Vocabulary lessons

Reading Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye in Spanish: a good way to find out that esposas means not just wives, but handcuffs.

Going to a gay bar called El Toro, featuring low lighting, a drag show, pictures of bulls made of words, & orange or green walls, with an Estonian girl, a Bulgarian, and an Austrian volunteer for a Spanish advocacy group that gives out boxes of condoms in red pleather wallets: a good way to find out that, in certain contexts, entiendes? means not, do you understand me? but rather, do we understand each other? As in, Are you gay, or what?

A vegetarian couple from Mexico I met at a dinner party (I bonded with them over our being fellow americanos) taught me the Spanish-Spanish word for gringo, too, but I’ve already forgotten.