Apropos de nothing

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So I went to the dancing place for poor people, last night.ⁱ Buncha dudes in black jackets outside, one of them asks me if I know how this goes ? Rather neutral more than anything, I suppose it might have been the first time he saw a guy in a suit with a girl in a cocktail dress trying to get in. Just trying to make sure the gringo didn't make a wrong turn or something. I tell him I'm really just there to have a drink, he bids me go right in, and points me towards this little hole in the wall where they sold tickets. Fifty pesos a head, no discount for women, comes to about three dollars and maybe some change.

After which is teh securidad. Because securidad, you understand. So they make one go through a metal detector gate. It looked pretty beat up and as it never beeped, for anyone, I just assumed it's there for show. It probably read minds or something, because as I went past it screamed holy murder. Far from being broken, it was so acutely tuned it picked up : set of keys (solid copper) ; money clip (twenty grams of steel if that) ; the fucking zippers on my boots (!!!) and so on. So a guy with a handheld device went over the magical foreigner who actually possesses metal, unlike apparently every single of the twenty dudes and five or so girlies going in at the same time, and then a different dude patted me down. This one was actually competent, which is always refreshing to see in Argentina. They also had a female guard to pat down the girls. A female guard. If I were tasked with providing the security cover for such a venue I'd definitely put slightly more effort into making sure the womenz aren't smuggling weapons, but hey, what do I know.

The inside was a thing of wonder, at least to my eyes. There was one floor, about 500 m² or so, with a bunch of bars to the sides, a stage sort-of in the center, and maybe a hundred or two people milling about or seated on the benches lining half the walls. That was it.

The way you do "dance hall for poor people" where I'm from is that you make the general population go on the bottom floor, yes, but you also have a second level looking down. A level where the dudes that aren't miserable utter fucking failures in this life sit, with the express purpose of picking from the crowd. Because that's the fucking point of one of these things, the women born out of idiots work their butt off waiting tables or whatnot to afford an outfit that'll show their tits and some tits to show, then await the Saturday breathless and go break themselves on the main floor like their life depended on it. Which, in sane places, it does. If one's lucky (good's not even worth the mention, of fucking course she's gonna be good) they get invited upstairs and this ascension is exactly like when God calls upon you and lifts you in the air, only better.ⁱⁱ

The way they do "dance hall for poor people" here is that "Argentina no es un pais pobre" and consequently they're not poor, they're just drinking the most objectionable fuel oil at 30 pesos a drink (about two dollars for FIVE SHOTS in a plastic container) and mill around in a puke scented room for different reasons altogether. So I went once around the room, took in the bevy of babes that'd need to be washed twice and elongated thirty percent to become members of this species, was hit upon by some dude (no, srsly) who insisted to shake my hand which is also the first time I shook hands with someone carrying honest work calouses on their hand in at least a decade and then got out.

Altogether a rather informative excursion in what the ideology of poverty denial yields down the road. Methinks you'll see enough of this in the not so distant future at a mall very near you. On the way towards the downtown ran into a concrete pole upon which two items were afixed. One included a poorly xeroxed picture of an indistinct child with an indistinct man, apparently together in a standard bathroom tub, and an explanation that the child was abducted by the fellow, and if you have any information please call this number. The other included a well printed image of a dude surrounded by a bunch of gendarmes or however you call the chickenshits that "work for the government" in ballistic vests and those ridiculous get-ups, with the leyenda that "la sola prepotencia es la de el estado", ma pis pe el de estado.

The moral of this entire thing being, that it's not actually necessary for things to work in order for those things to be. In this perspective, people chiefly exist to insulate the demented productions of their "culture" from the constraints of reality, at the not insignificant cost of their own existenceⁱⁱⁱ. May it serve them well, and may they be happy with it!

1. For the practically inclined, Brazil y Salta. [↩]
2. Such reports as have reached us as to the quality of God's moves as well as the parameters of His penile endowment fail to impress. [↩]
3. This is the fundamental Faustian proposal : the devil will gladly provide you with a state. The price for which service is, of course, everything. [↩]