Though ‘Despacito’ had absolutely dominated UK radio waves during the year in which Kass and I started talking, I didn’t look up the song properly or learn what reggaeton was until I wanted to understand more about LatAm culture. Out of genuine curiosity, of course… but also to try to impress her.
I scanned through my playlists to see which Latin American music I already listened to, and picked out a couple of songs by 2000s hip-hop group Calle 13. The name — pronounced kinda like ‘kah-yeh’ — means ‘thirteenth street’.
On our next Skype call (what happened to Skype by the way? We built our whole relationship on it and then Zoom came outta nowhere and I’ve not heard from Skype since) I was excited to flex my expert knowledge of LatAm entertainment.
With all the misplaced confidence of a thousand erroneous suns, I asked Kass: “Have you heard of Cal Thirteen?”
Cal. Thirteen. Pronounced as written.
Her brain takes a few seconds to lower itself into the pit of despair from which I scavenged my botched pronunciation, and then she’s laughing. “Do you mean Calle 13?” Each syllable — kah-yeh treh-seh — is acupuncture for my ego.
In the moment, it felt like that would maybe be the end of our budding romance, but fast-forward half a decade and it’s a fave memory from the young-dumb-and-long-distance days.
Along with ‘Mexican restaurant’ menus featuring paella and patatas bravas, and the “glockymolo” clip from Great British Bake Off’s infamous ‘Mexican Week’ (which we now quote every single time there’s guac on the table), my Cal Thirteen blunder is one of the examples we cite when we’re explaining good ol’ fashioned British insularity to our friends.