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At twenty years old, I told my parents I would not finish my studies: I would fly to Buenos Aires. There was nothing awaiting me in Argentina but the artistic freedom of Cortazar and Borges, and a total independence from family and the habitual Western cities. But two weeks before I left, my best friend died. Everyone told me to cancel my trip. I did not. When I took off towards Argentina, both numb and at a mind-blowing level of pain, I had nothing but a number my mom had scribbled on a note: the sister of a friend lived in Buenos Aires, she would pick me up. I had no idea what I was doing, where I was going, why anything was real. And then, I landed. Cai, my only contact, was at the airport, incredibly joyful and chirpy. She asked why I had chosen Buenos Aires of all places. And I panicked, because of the thought of her eyeing me strangely if I said the truth (which was I had no clue). So I answered, “To learn tango”. She gasped: she knew tango teachers, what a coincidence! On the way to the airport parking lot, she called a friend, got the number of his son (said teacher), rang him, and told him we would meet him right now at the restaurant he was working in part-time. A reminder: I had just gotten out of a fourteen-hour flight; I was wearing pyjamas; and I craved a shower. But grief has this special effect of making you lose just enough interest in anything to follow the flow. So, thirty minutes later, I was meeting a tall and handsome blue-eyed tango teacher slash therapist slash book writer slash waiter, and he was inviting me to the class he was giving with his sister on that same night. Before even one shower, I had gone from no-plans Argentina to a packed schedule and new friends. And from then on, it never stopped. Every other weekend, Cai would take me on road trips to an hacienda with wild yet tamed nature all around. We would stop on the way at the McDonalds drive-through, then smoke half a pack of cigarettes during the ride — unhealthy and risk-free, but I felt like I was Jack Kerouac. The tango teacher, Ignacio, became my Argentinian love, and I spent a year with him. He taught me to dance, to cook ceviche, and he introduced me to Jung and hard-rock metal. As for his co-teacher, his sister Martina, she showed me what being a free woman meant in terms of choosing your sexual life and owning up to it, although I’ve never quite been able to be as liberated as her. You could hear her laughter from miles away and she would do yoga poses in the middle of wild parties while her minuscule angel son slept on a couch nearby. I talked to my departed Dorian every day, through journaling, through unoriginal sky-facing monologues, through lyric-writing. I wanted to live everything intensely for him, to say yes to whatever, to allow myself to be ridiculous just so that he could come back and make fun of me. And so I attended a birthday party of a 40-year-old Italian man dressed as Batman; a backyard hippie party where clowns put on a surprisingly well-written show; a metal festival where I saw the gods Judas Priest and Ozzy Osbourne perform. I attended art philosophy classes; cooking classes; singing classes; Latin-American literature classes; creative writing classes. I drank Red Label, Black Label, Gold Label, and the delicious Blue Label, pisco sour, Fernet, and more maté than I’ll ever need in my life. I did not find the meaning of existence. I did not get answers on the unfairness of Dorian dying. But I did come back to life, slowly and laboriously, one grilled meat in the forest at a time. And when I feel hopeless, I remember Argentina, and I know that I am always one plane ride away from a whole new adventure.