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.

walking after midnight on scalabrini ortiz

On Scalabrini Ortiz, about halfway between our house and the hostel where Manu works, there's a sidewalk stand that sells flowers and incense and other fragrant things. It's inconspicous enough, nothing eye-catching to set it apart from any other flower stand in the city. Nothing famous-looking, no plaque marking it as the oldest, best, most traditional. No apparent need to stay open long hours to cater to hoards of life-long loyal patrons or swarms of tourists crowding around to catch sight of the "Famous Buenos Aires Man-Eating-Flower Stand" or the "Plaid-Clad, One-Armed Florist." There's nothing freak show or David Lynch about it. Nothing hyphenation-worthy, nothing special. No, nothing like that.

Still, as I was walking home from the hostel with Manu one night in the wee small hours of the morning, after having taken him dinner while he was working and stayed drinking cerveza until he got off, we passed this flower stand and it was open. All the surrounding storefronts were dark and locked, and it seemed to me odd that it was open at this time of night on a day of the week (Monday) when I could imagine little else open aside from the windows of drug dealers' vans, the legs of local transvestite prostitutes, and the McDonalds across the street. What did this flower and incense and who-knows-what-else stand have in common, I wondered, with said windows and legs and McDonalds?

locos por el porro: tell your children

This week, the Argentinian Supreme Court voted to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use by adults in private. According to Cabinet Chief Aníbal Fernández, the move will allow the government to focus its anti-drug efforts on traffickers instead of users, and allow users "to be treated as addicts instead of criminals." (http://www.buenosairesherald.com/BreakingNews/View/10082)

Despite my D.A.R.E. and Cartoon All-Stars education, I´m not particularly concerned that this new law will effect a Reefer Madness wave of pot-induced incidents of manslaughter, suicide, and rape in Buenos Aires. Rather, I doubt it will have much of an effect on anyone who hasn´t already been fined or forced to complete some sort of anti-drug program because a police officer caught them with a joint (as for those who have, I imagine it might make them a little less paranoid while smoking up... or, maybe not).

Nonetheless, I thought this was a good occasion to compile and share some vocabulary related to this now-slightly-less-illegal pastime. I consulted some local "addicts" and came up with the following list:

porro, faso- pot/weed

una vela, un cohete (literally, "missile"), un canuto, un churro (after the oblong tubular shaped pastry by the same name), un porro, porrito ("little cute porro"), un faso, un fasito ("little cute faso"), un paraguayo/paragua (from paraguay, conotation of being not strong; not to be confused with "paraguas," meaning umbrella), un pinito (one that smells like a little cute pine tree)- a joint

estar loco/reloco ("crazy/very crazy"), estar de la cabeza, estar del tomate (roughly, "out-of-your-mind high"; literally, "of the tomato"), estar fumado ("smoked"), estar de la nuca (nuca is the part of your head that meets the top back of your neck, this term comes from the idea of being punched in this location and subsequently knocked out), estar del orto (orto is a euphemism for anus meaning sunset), me pegó ("it hit me")- to be high

una tuca- roach (end of the joint)
tuquera- roach clip
un finito- really skinny joint
un troncho- very thick joint

la punta- the dealer

las sedas- the rolling papers

picar- to separate pot with one´s fingers in preparation for making a joint (there is probably a term for this in English, but I´m no expert, and "to separate pot with one´s fingers in preparation for making a joint" yielded nothing on urban dictionary)

armar un porro, etc.- to roll a joint

una seca- a drag/hit/toke

bajon- munchies

Now that you know the imporant vocabulary, you´re ready for some sentences. Let´s try speaking like a porteño!

"¿Me das una seca?"- "Can I have a hit?"

"Uh, ¡como tira!"- "Oh my, how it pulls!"

"Como pega este fasito!"- "How it does make me high, this little cute joint!"

"Estoy con bajon/ Estoy de bajon/ Tengo bajon/ Vamos a bajonear algo/ Estoy bajoneando pizza."- "I am with munchies/ I am of munchies/ I have munchies/ Let´s go munchies(verb) something/ I have the munchies for pizza."



Take that, Canada.

Of Meat and Meeting

Sometimes I wonder why I don´t have more friends. Then I interact with people.

Sunday night, Manu and I go out to dinner with one of my few sub-equatorial friends Meghan, her mother, who´s in town for the week, Meghan´s friend Danny, and Danny´s recently expatriated friend Felix. We all meet at a popular parilla in San Telmo that boasts meat so tender you can cut it with a spoon-- where, of course, I order fish. So when Felix at the other end of the table starts making the kind of sounds I´ve only ever heard through a wall when someone in another room was watching an adult film, I ask for a bite.

Sure, he says, let me get you a slice-- er, scoop. I return to my own plate and am squeezing lemon on my fish, when I overhear him whisper to Danny, "What´s her name again?" and I, instead of quietly continuing what I´m doing in politely feigned obvliousness, say, pretty loudly, "Jeanette."

