A Crazy Ride to Ibará

After grabbing a quick breakfast at Hotel El Sol, Guille and I took a taxi to the bank where we kept the young driver waiting for more than a half hour while changing money. We made it to the bus station in time to catch the bus for Colonia Pelligrini, the site of the ecological reserve called Esteros de Ibará.

The bus ride was crazy — an old bus packed full of people and supplies. We traveled to several local homes  looking for passengers before heading on our way to Colonia Pelligrini. The road was packed dirt and quite muddy in places where the rain from a recent storm gathered.

Along the way, we came across a broken-down van with several tourists and a drunk man, probably a migrant ranch worker, who we dubbed the “cowboy”. After shuffling people and luggage around for half an hour, we were ready to continue on our way.

About ten minutes later, the bus’ motor died and the driver and faretaker went through a complex procedure to get it started again. This gave us a welcome break to stretch our legs from the cramped position we were in.

The drunk cowboy offended Guille when he boarded with a muddy bag that he rubbed on Guille’s coat and hand as he sat down, practically in Guille’s lap. Finally, I told the guy to move over onto the wooden plank the faretaker had placed across the middle aisle for him to sit on. Guille said it wasn’t necessary — I replied that it was for me, not for him — and I could see that Guille was relieved when the guy did move over.

Then he started coming on to the Spanish woman seated nearby, which horrified most of the people on the bus. I wanted to help, but there wasn’t much I could do except ask her if she was upset and wanted to change seats. She said she preferred not to change, but eventually the outrage of the other passengers was so great that a forceful local woman practically dragged her to another seat, which she admitted afterwards was more pleasant.

A little while later, we noticed the smell of wine on the bus and a puddle of wine on the floor. Several people checked the cases of wine stored on the floor to see if they had broked, but it turned out that it was a box of wine in the dirty bag the cowboy brought on board that had spilled everywhere. He took the box of wine out of the bag and started drinking more. He was so drunk that even Guille couldn’t understand much of his Spanish. He claimed to have German parents and tried to speak a few words of German with me.

His skin was the texture of leather, hardened and bronzed by the sun. Had he not been eternally drunk, he could have been a handsome man. Finally, he got off the bus at a local ranch and tried to persuade a man there to hire him, or so it seemed.

As we neared the ecological reserve, we saw more of the diversity of animal and plant life, including the first capibaras, known locally as carpinchos, that I had ever seen. Guille calls them big rats, but I think of the carpinchos as huge guinea pigs and I find them adorable. For that reason, I gave Guille the nickname of “carpinchito” (small capibara).

The bus ride scheduled for three hours ended up taking six hours, but we did finally, after miles of “mud skiing,” end up at Colonia Pelligrini, where there is a charming campground and the wonderful Ypa Sapukai hotel where we are staying. After watching the sunset from a little tower on the hotel grounds, we had a vegetarian meal and slept well.

Concordia

Guille and I are in a small hotel room in Concordia, Entre Rios, Argentina, after a torrential nighttime downpour — not sure if we can travel on to Mercedes today.

Well, we made it to Mercedes and the Hotel El Sol, then took a bus to the shrine for Gauchito Gil. He was a cowboy who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. The rich killed him for it and he became a local saint as a result.

We returned to Mercedes in time for a free theater production of Quijote and a quick dinner afterwards. Guille and I raced each other through the main town square on our way back to the hotel.

Preparing to Travel With Guille

Since Guille and I got along so well, and since he was temporarily without his job as a hairdresser, I invited him to come along with me to travel in northern Argentina. After considering it for a bit, he decided to come along. We tried to find a laundry to wash our clothes before heading out of town but they were all closed because it was Sunday. We went to the bus station to research tickets then walked around town. We had a romantic dinner in the old town with an excellent bottle of Uruguayan wine and a creme papaya with cassis for dessert. I spent the night at Guille’s place in the apartment he shares with Santiago. Santiago has a sign on his room that reads “Shh… animals hibernating.”

Enter Guille!

At Cain, I met someone who may become important for the rest of my life. Guille, a 20-year-old somewhat longhaired hair dresser. I was blown away when I saw him and thouight he wouldn’t be interested in talking with me, or perhaps was an escort. Fortunately, he was really interested, so we talked and danced and had a fabulous time getting to know each other. We were so attracted to each other, we knew we had to spend the night together, so I brought him back to the hotel, even though I knew I’d have to pay more for a second person in the room.

Leaving Buenos Aires, Arriving in Montevideo

After a wonderful ten day visit, I left Buenos Aires on a ferry bound for Montevideo, Uruguay. In the ferry station, I met a French-speaking straight guy named Tonino, from New Caledonia. He was kind enough to recommend a hotel, and we took a taxi there together since I hadn’t made any plans. We ate dinner at a pretty good place near the hotel, then I went off on my own to meet Nando, a guy I met on the Internet. At first Nando didn’t show up at the street corner where he said he would meet me, so I was kind of bummed. Fortunately, he called me with apologies for being late and we met up for a coffee, where it turns out we felt like friends rather than romance. Then we went to a queer disco named Cain.

La Vida en Buenos Aires

Edgardo was a great pal while I was in Buenos Aires. He and Jim e and I hung out a lot together, well, especially he and I hung out together. He came to the hotel in a taxi to help me change dollars into pesos since I didn’t have any pesos I could use to pay the taxi driver until after I changed money. Afterwards we went to his place for a great “nap”.

