5.00am, Saturday May 16, airport ....I actually get to the party part

Shit. I am at the airport way too early. It is 5.00am and my flight is at 8.45. 6.30 is when I wanted to arrive here - by bus. However, W couldn´t get an answer over the phone to her inquiry as to whether the bus that goes to the airport runs all night and no one else seems to know. W thought it best I take a taxi, a very expensive option at $75 pesos. (Nothing I paid for on this trip so far came anywhere near to that price.) The bus takes two hours to get to the airport so I left myself two hours. The taxi took 20 minutes. I could have kept dancing to a ´90s pop performer for another hour and a half. Since, as I explained to W, Australians begin and end their nights out a bit earlier, I had lost it by 4am, forcing my zombie sways to resemble dancing.

The ´party´ that we were at involved a weird drag queen show with a Jewish theme. It was not really my kind of music but I felt like I was in a movie about someone going to a club in Buenos Aires, what with its dark maroon tin roof and lowered circular dance floor, huge, a rounded balcony, a stage with curtains and TV screens, and a dance floor littered with drink bottles. The place was packed, fortunately mostly with gay young men who were mostly nowhere near as camp as Australian gay young men in dance clubs, though I did get to watch a few couples of boys kissing each other like kissing was going out of style. It was a very young crowd but, as W promised, a crowd with good vibes. No one tried to pick us up or touch us - everyone just danced and drank and occasionally stuck their tongues in each other´s mouths.

Before dancing, W, two of her friends, and I went to dinner at a lovely restaurant/bar. It was a bit rustic/a bit trendy, set up in a big old house. It had a green and cloudy stained glass window in the back in a simple pattern, bamboo-like branches in pots and low tables and couches, with a deep red decor. We sat on an enclosed balcony under gas heaters. Dinner was my thanks to W for her lovely hospitality. I had a delicious meal of large tortellini stuffed with mozzarella and basil in a tomato and mushroom sauce. The sauce was dark-flavoured and may have had sun-dried tomatoes in it as well as what I think were porcini mushrooms: very dark with a spongy-crumbly consistency. I think this is the first time I´ve actually tasted the stuffing in a tortellini (the mozzarella, not the basil). W, also a self-proclaimed food lover, ordered the same and we both exclaimed over our food throughout the entire meal. We were brought a big basket of assorted bread rolls and breadsticks and I selected a bottle of marlbec syrah, a sharp, strange wine. W´s male friend ordered a sandwich and chips and we gals at his chips, lovely fried potato rounds, not thin like packaged chips but not thick like fries or wedges, but just perfect.


Me, W, and glass of wine at restaurant (notice my face thin out in later photos. Travelling, and summer, is good for me...)

W´s male friend was hot. Young - 26 - but tall in this city of short people and broad, with straight teeth, a ready smile and straight hair he pushed out of his face. I wouldn´t have minded the opportunity to kiss him... He was an old-fashioned sort, keeping us safe. It was nice when his big hands guided my back. He took my email address but when he asked me if I like metal and I said no, Pink Floyd is as hard as I get, he said Pink Floyd was too Left and he was Right (this was all partly spoken in English and partly translated by W). He asked if I was Left or Right and I said Left and asked W to tell him I´m a feminist. He said he thinks women are more important than men but W couldn´t translate my question of whether he thinks women should be able to do whatever they want.

I am invited back to W´s place whenever I again find myself in Buenos Aires and to her friend´s place as well. I must get back soon.