Latacunga to La Maná

This was right at the end of our two-year stint as Peace Corps volunteers in Ecuador. My wife and I were heading back to site on a bus snaking its way through the Andes.

The voyage was indeed long and painful, more so than usual. Maybe it was because we had been traveling for about a week now, probably spending half that time sitting down on various buses, but the hours were starting to feel like days. Three bus rides out of the Oriente and we made it to Latacunga, one more five-hour trip before we’d be able to hop on the back of a pickup and take it an hour more back to site.

The buses from Latacunga were probably some of the worst in the country. Where I’d classify the majority of Ecuadorean buses as too small, the three or four bus lines that cross the Andes from Latacunga to La Maná were even smaller. And these buses were always packed. They left the Latacunga terminal full, and then after crawling through city traffic for two or three blocks, there would be another stop to let on a couple dozen or so more people. Most of these latecomers would be indígenas who lived throughout the various mountain communities along the route. The aisle would be packed with people standing against the seats, the women’s long, traditional shawls hanging in the faces of all the people sitting down.

The indigenous people lived apart even from other Ecuadoreans. Their fellow countrymen were practically foreigners, so us gringos might as well have been from another planet. On those crowded buses, even though tickets were sold with assigned seating, you needed to board very early and claim your seat as soon as possible. You might hop on the bus only to find an indigenous family of four sitting in your seats.

Thankfully this never happened to us, but I’ve seen confrontations like this play out in a very formulaic way. The person would ask them to get up, showing them the ticket with the seat number. This person would be ignored. The next act would be to request help from the bus driver or his ayudante, who would also try to get them to move. This would also be ignored. Maybe the passengers might say something in Kichwa that nobody else understood. And that was usually as far as these situations went.

On this particular trip, we had our seats and the bus was packed. Half an hour or so out of Latacunga, the bus stopped outside of a bakery. My wife and I had always noticed this exact stop, everyone got off the bus and bought bags of bread. Whenever we took this trip, we were always so exhausted from just settling into our seats, so we never felt compelled to go and check out what the fuss was all about. But we only had a month left to go before our service was over. I was starting to feel nostalgic for all of the things that would soon be nothing but memories. I got off to get some bread.

After two years in country, I knew how the lines worked. Everybody walked right up to the front and shouted out their orders. “Fifty cents worth,” I held out my money. The lady working the counter ignored me and proceeded to help everyone else. I started getting impatient, especially as more people started entering the store long after I did and were served before me. I kept repeating me order, but my presence wasn’t even acknowledged. Finally after everyone in the store was helped, as the bus started honking and revving its engine, the lady handed me my bread without a word and took my money.

I’m not looking for special treatment, but I just hated it when random people acted as if I barely existed. No matter how comfortable I felt in Ecuador, no matter how well I spoke Spanish, no matter how many friends I had back in Pucayacu, as soon as I left the comfort of site I was just another dumb gringo, just another tourist at the mercy of the crowd.

Pissed off, I hopped on the bus just as it was pulling away. And as soon as I got on the bus, I ran straight into a bar running alongside the aisle, slamming my head right above my left eye. I’ve hit my head countless times in Ecuador, but this easily had to be the worst. I was actually stunned. For a second, all I saw was white, my every sense consumed by a liquid fire that ran from my head and spread throughout every nerve ending in my body. I couldn’t breath. I could barely stand up.

The initial agony passed and I regained my senses to see four or five teenagers pointing and laughing at me, not even trying to hide how funny they thought the whole situation was. I was overcome with a rage that I hadn’t felt in a while. I can take the pain, I can take the humiliation, but I was absolutely fed up with being laughed at. Everything I did was under scrutiny. Every time I misspoke, every time I tripped over my own feet, every time I asked the wrong person the wrong question, I was laughed at. Every time I spoke in English, every time I walked by a group of people, every time I took a breath, I felt like people were taunting me. The constant spectacle that was my presence was enough to paralyze me, to make me spend days at a time indoors without showing my face in town. When I even suspected people laughing at me, I withdrew into myself, tried to ignore it, to block it out, to wait for the embarrassment to pass, hoping my face wasn’t red.

But this time was different. Maybe all of those repressed feelings had been bottled in for too long. Maybe the pain from the collision prevented me from swallowing my pride and finding my seat. But I lashed out. I got right in their faces and started cursing at them in a mixture of English and Spanish.

