Leaving the Lake Life (for a moment)

I'm finally preparing to leave my school, host family, and beautiful and impoverished town and home of more than one month, San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala. If Chocobananos will be more difficult to hunt, at least I can end the premeal ritual of blaspheming deities whose existence I deny anyway. And I can avoid the occasional, always uncomfortable hours of post-dinner preaching, exponentially expanded explications of three words I can summarize in a breath, "Todo es dios."

I'm going to log a few more checkmarks in the tourist ledger before I arrive in Aruba next Wednesday: Chichicastenango and Guate, la Capital, where, even if I get robbed six times in two days like the statistics predict, I'm still going to have a Q$50 bill stashed beneath my insole with which to indulge the gods of high metabolism at Patsy, a chain of Guatemalan pastelerias.

My spanish is progressing faster than the digested tortilla-paste tube through my intestines, which means that I can now name a few more doughy foods I've tasted and then rub my belly and nod my head enthusiastically, repeating "muy" for upwards of a minute and then concluding the imposter oraciòn with "rica." If I'm feeling especially authentic I might skip the foreplay and just drop "¡Calidad!" Speaking of, the most recent additions to my international foods digest include chuchitos: balls of masa, oil, and salt, the same mixture from which tortillas are spanked into shape, filled with a spiced tomato salsa and chunks of chicken; and extra-crisped tortillas filled with a simple black bean paste, almost a Salvadoran papusa. Simple and exquisite.

And, after a few confidence-crushing attempted-conversations marred by sudden onset inability to form, much less string, syllables, the last few days have been promising. I've been visiting my 22-year-old teacher in the popular 'Teco night hour pastime of doorstep conversation; and, no, I haven't changed instructors in my four weeks of study, even though I know exposure to different speech patterns and teaching methods would prove beneficial. I've been playfully conversing with groups of inquisitive youngsters all over town, in particular a gang of boys who ask for endless vocabulary translations from spanish to english and a group of shy, smiling maybe 10-year-old girls from whom I buy grilled bananas sprinkled with sugar or homemade Chocobananos from their store-and-homefront alleyway-dustyard arrangement of closed-lidded pots clouded with steam and a sixpack sized cooler. Like the Guatemalan equivalent of American kids with lemonade stands. Except that lots of adults run juice stands in Central America, but fresh squeezed as opposed to lazy American kids and their from concentrate jugs.

The teens and adult-aged hoopers know me, most by name, and I've met a few of their sisters, who may or may not me married and/or with children. I caught a ¡Que guapo! from two cute and of-age 'Tecas while walking down on of my regular alleys the other night. I've also earned smiles and waves and playful accusations ("¡Eres mentiroso!") from the Sarita (Guatemala's Ben & Jerry's) ice cream attendant.

When I return to the third world from Arubian excess, I expect I'll make my way back to San Pedro shortly, maybe after a week of studies in Xela (Quetzaltenango), to study here at least a few more weeks, maybe longer. But I do, I promise, intend to keep traveling. Don't fret friends and family and cousins who plan to visit. I'm responsible enough to make sure a combination of cuties and ¡Que guapo!s and Quezalteca Especial don't strand me in San Pedro La Laguna with a Surprise! infant-anchor. Anyway, let's be honest: I can't settle in a town without the daily waking assurance of an available array of fruity goo-filled delicacies and icing-stacked layer cakes.

Whatta pisser

Where it has ended up costing me $850 in legal fees to have a UIP (Urinating in Public) citation expunged from my permanent record -- thanks to an alert crime fighting police duo working latenight undercover in an empty Charlotte parking garage last spring, and who, ignoring my cordial compliance with their every inquiry and demand, indulged in the powertrip of constantly reminding me, "We can take you to jail right now. Wanna go to jail for the night?" -- in Guatemala any place a man can plant two feet is a public toilet. Everyday I see the phallically-endowed suddenly veer from their paths and, shielded by turned backs, relieve themselves roadside. And yet half the population radiates scorn should I run past barechested.

