Salsa Picante

I was bleary eyed from yet another 14 hour bus ride. Trips like that were becoming characteristic of my time in Argentina. At least it wasn't a 30 hour ride like the one I did a month ago. But still the feeling was similar. You arrive in the middle of the night to an unknown city, peel yourself out of the semi-cama seat that stubbornly never grooved to the shape of your back despite so much time on it, and you pile off the bus. The hostel brigade storms in. They know to get you when you are weak and confused.

"You looking for a hostel?"

"Yes."

"These are the services we offer: hot water, dormroom, breakfast, free internet..."

"I'll take it."

"Really?"

The expression of surprise I got from that hostel worker didn't inspire confidence, but I figured that pretty much any hostel could meet my requirements of a roof and a shower. The last one I slept at was probably the worst, where the mattress on the bed was paper thin and yet still infested with bed bugs. I was still scratching the huge red bite marks on my bicep and back while I walked with the girl toward the hostel she offered. At that time of night I'd rather go with the first offer than wander aimlessly around an unknown city. It's a game of roulette, but more often than not it works out just fine.

The hostel worker looked at me from the corner of her eye and asked, "You thinking about going out tonight?"

"I don't know. I'm pretty tired."

"But there are going to be six girls from the hostel going out. We need a guy to protect us."

I laugh. "I probably wouldn't be much use to you in the state I'm in. I might need you to protect me."

She smiles at me responding, "You wouldn't want me to protect you. I'm too dangerous."

The hostel worker says the last point with an obvious coquettishness that would be flattering, maybe even interesting, if her lips and nose had less piercings and she didn't have about five kilos on me, despite being at least a foot shorter. I shrugged off the comment.

"So where's this hostal?"


Illuminated by flourescent lights that hummed like a beehive, my room was empty despite being designed for eight. Excellent. Peace and quiet. The pierced girl left me to settle in. I realized my shirt was sticking to my back from the sweat that seeped from my pores during the trip. I took it off, tossed it on the bed and walked the checkerboard floor to the bathroom.

New hostel showers are an experience unto themselves. They are like beginning a new relationship. Perhaps she'll be cold at first, making you believe you have no chance at warmth. Or she'll surprise you with so much heat that you get burned and have to run away. More often than not, you have to be a gentleman with the shower. You have to get to know her, learn how to push her buttons just right so that she provides you with consistent, comfortable warmth. One wrong move and she'll go frigid on you again. Or she'll scald you permanently.

I took my time with the shower. I was a gentlemen. She rewarded me with a stream of perfectly warm water. Sure it took awhile to heat up, but I smelled terrible and was obviously a bit needy at that point. I didn't expect the water to be warm right away. But when it was, I dove in and enjoyed every minute of it.

Drying off I heard a knock at the door.

"Joshua. We're leaving in ten minutes."

Right. I never declined the invitation to go out, so it was assumed I'd go. I was just about to shout that I was too tired when my stomache growled loud enough for the hostel worker to hear. I hadn't eaten for the last half of the bus trip.

"You're coming, right?" she asked.

"You think there'll be a place to grab some food?"

"Of course."

"Yeah. I'll go."


We got out of the taxi, me, the hostel worker, and two other girls. Where the other three girls were I had no idea, but my mind was on food, not on girls, and I searched the bar cramped street for a place to eat.

The slang expression for techno music here is poonchy-poonchy. It's called that because that's the primary beat that the music follows no matter what song is being played. Poonchy-poonchy. As I looked for food, all I could hear was poonchy-poonchy. I watched small crowds of people meandering into the bars and discotecs. It was a Wednesday night. There was not much nightlife around. The poonchy-poonchy echoed in the streets.

"Hey, I know a guy that works here," the hostel worker directed us to a discotec illuminated with neon purple lights. "I bet we can get some free drinks."

I was pulled into a whitewashed room where the poonchy-poonchy now picked up and grew louder. I shouted something to the hostel worker about food and she responded by putting a beer into my hand. She clinked her Fernet and Coke filled glass against my beer bottle, looked me in the eyes, and took a drink. I did the same. Before I knew it, I was stomping out poonchy-poonchy beats in the middle of the dance floor while the piercing faced hostel girl grinded on me like I was a stripper pole.

No, I was not happy.

I looked for an out, some way to escape the hostel worker who was now clearly trying to seduce me on the dance floor. An objective viewpoint would understand that inebriated poonchy-poonchy girations were everything but sexy and when combined with aggressive groping of my backside were less sexy still. But objectivity is tossed out the window when Fernet is mixed with CocaCola and I'm sure in her head the hostel worker thought she was Jessica Alba on that dance floor. Had that been the case, had she been Jessica Alba, I wouldn't of snuck off to the bathroom the moment she turned her back to me to do yet another butt out, drop to the floor move. But she wasn't Jessica Alba and as soon as that butt hit the floor, I was at the bathroom sink, slapping cold water onto my face.