“Motherfucking chuchas,” I screamed through clenched teeth, “you want to laugh at me? I’ll give you something to laugh about!” The teenagers immediately stopped and recoiled in shock. That’s right, I thought to myself, not so tough now. I went on for another thirty seconds or so of rage, holding my head and lecturing them about how you shouldn’t laugh when somebody hurts themselves.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. My wife pulled me back.

“Rob, your head,” she said with a worried look on her face.

I pulled my hand away from where I had hit myself. It was red. There was blood running down the side of my face. My rage turned into shock and I sank meekly back into my seat, feeling suddenly very vulnerable and very hurt. The ayudante gave me a roll of toilet paper and I rolled up a bunch to put pressure on the lump that was beginning to grow. I was starting to shake. Finally coming to my senses somewhat, I looked around the bus to find every single person staring at me, open mouthed, not saying a word. I wanted to die. I wanted to disappear. Even worse, I felt like I wanted to cry. It was probably one of the most humiliating moments of my time in Ecuador. I felt like an asshole gringo who hit his head and took it out on a bunch of kids. As much as I loved my time in Ecuador, this had to be the absolute low point. I was sick of being the foreigner, the real or imagined butt of other people’s jokes, the source of everyone’s entertainment. I spent the next four hours nursing my wound, closing my eyes, and imagining that I was on a plane back to New York.

I’m not scared of anything

I’m not afraid of anything. Except scorpions. I woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks ago, I opened my eyes and I saw this scorpion just inches away from me on the pillow. And I didn’t know what to do, should I move? Do these things react depending on how I react? Should I stay still? I couldn’t do anything, but I couldn’t just sit there and not do anything. The whole time, that growing feeling of dread was overtaking my whole body. What had started out as a pit in my stomach was spreading upwards, through my throat, out across my neck to my arms. Just when I felt like my heart was going to overload, I blinked, and when I opened my eyes, I started to get the sense that there wasn’t really a scorpion there at all, but it was just a weird way in which the fabric of the pillow was bunched up. And yeah, I had been asleep, and that’s happened before, you wake up and you see something across the room and it takes you a minute to get your wits about you.

Still, I’m basically fearless. Unless we’re talking about heights. I wouldn’t call it a fear, exactly. It’s more like an innate terror, something that my body isn’t really in control of. Like, I take a look down, and whatever sort of instincts drive my most basic decision making process, they start sending out panic-induced distress signals, “Rob, abort, get down from wherever you’re at.” If I’m on an airplane, or a Ferris wheel, or even if I’m just watching a movie or a Youtube clip featuring somebody doing something high up off the ground, I get that sweaty palm sensation, which speaks to my empathic abilities, to really put myself in the shoes of anybody. Who knows? Maybe it’s hereditary. Maybe all of my ancestors died horrible deaths after falling from a great height, and through evolution, that fear has been passed down to me, to hopefully prevent me from meeting a similar fate. In which case it’s an advantage.

But no, besides scorpions and heights, I’d have to say that I’m not really scared of anything. Wait, I forgot to mention heartburn. I’m pretty scared of heartburn, not that I suffer from it that often, it’s definitely not a chronic problem. It’s just that, I remember this one time in college, I went to the cafeteria, waited on the line for the omelet station. Usually I’d just grab something premade, but on this day I guess I felt like I deserved something fresh, like it was worth the wait. “Give me everything,” I told the omelet guy, and he said, “OK,” using those mini tongs to pile in a little bit from each container, peppers, onions, cheese, everything. And it was great, but right afterwards, I started getting what I’d later identify as heartburn, that stinging right below the chest. There was no relief, laying down didn’t help, I couldn’t walk it off. Finally I went to the nurse and explained my symptoms. She gave me a bottle of Tums and told me to take four every half hour. And it worked. But still, that feeling, I’m still terrified of that burning, it felt like I was being eaten alive from the inside.

Also, carcinogens, I’m really afraid of carcinogens, all of them, yellow number-five, the stuff that’s in plastic bottles, harmful radiation from the sun, I’m afraid of all of it. One time I read this article about how if you keep your laptop on your lap, then that’s basically a carcinogen, because you’re irradiating your lap. So I threw out that laptop and started only using my phone. And then I read something else about how phones might cause brain abnormalities. So I threw out the phone and I exclusively use my desktop computer.

