My Woman Is Gone

all right, so without any further a-do...

(...because you know, I could start this off just as any of the previous posts, that 'yeah, so... khm.. sorry everybody for not giving a sign of life for such a long time but we were busy with this and that, but we hereby promise to be better from now on yada-yada-yada...')

which is basically how I started this post anyway.

By the way, do you remember the first post on this blog?

Yep, the one in which I kindly asked you to organize a rescue mission in case we didn't give a shout for more than two weeks... It's been THREE weeks. WHERE IS THE CAVALRY?!! 

'...screw you guys! I'm going home!'

Anyhow.

Me woman is gone. 

Niki found herself in a quite favorable (to her) situation of having 3 days off in a row (was it 4? ... damn, I'm not sure when she's coming back..), so she took the cash AND the credit card and set off for the coast with a friend of her. Now, she's a good woman, so she left me some money ('baby, promise me that you'll do some shopping and eat like a human being'), which - I must honestly say - is half gone. That said, I must restrict the expenses to only the most vital necessities, which - accidentally - is beer, fags, and toilet paper. I'm pretty much secured with the first two, so I'm happy. The last one looks kind of grim, but I'll worry about it when the shit hits the fan (now, really, could you think of a better place for this phrase?). She even wanted to take my Bukowski as well, can you imagine that? UNTHINKABLE! But I stood my ground, so now I can continue spending my evenings reading "Tales of Ordinary Madness", doing all the unhealthy things that men do when their woman is gone (which is drinking in solitude, smoking, eating late and being on bad terms with my shaving machine), and getting into the vibe of an unacclaimed literary genius, boozing his life away while writing about bums and whores. It's a pretty sure bet to think that what you're reading right now is directly affected by Bukowski's prose. (God, I have to stop reading Bukowski). Other influences you may see (or not) in my writing include punk rock, as in a quite short interval of time (say, 2 days) I watched two documentaries: "Punk Attitude" by Don Letts, and "Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten" by Julien Temple, albums of Joy Division (influenced by seeing "Control") and neurotic jazz music of the kind of Cujo and Amon Tobin (which in fact is one and the same person). All of which I wholeheartedly recommend.

Today, no.. actually for the second day, while at work, I was playing with the thought of getting up from my chair, opening my boss's office with a well aimed kick and telling him straight in the face what I think of answering questions like 'is butt-sex healthy?' (that's an original one, actually). And I don't have warm feelings about answering such questions for 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, especially since HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW IS IT HEALTHY OR NOT??

I am just about to initiate my plan B which constitutes of printing some 50 CVs and going on a tour around all the bars, restaurants and snob hotels of Palermo with the purpose of finding another job. And it's simply because ANYTHING is better than nursing love lives of Americans. Actually there is a couple of Polish restaurants around here, so I think I'll try those ones first and show them how to make Pierogi. 

Damn! Sorry. My beer is gone so we'll take a short brake for a refill. 

<..........> (which, in my humble opinion stands for 'short break to refill the beer')

During the last couples of weeks nothing much happened (besides me waiting for the cavalry to arrive). I've been looking for a job (again). Some other people have been looking for a job for me. And I've been looking for some more people who would look for a job for me. 

At the beginning of January a dear friend of ours from Ecuador came to visit. Her name is Soledad and we met in Granada, Spain, in early 2006. It was actually a funny situation because she arrived to Granada shortly after Niki departed for Hungary to write her thesis. All of a sudden I got this text in Spanish saying that she'd be staying at our place and I had no idea who she was. Apparently Niki met her in Tarragona, they talked all night and Sole said she was going to Granada, so Niki offered her to stay at our apartment... but forgot to tell me about it. So now, in Buenos Aires, she actually saw us both together for the first time! We also met Sole's cousin - Sylvia, and her boyfriend Dylan, and ended up consuming large amounts of alcohol and playing guitar. 

Oh, we also signed up for Couch Surfing, so all of a sudden we had some visitors coming from all parts of the world to crash on our couch for a couple of nights. So far we had: two girls from Germany, Geraud - a French guy who temporarily works and lives in Cochabamba, Bolivia, Terrence - dude from South Africa who was with us when Sole was here, and filled me in on secret practices of doing business, Ricardo - a Brazilian who filled us in on where to go in Brazil, and recently a couple from Hungary - Adrien and Karesz who brought us cseresznyepalinka (home made). By the way, Terrence, if you're reading this, dude, you left some Shaolin footwear here! One reason for you to come back! We actually have so many requests from Couch Surfing that - unfortunately - we had to start turning them down. Otherwise we just wouldn't have any private life with Niki any more. 

On the more local, but still social accent, it seems that we have found our Argentinean crowd finally, as expected I might add. There's always someone dropping by our flat, they are mostly Niki's colleagues from work: Leo (he likes punk rock too, but I don't know if he likes Bukowski), Yessi (she works for visual production of one quite well known band called Bersuit), Martin (who does sound for concerts and I got him into psytrance music), Ceci (I wrote about her before) and a bunch of other people that we meet almost everyday. Most of them work with Niki at Telemedia, so she gets to see them more often, naturally. 

We got to know some real Argentinean bars, not those plastic-fantastic designed "lounges" or whatever they're called where they charge you 15 peso for a beer. Last week Ceci took us to a place (of course I forgot the name by now) that had the real Argentinean tango vibe, minimal, 4th hand interior all soaked up in smoke (yes! it's allowed to smoke inside! .. at least it's not prohibited.) and young, and not so young lads and girls sitting around playing and singing tango. Wonderful! When I was there, I kept thinking that Nate would love this place.

Hmm... In the end I managed to end this post on a brighter and less cynical note.

Now back to Bukowski.