MeMag - Me Magazine

I know one person in Santiago besides M’s friends. Naturally I ran into her on the street one of the first couple of days I was here: My former Spanish teacher. She was supposed to call me when she had some free time, but never did. Or so I thought. Christmas Eve I ran into her on the street again! Only a few million people live here after all, and she assured me that she had called me several times without getting through. I have no problem believing that since my telephone doesn’t actually work except when there is a full moon and Aquarius is in the second house of the rising sun and you are leaning out the window while wearing an antenna hat, crudely made out of aluminium baking foil.

Another person I accidentally ran into was C, Susy’s ex. This I instantly knew spelled trouble. We talked briefly as he was waiting or someone who arrived maybe a minute or two afterwards. I tried not to volunteer any information about Susy and this made me feel like I was appearing to avoid the issue. I did finally mention that I was renting a room in her flat and it probably sounded like I was her new lover because I said it towards the end of our conversation while kind of averting my eyes in awkwardness. “Oh and by the way… er… I’m living with your girlfriend now. Gotta go. Chao”.

Knowing that it would cause a strong reaction, I didn’t mention to Susy that I had run into C. It is after all none of her business as he was just as much a friend of mine as she was before I moved in here as a tenant. And why worry her. I will not pick any sides and start fighting against any of my old friends because they are having relationship problems.

What I did do was to mention the chance meeting to M as an example of how absurdly small the world is. I also said that I didn’t want Susy to know. As she as a woman and women have a pathological need to spread gossip, she immediately called Susy and let her know. M has after all no respect for me or loyalty towards me whatsoever. At least not when I’m battling against a female.

And Susy is now upset with me for not having mentioned to her that I had met him. She doesn’t want him to know anything about her new life, yet she quizzes me on his. As a woman she naturally uses her vulnerability as a weapon in the argument. There are casual words of his violence towards her dropped in between her sentences of how she doesn’t mind that I retain him as a friend. Women will after all always use their femininity to get what they want. Even feminists. She apparently felt betrayed by me because I hadn’t reported the meeting to her, as she didn’t want to “live in fear” of him. How not knowing of the existence of something should have you live in fear of it, is beyond me, but anyway.

The point is that I DON’T CARE about their problems. All kinds of couples end up as enemies and then you’re supposed to choose a side. This does not interest me. I don’t care who said and did what against the other. I didn’t get any of the sex and affection and I won’t have any of their marital problems either. I simply do not care. What is annoying is when these women start cackling and whipping up a storm of melodrama. I don’t even have any strong need to hang out with C. We are not close friends. I just want to be able to walk down the street and accidentally meet one of the few people I know without having to fear the consequences.

Handmade glass at the Feria Artesania

El Chanta Clause is whipping his sweating plastic reindeer across Sanhattan. The Chileans love the cheesy sides of Christmas. They jump at the opportunity to cover their yards and windows with the most hideous twinkling light displays one could possibly imagine. But the actual Christmas celebrations they seem to tackle with Stoic serenity and a minimum of excitability. For instance I asked Susy’s boyfriend what he had given his daughter for Christmas and he shrugged his shoulders and said “nothing. We had dinner together”.

Although Susy insisted that I should, I refused to invite myself to M and E17’s Christmas party. In light of how the atmosphere has been lately, I had no intention of going if I was not wanted. Finally on Christmas eve, as I was making myself the traditional Christmas pizza, the phone rang and a friendly sounding M invited me to spend the evening with them.

I loaded my mountain of gifts into a taxi and rode across town. At their house a very serious looking E17 opened the door explaining that her mother was busy in some sort of new ageish ritual or meditation or whatever. She then returned to her room and I sat quietly waiting in the hall until M finally came down ready for us to leave for the supermarket.

On the phone she had assured me that everything would remain open, something I thought odd since they live in the suburbs and even here in the heart of the city, or one of it’s outer chambers at least, everything had begun closing down by the time I had gotten ready to leave by taxi.

