📍Buenos Aires, Argentina, 7.25.25

Martin picked me up at 8pm. That’s early for Argentina, I’ve come to learn. Most people don’t go out until at least midnight, and many clubs open around 1—though I hear it doesn’t get good until 3am. I was nervous to meet my cousin, so I had gone out and bought a bottle of Malbec. This one was 8000 pesos, $6, which is apparently still on the “pricier” side. The cheap ones go for 2000 pesos. Next time I’ll try one and rate it to see if I have any semblance of taste in my bones. Doubt it.

When I first decided to come to Argentina, I didn’t know I had family here. Or maybe I knew once, but I’d long forgotten. I don’t particularly remember why I chose it, only that it was “calling me.” That might just be my half-assed excuse to do something I wanna do but don’t have a good enough reason for. I make every decision on a half-whim flight of fancy at some lost-feeling 2am when I’m overburdened by heavy solitude or manic hope. There’s little justification for any of it. 

My great uncle Virgil connected me with Lucia Valente in Italy, who connected me with Martin and his grandmother, Linda Valente. I’d messaged Martin and gotten a response almost immediately. My first impression was through Instagram. He’d traveled extensively in the US, Europe, and even went to the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, where Argentina took the victory against France in a dramatic penalty shootout after they’d tied 3-3. He says it was the best moment of his life. 

I got in the backseat, behind Martin and his fiancée, Sofia, who didn’t speak much English. Martin was fluent and translated back and forth between us. Sofia is an architect, and they’d known each other since they were kids. In fact, their entire friend group had grown up together, enmeshing and marrying each other’s siblings until the line between friend and family got a little too confused. Now everyone is just family, and that’s that. 

They brought me to a performance that I can only describe as surrealist performance art— people dancing on walls, sprinting on a floating globe, running from falling chairs, and a great big moby dick bouncing its tail across the audience. Interactive. Cool.

They also got me a cup of fernet, Argentina’s national alcoholic beverage. It’s an Italian apertivo—herbal, minty, mixed with Coca-Cola. I said I liked it, but they doubted it when it took me the entire show to get the cup down. 

After the show, we went for pizza and Martin and I attempted to trace our family tree back to whatever connection we might have, showing each other photos of family and stalking past lineages haphazardly put together. We determined somehow that his grandmother Linda is the cousin of my great-grandmother, Angela. He’s a generation older than me, 35 years to my 26.  

Martin was amicable, kind, easy to talk to. He swore off meat in the barbecue heaven of Buenos Aires, where the street smells constantly of asado simply because he loves animals, which I found sweet. For work, he does something in the trade realm at Oakley. Seems to make good money for Argentina, drives a nice car, and plans to build a house with Sofia one day and have a bunch of kids. A simple life, it seems. A solid, heart-filled one. 

When the check came, he asked me if Buenos Aires was expensive for me because it’s very expensive for him and Sofia. I felt a flood of guilt, even though I’d already pulled my card out to pay. Something about the way he said it, like it weighed so heavily all of a sudden. The check was 34,000 pesos, $26. I said it’s of course cheaper than the US and that I will pay, but he didn’t let me. Next time, he said. I wondered why he brought it up if he wasn’t going to let me pay, but maybe I read into it too much. I hope so, cause I felt awkward after that, like I missed out on some social cue that was obvious to them. Was I supposed to have given them money for the drink? For the show? Should I have packed them a care package from the US? Issued reparations for my government’s military and economic interventions that have helped erode their economy and, with it, further opportunities for their own upward mobility? The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret, my book says, every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth. Was I complicit then? I think I would have happily sent over my entire bank account had they asked. But at the moment, I couldn’t clock my own moral compass. There was no script to follow. I’ll bring them gifts when I visit next weekend. 

It seems pertinent to say at this point that I am plagued by guilt, so I very well could have misread the entire situation. It is a suffocating blanket of guilt. I feel it press down on my soul every time I buy something, every time I clock a facet of privilege, every time I see someone on the street asking for money, every time I force one of the old keys into the lock, every time I go to sleep in a soft bed and warm room, every time I force a local to speak English, every time I remember that I am a tourist here and my presence is a fat pile of selfish garbage. I don’t know how to make up for my own existence or what I could do to absolve every negative impact my presence has. Am I being dramatic? Should I just never travel again? Lock myself away in my room? Weep in eternal sorrow? Burn myself at the stake because my very being is a sin against humankind? That seems a step too far.