Working at a free health clinic in Mexico has provided me with countless experiences that I'd be hard pressed to find anywhere else: receptive patients, amazing food, latent tuberculosis. Well, the last one's kind of a bitch, but at least it's treatable, although the cure may be worse than the disease. For the last seven months, I've been taking a daily antibiotic that apparantly can do quite a number on my liver if I combine it with excess alcohol. (The definition of excess is, of course, generally dependant on how cheap it can be obtained.)
So how does any of this relate to last night? Well, losing my liver would be quite a pisser. And as such, I've been pretty picky with the nights that I go out, with the obvious exceptions of my first few epic weeks. I did however, decide to go out last night for the birthday of a friend of a friend of a friend. Here's how the night unfolded:
11:00pm - I received a text message from a friend with the address of the party we had talked about earlier that day. All Buenos Aires addresses have a street name followed by a number, no east or west. If a street runs the length of the city, its name changes as it crosses the center. If it doesn't, it's numbers start and stop at apparently random values. (At this point, is anybody surprised?) So, one number means one location. Unless the same street name exists in one of Buenos Aires' many suburbs (I think you know what's coming). The next three hours would have passed much smoother had I just called my friend to clarify, but student-traveler commandment #17 is: Thou shalt conservath thy cell minutes (even if that means sending a small fortune's worth of 10-cent messages). Who ever said religion makes sense?
11:10pm - I set off on a bus towards downtown, and felt the beginings of an intense I-really-gotta-pee sensation develop in my bladder. The latter event being severly compounded by the first, shock absorbers haven't quite caught on here.
12:10am - I got of the bus as close as I could get to my destination, but by now my bladder was screamming, "you'd better walk fast, dumbshit, I told you to go before we left."
12:15am - I arrived at LaValle 1498, as planned. Although the neighborhood didn't have quite the suburban feel that was described to me. I didn't care, as long as the place had a bathroom. I walked up to the building, and this is where things got interesting. Once I got close, I could see that the building didn't appear to have been occupied since the cold war, at least not by anything with less than 4 legs. In fact, the whole neighborhood had an erily empty feel. In my haste to find a toilet, I hadn't really noticed my surroundings, but I was in a place I really shouldn't have been. I sent a note to see where they were, and my friend told me to come up the 11th floor. In a fit of inginuity, I walked across the street and started counting windows, only nine. That's not right. Through a series of text messages, I realized that I was at the wrong LaValle, no surprise. But at least this address fiasco took my mind off having to pee. I noticed that the pain went away, and at first I thought, "great, my bladder probably just hit capacity and popped." Really, I did, I'm not quite as smart as you think I am. I then realized that a popped bladder would probably hurt more than having to pee, so I (no joke) felt my pants to make sure there wasn't any leakage. Don't worry, I was safe. Maybe I just didn't have to pee anymore.
12:18am - I was wrong. The pain came back at a level that would justify pissing myself on the spot. I couldn't quite run without making things worse, but I performed the clumsy piss-gallop that anyone who's put back a couple of big gulps knows firsthand.
12:25am - I arrived at McDonald's, the American embassy of cheap drinks and free bathrooms. Abroad, their signs read, "4 billion flushed."
12:26am - Unzip.
12:32am - Ahh, much better.
2:15am - After quite a long walk and bus ride, I arrived at the intersection where we were supposed to meet. With my two friends with me, I showed up to a house in which there wasn't a single person I knew. I wasn't too worried, though, Argentines are generally very social, and my Spanish is improving. We spent the next couple of hours chatting and playing ping-pong, only one of which was facilitated by the alcohol.
4:00am - Somewhere around the 30th time my ass was handed to me on the ping-pong table, there were murmurings of going out to a club. There was a time on this trip when that would have surprised me, but not anymore. The problem was, however, that there is only one thing harder than getting nine Argentines focused on one plan: doing that while they're drunk. I just took a backseat on this one and went to town on the pretzels until something developed.
4:45am - With a destination known and taxi called, we went outside and peed on all the neighbors' yards. I wasn't even drunk (really!), it's just not a big deal here. If I only would have known that a few hours ago!
5:15am - We entered a club that was actually very close to my house. After about half of us paid the cover, the other half decided they didn't like the way that place felt that night. No enough people. Here's a thought, perhaps they're sleeping. Thankfully, the bouncers, in a rare showing of humanity, gave us our money back. It didn't hurt that there were a few cute girls with us.
5:30am - We moved to another place, one just as close to my house. We all pay and enter, no problem, yet.
5:45am - No more than 15 minute after we enter (and pay $10), the house lights come one and the bar tender tells us that the place is closing. Us Americans, the hard asses that we are, jumped right up, but our Argentine friends started arguing with the guy, telling that no one told us they were about to close when we paid. So they get all animated, like Argentines do, and half the bar staff comes over, giving us to-go cups for our drinks, the works. No effect. A couple of cops came out of no where, and the locals start yelling at them that they're no better than private security. It's no secret that Latin American police officers are available to the highest bidder, but that's neither here nor there, I'm about to get sent to jail. Here we yankies are, like, "Ahem, cough cough, uh, arrest means deportation for us." So we, with the help of the Argentines that weren't too upset, dragged out the rest.
6:00am - A couple of the guys start asking where we shold go next, but I was way too wiped out to think of anything but home. I wasn't alone, but the other two Americans lived to far too walk. So my only links to the group took a cab home, leaving me with a group of wild natives that we're still iching for more. In my haste to break off before the next near-arrest, I said my goodbyes and took off without paying attention to the direction in which I was heading. Good thing there was pleny of sun light to see the signs!
6:30am - I got home and did a samurai-crawl to my room, so as to not wake up the rest of the family. Although, knowing them, they probably weren't even back yet! By that point, I had already passed the sleepiness hump and wasn't too tired, although I knew I would be the next day.
3:00pm - Yep, I was right.
M
