Enough with the cock and balls and the vagination.
Mastication.
I don’t even know what that means.
Actually, I do in this case, but three syllable words can get a little tricky for me.
So I keep it simple. I try to anyway.
I got a friend who’s wicked mad good with the wordplay game.
He sits silently and observes most of the time but every once in a while he busts out with all his intelligence.
Which makes me wonder exactly what that word means.
It’s a big word for starters, and for finishers it’s all relative, isn’t it?
Not.
A tight taught knot we’ve got already!
Fucking Irish.
I mean Fighting Irish, is what I ment to say.
Notre Dame.
IRA.
St. Patty’s.
Some river in Chicago or Boston getting dyed red.
I mean green…red wouldn’t make any sense!
Four leaf clover.
Munchkin’s.
Not Munchkins, I mean, those little dudes.
Dwarfs? No, LEPRACHAUN!
Damn that was difficult to get out!
And that, my friends are the immediate associations I have to Ireland.
Pretty pathetic, perhaps.
But perhaps it is you, with your eveil eyes, that chose to interpret it that way.
Enough with the cyclical dialogue.
Ok.
FWD.
Always try to keep moving forward.
Cuz you’re working hard to go fwd and if you pause to try something or start thinking about the past, you might get held up.
I’ve never been held up before.
I’ve lived vicariously through the movies, on both sides, but never in real life.
Speaking of dreams, I had one the other day where I made out with a couple of sisters.
Just when it was getting good, the dream would shift.
And then there was a rivalry thing going on and that kind of made the dream a little less exciting.
Boring.
Stupid.
Lame.
Duh.
I was trying to add words in the same theme and each word had to be shorter than the one before, and so on and so on.
But my vocab and my options were used up pretty quick.
Pretty quick ejaculation problem.
I tend to ejaculate very quickly.
It’s a very strange phenomenon because in actuality I either e-jack really quickly or I last for hours.
I’m usually drunk when the latter happens.
Whenever I read “latter” in a text I have to think about which option would make more sense because I have a hard time remembering what “latter” means…the first one or the second one?
And then I also associte it with “ladder” which is an imaeg I have to fight off when I’m trying to figure out number 1 or number 2.
I go number 2 quite a bit, and mostly I enjoy it.
A separate sort of piece.
I read that book in high school. Maybe most of us did.
Finny.
Funny Finny, sounds like Fanny.
Fanny is to pack.
Fanny Pack.
Knick knack patty wak, through a dog a bone.
I have no idea what I’m saying but I know I’ve heard it from somewhere.
I used to say cock in the butt all the time, forgetting that it was a reference to a porno website I had been visiting, and I was so scared that someone might find out about my habits.
Interenet habits.
Internet clothing. (from English to French!)
You are boring.
No you’re not and neither am I, but nonetheless I’m bored right now.
I’m a fake, I’m a frog.
I sat across from him in a pub off the high street near UCL, and he kept saying “I feel like a frog” and I asked him to repeat it and he would, with a perfectly straight face. It wasn’t til later that I realized he wasn’t saying frog.
He was saying “fraud”. “I feel like a fraud”. And then I breathed a little easier because my friend wasn’t weird or strange, I had just heard him wrong.
Wrong turn, no left turn, no no no.
Enough with the no’s already.
No’s.
Nose.
Where do I wanna go with this one.
Funny silly cakes.
I’ll slap you silly you little cream filled doughnut.
By the way, goodnight and
I think
I
May
Be fall
Ing
In
LoVE
Wit
You.
I said maybe.
Word to your moms.
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Chapter 38: Bills, Shawarma, the Supermarket, and other mis-adventures!
It was three pm when I started. I told myself that at 4pm I'd jump into the shower and get to the other stuff I had to take care of today. But by 6pm I was still sitting here at the computer. So, to be fair, I was setting myself up for disaster-but whatever, here is what happened next...
...at 6:05 I jumped into the shower. I had a deadline at 7pm, but I had waited till the last minute.
