Advice for Day 3: dancing into tomorrow

To a Latino, a few drinks almost always equals coming home at 5 A.M. with sweat stains and more than enough stories to tell the grandkids. After eating dinner at 7 AM with Brasilians, watching the sun come up outside a boliche in BsAs and having to drag my Latina roommate from bars at close you would think I would have learned this cultural norm.

But since Lore, a notorious all-nighter Latina, is now a single mom of a two year old, I thought maybe this time when she asked me out to a quiet night of drinks, it would really mean a martini or two in some quiet little bar. But it seems, toddler or no, Latinas never forget how to dance into tomorrow.

After a few drinks downtown, we spent a few hours dancing off our buzz followed by a few cups of coffee at 3 am to prolong our Saturday night. As we ended our night at Denny’s over whatever caffeinated beverage we could swallow the fastest, I looked around the table absorbing for the first time that this one exhausted gringa was surrounded by 10 fast-talking Latinos, none of whom seemed to be concerned about the fact that today was now tomorrow.

I tried to catch snippets of conversations, picking out the key Spanish words I knew. One young Mexican had just taken exams and was looking to go into the Navy (because everyone knows the Army screws you over- that is of course roughly translated). Another, dressed up in a flashy suit and shiny leather shoes, was working for his engineering degree at Milwaukee and hoping to move home after.

I asked one of the Peruvias what he did and he answered, “Can I tell you what I want to do instead?” I said that yes, I thought it would be perfect he told me what he would be doing tomorrow instead of what he was doing today. Besides as far as the clock was concerned it was tomorrow.

There is something liberating about talking to people for whom time and timelines don’t exists. There is something beautiful about seeing the future coming up while you are still drinking yesterday’s coffee. There is something revolutionary about dancing into tomorrow and realizing how little yesterday matters.