Stroke of Midnight, Stroke of Luck

New Years, Buenos Aires. Simple enough plan: Pete, Jan, Martin, and Kristoff are all here, and we’re going to go out drinking and have a mellow evening.

You know this blog better than that by now, right?

I should’ve known the mode was set when the night before, I heard retching sounds outside my door. “Great, is someone gonna vomit?” I thought. Then I heard a splashing sound outside my door, and figured I was right. “Gee, I hope he or she is alright…” I thought, and then I heard one quick pound on my door, followed by silence. “I hope this person isn’t choking on vomit or something,” I pondered, followed by the distinct thudding sound outside my door. “Gee, I hope no one is dead…” then regretted ever thinking it. I crept toward the door, opened it, took a quick step outside, and promptly sunk my foot in a shallow puddle of vomit. Next to the vomit was flowing black hair, and with it a body, an asian girl lying splayed out, flat on her back, unseeing eyes wide open and staring at me.

I paused, unsure what to do. Was she really dead? Did I need to give CPR? Was she going to vomit into my mouth if I did? I began to kneel down to check, when suddenly she blinked, then smiled. “Hey mister!” She sat up, looked at the vomit, pondered it for a moment, shrugged, stood up, and walked off.

Fast forward to the next day. I wake up and check my email. Nothing from anybody. I send out another email, then decide to head to the neighborhood of La Boca for a few hours. The locale is world-famous for its colorful buildings, small art vendors, and tourist-ready street tango dancers, as well as a disgusting density of tourist shops, photo ops, and other mutilations of the neighborhood. It’s also known as one of the rougher inner areas of Buenos Aires.

Lamenting the tourist traps, I decided to get a late lunch at one of the more authentic cafes on a side street. Generally speaking, tourists are advised to avoid those. The whole menu here was in Spanish, and feeling adventurous, I ordered something I’d never heard of before, called Paderilla, which I was assured was delicious meat. Well, it is, in large quantities, but that’s just the start. Steak, chicken, sausage, blood sausage, tripe, kidney, intestine… I was starring in my own version of Fear Factor, and that novelty-seeking chip on my shoulder encouraged me to take a bite of all the new and exotic fares. I did not take a second bite of most.

As I chewed on the chicken, I noticed a crowd starting to gather at the end of the street. The crowd formed a circle, and in the middle, two people moving wildly. I couldn’t make out what was going on, until the crowd parted like curtains. Inside was two men; one was bleeding profusely from his head and staggering around drunkedly, swearing. The other wielded a lead pipe. Easy enough to figure out.

Claiming victory, the man with the lead pipe started to leave, but was stalked and harassed by the bleeding man who was somehow still standing despite a violent head wound and being pulled back by his friends. Someone calls the cops, and he walks off… except, he returns 5 minutes later, brandishing a huge butcher knife. Just then, the cops show up. The bleeding man turns from waiving his knife at the man to waiving it at the cops. The cops just point at their hip holsters and shake their heads. The bleeding man turns to walk away, and the cops follow. More cops show up. The bleeding man makes another attempt to go back down the street, and the cops jump him. One takes out his baton and starts beating the shit out of the man. Another cop joins in, while another still starts kicking. When, and only when, they feel satisfied, they cuff the now far bloodier man and haul him away. I take a bite of my blood sausage.

I return to my hostel, and find no email still. I resolve to take a nap, and if no one responds by then, I’ll just go by myself. I nap, I recheck my email, and still no response. A few minutes on Facebook, and its already 10pm and I’m ready to leave. Before I can click ‘log out’, a sudden email arrives. Martin’s hostel is hosting a party, and Pete, Jan, and Kristoff have just shown up. No one bothered to tell me any of this until now.

It’s a short 10 block walk through an unsafe neighborhood, but I arrive in enough time to enjoy some fatty steak and mediocre wine. Around 11:30, Pete and Jan want to go bar-hopping, but Martin has a friend, named Hanna, and this friend wants to go to a rave. But first, said friend wants to see the fireworks. I’ve shared about 10 words with this woman, in her mid to late 30s and still avoiding a real job, but I immediately volunteer to go. No one else does, so the two of us take off alone.

She intends to meet some of her friends in the plaza and go down to the riverbank. We find the friend she intended to meet and his two friends she knew about, but they have brought along 3 friends of their own. Whatever, the more the merrier, right? We take off down the block, and one of the new girls recognizes 2 friends of her own. They exchange hugs and join our group. Some black dude with an oversized camera asks us where to find the riverbank, then tags along with us. The bus deposits 2 girls fresh into the city, with their oversized backpacks, on the corner we’re waiting to cross at 11:50. They join us. We’re off to see the wizard.

Buenos Aires doesn’t actually have fireworks. This is just people with their own illegal wares shooting them off while the police turn their heads. The size and quantity of these fireworks isn’t very impressive, but the fact that they’re setting them off mere meters from our heads makes for pretty impressive bangs. Flowers and pom-poms of fire explode in front of our eyes, ringing our ears, illuminating the water and the bridge and the dock cranes and the mirror-windowed skyscrapers.

People partied in the streets, from in front of the swanky new Hiltz hotel to the large patio of the swanky new Hooters. People had warned us Buenos Aires is dead on New Years, and there’s especially nothing to do when the ball drops, but they were wrong. This homebrewed, spirited celebration was beautiful and energizing, and I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else for it. It was the perfect capstone for a perfect night.