By 6:12 i was locking my door on the way out of the apartment. I remember now hearing a funny "click" but I didn't think anything of it at the time and I went on my way. Here was my challenge: I had to pay bills for the first time here in Buenos Aires, and I had to get it done by 7pm, when the "rapi pago" joints close for the night. That was the main challenge, but there were two more challenges I had to face within this 38 minute time frame: 1) get money out of the ATM, and 2) find a place where I could actually pay the bill. having been in BA for a while, I'd heard of "rapipago" and "pagofacil", but I'd never actually gone to one, and wasn't sure where the most convenient and close location to me was.
First of all, let me say that it is absolutely impossible to get money out of an ATM in BA. First of all, they're called "cajeros automaticos", secondly, everything here is done in cash, thirdly they have limits of about 350 pesos (approx US $110), and finally, atm's are nowhere to be found. It's not like in the States where you can find any 7-11 or 24hr. deli type joint and take out cash...here, unless you're on a big avenue or something they are hard to come by. So, with that in mind...
...My plan of action, with the 38 minutes I had left, was to deal with each problem one at a time. My first objective was to get cash. And so I started for the only ATM I knew that was close (approximately 8 blocks away). This was risky because I'd played this game once before and what had started out as a quick 15 minute excursion to get cash had turned into a 2 hr ordeal as one cash machine after another was "out of service". Super frustrating and agonizingly typical in this part of the world. Nonetheless, I pursued this option as it was my best bet. Luckily, once I got to the ATM, I was able to take out money and that part of the saga was over.
My next objective was then to find a place where I could pay my bloody bills. I started for the one Kiosko (deli/convenience store) I knew that was only an L shaped block away thinking that would be a good place to start my investigations. When I got there, however, it was uncharacteristically busy, with one guy on the phone and and a bunch of people inside. Working with a time limit, I had developed a very rapid pace and before I knew it I had walked right by the Kiosko. Luckily I was walking towards a major avenue and I thought that would be a good place to start anyway. When I got to the major avenue I was somewhat disapointed not to be immediately rewarded with a rapipago within seeing distance. Again, with the momentum, I made a quick decision to take a left and continued my journey...
There was a police officer standing outside a major supermarket that I secretly hoped would have a pagofacil service. Being that it didn't, I kindly asked him if he could direct me to one. He motioned one lock 4 blocks east and 1 block south. I thanked him and continued my journey with his directions in mind.
The trip was taking longer than I had anticipated and at one point I realized that I had taken the police officer's word for it, without question, and that my short-term fate would lie in his hands. Not that you can really trust police officers anywhere else in the world, but here they are particularly corrupt and scary. But my sudden hesitations were suddenly abated when I found the joint he had described.
It was half pharmacy, half bill-paying joint. Interesting. Of course, at 10 of 7pm, I find out that their system is down. God damn-it! I ask for another option, another joint. I am pointed to a location that I had bloody passed on the way over here in the first place...but with no assurance that it would still be open. Keeping an open mind, I try for the new place. At the very least, it's on the way home. I finally reach the joint, and to my astonishment it is not only open, but ready to serve me! And so, friends, after all this excitement, I was finally permitted to hand over cash and pay my mother-fucking bills!
I stepped out of the joint with what seemed to be a weight lifted off my shoulders. I had not been a complete deadbeat today-though it was only in the nick of time, I had managed at least to pay bills today! I walked the streets of Buenos Aires once again as a free man!
Along with my shoulders, my spirits lifted. I was trying to make my way home by or through streets I didn't yet know in order to do something and learn something new. I was soon rewarded...I passed by a joint and something about it caught my eye. When something is even the slightest bit different in Buenos Aires, it tends to catch your eye. This is because, after the honey-moon phase of course, everything in BA is terribly bland. After you get over the idea of how good the steak, choripan, and chimichuri are here, you face the music and realize that everything here lacks originality and flavor. And so, i pass this joint, and I know there is something different about it. Upon closer observation I realize that my attention has peaked because it is a middle-eastern joint. Fucking taboule and shawarma and kebe and all sorts of flavors await me in this little take-away joint.
