It turns out that the communications where I live are a little more sparse than I thought. There is no land-line, and the Wi-Fi network that Miguel said could be found on the north side of the apartment wasn’t there when I checked. There is one Wi-Fi network available, but it doesn’t give me an IP address, so there’s no way to connect to the internet. I’ll have to see if you can look for other IP addresses some way and inspect the services they provide, a good opportunity to learn about TCP/IP networking, which I have been eager to do for some time. I did find an application called Kismac that has pull-down Aqua menus for things like “Dictionary Attack” and “LEAP Attack”. I love Macs.
The practical upshot of all this is that I have to go outside the apartment to use the Internet or make a call, and I wasn’t able to get a hold of the other gringos all day to see what they were doing. So Miguel invited me to go to a party for one of his friends who had just gotten married. She turned out to be one of the subjects of his photography that he had shown me earlier in the day, and one of the most attractive women I have ever met in my life. Her name was Ximena, and she lived with her new husband in a cavernous apartment on the northwest side of downtown. The groom, whose name I unfortunately did not catch, is a painter, and their place was filled with his paintings, large portraits of humanoid figures with heads that show aspects of demons, monsters, animals and human faces. Each pictures was more or less a variation on this same theme, and they were all universally gruesome, with the subject apparently in a great deal of pain. But, the way the different facial features were mixed, as well as the facial expressions and different-colored background swirls, gave each portrait a subtle and distinct mood from the others. On the whole, I really liked the paintings.
After we had gone from room to room, inspecting and commenting on each one, (which I completely failed to do in a complimentary or insightful way) we settled into the normal party routine of sipping drinks and chit-chatting. It’s then that I noticed the really weird aspect to this party. In addition to the gothically attired twenty-somethings who I assume were the friends of the groom, their parents and older relatives were there too, in the sweater vests and sports coats that are casual wear for most middle-aged Chileans. So, the party was a mix of slightly older people than me, in black leather coats, chains and satin; people my parents’ age in their work clothes, one 15 year old kid in 15 year old gear, and me, feeling a little out of place in a red flannel shirt and jeans.
I soon got over my unease and started working the crowd. Every time I would see the groom’s father, he would say something in Spanish like “Oh, here’s my friend from [California, Ohio, Indiana, etc.]!” He seemed to think this one of the funniest things a person could possibly say, so I just played along. As the night progressed, the subject for conversation turned to the United States (surprise!) and he became very agitated and started asking me how I felt about some guy named Booch. It probably seems obvious to whom he was referring as you read this, but I was trying to understand a lot of other things he said, so I didn’t understand that he meant President of the United States George Walker Bush. By the time I did understand what he was talking about, he was closer to me than you normally stand to a person, and speaking much louder than you normally speak to people, certainly louder than was necessary, given that he was so close. Now, to be graceful, I am not a big fan of the President, but I didn’t like the way he seemed to be insinuating that I was personally responsible for the foreign policy of the US over the last five years. As politely as I could, I said something like the following “Sir, don’t you also hate the politicians here in Chile?” [Well, yes] “Then it’s not that Bush is worse than other politicians, but that he is more famous and powerful, so you know him and hate him without seeing why he appeals to some people in our country.” I hope that’s what I said. At least he seemed to calm down a little.
Most of the evening was spent trying to follow people’s conversations, but they were usually about subjects that aren’t covered in Spanish textbooks, so it was hard to keep up with a lot of the vocabulary. Throughout the evening, various wedding-related events kept happening, like the cutting of the cake, throwing the bouquet and flinging the garter. It was fun to see these wholesome events happening in such a strange and unwholesome setting in another language. At 4 o’clock, I was getting pretty tired of dancing and saying “Como?”, so I just sat down and watched Ximena and one of her friends put songs on the computer and dance to them. They were pretty into 80’s New Wave and related bands like Joy Division, Depeche Mode, and Placebo. Some of the stuff really relieved my rock music jonesing and I made a mental note to go search it out.
Eventually not even the music could keep me awake and I felt my eyelids drooping. Miguel wanted to wait until the Metro started running, which would be in about an hour. Then he remembered that it was Sunday, so they wouldn’t start until mid-Morning. I decided to take a micro home, just as the sun was coming up. I love to see cities wake up, and Santiago is better than most U.S. cities, since you can smell food starting to cook, watch the sun rise of over the Andes, and see people blearily stumble out of the homes and toward the bus stops. I blearily stumbled out of the bus, up the stairs and into bed.
