Sleeping Around (5 page)

2) Take off your shoes.

(I presume you take off your shoes before the orgy.)

I am one of 48 authors (although none of us has a profile as well-written as Manuel's), while Caroline is one of 286 architects. Caroline had also couch-surfed with a few fellow architects on her 3-month jaunt around South America. ‘I've only couch-surfed for half of my trip,' Caroline said. ‘It's been fantastic, but I am getting tired of telling every new person I stay with my life story.' I imagine that could become tiring. Maybe I should have prepared a Brian Thacker Fact Sheet to hand out to my hosts to ‘read in their own time'.

Then again, I think you'd be more than happy to divulge your entire family's past if you were staying with a multimillionaire who gave you your very own wing in his sprawling mansion. That's exactly what had happened to Caroline in a town in Argentina. ‘I'd sent him an email to ask for a couch and he told me to call him when I got to the town and he would pick me up,' Caroline said. ‘
He
didn't pick me up, though. His chauffeur did and we drove out of the town to this grand mansion on a hill. A maid met me at the door and took me to my room, which had the biggest bathroom I've ever seen. I even had my own lounge room overlooking the swimming pool . . .'

Let me just pause here for a moment to tell you that I stupidly didn't get the host's name or the name of the town. I've told this story to quite a few people and the first thing they ask is: ‘Where do I find him?' Sorry, if I knew that I'd be sitting in that lounge overlooking the pool right now dictating this book to one of the servants. Let us continue . . .

‘Dinner was an absolute feast,' Caroline beamed. ‘And they even had serving staff. I stayed for three nights and didn't want to leave. His family were just lovely.'

A mansion certainly beats a mini-couch in a smoke field. José's friend, who looked like José's assistant clerk, had turned up and they were alternating playing guitar and chain-smoking. Both José and I-never-quite-caught-his-name played beautiful guitar—well, at least one of them did, I couldn't quite see who was playing through the fog.

At 12.30 José announced that we were going out to do some salsa dancing. We were heading to Bella Vista, which I was told was once a dingy neighbourhood before being turned into an artsy enclave. We turned the corner into the main thoroughfare to find a street of old colonial buildings that were now bars blasting out deafening music. Walking down the street past the open doorways was like spinning the dial on a radio, hearing split-second grabs of music before picking up the frequency at the next doorway. Hordes of young revellers drinking large mugs of beer filled the outdoor tables, but the insides of the clubs were quiet. The first one we tried was almost totally empty.

‘Nothing happens till one o'clock,' José bellowed over the booming music.

I looked at my watch. It was two minutes to one.

‘We better stand aside for the rush then,' I quipped.

We eventually found one club that had people in it. I was just about to go to the bar to get drinks when José said, ‘This is a gay bar. Is that okay?'

‘Yeah, that's fine,' I shrugged.

I-never-quite-caught-his-name, who didn't speak a word of English, said something to José.

‘He says he wants to go,' José translated. ‘He doesn't want men pinching his bottom.'

We headed back to the first club, which had begun to fill up. It did feel a bit like being in a cross between a McDonalds and a butcher's shop, though. There was sawdust on the dance floor and the furniture was mostly bright-yellow plastic moulded chairs. The blaring music was a mix of salsa and hip-hop with a dash of techno. We each grabbed a super-size-me bottle of beer and José immediately dragged Caroline up onto the dance floor. I sat with I-never-quite-caught-his-name and we just smiled at each other and said cheers a lot.

By two o'clock I was fading and ready for bed and Caroline decided to walk back with me. ‘It doesn't
really
get going till three,' José said as we got up to leave.

‘So, how is the mini-couch?' I asked Caroline as I arranged my pile of cushions back at the apartment.

‘Very, um . . . small,' Caroline said.

I nodded in agreement. ‘Maybe José could start DwarfCouchSurfing.com.'

4

‘Requirements and Restrictions: Be nice.'

