Boobie Book Club and the Redneck Feminist: 10 Rules for a Productive and Fulfilling Girls’ Camping Weekend

1. Don’t tell your dad that you are going on a girls-only trip to climb Old Rag and talk about Tina Fey’s Bossypants. He will worry that the “wrong people” will mistake your feminism for lesbianism and murder you. What he is referring to is the gruesome 1996 slaying of two female hikers along the Appalachian Trail which remains unsolved to this day – for the sake of comforting Dad, you might want to point out that this specific crime also remains unrepeated. But going back to the original rule, it is probably best if you steer clear of this conversation all together because, let's face it, it’s kind of a downer and a bad way to start things off.

2.Choose your campsite carefully. A discerning camper knows that no matter how many campsites are available at the time of registration, it is essential that you preview them all before committing to one. There are a number of factors that one should consider when selecting the best place to pitch her tent. Among other ideal conditions, such as a lack of rocks, “widow maker” trees, and little girl ghosts on bicycles, proximity to rednecks deserves special attention. While it might make more sense to some people (such as people who went to fancy universities, listen to NPR, and/or master the didgeridoo) to try to stay as far away from rednecks as possible, you must remember that cultural exchanges are important if you want to be an open-minded, well-rounded feminist, so you should strive to place yourself in diverse settings whenever possible (in the end, you probably have more in common with the four Chinese tourists playing mahjong on a picnic table next to the other campsite that you were considering). Keep in mind: rednecks, like black bear cubs and deer, are just as afraid of you as you are of them.

3.Check the weather, and for god’s sake, woman, seam seal your tent! Otherwise, you will end up sleeping in your car.

4.When the man at the gas station asks you how much wood you would like to buy, do not respond, “Enough for one fire, please.” This is not a thing.

5.Blow on it. This is how you get your campfire to grow. It is also what rednecks shout repeatedly at girls from the next campsite over when their first strategy of just standing there and staring at them for an hour fails to get their attention. For the record, fanning the fire with a Tupperware container lid will do the trick, while also entertaining your neighbors from Bumpass, Virginia (name of place has NOT been changed to protect rednecks). About five minutes after we got our fire started, the torrential downpour resumed and we sought refuge in the leaky tent (see rule #3).

6.When the only girl in the group of rednecks invites you to toast marshmallows over their propane-enhanced fire, take her up on it. This will lead to one of the cultural exchanges mentioned above and enrich everyone’s understanding of social groups that differ from their own. You will learn that sometimes women are linebackers on their high school football teams until they drop out, after which it is against the rules to play anymore. They will learn that sometimes women work in neuroscience labs and experiment on rats.

7.Don’t ask the girl redneck how she broke her leg. While her ability to tackle and be tackled by men on football fields is admirable, the fact that she gets in physical fights with guys who push her down hard enough that she ends up in a cast for 4-to-8 weeks is not quite the breed of feminism that you’re going for.

8.If you think that there is a possibility that you will be struck by lightning, assume this position:
Granted, it looks kind of silly, but in the event that you are indeed struck by lightning, it will divert the electricity away from your vital organs and increase your chances of survival. Then, once the storm has passed, you can play leap frog. This tip falls into the same category as not dropping your hands to your sides during a stampede and spitting to find which way is up before you start digging after you’ve been buried by an avalanche. These are just a few of the many dire situations that feminists worldwide risk finding themselves in every day.

9. Don’t buy a “zesty” pickle-in-a-bag from the camp store. While you may find the phallic cartoon pickle man on the package intriguing after a few glasses of wine (read: a few swigs directly from the bottle that you pushed the cork into with your chapstick because you didn't bring a corkscrew), there are multiple reasons why this is never a good idea. You’re a feminist, after all.