I have a bit of a history with a young lady from Jordan, and so I tend to be quite eager to not only order and devour a tasty combination of foods and flavors but also to throw a couple of words out in Arabic and watch in amazement as they are amazed by my linguistic skills. This was not to be in Buenos Aires. Firstly, I'm pretty sure that today I visited the only middle-eastern shawarma joint that doesn't have shawarma during all opening hours. Typically Argentine, I'm afraid. Secondly, I stared down through the glass into a cage where they kept little tupperwares of taboule and started to realize that my expectations had been way too high. In the spirit of adventure and trying something new, I ordered it anyway. Pretty soon the suspiciously Argentine middle-eastern man was putting the little container into a plastic bag for me. He asked me "what else" and I told him nothing but some utensils to take with me. But guess what, they don't have plastic forks for take out orders! Fine I said, give me some pita bread so at least I can scoop this shit out of this crappy container with half-assed taboule in it (you can imagine what I actually said and what i just thought to myself)! He motioned to another counter where there was a huge stack of pita bread and told me that they only sell it, they don't give it away for free. "Go fuck yourself" comes to mind but at this point I understood that my whole fantasy had gone to shit and I might as well just pay for the bread and get the hell out of there.
And so, a few moments later, i'm walkng down the street eating a pita bread filled with shitty taboule that's leaking onto the sidewalk. I was so hungry at that point that I still managed to find joy in consuming the bloody thing. But in doing so, my mind shifted to another peculiar point...people here don't eat on the street. What I mean is that it is very rare for you to walk down the street and see someone eating a slice of pizza, or an apple-or anything. In a previous conversation i had had, this point was attributed to the fact that the Argentines take their time with meals, and enjoy the food and company they're in. But my last stop was NYC and eating my lunch between destinations was routine, if not encouraged, and I was getting tired of people staring at me. God damn I needed something to go right today!
2 B cont'd.
...at 6:05 I jumped into the shower. I had a deadline at 7pm, but I had waited till the last minute.
By 6:12 i was locking my door on the way out of the apartment. I remember now hearing a funny "click" but I didn't think anything of it at the time and I went on my way. Here was my challenge: I had to pay bills for the first time here in Buenos Aires, and I had to get it done by 7pm, when the "rapi pago" joints close for the night. That was the main challenge, but there were two more challenges I had to face within this 38 minute time frame: 1) get money out of the ATM, and 2) find a place where I could actually pay the bill. having been in BA for a while, I'd heard of "rapipago" and "pagofacil", but I'd never actually gone to one, and wasn't sure where the most convenient and close location to me was.
First of all, let me say that it is absolutely impossible to get money out of an ATM in BA. First of all, they're called "cajeros automaticos", secondly, everything here is done in cash, thirdly they have limits of about 350 pesos (approx US $110), and finally, atm's are nowhere to be found. It's not like in the States where you can find any 7-11 or 24hr. deli type joint and take out cash...here, unless you're on a big avenue or something they are hard to come by. So, with that in mind...
...My plan of action, with the 38 minutes I had left, was to deal with each problem one at a time. My first objective was to get cash. And so I started for the only ATM I knew that was close (approximately 8 blocks away). This was risky because I'd played this game once before and what had started out as a quick 15 minute excursion to get cash had turned into a 2 hr ordeal as one cash machine after another was "out of service". Super frustrating and agonizingly typical in this part of the world. Nonetheless, I pursued this option as it was my best bet. Luckily, once I got to the ATM, I was able to take out money and that part of the saga was over.
My next objective was then to find a place where I could pay my bloody bills. I started for the one Kiosko (deli/convenience store) I knew that was only an L shaped block away thinking that would be a good place to start my investigations. When I got there, however, it was uncharacteristically busy, with one guy on the phone and and a bunch of people inside. Working with a time limit, I had developed a very rapid pace and before I knew it I had walked right by the Kiosko. Luckily I was walking towards a major avenue and I thought that would be a good place to start anyway. When I got to the major avenue I was somewhat disapointed not to be immediately rewarded with a rapipago within seeing distance. Again, with the momentum, I made a quick decision to take a left and continued my journey...
