The Where Can We Put Patrick? Debate (or Dictate PBA's Future)

Sadly, though the everyday scenes of toiletback gore in hostel bathrooms indicate many mochileros are having as much trouble coping, I've exhausted all my endurance for the brutality being waged in my belly.  What I'm carrying, harboring, isn't temporary.  This is full fledged fuckin' possession.  I've been owned.

There is no longer debate.  If the Bolivian-Japanese stomach coalitation can't cure me -- chances they can even diagnose me correctly approximately equivalent to those of Barry taking Usain Bolt in the 100m, or of me ever asking Barry to sing me a lullaby, or anything resembling a song, anything that requires even the most elementary ability to carry a tune -- I'll be home within a few weeks, as soon as I can figure out how to navigate the thirty plus hour bus stretch from La Paz to Lima without embarrasing myself, without soiling my reputation. Gross. Something of a psychic, I can see myself poppin' bottles of bowel-cloggers and refraining from eating for several days.  Which is the worst sounding proposition I've ever encountered, but circumstantially practical.  I reread that sentence and a whimpery dammmn just mustered itself over my lips before disintegrating into inaudible particles of despair. (Update: I'll be touching down at CLT late on May 3.)

Once back in the States, where I'll remain for the rest of 2010, at least (before jumping back into travel, presumably picking back up in South America), the big question is where?  What follows is a not necessarily closed list of locations to which I'm considering temporarily relocating, corresponding pluses and minuses, and an open invitation to any and all to help influence my decision.  Sell yuh city, suckas.

• Raleigh, North Carolina
• Pros: My most frequently visited city, for the residence of a number of great boozing buddies, the best Detroit style coneys outside of MI, and Lilly's Pizza.  The 'Canes.  Chapel Hill is nearby and, in general, Raleigh is a young city.  Multiple tailgating opportunities every Saturday in the fall.  Oh, let's just say it, college girls!  Southern Belles! Now shower me with "Predator!" 
• Cons: Reliable public transit?  Job opportunities?
• Chapel Hill, North Carolina
• Pros: Friends in and around the area, bars and restaurants all walkable.  It's the better weather Ann Arbor.  And a surplus of college and just-outta-college girls.  Good pickup basketball.  Maybe I can score Duke tickets in the fall?
• Cons: The nauseating sea of baby blue.  No current job prospects.
• The Charlotte Metropolitan area, North Carolina
• Pros: This is my home.  I represent D-town, don't get it twisted.  My main folk, aka tha 'rents, and a group of, to repeat the word, beloved core relatives live in the immediate area. I have countless friends in the area, and I know which bars have pint specials when, which grungy venues have the best shows, and when my friends in One Another are rocking out.  The restaurant scene is strong. The weather is bearable in the summer, mild in the winter, even affording us the occasional cute dusting of snow, and the spring and fall are heavenly.  I also have connections I can exploit for jobs.  Importantly, there's a large Latin population with whom I can mantain my Spanish.
• Cons: Public transit exists, so I've heard.  I've lived in the area practically my entire life.
• Asheville, North Carolina
• Pros: Cool vibe, cool people (including some friends), really it's like a little Denver, CO.  More important than the people, there's the Highland Brewery.  'Nuff said.
• Cons: No job prospects to speak of, and does public transport exist?
• Chucktown, South Carolina
• Pros: College girls...at the beach. Jeeeeeeeeeesus christo! Shrimp 'n' grits. A number of close friends who might even be able to offer a room.
• Cons: No job prospects.  And how good's the public transport?
• Miami, Florida
• Pros: We might as well be talking Latin America. Cuban food. The weather, the beaches. Public transport. One of my main homegirls lives there, and probably other friends as well.
• Cons: Dexter copycats and an expensive city.
• ATL and NoLa
• Pros: Both are dirty south, Ludacris and Li'l Boosie (well, in Baton Rouge.  Wait, he's in prison for the next 4 years). Soul food. Multicultural areas.  Boobies for beads!
• Cons: Hot and sticky. Public transit and job prospects?
• Austin, Texas
• Pros: A college town, young population, etc.
• Cons: I don't know anything else about Austin, certainly nothing job related.
• Washington, D.C.
• Pros: An awesome city, with public transport, friends, and my main homie, Li'l Brodus.  Generally a place I'd love to live.  I hear there's a train that runs to NYC? Either way, there's Jet Blue.  I'd say it's about time I make good on those promises to visit NYC.  Ovechkin.  Lots of Latin folk, too.
• Cons: Lack of job hookups and $$$!
• NYC
• Pros: Not sure, but people tell me it's crazy, as in awesome.  Plus there's the public transit system, and I do have at least a few friends left in the city.  Oh, and pizza.  Even if a slice costs as much as an entire pie back home.  But maybe Latin American street eats can ease the pain?  NYC is playground hoops.  Two pro hockey teams!
• Cons: Expensive as a muhfucka.  Cold winters.  And, again, no particular job prospects.
• Boston, MA
• Pros: A cool city, people with cool accents, and clam chowder.  I've got some good friends in the city,too.  Plus amazing, Canasta-expert relatives (that I potentially exploit for work?) living not far away.  And lotttttttttts of college girls.  Some that'll be into the NE brand of hardcore. And maybe hockey. And if not, I'll be befriending drug dealers selling GH--, er, wait...
• Cons: The winter and cost of living.
• Ann Arbor, Michigan:
• Pros: The quintessential college city, walkable (and runnable), with house parties and cheap beer specials and myriad restaurants (noteably the selection of superlative middle eastern food, for the concentration of middle easterners in the area, and coneys!). The outdoor basketball courts by the CCRB fill up in the late afternoon, and decent pickup soccer is never a problem. Then there's the proximity to Kalamazoo's Bell's Brewery, which means plenty of fresh Two Hearted. And the summer is divine, especially over a few pints. Plus I have beloved relatives living nearby, and boy do they know how to have a good time (and eat)!
• Cons: The winter. See, I think snow is cute for a few days. Plus I have no particular job prospects, and am unsure if I have any friends left in the city. Lastly, an angry practically-midget ex-friend threatened in late 2008 to smash a bottle over my head on sight for stealing, no, temporarily borrowing his girlfriend. Whoops.
• A newly occuring pro: I'm not sure the Little Iranian can reach my head, and I'm offering neither stool nor knee nor boost of any variety. Plus his girlfriend might still be around...
• Chicago, IL
• Pros: Reliable, urine-scented public transit.  A playground basketball tradition. Pizza. Friends from Northwestern and back home. I wouldn't have to go anywhere for Lollapalooza. Maybe I could make friends with Twista. And if not, a strong punk rock tradition.
• Cons: Expensive. And, again, that daunting lack of job prospects.  And Candyman.
• Aspen, Colorado
• Pros: Beautiful town, mountains, and a situation in which I'll no longer have an excuse to try skiing.  Plus, one of my best friends lives there, and maybe a kickass cousin as well, if she herself doesn't relocate.  I've even been promised job help, and I hear the young folk in town keep the party lively.  And, as I'm already accustomed to running at altitude against breathtaking backdrops...
• Cons: Expensive, and maybe a bit isolated?  How far's Denver?  Can I get Bell's Two Hearted on tap?
• Portlands, Oregon and Maine
• Pros: I don't think it'll be a problem getting Bell's, or any other delicious beer, on tap. An impressive variety of excellent restaurants.  Friends in one, a favorite cousin in another. Seafood!  Euthanasia? The Latin population in Oregon is said to be growing.
• Cons: Hippies. Just kidding! But, seriously, is a shower that painful? 'Cause I kinda dig deodorized alternative chicks. Not sure about job prospects in either.  Are they expensive? How's public transit? How will I practice my Spanish in Maine?
• Seattle, Washington
• Pros: Friends in the city, iuncluding at least one great friend (who has mentioned she'll help me with finding a job).  The music scene, the restaurant scene.  Don't know much else.
• Cons: Public transport? Is it expensive? Where's the sun? Are there Latin folk?
• San Francisco, California
• Pros: I liked it when I visited, long ago, and I have a number of friends in the city. Seafood! Good beer. Public transport. Spanish to be spoken.
• Cons: Expennnn$ive. No job prospects to speak of.