10. Don’t feed the animals. This means throwing your uneaten, neon-colored alleged pickle product in the bear-safe trash cans which can be found near the bathrooms and scattered among the campsites (opening them the first time can be a little tricky, but that’s kind of the point, and once you get the hang of it, it’s a practically effortless procedure). It may be obvious to you, but wild animals do not realize that zesty pickles-in-bags are not viable sources of sustenance. They will come and eat whatever you leave lying around. Then they will get used to human contact. Then they will die. This is a simple but important point: It may be within a feminist’s right to be truculent at times, but it is never ok to kill animals for no reason.

renewing my visa again, again

Manuel and I went to Colonia yesterday. It was a 70s, clear skies day, a perfect day for a visa run. We rented a pair of rickety bikes -- Manuel's was gray because he likes things that are not so black and white, and mine was pink because I'm a girl -- and rode along the water to the old dilapidated bullfighting ring that I first visited about this time 2 years ago. The holes in the fence surrounding it that we'd climbed through then have since been patched, and we didn't go in. Across the street, there was a sign nailed to a tree that said "antiguedades," but there weren't any antiques for sale.

On the way back, we had to climb a hill. It wasn't a very big hill, but it left me winded, and I remember thinking, "How the hell did I ever make it over the Rockies?" But it was all downhill after that, which is a good thing when you're on a bicycle.

Back in town, we didn't go to the historical district, where there's a lighthouse built inside the ruins of an old convent, a tree growing out of the wall of a 17th century house, a museum with a whale skeleton. After all, there's only so many times you can look at Uruguay's oldest church without it getting old. I've been there before, and yesterday I just wasn't in the mood for time traveling or taking black and white pictures of shadows on cobblestones.

What I was in the mood for (as was Manuel) was drinking beer in a plaza, and that's what we did for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to return the bikes and head back to Buenos Aires for another 90 days.

By the town's main plaza, there was a cart selling fried food and drinks (including very cold beer), with some plastic tables on the sidewalk. We picked a table in the sun and leaned our bikes against a nearby tree. Manuel asked an old man at another table if the bikes would be ok like that, unlocked. "No pasa nada," the old man assured us. "Esto es Colonia." He informed us that, in Colonia, people didn't bother stealing old bikes and, after a pause, added "Aca roban los bancos," which either means that they rob banks or that they steal benches. We didn't clarify.

As one beer turned into 4 beers (we could pay with Argentine pesos, but we only had a 50 and, since they couldn't give us change in Argentine pesos, we decided it was better just to spend the whole 50 on beer rather than accumulate a bunch of Uruguayan pesos), our conversation wandered all over the place. At one point, Manuel administered a makeshift IQ test to me that was meant to resemble one that he'd been using in one of his psychology classes (it was all about finding patterns, and I found a lot of patterns, but not the right ones). In another moment, we were critiquing Argentine infrastructure.

It started with me teaching Manuel what the word "gutter" meant. I don't remember how it came up. Maybe I was trying to convince him that we should adopt a dog to save it from a life in the gutter. This is a safe bet, as I am often trying to convince him that we should adopt a dog. Other arguments have included "because they're cute" and "because I want one."

"What's a gutter?" he asked.
"Like, I don't know, maybe where they find you after the mafia kills you," I said.
"I don't think we really have a mafia in Argentina," he said. "It takes too much organization. We only have disorganized crime here."
I laughed and thought about another way to explain the essence of a gutter. "Ok, then, what the water from the street goes into."
"Ah, that sounds like something else you need organization for."

Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that I've been here for 2 years. I like it here, but it can also be frustrating. Argentina, like Colonia, while charming enough, is a little backwards in certain ways. There are some things that I don't think I'll ever fully get used to, like streets that flood and cars that treat you more like targets than obstacles at intersections and inflation rates that make me think of the Weimar Republic (where, so they say, if you went to a bar planning on drinking two glasses of beer, it would behoove you to order them both at the same time because if you waited to order the second one until you'd finished the first one, the price would have already gone up).

Some things, though, have become routine, like going back to Uruguay, over and over and over again. How many times, I wonder, does one have to renew her "temporary" status in a place before she becomes permanent?

