Okay, it’s quarter after noon on Saturday and Dawn and I are reporting to you together–juntas!–from the darkened bowels of our sweet ass hotel room at the Hilton in Buenos Aires. We drew the curtains after getting in last night at 4:30 so we could sleep. Now we’re propped in our twin beds with the fluffiest white comforters figuring out how we can together describe our evening last night. (There is still plenty to report about the end of the cruise, but that will have to wait for now.) Then we’ll go find “breakfast.”
First off, Buenos Aires rocks. We are in heaven. And this is the perfect way to end our trip because so far we are both feeling so much similarity between B.A. and Madrid that we’re constantly having flashbacks from our year together there 20 years ago. When our buses dropped, us and 200 travel-anxious and party-withered Atlantis guests, at the hotel yesterday, D and I were officially liberated from Atlantis duties. So we left our bags in the hotel’s holding area and hightailed it straight into the city–well, technically kind of around the corner and down the street from the Hilton where there is a long line of restaurants along the river. We sat down at a patio table at this place called Cabaña de las Lilas, which Rich (the Atlantis owner) had recommended to us for the amazing beef.
Oh my god. Andria and Terry, Grandpa, you guys would have been in heaven. I wish all of you were there. Not only was the monster T-Bone we had one of the juiciest things I had ever tasted, but the wine list was seriously 50 pages long, full of Argentine Malbecs, South American Sauvignons, Merlots, and that other grape they grow in Uruguay I can’t remember the name of. I tasted an amazing Malbec that had me swooning the whole day and I would have drunk more if D was into wine at all. We then had an emotional conversation imagining how we would have reacted at age 20 if fairies told us what our lives would be like at 40–and that we’d be traveling together in S. America and living in the same city at home!
After that we strolled up this amazing pedestrian avenue called Corrientes. It reminded me a lot of lower Broadway in New York or the Mission in S.F., just shop after shop chock full of goodies, with a kind of crusty presentation overall. Dawn must have dipped into four Latin record stores in the space of five blocks. We were complete dorks, still wearing our matching bright orange Atlantis polo shirts and khaki shorts, but we couldn’t have cared less; we were speaking Spanish again in a bright, sunny, HUGE, beautiful city in Argentina!
Flash forward several hours. We’ve indulged ourselves in a long siesta and I am officially OVER gay men so have started doing the leg work to hunt down a lesbian bar, using these crazy maps of gay Buenos Aires provided by the folks who spent weeks waiting for this ship to arrive. (Seriously, the arrival of Infinity actually was televised on the local news.) After some research, I settled on a place called “Ko-Yo-Tes V-EK” as the target and worked with the concierge to locate it on the map. I then promptly forgot to bring the map as we headed into the city, but D said she trusted my memory.
We might have chosen to take a taxi. However, being the city-savvy girls we are, we decided to hoof it–in what appeared to be a sudden sand storm. The wind had come up and was blasting through the avenues, giving us instant hot dirt facials. And we found ourselves mysteriously blockaded from reaching the avenue we wanted by a many block-long obstacle of deserted government buildings (the ministerio de economia, the ministerio de justicia. These weren’t gorgeous buildings to us, they were gauntlets standing between us and porteño lesbianas). But with grit in our tear ducts and determination on our lips, we muscled our way through vast piles of blowing garbage, empty parks, dilapidated sidewalks in what was clearly the WRONG neighborhood to be walking in. And discovered that the address I remembered–was it 459 Hiopólito Yrigoyen??–would have put us in the middle of a large marble, empty government monstrosity. Hmm, maybe I had the number wrong. We continued walking until we suddenly happened on an oasis–a mini pedestrian mall with delis and seating al fresco, made more charming by the sleeping dog and the garbage swirling and gathering around people’s ankles. Ah, more food!
Hard to describe the pleasure we found in ordering Spanish tortilla–our staple in Madrid–from the menu, and sipping cold Pepsi straight from a sweating glass bottle. (D had the Pepsi, I had a lovely Argintine beer that cost about $5 for a liter). We were lost, but who cared. And on top of the large tortilla we ate a pizza that had stealth discs of longaniza (sausage) hidden under the cheese. Dawn saw an opportunity to offer these greasy treats to the sleeping street dog, and took umbrage when the urchin would not wake up to eat the offering she had placed directly under his nose. “What kind of dog rejects sausage???” We concluded the dog must be dead. (He wasn’t.)
The other highlight was talking with the waiter to determine whether we were indeed near any kind of club frequented by women. He had no clue, but commandeered some English-speaking hipster youths at another table to try to help us. They directed us to a place called Americano in another neighborhood–but we weren’t having a place called Americano, so after dinner we taxied back to the hotel, picked up our map, realized we had the wrong address (we actually were only four blocks from where we wanted to go), and at midnight were back on the aformentioned street. In fact, the taxi pulled up in front of V-EK and a handful of women standing outside who looked embarrassed for us. Dawn said, “what’s the cover?” They answered, “None. We don’t open until 1:00.” (FYI, this was NOT a late night club. Just the regular hours of clubs in B.A.) So we had more time to kill.