That's it, now convince me.

Pieces of the Devil's Pie

Currently restricted from bus travel by my pet belly Satan, who amuses himself by belching bedlam out my anus at his bidding, I'm determined to indulge every food whim until I make it home to first world medicine. Greasy street food forked over by dirt-encrusted fingernails? Fuck it, looks delicious, can't make me any worse.

So, hypothetically, if you've just run into the first open business your Emergency Shitscan could locate, a university in this instance, sweat beaded on your forehead, stammering while doing some sort of retarded ballet and fidgeting with your waistline, "Preferiría que no tuviera que preguntar, pero ¿donde está el puto baño?, and have newly emerged after having spattered carnage, what do you do?  Do you a) relax and catch a cab back to your hostel, to avoid walking and jostling your bowel-bomb, or b) continue mixing disaster, breakfast visions of salteñas picantes dancing in your twisted, reality-ignorant daydreams?

I'd choose B.  So I chose B.  Only, on the way to the salteñería, I was distracted, as always, by pastries beckoning from a glass storefront. I entered, telling myself, scolding myself, "Solamente pan blanco, hijueputa. Acuérdate, huevón, comidas blandas para tu estómago delicado."  Too late I noticed the case full of brown-tipped-meringue-topped crusts, an index finger instinctively sneaking for the one-hundred Bolivianos folded and refolded to Chicle-size stuffed into my jean's unrobbable mini-pocket. Emergency funds. Pie de Limón porn strutting it's perfect meringue peaks, hiding the sensual layer of limón deep inside. Full sized pies, medium sized pies, and little bite sized cuties. Resistance was futile.

"¿Cuánto sale el pie grande? Y el mediano?"

"A vientecinco y quince." she replied, pointing, quoting prices that would buy you a slice or two at any normal pastry shop or restaurant.

"Déme un grande, porfa," I stammered, hardly believing I was going to walk out with an entire fresh-made lime pie for less than $4.  I watched her decoratively and protectively wrap the pie, treating it more delicately than I'd treat my own infant, treatment entirely unexpected in this little cubby of a pastelería -- this locale with its grubby, gray-cement-walled, graffiti-tagged announcement outside.  There was no just throwing this masterpiece pastry into a plastic bag, sticky meringue clutching at the sides, peaks distorting and detaching as the bag bulged and swayed during the walk.  She handed me a heavy Styrofoam plate -- expertly wrapped with a protective bubble over the meringue -- and I smiled, the invisible layer beneath, where all the measure and weight of a good lime pie resides, reassuring me. No over-crusting. No inflation of meringue. No skimping involved. No bullshit, straight Pie.

Tonight was the first time I'd eaten an entire nine inch pie.  And after a meal.  It was a rich challenge, one that has left me worthless, headachy and slightly nauseous, but the flood of dopamine is reward aplenty. Most people understand how overindulgence in a certain type of alcohol can a spawn long-lasting taste aversion. I might've accomplished the food equivalent. (That theory was dispelled the next afternoon, when I caved to my adicción al azúcar, trekking the mile to La Paz's Pastelería Emmanuel to pick up another luscious pie de limón.)

Blame South American tummy critters for the previously-unimaginable-though-now-fully-realized upping of scatalogical content on this pooey blog

Anna and I left Cusco, Peru on a good night.  It was pouring rain, but my tummy wasn't murmuring, no threat of leakage, ensured further by a bagful of avocado-spread, intestine-clogging ciabatta.  We chatted, debated eating a potato discovered wedged between our seat cushions, drifted, awoke in Puno, and disembarked in Copacabana, Bolivia, but not before I'd purchased the $135 Bolivian travel visa required of all Great Satan residing gringos.

In Copacabana we chance encountered every person we'd met in the last few months, ferrying to La Isla del Sol, a food-limited otherwise paraíso in Bolivia's section of Lago Titicaca, with our three Dutchies and an amigo Paisa.  We stayed a night in the South, perched high above the port's rickety docks, staring at distant, snowcapped Andes stabbing upward from that placid, horizon-seeking blue.  Two nights on the island's north side followed, days spent burning shades that Crayola's crayons would be jealous of splayed on white sand beaches, those snow capped cloudseekers visible yet unfathomable.  We ate sandwiches, french fries, rice and trout, cookies, beer, and wine.  Being the only food available on the island.  Taking advantage of my chance pairing with intelligent (and beautiful) card-fiending drinkers, I promised everyone they'd be enamored of Basket, er, Canasta, being the greatest card game ever, and for geographical context, Latin-originated.  They learned, we played. And played. And played. On the island, off the island, we played.  In hotel rooms swilling boxed wine.  In restaurants and cafes, playing around plates, between bites.  Playing cards became a pocket essential.  (I'll refrain from mentioning Spit, a series of slaughters inflicted upon me by Anna, though always with that loving smile...that same smile that used to get little brothers snuck.)

It's much clearer now that all international entrance forms should update their intent section, namely including 'Terrorism' under the "Objeto de Viaje" header.  Which might catch some dimmer terrorists, but would mostly just be funny.  As it is, I've been terrorizing whichever part of Bolivia happens to be within a three meter waft radius of my buttblaster, on those rare occasions I have the confidence to squeeze out a screamer.  With the bubbly stomach, there's much more teeth-gritting-anal-clenching than pause-to-pretend-to-admire-architecture-while-performing-subtle-leg-and-cheek manipulation.  I'm a budget traveler.  Laundry is not a prime priority.

Yesterday I headed out early, fresh liquidy sewage sloshing in two plastic, screwtop canisters in my backpack, heading toward a collaboration Bolivian-Japanese Gastrointestinal hospital in La Paz, once and likely still considered the premier hospital in Bolivia.  (Though second ranked is a corner-posted, incense-burning witchdoctor, La Famosa Curandera Exorcista Mama Cholita. Oh, well.)  Firstly, I'm becoming far too practiced defecating into receptacles.  Skill building, I know, but not really résumé worthy.  So It's too early, I'm hauling feces, paranoid of leaks, when I feel two droplets of water splatter atop my head.  I glance up and catch a skullsounding blow a centimeter below my right eyeball, smack on the orbital bone.  Rocky debris from a highrise construction site without any safety-zone detour for pedestrians.  Sporting a rising welt, the precursor of a nice black eye, I trudged onward.