Keeping with reminiscence, I just had a classic American moment. Not quite eating an entire Trader Joe's frozen carrot cake in one sitting, and certainly not a repeat of representative feat of good ol' American gluttony nonetheless: upping my daily consumption of pastel de coco to two hefty, indeed already Texas-sized, portions. The type of $8 slices dates share after a nice steakhouse dinner, hefted into my to-go back for Q$6 each. It's a heavy cake, literally, with a dense cake portion and sufficient frosting, but not the inch-thick layers necessary to satiate a frosting-fiend like me. The solution: eat all the cake from one slice, leaving an L-shaped surface of frosting, then tip the untouched slice on its side and layer the extra frosting atop, effectively creating a side-and-top iced slice of bliss, a triangularly-cut piece that is frosted like a corner chunk from a rectangular cake. Or, another option I haven't tried -- maybe tomorrow -- is draping the lonely layer of icing directly over the icing of the slice still intact, like an icing-armor upgrade or a vanilla-frosting cape.

Taming the Lion

I have only to endure one additional five day deluge of mind-cluttering conjugations until I can catch a bus to Chichicastenango for the city-sized Sunday market, then waste a few days in Guate dodging armed robberies and seeking out the Patsy chain of pastelerias with tiered cakes beore I jet to Aruba for a mini family reunion, trading third-world struggles for first-world excess. Resort life: prepaid drinks and eats during a week of beachside splendor. I'm salivating for cakes sliced into American proportions with blizzards' accumulations of fresh white frosting, longing for menus where "steak" signifies a hunk of meat thicker and tenderer than a t-shirt. Stiff mixed drinks and hoppy imported beers will feed a steady stream of clear urine belying the dehydration I'm suffering in the sun.

I doubt I'll be able to find rellenitos though, my new favorite Guatemalteco snack, an alternative take on the popular plates of planatos fritos con frijoles y crema: rellenitos are platanos mashed and then reformed around a thick paste of sweetened refried black beans, then fried until crispy and golden brown. The final product resembles a fresh foods Twinkie summoned from Dimension Unprocessed and Unchemically Altered (which is nearby but securely separate from Dimension X, so there's no risk that preparing rellenitos will transform your frying pan into a portal for Armageddon, General Trag, Bebop and Rocksteady not a threat to burst into your kitchen in a spray of spattering oil).

Until Aruba I expect my vision will be blurred and judgement impaired by the pursuit of a woman: the traditionally garbed bottlefront sketch adorning every bottle of Quezalteca Especial. Friday night she led me and two fellow gringos into the neighborhood den of seediness: La Cantina el Rinconcito. Mildred, my maestra, had advised against our patronage, suggesting instead the nearby La Estrella, reasoning, "It's safer and cleaner. La Estrella doesn't allow borrachos to snort coke off its tables." But already swigs deep into the Quezalteca, carrying a half can of Cola to chase gulps from my next 1/8th liter bottle, el Rinconcito was a fated adventure.

When we entered three or four drunks were slouched against walls, balancing within a lurch of the bars from behind which are dispensed bottles of beer and liquor. Not drinks. Bottles. We ordered our bottles and before I could clear a chug a diminutive man who was watching at least three of me sidled up and said something about Jean Claude Van-Damme, then Chuck Norris. As usual in San Pedro, the bums speak the best English, always enough to ask you for a drink or a few Quetzales and recite the names -- accompanied by the requisite handchops and halfkicks -- of the butchers of acting and bad guys who dominate American superaction cinema.

After I passed the bottles of liquor and Coke to Devin, friend and fellow student from Denver, a blue t-shirt clad man stumbled into the room, spouting nonsense as his eyes pinballed about his sockets, his hands and arms disassociated entities rising and falling, waving and gesturing without any discernable pattern or motive. His fingernails appeared to have been cultivated for years, his fingers permanently mangled, like crooked and bentback remnants from a hobby of slamming them in heavy wooden doors. Afraid anything could rile the man further, his finger-and-fist assaults on his own cranium increasingly violent by the second, I turned around to talk to the bartender, hoping his eyes might indicate were I about to be impaled by knife or fingernail.