Felix turns the same color as the inside of his steak, and I begin apologizing profusely, explaining that the only reason I remember his name is that when I met him yesterday he was talking about how he´d just come from a store named Felix, where he´d bought a t-shirt that said Felix, which he showed me. And then I start talking about the intro psych class I took in college and am rambling on about pneumonic devices and how repetition, like rhymes and acronyms, helps commit things to memory, when I stop myself.

"I´m awkward," I say.

An awkward moment of silence follows.

"Really awkward," I say, realizing that that´s not the best way to break an awkward moment of silence, as another awkward moment of silence follows that is about as unending (and certainly as awkward) as what happens when you divide one by three on a calculator. An era of silence, more like.

Eventually, Meghan´s mom starts talking about the colored antique soda bottles she bought at the fería to accent her newly redocorated bar room back in New Jersey, and how she got the idea from Better Homes and Gardens, or was it House Beautiful? Felix passes me the promised bite of his meat, the consumption of which, indeed, is not unlike an orgasm-- though, in this case, kind of like an orgasm interrupted by your mom walking in. I eat some of Manu´s fries, but don´t finish my fish.

In the taxi home, I´m still thinking about that intro psych class. Maybe I should buy Felix a bottle of fernet, and he can remember me with a limerick:

I once met a girl named Jeanette,
Whose name I did soon forget,
But with this here fernet,
I´ll remember her yet,
Jeanette, Jeanette, Jeanette

Then again, "I once met a girl named Jeanette, who was awkward," has a certain ring to it.

Que los cumplas feliz!

Yesterday was Manu's mom's birthday (and today's my mom's birthday -- hi, mom!). Just as I stereotypically imagine any Latin American, Italian, Greek, or Jewish family function should be, a birthday in Manu's family means a gaggle of family members sitting, standing, and stumbling around a giant table drinking wine and eating meat. Just as the family members are many, so are these birthdays frequent.

Manu dislikes these gatherings. He moped when his Tio Carlos called us lovebirds and seemed not thrilled about the fact that everyone was comparing him to Freud because of his beard and round glasses, and the fact that he studies psychology. "I'm not even studying psychoanalysis! Besides, Freud didn't have long hair," he said, and then frowned at me when I patted him sympathetically on the head and called him my poor Freudito. Then he skulked off to pet the dog. I asked him if it wasn't a bit rude to hide like that, and he responded that, well, not really. His family is used to him disappearing-- indeed, I've heard many times how, growing up, he was always the child who got lost. "Mariana and Martin would follow Cristina like little ducklings," I'm told by various relatives, while Manu wandered off to inspect a dead bird or stick his finger in a crack on the sidewalk. Mom and ducklings would turn a corner, and, oops.

Likewise, he's always been protective of his personal space. Before he could speak in words, he had a vocabulary that consisted of the sounds "la-la" and "ka-ka." "La-la" conveyed favorableness, while "ka-ka" was distaste. He would carry around a big stick, and if someone came too close to him, he would whack them with it and shout, "ka-ka!"

When it comes to extended family, I grew up with plenty of personal space. My cousins, etc. are spread thin (there really aren't very many of them to be spread) from sea to shining sea, and just about the only time we were all ever in the same place was when someone died.

Perhaps that's why I, unlike my better half, actually enjoy these My-Big-Fat-Greek-Wedding-type get-togethers that revolve around something other than a funeral (though, I'll admit, the seventeen of us huddled in the state park to illegally scatter Grandma's ashes by the Elfin Forest after telling the park ranger that we'd been singing glory, glory, hallelujah just for the hell of it, was actually kind of fun). My favorite part of the birthday party was when Cristina opened her present from the kids and us novios: a pair of tall brown leather boots, with a bit of a heel. She liked them a lot, and they promptly got passed around the giant table, so that all the uncles could take their turn smelling them and pulling on them to demonstrate what a very nice gift they were indeed-- the real thing, made of strong, fragrant leather. They're Argentines, after all. They should know.

Little boobie

Mi amore, flor de primavera, Sandy,

I realize this post will be so heavily laden with inside jokes that it may make no sense to anyone but you, and it may questionably make sense to you since I woke up on an airplane at 6 this morning and haven't slept since.  

I decided to go to the gym and a Gotham Magazine party for Mary Lousie Parker's new play and magazine cover today rather than unpacking and putting photos up.  I then realized that you have all of the best photos from the trip and will have to look through mine for some gems to barter a trade with.

It is weird to be back in New York and having every moment of my life planned through Saturday evening (I refuse to even speak of a time past then at this point).  It is also weird to not be able to say random words in Spanish, though I've kind of still been doing that today.

For the record, my dad does not think  you broke the internet in Valparaiso.

More later, and photos later, not sure of when since I need to pack and sleep and oyyyy no me quiero trabajar manana!!

Besos y besotos y muchas gracias para los dos semanos

Ciao,

Candy