Then I make it to the hospital, and after initial confusion am made aware I can't just give my stool samples to the laboratory.  I have to have a receipt indicating I've paid for certain tests.  But, after I've tracked her down amidst the hubbub of a third world hospital, the doctor from the day before can't tell me what tests I need, exactly, only that I need to buy ficha, which is to say an appointment with any doctor on-duty.  Too bad this is hours after the opening 6am rush, and there are no spots available before afternoon.  So I'm pinballing between ventanillas, glasswindowed stations, accosting anyone wearing a medical uniform, opening conversation with a shocking, exasperated announcement, "Hola, ¡tengo heces en la bolsa!"  You feel like a man strapped with explosives, "Listen, motherfucker, I've got poo in my bag."  Terrorism, even if it wasn't my intention upon entering the country.

(Putting me in an even more poo-flinging mood was the hassling I took this morning from the laboratory staff, when I returned outside of the 8-9am window to submit a followup sample.  I tried to explain that even though I'm extra-regular at the moment, I still lack the ability to defecate upon command.  If I exercised such bowel mastery many more offending parties would've found their doorsteps and floors soiled during my revenge-plotting-filled youth.  Tomorrow I'm waking early to punch myself in the stomach during jumping jacks, since I was forced to promise an on-time delivery.)

La Paz is daunting, vibrant and bustling, sounds and scents alternately beckon and repulse.  The density of the cement-and-aluminum constructed city center blocks -- quite literally blocks, gapless, gray monoliths that maze inward through side-by-side shop entrances -- radiates out and up the encircling cliffs, humanity improbably clinging to sheer rockfaces as if planebound structures were simply lifted and pegged, like Legos or tacks, suicide or accidental death available through anyone's front door.  It's a city in which to splurge, high-class dining and services going for pocketchange, those monedas jangling against your thigh plenty to purchase a reprieve from the chestheaving block-to-block ascents.

I stroll snatching up cheap eats, salteñas and empanadas, pasteles and pyes, obscenely engorged chorizos dripping mayonnaise, grease and sauteed veggies, always dribbling some crema or salsa in Vampiric fashion, my few-day-old stubble trapping crumbs, light doughy flakes fanning out from my chin across the chest of my t-shirt, occasionally coughing sweet powdery clouds when I indulge in an over-sized, overpowered chomp. (None of which matters to me because, well, to put it politely, Bolivia is not threatening to win many Miss Universe Pageants.) Since I can't find any correlation between an artery abusing diet and stomach violence -- and as I've been warned against indulging further in arbitrary antibiotic assaults against my intestinal invaders I'll assume I can also ignore the accompanying dietary restrictions -- I'm going to enjoy my time off the toilet.

This and that

Relatively smooth sailing here in Cusco, Peru, my stormy stomach acids simmering significantly until they bubbled back today, thanks either to:

a) my inglorious late night return to street food -- two bun-sandwiched, paper thin, fifty-cent meat patties, stacked with french fries and probably contaminated "¿ensalada?", "Si, por favor (stack my burgers with tasteless, nutritionally-vacant iceberg lettuce, either unwashed or washed in contaminated water, thus the classic lose-lose proposition),

b) or my (Blue) Devil-fueled return to gettin'-my-guzzle-on, celebrating Duke's presence and later victory in the National Championship game with the alcoholic circuit, vino blanco to unas chelitas heladitas to Johnny Walker on the rocks and a Pisco Sour nightcap. Today I've popped and plopped a kaleidoscope of consistencies. Which I'm sure you were dying to know.

I've stayed busy acquiescing to cravings, devouring ice cream (topped with crushed, mint-filled chocolate cookie sandwiches, twelve cookies per half-later, which is to say the usual daily serving) and cakes and pies, pretending I know what it's like to be pregnant and eat whatever you want, whenever you want.  I suspect sets of meanspirited ladies will soon be wishing upon me the passing of a walnut-sized kidney stone, to authenticate the experience.
 
And then there are those small-appetited creatures, humans they may be, that assume my entrance to the room, hefting a bowl overflowing with a full liter of frozen dairy dessert, four packages of smashed chocomint cookies in my hoodie pocket ready to be rained atop, is an invitation to scamper for spoons.  There's a reason there's only one spoon -- mine -- stabbed into my daily heaven mound.  This bowl, your daily caloric allowance, is my weight maintenance.  My precious calories!
 
While I gorge myself, dumbed by dopamine, I can enjoy, with clarity, unless muffled by cookie-crunch, the comments escaping my volunteering colleagues.

1. "Did you make your own meat?" (Rosa) (The context is lost, but I swear it was funny.)
2. "We (Britian) have the highest pregnancy rate in all of Europe." (Laura)  "Wait, higher than the U.S.?" (Hallie)
3. "I just want my bloody clothes." (A terribly confused British friend -- and closet murderer?  Anyway, Wrong, you just wanna get rid of, burn or bathe in acid, dispose of utterly and completely, that DNA-stained evidence.)

As to killing calories, I've had the good fortune to befriend quality Peruvian hoopers, some even approaching normal human stature! (although not so tall to preclude requests that I man the post).  I played against a family of troll-statured, goblin-faced Peruvians, their features the hideously contorted messes of wax-statues in a Saharan heatwave, who literally could have walked into the shooting of Troll II and never been noticed.  Though, for all they've been deprived by wicked deities, they've been bestowed fundamental basketball prowess and work ethic.  After I flagrantly and intentionally fouled one, I looked down and patted, petted his mop of black hair, cooing "Lo siento" like a maniac.  I forgot he was probably forty.

And now an abrupt transition to the Latin American inability to make change, even for small bills.  Even at a grocery chain like Mega, a barcode-scanning operation.  So when the register comes up veinte centimos de un sol short, were talking like six cents here, instead of bothering another cashier for the change, my cashier starts eyeing her station, taking stock of what small value items she might be able to offer me.  "¿Té?" she asks, pointing to paper-pouches of Manzanilla Tea spilling out of an opened box.  Probably her personal stash.  "¿Fósforos?" she suggests, shrugging her shoulders while indicating a stray box of matches.  I started to laugh. Really? "Dame los fósforos," I replied, shaking my head.  The story of the matches in my pocket, which'll be convenient if I start getting those urges to commit arson again.

The upside of doing nothing else...more words, more frequently.

How many consecutive hours can hippie mochileros strum out identical acoustic insults to (my) good taste on their guitars?  That cheap rum must imbue them with special appreciation powers, because I'm chocking back vomit mixed with fantasies of spearing eyeballs with the jagged splinters from that very guitar smashed over hippie heads.

With frustration on the brain and the weekend's free-drink-and-panty-chasing club-bounce scheduled for tonight, looks like it's another round of feigned interest and repetitive sidestepping, enduring mindnumbing and eardeafening, salsa-saturated hours between three-minute invitations-to-grind, aka hip-hop.  I, as a proudly grinding estadounidense, admit I neither understand nor care to understand the European practice of dancing solo.  Gimme someone spittin' fire over a heavy bassline and a chunky backside to ride up against and I'll show you some rhythm.

While my head swivels high over the height-challenged Peruvian crowd, ostensibly scouring for a pretty thing to decorate my dormbed, I'm imagining myself transported back inside the grimy scribble-and-sticker tagged walls of Charlotte's The Milestone, a bunch of hoodied-up punk rock hooligans swimming through the standing clouds of cigarette smoke, everyone a PBR tallboy in hand, cute alternative chicks lounging around, all black eyeliner and bullsized nose-rings.  We're three hundred ears still ringing from the last set, a palpable buzz for the next act, the first thumped kickdrum to rattle our chests, the first crashing cymbal, the initial peal of guitar-in-tuning, any and all will ignite the stampede for stagefront position.  And, since this is my fantasy, I'm waiting for my fantasy headlining friends, One Another.

