Wayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road

as filthy as a gay man on a saturday night

John is sitting across from me, sobbing. Broken. He has had his wallet and money stolen. For the past three hours he has been sleeping on the street, only to be woken when someone stole the last possession in his pocket, a pack of Marlboro Lights. This all is my fault because last night I took him to Amerika, a place where you can have the best night of your life. Or the worst.

Amerika is an astonishing club in Buenos Aires. It is full of sweat and sin. Over two thousand people pack into the space on weekend nights, taking full advantage of an open bar that comes included in the ticket price. Bartenders drip with perspiration as they dump 40-ouncers of Budweiser into crunchable plastic cups, pop countless bottles of champagne and pour shots directly into the mouths of alcohol-happy Porteños. The perimeter of the dance floor is surrounded by a drainage duct, in which busboys dump half-empty drinks and hose vomit. All the while a crowd loses its collective mind.

The idea was simple. My new friend and I would have a crazy night out. I had met John (“Can” is his real name, but it translates from Turkish as “John”) in Spanish class. He was twenty six and came to Argentina from Istanbul, having just split up with his long-time girlfriend and recently telling his family that he was gay. “My mother cried. She said that I am just depressed and I could not possibly like dick.”

He explained that rump-roasting is not taboo in Turkey. It is not uncommon for straight men to have sex with transvestites or gay men – the definitive rule being that if you’re on top, you’re straight, no matter what you’re dipping into. In a culture where straight men are banging gay men for pleasure, I can see why it would be confusing to figure out just where your preferences lay.

We took a taxi to Palermo, and then waited in line with a straight couple who had gotten a babysitter and taken the night off from the misery of a screaming baby. I asked them if they knew that the bar was mostly gay. “Yes but it’s okay. We like it because we can forget that we are parents and sometimes we forget to be dirty and sexy. So we come here. Nobody is more, how you say, filthy than the gays.”

Fifty pesos later, John and I entered the main hall. A man dressed like Charlie Chaplin was swinging overhead on a trapeze, as a remixed classic Madonna track blared from the perfect sound system. Thousands of bodies grinded and cheered as the beat took a less pop direction, moving into a chicka-chicka beat and away from The 80’s. It wasn’t dull house music but it was no longer a familiar hit – the DJ knew what was designed to propagate lust and chaos, as if all the previous music had just been a warm up. Amerika went off.

A drag queen who could have been mistaken for Iggy Pop howled and swung his hair wildly. Arms reached over shoulders for drinks at the bar. Girls with lit cigarettes flailed their arms, like Medusas with a nicotine habit. People were dancing anywhere that there was room – on top of podiums, on the stage and on couches. We played our part, consuming dangerous house vodka and gossiping about the people in the crowd. Iggy Pop came over and danced for us, his cheap red heels accentuated by varicose veins and emaciated legs. “Whoooooooooooooooo,” he would say after every tenth beat of the music. “Whoooooooooooooooooooo.”

The smoky dance floor eventually pushed us upstairs, to an area called the Love Tunnel. In most circles it’s simply referred to as a Dark Room, an area of a club where people congregate to slam bodies. I squeezed into a curtained-off area about the size of a basketball court, the air still thick with thumping beats. It was 4:30am, which seemed to be the peak time for getting some action.

A sea of people were mounted against walls, down on their knees or riding their partner on one of the many couches. Every combination of body parts was in play; dick on dick, dick on vagina, dick in mouth of person with dick in vagina. The sound of condoms ripping was audible. There was one woman who obviously thrived in this environment, hanging herself face-first over the balcony while men lined up to take their turn with her. Guys would text their friends, letting others know that there was an easy lay on the balcony. Tourists downstairs were pointing camera phones at the spectacle from below, surely collecting imagery that even the filthiest porn sites had not yet imagined.

John and I split up to check out the action. I became aware that a Porteño was cruising me hard, eventually sliding up beside me and putting my hand on his crotch, which contained a piece so large that it should not have been inserted in anything smaller than the eye of a hurricane. I took a pass. Minutes later I saw the same cruiser in a corner with an eager taker. I was unable to stop watching as something the size of a policeman’s bayonet went in and out of his partner’s mouth. He looked at me and smiled, as if saying, “this could have been you.”

I continued to wander the dimly lit room and took it all in. Like the man servicing a crowd of five other guys. I strolled by one couch where a straight couple was quietly doing The Nasty. I was surprised when the man waved at me, then put his hand on the woman’s waist as he regained his stride. It was the couple from line.

Eventually I found John and told him that I was probably going to leave. “I will stay and take a taxi home myself.” His shirt was ripped open, his hair was sweaty and he had the crazy look of a cat in front of a bowl of guppies. I told him to be careful and text me when he got home.

No text arrived and I assumed that he had pulled. By noon I became worried and called his phone, which was shut off. I signed onto Facebook and saw that his profile had been dormant for 18 hours. Suddenly, an instant message popped up from John. “I am so fucked.” He recounted his evening.

He had been fleeced of his wallet and cell phone while making out with a guy in the Love Tunnel, not realizing it before it was too late. He asked the club to call the police and they simply kicked him out. He slept on the street next to the club where, at 8 a.m., a bouncer tossed his empty wallet into his lap. An employee then took pity on him and gave him 20 pesos to get home, at which point John realized that his keys had also been stolen. A locksmith was called and two hours later, he was broke. I bought him dinner that night and he looked like a man who had run two marathons.

He told me the story over and over, a man in shock. He eventually worked through the other side of the trauma, emerging a deranged champ. “Can we go back next weekend?”