Éxito

My weight hasn't budged from 127 in three weeks. But I don't mind, it's a nice low weight for me compared to my elephant months this past winter. On Friday I felt sexy pulling on new tight-fitting jeans, a strappy tank top and wedges. My hair was long and sleek, my make-up fresh. The cat calls were louder and more frequent than usual when I walked from my house to the Castellana Plaza.

Friday was a friend's birthday and we made a plan within our group to go salsa dancing at a local place. I wanted to do something to make her feel special so far from home, so I left my house early to go buy a sparkler candle (volcan) and donuts instead of cake (cakes here in Colombia have never impressed me, always dry and tasteless). 

On the way to the store I walked across the street rather than using the pedestrian overpass because there was a group of teenagers hanging out up there and I didn't want to walk past them. So I darted across traffic instead and saw a very fat cat dead on the median. Its skinny little black and white legs were sticking straight up into the air from its fat black and white body. "Tsst Tsst Hola prima, mi vida ven aca" a guy called to me as I walked. For once I turned to acknowledge a guy calling to me on the street."Que pasó?" I asked him, pointing to the cat. "Se caió. Se morió," He told me, as if I were an idiot for asking. I said goodnight and walked away.

In Éxito (Colombian equivalent of Target) I walked straight from the entrance to the baked goods section where I examined every single box of donuts and compared them for most desirable flavors and variety. I had left my house far too early and had more than an hour to kill before I met my friends. So I walked up and down the aisles with my box of donuts, stopping to pick out a new color of nail polish. I wandered through the aisles of refrigerators and ovens and televisions and thought of the day last week when I'd done the same thing with Francisco. When I got bored I paid for the donuts and the nail polish and an impulse purchase of a smirnoff mixed drink in a can.

Then, like any number of strange americans in superstores, I sat down at a table with a box full of donuts to drink alcohol and paint my nails raspberry pink. For 30 minutes I sat contently, drinking and carefully applying three thin coats of polish. I waited for them to dry, stood up when it was time to meet my friends and went off to find a moto taxi.