A former latin american exile writes about life..

Ok so I gave up a comfy boring life to go live in South America. Lots have suggested that I write about my experiences, so here it finally is.

Friday, July 15, 2005

things for sale on the bus

I boarded the bus to go to work and saw a new spin on street vending. A guy boarded the bus with nothing but a blue plastic folder, the type you would keep legal documents in. Launched into his speech about how he had something for sale, blah, blah, blah – but what caught my undivided attention was the something looked a hell of a lot like a diploma.

I thought, wow, what a possible opportunity – I could un-do 15 years of sloth, laziness and apathy towards a college degree with the slight expenditure of just a few pesos.

It was not meant to be. They were simply cheesy certificates that kids could give their fathers for fathers day (I suspect more dads get these here than, say, gas grills or even ties for that matter…)

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

I am the camel...

And the straw broke my back.

Companies go through growing pains when they hit a certain size. I remember this vividly when I was working for a dot-com in Minnesota. Every month, every week, some new policy or mandate, some new project, some new logo, some new venture, all of guaranteed to be wildly successful beyond everyone's wildest dreams - and all of it to be carried out yesterday.

But its a bit different to do all of this while being paid a reasonable salary - I drove to work every day, had quite a bit of freedom, could buy pretty much whatever my heart desired... leather jeans? Yes. Doc Martens shoes? You bet. Plane tickets someplace for the weekend plus hotel plus a few restaurant meals? Yeah, no problem - just be back in time for another 50+ hour workweek where everything is urgent.

And here I work for a company of a similar size. It's making that transition from being a small-time concern to something that could be really big. Everything is of course new and wonderful (well, new and cheaply-taiwanese-made-wonderful) and always, always urgent. And that would have been just fine like the dot-com - except here new clothes are impossible, restaurant meals are few and far between, plane tickets for the weekend are out of the question, and shoes are to be repaired, not purchased new. Hell, sometimes its necessary to choose between the cat food and the shaving cream or toothpaste - a fact which is not lost on me when the kitty is having her daily 4 AM I-can't-decide-if-I-want-to-be-in-the-room-or-out-of-the-room crisis.

The straw that broke the camels back came in three parts. Friday July 1st saw the first installment, and Tuesday July 5th was the second and third. The guy I work for is quite a number of levels down the food chain from the owner of the company. But another manager - someone who reports directly to the owner, decided to take a special nasty interest in me and just be as rude and demeaning as possible. Nothing I did for this person was acceptable, everything required some nasty email carbon copied to my boss and even other co-workers, and I just had enough.

So Tuesday July 5th I had one of those rare moments of clarity. After receiving a couple of go-rounds of nasty abuse that morning at the hands of this Carrasco-raised breast-fed-by-proxy-and-then-Catholic-schooled sociopath, I had had enough. So I did well, what I can do. I got myself some insurance - i.e. a quick phone call to my parents in which I explained what was already obvious to them:
  • broke
  • need plane ticket home if am going to go home
  • need place to stay while reestablish self
They assented (THANKS A MILLION MOM AND DAD) and that left me the courage to tell this company that this uptight arrogant manager had made it impossible for me to continue working for them.

I did so. My resignation was tendered and three weeks notice was given as per my contract. My boss was extremely surprised. I was very upfront with him... "This is not a negotiating tactic, I am not looking for a raise, or better working conditions, or anything. I simply want your acceptance of my resignation and an agreement about how many more weeks I will be working here."

And that was that.

I will post more in the coming days about what went on in between time... but suffice it to say that on 11th August I will leave here. My time in Uruguay will come to an end. I am very OK with this too.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

after the mid-date update

Well, this date was particularly nice. A great movie, good dinner afterwards, plenty of laughter and conversation during and after dinner... a lot of it centered around ladies, by coincidence.

We had sat down for dinner in a restaurant near the rambla. I know for certain the waiter thought we were tourists - I blew his mind at the end of the meal though.... but I will get to that.

I looked around the restaurant a bit after having made a selection from the menu, and immediately sighted something horrible - proof that one can indeed put lipstick on a pig, indeed, she'd probably done it herself. There was a hideously ugly woman and her husband having dinner with another couple - they were just finishing up as luck would have it.

But something struck me about the demographics of the crowds we were surrounded by both at the theater and in the restaurant - everyone was old. I mean, really old, sixty plus. I suppose part of it is we weren't exactly seeing the biggest hollywood hit of the century - in fact it was a French film - and we ate at a not-particularly-chic bar on the Rambla. Still it was weird.

