YA FUE

November 25, 2005 - Thanksgiving Day (which makes even less sense to me down here than back at home).

The sweltering heat has finally subsided somewhat and now, after a brief sub-tropical storm passes through, spewing out just enough rain to wash the dog and pigeon shit off the balconies and sidewalks, cleaning the decrepit cobbled streets, the city once again breaths freely.

Yesterday was a big day for me. I actually (and finally) put in a ten-hour workday, catching up on my backlogged photo archive while continuing to establish a strong digital workflow. Naming conventions, metadata, keywords, color corrections, storage, and then correct titles, captions and descriptions… transforming a basic digital photo, which really has no value without these key pieces of information into a digital asset, which has value and will live in a searchable archive long past the point when I’m gone.

Excitedly, I clean the entire house in anticipation of Samantha’s arrival. The first time she came over she commented on how dirty our kitchen was. Strange, since I don’t really use the kitchen and didn’t think it was actually that dirty, but first impressions are the hardest to erase, like the day I met her in Caminito. This would be our second private tango lesson and I’m finally starting to make sense of this crazy and painfully difficult dance to learn. I showered, dressed, thought about shaving, lost the flip-flops for my dancing shoes and made some coffee. Victoria from Mendoza, the queen of the house, comes home from a long day of working in an office doing marketing for a local media company … can’t say I’m jealous of that at all.

“Tonight’s the night,” we both agree, like the Neil Young song playing on my i-Tunes. All this waiting and anticipation has come to a head… I can wait hasta la muerte for Samantha… but I must know if she wants to be more than just friends.

When I arrive at Constitución just as the first raindrops begin to fall its 8:37PM, eight minutes before our schedule meeting time. Perfect... but I always get nervous waiting for her here, not because it’s as dangerous as everyone says, but because of the anticipation that always builds before I see her smiling face. I expect her to be a few minutes late because she has to take a bus to her train station and the schedules in the barrio can be less than exact. I decide to eat one tic tac every five minutes on the dot... call me OCD, whatever. After twenty-five minutes pass I begin to think of all the scenarios that could have gone wrong, like when your backpacking cross country and someone unexpectedly takes a wrong turn unbeknownst to the rest of the group. You start to realize that you have no idea what could have happened and even less of an idea about what to do now.

After forty-five minutes I start to get anxious… and finally find a public payphone that works and call her house. Her sister Valeria answers and tells me Samantha didn’t come home as usual after work and how strange it is that she isn’t at the train station because usually she is very punctual. I try calling her cell phone, which isn’t receiving calls at this time… and then after more than an hour of eating tic tacs and waiting, I am forced to hurriedly take a cab back home. Victoria tells me that Samantha called earlier, at 7PM and left a message on the answering machine saying that she wasn’t going to be able to make our scheduled class. “I’m gonna kill her,” I say. “No, no, no…” Victoria says, covering the mouthpiece on the phone as she talks with her boyfriend. “She just called again and feels horrible that you didn’t get the message but very much wants to meet up with you tonight. She’s in her house and you need to call her right now.” After she finishes her call she continues, “but I think you need to tell her that you want to sit down with her and talk.” Dios Mio is correct. Samantha knows I’m pretty steamed at this point but agrees to meet me once again (or vice versa) back at Constitución, this time at 11:45PM. We had planned on seeing a live Tango-electronica band called Narco Tango tonight in Palermo and we stick with the plan, with the amendment that we are going to actually sit down and talk beforehand.

This time she arrives on time, hiding her face behind her jacket as she approaches me in the train station, the very same station where I first danced tango with her more than two months ago. We leave the station to grab one of the many buses out front and head across town, laughing and joking despite our talk that is yet to come. In the restaurant we finally are served at 12:30AM, Thanksgiving morning. “Here’s to me,” she jokes raising her glass. I try to explain to her how funny it is to hear her say this, because that’s exactly what my ex-girlfriend Jill’s family used to say during their Thanksgiving dinners, everyone raising their glasses at the same time, “here’s to me!” After thirty minutes of trying to explaining this apparent coincidence, today being Thanksgiving and that I don’t know anyone else who says this, she finally understands that it’s not about me lamenting about my ex-girlfriend, but rather its about her saying the exact same thing as Jill, who I also used to call mariposa – butterfly. I’m a real sucker for mariposas.