Wait, I forgot germs, and this ties in, because the desktop computer use is also a way to make sure I’m not touching anybody else’s keyboard, OK, and they’re not using mine. Because we’re getting into flu season, and I can’t afford to start thinking about the flu, if only I weren’t so scared of needles, or vaccinations, I could get a flu shot and sleep easy for a while. But even just the cold, isn’t it always cold season? Or strep throat. One time this guy at work told me that he was recovering from strep throat, and so I quit, no way.

I think I’m getting carried away, but I’m actually very brave, it takes a lot to rattle me. What was that? Did you hear that? I think someone’s at the front door. I can’t be positive that it might not be an attacker. Look, just, if you’re reading this, do me a favor, use your germ-ridden cell phone and call the cops, tell them to swing by and just kind of drive really slowly in front of my house, just to, you know, scare away any would-be home invaders. I think they’re still knocking. Hurry up, all right? I can’t take the sitting here, squirming, imagining all of the hundred different ways in which this is all going to crash down around me, just wind up horribly, horribly wrong.

I need a Drake break

I wait tables at a big, corporate, restaurant chain. It’s one of these places with a huge sound system installed throughout the entire space, speakers hidden, blended seamlessly into the ceilings. There’s a touchscreen on the side of the wall that gives you the illusion of there being some sort of a control to the whole system, but in reality, all of the songs are selected by some company VP far, far away. The playlist never changes entirely, it’s more like, once in a while they’ll take out one song, and maybe a couple of days later they’ll add in another.

I’m very conscious of this music because, well, I’m there every day, I’m in the restaurant seven to twelve hours at a time. Where the average restaurant guest won’t ever hear the same song twice, I’m stuck listening to each track three, four times a day. These weird new age jazz mixes combined with the occasional pop hit, I’m not even really aware how engrained these sounds are in my consciousness, not until one obscure song stops and in my head, I’m already starting up the beginning of the next weird synth hit, those first few seconds cycle through my head before it actually plays out loud.

The first few times this happened I was like, no way, did I just predict that? And now it happens and I’m like, come on, please don’t actually happen, please don’t really play the next song that I know is about to come up. I just feel like I’m being programmed, like my brain is being hardwired to memorize these songs that, had I never worked in this restaurant, I’d have never been exposed to in my life.

And while, yes, it’s mostly this kind of weird instrumental music, they do throw in the occasional pop hit every now and then. About a month or two ago, this popular new song by Drake was added to the playlist, it’s the one that’s like, “You act so different around me / Just hold on we’re going home.” I hear it everywhere, in addition to the four or five times it’s piped through the walls at work, it’s on in the taxi, it’s playing on some seemingly unattended boombox propped up outside of the entrance to the subway.

When it first started cycling through, everyone went nuts. You’d go into the kitchen and everyone would be singing along, the dishwasher harmonizing with the prep cook, the smooth sounds of contemporary R&B permeating every corner of the restaurant.

But I don’t care how good you think a song is. You start listening to that song every day, five or six times a day, certain things are going to happen. You’ll start hearing it in your head, and then your brain’s going to take it to another level, it’s going to deconstruct that song, every note, every background effect will be revealed. And once you commit that song entirely to memory, it’s inescapable, it’s the type of tune-stuck-in-your-head that almost sets itself on repeat in your mind, all day long, even when it’s not playing.

Then you might even ignore it the next time it comes on. You’ll hear that song and you’ll think, what the hell? What happened? Why didn’t I get anything out of it this time? And that’s when you fall down the other side of the mountain. Pretty soon you start to hate this song, that dumb drum machine intro, it’s just one drum, the most basic of beats, it’s virtually indistinguishable from any other drum intro, but you hear it, and you know it, just one beat on that drum machine and every fiber of your being absolutely knows that it’s going to be Drake.

“I’ve got my eye on you,” over and over and over again. But like I said, this song is a hit, it’s everywhere. And maybe everyone else in the world might eventually get tired of hearing it too often, but definitely not yet, your average music listener isn’t nearly as caught up as you are on this accelerated moment of Drake.

