Santiago Sleaze

Dear all thankyou for your continued patronage and the overwhelming response to the last post; most of it utter tripe, but keep it coming. For those of you not "in the know", Gebs was a fellow inmate at NMHS and now owns and runs a leper colony.

Anyway not much to report since my last post, although you may have a giggle to know that I stood in some wet cement last week; some workmen were putting down a new footpath and failed to take the correct safety precautions such as blocking the way to pedestrians. Still I managed to get myself out ok and only had to give my shoes a quick brush down; at least I have now left a more permanent mark on Santiago.

This past weekend, I took my second dance lesson which went as well as could be expected although I still have trouble working out when we are dancing Salsa and when we are dancing Merengue (I am pretty useless at it all). You may remember when I posted about my first dance lesson that I wrote of a particular dirty old man whose shirt seemed to come further undone as the class progressed. This week his shirt was practically completely undone before the class had even begun and I held grave fears that other garments would be discarded. Fortunately this did not eventuate however I am convinced that he takes too much interest in some of the younger ladies of the class. This is not uncommon in Santiago, since most Chilean males seem to have a negligible CCC rating (Charm, Charisma and Courtesy) and indeed it is not uncommon for trucks to slow down whilst passing members of the contary gender and the driver to holler profanities, make smooching noises and to grope at his own chest. This type of behaviour seems to transcend all walks of life, a group of us foreigners (2 males and 3 females) went to the Mercado central (central market) for a "cultural" exercise for class last week, where numerous fishmongers, butchers and bakers seemed to take great delight in holding their produce to their chests as if holding breasts and then proceeded to behave in much the same manner as the aforementioned truck drivers.

Furthermore there actually exist numerous chains of coffee shops (like Hudsons in Adelaide etc), which are described in Lonely Planet as "coffee with legs" as they are exclusively staffed by girls in very short skirts for the viewing pleasure of Santiago's businessmen. Anyway there is not much of this behaviour going on in the flat since it seems to be a South American homosexual haven, however there is always something else strange happening there; the other day I came home to find Eduardo, Jonathan and Raimundo (Bambi) all sitting like gorillas from a David Attenborough documentry going through each others hair as if looking for fleas whilst making what can only be described as orgasmic noises. Needless to say I have given up studying there (although not totally given up studying...yet!).

Be in touch soon.
T.