Scrambled Boobs

Flipping through the channels on our hostel-room TV one swampy Santa Marta night, I scanned past a blurred and fuzzed premium channel -- something digital cable had erased from my memory -- and was immediately transported back home and back in time...

I remember watching scrambled Skinemax many late nights at my parent's home, a blanket up to my waist even in summer, ready to claim fever, volume down and remote always aimed, prepared to punch the previous channel button if any house-creak even resembled a footstep. Scrambled softcore's adolescent lesson is discovering that disembodied breasts bouncing in one squiggle-distorted sector of the screen -- while a bored and moaning, green-and-yellow tinged head bobs in the opposite lower corner, tangled arms wrapping around one side of the screen to the other -- retain all their arousing appeal. The moral is that boobs trump weirdness -- and Colombia is silly for silicone -- so don't be ashamed for coveting that borderline circus-worthy creature crouched at the bar.

(And teens, to save you many nervous nights worrying about your still-womb-bound "brother": I'm pretty sure it's impossible that a stray smear or greasy glob of semen, shot onto the keyboard or glued to the remote control, might, through a freak chain-of-contact, impregnate someone in your immediate family.)

Sex Spam Highlights
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Text: Best oil for pork motor

Title: Your pork pistol won't fail.

Dulling the Senses: The Dangers of Aguardiente and Amiableness

I woke up at 2:30pm in my dorm bed with a new number scribbled in my little black pocket notepad, a cute heart appending the information. A business card for the hotel slid out from between the pages. All the markings of success.

My head ached the way it would if I'd decided to play stag with oncoming traffic. And who knows for sure? The string of beers had been repeatedly interrupted and enlivened by bottles passed from strangers hands, rum and aguardiente. A screwdriver poured by some cute Colombianas in a local park was, in my sloppy fervor, mistaken for a large shot and downed in a gulp.

Another image began to coagulate. A cute waitress at Blue, me flailing and failing, speaking Spanish spliced gibberish. Then the Peruvian fashion designer. Wearing a scarf. A nice guy. Man, it was awesome he wanted to buy me beers. Guess we grabbed a cab back to his hotel, where we posted up near the lobby bar for another round.

Hold up.

Fashion designer. Scarf. Getting me drunk. Who was it that appended their name and number with a heart?

Oh. Shit.

It took two sober seconds for the obvious -- that which hours before was obscured behind cans and bottles -- to become clear. Paul was delighted to learn I'd ended up across Medellín, drunk and solo, within an elevator's ride of quite the uncomfortable situation. Engage Mission Impossible: convincing all the pretty girls who observed my exit from the club and cab-dash with scarfed male accompaniment that it was an innocent misunderstanding.

Beanboy

So there I was, at the top of the stairs tucked around the corner in the closet-sized nook from which opens one dorm room. In that vacant, wood-floored cubby sits one empty desk; and one mini-chair, the type you'd pose an oversize doll on. If you're into that sort of thing.

I was squatted in the chair, my ass spilling over the palm-sized seat, my computer and my mammoth tub of beans sitting chest high atop the desk, my spoon awkwardly poised, lifted over my shoulder, for the plunge. Goliath in a dollhouse. A guy walked around the corner toward his dorm door and I, with the picture of myself in my head -- that crazy hostel kid hanging out by himself, in some lonely corner crouched on children's play accessories -- started snickering audibly. That was the second time I'd started laughing unprompted -- that maniacal building laugh that billows upon it's own stupidity -- since I'd accompanied a couple of hostel mates outside the property gates to huddle and indulge while tempting blackmail or imprisonment by passing policía.

Which brings us to the first time I randomly erupted, in the kitchen moving antisocially amongst a group of stir-frying girls. Must've looked pretty crazy again, a guy pacing silently for a few minutes, Lil Boosie bumpin' through the headphones, suddenly in hysterics. Hauling around enough beans to feed most Central American villages, I suddenly appreciated how comical it must be for the people who witness me buying and preparing beans for myself, one half-kilo at a time. For the multiple girls who've said, "I hope you're not sleeping in my dorm." For the girl who told me, "You've got gorgeous beans." For anyone who sees me ladling from one of my fridge-stacked Tupperwares bulging with a lumpy brown, sausage links, beans and cheese cubes pressing through the soupiness against the walls. For anyone who has encountered me hunched over a bucket, spoon in hand, a recurring image the last few days.

And for many days to come.

The Sweat Saga Continues

After the sleep-deprived overnight bus between Bucaramanga and Santa Marta, Colombia – loading the iPod with Season 4 of The Wire proved a sage decision – Paul, Chris and I stepped into a northern-coastal oven. Besides the browner skin and brutal humidity, not much had changed. The food was still fried, bland, beanless. Street-vended tropical fruits still imbued trash-littered streets with vibrancy.


We booked passable cement cells for $8000 Colombian Pesos per night, scarfed nature’s multicolor bounty -- fibers catching between our teeth as sticky nectar stained our chins – while sifting sand between our toes, and wasted the remainder of the day soaking sun in nearby Taganga, reminding ourselves that, no, we weren’t melting like the Wicked Witch of the West, just sweating. At nightfall we wasted a wise-spender’s day’s worth of meal money on a beachfront tourist trap that sucked the flavor from our fish as successfully as the bejeweling of Kelly Tripuka and Kurt Rambis would have the Cash Money or No Limit Records rosters.