Finally Samantha comes clean with the truth… “Ahora, quiero estar sola,” which has a couple of different meanings. The obvious one is ‘right now, I want to be single,’ but sola also means alone. “But I know that’s not true… I know that you want a family, that you want to be with a man that loves you, that you have the capacity to give your heart to someone. I´ll always have a place in my heart for you, but now I’m going to leave you in peace,” I tell her. We head to the club around the corner and ironically her friend Jose the guitar player, who is actually extremely talented for only being twenty two years old, is waiting for us outside. We go in without paying and catch the last song. The crowd loves the band but the three of us collectively decide that this version of tango-electronica is nothing special and we split before the crowd walking ten blocks to their bus station. Jose leaves us for a moment sensing the tension and Samantha says, “Well, what are we going to do?” Well… I’m going to leave you in peace and won’t pressure you anymore. “I’m working tomorrow from 3:00 – 5:30PM in Caminito. Do you want to come?” she asks with a gleam of hope in her eyes. I can’t believe her and almost burst out laughing. “You have my number… call me anytime,” I say as she boards the bus. She doesn’t see me standing there, watching her and the bus pull away into the night, practically in shock and numb from all this.

I aimlessly wander down the deserted tree-lined street searching for another bus to take me home. Rounding the corner there’s a guy waiting at a bus stop. I read the sign and there’s one of three buses that stops here that can take me back to Constitucion and from there and I can walk the seven blocks back to the house. “I’ve been waiting for ten minutes but this early in the morning, who knows how long it’ll be before the bus arrives,” he tells me after I ask when the bus will arrive. Now I’m muy cansado (‘tired’, which I find ironically close to casado, which means ‘married’) All I have is time and since I’m broke and can’t afford any of the dozens of empty taxis that are streaming by I sit down and wait. Two more people arrive and have a similar conversation with the guy already waiting for the bus about when the next bus will come. Now he’s been waiting for half an hour. After another ten minutes, they leave and after another twenty minutes he leaves, reassuring me that the bus will come and that it’s only a matter of when. But now I’m solo – alone. And with $6,000 of camera gear in my bag I start to wonder what I should do.

Just then I hear this terribly loud noise coming towards me from down the street. It’s the 151, the bus that’ll take me across town back home. I jump up and flag it down, always necessary or they simply won’t stop, almost missing him as he grinds to a halt. The driver opens the door and informs me that he can’t take me because his bus is broken and won’t make it to Constitución. But I’ve been waiting more than an hour, how do you suggest I get home? You can walk down there a few blocks and catch another bus. Sorry, but I’m not sure which bus to take or from where. Hop on and I’ll give you a lift. We sit at the green light and then a red and then another green light before lurching forward, as if he was demonstrating that the bus was really ‘broken’. At the next bus stop he informs all of the three passengers on the bus that this is the last stop and due to technical difficulties we can go no further but if we want to wait in the back of the bus for maybe another forty-five minutes for the next bus we can. I ponder this for a moment and then exit the bus back out onto the street and into the early morning. Crossing Corrientes I see my bus pass by and run after it missing it by a hair. DAMN! I break down, just like the 151 and flag a ‘tuerto’ taxi, literally ‘one-eyed’ but in this case, one headlamped. The cab whisks me down towards the Obolisco, BA’s central landmark and we pass by the Banco Frances, which is really a bank from Spain and then past some cartoneros, digging through the early morning trash.

Sitting on the toilet back home, trying not to forget all that has transpired (not to be confused with the Spanish word transpiración, which means to sweat), exhausted beyond belief, I’m thankful this Thanksgiving to finally know the truth… for better or for worse, her truth. Ya fue – that’s it... for now. Happy Thanksgiving to all and I leave you with words from Abraham Lincoln (from Wikipidia).

"In the middle of the Civil War, prompted by a series of editorials written by Sarah Josepha Hale, the last of which appeared in the September 1863 issue of Godey's Lady's Book, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a national Thanksgiving Day, to be celebrated on the final Thursday in November 1863:
"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.<
Done at the city of Washington, this third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the independence of the United States the eighty-eighth."
Proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, 3 October 1863. Since 1863, Thanksgiving has been observed annually in the United States.