Afterward we're gonna hit a houseparty, a filthy-mouthed crew littering a residence with beer and bodily fluids to a death metal and laughter soundtrack, brutal, barbed insults that only best friends can toss and tolerate cutting through the cacophony.  Finally, once bodies are strewn unconscious across the apartment, somebody's gonna step around the scattered cards and toppled bottles and lurch towards their car, making an inadvisable, cop-dodging run to Waffle House, waking up the next morning both hungover and with hell brewing in their belly, courtesy to that triple order of hash browns, all-the-way.  This is where I come from, and that's what I'm missing a few months deep in fucked-stomach-dictated paralyzation.  Those friends. Those scenes.  Those $2.50 pint nights with fifty microbrews available on tap, at least eight hop-heavy IPA's.  While we're in the bar, conversing boisterously over beers with the proper measure of head, stashed in the car is this week's anti-air-freshener, styrofoam-boxed leftovers seeping fumes into the upholstery, international dinner scents -- Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador, Thailand, Lebanon, Italy, Colombia, Peru, Greece, Serbia or good ol' southern Soul Food, maybe a few slices of a meat-and-veggie littered pie; plus, if I dined within fifteen miles of Central Avenue, the obligatory monolithic slab of dessert from Landmark Diner's should-be-world-famous dessert case -- that'll follow me around until overpowered by next weekend's selection.

The unhealthy triumvirate and other impertinent blurbs

As if the diagnosis of Salmonella and amoebas wasn't overwhelming enough, the results of the four-day cultured stool sample also revealed I'm teeming with semi-drug-resistant E. coli.  On a related note, I'm becoming way too practiced pooping into cups.

The upside of intestinal insanity's dietary restrictions might be pan con miel de abejas.  Proof that the simplest things in life can spread a smile across my scruffy lowerskull, the morning bagful of ciabatta dipped and bathed in gooey golden plastic-jarred goodness never fails to lure me from my alpaca cocoon.

Bearing similarities to Bolivia's altitude-aided thrashing of Argentina in World Cup Qualifying, yesterday Cusco's high-elevation (3,400m) wind humiliated me 4-1 in a hardly competitive one-on-one futbol faceoff.  I'd package all my depleted energies between hyperventilated gasps -- I had walked all four blocks to the court -- into fierce taps, nudging the ball toward the far goal, collapsing into a wheezing heap as breezes would breathe the ball back past me, rolling it to my left or right and down the concrete cancha, over crack-sprouted weed-tufts, at a pace similar to that at which most mother's push their toddlers, while I hacked and coughed dangling, chin-decorating lengths of cottonmouthed phlegm through spittle-flecked lips, spiritually and physically devastated, reduced to an easily overcome obstacle in the wind's triumph.

Medical Mysteries

There's a storm of speculation swirling through my cranium, in that I'm currently playing host to armies of tummy tormentors and it's universally known that exposure to germy kids, as teachers galaxy-wide will attest, is a surefire gateway to sickness.  Especially when the kids are third-world dwellers, and their dirty exploring digits tend to gravitate toward your face, squeezing your cheeks, pulling at the lips you've sealed tight to thwart the introduction of microscopic nastiness (thereby rendering impossible oral denunciations).  It's probable I leave school everyday with billions of crawling bits of promised torture and medical expenses smeared around my mouth, every chapped liplick inviting inside a few hundred million invaders.

That's conventional thinking.  But what if I've actually eaten a Peruvian child, whole.  What if there's a chusqui sucio clambering about my guts.  It's not so farfetched.  You couldn't have possibly eaten a child, you say.  Have you ever seen Peruvian children? I counter.  Every time I tread a pile of dogshit on the street, I fear I've trampled a Peruvian kid.  Almost every time a vendor accosts me near the market, hollering something about finger puppets for un solcito, I scour her palmed and finger-riding wares to verify no terrified children are mixed in with the cloth imitations.  No, you've probably never seen one, not unless you've rested your head on the sidewalk, one eye level with the concrete -- ¿hormiga o amiga? -- or regularly examine surfaces with a magnifying glass.

So maybe there was a niñito mixed in with the bunch of bananas I bought the other afternoon, or maybe one fell into the vat of leche at the school. Maybe, exhausted after a run, hands on my knees and breathing like a vacuum, I accidentally sucked up a pedestrian pequeñito passing between my feet.  I don't wanna abort the bastard, I just want him outta my belly.  So I should just do everything they advise pregnant mothers not to do, right?

Regardless, there was very little real threat...

There's something about booze that makes me, well, fucking stupid.  So here I am a week and some ago, walking home alone from the tragos gratis circuit around Cusco's Plaza de Armas.  It's 2am and I'm walking the deserted stretch back to my hostel, approaching two not-particularly-hoodlum-looking Peruvian youths traipsing my direction afoot.  Really, I'm just thinking about sandwiches.  A juicy thank you hamburger to offer the belly demons I'm happy have quieted themselves for the night, allowing me to drink and grind without anal-clenching.

I'm meandering through daydream, the sizzling grease hopping and dancing upon the pan, a sexy Cusqueña behind the grill ready to flip my burger, her short apron pegged midchest upon cold-activated -- when I'm startled from food porn by a two-handed thrust to the chest.  I stagger back, the alcohol advising me I can easily conquer these two normal-sized Peruvians, which is to say half-sized humans: "¿Cómo?"

"Dános dos soles."

I shrug my shoulders and try to walk through the human roadblock again, again detained by a push.  Well, I can just walk around the block, I think, though while the brain is occupied by thinking, the mouth begins to spout. "Ay, hijueputa, chúpame la verga, huevón."

The feet begin retracing their path down the block, I turn my back to the kids and my elevated blood alcohol content succeeds in raising a middle finger over each shoulder, while my mouth continues to spout obscenities.  The strange intoxication of adrenaline mixed with pleasure, pleasure that my Spanish is sufficiently proficient to fluently insult.

I end up at the corner and the two punks walk by.  We're still jawing at each other, my stares and stabs stalking them up the block.  Someone says something about go back to your country.  I invent something offensive generalization about Peruvians.  The more eager of the two stops and faces me, raising both arms wide and putting palms to heaven.  I do the same and continue practicing Tourette's, never one to let things die when my heart's beating booze.  Everything's a competition with me.

He begins to walk toward me, his friend lingering on the far corner, arms akimbo.  We're face to face, sharing breaths between strings of abuse, unblinking.  Then I'm laughing at him. Then he's slapping me, but gently.  Not enough to trigger my violence.  I don't see the friend approach, not that his presence changes my tune.  But I respond to the screwdriver he reveals tucked into his waistline, raising both hands, palms forward, "Ya no hay problema.  No tengo ningún problema con Uds."

"Andate, huevón."

I walk home quickly, hand jammed into my pocket, fingers caressing cold metal casing, the pen that, until now, has only been considered an implement to scribble notes.

Like they say, traveling teaches you to adapt.

The ugly side of third world travel

When the message materialized on my Facebook wall, "tell me an adventure... i want to live vicariously through you... :)," I figured it was time to demythicize the pure-heaven factor the cubicle-bound suburban-toiler adheres to the quit-your-job-to-continent-hop-until-the-cash-quits-you travel addiction.  Granted, if sanitary standards in the third world approached those of the squeaky clean USA, or if I had any willpower to resist hygienically dubious, corner-vended streetmeats or papas rellenas scooped from a basket and bequeathed via waste-caked, wart-gnarled hands, I'd probably not be approaching a fully-fingered hand's-worth of months of intestinal dystopia.  Or, in the doctor's words, "Where and what have you been eating?"

