Opinion Sur Joven

It’s rude. I turn on my back to seem less rude. “Someone’s stabbed me in the back”, says the man, who I can look at out of the corner of my eye. He has rosy skin, grey hair and round-shaped glasses, he’s wearing a light blue shirt and his face is neatly shaved… I’ve never seen such an exact resemblance to Barney Rubble from The Flintstones in my life. I can deduce out of their conversation that his name is Roberto, because in some parts of the talk he accidentally talks about himself in the third person. I go back to my original position for them not to notice I’m listening to their conversation; he sounds nervous, and he’s tapping his knee slightly against the table, clearly showing anxiety. The leading characters of the dispute are Claudia, Guido and Tomás. “Making a diagnosis is very easy –he says, and he sips some coffee, probably decaf-, therefore the important thing is having a vision and an integrative notion of the situation. I can’t believe the same thing happens over and over”, he assures, and goes on. “Things were rotting below the surface, a lot was going on, nobody said anything and I always shut my mouth”, he says making the worldwide mouth-zipping gesture. “I used it in a time of my life as an excuse to avoid seeing I was going through a lot and not to talk about it… I was an ass-hole”; he sounds mad, nervous, tense, and he says he’s not willing to keep on hiding things like that anymore. During this conversation/monologue, a fat man at another table talks very loudly with his fellow coffee-drinker and catches my attention: “… the problem is they won’t accept the instructions”. I go back to Barney Rubble, who stops monologizing and listens to his partner: “You should try to be smarter and start creating more informal relationships with people. I’m not talking about your boss: you do have to address him more formally. You don’t want to be praised or punished, Roberto, and that makes you stronger. No one’s entitled to criticize what you do, ’cause you have the last word, you’re the one who makes the decisions, and although there may be different points of view, decisions generally reflect an attitude”. Maybe he’s his psychologist. Do psychologists work at bars? After having been to several bars, I can observe a behavior pattern; there are different sorts of conversations: couple, work and therapeutic conversations. Every time two people meet to talk about something (that is, about something rather than about nothing), one of them assumes the psychologist’s role; external watchers find it hard to guess their bonds because their relationships are absolutely asymmetrical. “Well, then tell me how I’m supposed to make a decision if he doesn’t meet the minimum requirements”. While I’m listening to their conversation, different hawkers successively enter the place: they were seven, and three of them were selling pocket flashlights of the kind you can hang in the key ring. None of them tried to sell them to me… maybe they saw the look in my face. Barney Rubble’s playing with one of the key rings, and when the hawker passes by, Barney gives it back to him… he was just looking. How much is it? 3 dollars. No, thanks. The psychologist insists: “the good thing is you may compete with yourself because, for instance, when you see someone doing something wrong, you point it out and, at the same time, it’s useful for you not to make the same mistake, because you have to be better than them”. Barney Rubble gets angry, looks annoyed and slightly raises his voice. His partner calms him down, “It’s just an example, I’m not saying it’ll actually happen”. Silence, silence, silence… it’s a tense moment. “You should improve the environment to achieve good team work”. “You’re right, you know?”, Rubble says. “You should let yourself go, leave the assistant role and behave as a leader”, his friend insists. While Roberto answers in his low and monotonous tone, the people in the bar speak louder and louder and I find it hard to distinguish one conversation from the other. The fat man at the other table keeps vociferating: “we must set some limits; otherwise this city will be out of control”. Back to Roberto: “We left the worst part behind. Anyway, I still have a goal, because I have my routine: I get up at 8 and go to the doctor at 2 p.m., and he just can’t tell me what he once told me, ’Roberto, shut the fuck up’”. Silence again… I still can’t understand the other person’s role, his pseudo-psychologist: it seems as if he enjoyed Barney Rubble’s misery. I try to take a look at his face, and although I can’t make it, I get to see the logo of a major home appliances chain on Rubble’s shirt. “There are some things I won’t be able to give him, because he has something I didn’t have when I was a kid; because, unlike Roberto, Guido had a father”. “But you’re wrong –his partner says-; if you take a look at where you are, you’ll get a different energy to stand up and say ’I know I made a mistake’”. “But tell me something, Lucho…” That’s it! The other one’s name was Lucho. Lucho doesn’t listen to him and keeps talking: “you’ve been through tougher situations than this one and you got over them, and that helps you too because you’ve struggled a lot and I acknowledge it.” And that’s when all the praising began: “well, you’ve really been a great boss and I’ll never forget that”, Rubble answers. Compliments keep on for a while, though Barney finally starts reproaching him: “all I’m saying is we can’t keep working like this. And I know it’s not your fault, but is due to our system”. The waiter comes: it’s 5 dollars. “We accept jewelry”, the waiter says ironically. “Next time you pay”, the boss says.

