A Night to Forget

Chronology: the following takes place on late night/early morning May 29th and 30th. I was not able to post this sooner because my internet was down.

Much like the foil post from which this entry takes its name, the night started with the majority of my housemates sitting around a fire, eating dinner and drinking wine in the living room (picture attached, this time much less blurry). I walked in on the impromptu party at about midnight, late, as usual, after teaching my classes until about 11. Some cold rice at the bottom of its pot was all that remained of what looked to be a pretty exquisite meal, and many of the members of the house were about a sheet and a half to the wind.

A minute or two after my arrival, André informed me that it was his birthday, and that was the occasion for the festivities. I decided that now might be a good time to break out one of the bottles of wine I had been saving in my room (so far I have received two bottles of wine, some home-made bran brownies or something that were just awful, a big "honey-bread" cookie, and a pin that says 100% winner from my students as gifts for no apparent reason), and in typical "flaite" fashion that has sort of become the theme for our ghetto-elegance, I grabbed a plastic pitcher to use as a decanter (the bottle was a 2004 Cabernet-Savignon, and my student was pretty adamant that the bottle be decanted before imbibed in order to get the most out of the experience). I'm not sure the decanting did much, as the wine seemed to be little more than gatorade at the Broncos summercamp, but I figured at least it was a nice gesture.

After, mingling for a little while, I started up a conversation with the Nora, the Colombian girl who I rarely see but believe to be the most successful person living in the house on account of the fact that she is working for some sort of financial firm who is also paying for her masters degree (which, consequently may be the reason that I see her so rarely, considering she has a full time job and is studying for her masters). It didn't take long for the conversation to turn to more personal matters, and I soon discovered (as did the rest of the house) that I was the only member of the house that had not kissed anyone in my time in Chile. With the rest of the house aghast in disbelief, I actually looked pleasantly upon this little surprise, and wondered at how my housemates' opinions might have changed in light of this new information.

The moment passed to more important matters of business, namely, going out in order to celebrate André's birthday. After doing a quick headcount of those in on the festivities, we began the long wait for Andre to get ready, which of course included the obligatory borrowing of my beard and mustache trimmer, which I so much love to lend out (that was sarcasm in case you couldn't tell).

We were finally out the door at around 1:30am, about half an hour before I had originally planned on going to bed before stumbling upon this little improvised adventure. In spite of my best efforts to steer the group otherwise, the plan was to go to a place called Subterraneo, which ALWAYS charges a cover. Amaury attempted to mollify my aversion to the venue by assuring my that they would no doubt waive the cover on a dull Tuesday night. Alas, no such waiver was made. In spite of the fact that we were a group of 10 people, all of whom auspiciously intended to drink heavily in an amount that would FAR outweigh the paltry sum that the bar would receive from charging us an $8 cover (which was lower than their traditional $10, but still $8 too much), the doormen insisted on charging us a cover. They were persuaded to let Andre in to go look around, and he came out with a very clear message: "LEAVE."

Apparently there were 15 people inside, all of whom were sitting rather than dancing, and the main reason we wanted to come to this place was to dance. Literally beside myself and wondering at the stupidity of the Chilean system and their inability to think outside the box in order to make money, I almost missed my chance at redemption. Recognizing my window of opportunity would be short, I jumped in to recommend that we head to a pretty cool bar by my school where they give out free shots on birthdays (see "Freebies"). Unfortunately, in Andre's less than sober state, he failed to recognize the categorical imperative behind the term "free shots"... That is, they are NEVER to be turned down. Still, my entreaties fell on deaf ears, and we decided instead to head to a more touristy slash sketchy slash cliché strip of bars on a street called Suecia, which fittingly sounds suspiciously like sucia, which means dirty.

It wasn't until we had already walked three blocks in the opposite direction that Andre realized that free shots might not be such a bad idea, but changing the course of action of a big group of drunk people is like turning the Titanic: it takes a long time, a lot of effort, and in the end, it might cause a few fatalities. Needless to say, Suecia is where we were, and Suecia is where we would stay.

Exhibit A of previous postulate: we were convinced by a promoter to follow him off the main path into a back alley karaoke bar that from the outside appeared nearly empty. In addition, as we approached the place, there was a group of about 5 really cute Mexican girls with 2 guys. Seeing as how our group was about 8 guys and 3 girls, at the very least, combining our forces would improve the ratio if we ever made it to a place we could dance. Nevertheless, single mindedness and idiocy seemed to be the mantra for this group, so Adam insisted to our drunk and impressionable guest of honor that rather than follow the girls who invited us to join them and might entail a little more walking, we should stop in for a drink. After all, we WERE at a bar. Such was the infallible syllogistic reasoning of our resident Socrates: Adam, the hitch-hiker.

As expected, Andre took the bait. And as expected, the bar was empty and lame. I decided to stop messing around and at least get something accomplished, so when the bartender offered one shot to Andre on the house in honor of his birthday, I bargained the one shot into 10 pints of beer, so we sat down and had a beer on the house.

Maybe it was sobriety creeping in, or perhaps just a dose of logic swept over him, but after our round of beers, Andre wised up and decided it was time to leave. Of course, his moment of clarity was short-lived, as he decided we would lead us all back to Subterraneo. The long and short of our time back at subterraneo is as follows:

We were able to talk down the cover from about $8 each, to about $4 each and girls in free, which I still credit to the fact that the place would close in an hour anyway. Inside were about 20 people, which was better than before, if only slightly. The music was so god-awful, that in spite of all their best efforts even the Latinos couldn't move to the beat with any sort of regularity. I tried to offer some help to the DJ, but when I jumped on the empty stage in the empty club, was quickly intercepted by the rent-a-cop who then escorted me back to the awkwardly gyrating crowd comprised primarily of people from our party. I decided the night was beyond repair, and in true Kevin fashion, ran home in an effort to save time and money so that I wouldn't have to waste another penny on such a forsaken night.

I arrived in my room just before 4, went through my nightly routine, and had just gotten into bed when I heard the rest of the party come storming into the house like an abusive alcoholic on a mission to take vengeance against any silence that might leave him alone with his unstable thoughts. I tried to sleep through the rowdy din, but was mildly entertained when I heard the idiot gringos (Jon and Adam) struggling with our temperamental toilet. Every so often, the chain gets tangled after flushing the toilet, and it takes all of 2 minutes and an IQ of about 13 to get it working properly. Well let's just say the guys had one of the two prerequisites.

It wasn't until the following morning that I understood the extent of their idiocy, when I awoke to find the bathroom floor covered in water, the water main shut off, and the toilet irreparably broken.

So in the end, I had $15 less in my wallet, 4 hours of my life missing, and three days without a working shower or toilet on account of a birthday party and a couple of drunk idiots.