There was a police officer standing outside a major supermarket that I secretly hoped would have a pagofacil service. Being that it didn't, I kindly asked him if he could direct me to one. He motioned one lock 4 blocks east and 1 block south. I thanked him and continued my journey with his directions in mind.
The trip was taking longer than I had anticipated and at one point I realized that I had taken the police officer's word for it, without question, and that my short-term fate would lie in his hands. Not that you can really trust police officers anywhere else in the world, but here they are particularly corrupt and scary. But my sudden hesitations were suddenly abated when I found the joint he had described.
It was half pharmacy, half bill-paying joint. Interesting. Of course, at 10 of 7pm, I find out that their system is down. God damn-it! I ask for another option, another joint. I am pointed to a location that I had bloody passed on the way over here in the first place...but with no assurance that it would still be open. Keeping an open mind, I try for the new place. At the very least, it's on the way home. I finally reach the joint, and to my astonishment it is not only open, but ready to serve me! And so, friends, after all this excitement, I was finally permitted to hand over cash and pay my mother-fucking bills!
I stepped out of the joint with what seemed to be a weight lifted off my shoulders. I had not been a complete deadbeat today-though it was only in the nick of time, I had managed at least to pay bills today! I walked the streets of Buenos Aires once again as a free man!
Along with my shoulders, my spirits lifted. I was trying to make my way home by or through streets I didn't yet know in order to do something and learn something new. I was soon rewarded...I passed by a joint and something about it caught my eye. When something is even the slightest bit different in Buenos Aires, it tends to catch your eye. This is because, after the honey-moon phase of course, everything in BA is terribly bland. After you get over the idea of how good the steak, choripan, and chimichuri are here, you face the music and realize that everything here lacks originality and flavor. And so, i pass this joint, and I know there is something different about it. Upon closer observation I realize that my attention has peaked because it is a middle-eastern joint. Fucking taboule and shawarma and kebe and all sorts of flavors await me in this little take-away joint.
I have a bit of a history with a young lady from Jordan, and so I tend to be quite eager to not only order and devour a tasty combination of foods and flavors but also to throw a couple of words out in Arabic and watch in amazement as they are amazed by my linguistic skills. This was not to be in Buenos Aires. Firstly, I'm pretty sure that today I visited the only middle-eastern shawarma joint that doesn't have shawarma during all opening hours. Typically Argentine, I'm afraid. Secondly, I stared down through the glass into a cage where they kept little tupperwares of taboule and started to realize that my expectations had been way too high. In the spirit of adventure and trying something new, I ordered it anyway. Pretty soon the suspiciously Argentine middle-eastern man was putting the little container into a plastic bag for me. He asked me "what else" and I told him nothing but some utensils to take with me. But guess what, they don't have plastic forks for take out orders! Fine I said, give me some pita bread so at least I can scoop this shit out of this crappy container with half-assed taboule in it (you can imagine what I actually said and what i just thought to myself)! He motioned to another counter where there was a huge stack of pita bread and told me that they only sell it, they don't give it away for free. "Go fuck yourself" comes to mind but at this point I understood that my whole fantasy had gone to shit and I might as well just pay for the bread and get the hell out of there.
And so, a few moments later, i'm walkng down the street eating a pita bread filled with shitty taboule that's leaking onto the sidewalk. I was so hungry at that point that I still managed to find joy in consuming the bloody thing. But in doing so, my mind shifted to another peculiar point...people here don't eat on the street. What I mean is that it is very rare for you to walk down the street and see someone eating a slice of pizza, or an apple-or anything. In a previous conversation i had had, this point was attributed to the fact that the Argentines take their time with meals, and enjoy the food and company they're in. But my last stop was NYC and eating my lunch between destinations was routine, if not encouraged, and I was getting tired of people staring at me. God damn I needed something to go right today!