102

I think I’m in the wrong bar, because there aren’t many conversations. It’s a typical bar for lawyers, around Tribunales (a neighborhood in Capital Federal where the Courts are), but it seems lawyers don’t choose the same far corner tables as the gossips, the ones who don’t want to be disturbed or the pretty girls who want to be seen when leaving the bar. A couple appears. They’re about 40. The interesting thing is that they talk very closely, with their backs slightly bent frontwards and holding each other’s hands on the table. They haven’t been dating long: you don’t use that tone when talking with someone you know well: “today was a positive day, but each person sees it differently”, he says. Maybe they’ve been together for one year, tops, but probably no longer than three months; anyway, the conversation doesn’t sound very entertaining: “I’ve already been treated by many dentists and all of them tell me ’your mouth can’t be fixed anymore’”. He’s a complex guy; time passes and he starts talking about allergies and describes each dentist ever saw his mouth. “He worked inside and replaced the whole casing”, he explains. “He’s a general odontologist, but he’s passionate about this and he gradually adds antibiotics”. The waiter comes and he rejects the drink: he wants his Sprite cold. He seems touchy. The next table gathers a group of lawyers. “How are you doing, Doctor?” I hate that lawyers’ habit of calling each other “Doctor” instead of John, Smith or Johnnie. A lawyer dressed in brown has just arrived and sits down without invitation. Two types of people go to bars: depressed people and those who talk about politics and soccer, not to mention scribes like me, who use them to pick up some stories. The one who’s just arrived doesn’t like going to the doctor, so he prefers to be treated by phone. “The key is saying ’It hurts here, here and here’. My cousin is a gastroenterologist, so I say that to him and he says ’take this or that pill’”. That’s not the case of the man in the couple -who was at another table and a in a different conversation-, who does like going to the doctor and telling his girlfriend about it. He starts recalling anecdotes about his childhood and his teeth: “time passed by and my teeth started to grow all wrong”. Meanwhile, his girlfriend couldn’t say a word… “When I was a teenager they told my mother ’No, madam, the room, the gums, the shape of the mouth’, yada, yada, and have I told you about the shoes I had to wear because I had flat feet? So my cousin, who’s an odontologist, was the first to treat me. Her consulting room was located in the corner of Talcahuano and Santa Fe streets, she said ’I’m gonna fix you’, so she used the halogen lamp and bam, bam, bam, so when I came out I said to her ’you’re a genius’ and she fixed it”. What a boring guy. This conversation is pointless. Time to go.