Like Toilets that Flush Backwards

My grandmother Helen is pretty well-known among a certain circle of New York and Cleveland Jews and members of our family for sending people random junk in the mail. Often it is a newspaper clipping, her perception of your interest in which is not always clear. If you are lucky, she has scribbled an explanation on the back of the envelope -- a New York Times review of a play, for example, might be accompanied with a note like this: "Tony Kushner was your Uncle Hugh's roommate at Columbia, but Tony was mean to Hughie because he wasn't a homosexual." But more often than not, there is no such note, and you are left to guess why she has sent you a page full of real estate listings in Crown Heights or an advertisement for the sociology department at the New School (the latter, you suspect, may have been instigated by that one time you mentioned sociolinguistics in passing).

When visiting her in East Hampton, my brother showed her a drawing of an anime character he had copied from a graphic novel, and a week later she sent him an invitation to the opening of an exhibition on American painting that had taken place six months earlier in California (my brother lives in Virginia). One time she sent me a used bra that was at least 4 sizes too big for me. And I'm pretty sure my cousin Rebecca once got a pair of pantyhose with a hole in them.

Sometimes she does send something useful, but often with strange ideas as to how you should use it. Not too long ago, she sent me a small rubber cosmetics bag with an assortment of sample-sized eyeshadows, lipsticks, and mascaras inside -- the kind you get sometimes as a free gift when you buy other makeup -- along with a note suggesting I use the bag as a clutch when I go out dancing at night.

Once in a while, though, a real gem arrives. Shortly before returning to Buenos Aires, I received a package from her that, along with a bunch of crap I didn't want, contained an old necklace of hers that I actually thought looked pretty cool. Now, I was a bit conflicted at first about wearing the necklace, as it just so happens that this necklace is made out of ivory, which, at least in theory, I am against. But, like, a vegan friend of mine who once reasoned that it was OK for him to wear leather as long as it was vintage (invoking a logic that was based more on fashion, I believe, than ethics), I decided that it was OK for me to wear the necklace because the poachers responsible for the necklace were probably long gone by now and, therefore, posed no threat to the lives of any current or future elephants.

Plus, this necklace has actual magical powers.

At first, I thought it was just a good luck necklace. I was, after all, wearing this necklace when I took my laptop to the Apple store in order to purchase a new battery and, instead of charging me 150 dollars, the guy working at the genius bar gave me the battery for free, presumably just to be nice (my warranty on the previous battery had run out a long time ago).

As an isolated incident, of course, this does not prove that my necklace has any magical powers. Perhaps a stranger had recently given the genius bar guy a free car and he was simply paying it forward. Maybe he was just in a good mood. Maybe it was actually my cleavage that had magical powers.

But I was also wearing this necklace when I boarded my plane back to Buenos Aires and no one was seated next to me, giving me extra room to stretch out and sleep comfortably on the overnight flight.

Clearly, this necklace of mine had magical powers. And up to this point, it seemed that these powers were exclusively good.

Unfortunately, like toilets that flush backwards, my necklace's powers appear to reverse on the other side of the equator. I was wearing the necklace when I got off the plane and Manuel's brother's car wouldn't start. I was still wearing the necklace when, after getting the car running, Martin slammed on the brakes on the way out of the airport parking lot. We didn't hit the car in front of us, but the bag with my laptop in it slid off the seat next to me and hit the floor pretty hard.

At this point, it should have become clear to me that this necklace had ceased to be the good luck charm like it had been in the northern hemisphere, but was rather proving to be somewhat of a curse. But I left the necklace on and was still wearing it when we got home and I tried to turn on my computer and it wouldn't start.

Then I wore it to the MacStation, where the tech support guy informed me that, unlike at genius bars, at MacStatons, you have to pay 150 pesos just to have them look at your computer.

And I even wore it when I went back to get the diagnosis and was informed that not only did I need a new hard drive and would probably lose most of my data (only some of which is backed up, of course -- thanks, necklace), it would also take over a month for the new hard drive to arrive.

