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.

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.

The Hangover

Time in NC has become synonymous with dreary headfunk, the vise-like constriction of mind and motivation that a few six-packs too many of Bell's Two Hearted Ales tends to enforce indisciminately.  Those high gravity calories coupled with reckless feasting are slowly returning my Latin American-wandering lost poundage, little pockets of stored dessert puffing just above hip level.  My probably parasitic intestinal condition -- contracted from that high-class, apparently highly infested batch of ceviche -- is thriving, mind over matter failing miserably.  And I'm in a cubicle again, thanks to my old boss hiring me back for the year-end crunch.  (So you know, that thanks is sincere.)

I've turned twenty-six and used that newfound maturity to charm younger ladies.  (Well, that and the fact that I can legally buy beer.  They aren't so impressed that I'm old enough to vote.) My hair remains untouched, uncombed, unless I throw on a creeper's combover.  I find myself mumbling phrases in Spanish, mostly the filler word "pues" and sexually explicit commands, and dreaming latino on occasion, though I've avoided dumping any just-swiped toilet paper in the garbage can.

This vacation-within-a-vacation has provided ample opportunity to spend time with my family and friends, the world's only flock of folks fun enough to divorce me from Dad's in-house cinema, digital cable's assortment of boobies On Demand (in HD)!  In between social beer-bouts I struggle to whittle my mammoth collection of digital media down to 64 measly gigabytes of entertainment for the next year -- considering all the kids I let play with my gadgets, respect for preserved innocence is keeping my iPod Touch porn-free.

The same ol' P.