Mad Juan
Mad Juan was an interesting character. About 5ft tall, shaven headed, bearded, with a perpetual fag dangling from the corner of his mouth, his left hand invariably cupped around a beaker of red wine, and his right hand either dealing with his smoke, groping the nearest available female, or strumming on a clapped out guitar.

I lived with him for a month and a half in Cordoba, Argentina. He wasn't actually supposed to be living in the house I was staying in, but his parents had kicked him out after he had failed his medical degree (he was about 30). He'd moved in on the grounds that his best friend was going out with a German girl who also lived in the same house as I did.

Mad Juan had no concept of privacy. Or sobriety. Or none drug use. I'd met him before, but living with him was a bit of a shock. He'd get through 3 or 4 bottles of red wine a day, as well as numerous bottles of sickly Quilmes beer, porn mags, weed, ketamine and coke.

The major problem was that Juan was somewhat frustrated with life. He'd failed his degree and was slowly drinking and drugging himself insensible in response, yet wondering why he couldn't get a girl. The house was rented by one of the most attractive girls I have ever met. Maria was slim wasted, with a fantastic body that she was never afraid to show off in tight lycra running gear, with chestnut hair falling down to her pert behind.

Juan had his beady drugged up eye set on her. Maria, being only 19, wanted none of it.

Juan tried all the sophisticated chat up lines he knew, generally over dinner as we all sat there slightly embarrassed.

"Hey Maria, I have a 45cm penis, come take a look at it!"

"Hey Maria, see that salami? I'm bigger than that!"

"Hey Maria, stop looking at the Pirate*, everyone knows all the English are homosexuals, you want some red meat with me"

He tried to impress her by inviting over his friends and getting them all to help him serenade her with tango and folklorico songs. At 4am. In a quiet neighbourhood. Three shotgun toting policemen turned up and Juan tried to bribe them to leave. He managed to bribe them, but still got cracked across the head for being disrespectful.

After this Juan went down hill somewhat. The boyfriend of my other housemate got him a job in a nightclub bar, and Juan would stagger home at 9am stinking of booze and piss and climb into the first bed he could find. There really is nothing like having a sweaty, pissy smelling drunkard climb into bed with you when you least expect it. Maria and the other girl took to barricading their door.

The end finally came after a memorable night when Juan picked up two American girls in the club and brought them back to our house, for some reason with another 2 Argentine guys he'd just met.

I'm not too clear on what happened as I had spent a lot of the previous evening trying (and failing) to impress Maria and had gone to bed alone after far too much wine.

All I know is that around 8am there was a lot of screaming from the front room. I bounded to my door, arriving in the hall at the same time as Maria (who was, pleasingly, wearing very small sleeping shorts and a t-shirt). We cautiously crept to the front room and saw Juan, naked as the day he was born, shriveled gentialia bouncing around as one of the random Argentine guys beat him with the buckle end of a belt, whilst the other was doing a line of coke off a table. The two American girls, half dressed, looked fairly shocked. It was then that Maria nudged me and pointed to the bag of coke (the LARGE bag of coke), the wad of pesos, and the large knife.

We looked at the American girls. They looked at us. Slowly and carefully, they crept towards us, and into the hall way. We closed the door and dragged a heavy table in front of it. Maria called the police and we sat waiting, listening to Juan shouting and screaming. After a few minutes Maria shouted through the door telling the two guys to fuck off as she'd called the police, and after a brief barrage of shouting back they left.

A few minutes passed, and then we heard Juan laughing manically. We opened the door and he was stood there, stark naked, eyes like saucers, cock in hand. Maria told him to get dressed and get the hell out.

The American girls couldn't provide much detail. All they really remembered was drinking a lot of vodka and rum and then that there had been some sort of argument between Juan and the other two.

I saw Juan a couple of times later on before I left Cordoba. He'd decided to sort his life out (so he said) but I have no idea if he ever managed to.

*Pirates = Argentine slang for the British
(Zapiola zip-zap-zop, Wed 4 Mar 2009, 2:15, 4 replies)

The first line alone...

If you added a foot to his height, you could be talking about Captain Placid.

good tale though, well told.

*clicks*

*prays that Captain Placid doesn't read these replies*
( Pooflake braces for an onslaught..., Wed 4 Mar 2009, 8:40, closed)

I have!
*Grins*
(Captain Placid 24/7 ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn, Wed 4 Mar 2009, 17:48, closed)

This is my kind of friend!
Argentina was fun! I enjoyed myself when I was there although I wasn't called a pirate although I was called a groncho a few times.
( MagicallyInept Bored Sig., Wed 4 Mar 2009, 12:02, closed)

Groncho... Pirate...
Got to be an improvement on Rosbif, no?
(Beer Elf Thought this was like a campfire, anyhow, on, Wed 4 Mar 2009, 12:24, closed)