My drunken spanish exhausted itself after the usual introductory probing and I turned back to the floor, where the maniac was removing his shirt, staring down my other friend, Florian. Suddenly he turned to me, dropped his shirt, raised both hands with fingers fanned and fashioned into crude claws and began roaring like a lion. With a hybrid gulp-laugh I stepped past the drunk and exited the bar, as did Devin, and shortly Florian too, followed by the manimal still babbling ominous nonsense in Florian's face. The beast kicked at nothing like Bruce Lee in super slo-mo, much to the delight of the short kung fu fanatic who'd likewise followed the action into the street. The bartender ever materialized from behind his barricade, poking his head out of a doorway into the street to motion that we should leave, alternately pointing toward the raving Guatemalteco and aiming the same finger at his own temple, air-tracing invisible cones in the swift rotations thereof.

And we walked to La Estrella, where an extra Quetzal per bottle is the price of safety.

Fresca como una lechuga

The house has emptied out, Mama Claudia popping in from Guate to recollect her rascals, Melida and Mariori. When Mingito and Jacueline are at home with Ana Maria and I'm lounging in the hammock enraptured by Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, the only sound to break the silence is the soft slapping of palm on dough, the gentle spanking of barely resistant fistfuls of dough into flat, round tortillas to be fired on the comal the ritual premeal toll.

It's when we sit down for meals that -- if I were a God-fearing man -- I'd be concerned about my soul. As it is, I'm content to respect the religious beliefs of friends and family and enemies too while reserving my Sunday mornings for worship at the waffle iron, especially when I can get my hands sticky with authentic Vermont maple syrup. Guatemala is like home in that Bible-beltish kind of way. Which is fine and well, except I'm uncomfortable attempting to explain my lack of religion to a wonderful and devout family that prays before every meal. I think admitting "Soy ateo," would have me ostracized faster than a pedophile at preschool. (If that analogy is too much to stomach, substitute "Christian Laettner at a 1992 UK basketball reunion.")

As it is, I've adopted Davidson College Presbyterian Church as my place of worship, because I once entered for a wedding during the proceedings of which God was invoked or mentioned at least. For now I can rely upon my lacking language skills to circumvent discussion of the finer points of Presbyterianism, of which the only components I'm certain are the Bible and God. I've found myself engaged in two animated ¡Gracias a Dios! for all that has and will pass conversations, compelled to join to the fervent nodding and gesticulating toward the heavens. And I bow my head premeal and mumble thanks for Obama and the success of various sports teams and the wonder of peristalsis, continuing to thwart my strict diet of bowel cloggers if somewhat irregularly, and sometimes just strings of gibberish, my brand of speaking in tongues.

I'll admit, it feels wrong. But funny too. Like the other day when Melida and Melani decided to click buttons on my iPod and split earbuds. I started them on Smashing Pumpkins, unconcerned they could unwittingly navigate to Project Pat's X-rated glamorizations of Memphis street life, their English vocabularies limited to a short game of point-and-mispronounce-this-facial-feature. When they air-guitared my way, mock headbanging toward whiplash, I was a little startled they had discovered Aborted, a Belgian death metal band every bit as brutal and inappropriate for children as the name implies. I redirected them to Mountain Goats, locked the iPod, and found myself spewing sincere thanks to a subject unspecified: that Mama Melida wasn't around to witness the pumping of Satan into her angels' heads, and at eardrum rupturing decibels to completely destroy my credibility as a responsible guardian.

For the Babies

Families in Central America accumulate children like I used to collect baseball cards. Like babymaking is a pastime. This is partly due to religious condemnations of contraception and, I think, to a severe lack of education and foresight which allows the poverty-stricken to ignore the enormous costs of raising children for the money-making potential inherent in every breathing body. But every American adult knows there's only one good reason to birth a barnful of tots: more goodiebags to riad come Halloween! There's no Halloween in Central America, however, and as far as I know cannibalism is still condemned by Christianity, so I'm not witnessing some widespread stockpiling of protein snacks the way disaster-wary Americans load up on canned goods. But maybe the Mayans are taking those 2012 catastrophe predictions a bit more seriously than I'd realized...

