York. We have our lunch on a small side street in a little restaurant where we ordered a few more empanadas, a salad, and a cazuela lomo - a stew similar to a cassoulet made of beans, corn and beef. We find these empanadas the best we’ve had so far, their crusts slightly charred like good Delfina pizza crust, and Klover thinks the lomo tastes like an Argentine version of chili.
My father also died at the age of 53. By contrast, his body was cremated. I still remember the feel of the box that contained the remains of his body in my hands when my mother and I picked it up from the crematorium - it was plastic and black and it seemed like it might be a bomb of some kind that a special agent would place within a wheel well and strategically activate for a grand explosion. When I held it on my lap during the car ride home from the crematorium, I noticed it was surprisingly heavy – a whole life in one small box – and it rattled slightly as we drove along the highway.
It would be a few months later before we put my father's ashes to “rest” – Scott was on tour at the time and my mother wanted him to be there to attend the memorial, so she delayed it a bit. Eventually, we had the final goodbye with a couple dozen close friends on a houseboat in the California Delta. My father didn’t specifically ask for us to spread his ashes in this place, but he liked the water and cruising the Delta’s sloughs in the summertime, and my mother knew he wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.
On that day, we ended up stopping somewhere in the middle of the murky green delta water, a great distance from shore where the sun was so hot and bright it was blinding. As my mother lightly tossed my father’s ashes into the water, there was a sudden gust of wind and my father’s ashes blew right back toward us – we were just standing there in shock with our mouths and eyes open wide while we looked into the distance where we thought we were sending him. But then I felt a fine grit on my lashes and tongue – and though it’s macabre in some ways, it seems only too perfect that my father's final resting place wasn't just the delta, but actually somewhere in our eyes and lungs and our hair.
After visiting the Cementerio de la Recoleta, Klover and I walk down the pristine Avenida Calleo in Recoleta, arching our necks to look up at the tall apartments that line the street, reminding us of the Upper East Side in New York. We have our lunch on a small side street in a little restaurant where we ordered a few more empanadas, a salad, and a cazuela lomo - a stew similar to a cassoulet made of beans, corn and beef. We find these empanadas the best we’ve had so far, their crusts slightly charred like good Delfina pizza crust, and Klover thinks the lomo tastes like an Argentine version of chili.
After lunch, we stop into the pharmacity for some cough drops and then head back home via the subte. We nap a bit and, for fun, put on our sluttiest dresses and made our way back through the streets of Recoleta to dine at chef Dan's "Casa SaltShaker” apartment. We'd reserved spaces for a “closed-door dinner” there, or what we know in San Francisco as an underground restaurant. It was being held in the home of this local chef, Dan, we’d heard about through the New York Times and Time Out.
As we walk through the neighborhood, Klover asks, “Do you think the Arizona couple will be there?"
I'm not actually sure what the crowd will be like and we're both afraid this could be a tourist experience to rival our night at El Viejo Almacen. Upon arrival, we're met with five other couples – a retired couple in their sixties who were from Los Angeles (they’d just returned from a spectacular trip to Iguazu Falls and the very tech-savvy husband showed us a few images he’d captured on his iPhone), a couple from Vancouver, and a couple from New York who were traveling the world for a year. There's also a couple there who lived in Geneva, and Iris and Bobi, two women from Orange County.
We're a motley crew and Dan places us at two tables and suggests we split up and move around a bit throughout the evening in order to get to know one another better. Klover and I are initially party poopers – I'm still feeling really ill and we aren’t drinking, and Klover appears rather skeptical of the lot of our dinner companions. But as the evening goes on, we're presented with an interesting array of dishes around the theme of Morocco’s independence and as we learn a bit more about our dinner companions we gradually warm to everyone.
We're particularly interested to hear about Dave and Jesse, the couple from New York, and their plans to travel to Africa, India and Southeast Asia. They're young, maybe in their early thirties and lawyers who chucked their lovely jobs, sublet their apartment, and had plans to spend a month or so in each destination around the globe.
Lily and Jean-Luc, the couple from Geneva, are charming – they're probably in their fifties and Lily was born in Beirut and is of Indian descent. She has beautiful golden eyes and she's dressed in a sari and speaks with a slight British accent. She tells us that she's a tad confused about where exactly she's from – she’s lived all over the world though she met Jean-Luc when she was living in New York and they were both working for the UN. She's also interested in tango and asks us to describe El Viejo Almacen (we also learn “Almacen” actually means grocer and not German as we’d earlier suspected!).
