The friend who was replaced by by pastries.

My attempts to keep Barry in Central America, questions designed to stimulate a simple missed flight or a fabricated kidnapping -- "So you're really flying home Friday? Soccer season doesn't start until the fall, right?" -- failed to germinate. "So, yeah, how are your girlfriend's pupusas?" garnered, at least, a barely perceptible clinch of the tummy. We split in San Salvador's Terminal de Occidente this morning, sharing first a late breakfast: casamiento, carne, y tortillas, all swimming, of course, in vinegary platebound puddles of curtido heaped from the gallon-sized plastic containers enlivening every table, long since emptied of their original contents and stripped of their corresponding labellings, murky ecosystems swimming with vegetables and chiles and germs from every grubby hand that shares every jug's half-submerged community ladle. And, for my beverage, the 10:30am beer.

Without Barry's banter about fantasy novels and time travel I'll be filling my time with pastries. I'm back in Juayúa, where Pasteleria Anthony's creativity in shaping sugary dough into new shapes to be filled with creams, then glazed, iced, and or sprinkled with coconut flakes continues to confound my waking promises to eat healthily. This afternoon I was only "taking a look." Then my finger uncurled like a puppet aroused, indicating an on-all-sides white-iced cube of (to be discovered after that first rewarding chomp) yellow cake, sprinkled with coconut cakes, topped with a fluff-fence of light cream encircling a strawberry swimming in a swampthick pool of chocolate.

"¿Quieres otro?" mocked the pastry queen behind her glass case. Mouthwatering activated by a remote controller shaped bar with a white chocolate face and a caramel-color packed body, indicating another I stammered, "¿Que vale?"

"Cincuenta centavos mas." And so, sold by caramel, I walked out of Pasteleria Anthony's a dollar poorer but richer in saturated fats, simple sugars and Spanish practice. Seated on a bench surrounding the central park fountain, eyed by jealous kids still attended by health-monitoring mothers, I extracted the pastries from my bag. The cakeish cube was delicious, but tonguetip inspection of the caramel bar revealed complexities, layers of sugary goodness, I hadn't before detected. The white chocolate top was drizzled with meandering creeks of caramel, the density of the bar comprised of delicate sheets of baklava-thin pastry dough enveloping a wealth of dulce de leche, so much that globs dripped out the sides and back like an overloaded hamburger with each and every bite.

Hours later, offended by lumbering gringo-blimps oozing human skinglaze from their pores, I bought two loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter and a bag of bananas. The purchase satisfied the demands of the the first dream I have remembered in weeks, and -- if I can pace myself with four peanut butter and banana sandwiches every meal, as was accomplished at dinner tonight -- I might be able to stuff my stomach into pastry submission until I venture back into pastry-poorer regions.

The Bartman Cometh, and we get it Pupusa Poppin'

I finally dislodged my lazy ass from San Pedro La Laguna, Guatemala, my backside, I'm sure, still imprinted with routine, bearing the faint interlaced piecrust pattern of cushy hammock straps. My departure was a forty-eight hour whirlwind of house-hopping, issuing heartfelt goodbyes through chainlink fences and seated around comals burning dekerneled corncobs, promising I'd revisit my surrogate families...sometime. As I passed out photos I'd had printed from my digital camera, I was overwhelmed by reciprocal generosity, collecting a variety of handsewn items: a belt paved by stretches of majestic blues and a rainbow colored handbag adorned with a tiny wooden figurine of a Mayan woman in traditional dress; most touching of all was a plastic bagful of well-past-well-worn schoolbooks, broken spined and sans covers, loose pages rearranged haphazardly, accompanied by a stuffed ladybug and a photo in a frame crudely fashioned from a clear plate of hard plastic, tape and a bit of cardboard bent into a stand, all tied together with a red ribbon and two flowers with wire stems, shyly imparted by my recently befriended neighbor Rosita. Mildred gave me, in addition to a pile of handwritten cards collected in my final weeks, a fluffy stuffed puppy wearing a red heart inscribed with the word LOVE around its neck, and the puppy's paw-squeeze activated tune wavers lazily for a battery fading after who-knows-how-long-on-the-shelf-at-who-knows-what-tienda.

