Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay

Asuncion / Going Home

The guide book I picked up at The Strand includes every country in
South America. Naturally, some countries warrant more page space than
others. They have more attractions, say, or are simply bigger.
Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru. Those're all in the 200+
page range. The whole book is well over a thousand.

Paraguay, by contrast, warrants 27 pages. The entire country, in 27
pages! I think the Falkland Islands get more pages than that. Hell,
there're cities in this book that get more pages than that. Lots of
them.

Each country in the book gets an introductory page brimming with gushy
remarks about the soaring peaks, beautiful wildlife, awesome night
life, ancient ruins, exotic cultures, etc. The page for Paraguay is
only half full. The only real positive the authors could drum up is
that the people are "very friendly."

Even though I'd managed to find a little excitement in CDE, it's true,
I think, that the country is pretty sleepy. In Asuncion, I'd walk home
at night and in half an hour, across "downtown," I'd see maybe three
cars or motorcycles, two people. This is true even on a Friday or
Saturday night. Cats sit in the middle of roads, cozy on the warm
asphalt. (Why not? It'll probably be twenty minute before a car comes
by.)

I spent four nights there. I was the only person in the theatre for
Revolutionary Road. I watched the new Terminator movie entirely in
Spanish, without subtitles. I think I followed the basic plot just
fine: Christian Bale's grunts are a universal language. I hit the gym
in the mornings, drawing strange looks for doing 50 pull-ups, 50 dips,
200 squats -- and then collapsing onto the floor, moaning. The
CrossFit sessions were invariably followed by ice cream with dulce de
leche on top.

Friday night, I hit up what is probably Asuncion's only gay and tranny
bar. The place is called TRAUMA and feels so much like the clubs on
the fringe of North Beach and Chinatown in San Francisco in the
mid-90s. (I'm thinking of one in particular, a place called
Palladium.) I think it was the music, mostly, that gave it that feel:
EBTG's "Missing," Ce Ce Peniston's supremely queeny club hit
"Finally," and then blowing up the dance floor with Deee-lite's
"Groove is in the Heart." Probably 20 gay men per 1 t-girl. They were
a fun, ridiculous bunch. Much less drab than most Paraguayans I'd met
previously.

Between the central part of town and my hostal is an area full of
strolls. Clumps of girls and t-girls, and then creepy solitary Johns
casting wayward glances. Every night it was something different. One
night, a cat fight that ended up with someones shirt getting torn off,
revealing pubescent-looking breast buds. (It left me wondering: if you
supplement enough exogenous estrogen, your secondary sex
characteristic development should follow, at least haphazardly, a
normal sort of pubertial course? Tanner staging? Despite the copious
endogenous testosterone naturally present in these adult bio-men?)
Another night, a transwoman grabbing my crotch right on the street
corner, in front of a cop, in a desperate bid to get me to spend an
hour with her in the Sheikh Hotel. (USD$20 for her services,
"completo," plus USD$4 for the room for an hour.) That made me giggle
since I'd walked by that hotel during the day and imagined it a very
dour place with women in hijabs. Hah.

Asuncion IS pretty sleepy, but I still found enough there to keep me
busy for a few days.

I'm now in Sao Paulo -- legally since I'm inside the airport, in
transit -- and on my way home.

I'm quite happy to be coming home.

In the last year and a half, I spent three contiguous months in New
York City. Other than that, I haven't been in one spot longer than six
weeks. I'm feeling a very strong inclination to nest a bit, to stop
living out of a suitcase or backpack. My own stuff, my own messes. I
can hardly wait.

posted by daviduri @ 1:30 PM