To make matters worse, soon after I got back to Buenos Aires, the city suffered some of the coldest temperatures it has seen in years.

I took off the necklace.

My First Essay on Pragmatics

While I've been home, one of the questions I've been getting the most from people is if Manuel and I ever experience any sort of language barrier. I answer that, generally speaking, no, we do not, and explain that Manuel grew up going to a bilingual school -- he even learned his colors in English before Spanish, for some reason.

But more than that, I think it's true, as Manuel himself once suggested, that when you live with someone for a while or are around them all the time, you end up establishing your own (inter)personal mini-language (regardless of whether or not you share the same native tongue), the components of which would not necessarily make automatic sense to the untrained ear, but which are unambiguous -- crystal clear -- to those in-the-know.

For a close group of friends of mine in college, our mini-language involved referring to objects by their colors. If I wanted Rina to hand me the blue blanket off the back of the couch, for instance, I might say, "Hey Rins, will you pass me the blue?" Someone unfamiliar with this way of speaking might respond with a, "Huh? The blue what?" but Rina would know exactly what I meant, just as I would know that if Sophie and I were making omelettes and she were to say, "I need the yellowish orange," I should scan the vicinity for the nearest yellowish orange object and then give her the bag of shredded cheddar cheese.

And so it is with Manuel and me. We've developed our own way of communicating, our own mini-language. For example, sometimes I make nouns into verbs, and he has gotten used to this. Now, it should be noted that, while among native English speakers, I've noticed, this practice is not all that uncommon (and even if I said "water me" or "beer me" to someone who didn't themself -- it should be a word, it really, really shoud -- say things like this, it would more or less make sense given the context), in Spanish (apparently), people just don't talk like that.

Nonetheless, when I ask Manuel, "me aguas?" or, "me cervezas?" he will pass me the water or beer without hesitating, albeit also without being quiet -- he will usually protest my bastardizing of his language by shouting, "Don't say that!" or, "La puta que te partio!" (roughly translated, "the whore who gave birth to you!")

Another aspect of our mini-language has to do with vocabulary. Despite Manuel's near-flawless English, his vocabulary is not without its holes -- for a long time, he didn't know the word "oven" and there are certain vegetables, like carrots and lettuce, that he either doesn't know or just doesn't bother to come up with mid-sentence. And so a lot of our conversations include sentences like this: "Baby, will you turn on the horno for the meat? I'm going to cut up the zanahorias and put them in the lechuga with the tomatoes."

For the most part, we get by just fine like this -- conversations primarily in English with Spanish words thrown in from here to there. Still, there are times when things do get lost in translation and communication does temporarily break down. For example, one night not too long ago, we had just finished a late (though not so late by Argentine standards) dinner and Manuel said that he was going to make some black tea, and did I want him to make me some, as well? I said no thank you, that I was going to go to bed soon and didn't want to have anything with caffeine in it.

To which he responded, "No, I asked if you wanted some tea."

"No, I don't want anything with caffeine in it," I said, not sure why I was having to repeat myself.

"No, no, no," he came back with. "I said, 'Do you want some TEA?'"

At this point, I began to suspect that something was amiss, but, like the toddler who foolishly reaches for the hot stove a second time, not expecting to get burned, I repeated yet again, more slowly and louder (because sometimes it seems like just raising the volume is enough to get your point across), "I. DON'T. WANT. CAFFEINE."

"But tea doesn't have caffeine in it," he said.

"Black tea sure as hell does," I said and thought, have you been living under a rock your whole life?

"No it doesn't," he said. "It has te-eine."

"What the fuck is te-eine?"

"Coffee has cafeina, and tea has teina." And this is how I learned that in Spanish there's a different word for the caffeine in coffee and the caffeine in tea.

"Well, not in English, it doesn't," I said.

In the end, it was relieving to know that it was just Argentina where my boyfriend had been living his whole life, not under a rock, but, as I confirmed with you, Candy, when I went to visit you in Princeton, regardless of the language in which you are speaking, the substances in question in coffee and tea are molecularly identical, so it's not a good idea to drink either one of them right before you go to bed.

