1.20am, Tuesday June 8, at MS's ....too much Spanish

The three Argentinian couchsurfers are still here after a barbeque. MS and I were at another barbeque, for the occasion of MS's boat's captain leaving to go overseas. I am writing because I am tired of listening to Spanish.

Today I saw a goat. Grazing the garbagey suburb like the cows.

MS's eyes are green, sometimes blue. I like to watch him eat because he seems to savour every bite. His friends like him very much. His filmmaking colleague attempted to explain to me several times how lucky I am to have MS as a 'boyfriend'. He is straight - here the sparkly-eyed Italian photographer moved his hand up and down. Then he put his hands together in a prayer motion. People respect and worship MS, he said, not just here, but elsewhere too. Later, when he was more drunk, the photographer praised MS again, this time to MS as well. MS is a saint, Saint M, and again reiterated how lucky I am.

At the party, they all kept referring to MS as my boyfriend. It felt odd, made me proud, made me insecure. I felt almost like an imposter, or a slut, or like, yes, how lucky I am to inhabit this role for the moment. I wonder what they will think of me later, MS and I all over each other and then I'm gone, just a fling. But I can't think of this. And it seems that such things don't dawn on MS, who lives truly in the moment.

Venezuelans aren't argumentative like Italians and Jews. There was a lot of silence at the barbeque, with one natural-born storyteller doing most of the talking. He laughed and gambolled around and made big gestures and illustrative movements, the centre of attention. I remember MS saying that the purpose of loud music is so that people do not have to talk to each other. The woman whose house we were at talked with me a bit later in the evening with her little bit of English and my little bit of Spanish and I allowed MS's fellow filmmaker sell me a pair of blue dangly fake-crystal earrings that I didn't really want.

We stayed at the barbeque for a long time. Through the afternoon and as night fell we drank rum and Cokes, swam and talked in the small round pool of the host's apartment complex, and danced to a selection of concert DVDs played on a rigged-up television: rock, hip-hop, blues. I have yet to encounter anything on earth as sexy as dancing with MS - and this mostly was not good music to dance to. But I stayed close, my eyes locked on him, his eyes, his chest, I wanted to go home.

But, wait, it gets better. MS and I hitched a ride home in his boss's jeep. MS and I were in the back, with another drunken reveller. Riding in the back of an open jeep, the wind flowing through my hair and touching my eyes, watching the scrubby, hilly scenery of Margarita pass by in the moonlight was not too huge a step down from riding the waves on the catamaran. People ride in the back of trucks in South America all the time. Finally it was my turn.