Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Hazards of Gleaning in a Gay Paradise

Sometimes you wake up with the right mix of having escaped a hang over, a cup of strong coffee coursing through your veins, listening to a perfect melody from a quality stereo system as a gust of warm wind hits your smiling teeth while overlooking a polluted city from a balcony and you feel as if you have made some right decisions in the world and that life is worth living well.
Caption, ¨Two weeks here and I did not get tired of this view.¨

It´s funny how you can fill yourself up with fake self importance by just borrowing someone else´s material possessions.

I am drinking in Buenos Aires from bird´s eye view in a gay paradise. My friend from three years ago on my last visit in BA is house sitting her gay uncle´s apt while he is away for the holidays. He doesn´t get back from Mexico until the second week of January with his younger hunky lover. You can glean how the relationship works without straining the brain; one is a 58 year old doctor and the other is the 35 year old massage therapist with well chiseled abs. I am sure it is a two-way street but the home, flow of toys, and it turns out even his job, is tied to the doctor.

When I crossed the threshold and first stepped foot in this place I immediately became dizzy. A waft of herbs and spices from other lands and a kaleidoscope of sparkles and colors lifted me off the ground. ¨What the hell is this?¨ was all I could say.

I had to investigate this place.

I set off sauntering into the dining room and I felt as if I had been transported back to a rich merchant´s house in the time of pre-eruption Pompeii, Italy in 78 A.D.. White walls? Not a single spot of white in the house. No respite. This dining room is a 4 walled mural painted with life-sized characters and two views into an imaginary past. One wall is crafted to create the illusion of looking out into a courtyard with a fountain in a foyer and on the other a peak down a medieval Italian cobblestone road lined with red-roofed houses. Coming from the IKEA generation I have never seen such a finely made dining table; two types of wood thicker than the width of my palm and lacquered to a mirrored finish. I can easily imagine a megalomaniac noble sitting at the head of the table munching on a turkey leg and waving a jester in with the his free hand for entertainment.
Caption, ¨The owner would probably be peeved that I did not straighten the candles before taking these pictures.¨

I back pedaled away with awe slowly from the illusory noble wiping grease from his cheeks and entered the living room. The walls are all painted an Egyptian orange (even the smallest detail of painting the air conditioner mounted on the wall was not overlooked) to set the backdrop for the overwhelming collection of antiques he has gathered on his world travels. It is clear that these items have been purchased on the black market. It´s a splendid collection well kept in glass cases and, of course, proper mood lighting. Most of the items are masks and clay pots from pre-colonial Latin America, but there is also intricate silver work, items from Africa and Asia and the Middle-East.
Caption, ¨This represents only a small portion of the items on display- not to mention, just like the Guggenheim, only 10% of his collection is visible at any one time. The rest is in storage.¨
Caption, ¨I noticed a running theme throughout the house; Horses.¨

Mythical and realistic horse statues from all civilizations in pewter, clay, ceramic, paintings are found in each nook and cranny. I look down and I see I am standing on a full-sized zebra skin rug complete with tail. Seriously. What the shit. I am lifting my feet up as if I stepped in dog poop and an equally disgusted look on my face. Over my shoulder I notice the door has been painted over to blend with the surrounding wall in a giant MerHorse- half fish and half horse with it´s front hooves replaced by little fish fins.
Caption, ¨Mer-horse, or do you spell that Merhorse? Notice the door handle.¨

This is all too much. I took a seat on what looks like a handwoven artisan couch to keep my head from spinning while on my feet. The coffee table is cluttered with silver-dipped candlesticks that weigh more than a new born baby, a king´s crown made of bronze and topped with a cross, intricately ornamental and completely non-functional ruby encrusted eggs on little stands, a chalice, and it goes without staying since this is a gay man´s house, lots and lots of candles. Everywhere. The coffee table itself is a work of art worthy of an Art History doctorate thesis- it looks as though it took 2 Muslims their entire life to carve the wood into such an ornate lattice work and now it is a functional part of a living room on which to rest a coffee cup.
Caption, ¨The view from the couch.¨

You could buy another house with the items filling this apt. The cleaning lady from Paraguay says one thing to us before leaving the apt, ¨How can you sleep here?¨ If it´s possible there is too much culture. The walls and furniture pulse with the dead heartbeats from times past. Each item has it´s own history and when the house is quiet you can hear the faint murmuring of the stories and memories told by each relic in their native tongue. Souls from different civilizations bump into each other in the dark. My friend could not sleep for the first two nights she spent here alone.

