So yesterday I somehow stumbled into being declared a rock star in Argentina...well perhaps not in Argentina as a whole, but in the small set of offices of LADE airlines, the passenger service of the Argentinean Air Force that we will be flying the (hopefully) friendly skies with on our journey down to Patagonia and beyond. Now I had no intention of framing myself as a rock star, but one thing just led to another and suddenly I was the subject (presumably) of many a whisper and giggle in an office of primarily 20-something Argentinean females (the pain, the horror, the anguish). It all started when I sat down with a very nice, english-speaking Argentinean who elected to assist me with my travel needs. We talked, I told her about where I was going, where I had been, and the like. Aside from her belief that Argentina was multiple times larger than the United States ( Think Argentinean accent...now: "I know you have a big country, but Argentina is just so so big and there is so much to see here." Meanwhile, the United States is the third largest body in the world, both in geographical size and in population.), we were getting along in the dandiest of ways when she then asked me if I had ever been to Argentina before.
This is where it got a bit hairy. I told her yes, the truth, complete and pure, it even had a shimmer to it it was so clean. Then...then I said I was with a singing group at the time, also true, so very very true, I was in the game, the game of reality, a grand game. Then...then she said "ohhhh, a band."
A band...that dastardly dangerous and twisted noun, the noun that could mean oh so many things. It could mean a group of people of any kind, like band of brothers. It could mean a group of dorky brass, percussion and woodwind musicians with bad polyester costumes and plumes sticking out of their heads, like a marching band. It could mean an elastic, typically rubber harnessing tool, used for conventional purposes like holding pencils together as well as sadistic, recreational purposes like snapping your sister in the arm or shooting it at your third grade teacher (bad move, real bad), like a rubber band.
OR, or it could mean a group of instrumentalists-vocalists of questionable musical skill and sexual prowess, who "band" together (ah, a verb usage, so horribly versatile this word is) to perform for audiences with questionable (meaning, could go either way or all ways) listening skills and emotional stability, all for the purpose of exercising some kind of worship, most likely of the performers themselves, but perhaps, for the heady ones, Bacchus, the Roman god of wine (hmm, likely not).
Anyway, I seriously digress, the point is she said the word ¨band¨and I let it go. I thought it was harmless and technically it was a band, hmm... And then the word, that bloody, confusing word, spread, the spanish whispering began, and the giggles too, oh the giggles, the undeserved giggles. She asked me if I spoke spanish, I said ¨a bit¨and she then said ¨good.¨ I still don´t know what they were saying. Perhaps it was kind words like "oooh, cool" but in spanish, which could be "ooooh, muy bien," or "bueno," which is used ubitquitously by the way. Perhaps it was bad, like "he doesn´t look like someone who´d be in a band, too young looking or too short" or "he doesn´t have the right coiffant."
The point of this: I feel very bad about misleading a group of twenty something female airline agents into thinking that I was a rock musician and then having them smile and giggle in my direction as they looked at me for a short but nevertheless meaningful period of time. Hmm, strike that, I don´t feel bad at all about any of that, I actually think it´s fantastic. The point is: I am now known as a rock musician of questionable, if not inflated, success at Peru 435 in San Telmo, Buenos Aires, Argentina. You can find me there in my free time, which is technically all the time these days, oh loafing. Best.