In other words, what's in a name? That which we call caffeine by any other name would keep you up all night.

Groggy Thoughts Upon Returning to America

The flight from Buenos Aires to Houston got in around 5 a.m., and I went directly to the gate of my connecting flight to take a nap on the floor. I slept for a while, before being awakened by the voice of a woman nearby who was loudly telling her young child to stop crying (if I'd been in Argentina, I would have perhaps not understood her and have been able to tune it out, but -- sigh -- welcome back to the land of overheard conversations).

Sitting up and looking around, I noticed that the waiting area had filled up significantly in the time I'd been asleep, and I suddenly felt too self-conscious about being sprawled out on the floor in front of a bunch of people to go back to sleep. I decided to go buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee. This cost me less than three dollars, which didn't strike me as very much -- especially for an airport. Despite the small sum, I was allowed to pay with a credit card, which was a good thing, I realized as I fetched it from my wallet, since the only cash I had was pesos.

As I sat in the food court eating my doughnut, the feelings that came to me were mixed: comfort and convenience (the ease of my small talk with the immigration officer, paying with a credit card!), along with something akin to queasiness. The latter(est) perhaps had something to do with my lack of a good night's sleep, or the fact that my stomach had grown unaccustomed to dougnuts in its South American sabbatical, but it brought to mind the way I feel sometimes returning home from work when all the windows in the apartment have been shut all day. There's a closed -- cerrado -- quality, if not a smell, to the air.

Airports, I suppose, do physically have something in common with a shut-up apartment, but I had a feeling this feeling was more related to the announcement I'd heard as I was coming through security reminding all travelers that the current security warning level was "orange." For this reason, it was very important that everyone do their part by reporting any suspicious activity or behavior.

Perhaps I've been out of the country too long -- maybe it's all the Spanglish I've been speaking -- but I found it hard upon hearing this to get a clear idea of just how dangerous orange danger really was. Isn't it always a good idea -- common sense, even -- to report suspicious activity or behavior?

The only thing orange made me think of was how someone once told me that the most popular color for decorating doctor's office waiting rooms was orange because orange was a "neutral" color, that in general people have neither strongly positive nor strongly negative feelings toward the color. If this was true, did that make the current security warning level "indifferent"?

Was there some sort of color wheel involved in this system, I wondered, in which orange was more dangerous than yellow (and much more dangerous than purple), but less dangerous than red?

All ROY-G-BIVing aside, it ocurred to me that perhaps a good ole' fashioned numerical scale of 1-10 might provide a clearer reference point and leave less room for confusion. Case in point: While I was walking through the airport, a guy with a bunch of explosives strapped to his body passed me, but I was so caught up in my thoughts about doctors' offices and rainbows that I wasn't able to alert the proper authorities in time before he blew up the whole airport.

That didn't really happen, and I'm not writing to you from beyond the grave. It was just a joke. But as I was putting my shoes back on after going through security, I heard another announcement informing all passengers that any inappropriate jokes would not be taken lightly. And this is why, I think, the Houston aiport evoked my stinky cerrado apartment in the evenings -- though, who knows? Maybe the same kind of announcements are made in the Buenos Aires airport, where it's just easier for me to tune things out.

P.S. You know you've been out of the States too long when you get back and find yourself peeling apart two-ply toilet paper before using it. Because to not do so just seems wasteful...

addendum to the pot post

Although I did once see two policemen beating a man on the sidewalk, it's not entirely unjust to say that the police here will let you get away with murder-- if the price is right. In fact, you've probably heard that bribing the police to get away with minor infractions (inoffensive offenses) is about as common here as the glass-walled-in smoking sections in cafes, where you can watch the smokers smoking in their fog of smokey smoke from the safety of your own unadulterated air. But don't sit too close to the door, or you'll be smacked in the face with a backdraft-ish wave of secondhand smoke every time someone goes in or comes out of one of these pressurized hot boxes of tobacco.

