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.