It’ll be close to midnight on a Friday night. I won’t have any energy left. All I’ll want is for my lingering customers to pay up and go home, but everyone’s taking their time. And then I hear that drum beat, and while a small part of me dies inside, I look out across the floor, the smiles are everywhere, guests are actually starting to dance, these weird I’m-sitting-in-a-booth-but-I’m-going-to-do-my-best-to-dance dances, singing along, having a great time.

The other night it came on as I was taking an order and this guy froze midsentence. He got that huge Drake smile and he said to me, “Man, I just love this song! Just hold on we’re going home! I love it! What a great song!” and what was I going to say? That I had become numb to all music? That this was already the ninth time I’d heard this song today? No, I wanted a good tip, so I flashed my own Drake smile, I was like, “Right? Drake! I love this song too! It’s awesome! I know exactly who you could be!” and we merged into the chorus in unison, a weird restaurant duet, “Just hold on we’re going home, it’s hard to do these thing alo-one.”

It worked. Twenty bucks cash on an eighty dollar check. But man, I can’t take it anymore, I can’t listen to that Drake song again, I need a Drake break, just a small one, please.

Siamese Friends

I have this great idea for a TV show, it’s called Siamese Friends, it’s about two friends that get in a terrible car accident. That’s going to play in the intro, every episode, just so you can really get a sense of how bad this crash was. Maybe both cars will explode, I have no idea, I’ll leave that up to the director, but in my script, that’s going to be a stage direction, or a note, “Bad car wreck!”

And then they’ll both wake up in the hospital, you won’t really see them, the camera will be positioned behind their beds, staring at the attending doctor. He’ll go into this speech, “Boys, I want to tell you how incredibly lucky you two are just to be alive. In my history as a medical practitioner, I’ve never seen two human beings sustain the kinds of injuries you two did.”

The camera will start to swing around, we’ll see the friends, they’ll be relieved. But then they’ll start to squirm a little. The doctor will continue, “However, when the paramedics brought you in, we had to operate extremely quickly. Both of your lives were on the line, and so the lead surgeon stitched you together, figuring that your tattered bodies might stand a better chance at survival if they were sewn together.”

“And it worked,” he’d continue, “But I’m afraid the process is completely irreversible. You’re both sharing several major organs, and your circulatory systems are almost totally fused.” And he’d continue on like that for a while, giving all sorts of medical-sounding explanations as to why they’re going to have to exist in this current state, a pair of conjoined friends.

Naturally, both of the guys are going to be devastated. Their lives are going to be forever altered. But that’s going to be the whole show. They’ll get an apartment together, and each week we’ll watch them try to pick up the pieces of something resembling a normal life.

Like maybe they’ll have two totally different jobs. One of them will be a really rich and powerful stockbroker, but the other guy might only work as a restaurant busboy. And so, thinking that they’ll still be able to sort of manage two separate lives, they’ll each take a stab at running two careers at the same time. That episode will culminate with the broker trying to conduct a business lunch at the same restaurant where the other friend happens to work. And so it’ll be back and forth, negotiating deals while clearing plates and pouring fresh water.

And then later that summer at the corporate picnic, they’ll both get in a really competitive potato sack race, or a three-legged race, I haven’t really planned out the specifics of where exactly these two guys are going to be stitched together. I guess it all depends on how much of a budget I’ll be working with, like if I’m operating on a shoestring, I guess I could just get an oversized sweatshirt and have them both fit inside. But if I have the special effects department at my disposal, I could CGI three legs, one torso, probably any type of attachment.

I don’t know why any of the networks haven’t responded to my emails. I’ve been watching TV lately and I think I speak for most everyone when I say that I’m not especially impressed with the fall lineup. The only thing that NBC had going for it was that show about the wheelchair cop, but that got cancelled after only two episodes. Come on, don’t you guys want to make some great TV? Let’s make Siamese Friends a reality.

Maybe sometime late in season seven, some foreign doctor will visit them, he’ll say that he has a new experimental surgery he wants to try out, “I can make you two separate again!” And they’ll consider it, at first glance, it’ll be everything that they’d ever hoped for. But by the end of that episode, they’ll realize that they love being attached, that what’s better than never being an arm’s length away from your best friend? So they’ll choose to stay conjoined. And that’ll be the last episode. Somebody’s got to help me make this happen. We’ll be rich.