Feeling Desserted

Despite the fact that I've compiled a pagelong checklist of foods I intend to gorge myself upon in a self-inflicted binge that might well end like a particular scene in 7even, I'm hardly dissatisfied with Central American dining. I still love the tortillas that appear fresh from the comal the moment the cloth-wrapped and basketed stock tablecenter begins to dwindle. My hostmom's version of tomalitas, essentially surfboard shaped bars of ground maíz moistened, compacted and cooked, are a delicious sometimes substitution, though I do prefer tortillas.

I've enjoyed chuchitos, which are small tamales, thus made from maíz, filled with a tomato-based sauce and chunks of meat wrapped and cooked in corn husks. Paches are phenomenal, papas-based cousins of tamales, thickly mashed potatoes mixed with a tomato sauce then packed around combinations of meats, vegetables, and the mandatory hot chili, then wrapped in giant green leaves and cooked. And dobladas are a deep fried delight, fried tortillas stuffed with, in Mama Meli's kitchen, papas o arroz, then served smothered in shredded cabbage, salsa, and jalepeños.

But Mom's carrot cake, thickly spread with rich cream cheese frosting, Grandma's Thanksgiving strawberry pies, and Aunt Lily's skyscraping Pineapple-Coconut cake, not to mention Landmark Diner's entire dessert case and Cuz Jamie's Michigan blueberry pie, are never far from my mind when I attempt to appease my sweet tooth with snackpacks of cookies.

Getting to know San Pedro La Laguna: Cantina El Rinconcito

Cantina El Rinconcito is one hundred meters from my host family's home, the liquor dispensing establishment favored by San Pedro's drunks. El Rinconcito defines "drinking establishment": two concrete-floored rooms with doors to the street barren save a single small plastic table stashed in a dirty corner each, both with an interior barred window too, which divides the drinking rooms from the third room, with the liquor stock and cantina attendant, from the withdrawing incoherents who stumble in during the AM hours. The dirty cobblestones outside the entrances are usually occupied by slumped, mumbling heaps of humanity, the ones who can keep afoot more likely to accost fair-skinned foreigners for a few quetzales. Eerily, disproportionate numbers of roaming canines seem to succomb to the hopelessness on that stretch of street too, splayed in the dust separated from roadkill only by a faint pulse.

The cantina's charm, I'm sure, is obvious after sufficient hard drinking. And when the doorstep patrons are generous to add a little color. For instance the old man I passed last night, sitting, cradling in his lap one arm that looked like it had been dipped in a bucket of red paint, the dark pool on the cobblestones between his drawnup knees trickling downgrade between his feet, in tiny rivers diverging and converging and diverging to reconverge again in the crevices between the stone dodecagons, slowly fanning into a bloody reef.

Baller Bloggin'

Playing basketball most afternoons on San Pedro La Laguna's new centertown court is a hybrid of fun and frustration. Losing in any competition -- from card games to eating to, especially, sports -- is known to provoke my transition from Smiley to Satan as suddenly and uncontrollably as a muscle spasm. So it's problematic when one's teammates' idea of defense is ball chasing so rabid the only logical conclusion is that the opposing team is tossing an orb that grants immortality upon touch. The inevitable procession of uncontested layups equates to afternoons of one-and-done. Man-to-man defense: such a simple concept. How many times can someone commit the same mistakes without learning?

And then I consider my Spanish studies.

Right.

Otherwise, I've settled into a routine, which suits the order-lover in me. Study, eat, exercise, and sleep. To spice a boring afternoon gouge a shallow, five-inch long gash in my scalp on rusty barbwire, failing to remove all the flakes of grime during the post-injury shower, leaving that up to my alcohol and gauze armed spanish instructor cum sexy nurse the following morning, when the wound had turned greenish. Seriously, what's an adventure without the threat of lockjaw?

