Mixed metaphors

Behind the ping of raindrops on corrugated ceilings, over the rumble of the Pacific -- the heavy surf breaking over the jagged boulders scarring the beaches at Las Peñitas, the asthmatic wheeze of water sucked back to sea -- the perceptible sizzle made me grimace, my body tensing the way one does anticipating impact, being struck.  Like incandescent gashes suddenly torn into the night, electrical surges lurched across the black, horizontally, branching out and crookedly out, like NCAA tournament brackets from a Parkinson's afflicted hand unfurling in reverse, the spiderwebbing of cracking glass radiating away from the point of origin; then, extinguished, ocean and heavens remarried in darkness, the only remnants the etherial singes on unblinking irises.

Alone on the unlit street, power in Las Peñitas having gone out some time ago, I decided my life was worth more than seven dollars, approximately what I'd budgeted for a going away feast of pescado frito, tostones, y arroz, accompanied by either a cold Toña or Coca-Cola, the latter to this day concocted with real sugar in Central America.  With beach spread to my left and nothing in the way of trees or houses for several hundred meters,  I moved from a walking to jogging lightning rod.  

Back in my beachfront hostel, the same one that advertised "Horse Ridding" as an activity coordinated for visitors -- and someone must have taken them up on it; I saw nary a horse in my two days at the beach -- I reclined under a thatched roof and scarfed down the package of ten Oreos in my pocket, admiring the most violent display of lightning I've ever seen.  

The sky was ablaze.  It was like sitting inside a tent that light could hardly penetrate as an army of Samurai warred on the outside, frequent and errant sword strokes tearing gashes into the walls, unpredictably scattering across the canvas blinding streaks of light that were, inexplicably, cloaked anew in an instant.  In the moments between sharp flashes a dull glow would pulse on all sides, like the night sky of a city under siege, a city in flames, observed from a distance, evidence that beyond, behind clouds and obstacles, the storm raged.

The next day I was back in León, wandering the city one last time, in the evening catching a microbus to Managua, then a cab to the airport.  The cabby and I chatted the whole fifteen minute trip, which cost me under five dollars after tip, and he gave me his phone number -- another friend the next time I'm in Nicaragua.

At the airport, going through security, I inexplicably thought back to the bottle of Smirnoff Ice someone had left in my hostel room in León.  "What a waste," I thought, "How hilarious it would have been to hide the twelve ounce and thus not carry-on legal bottle in my carry-on, and then explode with a 'You got iiiiiiiicceedd, bbiiiiiiiiiiiiiittcchh' when bag-screening security personnel uncovered it in my bag."

I wonder if they play that game in Nicaragua.  I wonder if Nicaraguan airport security personal are allowed to have a sense of humor.  I wonder if sometime I'll get so intoxicated pre-flight that I'll think it's a good idea to ice airport security.  I hope so.

Delta Air Lines plays an instructional safety video before flights, during which passengers are advised that "most seat cushions can be used as flotation devices."  One would presume that Delta knows which particular seat cushions are floatable and which aren't, considering that all distinct cushion types -- headrests, seat backs, seat bottoms, etc -- should be constructed according to identical, type-particular specifications.  Yet, the company chooses ambiguity, promising survivors extra post-crash insanity -- amidst flames and wreckage and scattered limbs and torsos, screams and wails -- a mad and savage scramble to figure out which fucking seat cushions will keep your legless torso afloat until rescuers arrive.  

More likely than anything, Delta knows, should your plane crash into the ocean, nobody is going to survive.  So it really doesn't matter.

Toward the end of my trip, after my Spanish had edged out of rusty unpracticedness, I was asked, by native speakers who had known me for several days, once if I was Spanish, another time whether I was Argentine or Spanish.  And there was no asterisk, nothing about me being latino but retarded.  Which felt nice, complimentary without being an intended compliment, and it almost made me forgot an encounter weeks earlier in Masaya, when I was getting back into the groove of español 24/7; I'd unintentionally indicated to two  chatty and obviously gay teenagers, after having clarified I was a connoisseur of titties, a fiend for the latina, that I would consider joining them in a romp of the homosexual style.  "Pero no sos gay, verdad?"

Indeed not.

So now I'm back in the States, with a trip booked to Guatemala just after Thanksgiving, a little mission work.

That mission: to educate a few café-colored, Católicas Chapinas about the advantages and pleasures of contraception, a pocketful of Trojans and a healthy libido my teaching aids.