2 B cont'd.
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Buenos Aires Chapter 1/2 (Half)
I arrived in Buenos Aires on March 11, 2007 on a warm fall afternoon. My buddy was coming in the same day but his flight had been delayed out of Houston. And so there I was, sitting outside the terminal at Ezeiza, watching my new life unravel before me. Of course that sounds a bit dramatic but when something is so new it's like your senses themselves are hyper-sensitive. And so I set about hyper-sensitizing things. One of the things I was hyper-sensitizing was a beautiful American woman sitting not twenty feet from me on the same uncomfortable metal barrier. She was literally having a panic attack on her cell-phone...apparently whoever she had come to visit hadn't come to pick her up at the airport and she was extremely upset. More than angry, she seemed like she was gonna lose it. I contemplated going over to her and trying to calm her down because it was obvious everything was going to be ok. It was somewhat more exciting to think about going over to her instead of actually doing so.
In my daydream I am whisking her away in a taxi and soon we are in the city, checking into a hotel I couldn't afford in reality, and then we are a blur of champagne and dinner and dancing and hotel room sexy boom boom.
Every now and then she starts yelling on the cell phone again and I am suddenly jerked out of my dreamy state. Which is good in a way because I have to start the fantasy all over again, and I can make it better than the last one!
One of the subsequent daydreams involves a motorcycle, a vineyard, and a naughty young lady who didn't wear underwear under her dress. As you can imagine in the dream I am driving this motorcycle and she's holding on to me, and I can't stop thinking about her vagina, and we stop numerous times along the road overlooking the hills and everything is love and passion. But I will have to go to war soon. And then our passion will be cut short. And then I'm not sure if I return many years later or if the actual story is about the man she meets while I'm away. I must be distracted because I'm losing momentum on this fantasy.
And now I know why...a burly young Argentine has just sat next to me. He sits so close that at first I think he's got me mixed up with someone else. I kind of smile to myself, waiting for him to turn to talk to me and realize I am not at all the person he thought I was. That's always funny. But soon I am disconcerted as an other Argentine man comes and sits next to him, and they sit and smoke and talk and totally ignore me. Little did i know and soon was I to find out that the concept of personal space is somewhat lost on the Argentine people. So now, instead of daydreaming about a beautiful woman in the imaginary hills my focus shifts to the concept of personal space and how it seems rather lost on these two portly portenos. Pretty soon they're making vulgar comments about the American yelling into her phone and all my hopes and dreams are officially shattered. They have stolen her away from me.
In a desperate measure to move on from this setback, I pull out my book that I was excited to buy and read (Flags of our Fathers) when i left the states. It's totally boring and not at all what I expected. I can't remember why now, but either way I put it back into my bag and sit pouting for a while.
I miss Monica. Monica is the imaginary girlfriend I have left behind in the States while I pursue this Argentinian adventure. Monica would have understood me. That's what was so great about her, she was the only one who truly understood me.
We met in the lobby area of a rest stop between Washington D.C. and New York City. I was bored and sucking down some chicken tenders from Burger King, trying to finish them off quickly so that I could be on my way. And so there I was staring out the window to the parking lot, completely in my own world, and up comes this young lady in a yellow spring dress.She says "Hello" and then kind of giggles shyly and laughs confidently. A very strange combination.
I must admit I was a little taken aback at first but pretty soon we were laughing and talking in the middle of the lobby, having a grand old time. Very strange in retrospect, I must admit.
Stranger still is the fact that she ended up hitching a ride with me the rest of the way up to the City. I can' t for the life of me remember how or why she needed a ride or even convinced me to take her with me. That will remain one of life's great mysteries.
But anyway, that was over two years ago now, and once we were together we never looked back. To be honest the first 6months were the best-that's when we were at our best together. And since then we've both been waiting for the next move. We were very open about it, you know that we loved each other but that it would soon be time to part ways, at least for a while.
And now that she's gone I miss her. I wonder if I'll miss her less with time. Previous experience would suggest it, but she was different. My little Monica.