All the beauty of my departure created a karmic imbalance that was reset when I stepped off the bus in Antigua. As my eyes scanned parque central, the grand architecture and spewing fountain impressive as ever, I noticed a man, filthy, his head lolling about, sitting on outlying steps. His faded and tattered pants were spattered with, presumably, urine. On second glance I noticed his penis resting in his lap, jumping into action every few moments with as it was flicked or wagged, like some oddity peeking from its unzippered cave. That mental illness and public intoxication are ignored in Central America is distressing but, to be sure, the wealth of crazed men stumbling about -- singing and shouting incoherently, urinating and exposing themselves without regard to audience or location, rooting through garbage cans with no intention other than transplanting waste onto the surrounding concrete -- make the region a more entertaining place.

Barry showed up shortly, and we proceeded to waste several days in Antigua, Guatemala stalking the streets, ushered into every panaderia and pasteleria and grocery store by my addiction to pastries and cakes, especially those iced and or filled with creams and jellies and frostings. We sucked down a liter of Quezalteca Especial over two nights, amd I ate two to three market-cheap sapotes every day to fill the spaces of time (and the cavernous void of nutrition) between meals defined by saturated fats and simple sugars, or by grease and cheese dripping, salsa-mountain buried pupusas purchased for spare change at the food stalls surrounding the bus station. Submitting to the power of the pupusa, we finally embarked toward the pupusa heartland, El Salvador.

Minds clogged by cheesy pupusas, we nearly handed away our identities at the border between Guatemala and El Salvador, each extending our passports to the decidedly unofficial "officials" clamoring outside the bus' door. But as the images of the pupusa orgy to come began to flicker -- at the sight of our passports being hustled away to some location and with some intention obscured by Spanish, by guys dressed in torn t-shirts -- we simultaneously recovered our senses and snatched back our lives; more importantly our tickets to pupusa heaven.

Hotel Livingston in Santa Ana, El Salvador was our first sweaty stop, one of the first times in my life I haven't bemoaned a lack of hot water showers. We proceeded to pass two days just as we had in Antigua: exercise defined by the miles of cracked concrete walked to various foodstands and the heavy-lifting of pastries filled with thick custards, usually called leche. Genuinely concerned by my inability to refuse cakes and doughnuts (and packages of coconut-cream filled, coconut-flake covered Dinkis) following my departure from cream-and-icing starved San Pedro, I googled diabetes to determine if I could, in fact, overwhelm my system with sugar and induce disease. It seems, assuming I don't forsake exercise entirely and puff up, soft to the touch like any of my favorite pastries, I'll be safe. The halfmoon shaped, blackbean filled pancakes of Pan de Elote, which we devoured hot from the griddle daily in the central park, I have less guilt about eating.

At the end of each day spent sweating toward pastries, the sugar rush and inevitable crash crushing all ambitions but those of appetites unsatiated by white breads and simple sugars, we crawled the ghosttown-come-sunset toward pupusa stands or, on the second night and accompanied by (fellow Davidsonian, friend and current El Salvadoran Peace Corps volunteer) Jim Hooper, toward a local bar. (MS-13 never materialized, but a pirate and a maybe prostitute and a general excess of alcohol dispelled us from that bar rather suddenly.)

Moving southward through Central America, the women grow progressively more tantalizing while remaining completely impervious to accurate-age-determination -- is she 15 or 30? In Juayua, a charming, touristy mountain village on the Ruta de las Flores, where Jim, Barry, and I relocated for it's famed every-weekend food festival, we admired a couple of cute Salvadoran girls who seated themselves across from us while we sipped beers in the central park soon after dusk. We guessed their ages to be no more than 16, but captivated by their beauty and the giggles they unleashed every time we made eye contact, emboldened by a few beers and the fact that hitting on (even severely) underage girls was nothing that would phase the heavily armed police patrolling around the square, Barry and Jim's urgings were entirely sufficient. I approached the duo and ascertained that the first beauty was, indeed, fifteen. But the second, the more stunning of the two, claimed to be twenty, even after confronted with my barrage of stern "No te creo"s. As it was, I found myself a supermodel of a date for the political party sponsored town dance that evening, and shared two hours on a dancefloor, a head taller than anyone else, boring my partner with the same semi-hip-swiveling motion.

And so, Jimbo, Barry, and I passed the time: feasting at the foodstands for the weekend, spending two to five dollars for plates brimming with mouthwatering, generously portioned delicacies: fried yucca and chorizo to rabbit and shrimp, always with a side of thick tortillas. Hiking to a series of impressive waterfalls a few kilometers from town, where many locals were picnicking and swimming, eating too much ice cream and too many pastries, and passing the nights drinking around the town's central fountain. It was vacation, pure and simple, and quite clear that my life could not be better...unless my gorgeous dance partner, Ingrid, emails me, volunteering to nurture my Spanish language development. That is, assuming, my scribbled email address was even legible...