When we got to the supermarket it was of course closed, as was everything else. Even the video store that sell the good expensive ice cream was closed so we bought dessert at a gas station and headed back home to cook emergency leftovers. M of course blamed the security guard at the supermarket for not letting us in. It wasn’t our fault for being late.

It slowly dawned on me that I was supposed to do all the cooking. As I started peeling potatoes M quietly turned off all the downstairs lights except for in the kitchen and crept back up to her TV. Which was just as well since I managed to tear down half of the kitchen counter, drop a plate and a glass on the floor, break her gas stove igniter and cut my fingers twice which involved a bit of a red spill. I also banged my head several times on the cupboards. It’s like a Hobbit kitchen.

In Chile by the way, there is no word for “cupboard” or “kitchen shelves”. Every piece of furniture in the kitchen is known as “the furniture” which makes it a bit impractical to for instance call out and ask where the matches for the stove are.

Nevertheless I managed, to my own amazement, to produce a rather spectacular meal, aided by a very nice salad M had made. The teenager was rustled from her budoir and we all sat down to eat like a semi-normal family. Which I enjoyed very much. Afterwards we had to kill some time as E17 refused to open gifts before the traditional 12PM dateline was crossed. It’s not Nochebuena until after midnight. We spent the time watching a badly dubbed version of Sound of Music, which I think added another layer of comedy to an already ludicrous production.

The gift opening went by peacefully. I think E17 was a bit disappointed to not get any laptop computer even though she had made such efforts to make it clear that she needs one. The following day we would meet and talk briefly again. “I want a laptop”, she would say. “Your dad is poor now”, I responded. Which is pretty damn close to the truth. Each time I see her or her mother I feel more and more like one of those plastic reindeer. Whipped, useless, out of place.

Photos: not the Christmas dinner I made but the barbecue at M’s parents’ house the subsequent day

Things here do not work. The toilets refusing to flush properly seem curiously symbolic. In every office, restaurant or bar in this city, there is a turd quietly floating with poise and confidence, secure in the knowledge that it can never be repressed by mankind. Long after you and I are gone and forgotten, it will continue it’s peaceful bobbing at the surface, undisturbed by any floods of flushing water or verbal denouncements.

Much the same way, my life is nearly motionless. And all concentrated shit straight through. I have been sick for a while and now that I was getting better I seem to be sick again. I’m in my room, scared to answer the door or the telephone. When I left the house of my Norwegian friend the other day, some oldish woman there suddenly planted a kiss straight on my lips, which I frankly found a bit inappropriate. Now she keeps sending me text messages and calling. I will never answer the telephone again. It doesn’t work very well anyway. The only calls that are coming through are from this woman. Who gave her my number and why? Who is she? What did I do to encourage her? It’s not like I’ve ever talked to her or anything.

The internet connection in the apartment has been gone a week now. Once it returned briefly, only this time with a password. So this is most likely the end of my free web ride. Nearly all modern cafés here boasts of having WiFi, but it doesn’t actually work. Santiago is the third world dressed up to look cosmopolitan. But it’s all crap underneath. bad plumbing, bad wiring, bad everything. I wish they could just take down their WiFi signs and write “nothing whatsoever works here… our toilets don’t even flush but at least we have low prices. Deal with it”. Everyone would have been fine with that. But oh no… they all have to pretend to be advanced and hi tech.

Having to go to 5 internet cafés, drink coffee in each one only to learn that they don’t really have internet there after all is getting slightly annoying. Furthermore nobody seems to mind that it doesn’t work. They have wireless internet and seem proud of that. It cannot be used to access the actual web, but it is impressive nevertheless.

The mail doesn’t work either. I have yet to see a single mail carrier anywhere in the city. There are shiny well ordered post offices here and there, but they don’t appear to do anything besides selling stamps. My mother has sent me a ton of letters. She is a compulsive letter writer. But only one has arrived. The package I sent to M’s address before I left, with my dictionary and other important things in it, still hasn’t arrived. The mail slots downstairs behind the concierge, remain empty. Every day.

