st. mj's guide to paradise for lost gringos

 book three:

Cartagena Amable: ^[1]

back in the city again
craving a paradise fix

Cartagena’s beaches -- right in the city near downtown

tuesday, 10/11/94.

78.  OK.  SO YOU GOT YOURSELF HOOKED ON THE BEST THING IN COCALAND.  YOU WANT MORE.  YOU NEED A FIX.  NOW WHAT?

Cartagena. sitting and writing in Yazmín's cinderblock hut on the outskirts, in Pozón, the economically backward barrio for Cocalanders who are trying to escape places more economically backward, but often much lovelier in other ways, like Santisima Cruz.

(correcting a neighborhood electric problem without the light company knowing – and with audience)

on bare concrete in the main room, Robbie and i sit rocking in new wicker rockers before a groaning, dying fan that no longer rotates. he turns and looks at me, about to say something, but is distracted by Adriana.

beyond the creaking and groaning fan stands a small scratched wooden table, pushed to the corner against bare cinderblock wall. on it, a diminutive boom box. Adriana sticks a tape in, and overwhelms the small room with tinny vallenato. she wiggles a jig, a little solo vallenato, looking at me, then at Robbie, who half-hides a clownish smile.

you know, sammy – i’m not unappreciative of Robbie’s sisters, but – i'd rather hear vallenato booming down the caño from cantina loudspeakers, filling tree-shaded yards, a block from the subtropical outback. i'd rather sit in a straight-backed cowhide chair on back-patio mud, under palm thatch, with Pedro smiling over the fence, Ibrahim stopping in for breakfast, and Gustavo asking if i ever fucked a burro.

Adriana’s cool though.

she vallenatos past me toward the kitchen, past a soup-stained Yazmín coming out, who stops in the doorway and addresses her son over loud Caribbean accordion music. how funny it is, shouts Yazmín, that everywhere the gringo goes he pulls out a big yellow tablet and writes!

is she hoping i won’t understand, or will?

people change in the city, sammy. it's something to keep in mind. people who seem charming and simple in their little rustic hometowns, seem inelegant in the city.

maybe i'm the one who’s changed. their city’s okay, but their countryside hometown – is enchanting. what charms me there, falls flat here.

i miss that place. all morning on the boat, then bus, leaving my little paradise behind, i felt i had to go back, not just to the wedding, but to live. if there’s a way, why be anywhere else? why live in a southeast Denver town home development that's death warmed over, neighbors and lifeless habits hidden behind closed doors? in Santisima Cruz i'd be alive.

a two-story row house like the Dr.’s in southeast Denver

“why live in a southeast Denver town home development that's death warmed over,

neighbors and lifeless habits hidden behind closed doors?

in Santisima Cruz i'd be alive”

all morning traveling on chalupa and bus, and all afternoon here, i've been asking Robbie in English about a million things i'd have to consider in order to live in Santisima Cruz.

in connection with some aspect of that conversation, no doubt, he looks at me wanting to speak, then waits.

a small matter but a nagging one, in the meantime, is the insufferable heat. why does it come and go? why is it hotter at the coast than inland? the sea should cool things down, Robbie agrees. yet it's so hot in Pozón i can't guess the temperature. i never felt so hot in Denver or San Juan, or the Delaware valley growing up, not even during a heat wave. once i walked in the cauldron of Tucson in July, but that was dry heat. to endure year-round dripping heat, sammy, in Cartagena or Santisima Cruz, i will have to understand it first.

Robbie wants to take my mind off it; go into town with Adriana and buy the big rotating electric floor fan i promised Yazmín. i'd rather go to Brenda's where i feel at home, cool down in the shower, swish all the sticky sweat down the drain, put on dry clothes and head into town, not for fans but to find our little fool-around jester, Chalo.

he'll take me to an air conditioned store to shop for vallenato CD's that i'll never find in the states. i couldn’t even find them in Santisima Cruz.

at least yesterday’s wet eyes have stopped, sammy. what was that about anyway? depression? dying? coming apart? i never cry over small stuff. i don't usually cry, period.

i hope the nagging paranoia is gone too. if i'd given in to the fear i felt before i came here, i'd be stuck with you and racer in New Mexico. Ibrahim and Pedro wouldn’t exist.

