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.