Who’s Running Away?: A Buenos Aires Birthday

Written by Steph

This is part three of Alex Pollack’s adventures in Argentina (my favorite installment so far). Be sure to check out parts one and two.

It’s a black-blue December night and I’m sitting on a wide flanked step on the patio stairway of Milion, an elegant-spired mansion turned cocktail bar with French doors opening to a backyard garden of moss and ivy, and threaded beads of yellow light splashing halos over tiny tables of kissing couples.

by operatiecreatie

I take a slow swig off my bottle of Corona and squeeze my legs to allow the waiters to pass me down the stairway. They wear the blue-and-white stripes of the national futbol jersey, as if to suggest that in Buenos Aires, serving drinks is a contact sport. To my right sits a redheaded guy from Norway with his own Corona; his name is John, and only minutes ago did we shake hands and introduce ourselves to each other. “And it’s your birthday?” he said. “Yep,” I told him. Twenty-five. I’m twenty-five years old.

John bought me the beer I hold in my hand. I celebrate his generosity by starting a conversation on a subject unfettered by cultural barriers, a subject in which 87% of the world’s population has an opinion: Tiger Woods.

“Blondes and big boobs,” I say. “He’s got range.”

“On the golf course, too,” Don says.

We’re soon joined by a crowd of internationals, young people from Holland, Turkey, Sweden, Germany, Australia, and the UK, all invited to my impromptu birthday party by Lil, a gregarious British Indian with a small body and a big attitude. She had collected the email addresses and the phone numbers of our classmates at Expanish, and had quickly spread the word that it was Alex’s (“Who’s Alex?”) birthday. Since I’d only been in Buenos Aires for two days, most of my classmates were getting to know me as the birthday chico.

“I’ve heard a lot because she is from Sweden,” says Aron, who identifies himself as Iranian, but possesses authority on Tiger Woods’ wife because he was born in Sweden. “She is a beautiful woman,” he says. “She doesn’t deserve it!” With a measured but convincing passion, Aron defends the sanctity of Elin Nordegren as if she’s Sweden’s number-one export. Mel from Australia has a different take: “Tiger Woods? I thought he died or something in a car crash.” On the night of my twenty-fifth birthday, I’m bonding with strangers from different nations with the help of a famous golfer’s “transgressions.” Thanks, Tiger.

Lil approaches me with a getting-tipsy curl to her lips. “Alles Gute… zum.” She pauses. “Geburtstag!” she finally says, “That’s happy birthday in German!” Lil’s taken it upon herself to ask the guests how to say happy birthday in their native tongues, and then come to me with her findings. I am struggling to remember everyone’s name: Is John from Norway actually Don? Is Mark from the UK actually John? Rather than worry, I find myself concluding, “There’s the Swedish guy” or “That’s the Iranian girl.” It’s as if the UN has set up shop on the back patio of a cocktail bar in Buenos Aires.

“So, what are you running away from?” Lil asks me.

I turn to see her sitting next to me on the stairway. She pulls down her zebra-print dress over her brown legs. I laugh at her question, not because it embarrasses me, but because it brings up something I’ve thought about: travelling to escape. That impulse brought me to South Korea two years ago, but it’s not what brings me to Argentina; I’m here for a month, and then it’s back to the grind of graduate school in Orlando. I’m not running away, but Lil is, from a relationship gone sour and a job gone bad. I wonder who else here has such stories? Who else is running?

My birthday party contingent moves on to Club Bahrein, where the music bleats and bloops f-you loud and beer-drinkers push through throngs of shimmy-shakers.

I get a taste like that of a little pine cone in my throat. Clubbing is not not my thing: why did I come here?

I’d like to have a girlfriend. That’s what I’m running from or towards, thinking that Buenos Aires will offer the panacea for my romantic inertia. I’m no dinosaur, but the question of who’s next at twenty-five years old is pulling on my insides. I don’t feel like dancing.

♦♦♦

Three nights later, I’m dancing. Chalk it up to two shots of Absolut and a “why not?” shrug.

It’s the end-of-the-year fiesta for Expanish faculty and students and it’s happening at Fusion Bar, a basement watering hole in the Hostel Suites Florida Hostel. The lights are flashing strobes and the music is a mix of Gloria Estefan and Spanish acts with whom I’m not familiar. I smell body odor from the sweaty and the sleeveless, and in the dank corner of the club, I see Argentines making out with each other. I’m doing a variation of The Robot, but cooler, my arms swinging like mechanical chainsaws, starting and stopping and starting again near, but with a safe distance, from a group of young Argentine women in white dresses.

One of the women is small and short and expressive, her dark features blurring into a ball of energy, first laughing and pointing at my dancing and then mimicking my robotic moves. “Come se llama?” I ask her through the noise. Her name is Natalia, and when I tell her my age (“veinticinco!”), she tells me she’s older than that. We make small talk in Spanish and she understands me, and I understand her until I ask her if she has Facebook and her answer is, “dos hijos.”

“Que?” I ask, leaning low to reach her cheek.

“Tengo dos hijos!”

“Oh,” I say. “Oh, lo comprendo!”

She has two kids.

We agree to meet for an intercambio, or language exchange practice. Though this isn’t a love connection, I’ve at least conjured up a little activity as a freshly-minted twenty-five year old. Where the opportunity will come next, I don’t know, but I got my running shoes on.