"People who are depressed," as you say, "don't think straight."

but i’m thinking straight now, right? i've got a reason to live, as you suggested. a cause: fitting Santisima Cruz into my life. that's why i'm coming back for the wedding. but how would i live there? and why? i can't explain it. maybe to figure out what keeps the boys of Santisima Cruz so content, liking themselves and everyone around them. why doesn’t my son have it? or i?  i’d have something to write about, if i could figure that out.

why don’t we have such peace and contentment as they?

Robbie asked me again last night, in Yazmín's patio with Victoria and Gustavo listening, if i wanted to buy Yazmín's house for a million Colombian pesos. i was confused and skeptical, worried about the guerrilla connection, so i avoided dealing with it. but today as the river curved, and his hometown’s technicolor docks disappeared behind a brilliant fluorescent green equatorial savannah riverbank, i thought about it, sammy. twelve hundred and fifty dollars is a lot less than the twenty thousand he proposed four days ago. one of those offers is off. if it's twelve hundred, i'd be crazy to refuse.

what would i do, you ask, with a one-story row-home in a river town in Colombia, a place so remote it’s not accessible from the rest of civilization by road or air?[2] what would i do with a house whose floors are mud? whose bathroom has no running water? what would i do in a steamy, sticky floodplain, where the only air conditioning is a hole in the wall?

i'd take a month's vacation and write, that's what. with a fan on me day and night. each year in Santisima Cruz on vacation, i'd finish a book or start a new one. something different. because in that steamy atmosphere i feel different. something fresh and different comes out of me.

would the people help?

would i be able to help them somehow, while they helped me?

or if i lived with them all year, computer and all, would that work?

i've been asking Robbie these questions. and he has said 'yes', and i believe him.

he's looking at me again now. something is on his mind, something i might not want to hear, or he would have said it.

it's a game. breaking down my resistance. he wants something, and i'm supposed to wonder what, and whether i could live with myself if i gave in and asked.

he wants me to go buy a fan with him, but this look of his is another matter. money probably.

how would i feed myself if i lived in this country, sammy? disability payments?

am i disabled? do i have reason to say i'm still psychiatrically impaired? can i collect insurance and retire in river country to write? if i’m feeling well enough to think these thoughts, those of moving to South America, can i say i'm disabled? or am i deceiving myself again? do i still have the 'worst form of depression', as you say, one that tries to pass for health?

if i took a computer to Santisima Cruz, how would i avoid losing data when the electricity failed? how could i lock it and leave the house? would the police, or guerrillas, break in and take it, thinking it hid political information? i have to ask Robbie.

is the dream of Santisima Cruz feasible, sammy, or am i going off the deep end again?

i'm tired of thinking about it.

a trip into town to find Chalo would be nice.

here’s Adriana, waltzing vallenato toward me, smiling at Robbie, a bowl of soup in her hands.

79.  YOUR NEW ADDICTION IS GETTING THE UPPER HAND.  YOU’RE LOSING CONTROL.  TAKE YOUR MIND OFF FINDING YOUR NEXT PARADISE FIX.  TRY BASIC THINGS, LIKE EATING.  OR AT LEAST THINK ABOUT EATING, OR THE SISTER SERVING FOOD.

i just ate not one but two bowls of hot chicken soup with huge chunks of meat, potato and yam. i dumped in the side of rice like Efrén did the day we got here.

i've watched people all over coastal Colombia, and nobody does this but Efrén. he must do it because he's ‘Cachaco’, from the cooler mountains, inland, far from the Caribbean, way beyond Santisima Cruz; he’s from way past even Bogotá, near the sources of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers. Pasto. Or Popoyán maybe.[3]  i'll never get the food thing straight, no matter where i go. i’d have to be born a Cocalander probably.

