Just another night with Chilean transvestites...

I’ve been thinking for a while that maybe I should write about a different Chilean phenomenon each week. You know, familiarize my friends and family at home with the wonder that is Chilean culture. After last week, now seems like an appropriate time to write about the Chilean phenomenon that is “machismo”. The large majority of the visible, Chilean male population is desperate and outspoken cowards. If you have of remotely light-colored hair, they’ll say just about anything and everything to you and give you looks that actually do make your skin crawl. As Lucy Alta pointed out, the guys with their heads hanging out their car windows make you want to scream, “You are going to crash. Why don’t you look where you are driving??” In the end however, these men won’t actually do a thing. You can glare at most of them and they cower. My biggest problem is that I’ll probably get accustomed to being honked at while running here and will go home to the states and give one of my friends the finger when they try to honk a friendly hello. Still, although most men would never do anything, sometimes I get freaked out. Especially when returning from a dance club at five in the morning.

Lucy Alta, Katie, and I, had all been at the discotheque at the casino, a place where those who can afford to gather to dance poorly to (as Katie put it) all the 80s music you want to forget. We’re talking lots of men with glasses (the dorky, not the cute kind) who are slightly too old trying far too hard to look like they have any idea what they’re doing. Lucy and I walked Katie to her apartment, and then began walking down Libertad, one of the safest streets in Viña, to find a colectivo together, a sort of taxi that drives along certain lines. While walking along Libertad, two men passed us, glared in that way, slowed down, allowed us to pass, and began following us. Which was odd, but unfortunately not totally unusual, and we weren’t exactly positive they were following us. So we just kept looking for a colectivo, with perhaps a slightly hastened pace. Fate then provided us with what would soon be a much-needed bit of comic relief. Lucy and I definitely passed by two Chilean transvestites. Working the corner in a country where homosexuality and confused gender roles alike are less accepted than at a Christian Right tea party. Chilean transvestites, I applaud you.

Like I said, it proved itself much needed when, in the middle of the next block, a shady looking man in a large jacket and a skull cap walking toward us on the sidewalk did not move aside as he came closer to us, but rather, came right up next to us and began whispering sketchily under his breath before passing us by. It’s amazing how even a word like “beautiful” can make you shiver when said in a certain way. That wasn’t what made the humor necessary though. It was when I turned around to check on our two followers and noticed that the shady, skull-capped man had also turned around and was following closely. We once again picked up our pace, dashing toward the Plaza where the colectivos wait for passengers. We noticed that at this point, the first two men had positioned themselves on either side of us, which, while I was trying to stay calm, really did freak me out. We hopped in a colectivo, not bothering to argue much when the driver told us she was going to charge us double the usual (it’s still a $1.50 cab ride), and took off.

Sure, it’s possible that the two original guys slowed down because they wanted to watch two blondes go down the street and were actually going their separate ways and not trying to surround us when they split to either side of us. Not terribly harmful. And the man in the huge coat who muttered under his breath at us could have just turned around because he forgot something wherever he was coming from. In fact, that’s the worst part of all of it is that a girl feels like she can’t trust men here because they’re men, which seems so stupid. Like the fact that I can’t offer my seat to a tired-looking man on the bus because he “can’t” take it. The gender relations, as I’ve often said here, are the one thing I could never get used to. But things have to be changing, which is good news…here’s to Chilean transvestites everywhere!