By contrast to his wife, Jean-Luc is Italian and from Florence originally. He wears red Chuck Taylors and a summer sport coat and he's tall and bald and seems to have a slight lisp to his accented English. He tells us that he’s been in Uruguay for a UN conference on tobacco and they planned an extra week in Buenos Aires for vacation. He also talks about his life in Switzerland, rolling his eyes and telling us with a chuckle how “boring” Geneva is.
Jean-Luc and Lily are clearly far from boring and Lily ends up telling Klover conspiratorily that when she met Jean-Luc, she wasn’t attracted to him at all. They were at an office outing for the UN in New York and he was sweating profusely and she thought, no way. She was thirty-six at the time, and she didn’t know this was the man who she’d fall in love with and spend her life with. But they ended up getting married and she had her daughter when she was forty; they clearly seem perfectly suited to one another – both comfortable, wry, and worldly.
Iris and Bobi are also incredibly lively and charming. My first impression of them was that they were two attractive women in their thirties or early forties from the suburbs of Orange County, visiting Buenos Aires and hitting on the hot porteño men. But it turns out they were very different than they initially appeared - they both had been married when they met, but divorced soon after and they'd now been together as a couple for over seven years. Bobi was sweet-faced, Caucasian, and had shoulder-length dark hair and Iris, born in the Philippines, was incredibly friendly and self-effacing with a bright smile and a short bob. It was nice to watch them together - they were very tender and affectionate with one another and kept calling each other “babe.”
At the end of dinner, and after most folks had consumed at least four glasses of wine, Iris starts rallying everyone to head out to a gay nightclub nearby. Iris is incredibly energetic and won't take no for an answer, and Klover slowly begins to perk up. So, even though I feel like hell, I don’t want to miss out on all the fun. Though Lily and Jean-Luc consider the outing for a moment, they decid to pass, but Dave and Jesse are in, and Iris and Bobi are a definite, and then there's us.
As we're exiting the apartment, Iris coaxes Henry, Dan SaltShaker’s porteño server for the dinner party as well as his house companion, to join us, too. Of course, we really couldn’t communicate with him all that well since he spoke castellones, but when we ask him to come along, he coyly puts his fingers to his mouth in surprise, blushes becomingly, and gestures that we should wait a moment as he slips back inside for a change of t-shirts. Soon after, he joins us out in front of the building where the air is cool and fresh after a light evening rain.
Iris says they’ve been drinking a ton of champagne and “Speed” since arriving in Buenos Aires and, since at midnight it's still relatively early by porteño standards, she invites us all over to her apartment to try some. Of course, I'm still feeling so bad, I'm off the Champagne, but decide to try some of this "Speed" she spoke of. Yes, Speed sounds really good.
Iris and Bobi’s apartment is similar in some ways to ours, and though they have a doorman and are staying in a fancier neighborhood, I end up feeling we actually had a better layout in some ways, and maybe a better view off our patio. Not bad for us, and somewhat reassuring since I really didn't know what I was doing when I booked our place. Once seated inside on their couch, Bobi thankfully offers me some cold medicine and Tylenol, which I wash down with the flute of Speed. It turns out this tonic sounds exotic, and for a moment I wonder what I'm getting myself into, but it turns out Speed is just a sort of Red Bull energy drink that tastes like apple cider, and between the cold medicine and the Speed, I feel like I really do have a tad more energy.
At the club, "Km Zero," we pay a cover and end up witnessing a drag show that includes some wild slapstick comedy (that none of us can truly understand with the language barrier. Except, of course, for the physical parts - like when the big blond drag queen shoves an audience member's laughing face into her/his crotch). But the best part about the entire show is the tango dancing. Hands down, we decide this is the best tango we’ve seen during our entire visit to Buenos Aires.
As we walk through the neighborhood, Klover asks, “Do you think the Arizona couple will be there?"
