The other day I did some quick work on the metro after a girl innocently asked me where I was from because I stick out like a black dude in Buenas Aires. We ended up exchanging numbers and planned a Friday night hang out. Cell phones are horrible, yes I know, but they will at least triple your social life. You meet backpackers that are very proud that they don´t have a cell or iPod. Good for them. I am happy for them, but we are in a country where the people use phones to arrange hang outs (I was biking when I saw it so I couldn´t take a picture but I saw a Colombian cowboy on a horse going down the road while talking on a cell. It reminds me of the time when I didn´t have a cell years and years ago. I saw the neighbor´s Mexican gardener talking on his cell with his lawnmowers piled in the back of his bondoed 1980 pick-up truck and I figured it was time to get a cell). They are not going to stop by your hostel, take you by the hand and bring you out with their friends. Coincidentally, these same people without cell phones end up either 1) hanging out at the hostel and watching movies all night or 2) leaving our hostel to go party at another hostel down the street. I guess it´s the Colombian hostel tour. They are definitely keeping it real.
The girl was cute and sweet. Messages were exchanged and we had a meet up at a club called Palmayas. Now I already knew about this club and I already knew I wouldn´t like it. You make sacrifices when you are in a foreign land. And one of those sacrifices are your ears and taste. I would prefer to get a typical Colombian night out on the town than go to a cool electronic club and only talk English all night with other foreigners. Colombians that go out to these mainstream clubs go out in groups and they do not socialize outside those groups. It´s much like other big cities that way, but even more so here since their is always a feeling in the air that people should be extra cautious, especially the ladies cause shadey shit does happen here in Colombia. The girls will not go out unless there are at least 3 of them, and then usually with some of their guy friends, so the fact that I was invited along meant I had an ´in´ and I didn´t have to sit and watch in the party go by like watching fish in an aquarium.
I brought along this ex-party animal American that has been living in the West Indies for the past 18 years doing odd end jobs and loves to travel. We paid the cover which added insult to injury to have to pay for what I knew was coming.
We walked in and I was not disappointed. An enormous building with one giant room decorated with balloons, giant screens in each corner showing strippers doing the booty clap with blue screen laser beam graphics, full-sized free standing neon palm trees, paid dancers on platforms, and endless groups of Colombians all singing their lungs out to Spanish songs I had never heard, never wanted to hear, and hope I do not hear again. They mixed up the music between bad Spanish sing-along rock, Salsa, Merengue, Reggaeton, oh, and don´t forget the bad techno anthems from 15 years ago! You can ALWAYS count on the third world for bad techno.
The two of us bought a bottle of rum in the club in an attempt to trick our brains into enjoying this. The pre-party started hours before so we entered the club warmed up. Wandering aimlessly with my glass of rum and ice I found the group. The girl I met on the metro is grinding up against this ogre who is sweating and has the look of a man with one thought on his mind, and it´s not to play Bingo. I say ´hi´ to the group. The three girls are sweet, not drinking (¡¡PARTY!!), and I have to meet the two guys the are with. The ogre shakes my hand and I get a good grip of a big sweaty meatball of a hand with greasy sausage fingers. This guy is oozing. He is also one of those guys who has to keep shaking your hands and giving you bro-job half-hugs throughout the night.
After yet another sweaty embrace from the ogre, number 15 I think, he introduces us to a real treat sitting on a bar stool. He says it´s his sister but I immediately think he is giving the gringos a hard time cause she was as cold as a cucumber. Ah, so he introduces us to a stranger, ha ha, funny funny. She gives me a one up and down glance and I can immediately see written on her face, like someone who has been chewing lime rinds all night, that I am not nearly abusive enough for her. This guy has all the charisma of a juvenile delinquent and can bench press a pony. Then he takes his ¨sister´s hand¨ and starts dancing with her. In Colombia they call it dancing but I call it grind humping. Her arms are around his neck and he is wearing an amazing distant sexual gaze on his face. His sister is a plastic surgery disaster and her tits are spilling all over his shirt. I asked the sweetheart from the metro if that was his sister and she confirms it indeed is. Shocking.
She goes on to explain that you can dance sexual with someone but it doesn´t mean that you want to sleep with that person. It´s just how they dance. Wow. I wonder how you can every figure out if someone is flirting with you. I guess you get a tug on your nuts with a hand down the back of the pants. I don´t know. I´m confused, the rum is working, the laser lights and artificial smoke is making me feel even more intoxicated than I am. With all this Latin love dancing going on I turn into uber-white boy and clam up. I end up doing the 80´s white man dance with a chair cause it feels nice and safe, and right when I get in the groove I get interrupted by yet another meatball handshake and sweaty embrace. ¨Yes, yes, me estoy pasando muy bien. Gracias,¨ (yes, I´m having a great time) I say to him yet again.
All the alcohol in the world can´t save the two of us. After nearly 2 hours we have to tap out. You can only fake having fun for so long. We met the other girls, did some ear hole shout talking which, as always, involves lots of, ¨qué?, no te oigo, como?¨ (what?, I can´t hear you, huh?). After 5 one word answers to 5 questions you move on. I think they only speak grinding here anyway. I sound like a stick in the mud but I really do enjoy dancing. I can dance all night, but now, after years of going out I can´t fake a good time and I know when the night has peaked. This night it peaked when I sunk 4 balls in a game of billiards before we entered the club.
I had a Colombian hang out, and it makes me realize how we live on completely different planets. Their customs, the spice running through their blood is as foreign to me as my coldness is to them. Why not put my hand on their ass and just start grinding with someone I´ve never met? Mmm, I feel like a slimy scum bucket is why. I also figure it´s not my city, not my country, not my culture and that I could be treading on some unseen lines, not to mention the boyfriend coming back from the bathroom. I would rather stay a safe distance and take in the experience as a cultural observer.
*I forgot my camera so you´ll have to use your imagination
About Me?
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- Do NOT use bikes for long distances, especially not with mountains or in Latin America. Do not do it.