Poison

Buenos Aires, Argentina

There's a magic potion in Harry Potter's fictional universe called Felix Felicis that makes you lucky for a day. Every project you take on succeeds. You always say the right thing. Your sports teams win.

Sometimes I feel like I'm Felix Felicis. Any project I join is bound to succeed just because I'm on it. I can achieve any goal I set for myself. I'm the hero of the story. I stand up for people who can't defend themselves and I have a decent sense of humor about it all.

Other times I'm poison. The world is full of truths that nobody wants to face and it's my job to dig up all the ugliness and expose it. Every word out of my mouth is venom. Everything I touch dies.

I had one such ugly night during my brief layover in Buenos Aires.

*

I watched the pitiful end to the Vikings football season in an Argentinian hostel with ESPN Vivo Spanish commentary. I was cradling a giant bottle of Quilmes beer in my lap and sinking lower and lower into the couch.

By halftime the game was pretty much over. An old friend of mine had made a Facebook post earlier in the day about choosing purple (Vikings color) panties that day over green (Eagles) ones out of superstition. I added a tasteless comment to her post at halftime to the effect that maybe she should change her panties. She responded with "ish."

After the game I went out back to hang out with the other drunks. Turns out this hostel had a bar open to the public and only about half the people hanging out were guests.

The first local guy I tried talking to had no time at all for me. It occurred to me that he was too preoccupied with hitting on the hideous Swedish woman from my dorm room. And actually he wasn't even the one doing the talking.

His friend, another local guy, was trying to convince the Swedish woman to have a threesome with himself and the guy who was ignoring me. I was bored and started commentating the wooing to an Australian woman who joined us.

At some point the locals had to leave and only guests were allowed in the hostel. The party migrated out front and I wandered out there to have a look.

Some older stocky guy was talking shit about Americans. I think mostly he was insulting our intelligence. At first I assumed he was an American himself, since most of the old solo assholes I'd run into at hostels in my travels had been American. I got loud and started confronting him in Spanish. Why are you even here?

Turns out he was another local guy, presumably at the hostel trying to convince ugly European girls to do filthy things with him. I couldn't understand all of what he was saying to me, but I made like I did and insulted him for spending his weekends at hostels trying to pick up young foreigners.

After the locals left I got another beer and sat in the backyard by myself sending text messages.

First I texted an ex-girlfriend, but I misfired there because my texts were too vague to sting. "I don't think disingenuous really captures it. We need more bad words."

Then I finally responded to my dad on Skype, who had messaged me during the football game. I gave him 3 reasons I thought the Vikings had lost. The first two were football-related. The third was "why didn't you help pay for my college?"

Then I had a blacked-out argument with my dad in which I called him an asshole and a horrible father who blamed the women in his life for things that were his own damn fault. These were all critiques of my dad I had come up with over the past umpteen years but had never found occasion to voice.

*

The next morning I made leftover pizza and had a pleasant chat with the ex I had tried texting the previous night. Then I went on a walking tour of Buenos Aires and took a bunch of pretty pictures.

I felt shaken about having laid into my dad so much. But the venom had all drained out of me. Pestilence - like serendipity - never lasts forever.