He lives with a guy named Javier who is a bit blase about life in Buenos Aires.

Before meeting Andy, another guy from the Internet, I tasted my first real empanada at a place near the plastic surgery clinic where Andy has asked to meet me.

He showed up late and wasn’t at the clinic. We walked around town, bought some books, and ended up eating dinner at a restaurant in Palermo Viejo. During dinner, I found out that he had a boyfriend and hadn’t told his boyfriend that we were meeting. I gave him some advice about honesty in relationships.

Next I met with a guy named Daniel, also from the Internet.

We walked around Palermo Viejo and had a drink at a cafe. He was a nice guy but I got the impression that we didn’t hit it off that well. I later found out that he was hit by a car and injured a bit, so he went to his mother’s place out of town and we didn’t see each other again before I left.

I rounded out the day by going to a couple of gay bars (Sitges and Titanic) with Jim e and a guy staying at the hotel named Raoul. I didn’t really like the bars. Sitges was nearly empty and had only a few foreigners and a nervous under-age boy who got thrown out of the place. Of course, it was a Wednesday night.

The Lucknow 4: Gay Club Arrests in India

I’m shocked to read of the arrest of four gay men in India for simply meeting together for a picnic. Apparently, although no sex was involved, the police entrapped them and charged them with a violation of Section 377 of Indian Penal Code, punishable by 10 years to life imprisonment. The police apparently traced the guys through an online website.

One can only hope that this is the final straw that breaks the camel’s back to reform this antiquated law from the era of British colonialism so that gay people can take their place alongside the rest of humanity in India and around the globe.

Memory Lane: Interview with Allen Ginsberg (Between the Sheets)

This evening, I watched a documentary called Walt Whitman, part of the Voices and Visions series, directed by Jack Smithie, and copyrighted in 1988 by the New York Center for Visual History. The documentary includes numerous excerpts from interviews of Allen Ginsberg, including one snippet where he mentions a sexual lineage that connected him to Whitman through Neal Cassady, Gavin Arthur, and Edward Carpenter (a claim he also apparently made in a Gay Sunshine interview).

I had a flashback to the time I spent with Ginsberg in Cambridge, MA, in 1982, when he told me that I was part of an erotic lineage that connected me to Whitman through him and Carpenter and others I didn’t remember from that time. I now know much more clearly who Neal Cassady is, although Gavin Arthur remains a mystery. One result of a quick Google search identifies Arthur as ” a certain astrologer and San Francisco character, Gavin Arthur (grandson of president Chester A Arthur), who gave lectures at San Quentin while Neal was a prisoner.” Another entry reports that he studied astrology with Ronald Reagan before Reagan started his political career.

I had interviewed Ginsberg for Gay Community News in an issue published on August 21, 1982. The funny part of the interview was how we decided to end it in print, that is, with Ginsberg’s question to me about whether I was going to refer to the conditions of the interview in publication, my question to him about what he meant, and his reply that the interview was conducted when we were in bed together.

A month or so ago, I found a cassette tape containing the whole interview and listened to it for the first time in more than 20 years. I was surprised at how fresh and relevant Ginsberg’s words remained to me and to the current political situation in the U.S.

Perhaps an archive somewhere would be interested in the recording? If so, please contact me. Or perhaps I should just transcribe the whole thing and post it on this blog. The incomplete interview, as published in Gay Community News, is now apparently selling for $22 an issue on the web, so I guess I should scrounge around in the basement to see if I still have any copies, eh?

Bareback Mountain: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Neighm

A friend on a private email list asked me why I thought “Bareback Mountain,” (if not available at the previous link, try “Bareback Mountain” instead) the parody of Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” was funny, rather than an affront to the queer community. My answer:

While I thought Brokeback was an excellent film, it can be read in various ways by various audiences. One way to read the film is as a reinforcement of the “shocking” “lifestyle” of homosexuality and the inevitable destruction of those who are foolish enough to participate in it. I suspect that there are large segments of U.S. society that will walk away from Brokeback with that take on the film if they ever chance to see it. As other reviews have pointed out, it’s curious that the hetero sex is so much more openly filmed that the homo sex for example. Perhaps that’s why I felt profoundly depressed by the film.

The reason that the Bareback parody is funny is because it ridicules a reading of Brokeback in which homosexuality is as “shocking” and “deviant” as bestiality. It uses a similar meme of the cowboy (or shephard or whatever) so emotionally isolated he can only express his secret longings in physical isolation and in constant fear of discovery.

The shadow puppet sequences of physical intimacy are there because showing the actual act would be far too “disturbing” and “inappropriate”, unlike normative male-female sex. And the scenes of him turning away from his wife in bed (and presumably family as in Brokeback), his wife wielding the humungous dildo and recounting the visit from animal services, show just how dangerous such deviance can be to the traditional family structure.

I certainly don’t believe it’s the intent of the parody to compare homosexuality to bestiality in a serious way, but to tease out the themes of Brokeback that lead to a regressive and rather disturbing reading of it, unfortunately a reading that much of the movie-watching public may walk away with. The parody is, somewhat paradoxically, the kick in the butt that Brokeback needs for me to walk away from both films feeling integrated as a queer with a chance of living as a respected human being in a diverse and accepting society.

I won’t even begin to delve into the morality of such relations with animals… that’s a topic for another day.

Another person quoted on the list who saw the parody quipped that it explored “the Love that dare not speak its neighm.”