Under Party! Under what, you ask? Under the counter? Under construction? Underwear? This post contains a lot of men not wearing underwear. Read on.
The night starts tamely. I emerge from my apartment of relative calmness (sadly I’m not super enough to have a fortress of solitude) and walk down Avenida Corrientes to the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas. I sit through two hours of a poised, intense young professor explaining the foolishness of Russia for adopting Marxism when it should have been industrializing. Afterwards, I go downstairs to see a movie that I got a ticket for earlier. Well, I’m under the impression that it’s a movie, due to my spotty understanding of Spanish and sloppy color-coding on the part of the Centro. It is not a movie.
The lobby of the Centro is packed! More than I have seen. The line for this thing is thick and long, animated with lively conversations (for your imagination’s benefit I’ll tell you, Porteño Spanish sounds like Italian, and when Argentines get excited they tend to wave their hands around as if they were swatting flies). The people in front of me are a young gay couple who are keen to demonstrate that the concept of a Public Display of Affection does not carry the same connotations here as in the US. Not that I didn’t know that already, when half the people on the street are holding hands and looking dreamily at the sky and don’t give a damn that this is a busy sidewalk and some of us have places to go.
Hey, I am NOT a sourpuss, don’t give me that look..
The name of the event is Fiesta Loca! Fiesta Negra! Fiesta Under! Oblivious, I stand in line and, when the doors open, shuffle in. The first thing I see is a 10 foot long cock. The back wall of the room has graphic gay porn projected on it. The whole audience is a little in shock, believing that it’s some sort of joke but not really sure how to take it — are these people poking fun at us or at themselves? The scene, which is quite long and involves two couples, a swimming pool, and a wide variety of sex acts, continues playing throughout the night. It gets a couple more laughs every few minutes, just out of amazement that the nightmare of the Catholic ethos is being shown in full glory — nay, supersized glory — to a full audience sitting in a government-funded theater.
Before I sit down, the actors are on stage, confidently decked out in nylon and leather and denim and boots. Most of them, at least…a row of old ladies sits respectably along the back wall, smiling on the imminent debauchery like a group of benevolent aunts.
The first monologue starts. A young lady in what could be a Catgirl costume bounces to the front of the stage on an inflatable tube, and while the rest of the cast watches, she goes on at length about… well, something. I can’t follow too much of it. But it’s funny! Everyone else is laughing, at least. She sings a cute song with lewd lyrics and disappears.
There is no explanation of what this event is. Is it a concert, a musical, or an immobile gay pride parade? It’s not clear.
Next up, a man in loose clothing is overjoyed to wish the Centro a happy birthday — September was its 25th anniversary month — and is so happy that he’s going to lip-synch a J-Lo song. While he does it, his clothes start to come off. Soon he’s down to just his briefs, and although everyone’s convinced that’s as far as it’ll go, nope, they come off too and now his uncircumsized manhood is getting some air. He jumps off the stage and approaches the crowd, and puts his leg up on the armrest of a college-age man in the front row, who is stiff with horror. He starts to brace himself on the seat, and all at once, everyone realizes what he’s going to do — he climbs on top of the front row and starts crawling his way back. Oh God! He’s coming this way! What do we do?! The audience is riotous, panicked, hyperventilating with awkward gasp-laughs. He cuts short his adventure just as he’s right on top of me, gifting me with several extra seconds of junk-in-the-face, because on stage, the next actor is starting their monologue. He scurries off to the side, much to the chagrin of everyone in my row who thought they were going to be spared having to…you know, deal with it. Well. I guess I am learning things all the time in Argentina. I’ve never had a naked man crawl on top of me like that before. In public, that is.
After this 21st century Latin Rocky Horror episode, my memory gets a little hazy. One of the highlights that I remember vaguely was when the old ladies had their turn to talk excitedly about their sex life and how much they love “el Rojas,” the Centro. The low point of the show was when the few young women in the cast asked the audience who’d like to see them naked. The response was tepid, the catcalls sounded like they came more out of duty than enthusiasm, and the girls thankfully did not undress and exacerbate the awkwardness.
It was a good night. I don’t think I really need to add commentary to this, but let me just say how glad I was to see some representation of LGBT culture here. It really put that lap dog Rocky Horror Picture Show in its place. But if Porteños haven’t gotten wind of it yet, let’s try and keep Hedwig to ourselves for another couple of years. I’m just afraid they’re going to put us to shame there too.
