The standard parental question ¨When am I going to see you again?¨ actually translates to ¨When are you going to stop this craziness and come home?¨  As I prefer the former question, I opted to answer it by inviting my mother to come down and visit me while in Buenos Aires.  The weather´s good (the city´s name literally means ¨good winds¨), the crime rate´s low, the food is more interesting than it was in Ecuador and the high Jewish population would obviously be appealing to her, especially given I would be in the city for Passover.

Surprisingly, she took me up on the offer.  And so, when she arrived four days into my Buenos Aires experience, I couldn´t really hold it against her that I´d fallen in love with the town in a way that can´t be experienced with one´s mother.  But it´s possible that I did — just a little.  Hopefully she didn´t notice.  I´ll save all the mother-centric stuff for later, putting four days worth of quality, motherless Argentina/Uruguay action into this one.

Too Much Wine

This obelisk runs down ¨Avenida 9 de Julio,¨ the widest avenue in the world. Way to be original, Buenos Aires!

Emma and Patrick, my Irish partners from the MV Ushuaia have followed me back to Buenos Aires (it was always on their itinerary, so I can´t take credit for being particularly inspirational), and a large assortment of rave reviews have led us to The Milhouse Hostel for some post-Antarctican urban revelry.  It´s a large hostel — five floors, complete with elevator — and known as one of the city´s better party hostels, complete with packed DJ nights several times a week and a fairly extensive bar.  Wrist bands are given to all guests to help keep the order.

An Australian girl, whom both the Irish had met taking a bus together through Europe and Asia several years ago, was currently in town with her Argentinian boyfriend.  She seems familiar; turns out she gave me the Torres del Paine lecture in Puerto Natales several weeks prior.  Sadly, I don´t remember her name.

She asks for a funny story about me and I tell her that I used to dress up like Captain Morgan in the DC area for a couple years, talking like a pirate and drunkenly handing out free schwag with the Morganettes.  This is generally a good gauge of people for me, as half of those that I tell find it imminently interesting, while the other half feel a shame for me that I never quite felt for myself.  She tells me it sounds like one of the greatest jobs she´s ever heard of.

I ask the same of her and get a bizarre story involving Amsterdam sex shows, mistaken identities and a banana from a time when she worked as a cross-Europe tour guide.  The story´s interesting, but I´m far more curious about the job, with visions of free travel and wild mobile parties (all while bringing in a decent paycheck).  It turns out, unsurprisingly, that the paycheck is indecent at best.  As the same cities, landmarks, points of interest and geological formations fly by that once fueled her drive for more travel, she instead found herself burnt out and jaded, loathing a pass-through of Paris the way I might have once dreaded a code mesh or inter-office meeting.

Another job crossed off the ¨potentials¨ list.  I hadn´t really put much thought into it anyway.

She likes white wine, and it passes down my throat too easily, like flavored water.  Emma and Patrick split a large bottle of Quilmes, and the Australian (I forget her name) and I go through an entire bottle of white wine just as quickly.  Every order to the bar is another bottle of beer, and another full bottle of wine, each split between two, each drank at about the same rate.  When all is said and done, the Australian and I split six bottles between us.

Despite the obviousness of such a bad idea with hindsight, the inebriation still manages to sneak up on me at the time.  My speech is slurred.  I´m going off on an Israeli couple for making me always defend their people for their policies in South America (post-army Israeli tourists are almost always obnoxious assholes, derided by the rest of the traveling community).  They leave dinner early.  Patrick shakes his head as I challenge the Australian futilely to a drinking competition.  I lose.

A view of the city from the boat to Uruguay. I don´t have any pictures from drunken wine night, so you´re just getting fillers for now...

In general, it´s not economically sound to drink alcohol while traveling.  I´ve had my share of fun, liquor-drenched evenings from time to time, but in general I´ve seen the world mostly sober.  This is the first night since I´ve been here that I´ve been drunk.  Embarrassingly and disturbingly hammered.  Moreso than I can recall being in recent years.  Patrick says something and I throw the last of my wine at him, splashing a group of women in the table behind us.  They look back in irritation and I stare back at them fearlessly until they turn around.