I'm not actually sure what the crowd will be like and we're both afraid this could be a tourist experience to rival our night at El Viejo Almacen. Upon arrival, we're met with five other couples – a retired couple in their sixties who were from Los Angeles (they’d just returned from a spectacular trip to Iguazu Falls and the very tech-savvy husband showed us a few images he’d captured on his iPhone), a couple from Vancouver, and a couple from New York who were traveling the world for a year. There's also a couple there who lived in Geneva, and Iris and Bobi, two women from Orange County.
We're a motley crew and Dan places us at two tables and suggests we split up and move around a bit throughout the evening in order to get to know one another better. Klover and I are initially party poopers – I'm still feeling really ill and we aren’t drinking, and Klover appears rather skeptical of the lot of our dinner companions. But as the evening goes on, we're presented with an interesting array of dishes around the theme of Morocco’s independence and as we learn a bit more about our dinner companions we gradually warm to everyone.
We're particularly interested to hear about Dave and Jesse, the couple from New York, and their plans to travel to Africa, India and Southeast Asia. They're young, maybe in their early thirties and lawyers who chucked their lovely jobs, sublet their apartment, and had plans to spend a month or so in each destination around the globe.
Lily and Jean-Luc, the couple from Geneva, are charming – they're probably in their fifties and Lily was born in Beirut and is of Indian descent. She has beautiful golden eyes and she's dressed in a sari and speaks with a slight British accent. She tells us that she's a tad confused about where exactly she's from – she’s lived all over the world though she met Jean-Luc when she was living in New York and they were both working for the UN. She's also interested in tango and asks us to describe El Viejo Almacen (we also learn “Almacen” actually means grocer and not German as we’d earlier suspected!).
By contrast to his wife, Jean-Luc is Italian and from Florence originally. He wears red Chuck Taylors and a summer sport coat and he's tall and bald and seems to have a slight lisp to his accented English. He tells us that he’s been in Uruguay for a UN conference on tobacco and they planned an extra week in Buenos Aires for vacation. He also talks about his life in Switzerland, rolling his eyes and telling us with a chuckle how “boring” Geneva is.
Jean-Luc and Lily are clearly far from boring and Lily ends up telling Klover conspiratorily that when she met Jean-Luc, she wasn’t attracted to him at all. They were at an office outing for the UN in New York and he was sweating profusely and she thought, no way. She was thirty-six at the time, and she didn’t know this was the man who she’d fall in love with and spend her life with. But they ended up getting married and she had her daughter when she was forty; they clearly seem perfectly suited to one another – both comfortable, wry, and worldly.
Iris and Bobi are also incredibly lively and charming. My first impression of them was that they were two attractive women in their thirties or early forties from the suburbs of Orange County, visiting Buenos Aires and hitting on the hot porteño men. But it turns out they were very different than they initially appeared - they both had been married when they met, but divorced soon after and they'd now been together as a couple for over seven years. Bobi was sweet-faced, Caucasian, and had shoulder-length dark hair and Iris, born in the Philippines, was incredibly friendly and self-effacing with a bright smile and a short bob. It was nice to watch them together - they were very tender and affectionate with one another and kept calling each other “babe.”
At the end of dinner, and after most folks had consumed at least four glasses of wine, Iris starts rallying everyone to head out to a gay nightclub nearby. Iris is incredibly energetic and won't take no for an answer, and Klover slowly begins to perk up. So, even though I feel like hell, I don’t want to miss out on all the fun. Though Lily and Jean-Luc consider the outing for a moment, they decid to pass, but Dave and Jesse are in, and Iris and Bobi are a definite, and then there's us.
As we're exiting the apartment, Iris coaxes Henry, Dan SaltShaker’s porteño server for the dinner party as well as his house companion, to join us, too. Of course, we really couldn’t communicate with him all that well since he spoke castellones, but when we ask him to come along, he coyly puts his fingers to his mouth in surprise, blushes becomingly, and gestures that we should wait a moment as he slips back inside for a change of t-shirts. Soon after, he joins us out in front of the building where the air is cool and fresh after a light evening rain.
Iris says they’ve been drinking a ton of champagne and “Speed” since arriving in Buenos Aires and, since at midnight it's still relatively early by porteño standards, she invites us all over to her apartment to try some. Of course, I'm still feeling so bad, I'm off the Champagne, but decide to try some of this "Speed" she spoke of. Yes, Speed sounds really good.