There is no escaping the ambiance. From the couch I can hear the calls of endangered birds from the zoo the apt overlooks. The balcony is alive with green vegetation. Griping the guardrail and looking down 11 floors I can see a lion walking amongst the trees. It´s a green oasis in the middle of the city for blocks and blocks since the zoo meets up with the largest expanse of parks in all of this sweaty seething city of 13 million. You feel above all the madness, isolated in a tree house in the amazon looking down on the jungle below.
Caption, ¨The zoo down below.¨
Caption, ¨My feet got accustomed to the glass spiral staircase. Now I simply cannot imagine exposing my feet to the horrors of carpeted, or god forbid, wooden stairs.
Up the glass spiral staircase I head to the master suite. Along the way I pass what looks to be the hatch on Noah´s Ark bolted to the ceiling with more mood lighting and the pets of the house: a snake, a ferret, and the best kept salt fish tank I have ever seen in a house. The palatial master bedroom has two wood columns flanking each side of the bed covered in gold lamé duvet and tasseled pillows. In my head I imagine the Pope and Elton John coming for a visit and looking at each other saying, ¨You know, it´s just a little too fabulous, don´t you think?¨

The uncle is a ´foodie´ and the place is filled with fine wines, cook books, herbs, spices such as: Pink Hawaiian Sea Salt, Jamaican Pepper, Coffee Merlot Chocolate Sauce, Moroccan Harissa Paste, Cape Malay Babotic, Swazi Mama Mama Ibalulekile Hot Sauce from Ukua Africa, Sun-dried Apricot and Raisin Chutney just to name a few and more in French and Italian. The soaps in the bathroom sounded equally as appetizing: Botanical Shower Body Mousse with Pink Grapefruit and Cucumber detoxifying and purifying with a stringent grapefruit peel and toning cucumber fruit extract AND Botanical Shower Body Mousse with Olive, Almond and Myrtle moisturizing and revitalizing with olive oil, oil leaf, sweet almond oil and myrtle. Coming from a backpackers mentality where my luxury items are AAA batteries and pistachios I find I am left with a tickling feeling, a giddiness brought about by the gay extravagance. The uncle must be the Truman Capote of his gay circle of friends in Buenos Aires. Imagine the parties and costumes this place has seen over the years. That spine chilling creepy scene in The Shining comes to mind when a guy in a full bear costume giving a blow job suddenly stops, and looks down the hall (The zoom-in is what really makes your elbows tingle http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=NmOoekbK6YI ). Furthering my suspicions, at the moment there is a gay couple (friends of the uncle) from Miami staying in another room here along with us. They had a visitor, a tall drink of water, come over late and spend the night. Those gay guys know how to have an unapologetic good time.
Caption, ¨Marble countertop to hold the spices from around the world. All joking aside, this kitchen does make you a better chef.¨

Caption, ¨Those are real Versace glasses, and real ugly. I think I saw one of these on the floor next to the bed in that Shining scene.¨

One of the great reasons of traveling, number 413, are the stories you come across. Nothing is how you first see it and everything has a story just beneath the surface. As cliché as that sounds this is a fine example. It is so easy to dismiss the apt as a gay whim and see the stereotypical rich old man with the gold digging younger and more attractive trophy just as I did when I assessed the situation. Over the days talking to my friend I slowly find out more of the uncle´s story. All of his 5 brothers and sisters died of cancer, one of those being my friend´s mother. Watching all of his immediate family dying at a young age he has made a conscious effort to live life to the fullest and pursue his pleasures to the fullest- and he has many- wine, food, world traveling, art collecting, and men. It is money spent but spent well. Wealth enjoyed. It makes you wonder who is using who? Really it is a symbiotic relationship with the two. Both of their needs are met and they are together as long as the both are happy, and when the wave of happiness finally breaks then they will both move on.

It´s easy to judge but I have not lived through the same pain as he has. The whole reason he is on holidays through Christmas and New Years each year is as much to see the world as it is not to be home and feel the pain of his missing family here in Buenos Aires. My friend, who finds the house equally ostentatious and curiously comical, tells me this story with caring eyes. Although she has not traveled the world she understands it and has compassion in a much more profound way than myself from losing her mother when she was 7 and her brother a few years later. It´s a profoundness I am not sure I want to know yet know it awaits.

Still looking out from the balcony of gay paradise, while sipping my morning coffee amongst the whispering souls, I think about all the chaos in the world swirling about. How one could be been born in another situation in another country with other parents or none at all. It´s hard to not infer stories from what you superfically see. Putting people in neat little categories and placing them on an organized shelf is how I make sense of this holy pandemonium in the world so it is a little more managable for my small brain.
Caption, ¨Not many people have so many scepters as to necessitate a ´scepter rack´, he does.¨

Caption, ¨What a decadent wine stopper. It´s giant red ruby.¨