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At a solid age of 25, I thought I’d write an unedited post I thought of half drunk and covered in sweat at J Balvin’s – Lollapalooza concert, I’ll mention the relevance of this specific concert later.

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First things first, I’m a foreigner who came to the US in 2010 and stayed, school was always my strongest suit. My professional life was the hard part. I struggled, and eventually I found myself in Corporate white America in Chicago. Like “yeah let me have your wide range of fancy fartsy cheeses and organic ass tasting beers this lovely Friday afternoon. Yum.” Nothing wrong with that, just the soul crushing boring nature of its culture at times. Work is great though, I felt/feel super accomplished and eager to learn more in every project I’m put on. At work, my sense of humor doesn’t really cross paths with American humor much. That said, I adapt. Growing up I’ve always tried to reorganize myself based on the surroundings as a coping mechanism, it’s relatively easy. Professionally, you just make nothing about you, you make it about your audience, who’s talking to you, you ask them about themselves, their lives, their experiences and soon you start noticing their liking towards you. Some start thinking can relate in their experiences and their sense of humor. Definitely can't relate, but that's ok, we meet in the middle sometimes. One of my bosses once said during a lunch outing “…but your English is perfect, I thought you grew up here.” So I said briefly, “nah, I went to high school in a farm in Colombia", and fun fact: I did. We didn’t have enclosing walls in our classrooms, so sometimes we’d see ducks have sex during trig class, it was cool. To this particular boss, I’m her go to buddy during company outings, she knows the bullet points about my life, and I know her entire life story lol. Anyways, back to what she said about my English and not being from anywhere else, I told her it’s because she hadn’t seen my in my natural habitat, or on a dance floor. We eventually got drunk again, fell on top of each other at a roof top bar, I scratched my entire back somehow, she hit her head on the floor, got kicked out of a bar and now she’s my favorite boss. See? I adapt, we adapt ;)

“1000% Hispanic, loud, extra, unfiltered, inelegant, uninterested in American cuisine, reggaeton junkie, prone to sexual jokes, humping, grinding, twerking, soap opera aficionado, all of it. ”

As most of us do, we behave during work, it’s just what you do. But outside of work I should be free to be me. Problem now is, that outside of work in your mid-twenties almost always involves co-workers. Truth is, every cell in my body is 1000% Hispanic, loud, extra, unfiltered, inelegant, uninterested in American cuisine, reggaeton junkie, prone to sexual jokes, humping, grinding, twerking, soap opera aficionado, all of it. I’m not the “reading, yoga, talk about sports, eloquent speeches” type. It just is what it is. So trying to draw that appropriate line during outings is an absolute nightmare to my mental health nowadays. It’s getting better, I’m slowly finding a grey zone between game nights and party nights. Also, surprisingly not everyone in my surroundings feels as bothered by my actions as I thought they might. Few of them don’t even care, of course most are foreigners and a bit more open to other cultures than most. Luckily, the most important person in my life (William) is slowly becoming less bothered; it's a process I guess. 

This brings me to my final point: The J-Balvin concert. I only went because I love the guy. Adore him. To top it off he is from my birth country of Colombia. Better yet, the day of the festival I come to find out he is the first Latino headliner in the history of Lollapalooza. My pride was going through the roof of course. Then I saw his introduction on stage. It was a bird eye view of Medellin-Colombia, then the cover of his first song of the night named Reggaeton against the Chicago skyline in the background. I teared up like a child, but thank God it was dark and so sweaty no one could notice. I’m sure his marketing people knew what they were doing when they chose the entry song or whatever. But man this was huge to me. I’ll quickly explain why. In 2007, Reggaeton as a genre was my first love, my mother prohibited me listening to this kind of music for religious reasons I’ll spare you of reading about, so I made a hidden folder with songs I downloaded probably along with a few thousand viruses. Thousands of songs downloaded, 90% were Wisin & Yandel but there were also Franco ‘El Gorila’, Element Black, Zion y Lennox, Tito ‘El Bambino’, de la Ghetto, Arcangel, Cosculluela, Tony Dize, Daddy Yankee, and the list goes on.  Now guess who Mr Balvin brings to the stage during Lolla? Wisin & Yandel. Game over, they came on and I basically did the whole months’ worth of cardio in the next 45 minutes. I mean I was radiating happiness. I was ecstatic. I was happy because although I started off listening to the early 2000’s baby making, twerking, hands on the floor legs up high type of reggaeton, it had evolved into this cool sound almost like electronic, that makes you want to jump up and down and sideways and go up 500 flights of stairs twice. I was there dancing my ass off to that moment, J Balvin was in my city by choice, making history thousands of miles away from our home. Although he will never know who I am, my white bosses know the guy, my co-workers have heard his name, they felt uncomfortable disruption on their walks to and from work that day by glittery kids asking where the concert was. I told them that’d be me after work. It was cool, dope, sweet.