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Sunday morning I got up at eleven. There had been a storm earlier in the morning and the drops woke me up but I fell back to sleep as the rain kept falling.

The bathroom had been cleaned. The roach and the vomit were gone and the toilet was working right.

I walked to the market to see if the old man was set-up there, selling used magazines and comics like a couple weeks ago. He wasn’t there.

I bought some little croissants filled with dulce de leche and came home. The kitchen was filled with plates and bowls and pans from the night before. Grey grease had hardened in them.

I made a cup of black tea, ate the croissants, and checked my e-mail. I walked downtown at one, to meet Carlos Glucklich, the literature professor I work with, to have lunch with his family.

We met at Flamingo, the upscale restaurant across from the main plaza. It’s got big plate glass windows so you can see everyone inside who’s eating there.

Carlos is short, with finely-combed silver hair and big square glasses. He waited for me outside. It was a windy, chilly day and hardly anyone was out.

We went inside and he introduced me to his wife, his daughter Beatriz, and her friend Andrea. Beatriz studies English at a university across the river in Santa Fe. Andrea studied tourism but now works at a radio station doing promotions.

Carlos sat me down between himself and his wife.

Beatriz was looking down, away. She was quiet the whole lunch and looked like she’d just had her heart broken. Andrea asked me questions. Mrs. Glucklich got to talking. Andrea asked Mrs. Glucklich questions. The waiter brought bread and white wine for Carlos and me and his wife. Andrea got a Coke and Beatriz a banana smoothie.

Carlos said that “to be between Mendoza and San Juan” is an expression that means you’re drunk. I said there were a lot of people between there at my apartment last night.

Carlos asked me where I was from. He’d thought I was from the South and was going to have everybody whistle “Dixie” when I came in. I told him I was from Chicago and the north. He said they would have to whistle “John Brown’s Body” instead.

Mrs. Glucklich was talking about Lucas, a Dutchman attorney who had spent time in Parana. She was saying how shocked he was to see the shantytowns – the villas – at the edge of town. He was going to ride his bike through them but a woman he knew heard his plan and got a hold of lady she knew. This other lady knew people in the villas and would go with Lucas so he’d be safe and not get robbed or shot.

Mrs. Glucklich got to talking about a trip she’d taken to Buenos Aires and how she’d visited this theme park that's a replica of Jerusalem. She said there are beautiful live re-enactments of the last supper and the passion. They even sell food from Jesus’ time. Some kind of empanadas, she said.

Our food came. I ordered a cut of beef – lomo – served with potatoes and a cream sauce. Carlos got the same thing. His wife got beef, too, served over French fries. Beatriz got a vegetable stir-fry. Andrea got pasta.

We ate. We drank all the wine. There were a lot of TVs over the bar, near us. Tennis was on. There was an Argentine playing in a tournament in Montreal. Carlos asked if I liked watching tennis. He said his father was a fanatic for watching it on television.

Andrea asked Carlos if he played any sports. Basketball, he said. But that was a long time ago.

We ordered desserts – fruit salad for Carlos and double-scoop ice cream sundaes for Mrs. Glucklich and me. The girls didn’t get anything.

We finished and left. Carlos said he’d drive me home and we walked to their car around the corner.

“This is kind of an old car” he said as I sat in the middle, in the backseat. His daughter scoffed.

I said I was going to the Parana Costume Party that night, that I had to write an article about it for a magazine called 054. Beatriz said she’d gone a couple years ago but wouldn’t go again. The place where they have it isn’t very nice. The people aren’t very attractive. The music isn’t very good. Everyone’s jammed in together and everyone shows up drunk.

Mrs. Glucklich asked if I’d be drinking before I went. I said I might have to, for psychological preparation.

We got to my house and I got out and gave kisses and shook Carlos’ hand and said goodbye.

I was on the computer, on Facebook, and Laura, one of my second-year students, IM’ed me and asked if I was going to the Costume Party. I said yeah, but was planning on going alone since I hadn’t found anyone else. She said she was going with a lot of girls and I could come with. I said OK.

I lied down on my bed and took a nap.

I got up a couple hours later and walked to the bus station and bought an overnight bus ticket to Posadas, in the northeast. The ticket was for Monday night. I planned on going to the Costume Party, writing my article in the afternoon, then getting on the bus and getting out of town for a week. Classes had been canceled for exams.

I bought hair gel along the way home. I was going to dress-up as Tintin for the party. I felt it’d be appropriate.

When I got home I heard someone shout hello. It was Pablo. He, they, hadn’t left yet.

They were upstairs in Daniel’s room drinking mate. He told me to come up. Daniel had given them the key so they could come and go.

I put down my bag and went upstairs. Pablo and Roberto were there and two women. They were lying on Daniel’s bed, passing the mate, laughing, talking, tired, waiting for their buses later that night.