So, if you wanna live vicariously through me, the only exercise you'll be enjoying is toilet-tag, the sprint between bed and bathroom, an experience where any venture outside of the 100m I can make it in time anal-blast radius is opportunity for your intestinal partnership in discomfort, asshole-dwellers Salmonella and amoebas, to surprise you with a 10-second countdown, leaving you bug-eyed and swivel-headed, which business is getting invaded this time? and, fuck, please tell me I've got some toilet paper in my back pocket!  Then there's the drastically restricted diet, and don't forget that diarrhea drastically reduces your (maybe self-ascribed) sexiness, so careful when you answer the question, ¿Cómo estás?

Draped in chiquitos

Hoy kicked off my third and (for now) final week volunteering with Aldea Yanapay, a Cusco, Peru organization that operates an after-school program for seventy-some-odd Cuzqueñitos, beautiful and affectionate children arriving from predominantly impoverished families, many further afflicted by abuse, addiction, anything from the litany of crushing conditions I've been privileged never to encounter; conditions which, between the mind-boggling statistics (i.e. 75% of Peruvian women are subject to some form of physical or psychological abuse; estimations that over 40% of Peruvians live below the poverty line; etc.) and the tangible squalor radiating away from every city's scattered and gated enclaves of cash, we can conclude are disturbingly common conditions.

Working with mis chusquitos, whose smiling faces illuminate my weekdays from 3-7pm, is nothing short of a challenge, a welcome test of patience and flexibility after the numbness of eternal saturday, the alternate reality through which I've floated since...

Ah, mis corazoncitos, who for my bronzed complexion and relative giantism must mistake me for a cheerful, bipedal tree, their constant charging and climbing adorning my limbs with adolescents, scissored legs around my back securing una chiquita to my torso, gleeful shrieks and gap-toothed giggles bobbing at my face as I tickle her sides.  

Presentando la colección Verano Peruaño 2010, diseñando por PBA: Draped in chiquitos.

During class I can generally repel their charges, though sometimes their sneak leap-and-clamber street assaults have me ready to turn-out my pockets until I discern their squeals and featherweight, the peck at my cheek. ¡Hola, Profe!

During school various classes are intended to busy the kids from 3-7, math and art, games and study hall, later an hour or so with one's respective, age-determined "family" to plan and prepare a presentation for the week's-end show, though childhood's as-easily-inflamed-as-acetone excitability coupled with attention spans shorter tha-- wait, what were we talking about? transform this objective into struggle-of-the-day.  But it's a welcome struggle, an exercise in adaptation and creativity, how can I sustain their interest while working within educational parameters?  It's exhausting. It's rewarding. It's my new addiction.

Of tantamount importance is the quality of the organization's contributors; from the direction to the volunteers, Aldea Yanapay is brimming with eager and inspirational, genuinely hilarious (after-hours rum-swilling, rumba-fiending) souls (soulless me excluded, obviously), unconditionally-loving role models as positive as -- dammit, I was so close to achieving the rare, nay, mythical, "clean post" -- Magic's HIV.

Chapter Two: We've got a new shirt slogan here.

I'd flirted with zzzs for the last few hours but never settled any deeper into dream than the average person does driving home from the bar at 3am (get a taxi), a little nod here and there with a quick and unpleasant recovery, thanks to giggles and shrieks and such emanating from the $3 orgy-pad in our sound-conducive hostel.

So when the girls were finally booted I sighed and began melting into the mattress until CRACK! smashed the door into the wall, anew shaking lead-based flecks from the painted concrete, shuddering flakes across the carpet like wall dandruff.  My eyelids craaaaaaaankily garage-doored upward, exposing my looming tomato-headed amigo, his brain-container sagging so far toward his chest that it appeared his torso had gobbled his neck, his inebriated T-Rex shortarming adding a comical effect to his personage.  He gurgled something, pinballed between beds and the wall and ended up seated on the queen, facing me, left arm stabilizing his woozily leaning mass against my travel pack.  "Oh, jesus, don't throw up," began it's loop through my cranium.  Chase's chin would slowly droop into his ribcage, he'd begin a Gumby-topple to one side, then he'd shake his head, mumble something, gaze around the room in senseless stupor, and then rise, his heavy, tilted head providing the momentum to carry him back out of the room.

This routine was repeated at least ten times over the next hour, with several highlights, the most hilarious being several sudden crumples onto the concrete patio outside our room, followed by several minutes of Peter Griffinesque, knee-hugging, monotone moaning.  There was also the glossolalia-heavy tirades directed at the night watchman, and, once his shift had ended, at Sunday-morning sweetheart Milagros ("Whaaaarsh yooooour - *bleeeeeeeaaaaach* - naaaaame?" "Wha'on'cha talk a'me?"), profanity-laced abuses that eventually urged me out of bed, ready to scold.

I encountered a googly-eyed maniac chomping down an apple. "Chase, calm down."

"Whah? 'M no' dun' anythin'.  Wh'on't sh'talk a'me? FUCK!"

"Dude, she doesn't speak English.  You're hammered and being a fucking asshole.  Please, shut the fuck up and get in bed!"

"What?  How'uh fuck can'u calmyan asshole.  You wur sleep intha street laznight!"

Touché.

So he continued to stalk Milagros as effectively as any shadow, a Silly Putty-postured bumbler occasionally swigging from the half-liter of warm beer he'd discovered stashed in the corner of our bedroom -- as Chase'd inform me later, prior to the warm Pilsen, he'd already drained a bottle of liquor he'd pilfered from the community fridge -- occasionally veering from her side to yet again have his attempts to pump "Still Dre" through the hostel's sub-woofer equipped computer thwarted.  The first round of retard-karaoke had been sufficient torture for all the hotel's inhabitants, regardless of any language barriers.

It was quite miraculous, witnessing the alcohol-induced deterioration of a human being at 8am, yet fearful when surfaced the rage, a windmilling, air-punching, sudden onset violence straight from 28 Days Later.  He'd storm into the room, ranting mindlessly that nobody would let him do what he wanted! and why wouldn't she talk to him?  The indiscriminate screaming and punching pulled me upright in bed, with both hands readying my comforter to smother the beast should need be.  Chase picked up a plastic sheet of 50-caliber stomach pills and pushed one through the foilback, popped it into his mouth and began to masticate.  He managed an impressive, senses-delayed ten seconds before his eyes crossed and he began thrashing towards the bathroom, white-specks flying his lips, the tortured howls escaping with the powder-shower reminiscent of the primal pains of a full-grown human suddenly freed from lifelong captivity below some pervert's staircase.  He spent a few minutes in the bathroom spitting and gagging and growling, emerging stamping toward his bed, where he lifted his large travel backpack from the floor, proceeding to shake all its contents onto the floor.

And I'll never forget what happened next, when Chase jammed the empty bag over his head, pulling it down over his shoulders and arms, and then proceeded to perform what would equate to a shriek-accompanied standing seizure, a human-imitation of starved pitbulls in a bag, fighting over a steak.  When the bag came off Chase set about the room, retrieving and jamming all of his possessions into his 60L cloth cavern, emptying the bedside table of everything including the lamp, which I somehow convinced him to return to it's place amidst shards of newly-broken glass.