Almost no one notices when one or two rockets misfired and exploded in the crowd. We certainly didn't flinch. Maybe even nobody got hurt.

Hanna and I return to the hostel party, and she starts preparing for the rave, changing into her heart-patterned shirt and nice jeans. Meanwhile, Pete, Jan, and Kristoff are ready to leave, and want me to come with them. I’m tempted, but a New Year’s Rave just sounds too good to pass up. I’ll see them again before they leave, right? Maybe, but when Pete says as he walks off “Maybe we’ll see you in Sydney”, I start to have second thoughts.

And the second thoughts are well founded when Hanna comes back to me and tells me she called her friend, and there’s no room for me in the car. I storm into Martin’s dorm room to tell him that she won’t let me come, but he tells me he wants to go anyway, and that I should find some club to go to. Hanna tells me “Don’t be a little bitch, I never promised anything.” Yes, she had.

So, with Pete, Jan, and Kristoff gone, and Martin and Hanna going, and the hostel party winding down, I’m left with nothing to do and nowhere to go and no one to go nowhere with. Just then, Martin’s new roommates arrive, also fresh transplants off the bus. They’re a Brazillian brother and sister pair, and I tell many things about them just by watching them interact: The girl is bossier, the girl is tired and wants to sleep early, the boy is tired but still isn’t ready to call it a night, and the boy is patently homo.

It takes some prodding, some cajoling, some logic, some pleading, some innuendo and coy smiles, and about half an hour of patience, but I finally encourage the boy, a 22 year old named Doug, to come with me. He takes another half hour to get ready, and we’re out the door to first go clubbing at 3am.

Except, its New Years, and there’s not a taxi in sight. It takes us 10 minutes to flag one down, and another 20 to reach the club, but we arrive at the club in time to be confronted by the monster line. It stretches out the door, down the block, around the corner, and all the way down the next block. We’re tempted to throw in the towel then and there, but the line seems to be moving at a decent clip, and it only one short hour until we get inside. It’s after 4:30 when we get our first drinks and hit the dance floor. Surprisingly enough, everyone on that serpentine behemoth fit in the club with plenty of room to spare, and the great DJ and atmosphere actually made the hour wait worth the experience of being in this space, an exuberant outpouring enough to match the street parties and then some.

Almost immediately I bump into Martin. For reasons he never explained and I’ll probably never ask, he ditched on the rave and decided to go gay clubbing himself. I offer to keep him company, but Doug wants to move closer to the stage. As the liquor flows further and the dancing becomes more frenetic, Doug moves inexorably closer. See, I never intended to go after Doug, but my invitation to go out must’ve been interpreted as an invitation to something more. Or he only relented and came out because he wanted me. Again, I’ll never know.

I consider turning him down, but his company is nice. More importantly, the lock I’d put on my sexuality in Quito had finally been broken by a drunken pash during the Christmas party (and again Christmas morning, a new take on unwrapping your presents). When he wanted to sit down, I knew where it was going. The routine is always the same. Sit, lean, play footsies, head snuggle, eye contact, go for it. I’d been playing the same game since I first went clubbing in Brisbane, but now I was both good at it and had a much better sense of who I’d enjoy it with. Regardless, he and I were both good enough to keep it fun, while just managing to stay within club legal boundries.

Of course, as the night wears on, the Arq quandary inevitably rears its head, named after the bar in Sydney where I’d first encountered this problem. When two people who meet at a bar are both staying in hostel dorms, you want to stay in the club as long as you can, until you’re either too tired or it starts shutting down. Then you wanna go somewhere and crap out, but you also want to keep the hookup going. You debate which hostel you want to go to, but ultimately someone chickens out on the prospect of messing around with other people sleeping in the room. Said chicken is never me. Instead, you just end up going back to your own places, with empty unfulfilled promises of trying again another day.

So instead, we wandered the streets, trying to find a taxi to take us back to our respective hostels, but none were about. Well, there were plenty, but they were all taken by others in the massive club exodus, and the ones who weren’t were headed back home and not by Satan’s pubic hair could they be bothered to pick up a bunch of gringo passengers. We walked to the train station, but it was barricaded shut, so we kept walking.

In our frustration (for different reasons), we almost didn’t notice the crowd gathered on the street. A woman was wailing. Another fight? We walk up, and find yet another bloody body sprawled on the ground. He was not moving. He didn’t appear to be conscious. He didn’t appear to be breathing. Hit by a car, my best guess. The responsible car and driver are long gone.

Besides the crying young woman, no one appears to be doing anything besides standing around. Someone on the corner calls the police. I try and ask one of the bystanders if the victim is breathing, but he brushes me off. I try and offer my help, but he’s even more insistent in getting rid of us. Probably one of the family, he wishes to have their moment of grief private in the middle of morning traffic, nevermind the first aid or CPR he might need but isn’t getting because they don’t understand I’m not just some gawking tourist.

So we walk away. What else can we do? The police were already called. An ambulance might arrive at some point. Unlikely, considering we can’t even catch a cab. He might be dying, or dead, and some people are going to have a very unhappy New Years. But this is Buenos Aires and I’m a gringo bystander just trying to get home after a frustrated hookup after ditching and being ditched by his friends, my randomness of meeting this boy and meeting that girl matched only by the randomness of witnessing a knife fight or getting hit by a car.