I return to my room, driven into exile by the countless coffees I had to drink in order to access the non-working WiFi. Trembling with coffee nerves I sit on my bed, the bed itself also shaking each time the elevator behind the wall goes by. Outside there are fat old women who want my body and beggars who are convinced that since I am blond, I must be a vacationing billionaire. They will not let me be. With my stomach I spend half the day in the bathroom, in the dark since the lights don’t work. Just as well that I cannot face whatever’s floating down there eye to eye.

The exciting life indoors, here represented by one of the many colorful shirts I have bought here. This one was almost $3

Cool spurs at the Feria Artesania, - a market for handicraft where spent a good deal on hand knitted sweaters, hats and a fabulous belt that a gentleman is making for me right now

Since I have no direct dialogue with M and E17, I often use Susy, who know them both very well, as a sounding board. That is, she asks me things about my relationship with the girls and sort of speaks for them. She claims to always know exactly what they want and think, but sometimes I think that she is pretty far off and doesn’t know them well at all.

A few times she has brought up E17’s different university options and what they roughly cost. I had no idea people paid that much for a regular university degree here. A sum has been mentioned as an example, $10.000 a year for attendance, and then books and all the rest of it. Well… the sum keeps changing each time, but that was one of them. And in addition an absurdly high tuition at the start of the year, on top of the annual costs. It could actually be that all these poor Chileans I have met really make a good deal of money, only that they have to save everything they ever make in order to send their countless kids to college.

I told Susy more or less what I have said in college discussions before they suddenly became a reality: I don’t have any money and I don’t own anything valuable. Susy became a bit aggitated and insisted that I had no choice. I would have to pay for this somehow. Apparently the teenager will suffer some horrible faith involving abuse and poverty if she doesn’t get a higher degree from a good university. Maybe even death. I remain skeptical. In any case, I mentioned that as far as I know right now, there is no way I can suddenly raise any huge sums of cash by march. Only then, as she repeated that it didn’t matter because I had to do this, did it begin to dawn on me that people her expect me to cough up a ton of money. This of course will not magically happen. There is no money. Once this trip is over, I am broke and with no steady income.

I now suddenly have the feeling that whatever progress I have made in my relationship with my daughter, will abruptly end in a couple of months when they notice to their surprise and horror that no large sums of money are coming their way. I have mentioned that E17 can come and live with me and study for free at the university in Norway, but this is apparently not an option. They want it their way. But they won’t get it. Quite frankly, if all contact I will ever have with these women is when they want money for something, it may be the time to cut the umbilical chord.

I feel that people around me are using a lot of poetic words when they talk of how I should sacrifice my entire life for my daughter like a real father should. But wouldn’t that be a real father who has access to things like love and respect and the experience of seeing his child grow up, pass on his knowledge and so on. Not a father who is just a cash machine when needed. Sometimes I wonder why I shouldn’t contribute to the educations of my friends’ children instead, who I in some cases know a good deal better than my own kid. But I suppose this is how it works: The sperm donor is, after having completed his initial task, allowed to see his child briefly every week as long as there is money coming in to the women’s nest.

After dinner at a friends house, M suddenly offered to drive me home. We hadn’t arrived together. In the car I knew what she was silently thinking about. We hardly spoke but when I asked how E17 was (she hadn’t showed up that evening), M said that she was worried about the university and the high costs. I could feel the hints between the lines there. A while later she suddenly said that E17 had told her that I had promised to pay for her entire education here. We have never talked about anything like that besides me offering to let her stay with me in Norway should she so wish. We have never ever talked about anything in fact. So we couldn’t possibly have had a serious discussion about her future.

This is slowly all turning negative. I feel that the girls will all turn against me if I don’t cough up the money and their behavior is making me think of this entire fatherhood concept as a burden. If I don’t pay I may never hear or see from any of them again. And in every story ever told about me, I will be the monster who ruined their lives.

I’m also reminded of how much of a failure I am as a citizen. Unable to support myself, much less a family. Currently, being well insured, I am worth a lot more to them dead than alive it seems. But I have no immediate plans of self-sacrifice.