I watched in utter disbelief as Chase hefted the pack onto his back, strapping the smaller daypack to his chest.  "Fuuuuuuuck you!  Nobody let's me have any fun!  I hate this place.  I hate it!!!" he shrieked, sprinting toward the door.  But our door is actually two small wooden doors that open inward, latching in the middle.  Thus, while attempting to squeeze out of the single, inwardly-opened door, his bulging bags caught on the doorframe and the immobile door, producing a few hysterical and maniacal seconds of sprinting in place, his legs churning and arms pumping through pained shouts, "Let me go, Pleeeeeeeease, LET ME GO!" before his determined wiggling sent him lurching into the patio, from where he sprinted to the hostel door, threw it open and flew into the street, famous last words freezing me in disbelief, "Fuck you! Fuck everybody! 'M'goin' to Bolivia!"


Despite the obvious instability of the gringo sprinting through the streets, screaming "TAXI! TAXI! Take me to Bolivia!", I guess Peruvian nuevos soles are scarcer than I'd realized, as the first taxi on the scene pulled to a stop and calmly loaded up the liquor-bomb, whose passenger seat wailing reverberated even after the taxi had disappeared around the corner, the taxi driver presumably deducing from the baggage and torrent of BOLIVIAs that la terminal terrestre was the desired point-of-departure.

Chase disappeared, without paying his bills, at 8:30am one Sunday morning.  Twenty-five hours later I received an email detailing a drunken emergence from blackout at 4:30pm, on a bus somewhere between Cusco and Lima, where after being calmed by the bus attendants Chase accepted his fate and crashed back into unconsciousness.  He even managed to arrive with all his bags.

Thank god I have Chase to make me look like less of a problem drinker.


(As some of my fellow Cusco volunteers have suggested, with a picture of Chase's face plastered between the quotes, "Fuck you! Fuck everybody! I'm goin' to Bolivia!" would make a fantastic shirt.)

Chapter One: Look what the dog dragged in.

I stripped down to my boxers and snuggled under the blankets, turning onto my side and cocooning myself from the cold Cuzco night, one foam earplug already wedged and expanding, the other being rolled between the thumb and forefinger of my left hand -- that arm exposed from armpit down, over the covers -- preparing for insertion. My right fist, knuckles set against my mandible, supported my head; the elbow burrowed in the mattress elevating my body from waist up as I followed Chase ambling about, Pilsen Callao pumping through his veins, huffing out fume-tinged last gasps to inspire my resurrection.

“Alright, dude,” he surrendered, then stepped through the door.

“Hope you find some cuties.” I called toward his back. “And bring me one back too, if you do,” I added with a sly smile and a snicker.

He turned around with a face that implied everything in a wink and closed the door. I laid back, reached over my head with one arm to pull the unplugged ear upward, stretching the canal to facilitate the introduction of a spongy sound barrier. Then I killed the lights and melted into sueno.

I startled awake as the unstopped door crashed into the wall.  Chase staggered in, mashing on the lights to illuminate a puffy face so universally beet-colored it might've passed for a bad sunburn, if the spike of liquor didn't so permeate the air, his motions, and his words.  Neither the scratches on my watchface nor my blurry vision distorted the time, 5:38am.

"Eh, aaaaaaahhh, I gotcha un," he burped and giggled mysteriously, with strange satisfaction throwing a thumb over his shoulder just as two rather-hooker-looking women made an entry that would certainly not be mistaken for gliding. “Your friend is crazy,” I heard in heavily accented Spanish. I was praying these were hideous aftereffects of the Chinese dinner until one touched me, Chase and the other falling onto the queen-sized bed, buried in each other's mouths, scavenger hunting for tonsils. He came up for air and instructed with a glance, “You fuck her,” before returning to tongue-drilling. Skin -- or more specifically rolls of flesh falling-over and bunching-up around a bra – jiggled into view as Chase wrestled the dress.

My appointed girl kept looming and blabbering, but all I understood was a disc-skipping refrain of “STD. STD!”

“Nah, Chase. Hey. Fuck, Chase! Dude, not in here, please. And I’m not sleeping with this girl. Who is she?”

“What, man? You told me to bring you one! Just fuck her.”

“No.”

After a few dozen identical volleys, he proclaimed my loss and declared a threesome. But my hand hovered over the light-switch, stifling the impending orgy.

What ensued was a prolonged battle between a drunk-and-obviously-undiscriminating penis and a tired, sober and disgusted gringo too well-informed about bricheras and their penchant for slipping out with pocketfuls of swindled loot. Over the course of which voices were raised, the word “putas” slipped from my lips, and my outright refusal to tag my willing-without-a-single-encounter sextoy was used for ammo to blast me with a limited-English refrain of “You are gay,” and “I hope you have cancer in your penis.” There was a momentary intermission when an Argentinean friend also stumbled in, drawn to the commotion and female voices, and for a few moments occupied the mouth of my verbally-abusive appointed-pussy. But then it was more of the same.

“Pat, man, what the Fuck?!” Chase would scream. “Why’re you cockblocking me?”

“Have you ever had a threesome? Then why’re you fucking ruining my chance!?”

“Fuck, Pat, just turn off the lights. Yeah, turn ‘em off.”

Or flipping my suggestion back on me, “Pat, leave. Leave! Go get another room.”

Thirty minutes of logic later Chase angrily agreed to take the girls upstairs, when it became apparent my stubbornness wasn’t subsiding -- allowing me to unglue my eyes from my valuables. There followed a few hours of relative peace, though peals of laughter and reprimanding knocks at their door from the night watchman kept me from falling asleep. At some point the girls were expelled from the hotel, though not until after they’d entertained themselves, barricading themselves in their room, ignoring both Chase’s and the watchman’s appeals to open up.

Then somewhere around 7:30am it got interesting.

De vez en cuando...

Every once in a while you feel the impetus to write, and every once in a while that every once in a while is a 4am post-clubbing session, when the ringing in your ears is so pronounced that it's like Daddy Yankee followed you home from the club -- like a pesky Cusco coke dealer -- and is playing a concert directly in your ear canal. So if those filth-grayed, months-"recycled" earplugs can't drown out the sound, pump a little high-volume Elliot Smith through your earbuds and see what slivers of sensibility can stab through your volume-and-alcohol stifled senses.

I've lost track of time through my various regimens of anti-belly-buddy medications, and doubtless I've nuked everything good and bad, from natural intestinal flora to parasitic invaders, that once resided in my guts.  I think I might feel a bit better than I did a month ago, but that might be due to my recently unwavering commitment to a perpetually above-legal B.A.C.  And the bruises running down the right side of my body -- knee, hip, shoulder, and eye -- are reminders that my friend found me crumpled on the side of the road at 2:30am -- somewhere along the four block path between my Cusco hostel and the debauchery-mecca Plaza de Armas, sometime after following the first prolonged potent-beverage binge with an unadvisable corner rum-swilling session with four or five questionable Cuzqueños -- where for an undetermined number of hours unconsciousness had transformed me into a personalized form of third-world "urban sprawl,"  emerging somehow unrobbed, unraped, and undead. (And, yes, mom, dad, friends and relatives, I'm every bit as appalled and relieved as you.) Google helped me identify high altitude as the sneaky accomplice to excess, so tonight I stuck to beer and a few cocktails.  Which is why I can pound out coherent sentences approaching sunrise.