Anyway, I needed the menu again after the waiter informed me that my entire first selection was not available - they had neither pork chops to grill nor beets for salad. So instead I had a steak. Which cut of steak, I have no idea - I have not figured out any link between the north american names for cuts of meat and the Spanish names for them here. And I settled for tomato salad. The steak turned out to be excellent and the tomatoes were... well, okay. They are not as good in winter as they are in summer.

The waiter was flabbergasted at the end of the meal when I handed him my cedula and Oca card - you must show ID when paying with credit here, the card by itself is generally worthless without picture ID. Obviously I was not a tourist if I had one of those LOL.

The movie was over at 1145 pm and we finished with dinner just before 2 am. The thing is, you get used to the later hours and it doesn't feel like it at all.

So how to get home.. problem number one - very few buses late at night. Problem number two - we were not near either of the malls in that area of Montevideo so I had no idea where the stops were or which bus number to look for. Fortunately, there was a prostitute at a nearby bus stop. My boyfriend was like - if I ask her she will be very rude, if you ask she will think you're a tourist and be more helpful.

I didn't really believe she was working until we got closer - then the oversized purse, slutty clothes and heavy makeup told the whole story. She was a little older than she appeared to be from a distance too. But she was nice enough, if a little cold, in telling me that in fact no suitable bus would pass that stop until morning. We walked around a bit more and ultimately found a stop that actually had the signs showing which buses stop there as well as the schedule, and it wasn't much of a wait until we were on the way back to my place.

But anyway... it was a very nice evening and its a memory that will not fade anytime soon. :)

Monday, July 04, 2005

4th of july

Thanksgiving and July 4th are the weirdest days to be here... because usually they are just working days. My friends who are online from their offices in the USA are not present and I wonder what they are doing.

However, I am glad I am not there paying taxes to support the current government. I have started receiving US magazines again and seeing the advertising, reading the reporting, etc. and feel more connected than I did last year.

There was a particularly disturbing ad in US News and World report - showing shoes lined up near the door to outside. A pair of dress shoes, a muddy pair of running shoes - and a pair of army boots. The ad was something like - "Join the army reserve and stay close to home." Um, big fat lie there I think - it should say "Join the army reserve, get sent to Iraq and come home in a box." Then you'll stay close to home - in a cemetery. But your family will have a nice triangle folded flag to remember you by, isn't that nice?

The advertising is particularly jarring to look at, it reminds me of how huge the selection of products and services is there - and the list prices of things remind me of how little I am paid and how much shit I take for such little pay.

And I am finishing my 4th of july now watching Cronica, the news channel from Argentina - showing snow in Cordoba province. Children having a snowball fight on TV. It looks like about six inches of it fell - and the people they are interviewing are all agog about it. Comments ranging from "I've never seen snow," to "I've never seen this much." They've switched to a slow motion view of a snowball fight with Enya in the background. What I cannot imagine is the combination of slick roads and Argentine drivers...

Cronica - reporting on 4th of july

Some Argentines celebrated the 4th of July with a protest outside the American Embassy in Buenos Airies. Many pictures with Bush's head superimposed onto pictures of nazis in uniform. Of course he was burned in effigy as well.

Most of the protesters were saying stuff about the war in Iraq when they were interviewed - I agree with them.

I don't think Bush is a Nazi at all. He's a fundamentalist Christian and those are even worse - the Nazis killed a lot of people but the jesus freaks let them live - and then make their lives really boring when they try to impose their super-conservative ideas on everybody in the name of "family." They should all focus on their own goddamn families.

breaking the ice on a cold night

The ice is breaking a little bit more with the guys at the gym. I was laughing my ass off because they all suspected I was mormon, it turned out. Uh, no! It was pretty funny. But its getting to be vaguely similar - well, not really just in terms of the social stimulation I guess - to when I lived in Chicago above a bar and would go every night to have a drink or ten. Except, this is something healthy to do.

I am adjusting to the increased amounts of weights and like that I do different workouts on different nights... it helps with the inherent monotony of working out and it distributes the pain from day to day. But the first couple of times with more weight - ugh.

It is cold outside. Even to me, it feels cold now. The temperature is probably 5 or so. All the locals are bundled up like Minnesotans in January, its sorta funny. I'm fine with a winter coat - no need really for gloves or a scarf or a hat. I would just lose that crap, like I do with umbrellas.

a visitor upon arrival home

I got home tonight and about ten minutes after walking in the door, someone knocked. I about jumped out of my skin because I was not expecting anyone. Generally when I am home alone and the doorbell rings, I ignore it if I am not expecting anyone. But someone was just meters away and could hear that I was home, for sure, so could not be ignored.

