On Thursday, I called up a now ex-friend (keep reading) and asked her if she wanted to meet for a drink in one of the cozy little places near my apartment. She said that she was already going dancing at a club in Las Condes called Static and invited me to go with her. This was not for few hours, and I haven’t been getting up very early so I decided to see how I felt and call her back. At about midnight, I was feeling tired enough to go right to sleep, but she just kept shouting “No, no, no, I am going on vacation tomrrow; you have to come.” I had recently decided that I should try to make decisions as if it were twenty years later and I were looking back on the situation. Forty year old Joe would want me to have as much fun as possible, consequences be damned. (Hi forty year old me. How’s Vanessa?) Anyway, I figured I should go, but I should have smelled trouble when I couldn’t find Plaza San Enrique on a map. No matter, I set out on one of the trusty micros eastward to Las Condes, the easternmost comuna in Santiago. The people all kept saying the plaza was much farther, until someone told me to get off and take another one down Avenida Las Condes. A middle-aged man was waiting at the bus stop, so I struck up a conversation with him. Soon, we were joined by another man in a very nice suit, who spoke some English. When I told him where I was from he said, “Ah, Chicago! Lake Michigan, Windy City, wonderful!” We went through what I was doing in Santiago and what I thought of the city and Chile as a whole. He asked me if I understood quantum mechanics, and I replied that although some people say that no one in the world understand what it “means”, I understand how it works. “Amazing”, he replied, “here is a man all the way from Chicago, he understands quantum mechanics, and here he is waiting for the bus with us! Imagine!” I think he was very drunk.
Eventually, we started to lose hope that a bus would come, and they started trying to bargain with taxi drivers to carry all of us to our destinations. The man in the nice suit had only 500CLP ($.90) on him and we had a good laugh at his expense when he tried to explain why he was dressed so nicely and had barely enough to ride the bus home. Eventually we found a taxi driver willing to take everyone at the bus stop for the price we offered, plus a woman who said the would have her husband pay when she arrived at home. Everyone got but the two of us, and guess what! he husband wasn’t home. I felt really bad for the taxi driver, since I had seen this one coming a long way off.
We arrived at the Plaza, and I noticed that the club was in one of those large pre-frabriacted buildings that, in the US, are so common on industrial farms. I remember her saying that the place was very modern, but I thought that meant it had cutting-edge design, and interesting lighting, not that the whole thing had actually been assembled last week. Oh well, if I had fun dancing, it would be worth it. I handed the guy the 3,000CLP entrance fee, and for some reason he handed it back to me along with the entrance.
Since it was only about 2:00am at this point, still early by Chilean dance club standards, the club was almost empty and it was easy to see that my friend was definitely not in there. What was there were some 16-18 years olds dancing with each other awkwardly to terrible, terrible music in front of video projection screen showing a live conert by Moby (?). E_____ said that they were leaving before midnight and I would be sure to catch them if I got there after 1:00.
So, she stood me up. At that point, I began to review my history with this girl. Since I was in a foul mood at this point, the meditations took the form of the accusatory second person…
We hung out the a few times at the Residencia with the other Chicago guys, and we went to Kama Sutra, where you amused me a great deal with you girly antics [as detailed here]. Despite your claim of being bored with this country because you had already been inside three discoteques and to La Serena [a town out in the desert], you seemed eager to go to the places I wanted to go, so I was glad to have some company. You agreed to go to Cerro San Cristobal with me, but it was rainy that day, so I asked you if wanted to go to a movie instead. You agreed, and then emailed to cancel a few minutes later because some other people did not want to see the same movie as us. I did not understand what this had to do with you, me or our plans. Hmm……
Later, I asked if you wanted to go to the Caijon del Maipo, and I was not exaggerating when I said it was one of the most beautiful places I had ever been. You seemed genuinely excited, and I said I would call you to make sure you woke up. At 10:30 the next morning, you were not answering your phone, and you continued not to answer it until I stopped calling around 1ish. You never apologized for this until I called, not you, but someone who lived with you, and asked them if they wanted to come over and have some spaghetti that I was making. I got an email shortly where you said that you were sorry and that “[someone] should have figured it wasnt gonna happen!” Did you mean that I should have figured? How would I have known this? That you should have figured? Well, then why did agree to come along in the first place? This same email requested that I bring the spaghetti to you, and that you would help me eat it. Presumably, I would put all the spaghetti in a pot, carry it on the micros which you don’t even ride, and then carry it the last four blocks, or pay for a taxi myself so that I wouldn’t have to carry it. Woman, what are you smoking, or what have you been smoking for the last few weeks since this behavior started? Hmm…
Now, I am at a club in the middle of nowhere, where you begged me to come over my objections. This night is going to cost me about $20 after I take a cab ride home. And you’re. not. here. To paraphrase King Lear, I am trying to think deeply wherein I may have offended you. I wouldn’t have though twice if you hadn’t just said you didn’t want to do these thing. But why would you act the way you did? Do you treat everyone the same way, as if their time and convenience had never occurred to you, or is there something special in my case? I hope it’s the latter, but I’ll probably never know, since I don’t plan to see you again. I wonder if I should try to get revenge on you, by devising some invitation that you can’t resist and then stranding you somewhere where it will be amazingly hard to get back. No, you don’t seem like a worthy adversary, I don’t have a vengeful personality, and if you couldn’t be bothered to go to such a beautiful spot as Caijon del Maipo, even after I told you how great it was, you would probably just not show up anyway.
To be fair, she could have shown up, realized that the club was lame and left really early. I did try to call, but one payphone did not accept any coins and the other had a non-functional “3″ button so it was impossible to call her number. Oh well, it’s not like I was going to get much done the next day at work anyway.
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