That my friend, literally moments after bemoaning my disappearance to his taxista, happened to spot my splayed form and scream "STOP!", and then devote a healthy 10 minutes to wrangling my gibberish-gabbing corpse into the cab, then later into the hostel and into my bed, well, it's been suggested I should buy the chap a beer.  But for reasons I'll delve into shortly, that might not be the most prudent suggestion.

Nuking my belly-buddy

Last night's post-supper gulp of gooey, neon Pepto-Bismol led to a startling realization: these post-meal, 15ml shots will be my daily dietary highlight as long as I'm mired in this parasitic, tummy-pet genocide.

Shit.

Doctors are contradicting each other, one saying fill my page of prescriptions, another declaring this one solo medication will suffice, and at a fraction of the price.  One advising I can eat only this and that, the other suggesting his counterpart is delusional and hyper-protective.  I just get mad at my murmuring stomach and start punching it with closed fists -- something I've secretly done for years while running, cursing with innocence-corrupting ferocity any cramp that dare pinch my side.  Neurotic would be the word.  Therapy might be the solution.

My belly-buddy, or at least he who has been detected, is but a protozoa, Blastocystis hominis.  Sometimes I like to imagine all my sincerity and reflective powers reside in my intestines, which is why I haven't written anything with any emotional resonance in many a month, if not longer.  But I can tell by my blog's three visitors-per-week average that the world is enamored by regular reports of my eating binges and stool consistency.

Let's hope volunteering, my looming change of agenda, has rehumanizing, reinvigorating side-effects.  In the meantime: do people ever start cutting out of pure, intense boredom, just to bleed some color into their lives? I...am....soooooooooooooooo bored.

The cheerful beckoning of stool sampling (Stool Sampler is officially my new DJ name)

It's difficult not to be petrified when you read words about parasites "making Swiss cheese" out of your organs, even if aforementioned ominous wording comes courtesy of promotional materials for an unapproved product manufactured in some guys garage, whose floods of advertising are likely quarantined in your email's Spam folder.

I'm convinced my intestinal ravager is gaining strength with every carb-heavy pile of lomo saltado, every liter of ice cream and quarter pay de limón, every ají-painted plateful of cow's heart and stomach.  Now that I think about it, I can feel the little buggers burrowing through my body, nibbling craters through all my major and essential organs, and working in shifts to scatter cysts from my liver to brain.

Looks like I better pad the wallet for the doc's inevitable impuesto gringo.

Watered-down drive-bys on the rise.

Chances are you don't know me, not really.  Not the hairtrigger temper hanging behind the smile, infamous for not unprovoked but certainly unmerited instances of spitting and slapping and headbutting and otherwise abhorrent behavior directed against friends and family.

I'm running toward Arequipa's Parque Selva Alegra when the occupants of a passing taxi expel an unidentified liquid that spatters my t-shirt.  The laughter emanating as the car slows to the stop sign wells my reason-and-consequence-blinding rage, a phenomenon of a violence and uncontrollability to shame anything portrayed in 28 Days Later.  A viscous retort is conjured from the back of my throat and I begin to duck to window-level, ready to Hulk it out with this car of four, when chance has it I actually glance at my shirt, noting the dispersion and consistency of can-fired shaving cream.  I play it off like a graceful stumble and continue pounding pavement.

It's only then I recall the characteristics of Carnaval-time in Arequipa, principally that presence in the streets is acquiescence to walking-target status for the water balloon- and pistol-toting youths prowling afoot and scouting passenger-side.  I can't help but chuckle as I halfheartedly try to sidestep the shrieking and beaming chiquitas chasing me through Alto Selva Alegre with their spilling buckets and bulging balloons and water bottles.  And my laughter trails the the hazard-flashing hooptie -- that already doused my stationary, stretching self as it pulled into the gas station a few hundred meters back -- that slows down to 6:30/mile pace so a cute Arequipeña can soak me close-range with a high-powered stream, then smile and wave without leaving her number.

Tomorrow, promises César, one of the owners of my Arequipa residence, La Posada Del Parque, we'll camp out on the third story patio and rain havoc upon unsuspecting pedestrians below.

Defining Zombification

Somehow I never noticed my short morning jaunt to Arequipa's Mercado San Camilo, my ritual Pie & Papaya Quest, is literally lined with belly-bulging prostitutes sporting far-from-form-flattering Skittle-colored Spandex.  "Ay, cariño!" Sultry faces, but no licking of the lips, a minor personal disappointment. "Uy, Papacito!" drawls one unconvincingly, as she extends an arm in my direction, so unenthusiastically that I'm unsure whether she's doing rotator-cuff rehabilitation or trying to grab a handful of my t-shirt.  Still, it's all the attention I'm lacking from gringo-magnet bricheras, thanks to my caramel complexion and decent handle on español.

Perusing the superlative travel blogs of a few Evanston universitarias, recently befriended over pocket-change cajitas de vino chileno, has at least momentarily reawakened the synapses between my inner-author and fingertips.  Ah, the familiar crunch of the keyboard, the furious and familiar pulse of the backspace, the conflict between my diminishing command of the English language and orthography.  And still it's a facade.  I've nothing to say.  Nothing to contribute.

Maybe volunteering is the answer, a month-long respite from the monotony of perpetual Saturday.  Zombification (n) 1. the framing of days around three meals, the height of mental stimulation waffling over which pastries will pave one's path to late-onset diabetes.

"I really think salsa's a bit like rape."

There's nothing like waking up hungover, slinking out of the hostel in search of market-vended, resaca-stifling morning pastries and empanadas, and catching a 10am proposition from a corner-lurking hooker, either working a double or monopolizing on the bust-a-quickie-on-the-way-to-work crowd: "Vamos al hotel?"  As they (should) say, the early puta gets the worm.

The last few weeks of my life have been perfectly, utterly unproductive, governed by nothing more than pastry and chifa cravings, and the drug-resistant bacterial menace raging in my intestines.  Which, I suppose, is a diagnosis better than pet belly worms, if less cute.

So I've compiled another impressive collection of pirated DVDs, worn all the tack off my $4 rubber basketball, and, immobilized by flojera -- not even Maya's likening of salsa dancing to rape has prodded this latent predator into prowling the discotecas -- made friends with the many cycling through my Lima and Arequipa, Peru hostels, accumulating amistades to house and entertain and guide me from Santiago to Buenos Aires.

Time to go scrub the cake and wine residue from my teeth. And see what a pocketful of jangling Peruvian soles might procure on the corner.

The War and Drugs and Amazonian Bugs (in my belly)

Lima is a pretty rad place, and not only because it's named after a bean.

Or maybe that's the other way around. Factually, it is. Fuck you joke ruining Wikipedia.

Man, a puff of haziness no more profound than a that's a finger in my ass-gasp-of-surprise really puddles my honeypot of a head.  I...don't want...can't...do...anything.  Even the usual nerdutainment challenge of trying to correct a Blogger-flagged, red-underlined misspell just gets copied-and-pasted into Dictionary.com.  It was something eggregious like entreprunureal.

