Responsible Professional

I came down to Buenos Aires two months ago with the intention of finding gainful employment and becoming a productive member of a foreign society. And for the last two months I haven't really accomplished much other than drinking myself stupid and stealing movies off the internet. My original plan of attack was to blitz Craigslist with ads offering my services as a private English "Professor." Despite a seemingly bare market as far as English teachers native to the U.S. are concerned, I didn't get one bite. Well, not one interested in learning English, anyway. An Israeli salesman did respond to my ad asking if I would be interested in signing up for a pyramid scheme.

I then tried my social connections. Through local acquaintances I was put in touch with a girl in her early twenties who was interested in taking classes once a week for an hour and a half. She was studying at the University and her finals were coming up in a few months, so she wanted to brush up on her English before the big test. It was a good situation for both her and I. For twenty pesos an hour she would have a native helping her with English and I would have my first client. With luck maybe she would pass the word along to her friends and I could build a steady stream of revenue.

The first class went very well. She was pleasant and fun and we spent most of the time going over a workbook she brought along and practicing conversation. The teaching actually came pretty natural to me. Despite failing miserably as a writer in Los Angeles, I discovered that twenty years spent in the practice of writing gives even the biggest fuck up a pretty good handle on the English language. I'm living proof of that. So, all things considered, I felt that I had somewhat of an aptitude for helping people learn the language. Everyone has to start somewhere, and I was off and running.

There was just the tiniest bit of a professional setback after our second class, when I slept with her and then subsequently broke off all contact due to my overwhelming sense of shame. She was nice and very attractive, but the act itself was just another affirmation that more often than not I make poor decisions. So, on the one hand my teaching career was brought to a screeching halt while still in it's infancy due to a stupid mistake. On the other hand, I did get sex out of the stupid mistake, so I kind of look at it as a push.

There were a couple other opportunities that didn't amount to anything. I interviewed for a job writing press releases for a marketing company run by a couple North American expats. The guy I interviewed with was nice enough, despite working in marketing and being an obvious cocaine addict. We chatted outside of a Starbucks, throwing around marketing buzz terms like "SEO"  and "rapid deployment" like two giant douchebags for about half an hour before I went home and took a rape shower. In the end it worked out for the best, because they ended up going with someone else. I may still be unemployed and running out of savings, but at least I've never had to write a press release hyping some bullshit mobile application for the Iphone. And that means I still have my soul.

So, in the end, I've earned a whopping nine dollars in my two months spent in this city. I'm going to have to dig a tad deeper if I want to be able to support myself in the coming months. I'm probably going to have to start waking up before three PM, ease back on the binge drinking, suddenly become proactive, sociable and above all else curb the virulent rage that wells up inside me every time I meet some asshole from the United States living here -- which is most of them.