I thought of a plan. I'd carefully sneak out, walk up the street to find some food, then grab a taxi back to the hostel. I just had to avoid the hostel girl and I'd be good.

I peered out of the bathroom, eyeing the dancefloor in order to find the position of the hostel girl, the only threat to my escape. She was right in the middle, but to my relief she had already swept up another gringo, one who apparently was into piercings and obesity because this time he was doing the butt out drop to the floor move on her and she was utterly elated by it. I knew I had been long forgotten and so I casually walked through the dancing crowd, grabbed my coat and made my way to the door. Just as I heard the poonchy-poonchy switch to some sort of salsa rhythm I felt a hand grab my arm.

Oh no. She caught me. I was doomed for another set of gropings and grindings. I turned around keeping my head down so as to see her face to face. Like I said, she was a bit shorter than me. But to my surprise, when I turned around all I saw was a pair of pert breasts hidden behind a tight flowery dress. Not bad. I looked up. Not in front of me. Up. This woman was quite a bit taller than me. I'm six foot one. She was a giant. She looked at me and said one word: "Salsa".

She was not talking about food, food which I so desperately needed at that point. Nor was she asking if I wanted to salsa dance with her. She was telling me what was going to happen, whether I liked it or not. Salsa was going to happen. It was an order. She pulled my face into her chest and started moving me back to the dance floor.

If I'm well fed, rested, and excited to dance I am still probably the worst salsa dancer south of the equator. There I was, hungry, tired and not at all interested in dancing and this juggernaut of a woman was forcing me to dance. She slammed her right leg between both of mine and began the quintessential hip rock that salsa requires you to be able to do.

White men, having come from savage barbarians in cold bitter areas of northern Europe have never developed the hip sway that the latin men, coming from Mediterranean vacation spots, seemed to have acquired so cunningly while drinking sangria on the beach. We were too busy wielding swords and tearing fur off of animal carcasses to keep warm. Hip sways didn't interest us. Latin men were just sitting in the sun wondering how to attract women. I'm sure they thought, "If I move-a my hips a-like-a dis, de womens, dey will love me". And they practiced it daily most likely being very successful, and copulating on the beach like rabbits. But where my ancestors lived, in cruel, inhospitable places with names like Slavs, Saxons, and England, I don't think there were even women to try to impress. If there were they probably just looked like the men. Legs just as hairy. Beards. And if there happened to be a man who "moved his hips like dis", I'm sure he was used as bait for catching bears.

Generations later, my ancestor's blood still pumping through me, I was hopeless to put together any step that could be considered salsa. But the giant woman gripped me tight and forced me to try.

I thought maybe if I started up a conversation with her she would lower the intensity level a bit.

"So. Where are you from?"

She looked at me with a bitter, angry expression. She coldly replied, "France."

France? Her ancestors were pretty much in the same boat as mine. I guess she had a little more of the latin influence than my skull bashing great-great-grandpas, but she didn't grow up salsa dancing. You could tell. When a latin girl salsa dances, it is rythmic, natural. It's like walking, something she grew up doing and is therefore a part of her. You could tell that this french girl learned to salsa dance, took classes. Her movements were calculated, robotic. They only fit with other specific, calculated steps. Steps that I had no hope of summoning up to save my life. Regardless, my efforts at conversation failed. She was there to dance. Not to talk.

I stepped on her feet more than a few times, trying to follow the rythym she required me to march out. She was not pleased. I wanted to remind her that she had grabbed me. I didn't ask to salsa dance with her. She wanted to dance with me. I was just afraid of her, so I obliged.

She kept pulling me towards her, lifting my right hand in the air as if thinking that if she did that, somehow she'd trick my feet into knowing what to do. It didn't work, I could only stumble out a few steps at a time, steps that were awkward and flacid.

She looked at me and again spoke to me callously, "You only do one step."

"Yeah...I call it the 'J-step'," I looked down in embarassment. "It's uh...yeah, it's not very good."

I tried to laugh off the tension created by the comment. She just looked at me sternly, towering over me. Every one around us was having a wonderful time. We were not.

Her frown gave away what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. "I'm leaving."

"Yeah...me too."

She turned her back and walked away, absorbed by the crowd of dancers on the dance floor. I left in the opposite direction, toward the door.