¨That wasn´t cool at all, mate,¨ Patrick says.

¨pshhh.  It was.. funny.  Cuz, whatever.¨

¨No, it wasn´t funny at all.  I´ve got wine all over my shirt now.¨

I storm away angrily at those that can´t take such a harmless joke, stumbling in flip-flops back to the safety of my hostel.  A party´s going on at the Milhouse, with tables and chairs removed from the common area and a DJ blasting music to a surprisingly competent light show.  The floor´s filled with people and it´s too much for me.  I´m dizzy and my heart is racing for some reason.

Downstairs is calmer.  Leather sofas are perched around a large flatscreen television and Jim Carrey´s latest — ¨Yes Man¨ — is just starting.  I fall into the thick, downy comfort of the nearest chair and pass out upon impact.

I wake to screaming and disgust.  A girl is looking at me, aghast, with her hand to her mouth like an extra in an old Hitchcock movie.  Yes Man´s credits are rolling and there´s vomit on the floor.

must not´ve been a good movie.

Realization that the vomit is mine now fills me, and slowly, shame does as well.  I´ve done this maybe twice in my life, and always when I was so young I might´ve used that as an excuse.  I know that people are rallying for an employee to come down and, in what is likely the worst task at any hostel, undo that which I have done.  As people back away and bark their instructions just feet from where I sit, I´m spoken of in the third person, something alien and foreign and wrong.  Or maybe like a dog.  My dog eyes look down as I stand and mumble my apologies to an uncaring room.

My shirt is untouched, but the same can´t be said for the legs of my pants and my feet (where are my flip-flops?).  Three women look down at me from above the urinals.  They´re ¨clever¨ artwork, life-sized full-bodied picture cutouts of hipster women pointing down and laughing toward the spot where ostensibly a penis might be relieving itself in the accompanying urinal.  I feel the full weight of their scorn and half fall into a bathroom stall, gaining composure while hiding from people both real and plastered to the wall.

Outside the bathroom, a man with a mop is cleaning up after me.

¨sorry,¨ I say.

¨Hey, don´t worry about it,¨ he tells me.

¨no.  no, i´m really sorry.¨

¨Hey,¨ he says, stopping his work.  His face is serious and less happy this time.  ¨I said don´t worry about it.¨

I take the hint and move on.  An elevator leads upstairs, and a single girl rides alongside me.  I make myself as small as possible.  Was she in the basement when I was there?  Does everyone know the guy with the blue shirt and the jaguar claw necklace emptied his stomach on the floor?  Did I miss any spots?  Do I smell?  The elevator opens to the fourth floor and I bolt out and to my room.  Patrick — shit, Patrick.  Probably my favorite person I´ve traveled with this year and I dumped a glass of wine on him — isn´t there, though Emma seems to be in bed.  Thankfully I have no trouble sleeping.

In the morning, I pack up while the rest of the room sleeps.  I´m clean and strangely not hungover (I apparently did a fair job of purging all toxins from my system), but embarrassment still fills me from the night before.  In my mind, a network of gossip has alerted everyone in the hostel as to my size and description, and I´ve lost the few allies I started with.  My intention is to wordlessly check out, rebooting the entire city experience at some other dive on another side of town.

While looking into places on the Internet, Patrick comes up to me.  He´s awake, clearly.  My eyes automatically avert themselves as he asks how I am.  My responses to the smalltalk are muted and short at best.  He asks if I´m alright.

¨I´m so sorry about the wine, man.  I have no idea how I got that drunk.¨

¨Well, you drank six bottles of wine between you.  That´ll do it.  We had to pour [Australian girl] into a cab at the end of the night.¨

¨Yeah?  Well, I just…¨

¨Man, is that what you´re worried about??  I´m Irish.  We get that drunk every night, get in fights with our best friends and then wake up the next morning like nothing ever happened.  Don´t worry about it, man!¨

And suddenly, I´m not worrying about it.  At all.

Welcome to Buenos Aires.