While smoking pot has been decriminalized, it isn't legal. Especially smoking pot while operating a motor vehicle. The other night, a few of Manu's friends were doing just that (shame on them) when they were pulled over by the police. The offenders all consulted their billeteras and negotiated a payoff. Then, it was determined that the corner they were stopped at was too well-lit, and some arrangement was made like, go three blocks down that dark street over there and pull over and give us the money. Well, they'd gone about five blocks when the guy driving remembered he was supposed to be looking for a parking spot. At about the same time, the police car drove up next to them and one of the officers gestured out the window something like, oh, forget it, you dumb dead beats, and drove off. Apparently, they were too high to be bothered with.


Disclaimer: Let it be known that I, Sandy, am hereby in no way promoting this kind of behavior (kids, don't try this at home). It is dangerous. But, then again, so is war.

foxy ladies

Manu's madre came back from Germany last week and is staying with us until Thursday. She seems to think my Spanish has improved since she left in July, and she must not be wrong because not only was I able to understand her entire end of a phone conversation she had the other day while I sat across the room pretending to read (pero no soy chismosa -- de verdad!), but I was also able to participate in the 3-hour conversation she and I had after she hung up. Just me and her. For three hours. In Spanish.

I fumbled my way through some sentences (no doubt riddled with grammatical and syntactical errors), but mostly Cristina did the talking. Here is a translation of the story she told me:

The Saga of the Country Club Squatters

The house that Manu grew up in is about an hour outside the city in what they call a "country," which is a residential country club. Walled-in, security-guarded, and complete with two golf courses, seven polo fields, extensive horse stables, soccer fields, tennis courts, club pool, club house and restaurant, bar, shopping, a gas station, and a Coto (Walmart-ish, but more bougie), it's a good place to summer or raise children.

Now they're trying to sell the house (a slow process), and in the meantime they rent it. The woman who's been living in it for the past year or so is a rich politician of some sort, and very cheap (it turns out). She's littered the house with crappy furniture, which, in Cristina's opinion, makes it harder to sell, and what's more, she's stopped paying rent.

Let me explain: Living in this neighborhood isn't cheap. On top of the price of the house itself, monthly utilities are very high, and you have to pay membership fees that almost match the amount for the rent. This woman (her name, Alicia, I believe, should be drowned out by groggers like Hamen's on Purim), who knows that Cristina has to pay these fees if no one is renting the house, and who also knows that it is hard to rent a house like this in the winter, came to Cristina at the end of last summer with this proposal: she had to move out because she "couldn't afford" to keep paying the rent, but if Cristina would let her stay there rent-free until she found a new tenant, she would continue to pay the fees.

Cristina describes this woman as like a fox. I describe her as a bitch (a side note: one of my students is tickled that in English the words "bitch" and "witch" are so similar in sound and meaning, and that she can use both to describe her mother-in-law).

Well, Alicia (boo! hiss!) has been thus living rent-free since March or April. She complains to Cristina about the "poor condition" that the house is in and in the same breath offers to buy it from her for half the asking price. Now that summer is rolling around again, Cristina has decided enough is enough and is kicking her out. The only thing is, the woman said she'd move out two weeks ago and she's still there. My suggestion was to change the locks and sell the furniture.

This story makes Cristina sound like a pushover, but she's not. And this actually isn't the first time someone has tried to take advantage of her good will.

Some years ago, she was renting it to a similarly "foxy" woman, who was living there with her children and came to Cristina bemoaning her economical situation and begging to not pay rent for a few months. At the time, Manu and his brother and sister were all living with Cristina in a rented apartment in the city, and Cristina's response to her tenant was this: "If you don't pay me the rent, then I can't pay my rent. But I have no problem helping you out. If you can't pay the rent, I will just bring my children and we will all live together in the house" (it's a big house, and she wasn't bluffing).

The woman paid the rent.