The top Latin American travel accessory: white girls.

If we've talked business, money gettin' schemes, anytime in the last year, I've probably mentioned my interest in robbery: bank and tourist.  Minutes after arriving in León, sipping an average and overpriced, at thirty Córdobas, mojito at Bigfoot's hostel front bar, chatting to a German girl who'd just recounted the story of how she'd found herself in the hostel's dorm for the last month, a story that began with her being robbed, I found myself prefacing my monologue: "You know, I probably shouldn't be saying this in a hostel, especially a hostel swimming with irresponsible travelers who've yet to experience any significant setback."

I outlined why I hate working.  Because I'm lazy.  And that I like working with kids, especially chavalitos in Latin America.  And that volunteer work gives me a boner.  Because this variety of altruistic endeavour, at least in Latin America, seems to attract, almost exclusively, women; and these typically European or Australian or Canadian, sometimes Brazilian or Argentinean or Chilean women, let me assure you, are inarguably ones, one representing an affirmative vote on the binary scale, you would or you wouldn't.  And they're the best kind of ones -- ones even before you've taken them out to the Peruvian disco, even before you begin the usual debaucherous descent toward flirting with the toothless Chicklet vendor on your lonely stumble home; they're ones before you begin slamming the free drinks purchased by ticket currency distributed indisciminately outside, on disco row, where a gaggle of hype men hoping to entice white people, but especially gringas, into any of many indistinguishable bars push multicolored confetti into your chest, your pocket, your hand; some of the slips will fall into the recesses of your pocket to be fished out, wrinkled and faded, some weeks later, by the local woman doing your laundry.  If that slip of paper could talk, it would chuckle, reminding you why you love volunteering in Perú, surrounded by tons of ones: because every time you go out there's the chance someone else might do what you can't -- because even your expansive moral spectrum has boundaries -- and slip a roofie in a white girl's drink, and you might be around to benefit.  There's your boner.  Or potential boner.

But I digress.  To my enraptured German audience of one, I spilled the beans.  "What I think would be a great idea, something that would allow me to travel and volunteer and not exert too much effort, would be robbing tourists.  Digital cameras, wallets, laptops, all those valuables that travelers have a bad habit of leaving around, in the open, while they shower or sleep or take day trips."  She didn't seem particularly amused, but that's probably because she's German, who aren't allowed to laugh as punishment for their history.  I turned and talked to a Swiss kid who was checking in.  The German girl left at some point.



The next morning I awoke to the Swiss kid, who happened to bunk in the bed over mine, tearing the sheets off his bed, dumping his bags out, belly to the floor searching under the bed.  "Somebody stole my wallet," he said.  "It was in these shorts last night," shorts that fell off the bed sometime in the night, maybe scattering their contents on the floor.  I did the usual frowning, overturning of things, then went back to sleep, hoping the German girl, who was two beds over, wasn't witnessing this.


That night, or maybe it was the next, I ate some good pizza.  The first good pizza I've had in Latin America.  I went out to the underpopulated beaches at las Peñitas, forty five minutes on the hottest, most cramped chicken bus I've ever had the misfortune of riding; after the seats and aisles were completely, one hundred percent overflowing with sweaty flesh smushed against sweaty flesh, the fare-collecter holding a rail, hanging halfway out the front door, seven gringos, replete with backpacks, showed up.  People must've sucked in their guts, or maybe they shoved children under seats, because the gringos made it on.  Sitting on the right side of the bus, there was a wall of people, standing, the length of the aisle, making it perfectly impossible for me to observe anything except bellies to my left.  All the way to the front of the bus, and down the stairs, were people standing, preventing me from seeing anything out of the windshield.  My field of vision was a rectangular tunnel: all seatbacks and heads to the front of the bus, a human wall to my left, windows to my right, mercifully open.  The warm water washed away the sweat and grime, and a couple of cute Caleñas I met, after they waved and yelled at the gringo punishing his calves with a soft-sand run, the older of whom is studying medicine in León, made me forget the grueling ride to arrive.

Last night I met Justin, a cool kid originally from Greensboro, who'd studied at UNCC and the University of Michigan, with whom I share a love of alcohol and Latina complexions, and we ended up on a six hour binge -- beer then tequila then more beer then a lot of rum then more beer, some driving -- with a random group of Nicaraguan men we shared a table with at the crowded BárBaro.  I woke up to a cleaning lady telling me it was time for check out, and was I planning to stay another night?  I wasn't, but I didn't really have a choice.  Still in León.

With word of good pizza spreading fast, I joined a few nice British girls from the hostel while they ate.  Dinner was unceremoniously interrupted by a heavily intoxicated, well dressed Nicaraguan gentleman, with a nice collection of shiny gold teeth; I'd noticed him standing behind our table, admiring the white skin of my companions, and my Buenas, apparently, was an invitation to sit down.  He knocked over one of the girl's drinks, didn't seem too perturbed, and wiped up the spill with his elbow.  Within a minute or two he'd picked up the glass and started drinking what was left.  He never reached for the pizza, but I tried to move it out of arm's length.  His English was indecipherable, mostly gibberish, but he was proficient in drinking lingo: "You give me beer. Yes!"  He was stroking the girls arms regularly, shaking hands with everyone, repeatedly, every time he thought he'd mastered another phrase in English, which was often.  "I am English!"  He'd cock his head and coo at the girls, "Amor. Entendés? Jooo are wuv."  He told us he was driving himself. 

I went to the bathroom, which I thought would be his cue to whip out his cock, after the girls assured me they'd be fine.  When I came back, he was gone, and I'd missed the best part: the stagger slash lean-in for kisses-that-never-materialized when he said goodbye, shaking hands with the girls, his head just hovering in the vicinity of their faces.

Waiting for the dinner check a car stopped in the street, far from the intersection, far from the stop sign, in front of the window in which we were sitting.  A different Nicaraguan man just staring and smiling.  Then he waved.  After thirty seconds or so, he made his way to the stop sign, and then off. 

White girls.