We split for the pristine Parque Tayrona the next morning, hiking through jungle to boulder-bounded white sand beaches, shading ourselves and tempting “Guess what kills more people than sharks each year!” statistics beneath overhanging palms. The water was refreshing, perfect except for the tendency of salt-water to give sweating hikers crotch rash. A night in a hammock near the beach sounded more satisfyingly poetic than it proved in practice, but neither animal nor hippie raided my humidity-dampened stock of pre-prepared peanut butter & banana sandwiches.


Two full days of sweating and trudging through that nationally protected paradise later, we returned to Santa Marta, where I finally encountered worthy seafood, devouring a delicious Cazuela de Mariscos – a meaty shellfish stew simmering in a creamy milky sauce. Word had it Cartagena is for admirers of womanly perfection what, um, The Gold Club is for admirers of womanly perfection – which is to say well-primped and probably prosthetically enhanced -- and as we were a few beers deep and plans for the next day hadn’t developed past sweating, we made some frat-boy toasts – grunts and such -- and decided to dip.


The next morning, four hours of cushioned-seated, air-conditioned freedom from humidity southward, we descended into Cartagena, admiring the various shades of brown and ample vastness of booty bouncing betwixt all that colonial architecture all those misprioritizing gawkers were ooohhing and aaahhhing about. Misguided as they are, Cartagena is beautiful, understandably the crown of Colombian tourism, rife with shady parks and ornate churches, fortresses, the defensively walled-in old-town lined with attention-arresting colonial masterpieces – all thick columns, street-overhanging porches and wood-slatted windows -- single city blocks splashed with a rainbow’s worth of color.


It’s hard to be anything but low-key in Cartagena, where I’ve spent as much time in as out of the shower, sweating through clean clothes as if beer marathons were physically grueling. Sandwich-artistry is a new hobby, stuffing thick fresh-baked baguettes with market-fresh tomatoes and avocados, sautéed onions and fatty chorizitos, rectangular slabs of queso blanco hacked from the block, a pinch of salt and drizzles of hot sauce for spice.

After expressing an irrationality-inflated affinity for frijoles to the cleaning staff, passions propelled by the virtual absence of beans from my oft-ordered Colombian platters, I was christened El Gringo Frijolito and instructed to stock specific supplies from the corner store: “Compremos una cebolla, unos tomates, frijoles rojos y un Maggi.” The produce attendant was quite amused when I inquired, after long scanning the crates of vegetables, “Cual es el Maggi.” The bean-scooper was quite impressed I wanted “un medio kilo de frijoles rojos.” And my janitorial staff, cooking-aid amigas laughed heartily about the digestive repercussions of my desire to “llenarme de frijoles y nada mas.” I just smiled and got my bean on, Chef Frijolito.

"It was so funny it wasn't even embarrassing."

Guatemala wrapped up without any more cougar attacks, the only drama being the chicken bus pick-pocketing of Jackson by a hamburger-crazed Chapin – a detail discerned post-robbery, when the bank statement reflected no further damage than a $6 Big Mac binge at McDonalds. Maybe other institutions, with their superior standards of security, were more perceptive; presuming that some shabbily dressed Guatemalteca probably didn’t have an ATM card. And probably wasn’t named Jackson Whetsel.

Those minimal losses little more than nuisance, San Pedro La Laguna experienced a Gringo exchange, Jackson replacing Patrick at the language school and in las calles, quickly a hit with all my knee-high friends and their families, a new white behemoth to maul at every appearance. My last days I spent circulating through San Pedro, despidiendo a mis amigos. Jackson and I were invited to several delicious meals with Josefa’s beautiful family, whose humble doll-house kitchen could barely contain our human-sized figures. We accompanied Josefa and crew to Las Cristalinas as well, a beautiful and contaminated swimming spot somewhere between San Juan y San Pablo La Laguna.

And then, after thirty consecutive hours in airports or aboard planes, after enduring multiple bag searches and questions sessions by US Customs – I got off easy compared to my highly suspect, traditionally dressed Guatemalan doll, who was aggressively squeezed and molested by overzealous agents – I landed in Charlotte, whisked away by my parents, accompanied by my grandma, toward a gluttonous satiating of nine-months building cravings. Big-ass delicious pizzas and pitchers of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale (from Revolution Pizza & Ale House in Noda). Forearm-sized cuts of pineapple coconut cake at Landmark Diner. (And good ol’ Southern charm: a gentleman’s club billboard either crude or homicidal: “Come meat our dancers.”)