Iris and Bobi’s apartment is similar in some ways to ours, and though they have a doorman and are staying in a fancier neighborhood, I end up feeling we actually had a better layout in some ways, and maybe a better view off our patio. Not bad for us, and somewhat reassuring since I really didn't know what I was doing when I booked our place. Once seated inside on their couch, Bobi thankfully offers me some cold medicine and Tylenol, which I wash down with the flute of Speed. It turns out this tonic sounds exotic, and for a moment I wonder what I'm getting myself into, but it turns out Speed is just a sort of Red Bull energy drink that tastes like apple cider, and between the cold medicine and the Speed, I feel like I really do have a tad more energy.
At the club, "Km Zero," we pay a cover and end up witnessing a drag show that includes some wild slapstick comedy (that none of us can truly understand with the language barrier. Except, of course, for the physical parts - like when the big blond drag queen shoves an audience member's laughing face into her/his crotch). But the best part about the entire show is the tango dancing. Hands down, we decide this is the best tango we’ve seen during our entire visit to Buenos Aires.
The first tango performance includes the two male dancers dressed in tails. Their leg fly and their torsos are stiff and lovely and so formal as they twirl around the dance floor, but their eyes seem to be full of humor and flirtation. Their dance even includes lifts – very impressive - and we think the gender dynamics (who's leading?) add a surprise layer of bohemian delight to the whole show. Later, one of the drag queens dances the tango in full cleavage plunging regalia and again, we witness dramatic lifts and the tiniest glint of humor that elevates the performance, making it fun and coy in an unexpected way.
After the show is over, we dance with our dinner companions. Iris turnes out to be a big “Floggster”(Klover heard this is the term that refers to the young and hip in Buenos Aires who photograph and blog everything they do. Though I’ve always been a bit confused by the idea of experiencing all adventures with camera out front and center, I realize I’ve got some Floggster clearly running through my veins, too, and since I lose most of our photos from our dancing, I'm happy someone was there to capture the magic). Not only did Iris record our every hip shake and fist pump to the electronica and Cumbia coming out of the speakers, but she also inspires some new moves – riling us to dance in a circle and take turns in the center, leading everyone into some raucous maneuvers.
Of course, this game becomes a contest of who can make people dance in the most embarrassing way possible. And it was a game that circumvented all language barriers – Henry, our new porteño friend, dances it up just like the rest of us. We're surrounded by cute indie gay boys making out, women with sleeve tattoos wearing men's shirts with names like “Mel” stitched on the pocket, and middle-aged and balding men on the hunt for a cute new boyfriend for the night.
After a bit, the Speed starts wearing off, and with the smoke and fog machine fumes encompassing the dance floor, I start losing my voice. Klover and I pass along our contact info to our new friends as we head home for the night.
Once in the cab, we gleefully note that it was actually 3 AM - woot! - and I was happy I'd been able to stay up and out so late. And we'd actually accomplished a few goals for the day with the dinner, show, and the new friends - maybe we even made up for our lost Saturday. We also laugh that we’d traveled halfway around the world – and away from San Francisco’s gay scene – to find ourselves smack in the middle of a gay club and nowhere near a potential novio del dia for Klover. Sigh. But another day awaits, and we figure there might be more possibilities at Monday’s Pavement show.
Of course, this game becomes a contest of who can make people dance in the most embarrassing way possible. And it was a game that circumvented all language barriers – Henry, our new porteño friend, dances it up just like the rest of us. We're surrounded by cute indie gay boys making out, women with sleeve tattoos wearing men's shirts with names like “Mel” stitched on the pocket, and middle-aged and balding men on the hunt for a cute new boyfriend for the night.
After a bit, the Speed starts wearing off, and with the smoke and fog machine fumes encompassing the dance floor, I start losing my voice. Klover and I pass along our contact info to our new friends as we head home for the night.
Once in the cab, we gleefully note that it was actually 3 AM - woot! - and I was happy I'd been able to stay up and out so late. And we'd actually accomplished a few goals for the day with the dinner, show, and the new friends - maybe we even made up for our lost Saturday. We also laugh that we’d traveled halfway around the world – and away from San Francisco’s gay scene – to find ourselves smack in the middle of a gay club and nowhere near a potential novio del dia for Klover. Sigh. But another day awaits, and we figure there might be more possibilities at Monday’s Pavement show.
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