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!