This whole trip began at some point and the goal of this is to describe the beginning.
I got off at the airport after being lost in a vertical parking lot maze. My parents hugged and kissed me good-bye telling me carefully to be safe and happy; they were reluctant to go. They walked only slowly away. I was saddened to see them leave but not as sad as they were, because I had had so much previous practice at sadness and at leaving. Practice earned on planes going to Korea, China, Panama and of course to Argentina (the last time). This trip to Argentina, to Chile and to the whole southern cone of South America was no different in it’s separation but it was different in it’s adventure. The pain of unfamiliarity was similar but the prize was not, and I was accustomed to this by now. I knew I’d be back to see them, hug them and love them again, but I also know I was tired of the silent tedium in Upstate New York, and also tired of the noisy and rhythmic stasis of the Big City, a place forever locked in a Darwinian struggle to survive itself. One is always locked in a contest to be the best at anything in New York City, to get there, go there and come back faster than anyone else. That can get old.
So I had decided to return to Argentina. Not for a month or two, but this time for a long period - at least six months. I wasn’t going alone either. My boyfriend, lover and friend was coming with me. Now I feel some guilt that I brought him - how could I responsibly risk someone else to the wilds of the world? - but the fact is I probably couldn’t have kept him away. He wanted to leave, he was just as tired of New York’s bitch tantrums as I was. Just as tired of the frozen shit subways and the piss-stinking recriminations on every ride by the bums as I was. He was also just as vulnerable (perhaps more) to the impending economic doom that seemed to be implied everywhere at that time. New York was the centre of the world economic downturn. In a small way perhaps Manhattans’s race to perfect competition was a race to the bottom. That was not ultimately sustainable. It was/is/and shall continue to be a house of cards crashing down.
We therefore dreamed, and debated on the possibility of leaving the madhouse for a while. We thought about going to Argentina for a while, working a bit, being wise with our savings, and learning to enjoy a leisurely meal again. I bought the tickets and we both quietly wondered at the time if we’d be able to put up with each other for six months or a year. He and I had a good relationship, when I bought the tickets for us to go we had been an item for a year - but still, as Richard himself often said - one never really knows the changes that might occur if we came to live with each other all the time with no brake.
Well we were going to find out.
After my parents said good bye and I almost cried (we had had many fights over time, me and my parents, but we were earnest at least in our good wishes towards each other) I went through security at the gate. I took off my ‘gators’ (slipper like sneakers with two pictures of alligators on them) and went through security. In part of my mind I though about what my x-rayed image might look like as I passed through the metal detector, a huge fat blob with a little spindle of bone crowned at the top with glasses and a gay and ghostly piqué of hair. I don’t know why I felt so chubby when I was passing through the security gate; none of the security officers were exactly physically fit either.
Immediately after putting my hoodie and ‘gators back on I got a call, it was Richard. He had seen me several times in the airport (I had glimpsed him only once) and ordered me to stay where I was. I say on a dirty plastic stand of chairs while he cleared security. I had asked him to back off while my parents were there, since my Dad didn’t know. Needless to say Richard was pissed, more so than I thought he would be even.
“What. WUT” he said as I approached him. “I dunno this nigga.”
“I’m DL.” I mumbled. “In honour of Black history month.”
He laughed and his eyes lit up a little bit and for a moment I could have crushed that face up and saved it forever. Something ineffable was there in that face that had held me for a year and still holds me now - he has some kind of joy there at times that it is hard not to love.
He got over his mood pretty quickly and we had pretzels. We lounged near the take off gate in the little plastic row-chairs and talked about how we really did it. He bitched about how he didn’t have a Dominican passport despite having lived there most of his life and therefore having to in the future pay far out the ass for visas and entry permissions that I wouldn’t have to pay for as a Chilean citizen. Then we congratulated each other on “having really done it”. We were both a little afraid and a lot excited. I held his hand a watched the digital clock on the wall over the Air Canada stand; soon it would be time to go.
The next chapter: Andre and the kingdom of the crystal skull (argentina)
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