Florencio Varela, Buenos Aires
06/05/10
One of the best things about staying with Boxie-boo´s family was the opportunity to experience Argentina from a local´s perspective. Teresa lived in a community called Florencio Varela, which was about an hour bus ride outside of Buenos Aires City, at least three hours outside of Squamish.
It was a rough area, a tough community with frail edges, tattered at the seams. The streets were set stubborn in shades of brown and grey, a town that felt constantly overcast under bright blue skies. Walls of colourful graffiti shattered through town like a kaleidoscopic image. The new mosiac that formed was bold and beautiful, an aggressive softness of street paint, adding an artist´s addition to fill the community with needed colour.
A dreamy, observant softness flickered across Boxie-boo´s face as Teresa pulled into a packed parking lot of brown dirt, a feeling of community we all felt. The last piece of Florencio Varela´s mosiac fell abruptly into place.
Urban loneliness was released at the neighourhood´s market nestled in a packed building that looked like an airport hanger. Prices were cheaper than anywhere else we had seen in Argentina. There were no foreigners in sight. It felt to be a place where city-worn people, who, possibly keen to leave loud main streets and the silence of their homes, fled here for sanctuary, to smile and be with strangers. Sometimes we all want this, to flee from the solitude of our lives, to people watch and remind ourselves of our inherent ability to belong.
I stood there in a strange shock, inside the market, watching Boxie-boo. I could not believe my eyes. It was as if I had just seen a golden retriver dressed in a leather skirt, high heals, parading through the market as a hooker. I can do more tricks than just roll over, baby. We had been walking around stand after stand of clothing, shoes and even jewellery, yet Boxie-boo did not want to buy anything. I thanked the travel gods.
The market slowed to the pace of my standard drunken and incapacitated crawl, but without the ability to giggle while burping. In high school, when this ADD attack kicked in, my friend Alejandro and I would jump out of the window to skip class. There were no windows in sight and no Alejandro. I was losing my mind and tempted to scream that I my water broke and everybody need to make way. Locals moved so slowly, I scanned over and through the crowd, trying to find a path, looking like a young boy trying to see cheerleaders over a group of grown men. I gave up and zombie trudged onwards.
To entertain myself, I closed my eyes to see how long it would be until I collided with someone, cheating by squinting occasionally. Fearing a collision as I squinted to see a young woman, I opened my eyes to realize I was within inches from a mannequin´s bra. Having my eyes closed gave me a drowsy look, eye-to-eye with fake boobies, looking hypnotized and confused. An old Argentinian woman saw this, nodded and walked towards me, then began undressing the mannequin.The air was thick with the smell of celibacy.
She said something in Spanish and handed me the bra. I was about as confused as I would be if she offered me tampons.
“Sordo” (deaf), I said, holding my ears. I returned to Boxie-boo with a clown smile and new found energy.
“What´s up?” she asked.
“There was a nice shop back there with lingerie,” I said.
“Not happening!” she responded.
“You won´t even look?” She shook her head and turned her eyebrows into angry triangles. I realized there was no way to reconcile this event.
I knew I would always be remembered by the Argentinian shop owner as the strange, deaf foreigner with poor vision, who was either a cross dresser or the bearded woman from a traveling circus. There was no redeeming myself through Boxie-boo and no way to explain to her why she needed to check out a mannequin´s bra.
That´s all for now.
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