Juan Francisco Garrido, 27, Santiago, Chile

HospitalityClub.org

Juan learnt English by listening to ELO records. In his teens he wanted to know what the lyrics meant, so he translated every song into Spanish word by word. Juan had failed English at school and now he was completely fluent. Mind you, I don't think the ELO School of Languages is ever likely to threaten Berlitz. Some ELO songs don't even make sense in English. In my experience ‘Zing went the strings of my heart, zing, zing, zing' or ‘Pretty pretty, chilly chilly, silly silly, money money' don't come up in conversation all that often.

Juan picked me up from the spotlessly clean El Llano metro station, where the cleaners outnumbered the ticket sellers three to one. I told him that I would be easy to spot. ‘Just look for the guy with a bright red head,' I said. Juan was also easy to spot because he looked like a graphic designer. He was wearing groovy clothes and he had groovy facial hair.

Meeting your couch-surfing host for the first time can be a bit like a blind date as you check each other out and try to gauge whether you'll get on. But in this case I knew almost immediately that Juan would become a good friend. I was certainly going to be taken very promptly into the family fold. After dropping my bags off at Juan's house, we were heading straight out to his grandma's house for a big family barbecue (or an
asado,
as I was told it's called in Chile).

Juan lived with his mum and younger brother in the southwestern suburb of San Miguel, which was only a short drive from the metro station. It was nice to see broad and leafy avenues and large family homes instead of the endless ugly apartment blocks that the train had passed on my way out of the city. Juan's mum Nancy, who looked young enough to be Juan's older sister, met me at the door with a big hug. The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside was the couch, which I was happy to see looked long enough to fit an average-sized human. I was happier still when I was led upstairs to my very own room with a double bed that could easily fit three or four average-sized humans.

On the way back downstairs we picked up Han Solo from his bedroom. Juan's brother Luis Alfredo was a
Star Wars
fanatic and his room was a shrine to everything that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. The walls were covered with
Star Wars
framed prints and posters and a frightening amount of figurines were piled up on shelves, side-tables and on the floor. Luis Alfredo even had a Han Solo haircut.

‘Luis learnt his English from
Star Wars
films,' Juan said.

Luis Alfredo didn't say much, but that was probably because ‘Use the force, Luke' and ‘The stormtroopers have taken over the Death Star' are not things you say to someone you've just met.

Juan's bedroom looked like the headquarters of the Chilean Communist Party. The walls were covered with red and black Russian revolutionary posters. Juan was in the final year of a four-year graphic design degree and he was writing his thesis on Russian revolutionary posters. Juan was also learning Russian through mylanguageexchange. com, a website which pairs you up with a native speaker of the language you want to learn who in turn wants to learn your language. For twelve months Juan had been regularly emailing a girl from Moscow called Katya. After six months of corresponding, Katya decided to visit Juan in Chile for a month. Three weeks into her stay, Juan asked her to marry him. ‘When I finish my degree I am moving to Moscow to live with her,' Juan said with a beaming smile.

On the drive to Grandma's house I commented on how patriotic the Chileans were. The Chilean flag was flying from (or out of) nearly everyone's house. ‘Last week was Chilean Independence Day and by law everyone has to fly the flag for a week before and after,' Juan said. ‘The celebrations go on for a week. That's why we are having the barbecue.'

Grandma's house was a grand old place filled with chandeliers, grandfather clocks, marble fireplaces, elaborate antiques and the usual grandma-the-world-over clutter of knick-knacks, framed photos and lace doilies. Within a minute of walking into the backyard, I had a drink in my hand. ‘It's called
Ponche a la Romana con Frutilla
,' Juan said as he downed his drink. ‘It's champagne, white wine and strawberries.' Before I'd even had a chance to take a sip, a parade of cheerful relatives lined up for a whirlwind of introductions. At least most of the womenfolk did. The old fellows in their neatly ironed collared shirts were hunched over a small table in the corner playing cards. I'm sure that all the drinking over the years has destroyed the part of my brain that remembers people's names because, as usual, I didn't catch a single person's name. At least they all knew mine—Juan's uncle introduced me to everyone as Crocodile Dundee.