Looking through the peephole, it was a kid standing there with another kid. I figured, what harm can they do... so I opened the door. (Its not like I'm afraid to open the door, or should be, but you have to be careful nonetheless... I did have a passing thought as I looked through the peephole that someone might be on the other side with an icepick, but thats sort of a rare item here so I risked it. ;) )

Turned out to be the son of the woman who owns the little store (kiosko) thats in the front of this building. I understood what he was saying - or at least caught the subject and verb - but got it exactly backwards and I told him, "But I don't have anything for your mother." And he responded in English, "But she has something for you!" I was rather surprised - as was his friend when I immediately understood exactly what they wanted.

I stayed awhile to chat with them. It's interesting to see what people's perceptions are as well as what news stories they have heard about the USA... this time they were asking me if Chicago still had gangsters (yes, except in this day and age its the mayor and the city government was my response) and if it was really true that Giuliani killed all the flies in New York City. (I have no fucking clue where they picked that up from - perhaps they died from less government?)

What she had for me was my internet bill. Internet is outrageously expensive here and its my least favorite bill because the customer service of my internet service provider (Dedicado) is horrible. But that's not her fault. I sorta felt obligated to buy something - I usually buy diet coke from her (yes, they DO call it Coca Cola Light here and not diet coke - but thats what I will call it until I likely die of side effects from drinking it!). She was out, I knew that from Sunday when I bought the last 1.5 liter bottle of it from her, but I figured chocolate milk would do - its a strange product, called Colet. You buy it in a box and its got an expiration date thats months away. You can set it on a shelf and keep it at room temperature for the whole time and its fine. Scary. But it tastes good.

Of course in the process of talking with the kids I asked their names. I was sorta surprised that the owner's son was named Bruce. His friend had a much more Uruguayan name - Sebastian. I think between 5 and 10 % of the male population under 30 is named Sebastian. But Bruce... that was a little different.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

mid-date update

Hmm... Las Coristas was a great movie. A little weird to follow the movie either though listening to the spoken French or reading the Spanish subtitles, but I got by.

I was quite surprised by the relative age of the crowd. I mean, this was definitely an over-60 gathering.

On the way home we held hands on the bus. A couple was very much staring at us and I wasn't sure how to react but when they departed the bus the guy smiled and said "Exito" and they both waved from the street - it was friendly after all.

Saturday, July 02, 2005

movie night

So here's tonights entertainment... a movie and then dinner. Movie at 2130 and then dinner afterwards. Yes, afterwards. The order is opposite here because its customary to eat later. I guess this also means skipping the supersize bucket of popcorn at the theater.

Los coristas

En 1949, Clément Mathieu, profesor de música en paro, empieza a trabajar como vigilante en un internado de educación de menores. Especialmente represivo, el sistema de educación del director Rachin apenas logra mantener la autoridad sobre los alumnos difíciles. El mismo Mathieu siente una íntima rebeldía ante los métodos de Rachin y una mezcla de desconcierto y compasión por los chicos. En sus esfuerzos por acercarse a ellos, descubre que la música atrae poderosamente el interés de los alumnos y se entrega a la tarea de familiarizarlos con la magia del canto, al tiempo que va transformando sus vidas para siempre.

Friday, July 01, 2005

on dating

I made an attempt at writing this last night, then I decided that
(a) I'd better think more about what to say and
(b) that I'd better ask permission.

Both of those things having been done, here I go...

I met someone about four weeks ago. The how is not important, simply the fact that we have gotten in contact with one another is. It's interesting, because he's a lot like me in some ways - and very opposite in others.

Montevideo has a monument to gays and lesbians. (Yeah I left out mention of some of the groups, sue me...) You might be surprised at this... after all, how could this city that doesn't even have a gay pride celebration have a monument to gays and lesbians? But it does. Let's just say that there was a very high-ranking gay man in the intendencia and along with pressure from various groups the monument came to exist - and that's where I laid eyes on him for the first time.

We had tea. Two and a half hours of conversation flew by while we had tea. (I don't mean just a cup of tea, a proper British teatime with a large quantity of food was served.)

Background... I haven't met a lot of other gay guys in Uruguay but the ones I'd met previously all had one or more traits in common. About the only trait that's wholesome enough to mention in a public forum such as this is that they were all massive closet cases. I suppose I can understand that given how intolerant this society can be, but it got to be boring. Furthermore I didn't really connect with anyone. We tried to communicate but didn't really get in sync - and it's not a language barrier either because I've gotten to the point that I can communicate just about whatever in Spanish provided one can understand my style of speech - nearly devoid of correct structure.