My three weeks back in the States were a blur. I lost days in front of the bigscreen courtesy of On-Demand programming and Redbox, hours of zombie-ism broken only by scent-triggered staggers to the kitchen, to discover which delicious dinner from my pages-long list of “foods that make my lust for Heidi Klum seem normal” my angelic mother had prepared that night: Chicken enchiladas; Spinach quiche; Shish kabobs; Spinach salad; Roasted root vegetables; More spinach salad; Cobblers; Carrot cake…

There was a fantastic weekend in DC with lil’ bro, piping latin tunes through his plush digs, slaughtering brain cells at the DC-area Beer, Bourbon, & BBQ Festival. Then off to the latest of our beloved, tri-annual family reunions, this year on NY’s Lake George -- another weeklong family party of sporting (shuffleboard, beach volleyball, basketball, soccer, etc.); cards (an entire meeting hall dominated by our family, more groups of fours and sixes circled around tables than a kindergarten class, playing psychological warfare with each and every discard, card counting and contorted faces defining another famous Canasta marathon); and consumption (liquors and mixers smuggled in by the handle, ice horded in trashcans, the solo cups of family young and old kept brimming as we once again flirted with ejection from an “alcohol free” family center -- and I couldn’t have been conspicuous if I’d tried, my entire wardrobe soaked in and reeking of the liter of Guatemalan firewater that had exploded in my checked bag during the flight.)

A week back in NC -- divided between bars, my left-side-of-the-couch spot in front of the TV, and the kitchen -- closed out my vacation within a vacation. The debaucherous 4th of July was extended a few days and celebrated in Raleigh with Kibbs, Russell and Bruce, with special guest appearances by Saul, Shane, Dave, Mike Janes and lots of random girls (whose numbers may or may not be programmed in my mom’s cell phone).

And so I -- sleep deprived after consecutive nights of cervezas and reminiscing about Central America, desde la comida hasta el incredible baile tipico de la Garifuna, la punta; after several weeks of postponing even the most cursory South American planning – materialized in sprawling Bogotá, Colombia with a hostel reservation somewhere in La Candelaria, a hip but grimy section of the city dotted with universities, museums, cafes and bars, teeming by day and unsafe to walk at night. I spent six nights in Destino Nómado, a fine hostel in a less-mugged area, telling myself every night that the next day was the day I’d do the planning necessary to divorce myself from the city. But the draw of bandeja paisa (the traditional Colombian variety platter), arepas (fried cornmeal discs stuffed with cheese and/or meats), and obleas (Frisbee-sized wafer-discs sandwiching generous slathers of dulce de leche, various fruit jellies, etc); the steady diet of watery beer and aguardiente as prescribed by dorm-encountered friends Paul and Raul; plus my boundless laziness kept me captive.

But, for travelers, sometimes laziness breeds opportunity. I was in Bogotá to play futsal against locals. Around to stretch a 30th-floor clubbing session until after-sunrise, in a posh discoteca where coke was snorted as liberally as air despite the omnipresent security. I was available to play tejo, the traditional, alcohol- and shit-talking powered Colombian drinking game involving cases of beer, refills of cases of beer, and tossing metal weights down an alley toward an upward slanted clay-pit, with a metal ring in the middle, on the rim of which are placed small bags of gunpowder – when the weight smashes a pouch against the metal rim, there’s a LOUD and visible explosion, lots of clinking and rejoicing.

I walked the city with Paul and Raul, observing extremes of poverty and wealth – sheet metal- and tarp-walled homes in the shadows of highrises and luxury condos; horse drawn carts behind BMWs. From atop a skyscraper we marveled as the endless city crawled over the surrounding mountains into infinity, gawking at the public-transit-only highway lanes, clogged for miles with exhaust-spewing buses bumper to bumper, packed as tightly and inching as uniformly as trains.

Finally the route out of Bogotá materialized, though not without calamity. After Paul, Alex and I accidentally boarded a bus going away from el terminal de autobuses, we climbed mountainside slums into the far south of the city – where Raul, Colombian himself, had previously mentioned is the place “even Colombians don’t go. Maybe they’ll find the pieces of your body.” Our route terminated in a black-bus filled parking lot, the silence outside that property suggesting the days decapitations had already been performed. After asking at least five people – from idling bus drivers to tiptoeing locals shocked to learn that gringos, like themselves, are born with bodies assembled – we ascertained that at a nearby corner buses passed heading toward the terminal, where we arrived with, not in, bags.

Paul and I arrived in quiet, colonial Villa de Leiva at night, creeping into town in a chorus of incessantly blaring horns and sky-illuminating explosions, accidentally absorbed into a procession as townfolk with blankets draped over their shoulders, slipped over their heads through a single center-cut hole, sauntered past sipping Colombian lagers. For a few days every July -- as happens in every Latin town at some specified point during the year -- Villa de Leiva is transformed into a party, it’s massive central square turned into a maze of vendors, a bullfighting ring constructed, outsiders converging for a few days of dance-and-alcohol saturated revelry. The distant throb of reggaeton became my lullaby.


A daytrip to Santa Sofia for six hours of high-octane hiking was about the only accomplishment during that few day stay, before we departed for Bucaramanga. Where the only notable accomplishment -- beyond practicing my mango peeling and platáno y yuca frying techniques -- has been the daytrip to El Cañon de Chichamocha, a dramatic gorge gutting the Colombian highlands.

And I can’t imagine the sun-baked coast will cull more activity from this hammock-bound loafer.