International Day of the Woman

In Chaitén, we celebrated the International Day of the Woman in style!

After running some errands, we spotting a Pub across the street and headed there for a late lunch and beer. We met Thomas in the dim but friendly atmosphere. A fisherman by excuse, he has traveled to Chile each year of the past nine to sample the best food and wine he can find. Two buddies of his have been joining him for the past few years, but Thomas is the ringleader and, in a word, unflappable. After a few oysters and Pisco sours, we’re all old buddies discussing anything with chummy familiarity, a laugh and a slap on the back. We agree to meet him and his friends back there for dinner.

We return at dinner time and find ourselves greeted with a few free shots because, as Javier the barkeep and owner explains, it’s International Day of the Woman. Soon Augustina, Javier’s wife and occasional waitress, and her friends make a crowd of eight or so women drinking it up at the table next to ours. Thomas asks if anyone in our group would like to go outside for a quick joint (seems he smuggles it in buried in bags of dried thyme and rosemary). Chip and I see an opening and head out with Thomas and his buddy (the other having retired to bed over an hour ago) leaving Jen and Amy with the rowdy women next door. A loud cheer goes up as we leave and the door closes. The goings on after we left I’m not privy to, but it sounds like they were partying it up!

The four of us headed down to the water and got good and thoroughly stoned. Javier joined us in a few minutes and told us to follow him. He lead us around three sides of the same block.  During this time, the newly stoned mind begins to imagine worst case scenarios: muggers, a practical joke, perhaps he’s walking us to the cops? Instead he pulls out a key and opens a padlock on his produce store down the block from the bar. Inside is the Promised Land! Bins of fresh fruit and veggies surround us and it’s all I can do to keep from grabbing a ripe apple of two and stuffing them into my pockets. Javier pulls out a knife and slices open four prickly pears. They were a little unripe and thus seedy, but sweet and juicy just the same.

We walked back to the bar and opened the door to a blast of hot sweaty air thick with cigarettes. The women were all circled around two tables that had been pushed together and covered with drinks in various states of drunk. I swear that both conversation and music all stopped as we stood in the doorway and accessed the situation. The music couldn’t have stopped – it didn’t change much for the rest of the night – so that must have been my pot-addled brain trying to get my legs to either walk in or flee for dear life. I was overcome by a sensation of “us vs. them.” Regardless, in we went.

Later I found myself still quite stoned, quite a bit more drunk and dancing slow with an enormous slab of a woman named Anna Marie. And I was enjoying myself, though the transition was not without pain. After coming in, Chip sat in the corner of the room, looking as if he could push his molecules through the wall if he only tried hard enough, all the while turning white as a sheet. Needing a break myself, I offered to walk him home. This turned into quite an effort as we were locked out and needed to wake the dead before someone opened the door for us. I headed back to the party hoping the time in the fresh, cold air would’ve cleared my head. Not really, but reentering the party was easier this time.

I danced with Rose, a smartly dressed older woman. Short dark hair which matched her stripped blazer – I would’ve pegged her for a lesbian back in the States. Madison, a hairdresser, kept telling me she was a hairdresser. Anna-Marie said that I was half-woman (long hair and earrings) and half man (sandals and shorts). Paula wanted another notch in her bedpost and grabbed any available man to bump-and-grind whenever the music changed. I’ve never danced so pathetically as when she grabbed me. At some point, stymied by the lack of interest in her aging sex appeal, she staggered out the door and to the left.

As Anna Marie and I watched her through the window, she mentioned in an offhand way, “she lives to the right.” A few seconds later, Paula lurches back into view heading the correct way home.

And so continued the night: Pisco and sweet Vermouth, bourbon, beer, wine and a lot of Spanish conversations that I don’t fully remember and am not sure I fully understood. Jen checked out around 3am and Amy and I lasted until 4:15 or so.

Thus I celebrated Women with friends and complete strangers. We partied like high schoolers whose parents had left for a week, completing the scene with the cops being called to break up the party. Soon after we returned from the produce stand they arrived and were smothered with drunken affection until the only remaining option was for them to smile and leave. It was obvious from one of the younger deputies faces that he was seriously regretting having to work that night.

I celebrated the International Day of the Woman with Rose the Matriarch, Madison the hairdresser, Augustina the mother of three, Anna Marie my enormous dancing partner and poor Javier – whom everyone came to call garson by the end of the night. He was running around making sure everyone was having fun. Yes, poor Javier, who swapped roles with Augustina for a night to let her take charge for one celebration.

Poor Javier, he was having the time of his life!