mi vestido

This first thing I ever wrote about Alejandro was about the way he dressed.

He wore skater-style sneakers, baggy jeans, and a black t shirt with some sort of tattoo-related design on the front. He usually wore a leather jacket with a hooded sweatshirt poking out the collar. He had a shaved head and dark stubbly facial hair. I, on the other hand generally looked rather bookish in collared shirts and cardigans (July 2011)

Seven months later, I described his style again

Alé often wears an Ed Hardy shirt with a tiger on it that he told me he bought at the El Alto market one Sunday. He wears baggy light colored jeans and black Adidas shoes that often have the laces untied. His dark brown leather jacket has a sweatshirt hood poking out the collar. He shaves his head to the second lowest setting once a week. He has small black flesh plug earrings, and his right hand has a tattoo in black and red of a rotary tattoo machine that says “calibración.” (February 2012)

It’s now been one year and 7 months that we’ve known each other. I’ve met his family. I’ve seen him quit 2 jobs and survive another attempt at school (in Art & Design this time). I’ve been apartment hunting with him (for both him and myself). I’ve cooked with him a few times and given up and eaten Mr. Pizza or street hamburgers far more times. I’ve fallen asleep watching movies at 8pm and stayed all night drunkenly engaging in what could be considered Marxian arguments with him. We’ve dealt with Bolivian bureaucracy together. And in general I’m rarely surprised by him.

But on the night of January 12, as we unloaded tattoo equipment from his car he startled me.

Me gusta tu vestido. Es muy vintage!

the dress in question

Granted, Alé’s style has changed as I’ve known him. On New Year’s eve he lost the sweatshirt that always went under the leather coat. He wears a grey and black striped hoodie almost every day, now. His jeans are darker and slimmer, and he’s switched from DC sneakers to Adidas. He’s grown out his hair, and its parted slightly to the side. He’s let his beard grow out, and his mustache is verging on handlebar. I suppose you could say he’s got more of a vintage look going on too lately.

But this still surprised me. I always thought of our styles as polar opposites.

But then I remembered other instances. He once told his friend Ro that I had to be an expert on Johnny Cash because I had horn rimmed glasses and a red plaid shirt. He admired my t shirt with a Warhol print of James Dean. And now he always tries to steal my imitation Ray Ban sunglasses (25 Bolivianos at Plaza San Francisco).

Our musical taste seems to be growing more similar as well. Or maybe its always been that way, I just let my assumptions get in the way. Maybe its only a surprise because I thought I had him pegged so clearly. But as I get to know him he becomes more than the stereotypes. And I suppose everyone does. I think back to what I wrote about my grad school cohort the first day we were introduced. How we’ve grown together, seen each other through divorces and deaths. They are not who I expected, but I wouldn’t ask for anyone better  with whom to decide that Friction is not worth reading or that doxa is a pointless concept. Maybe the truth is we all have more in common than it appears on the surface. And maybe that’s part of the point of anthropology.

buena onda en la paz

I am so much cooler in Bolivia.

“Really, I am!” I want to shout at people I meet here in DC.

I suppose it’s a matter of social positioning, and I can’t really help it. Here I am a grad student and adjunct professor. I either stay in sweat pants all day or try to fight my younger-than-I-actually-am appearance by trying to dress like an academic. I hate when librarians ask me if I’m looking at information for a class paper. But in La Paz, I am one of the cool kids. I wear vintage, rockabilly dresses or ripped jeans and t shirts given to me by tattoo artist friends. I’m a live music junkie, a tattoo shop groupie, booze-slinging benefactor, restaurant aficionada, mural-painting sidekick, dj enthusiast, and a legitimate luchadora who rarely pays for a drink.

I wrote in May that I’m famous in La Paz (only half-jokingly), and its (half-jokingly) true. La Paz has the feeling of a small town, and if I don’t know everyone, I at least know someone who knows them. DC is small too, but rather than being comforting, its almost oppressive. When I left here in April 2011, I had good friends and a comfortable repertoire. I return to a place that feels empty. Most of my friends have left (such is life in such a transient city). With others I have grown apart. Evenings feel empty here as I crave distraction, camaraderie, excitement.

I came back in a depressed state, and googled “post-fieldwork depression.” Most of what turned up was written by people who disliked their field site and were depressed in the field. I felt the opposite. I longed to return to my friends, my usual days of training, reading, writing, visiting friends workplaces or homes, nice dinners served by my favorite Belgian, and the free tequila shots that went along with it. I missed the guessing games of who I’d run into on the street (there was always someone, but you never know who). Slowly it gets better. Easier. I instinctively put paper in the toilet, and don’t turn my nose at tap water. I wait patiently at bus stops, and thoroughly appreciate my electric heater. But I’d happily give it all up, even knowing there are horrific electric showers waiting for me on the other side.

But this is how it happens. We re-integrate ourselves to the best of our abilities. We find the little things that make us happy (hot water in sinks) and try to forget the things that were so magical about our other home (evening light on Illimani). And at the very least, I’ve found a bartender here who hooks me up as well as I was taken care of in LPZ.