Editor’s Note: Due to the nature of this story, the subject’s real name has been changed.
I stand amid the crashing ocean swells, as the seashells pass and the sand sinks through my toes. To the west, a gray seagull leaps from the rocks to investigate an empty soda bottle left in the sand. To the north, I spot an abandoned military tower built four decades ago by the dictatorship and to the east, a group of fishermen passing a liter, celebrating the morning’s catch. They’re folding their nets, laughing, enjoying the day even if they would make less than $10 that day.
I wonder if they are happy having so little. If it is all they know, why not?
As another wave recedes to the sea, my thoughts venture back to my first days in Argentina — when I still thought in dollars, dreamt in English and greeted strangers with a handshake.
It was a rainy August afternoon.
Ivan Andreas had just escaped an armed pimp escorting him to the ATM: He had refused to pay a $100 entry charge when he was mistakenly lured into an Argentine brothel. His face was flush full of adrenaline, but he walked with a grounded composure, debonair that he was. Intending to find each other somewhere within a three-mile radius in downtown Buenos Aires, we crossed paths on the steps of the Plaza de Mayo cathedral.
“I think they dress classier here,” I commented, as I was wearing the only pair of shorts on a warm, humid day within a crowd of hundreds.
“Yeah, but their whores still dress the same,” chuckled Ivan, still in awe from his unplanned encounter.
I think that was the first time I used the United States as my center-point for cultural comparisons. It was my reality, my life and my perspective on what it meant to be a civilized human being. As time went on, however, this would shatter to pieces.
For the nightlife was by no means civilized.
Lasting from sunset to sunrise, anything goes during an Argentine night. From the bars and nightclubs to the passionate make-out sessions after no more than several words to the two-hour “telo” sessions to do the dirty deed, Argentine nightlife could not differ more from our tame house parties.
Catholic and conservative on its exoskeleton, Argentina is a high-rolling Vegas “putero” once the sun goes down.
Ironic or not, their lack of rules seems to bring out the best in people.
Ivan showcased this the most.
Homegrown in the Bible Belt of the Midwest, educated in the progressive Northwest and free to roam in the “no-rules” land of Argentina, he made chaos his stomping ground.
He thrived under uncertainty, moving with rock-star confidence and a gift of gab like I had never witnessed in the states. He’d kiss and hug anyone.
He’d reminisce with near-strangers in what seemed like lifetimes of memories. Sleep was always an option for Ivan, and at the humble age of 20, why bother? He figured that the more he ate, the less he needed to sleep.
Call it backwards logic, but it worked. All the women wanted him. All the men wanted to be him. He had the city by its balls, and there was no turning back. He had achieved a state not possible within America because of our rules and social norms, and he was on cloud nine.
Yet when he contemplated that this paradise — one where he could be himself — shared the same world with the United States, he snapped.
It seemed that the North American engine wouldn’t let him from its grasp.
Social networks reminded him of home responsibilities. The credit card sticker on the Nike store window put images of bills and debt in his head. He finally was himself in Rosario, but it seemed to be nothing more than a glimpse at satisfaction. The world wouldn’t let him be the human being that he was. But he refused to give up.
So the gears turned, and the dark shadow of fear drowned his reality in a sort of apocalyptic paranoia. Screaming in despair, he ran from invisible satellites, ones he genuinely believed would conquer him.
On the beach in Uruguay, I spot a sand dune on the peninsula. It looks like a good place to watch the sun set in the west, the direction of beautiful havens like Oregon and Rosario, where I once questioned my host-brother Ezequiel Romano about Argentine rights such as free education and health care.
“Once society is given a privilege it becomes impossible to retract,” he said.
I look out on the horizon and think of Ivan. The Ivan who once was, is now and probably will never be again. Ivan the talker, the lover and the no-limits dreamer who marched out of line. Ivan: the Midwest boy who came to Argentina and found out what it meant to be human, until the system denied him the privilege.
Today I played charades in Spanish — a language I barely know. Tonight I am taking a bus ride to Rocha — a place I have never been. Tomorrow, hopefully I will see beaches human eyes seldom get to witness. But Sunday I will head back to the United States of America. Part of me wishes I were among those fishermen to the east.
And I think of Ivan.
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