So this Saturday three daring gringas, including yours truly, decided to brave the carrete (carretear verb: to party, go out) scene without the benefit of a Chilean chaperon. El Huevo (literally, the egg) is a huge, multi-storied club in the middle of Valparaíso–a trip that only took forty minutes from my house. There are certain times of the day when one should avoid riding the micro–around 9 p.m. on Saturday night being one of them.
We started off by making a classic gringo error, though we already knew it. Nothing, I mean nothing, on the weekend starts until at least midnight, and that is still early. We decided to meet out front of the club right before 10 p.m., hoping that the 4000 peso (about $7) cover might be cheaper then, as someone had mentioned it might; unfortunately it wasn't. But we were already there and having nothing better to do, we decided to go inside.
A task much easier said than done. First you have to show your ID to the bouncer, then you have go to a ticket window to pay for your cover, where you receive two slips of paper–they are obsessed with receipts here. Then you have to go up a small flight of stairs where at least four rather large people dressed in black stand conveniently in your way. Seeing no other way in, we walked up to them and got rather awkwardly patted down just in case we had special gringo drugs or something.
After running the gauntlet, we managed to get into the club, only to find that only the ground floor, where a band played too loudly and in the dark, was open. It was not a very good place to dance because it was full of tables, and we found out that the other floors don't open until midnight. One of my friends decided to ask the scary-looking guards if we could get back into the club with these magic slips of paper if we went out. The answer? “No po.” The word “po” is an integral part of Chilean that doesn’t really mean anything but gets added onto numerous words.
So what did we do for two hours? Well, we drank; there weren’t any other options. According to convenient signs taped to the bar, one could get a drink along with the cover. Hah! Finally, I had a reason for at least one of the mysterious slips of paper. So we sipped our drinks and bragged about our respective universities for two hours.
A little before midnight we noticed that club employees had started letting people go up the stairs, so we followed them and found we could get into two back-to-back rooms that had two themes. One was pop, which was hilarious, Barbie Girl for example, and the other was reggaeton. Of course, since it was only 11-something, no one was dancing, which meant more drinks while we waited. The pop room filled up pretty fast, and we stayed for a while until we met three Chileans who were very proud of their vulgar dance moves....
We shifted from room to room, generally trying to avoid creepy guys and the old fat man who kept offering us beer and eventually made it to the roof where they dance salsa. We wandered out onto the dance floor in hopes of finding non-creepy guys to dance with us.
We were awkwardly standing near the wall, trying to not attract creepers, when we noticed a group of nuns come up the stairs. My first thoughts were somewhere between Sister Act and "Oh, god, they’re here to warn us of our evil ways." One of them, who had to be at least six foot two, danced her way across the floor. Awkwardly, just the way you’d expect a nun to dance. She and the others went around to people, handing out little fliers. Everyone stared and some even took pictures as they continued spreading their “message.”
“They’re men!!” one of my friends exclaimed out of nowhere.I tore my gaze from the giant dancing nun to look at her.
“What?” I asked incredulously.
“They’re men,” she repeated.
“Look!” she showed us one of the papers they had handed her. It was a program for a play including the names of the cast. Names like Arturo. Out of probably seven or so actors maybe two had feminine, or possibly feminine, names.
After a few confused seconds, we all realized that they were advertising for a play that we actually had seen a banner for on one of our walks around the city. I turned back to stare, open-mouthed, at the giant dancing nun who was actually a man. I’m not sure what’s more amusing: real nuns in a club trying to save the sinners, or cross-dressing nuns (I think one of them might have been a woman) in a club advertising for their cross-dressing nun play.
After they had made their way through the crowd and left, and we actually did find some guys to salsa with, though the creepiness level varied wildly. We didn’t stay out late (in Chilean terms) and decided to head home around two.
I had more travel difficulties and finally made it home around 3:15 a.m. after having taken the wrong bus (the guy had assured me that it would go up Libertad) and finally getting dropped off about ten blocks from the house. I probably made that ten blocks in less than ten minutes and fortunately made it home without any problems. Maybe I could contract a cross-dressing nun as a bodyguard...
January 28, 2009
Cross-Dressing Nuns, January 2009
No comments:
Post a Comment