Well, time will tell, I suppose. And now time has passed and it's time for me to get up from this metal barrier and go meet my friend who should be coming through customs at any moment. Well, it just goes to show you...that's silly that doesn't even make any sense. Nothing is going anywhere right now and it certainly isn't showing me anything. I just thought it might sound good to say that. But it's not that smart is it? What I'm trying to say is that I've just met up with my friend now and we have to go haggle for a fair price for a taxi to take us into town. What I'm really trying to say I guess is welcome. Welcome to Buenos Aires!
In my daydream I am whisking her away in a taxi and soon we are in the city, checking into a hotel I couldn't afford in reality, and then we are a blur of champagne and dinner and dancing and hotel room sexy boom boom.
Every now and then she starts yelling on the cell phone again and I am suddenly jerked out of my dreamy state. Which is good in a way because I have to start the fantasy all over again, and I can make it better than the last one!
One of the subsequent daydreams involves a motorcycle, a vineyard, and a naughty young lady who didn't wear underwear under her dress. As you can imagine in the dream I am driving this motorcycle and she's holding on to me, and I can't stop thinking about her vagina, and we stop numerous times along the road overlooking the hills and everything is love and passion. But I will have to go to war soon. And then our passion will be cut short. And then I'm not sure if I return many years later or if the actual story is about the man she meets while I'm away. I must be distracted because I'm losing momentum on this fantasy.
And now I know why...a burly young Argentine has just sat next to me. He sits so close that at first I think he's got me mixed up with someone else. I kind of smile to myself, waiting for him to turn to talk to me and realize I am not at all the person he thought I was. That's always funny. But soon I am disconcerted as an other Argentine man comes and sits next to him, and they sit and smoke and talk and totally ignore me. Little did i know and soon was I to find out that the concept of personal space is somewhat lost on the Argentine people. So now, instead of daydreaming about a beautiful woman in the imaginary hills my focus shifts to the concept of personal space and how it seems rather lost on these two portly portenos. Pretty soon they're making vulgar comments about the American yelling into her phone and all my hopes and dreams are officially shattered. They have stolen her away from me.
In a desperate measure to move on from this setback, I pull out my book that I was excited to buy and read (Flags of our Fathers) when i left the states. It's totally boring and not at all what I expected. I can't remember why now, but either way I put it back into my bag and sit pouting for a while.
I miss Monica. Monica is the imaginary girlfriend I have left behind in the States while I pursue this Argentinian adventure. Monica would have understood me. That's what was so great about her, she was the only one who truly understood me.
We met in the lobby area of a rest stop between Washington D.C. and New York City. I was bored and sucking down some chicken tenders from Burger King, trying to finish them off quickly so that I could be on my way. And so there I was staring out the window to the parking lot, completely in my own world, and up comes this young lady in a yellow spring dress.She says "Hello" and then kind of giggles shyly and laughs confidently. A very strange combination.
I must admit I was a little taken aback at first but pretty soon we were laughing and talking in the middle of the lobby, having a grand old time. Very strange in retrospect, I must admit.
Stranger still is the fact that she ended up hitching a ride with me the rest of the way up to the City. I can' t for the life of me remember how or why she needed a ride or even convinced me to take her with me. That will remain one of life's great mysteries.
But anyway, that was over two years ago now, and once we were together we never looked back. To be honest the first 6months were the best-that's when we were at our best together. And since then we've both been waiting for the next move. We were very open about it, you know that we loved each other but that it would soon be time to part ways, at least for a while.
And now that she's gone I miss her. I wonder if I'll miss her less with time. Previous experience would suggest it, but she was different. My little Monica.
Well, time will tell, I suppose. And now time has passed and it's time for me to get up from this metal barrier and go meet my friend who should be coming through customs at any moment. Well, it just goes to show you...that's silly that doesn't even make any sense. Nothing is going anywhere right now and it certainly isn't showing me anything. I just thought it might sound good to say that. But it's not that smart is it? What I'm trying to say is that I've just met up with my friend now and we have to go haggle for a fair price for a taxi to take us into town. What I'm really trying to say I guess is welcome. Welcome to Buenos Aires!
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