One night in Buenos Aires (draft-ish)

[I´ll shoot the moon is by the supremely talented Tom Waits from his collaboration with William Burroughs. The jazz club was thelonious, the bar was La Peña de Colorado, the restaurant was overpriced.]


We walked to the restaurant. I say ´the restaurant`. We went to find a restaurant. Which seemed like a bad idea since neither of us were anything close to hungry. So we took detours until we found somewhere to pass time til our stomachs showed some interest.

What we found must´ve dated back 200 years. A funny place where segragation still lived. Tango and tourists up front, locals and pool and something that involved green tables and dice and a lot of concentration in the back. We ordered a couple of beers and tried to sit in the middle. The waitresses all looked tired and no one but an old guy with an air of self importance and a laptop sat near us. Conversation was slow but pleasant. It was Susan´s last day and I´m hopeless at goodbyes. We ordered more beer and looked for somewhere to play pool. There were tables underground but everyone looked a little too much like a foul shot would cost you a finger so we resurfaced. Found a little table outback near the old guys and their dice.

Everybody smoked in that backroom. It was a little like those paintings of dogs playing cards or round a table, cigars hanging from their expressionless mouths. In fact it was a lot like that. We played a couple of games, drank a couple more beers and moved on.

Conversation is always a little poor with me walking through the city. I can´t hear for shit if there´s traffic. It took getting to Puerto Madero for my ears to pick up.

I ordered the steak She ordered something vegetarian that somehow managed to look better than my finest cut of Argentinian beef with a couple of Cuba Libres on the side.

At some point we must´ve left. I remember running across a zebra crossing despite their being no traffic, but the next clear impression on my mind was sat in a jazz club. I appreciate there is´t an excuse for being in a jazz club but the dj was playing ´I´ll shoot the moon´. We seemed to be sat with 3 americans and a guatamalen. No intention of being social, solely out of a need to sit.

A saxophonist came on and I ordered something tart with a lot of whisky. The whole club looked like someone had just fitted a blue light in their attic to light up their carefully arranged as many community chest sofas as they could cram in. It had a good vibe.

The saxophonist finished and a blues band showed up. They suited me better. I ordered up more tart stuff with whisky and watched white russians, beers and a bottle of red join my drink.

At some point funk came on and we vacated the area. By now we were best friends with the guys at our table. Just around the corner was a little bar with crumbling plaster walls and Incan pornography on the shelves. The place was nearly empty but we got some beers in, now a six, and compared culture, travel and mustaches. Over time the place picked back up again and guitars started to appear. One at every table. And one by one every table burst into a different song. But there was no competition. No one outsang each other. They just sang. The air was music. There was sudenly something really pretty about those ricketty wooden benches, and the decaying plaster walls, and the smell of the cigarettes and the glint of the empty glasses and bottles.

After a while some of the guys wanted to sing some Beatles with us. English speakers and all. So we sang up for Hey Jude and got in some more pizza.

By around 4 Susan had to go. I never gave her the goodbye she deserved. I expected to see her around 12 the next day, full of plans for the afternoon. Something to do with a tango club or art. I´d wonder where she´d gone for a good few days after.

But we stayed on at the bar. My second smokey backroom of the night but the music was a far cry from the clattering dice and cues and the tick of the clock reminding us nothing is free in the neighbourhood by the port. In this room there were only 2 guitars. Only one song.

I could feel my eyelids droop as I perched on that barrel listening to songs that I thought were about freedom, and love, and black haired, brown eyed girls who´d got away. It was pushing six when I forced myself to leave. There was real beauty in the room. Like the city had dissolved and there was just us. Singing, and plucking, and laughing, and listening.

When I stepped out with the guys from the jazz club it was raining. The first real rain I´d seen in the big Aires. We kissed cheeks and and I climbed on a wheezing bus I hoped would take me home. As it jerked around Plaza Italia I tried to remember something I´d heard in there. A line, a chord change, a voice raised for a cause a century old. I never did remember. But I remember it was perfect. Pornography, mustaches, cracked ashtrays and all.