that’s another thing to consider, sammy, before living in Santisima Cruz.

and here's one more. Robbie and i complained last night about the illogic of the coastal Colombian diet, high in calories and heat. at midday when everything is too hot already, if you aren't dripping with perspiration by the time you sit down to lunch, the hot soup will do it for you. nobody has an explanation. along the coast and inland as far as Santisima Cruz, they say, that’s how it is. even social-change-minded Victoria serves hot soup at midday with the sun beating down 95 or 100 degrees of sticky equatorial-type heat. in the city of Cartagena, where it’s even hotter, restaurants offer a choice of hot midday soups, no cold gazpachos. and then, as if hot soup once a day caused too little sweat, they repeat hot soup for dinner.

i'm not saying i can't live with it, just that i can live with it better if i understand it. that’s the way i am, sammy.

and why so much starch? for breakfast, granted, you get fish. but it comes with potatoes, or platanos, rice, corn masa, or rice masa. or maybe some thick doughy corn arepas. starch starch starch. at any meal they'll throw in bananas. more starch. a long cut-off branch of them hangs from a rafter beneath the back-patio palm thatch roof in Santisima Cruz, poking out bunches along the branch in a spiral, ready the next time you're starved for starch.

and you could refuse food politely, but you'd offend the cooks. Robbie says, "Just say no." yet he doesn't say no. he eats what the women give him. and i've tried telling Yazmín no. she nods her head. then a minute later sandals come slapping out of the kitchen. Adriana comes with a heaping delicious-smelling plateful, and SHE works on you, as if in the tiny space of the kitchen, forever loquacious coastal Colombian women rubbed elbows in monastic silence. there’s nothing to do but give in. not just for international relations. it’s graver than that.

in Cocaland, it seems to me, women who spend their lives in the kitchen lose their bearings if men don’t eat what they cook. they lose their reason to live, as you would say, sammy. if you don’t eat what they cook, they’ll wither and die like i almost did before you dragged me to San Juan. this means that here in Colombia, my eating keeps alive not just me, but Mamá and the other women too. if i don’t eat what’s placed before me, i’ll kill Mamá, and i don’t want to be a Mamá killer.

that’s another thing. nobody leaves food on the plate. i try not to, but sometimes i can’t swallow the starchy dry tasteless masa or sticky sweet rice. as for Robinson Crusoe Rivera, he never leaves food. he even grabs up what i leave, forgetting he said it was ‘too much’. he’s heavy and tall, so an extra pound won’t show. i’m short and thin. when i overeat, after the meal my stomach protrudes above the belt of my pants like Mr. Pickwick’s.

so you see, there are a few matters that call for understanding and acceptance, if one is to live in Cocaland peaceably.

i have my work cut out for me.

one day i asked Angel why he wasn’t fat. he explained that before his son died he was. but then he lost weight.

as i’d suspected, when i first heard his story. severely depressed people lose appetite and weight, like i did.

and there’s one more aspect to this food thing. Robbie’s convinced that when we’re not here buying beef and yuca for the family, they don’t eat well. he wants to know if it’s true, but they won’t tell him.

that’s another reason to live in Santisima Cruz, sammy. i could find out.

“two steeples, blue and pink in sunrise light”

–

“that church with the see-through coffin"

Santisima Cruz:  Mojano River, at rainy season high water, drags loosened vegetation
past the main dock and plaza and Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) church

80.  REMEMBER, YOU’RE TRYING TO STOP THINKING ABOUT FINDING YOUR NEXT PARADISE FIX.  FOOD DIDN’T WORK.  TRY THINKING ABOUT STRANGE THINGS, LIKE GOING TO CHURCH ON MONDAY.

speaking of Angel, he finally went to the town cemetery Sunday while i was in the hammock, hung over. Robbie went too. he visited the grave of the great aunt who raised him, having asked God in New York to at least, please, let him see her final resting place. that was back when Robbie’s whole family was sick or dying. each month he'd save for a plane ticket, then have to wire them the money he’d saved, and postpone one more time his trip to see them.

