Thing We Learned in Buenos Aires #2

If there's one thing Argentine people like to do, it's making out.

Not that I know from personal experience, of course, but because they do it everywhere. They do it on street corners, they do it on the Subte, they do it in restaurants (noisily, at that) and they especially love to do it in the park. Some couples choose to do it on the park benches, and others stop mid-stroll to suck face in the middle of the sidewalk.

But here's where it gets awkward: their most favorite activity seems to be doing it lying in the grass. This is the point where the words "doing it" stop simply identifying the act of kissing and instead take on their 3rd grade meaning.

It appears that they come to the park specifically to get as close to public intercourse as they possibly can, and no one bats an eyelash. That's not to say that they're groping and drooling -- in fact most of the time it's all quite tender and sweet -- but I think it's the sheer volume of attached faces that makes it so overwhelming.

Last week Liz and I picked out a nice stretch of grass to sit and read on, and within an hour there were ten lip-locked couples just in the 20'x40' area that we were sitting in. I felt like perhaps we were sitting in the making out section, and someone would surely come to us at any moment and ask us to move along unless we happened to be lesbians and simply taking a break.

My amazement is almost entirely based around the fact that it seems that none of these people were born with an ounce of inhibition -- something that I have plenty of. I'm all for holding hands in public or little hugs and kisses here and there, but all of this park-bound making out that seems to only barely fall short of foreplay is another thing entirely.

Then, of course, there's the romantic side of me. The part that, should I weave through the bodies on the right day, thinks it's the greatest thing ever.

Here, part an early entry from my journal:

People here love each other. Couples wrap themselves in knots on benches and spoon on blankets in the grass. But the kissing and touching is tender, sincere. Not sophomoric and obnoxious. They all at once command attention to their affections and respect for their privacy in these wide open spaces.

I suppose at times it gets a bit absurd, like the couple in the median of a pedestrian street who, as Liz put it, "Must not have been able to make it that far without making out."

Generally speaking, though, it's something like lovely, if a bit heart-wrenching for me. But unlike that typical lovelorn torment, I feel happy rather than sad - glad for these people and how lucky there are to be here in love, lust, or anything else that brought them together for those moments.

So I suppose one can look it it from several angles, and perhaps by the time I leave here it will no longer phase me to lie in the grass, literally surrounded by these doubled forms. But in the end, this will still be my favorite thought on the subject, delivered by Eriks the first day we discovered the phenomenon:

"They'll totally know we're tourists when they see us reading in the park instead of making out."