B subway

We move on to talk about pipes. This time I choose the center of the bar, next to a column. I came to this bar because I know cab drivers usually come here too, and I wanted to listen to soccer conversations, but I ended up attending plumbing lessons. I freak out when people draw little sketches, plans and other drafts, just like my friend Ivoch. Ultimately they are a bunch of liars and we believe their nonsenses because they use a serious voice. Once Ivoch said the water of glaciers is hot… and we believed it. The plumbers had finished. “I got up at 5 a.m.”, one of them says and then burps. This bar of Social Science students is very different to the one of lawyers and white-collar workers. Let’s take a look. Average age: 28+26+24+22+60+23+23+70+45+50+55+66+60+45+70=44, but age averages are tricky. We may see folders with notes, a man playing with a ring on the table, a lot of progressionist beards and one Mirinda (who on Earth drinks Mirinda?). The TV is set on Crónica TV news channel and the cars keys are on the table, showing an “I parked at the front” attitude impossible to get downtown. There’s also a cell phone on the table. A guy and a girl are studying together. As the minutes go by, the guy seems to get closer to her, and she’s in an intermediate attitude between laughing and moving back; playing-hard-to-get women. Some students, who probably have an exam today, get up and leave; the waiter approaches the table and starts making noise with cups and trays. One person enters, takes a look and leaves. Teresa Raccolín, a History professor who speaks fast and without pauses -like this article-, sits next to me. She sips coffee from a glass –a habit I hadn’t seen since 1930- while people enters and exits the bar. Behind me, some girls are playing with a cell phone, distracted from their studies: they’ve been doing it since they arrived, unwilling to concentrate. Congresswoman Juliana Marino passes by. A guy sitting in front of me complains. He picked it up on Monday, he tried it on Tuesday and it broke down again on Friday. “What can I expect?”, he says. Raccolín goes to the ladies’ room and then leaves. She was in there exactly for 7 minutes and 18 seconds. Then Lucho Núñez, a writer of our publication, enters and asks “What are you doing?” “I’m listening to other people’s conversations”, I answer. He tells me I’m doing the same as the sociologist Alfred Schütz, who would say that in order to think of the cities we must leave aside all we’ve learned and pretend we are aliens who fall on the earth and analyze things; Lucho says that Schütz says that that’s why foreigners see things native people don’t. Lucho goes to the men’s room and then leaves. The girls with the cell phone leave too, and the waiter brings the change: two quarters and a dime. An ideal sum for his tip. Now that everyone’s gone, I’m leaving too.

160

Three women arrive. The youngest one sits in front of the other two. “I don’t know how much experience you have –she says to one of the two other women- and the schedule is from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m., sometimes a little longer. I have to make a decision within two weeks, so I’ll call you, you’ll come and we’ll see how you do it; otherwise it’s very hard to know whether you’re going to do well”. “How is it?”, the eldest woman asks. “I have two daughters, one is 9 and the other one is 11”, says the probable future boss. The others start talking about their children and she answers “I don’t have a boy yet, but I’m really happy”. Situation: the probable boss is approximately 29 years old. Two people came to the interview. One girl –aged 18- and an older woman who seemed to be her mother. They met at the bar to get to know each other, to see whether the 18-year-old girl was able to start working at the probable future boss’s house. The probable future boss says everything’s alright, but that the girl will have to pass a little test before. Okay, that’s it, there’s nothing else to talk about for these three people who have nothing in common. But… the coffee hasn’t been served yet. Silence, silence, silence. The mother breaks the ice, “The girls are doing better, aren’t they?” “Yes, a lot better”. Silence, silence, until they talk about one of the only two issues we all have in common: the traffic (the other one’s the weather). It’s a tense moment and the girl doesn’t say a word. The mother says she worked near this neighborhood once. “I left because I got a better job”. Her daughter is still voiceless. Apparently, both of them are currently working at a grill room. “And what does she do?” “All sorts of food, potato tortillas, everything”, her mother answers. She doesn’t speak. The coffee is served and the probable future boss thanks them: “I’m glad you came. I’ll surely call you within two weeks for you to make a little test”. She addressed her as if she was talking to a little girl, in a very patronizing tone. “I’m going through a lot of auditions for my profession, because that’s the only way to do it”. Auditions? I turn on my back. The probable future boss was a famous actress! Luckily, she doesn’t notice my celebrity junkie behavior and keeps talking. “You seem worried -she says to the girl-. Is it because you want to work? You look a little concerned”. They keep on talking for a while. The actress ends the meeting –which had already lasted 15 more minutes because the waiter wouldn’t bring the coffee- and pays the check.

I’ll never know who she finally hired, nor will I remember the name of that famous actress whose face I’ve already forgotten. Nor will I ever know how the day at the bar next to the Social Science school ended, who passed their midterm exams or how Teresa Raccolín’s class was that day. And I’ll never get to know whether the love between the guy obsessed with his dentists and his mute girlfriend will last forever, or if Barney Rubble managed to solve his problems at work. Bar stories come to you, pass you by, remain with you, cheer you up or make you sad. And then they slip away, just as a breeze, for those who hear and feel them.

Except for their protagonists.

To G.G.M