Maybe not Locked Up Abroad roulette like walking a sack of weed from Belize into Guatemala, but still a fun round of Will You Please Empty My Wallet, Señor Policia?, I put in a good four hours of Lima driving a few weeks back, with a copy of an expired NC driver's license. Lima rush-hour, crunch-time driving. Ton-weight bumper cars at 80km/hr.  Lanes are suggestions. Stoplights yearlong Christmas decorations. And right in the middle of dodging weaving microbuses crammed with at least 15 certain dead, my 17-year-old hermanita Celeste gets through on-air to a major Lima radio station.  I can hear her coming out of the speakers.  Then there's a phone on my face, and I'm jabbering in English and Spanish across Lima, back to myself.  I should be getting laid for this. I'm definitely not. No, motherfuckers, I'm not Chilean. I'm not Argentinean.  Just a dark-featured Gringo who happens to spit a lil' castellano. I'll tack on a blond wig and baby powder this Greek-featured face if it turns you on.  I'd let you layer my eyeballs with lead-based-watercolors if Skinemax and stripclubs didn't exist.

But, shit, dude, leaning on that horn like every shrill burst is juicing up some glowing throbbing video game bar you have hovering somewhere in the upper corner of your lifescreen is fuuuuuuuuuuuuuun. Like doing your part in the war against overpopulation plowing indiscriminately through crosswalks. Laying down speedbumps to control all the maniacs chasing you with their blaring horns. Run The Gauntlet with pedestrians challenging your bumper instead of head-seeking strikes-from-the-laces.

Do you think considering staying in Lima an extra three weeks -- close to an NCAAairing Sports Bar -- just to guarantee I don't miss this year's first Duke-UNC contest is extreme? (Seriously, I'm impaired. I actually just clicked search on Dictionary.com because I couldn't figure out what was wrong with Extreem.) Oh, as to that question. Of course the answer is NO, all you pussy non-real-fans.

You don't support this post if you don't support weed. And I don't even really smoke, but that backpacker peer pressure to enhance the flavor of the liter of Lúcuma ice cream -- clenched between your thighs, cold condensation relief from the Lima sauna soaking your Dickies shorts -- is hard to resist.

...

Damn. I just did a reread. Probably shouldn't have wasted my "you don't support this if you don't support weed" plea to get paid by High Times.

Marrrrrrrrriiica!

The man seated beside me smalls like a full platter of Anntony's Caribbean Chicken, loaded heavy with calypso rice and collard greens and a half chicken in Anntony's signature sauce.  And while I appreciate him transporting me home for a few moments, I really hope he doesn't read English.  I'm really glad I haven't indulged in any cactus-derived hallucinogens, or this might've gotten really awkward.  I really hope we stop for food soon...

I'm a few hours deep into another 22 hour bus marathon, this time the return trip from Cuzco to Lima, again assured a night sans sueño, playing pendulum in my seat as we whip around mountain passes.  There's really no reason to be in Peru any longer, doing laps on the dispersed friend circuit.  But, boy, do I have great Peruvian friends.  Not to mention a tackless $4 basketball worn gripless on gnarly Peruvian pavement, slowly deflating in a friend's Lima closet, and one can endure only so many And1 highlight reels on the iPod Touch before antsiness has him ghost-dribbling pedestrians down crowded city calles.  Have you ever heard of a bus running a 20+ hour route without a bathroom? Neither had I.

Fuck.

Among other repeat ruins, I explored Machu Picchu for the second time, accompanying mi querida Caleña Kely and newly-forged parce Francisco from Trujillo to Cuzco, now back to Lima, happily playing tour-guide to Cali-come-to-me. Man, I'm gonna miss mis parceros.  All that Cali slang.  That sing-song speech. "Ay, parrrrrcee, qué chimba!"

Ringed binders really bother me.  So I'm left-handed and writing from the back forward, flipping my notebook at each page turn.

Monday's 4am ascent to Machu Picchu in steady rain revealed that my rain-jacket isn't impermeable.  In fact, it's much closer to 100% permeable. Temporarily resistant like a single-ply napkin to a juicy tongue's thrust. (A confusing analogy pulled from the high-school lunch table.)  By the time we arrived at the cloud-enshrouded Hauyna Picchu, I quivered to the rhythm of hypothermal-onset.  There were three hours sheltered in the entranceway of the plush Machu Picchu Sanctuary resort, crouched and shivering over a spread-poncho picnic of white bread, canned tuna, and bruised fruit, three disheveled figures being reprimanded by the hotel staff for playing homeless on the steps as we tried to take advantage of the heat emanating from the hotel doors opened by the nonbackpacking crowd.

Figuring I'd already done Machu Picchu, and on a perfect November day with my brother and Franco-Peruvian friend Blanca, I procured a large, impermeable garbage bag a good six hours late -- from a worker whose perverted fashion sense prompted him to ask me which color I preferred -- and started hiking back down toward Aguas Calientes and una ducha recaliente. But a few hundred meters later I reversed path, unable to pass up the opportunity to stuff my memory card with hundreds more identical photos.  And this time obscured by clouds and mist!  But the sun graced us with it's presence at last, and now I have more great photos with more great friends, and at least 50 photos and 6 minutes of video of heavy llama fornication.

I probably should be dead of some cold-and-wet provoked complication.  Instead, I just have to pee while I set legs jammed into Francisco's back, lamenting the extinction of my trail mix.

Upping my creeper status

Seven weeks of fantasy life stateside revived my travel bug, which is not a reference to the hosts of travel bugs thriving in my gut.  My gracious ex-boss rehired me as a part-time contractor, my relaxed office hours enabling me to booze with friends most nights of the week, then bumble into my cubicle at an hour by which the head-fog had subsided.  My paychecks enabled me to pay all my bar-tabs, procure a few new toys (like the mochilero-essential 64gb iPod Touch), and left me enough leftover change I was uncharacteristically unconcered I might've tipped fifty-Bell's-Two-Hearted-Ale-bucks on a $20 tab.  To an in-no-way deserving waitress.  Which is to say not only was she far from exemplary at her job, she wasn't even cute.

I feasted frequently, my checklist of foods to eat back home mostly satisfied, fifteen newly added pounds of hip-swelling flavor pocket reserves accompanying me back to the lands of ever-crowing city roosters and taxi-kidnappings. (Keep in mind, the chunkification of Patrick merely transforms him from gaunt to lean.)

I find myself unable to purge or even suppress thoughts of and longings for that which I've just fled again -- my back-friendly pallet on my parents' hardwood floor; throat massaging microbrews with the "pint pounders" and rounds of shots with my friends from the trenches and vicinity; bleeding beets and the procession of vegetables that color mom's home-cooked comforts; the company of family from chilly Kakalak to snow-consumed Michigan; a beautiful young woman -- as if memories and desires can no more easily be flushed than my starch-stuffed bowels.

Lima is growing on me again, the intimidating metropolis, behemoth no less, that actually offers more than the dense, guidebook-imbued foreboding.  It also doesn't hurt one's perception to depart sub-zero, sun-deficient days and disembark in full summer swing.  The women are as brown -- if not browner -- and as beautiful as ever, and intoxicated with Vitamin D I almost violated the camper-counselor code of conduct -- which is what happens when girls become women and you're in a land where age differences are more readily and legally disregarded.

Hey, look at this cute, light-skinned girl. Waving at me, no less. Wait, why is she asking me about Davidson Soccer Camp in perfect English.  You used to call me PB&J, eh? And you're from Chapel Hill?  Oh, shit.

"Wait, you're Austyn, aren't you?"

And so I've reencountered one of my favorite ex-campers, from one of my best groups ever, a continent away, after never having encountered anew in North Carolina.  Now we need to have a beer, just so I can up my creeper status a bit by saying I've had a beer with a camper.