This street hosting the club was absolutely forlorn looking–metal shuttered, graffiti, piles of trash, and off the main thoroughfare through town, Avenida 9 de Julio. Just the kind of street where you cannot envision any kind of life behind those doors–and exactly where the lesbian bars are universally tucked in all cities.
We wandered around the streets and into a great little cafe called Iberia where a now sleepy-eyed D got to test the local hot chocolate (with the standard tiny spoon and courtesy galletas) and we got to test our Spanish by reading the Argentine daily. Then we were back at the door of the club, trying to come up with enough pesos to pay the cover (they didn’t take dollars, but D ended up being able to change a $50 with the bartender).
Okay, the scene. The security guy first screened us as if it were a Papal visit, then we stepped into a nearly empty room throbbing with fairly mellow American beats. (Can I tell you how many times I’ve heard that Umbrella song in S. America?) There were a handful of ladies along one wall, and three women behind the bar. The d.j. was in a crow’s nest above the bar, one large disco ball and three disco ball “moons”/lesser lights twirled beside it. Basically, it could have been any neighborhood night club. We did notice this interesting steel structure suspended above the bar, something like a horizontal, chain-link fence. We were clearly cautiously observed by the locals, but smiled our friendliest smiles. (Note: 98% of the women had long hair.)
Things were looking up when a leggy woman in cut offs, boots, and a tiny white tube top brought us complimentary glasses of champagne. Then another of the “bartenders” in cuts offs came out from behind the bar and started swirling long colored ribbons in huge, bright circles like a rythmic gymnast. Whoa; women’s bodies. We were DEFINITELY off the cruise now. D bought us drinks and we settled in to see how the night unfolded.
Okay, you know that movie Coyote Ugly, starring the much coveted Piper Perabo (who, as we all know from that tragic boarding school movie Lost and Delirious, has lesbian appeal)?
Well it took us until one of the bartenders was on the bar deploying the fence device and her cohort was blowing a whistle and yelling “primera víctima!” (first victim) into a mic that the proverbial penny dropped and we realized the theme of KO-YO-TES: like, lesbian Coyote Bar. That’s when the body shots began and the music morphed into Dawn’s favorite, Latin hip hop and REGGAETON! We’d had drinks, they’d had drinks, everybody started making friends with the Americans, our bad Spanish was flowing and we were straining to hear the incomprehensible “eslang”-inflected communications of our new buddies. Soon we found ourselves the special guests—which, within an hour, meant that a certain American person we know was bullied into licking whipped cream from the browned thighs and firm bellies of tube top-sporting, recumbent, bar-writhing beauties. (Okay, it sounds crazier than it was…Nah.) And, a few songs later, the other American was sighted ON the bar, ON her back, with her shirt up to her bra, BEING LICKED on her muscular abs (which gives a clue who we’re talking about) by a random Argentine tongue, which afterwards led to a brief misunderstanding about how available said American actually was for further play).
You should know that there were never more than 50 women in this club, and none was over the age of 25, but those women from Buenos Aires know how to have a great time. We danced merengue, salsa, cumbia, samba, Reggaeton, American hip hop, R&B—and, at one point, a crazy conga line that involved pretty much all attendees. Dawn got a great lap dance and hours of sweaty bailando with a sexy, 19 year-old butch dolly, and Nancy enjoyed lively broken-English yelling and laughing with the cutest little couple, one of whom was a dead ringer for an Argentine Courtney (Marcy’s girlfriend). Dancing had its tricky moments, given the tacón (heel)-grabbing holes in the floorboards, and the fact that patrons were smoking anything from cheap strong cigarettes to weed to hash—and yet no one seemed particularly wasted.
Perhaps the highlight Ko-Yo-Tes bar-top performance of the evening was when the more unsuspecting of the Americans (guess who) and three other women were ushered to the front of the bar where they were each offered glasses of clear liquid. The American figured this was a drinking contest—but no. Oh, the liquid was water; maybe it was for quenching the thirst built up from dancing…but why so public? Oh, could that be because the dancers were now writhing on the bar while POURING water down their chests, and smashing the participants’ heads between their slick breasts? Then they were slipping around on their knees, wagging their asses while participants were invited to pour water down the sluice of the dancers’ cracks and other assorted valleys. Good, lord; needless to say, fun was had by all.
Picture us leaving at 4:15. I’m not sure Dawn will ever forgive me for dragging her out of unadulterated (?) heaven, but I was drop-dead tired and didn’t want to worry about either of us getting home safely on our first night in a strange city. It was like Celine Dion leaving Vegas, like Barbra giving her last bow at her last concert—I thought the Argentines were going to cry, they loved her so much. She was blowing kisses to them as she reluctantly backed out the door, her hair completely soaked with sweat, her teeth gleaming under the black light in a huge smile, and the butch dolly holding onto her ankles for dear life.
Even though I was surprised she was talking to me at all, I loved listening to D chatter on about our night the whole way home. She said it even displaced Sambadrome as her best memory of the trip. Definitely not a night to be forgotten.
The Dutch boys I went to Sambadrome with. 
This is why I appreciate gay men:
Afro-Asian??? 
Disco Balls: 
Rainer & Jochen, my sweet Frankfurt friends:
Who knew that violent vomiting would follow?
Frenchie Davis 