Jim had to return to work and Barry and I have relocated to the stretch of surf spots spanning the Pacific coast. A few chicken bus changes led us to Bus 80, departing La Libertad for Playa El Tunco. The handful of Bus 80s running the coastal route are the usual chicken buses, but ours had been outfitted with a bassy speaker system that showered unwitting El Salvadorans with uncensored American rap, a deluge of odes celebrating the nomenclature of genitalia and the juicy details of romantic strip club encounters. Or maybe the words had been slightly altered for regional appropriateness: "Pupusa poppin' on a handstand."

El Tunco is a quiet beach with a few hostels filled with surfers, a few restaurants, cheap beers, and enchanting sunsets. Walking the road for twenty five minutes we can eat for half the price, and with the all-important option of pupusas, so we trek a few times daily to the dilapitated stands and in-house eateries at the next beach, sharing hours of postmeal conversation seated in the carport/dining area of our favorite mom-and-pop operation.

My vacation within a vacation continues, and I'm completely infatuated with El Salvador, mesmerized by, in this particular order: it's women; their pupusas; and the delightful citizens always quick to converse with a pasty foreigner butchering their language.

Life's a Zoo

In the midst of a coconut cake drought, galletas have reasserted themselves in my post-dinner dessert marches. Emperador® cream sandwiches -- vanilla cookies and filling; chocolate cookies and filling; and a corporate ode to diversity, combination flavor -- are nearly irresistable. But I've been hooked by Panaderia Peter Pan's footlong surfboard sugar cookies, a steal at Q$1 each.

I do feel something of a traitor, however, even tempting taste-buds at any Panaderia not named Panificadora Mana, home (literally) to my friend and dedicated purveyor of pan and pastel, Olga. Olga, who gifted me free pastel frio on my birthday. Who was slightly offended when I didn't appear to compart and feast with her family on Noche Buena. And who Friday night set a stool in front of her counter -- amidst metal prong-bearing breadshoppers plucking and placing pan from the glass display cases into their plastic baskets -- brewed me coffee, handed me the cellphone when her illegal daughter called from ATL, and fed me pastel and galleta while we chatted away an hour, eventually declining any sort of payment when I stood to exit.

I woke up early Saturday for a microbus-shuttled daytrip to Guate's zoo, chaperoning with Corazòn Maya's maestras a group of precious niñas involved in the school's outreach project. The project, spearheaded by schoolhead Marta, funded in part by a percentage from every extranjero's school tuition, but mostly by saintly Canadian Beth, assists twenty truly impoverished Pedronan families. The Mayan girls, who would otherwise be toiling spanking out tortillas or handwashing clothes, sitting on the curb with a basket of manderins, are provided occasional organized excursions, game-filled weekly gatherings and English instruction at Corazón Maya, and helping funds for life's staples: edibles (arroz, frijoles, y maíz) and (as the project's eminent contribution) public education.

The girls are adorable, loving and playful, so much it's easy to forget they're saddled with struggle daily, that every Quetzal their mothers imparted them for snacks represents a portion less of some essential at home. Many of these homes, some of which I've toured, are crude constructions of concrete and corrugated tin roofing; others gap-riddled, walled by vertically-arranged wooden slats. Uneven dirt floors aren't uncommon, sheen hanging cloths or sections of sheet metal for doors separate the family upon family crammed inside one or two small rooms -- littered, spaceless enclosures without the luxury of distinction between bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen -- from the biting, windy winter nights. Mattresses on the floor are fire hazards bumping the chimneyless comal, which chokes the air before every meal, a sheet of plastic hanging around a bucket feet away designating the bathroom. Agua pura, a few dollars every five gallons, is an unaffordable step up the sanitation scale.

A trip out of San Pedro is a world's-away jaunt for the girls; for whom, unaccustomed to travel, the ruthlessly winding road, obstacle-littered roads to the city are the recipe for motion sickness. Whipping around turns approaching 180º, the girls one-by-one began reenacting that unforgettable scene from "Stand By Me", the backseat retches and putrid odors wafting from the plastic bags the girls donned like oversized SARS-masks catalyzing a chain reaction. The girl beside me succumbed, twice belching projectile showers before someone handed her a cute, pink sack big enough for a bakery cookie. For me, the soundtrack of the trip was the crinkling of plastic bags and the soft plop, slosh and slop accompanying every subsequent purging, plus the chorus of laughter erupting every time another girl dropped a freshly-filled vomit-bomb out the window.