(good grief. maybe that's why he never paid his debt to me.)

then yesterday at five, Yazmín and Robbie went to mass in Santisima Cruz. i'd wanted to go, ever since we'd first pulled into the dock Friday and looked up at the two steeples, blue and pink in sunrise light. but hangovers and other things kept getting in the way.

when i heard church bells yesterday at five, i was out in the fields beyond the town, watching Egidio round up cattle. i thought nothing about it. we got back to the house and Yazmín complained that Egidio had kept me so long, i'd missed mass. as often happens, no one had said a thing about going anywhere. if they had, i could have come back in time. i had a watch. but in river country you live in the moment. people pretend to be part of twentieth century Western civilization, where events are expected to occur by the clock. in fact, they care very little about clocks in paradise.

as for me, i forgot Catholic churches have mass on Mondays and other weekdays. in river towns i've known, where i was born in South Jersey, for instance,[4] the Official Board of any town’s Methodist Church would have considered any recommendation of communion on Monday at any hour a sacrilege and a lame-brained, plain crazy proposition, even if it had come from the minister. especially so, i should say.

it's another thing for a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant gringo to get used to, in order to thrive in a Cocaland river town. and i’m working on it, sammy.

here we go. i feel like crying again. a beautiful vallenato comes on, here at Yazmín's in Pozón. Diomedes Diaz, maybe.[5]  if i buy Yazmín’s house in Santisima Cruz, sammy, i can go to mass in that church with the see-through coffin any day of the week i want.

another reason to live there. i keep thinking of more and more reasons.

Robbie's forgotten what he wanted to say to me. he's caught up in a heated conversation with Yazmín about whether people ask Jesucristo[6] for help or not. i look at him and he looks in my eyes. we understand something. he knows that for the last few minutes i've been writing, not listening. so what's this silent look between us? on my side it's because i had the idea just now that i can ask him and other Colombians i know, how to do this: how to leave the U.S. and live in Santisima Cruz. or go back and forth, maybe 50-50. these thoughts make me friendly toward him.

on his side, he's friendly because i’m friendly. he has no idea that he just became the key to my retiring in paradise.[7]

virus permitting, of course.

i almost forgot that little bug.

“Robbie has no idea that he just became the key to my retiring in paradise”

(a daytime party by the river in coastal Colombian river country)

81.  SO ANYWAY, IF YOU GO FOR ANOTHER PARADISE FIX, HOW WILL YOU DEAL WITH ALL THE ENDLESS FAMILY INVOLVED?

i've cooled off hogging the space in front of the noisy gear-stripped fan in Pozón. it's frozen in one position.

Fabién comes in from who knows where and claims he went to school today.

“Fabién comes in from who knows where and claims he went to school today”

i told him before we went to Santisima Cruz, if he wanted a special stick of chewing gum i brought all the way from the famous U.S. just for him, then, instead of wandering around loose in the bus station he'd have to go to school each day while the rest of us traveled up the Magdalena. and he'd have to show me a note from his teacher when we got back, proving he'd gone.

he says, "Sí."  meaning he went.

i say, "Bueno."

but there's no note, sammy.

maybe school teachers here don't send notes home. i forgot to ask if they did. so should i believe him and give him the gum, when he has no note? how should i treat him, now that i'll practically be living with him, almost like a member of the family?

and how help the simpático people of Santisima Cruz, while they help me? are we going to figure this out?

a town that opens your heart can extend your life if you stay in it enough. what’s good for the heart is good for the rest of me.

but obstacles remain. if i find the money to move to Santisima Cruz and write there, will there be any bucks left to fly me to publishers in the states?

should we publish in South America instead, sammy?

i don't believe i’m thinking this. for years i’ve had no faith in my writing, and haven’t written a word, as you know.

why should i bother now, just because some equatorial podunk opened my heart for five minutes? am i grandiose or what?

now Robbie carries on about how Americans send missionaries and money to other countries. i can't get the gist. he never talks about missionaries. who is on which side? i wasn't listening. i was thinking about lengthening my life.

if i'm going to live here, sammy, and live a little longer, i'll have to LISTEN.

so i interrupt.

what's going on?