Finally, after I'd met twenty-odd relatives (and I mean that in the nicest way), I had a chance to survey my surroundings. Set in the shade underneath a wide trellis entwined with vines, two long tables had been set up for lunch. In the middle of the long backyard, underneath an enormous lemon tree, was one of the biggest barbecues I'd ever seen. Under a thick cloud of smoke three men were tending to what looked like an entire cow cut up into bits. Rising up behind the backyard fence were the Andes. It was amazing to think that we were sweltering on this hot spring day when less than 24 hours earlier I'd been skiing in those very mountains.

Soon there was a flurry of activity as more guests arrived and more drinks were handed out with more vigorous handshaking and hugs. After I finished the drink with the long name, I was handed a large pisco sour. Just when I was thinking that I'd better eat something soon to help soak up the alcohol, it was time to sit down for lunch. Everyone else on the table immediately began taking part in a rapid-fire conversation where the only words I could understand were ‘si' and ‘no'.

‘What are they talking about?' I asked Juan (who, other than Luis Alfredo, was the only one who spoke English).

‘They are talking about what's happening on the TV show
Lost
.'

Yes, it really is a small sad world sometimes.

Uncle Diego* put more bottles of red wine on the table than there were people to drink them while Aunty Claudia* produced large plates of little tasty Chilean savoury pastries called
empanadas
. (*These names are fabricated because of the name-erasing circuit in my damaged brain.)

Aunty Claudia* asked me (with the help of Juan's translation) if I liked Santiago and I told her that I did, but that I hadn't really seen much of it yet. ‘Santiago very nice nice city,' Aunty Claudia* said proudly.

When she left Juan said, ‘There's nothing to see in Santiago. It's nice but boring.'

After an entrée of steaming jumbo mussels, I was handed a plate that was then piled high with so much meat it would have made a vegetarian faint. I ended up with a slab of pork ribs, a lamb shank, thick juicy pork sausages, chicken legs and beef legs (I think I got two entire cow's legs).

Just when I'd put something that resembled a dent into my mountain of meat, another huge helping of yet more meat was unceremoniously dumped onto my plate. I was already stuffed and my stomach felt like it was going to burst, but Uncle Carlos* and Uncle Eduardo* were still cooking giant slabs of animal on the barbecue.

Fuelled by free-flowing champagne, wine and pisco sours, everyone was becoming increasingly boisterous and loud. Juan tried to translate a particularly heated conversation. ‘They are having a philosophical debate about whether nothing exists until humans experience it.'

Fifteen minutes later I asked Juan whether they had resolved their debate.

‘Oh no, now they are talking about what is happening on the TV show
24
.'

‘Does your family get together often?' I asked Juan.

‘Yes, very often. Family is the most important thing to a Chilean.'

I was envious of these folk. The last time that my entire immediate family sat down to a meal together was Christmas day, 1991. I think I now know the secret, though: A family that smokes together stays together. Just about everyone at the table was puffing away like mad when they had finished their meaty feast.

There were a few smoky gasps of horror, however, when I passed around a pack of Australian cigarettes. (I'd just like to add here that I only brought the cigarettes with me all the way from Australia to warn people of the dangers of smoking.) On the front of the box was a large photo graphically demonstrating what happens to you if you smoke. Apparently, after too many ciggies you will look just like the Elephant Man. The photo was of a horribly deformed foot with rotten and missing toes. This is caused when smoking damages your blood vessels and blocks circulation, resulting in gangrene. Or, according to Uncle Miguel*, by working too hard.

Uncle Miguel* stared at the photo and said (well, Juan said as he interpreted for me): ‘This means that if you try and work and smoke at the same time you will drop something on your foot and smash your toes. So we should do less work.'

Actually, the graphic warning seemed to inspire everyone to smoke more, because less than an hour later they had all run out of cigarettes. ‘We need seven packs,' Juan said as he counted hands. I volunteered to walk up the street to buy them because I really needed a break from drinking. I was getting quite tipsy and I didn't want to tip over that line into tanked and do something embarrassing. Not that I necessarily would, but I once made a total twit of myself on a similar couch-surfing experience.