By the time we arrived at the zoo, health had been restored. We entered a train of kids and adults toting backpacks and shoulderbags, starving for stomachs recently emptied or yet empty. Sitting down on shaded benches, sirvilletas concealing cylindrical towers of tortillas and plastic containers of cold beef, fish, and chicken materialized beside every girl. With dirty hands we feasted, and I never thought twice snagging hunks of for-who-knows-how-long-unrefigerated-meat to enliven my tortillas (which just happened to be the delicious black bean-filled variety!).

In the manic following hours the girls, fascinated by photography, took advantage of my inability to refuse their smiling faces, effectively keeping my camera out of my hands. Sure, fingerprints smudged the lens by the time I got it back and, because every girl was certain her photo of this or that animal from the exact same angle and with the exact same (lack of) zoom would be award winning, I had at least five identical shots of every exhibit. But the girls were also invaluable accomplices in the difficult quest to shoot cameraphobic Mildred, whose sixth-sense for covert-photo-detection is at full height when I'm fingering the trigger.

After the zoo, once each girl had removed any visible jewelry, we herded the girls into Guate's Constitutional Plaza, zona una's plaza central, where we enjoyed ice cream on the central fountain's steps among the milling vendors, visitors, and petty criminals, soon afterward enveloped in a white mass of marching thousands chanting for peace.

Here I am, in a foreign land, accumulating kids like Ghengis Khan, but without the fun in bed. Though, in the context of modern times, without the child support as well...

Observational humor

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Matters of Taste

The yolky yellow center of a properly fried egg sunny side up is like an otherwordly portal, a humpy, fluid-filled gelatinous jiggler with an outer film strong enough to require effort to penetrate. At Friday's breakfast -- fried eggs and tortillas made from maìz negro, what we call "blue corn" -- I watched (with a tingle of apprehension) Melani's probing, ketchup-dabbed fingertip attempting to breach the exterior skin and spill the runny yellow soul over her plate. And in the process maybe, just maybe, accidentally unleashing dimension-jumping supervillians. But the sunny hump just bulged this way and that, each poke and prod distorting the dome, seamlessly reshaping the yellow mound until the pressure alleviated and the yolk melted back into a perfect dome. It was strangely exciting, and at least the second time this trip I've anticipated the sudden manifestation of General Trag...or worse.

And recently, accompanying our broccoli fried in egg (another simple but delicious creation from the kitchens of shoppers bound to local markets, not Wal-Marts), what did we sip for dinner? According to four-year-old Mariori, mugs full of Tè de Maricón, a declaration that sprayed hot Tè de Pericón out many nostrils.

Emperador® galletas, all varieties, reign supreme. Not only do they best all cream sandwich cookie competitors in taste, but in price as well, and the second listed ingredient in Azùcar. As in Pure Cane Sugar. Good luck finding packaged products made with sugar stateside.

And last night I dined upon a Middle-Eastern tasting delicacy, another unforgettable creation from the limited pantry: fried patties mixing beef, egg, herbs (including mint), and chopped vegetables (including, at least, onion and tomato). A fried and spiced super burger. Incredibly flavorful. Thus Mama Meli's name for the creation is something of a letdown: "Torta de Carne." That's right, "meat sandwich." As in slap a patty between tortillas and dig in! I guess sublimity defies naming.

Pavement is an awesome band. And an awesome place for drunks to rest their faces.

I've officially held down a girlfriend for longer than ever before. That wasn't supposed to make me sound like a rapist. I even brought her home to meet mom -- my Guatemalan host mom, that is -- who was quick to allude to marriage (and a promised lifetime of tortillas is, to be honest, enticing). Sorry Real Mom and Dad; someday you, too, will have an opportunity to create the same awkwardness.

After reprising World War Whatever at every opportunity for the last week, San Pedro seems to be returning to normal. Who knows, maybe the town just ran out of fireworks; either way, the barking of feral packs has returned as my nightly sleep soundtrack. Families are filtering back to the city, packing buses every hour. Meat will soon again be a mealtime rarity, the festive chilera replaced by simpler green chili and cilantro concoctions. Dessert disappeared with the final crumbs of panes de zanahoria y banano and pay de piña. Midnight tamale feasts have been relegated to late-night craving-stoking memory.

Without my friends Adam and Ricardo, who departed just short of el Año Nuevo, I passed the year's end marathon of reveling admiring drunks zombie-shuffling through the streets or, in my favorite position, facedown on concrete, fresh piss straining their pants and darkening the dusty cobblestones crotch-level, discoloration streaming down-gradient.