This took a while. This quiet back street turned out to be one of the busiest in Santiago once I was ready to shoot my photo. Cars kept coming and coming and blocking my view. Each time I had to balance the camera’s lens on my USB pocket pen drive in order to get the right height, and then set the timer and shoot without moving the entire setup.

I wasn’t completely happy with the angle on this at first (It’s leaning to the right), but now I like it the way it is with it’s unreal colors. One of my favorite of these images from Santiago so far, I even think

A tattoo and piercing parlor in a quiet neighborhood, just around the corner from the two previous daily shots. Someone has apparently built himself a shop to look like something out of an ’80s movie. Can’t make up my mind if that is very cool or very stupid. or both

Since, as I mentioned, I don’t have a tripod, I tend to lean my camera against walls and trees. here I had to stand in the middle of the street so this is a hand held night shot. Luckily it came out sort of nicely blurry and not annoyingly blurry. I tried the same trick several other nights after this, but with only a fog as a result

Another evening walk which was not very productive in terms of photography

Still walking home from the park. Not a very exciting image perhaps, but at least some of the previous ones were lucky catches in such a short time span. A good evening walk

On my way home from the park, I passed by this lamp post which I thought looked neat

Passing by the Taca-Tacas a second time. This time they are in use

Drinking fountain. Still in the same park the same evening

More blue flowers. These make me think of the fall of the Roman Empire for some reason

The trip turned out to be a day longer than M had told me, something I only actually discovered many hours after returning home. Another thing that changed was that we weren’t going directly home at all. Instead the car turned south towards Quisco where M’s aunt has bought an old house which she is restoring. This was no problem for me, except that I quietly wondered why we had to get up and leave so damn early on our last day at the beach.

Everything went smoothly as far as the return home was concerned. I was a little jealous that M drove E17’s boyfriend home and had a warm goodby with him whereas I was dumped in a parking lot on the other side of town, given a short cold goodbye and left to walk along the streets until I could find a taxi, which to be honest wasn’t very stressful really. But it suddenly altered the last impression of the trip for me. The girls are both prone to suddenly change their behavior into cold indifference. This makes it harder for me to approach them. I am not going to be the dog forever wagging his tail waiting for the moments when I will be allowed into the house.

E17 has unfortunately adopted some of her mother’s lesser qualities, such as a knack for bossing people around. While she herself stuffs herself with candies, her boyfriend is apparently not allowed the same quota. Today, as far as I could tell, he actually asked her permission to buy himself an ice cream and she flatly said no. “If you gain two kilos more, I’ll dump you”, she coldly added, poking him in the stomach before turning her concentration back to her lollipop. He mumbled something quietly and gestured towards her own waist area which indisputably has grown somewhat larger than his. But she was no longer paying attention. She had spoken and the subject was therefore closed. Maybe I should have said something. I don’t know how these parental things work.

It is my experience that all women are nags by nature. It always comes out from time to time. But it was obvious from his bewildered lost look that he felt the same way I do when M suddenly does something unpleasant and unexpected. Lately she has been an angel, but I cannot help but suspect that this is either due to the fact that we don’t see much of each other or to the house guest they have had living with them during my stay here. As I have probably pointed out before, people tend to behave their best when there are witnesses.

There was a short flashback during the weekend at the beach when I was baking a pie and M suddenly coldly ordered me not to use the electric mixer for the two minutes I needed. She said that if I ran it that long it would break. I said no, that it was more like ten to fifteen minutes but she wouldn’t hear of it. “But nearly all recipes require mixing for two minutes”, I continued in an immasculinated begging voice. “No”.

Always one filled with self doubt, I then found the instructions in the box and read them, discovering that there was a limit of ten minutes which one should try not to exceed. I told the good news to her and she laughed coldly at me for thinking that the instructions knew more than her. By then the conversation was over and she pretended to be absorbed by her TV show so as to get the last word.

I don’t know why some people are like that. Why there is a need to suddenly disrupt a pleasant situation and purposefully sour it into something negative.

The beach at night, just outside of The Swiss Pirate

The kitchen door. Inside the girls are playing one of their incomprehensible card games

Small photos: The kitchen and Aunt Gloria’s new beach house