Angel's wife complains she's Jehovah's Witness surrounded by Catholics, says Robbie. if a person is happy in his heart because of his belief, Robbie says, then he feels it in his heart and goes out in the street and says, "I'm Jehovah's Witness, here's a tract."

i tell him in English he learned that from the Indian guru we both went to see in Miami, from opposite hemispheres, the one who caused us to meet in Miami in the first place.

no, he says, he learned it from what he went through, trying to stay happy in the states despite everything.

what is he talking about? i don't know what he went through, even after thirteen years as a friend.

if i don't understand him, how will i understand the other forty million Cocalanders? if i don’t understand them, how can i live here?

Robinson hands me his sister-in-law's Bible and asks me to find the Ten Commandments so he can read to his family. they're arguing. he's proving a point. nobody’s upset, but i might be, sammy, if i get involved. the commandments remind me of growing up in a conservative Protestant setting, as you know, with its belief that sex and many other fun, wonderful, healthy, or self-expressive things are sinful and evil. you know all this. Robbie's not the only one who struggled to find happiness. some of our nation's founders, called Puritans, handed my forebears a way of thinking, a Bible-pounding style that reproached anyone less pure than they. they were morally superior, the ones most likely to get to heaven. Robbie felt abandoned growing up, while i felt smothered – by people over-concerned with purity. you know what? sometimes i think i'd rather have felt abandoned.

i don’t think i ever got out from under all that smothering. when they quit smothering me, i did it to myself.

now i've found a reason to live, and a town to do it in. it’s not too late to get out from under the smothering, sammy. i can live in a place where there's NO puritan neurosis. i can offer a hand to simple people who just want to find a little niche for themselves in this dying world, like i do.

to pull it off though, i have to keep paranoia and depression in check.

the effort is giving me a headache. in Santisima Cruz i forgot my tense neck and head – except for the boat trip to get there. and the hangover. but here, thinking about what's right and best... – and that's another reason to move to Santisima Cruz. no more headaches, no more neck tension, no more pressure mounting up the back of my head. no more need for the brain to give answers.

but how go back?

on top of the food we've had for lunch, Robbie insists i eat a sugar candy. he's buttering me up for something, i know. meanwhile rocking at my right side, soft-lipped Adriana, always good for a chuckle, wants me to take her to the U.S.

"How am I going to get you in when you're illegal?" i kid.

"I'll go in your bag," she says, soft lips curling in a hesitant smile.

"I'm going to live here," i say to throw her off.

"Good, then you can marry me," she says.

i pretend not to understand for a few moments.

"What did this woman say?" i ask in shock, but now they're talking about something else. Yazmín and Robinson split their sides. i smile bewildered. i seldom am sure if i've heard what i think i've heard in Spanish. less so when it's a joke. Robbie won't confirm in front of Adriana that she said what she said, and Yazmín foils discovery by changing the subject.

"Mj," she loudly tells Adriana, looking at Robbie, "has been invited to a wedding December 30, Gustavo's wedding in Santisima Cruz!"

now we know why the family yanked me away from Santisima Cruz, sammy, when i wanted to stay longer. how can Adriana and i become an item, if i’m in Santisima Cruz and she is in Cartagena?

how am i going to deal with them? this is too much.

marrying Adriana might brighten my life. she’s young, attractive, playful. she keeps turning me on. but i can't stand the thought of a wife and kids, after what we all went through the first time, parents fighting over kids. and anyway, it's a foolish girl that would commit to a dying man with more debts than assets. a celibate dying man. infected with sexual plague. Robbie should wake her up to reality, if she thinks she'd like being married to me. but the least of these things can never be mentioned.

so how turn her off without hurting her?

there are many angles, sammy, too many, enough to make you depressed again.

i’ll just have to handle them, like i said in Santisima Cruz last night.