But this guy was different - he was out. That takes some courage and conviction here just in general, but he was willing to go even further and be active in groups at college, organize events, be seen on television as part of those events, etc. Given that in terms of evolution of gay acceptance, its roughly 1986 here and not 2004, it's a big deal. Or it was to me, because I also had a time period in life (age 20 or so) when I went from being very closed about myself to being equally active, visible, vocal and public about who I am.

So I was sitting there drinking... well, I confess it wasn't tea, I'm not overfond of it and especially not with (gasp) milk - my coffee and eating something or other and thinking... wow, I'm chatting with a local version of me, as I was some years ago. This is fascinating.

We chatted and chatted and chatted while the restaurant filled up around us with the dinner crowd and they ultimately kicked us out. Well, they didn't really kick us out, they just made it clear they wanted the table back. Nothing rude or out of the cultural norm, mind you.

So what to do afterwards? Think fast. It's 10pm on Sunday night in Montevideo. Neither of you are in the mood to go to a bar and even if you were that's way too early for them to be open. Well, it was about 16 degrees or perhaps a bit warmer, and we went down to the Rambla.
We continued to chat. Sitting directly on the stone retaining wall by the Rio de la Plata, we chatted, at least until I got cold from sitting directly on the wall.

I am not normally given to public displays of affection. I used to do it frequently in my early 20's, but that was before a couple of unpleasant incidents that happened. I will not describe them and will leave them in the indeterminate past, but suffice it to say those things heightened my sense of just how fast things can go from safe to unsafe and how quickly a wonderful evening can be utterly ruined.

But fuck it, I threw caution to the wind, here of all places. My post "out with it" was written just a couple days after what I am now describing... We walked hand-in-hand. It was a long walk, having started in Ciudad Vieja we went down the Rambla and into a residential neighborhood near the American embassy, ultimately winding up at Tres Cruces where we parted company. And we walked hand-in-hand the whole way. It brought back memories of how empowering and terrifying it was the first time I'd dared do it when I was 20-something - and other less pleasant memories but I pushed those aside, no sense dwelling on the past.

I don't remember in detail what we talked about - we were still at the "exchanging life stories" stage, sort of... but I was hanging on his every word. I felt comfortable with him in a way I rarely feel comfortable with anyone.

When we parted company and I was on the bus going home, I was fervently hoping that I would see him again... and perhaps again and again, I don't know. The last part I tried to push aside, no sense getting all wrapped up in stupid fantasies so soon.

I have seen him every weekend since then, talked on the phone frequently, and things have progressed from the "exchanging life stories" stage to the "sincerely getting to know one another" stage. I can close my eyes and visualize his face, now, for example - I have trouble putting names with faces sometimes, much less remembering a face in detail. There are few topics that we haven't talked about.

He also forwards me rather thought provoking articles on aspects of world news I don't think much about or had simply tuned out, over time. Around age 28 I got to this "I've got mine" manner of thinking and stopped following news about GLBT rights. This whole business of living 7.000 km from home, and alone at that, has gotten me more in tune with the way I used to be - I think. I find most of it fairly interesting, even if I don't always agree with it.

I don't know quite why but English seems to be the dominant language for communication between us. His English is far better than my Spanish, even if his pronunciation is British. I am frequently called on the carpet for my vulgar uses of language - for whatever reason I write fairly formally here but in regular speech I can be pretty, um , colorful - and positively polychromatic when I am at one emotional extreme or another. He got me addicted to listening to gaydarradio - an audio service from the UK with really good dance/electronic music mixed in with some local news items that are akin to Cronica in English. His comment, when I admitted my new addiction, was that I might learn a more "cultured" way of speaking as opposed to that "vulgar dialect from the colonies" - as he perceives my manner of speech. Meow.

So we're opposites in that aspect... he speaks quite formally and nothing obscene or improper ever passes through his lips - except one particular nickname for one particular person, it taught me a new dirty word in Spanish and made my day. We're also opposites in that I think of most everything as black and white, ones and zeros - his world has many more shades of grey, that's evident. And going out for a walk with him the other day really rammed home how driven I am to do everything fast. I don't even consciously think about it, it just happens. And he's like, slow down already... which for me is disconcerting because when I physically slow down, so does my train of thought. It's hard to explain.

I also don't know why but I am quite curious to meet his parents. No, not that I am expecting it to ever happen anytime soon nor do I really want to be "brought home to mom and dad" with all that that entails. I cannot imagine... strike one I am older. Strike two (and three)... my nationality. (The "strike" thing is a baseball metaphor...) A better way to sum it up would be this... the nut doesn't fall far from the tree, usually. So I'm curious.

But one thing is for sure - when the phone rings or the instant messenger thing flashes, part of me always sort of hopes its him on the other end. I want to see where this delightful interaction of souls leads.