They were talking about how some writers, instead of writing “los alumnos” (the students) now put “lxs alumnxs” to try and take away the gender of the word and to be fair to men and women and transsexuals and others.

I asked how you were supposed to pronounce that. They laughed and tried to make different vowel sounds.

One of the ladies said that, here people were arguing about these semantic issues, when there’s thousands of people starving in Argentina.

She got the mate and took a sip and asked if they were going to go walk around before the sun went down. Asked why the guys hadn’t asked the women to go for coffee.

Pablo got mad and said that in a feminist world the men shouldn’t always have to ask the women out.

Their feet dangled from the edge of the bed. The women had their shoes off. Roberto was wearing blue sneakers. They looked like kids’ feet.

I went back downstairs and finished reading a David Foster Wallace essay. It was “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”, the one where he takes a luxury Caribbean cruise by himself, on assignment from Harper’s Monthly.

The doorbell rang. It was somebody from the conference. I told him to come in.

He was followed by somebody else, then another person, then another. About 15 people came in. I kissed and hugged everyone, then went back to my room and shut the door.

I was going to go meet Laura at her house at 9PM. She lives close to the field where they have the Costume Party, so we could walk from there.

I shaved my beard and rolled my corduroy pants into knickers and put a lot of gel in my hair. Putting your hair into a vertical pompadour is harder than it looks. I cut a length of my bangs off but that didn’t help. I was hoping Laura could do something. I’d already told her to bring blush for my cheeks.

I put on a scarf and put my camera pouch over my shoulder. I left and found a taxi and took it outside town to Laura’s.

We met up at a neighbor’s house. We walked down the street and bought empanadas and ate them, cold, with Sprite. Other girls came over. They opened up their make-up kits and started doing their faces. They were going as cats. One girl helped me with the blush. She’d never heard of Tintin. She knew him when I showed her a picture.

They, we, were drinking pineapple daiquiris.

This house had a lot of cats, and a big hairy dog. A white cat was lying on a love seat. The dog would walk over, put its snout in the cat’s face, sniff it. The cat would rear back, turn its head away, then swat and hit the dog’s head. The dog would walk away, then come back a few minutes later and do it again.

More girls came over, then some guys, too.

The mom and dad of the house came home and were looking at our costumes and the mom said that there were groups out all over in costumes and they said people from Paraguay and Brazil and even Spain had come for the party.

We went outside, but not everybody was quite ready and we went back inside.

We went outside again and took pictures and headed for the field. A Wrangler drove by with three guys standing up in back dressed in camo fatigues and ski masks and holding up plastic rifles. Flags were tied to the roll bar.

We got near the field. We crossed a highway. The cars were stopped, gridlocked. Families and old people and kids were out, looking at the costumes and everyone entering the party. Others were set-up, grilling, selling hamburgers and choripan and Fernet and Coke and beer.

We pushed our way into the crowd, towards the entrance gate. We pushed and waited and drifted up the hill and forward to the security pat-down.

The Costume Party had 8 tents, each with a DJ and plywood dance floors. They were playing Cumbia and Reggaeton and Electronic music.

We went into one tent and danced a bit. Then another, where Laura and her friends found their other friends. They were passing around bottles and cigarettes and jumping up and down and dancing. Most of the costumes were variations on professions (doctors, athletes, gauchos, police officers, maids) or pop culture heroes (Captain America, the Joker, Batman, Smurfs, Legos, Santa Claus).

I wandered off on my own to take pictures and see things for my article.

There was a mime shouting into his phone. There was a kid crutched against a Speed energy drink sign, sticking his fingers down his throat, gagging himself, trying to vomit. There were two Santa Claus smoking cigarettes and dancing on a platform to House music. There was a doctor in scrubs chugging a Budweiser, also up on a platform.

I walked by a big carnival pirate ship amusement ride. It was near the edge of the field and a fence. There was a solider and a police officer and prisoner standing up at the fence, facing out, peeing.

I danced in the Electronic tent, looked around some more, then left.

I walked to the gate and asked if I could re-enter. They said no. I stood there, thinking a minute. There was a police officer nearby. A kid was passed-out on the ground by a fence, his head buried in his arms. A guy came up behind me and turned on a siren. When I turned around to look at him he said oh sorry and smiled and walked away and turned the siren back on.

I left.

Off to the side of the security pat-down was a pile of bottles and trash. Everything you couldn’t bring in that the police made you leave behind.

I leaned against a fence to take a picture of it.

A cop asked me what I was doing. I said leaving.

I got in a cab.

The driver asked if these kinds of parties are typical, where I’m from.

Yes, I said.

I got home by 3:30. The party was supposed to go until 10AM. Laura and her friend had brought sunglasses for when the sun came up.

I went to bed.