In the steet I saw a hot dog vendor. Finally I'd be able to eat. My stomach could barely wait for the food. I ordered two hot dogs. The vendor threw the sausages into their respective buns and before handing it to me he asked, "Salsa?"

I ate the hot dogs grudgingly. Somehow I had lost my appetite.

The Cathedral of San Francisco

It's a dead heart in the middle of the city. It's dead because if you were to cut it nothing would bleed from it. The gash would just sit gaping open like the mouth of a fish after suffocation. It's cold despite its earthly red color which would otherwise connote heat. The dichotomy doesn't work. The color would make you believe it should still beat, it should still feed the city with warm life. But it doesn't. It sits lifeless save that warm color of blood that covers the walls. The blood scabbed over long ago, to the point that now the Cathedral of San Francisco has begun peeling. Flakes of scab exfoliate off the walls revealing fresh pink flesh underneath. The wine colored paint chips are crushed into the sidewalk by passersby. The chips mix with dog feces and cigarette butts. They are the sands at the base of the temple, the sign of age and deterioration. Perhaps that's where the cold lifelessness comes from, from the fact that it is in the process of death, or ruin, or of being forgotten.

The city of Salta ignores its heart save a few religious nuts that still go in to pray. They're nuts because only madness would lead you to want to enter that sanguine structure. It's a house of God that has graffiti on the walls and smells of urine. It's piety is issued, not felt. Even the convent attached to it, tumor like, seems atheistic. I have not seen the nuns inside that are rumored to live there. Nor have I heard their prayers. Has God?

The pedestrians that walk by seem to have already forgotten it as the life organ of the city. There is little reminder of the heavenly, just pollution choked streets that extend from the crimson mass like black arteries. Its superior vena cava is a byway. The left subclavian is a mess of motorcycles and vintage Mercedes. It's a circulatory system filled with swarming flies and exhaust, extending to the ends of the city where finally the veins can release the chaos and breath.

* * * * * * *

I like the Cathedral of San Francisco. Sure it doesn't sound like it, what with all the death and filth metaphors. But I like it like I love Picasso's Guernica, which is about the massacre of innocent townspeople in the Basque Country. I stood and stared at that painting for half an hour, not able to take my eyes of it. I did the same with the Cathedral of San Francisco in Salta, Argentina. There is emotion in it. Emotion that does not have to come from optimism or from the conventions of what you are supposed to like. You're not supposed to like dead hearts...but you do like the color crimson, you like ruins, you like antique like deterioration. I like the idea of a cold religious temple. There is something telling in the idea, something darkly playful.

I suggest a visit to the cathedral if you get a chance. How would you describe it?

Weak Cochamo Post

Since it seems that my Cochamo writing may be lost forever in writer's block, I opted for the easiest way out: a photo essay that's not even grammar or spell checked. Hooray! All this happened about 4 months ago now, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

This is a rest for those of you who don't like to read that artsy fartsy stuff. Just click the link below to see some nice photos and read some very bad writing.

Cochamo Post

The Treehouse

She told me that she always wanted to live in a treehouse. So did I. So I took my paints and went to work creating a painting of a giant oak tree on a hill. I painted the branches reaching out into the cool air. I painted the leaves with colors of autumn. And cradled in the nook of the outstretched branches I painted a treehouse. Below the oak with the treehouse I painted text. It said,

"This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in a tree in the countryside of Spain, or in the South of France, or overlooking rice patties in China. This is where we'll live together with the freedom of childhood, where we'll walk barefoot across its creaking floorboards and drink tea next to the woodstove. This is where we'll cook delicious food that we'll eat in bed and where we'll read aloud to each other by candlelight. It's where we'll hang this painting on the wall along with pictures from our travels together.

This is the treehouse I built for you. This is where we'll spend hours talking honestly under blankets, laughing at a time when life seemed difficult. This is where we'll make love, where I'll learn something new about you every day and every time that happens I'll be fascinated. It's where I won't be afraid to look deeply into your eyes, where I'll give you kisses for no reason other than I wanted to. It's where I'll write and paint and wait for you every afternoon to come back from your walks. And every time I see you enter I'll think, 'Beautiful'.

This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in the mountains of Colorado, or the foothills of Patagonia, where the only sounds are that of the brook in the distance, the finches playing on the terrace, the wind caressing the leaves. It's where our son will take his first steps, on a floor suspended above the earth. It's where we'll go to celebrate and to greive, where we'll know real happiness together.

This is the treehouse I built for you, where I wait for you now, watching the sunset in the distance."

The painting was honest. The text, even more so. But I wasn't satisfied after I painted it because what I really wanted to create wasn't the painting at all. What I wanted to create was the treehouse itself.