Two-hand touch

Come on, get up, you’re all right, you didn’t fall that hard, just try and put some weight on it, I’m sure you’ll … ooh, you know what? Don’t put any more weight on it. Just give it a minute, I think that’s the body’s natural response to an impact, swelling, even if nothing’s broken, especially when nothing’s broken, because if there wasn’t any swelling, well, then you’d be in trouble, that’s when I’d start to worry. Maybe you’d be dead. You never see swelling on a dead person. Just a lot of bloat, which is totally different.

Nope, a fair amount of deep purple swelling is biology’s way of telling you, OK, you took a little bit of a tumble, but just let me rush a whole bunch of antibodies and natural painkillers to the affected site and … listen, I don’t even think you hit the ground that hard, I mean, you’ll be on your feet in a minute. Maybe two minutes. Just give it five minutes.

I didn’t hit you that hard. I know we were playing two-hand touch, it’s just … you know, heat of the moment, animal instincts take over and SLAM! You see? I’m getting all riled up just thinking about it, which is perfectly natural, that’s my physiology still reacting, still preparing for more reactions, I’ve got so much adrenaline still coursing through my system, I feel like I could take down everybody here. Does anybody else want a piece of this? What are you looking at, huh? He’s fine. Just give him some room to breathe, Jesus.

You know it’s because I used to play in high school, you know that, right? Some things cannot be unlearned, and to be perfectly fair here, you were coming at me pretty aggressively, way too cocky for a guy who still had a former varsity lineman to get through before crossing to the end zone. I know it’s a friendly game and everything, but I’m not just going to let you win.

Does anybody have any ice? Just … when you get home, fill up the tub with ice and stay in there for an hour, two hours, and when it melts, just get the Mrs. to fill it up with even more ice, nice and ice cold. I guarantee you that the swelling will … holy shit, is that bone? No, that’s not bone. That couldn’t be bone. Bone doesn’t come out that way. I totally, absolutely did not hit you hard enough for that to be bone.

Motherfucker … well, that could have just been a really awkward landing. On your part, I’m saying. You know, you’re a runner, right? I’d bet you anything that you had one of those stress fractures. Have you been feeling any shin pain lately? Like shin splints? Because that’s like a micro break right there, like all it takes is the slightest amount of pressure in just the right spot and, CRACK! That’s what I’m betting … I’m pretty sure that … there’s no way I could have.

Look, I can reset that, I think I actually have to. I took half of a lifeguarding course like ten years ago and … I’m serious man, that thing has got to be reset. We’re looking at permanent lifetime damage, like a limp, maybe a prosthetic, if that bone starts to heal without being properly aligned. That’s nature man, you don’t understand the resilience of the human body, almost to a fault, like the second you go down … remember I was talking about those antibodies? The swelling? Well it is a good sign, normally.

And even though I’m pretty sure your legs were in bad shape coming in here, I do feel somewhat responsible. When you run, do you strike with your heel or with your toe? Because heel striking, or toe striking, I can’t remember, but one of those is really hard on the shins. Didn’t you think about any of this before you took to the field? Don’t you have kids? Playing on a team against a former two-time county starting lineman? It’s like those guys who run with bulls over in Spain, nobody thinks they’ll be the one going down, getting trampled, gored, and no one wants to see that happen, but when it does, you don’t ever hear anybody blaming the bull. Am I right?

But still, we’ve got to get that bone set. Just, stop struggling. I know it hurts, don’t worry, I’ll bring over lots of ice for that ice bath, that’s going to be one of the coldest ice baths you’ve ever taken. You won’t even be able to feel any of this pain. Just, stop, just … somebody hold him down. Jesus! I’ve got to do everything …

Well, he wouldn’t stop struggling. This’ll be much easier now that he’s knocked out. There we go, just like that and … oh. Oh God. That’s even worse. And why is it all of the sudden bleeding now? You know, I think we should call an ambulance. I think … I think we should call his wife. Just … you guys saw all that, right? I was trying, like the good Samaritan. Like good Samaritan laws, they exist, right? That’s a thing, right? Because I was just trying my best. I didn’t know he had weak shins. I think he’ll be OK. We just have to wake him up, just slap him around a little bit. HEY LARRY! WAKE UP! LARRY!