Barry: cool, guatemala sounds like squatemala

There are few games uglier than Guatemalan men's basketball. If the women aren't fundamentally sounder, at least their slower, more deliberate pace produces the illusion. It's obvious some Sega-freak implemented NBA Jam as the official tutorial for Guatemalan men because they believe that triple-threat position (a traditionally crouched and grounded stance from which a player can dribble, pass, or shoot) occurs sometime amidst midair contortion.

Where traditional, Gold medal-winning philosophy stresses players never leave their feet without predetermined intent, a Guatemalteco hooper's sole intent is to pluck a pass from the air and sprint the minimum number of steps required to maximize his leaping ability. Presumably, the idea is that his 18-inch verticle will bring him to the height of the average American point guard (or mythical Guatemalteco), from where he'll be able to survey the court and make a play. Yes, Guatemalteco is like NBA Jam minus the fundamentals and played with human physical limitations.

The consequences of faking premeal prayer by mumbling Spanish sounding gibberish

A booming voice startled me from sleep before 5am this morning, eulogizing the dead while locals from all corners of San Pedro slowly converged upon the source. Monologues and sessions of song successively surged through the distant loudspeakers, adjacent the cemetary, commencing el Dia de los Muertos. Shortly, a string of explosions jolted from my dreams any final prayer for sleep, bombas launched heavenward to stir any stubborn soul or diety whose Saturday night acquaintence with Quezalteca Especial was a touch too spirited.

Acquiescing to consciousness, I performed my near daily routine of situps and pushups before I was hailed downstairs for family breakfast, a delicious Sunday spread of carbs: pan de banano, pan de elote y huisquil, a green starch vegetable dispensed by tree in-yard, featured prominently in our diet of sopas, sopes, and today served solo, peeled and boiled. The pan de elote was exceptional, rivaling the subtly sweet perfection of my mom's corn muffins and the complimentary baskets served steaming at my favorite soul food outposts. The pan de banano was delicious too, but I have yet to find a loaf in Central America that approaches mom's. Huisquil is similar to a green potato, better as an ingredient or with accompaniment.

Yesterday was my first hanging solo with Guatemaltecos outside my homestay family. Early in the morning I speed-hiked a mountain in neighboring San Juan La Laguna, to Mirador Rostro Maya. The middle-aged father of my language school's coordinator was my climb partner, his respect earned after I dictated the speedy completion of the demanding climb circuit in record setting time. Sore quads and megabytes of photos survive as memories from the up and down workout.

In the afternoon Chema, the twenty-six year old coordinator at Corazón Maya language school, invited me to backseat on his moto while we powered uphill past town to San Pedro La Laguna's campo de futbol, an officially-sized and lined megasandbox. We watched parts of two league games, action-enveloping duststorms spawning from frantic footwork following scattershot toeballs crossfield. At night -- after I strolled through the raucous bewreathed and candlelit cemetary, escaping the circus of special occasion street vendors sandwiching the entranceway with just one Q$3 hunk of pan -- I joined Chema and his wife for sloppy hoops action at its finest: a señoras versus señoritas debacle on the municipality's new cancha de basquetbol, every whistle signaling a chaotic surge of youth sprinting and screaming and hoisting errant shots with an assortment of balls all over the court, often a scramble that ignored the referees' imploring whistles and returning jugadoras, lingering into the resumption of league play, amusing spectators by further confusing the action.

Afterward our trio parked on tienda steps while Chema and I fended the cold with lukewarm canned pints of Gallo. On the walk home I won the alleyway adventurer's award of spanish practice with two long-celebrating Guatemaltecos, a more or less coherent conversation that the sloppier-drunk of the two kept redirecting to martial arts with flatpalmed convergences of hand held centerchest preceding the signature half-bow, that he could summon his eyelids only halfmoon and his slurred speech I could imagine as any language completed the effect. Fifteen minutes and thanks but no thanks to offers for weed and the opportunity to buy the pair more drinks later, "Hasta luego," signaled the day's final ascent: to bed.