“some equatorial podunk opened my heart for five minutes”

82.  AND WHAT ABOUT THOSE EXTREMELY DELICATE SUBJECTS YOU HATE?  DEALING WITH BIG EXTENDED COCALAND FAMILY MEANS DEALING WITH ALL THAT AGAIN.  EVERY TIME YOU WANT ANOTHER PARADISE FIX, IT JUST KEEPS GETTING MORE AND MORE COMPLICATED.

6:20 p.m.  back from shopping – Robbie, Adriana and i. we sit in the sala at Yazmín's, enjoying the fan i just bought. on a white plastic pole four feet high it rotates around a quarter of the room, swishing wind past our sweating faces and chests every few seconds.

Robbie and i finally had our discussion in the cab coming back, sammy. he did have something on his mind, not what i thought, but worse. i'm upset, and counting on this writing to help me work up to telling you.

the kids eat first this time, while we wait for our shift to eat.

i forgot to mention that Robbie's people, if not all Cocaland families, eat in shifts. tables are small and chairs are few. families are big. tables and chairs cost hundreds of thousands of Colombian pesos. you live outside more than in. the issue of sufficient space inside any tiny dwelling comes up only at meals and bedtime. a table big enough to seat all currently present would fill the house. this house doesn’t even have a dining room. so, in this 'house' anyway, meals are eaten in shifts at the tiny boom box table in the sala. the wee table has to be cleared of the diminutive boom box and anything else or there wouldn't be enough space for two plates. guests eat first, meaning Robbie and i; then other men and adults; then children; then cooks.

Victoria does it the same way.

tonight we got back late, so the kids ate before us.

it's one more thing to get used to.

6:35. i eat without complaining, but Robbie is ready to stage a revolution. "They give us too much food!" he complains in English so they won't understand.

i always leave what i can't push down, but he eats every kernel, then complains. didn't i ever teach him that families talk? they work things out talking. it's so easy. how am i supposed to live here, sammy, if everyday problems can't be talked out, if the quantity of food required for healthy living can't be discussed?

if the bug holds off and i get to live here, and if the impossibility remains of talking about difficult things, i may kick the bucket before my bags are unpacked, just from eating every morsel they put on my plate.

i ask if the new fan i bought Yazmín isn't louder than the old one. when it turns, it rumbles like a turbo-thrust jet.

no one gives me satisfaction.

i insist on an answer and Robbie shouts, "It's fine, mj. Please, leave it alone!" he scolds me like he would a cranky granny, laughing to soften the jest.

years ago his natural tendency to take me lightly showed itself. never offensive, he kept it off the cuff and caring, in a coastal Colombian way. it balanced perfectly the gravity with which i took myself, a seriousness preposterous enough at times to kill us all.

at the moment he has no idea how much is on my mind, because it's so earthshaking, i'm trying to keep it to myself. apparently my worry is showing.

this is the way it feels to me, sammy, right or wrong: the future of the world hangs on my getting back to Santisima Cruz, living with the people, and understanding, helping, and writing about them.

now you're laying this diary down in your lap. you're telling racer with grave concern, that once again, mj lorenzo has become ‘grandiose’.

Yazmín smirks at Robbie's tone of voice scolding me. they get me to laugh somehow, finally.

the tiny main room sala echoes with family noise. Adriana stirs her drink in a metal cup with a metal spoon. Robbie, Yazmín and one or two more grown-ups talk on top of each other. five or six kids shout loudly. they scrape their dirty sandaled feet on the concrete floor. it's a loud and noisy three ring circus in one tiny ring. the audience is in the tiny ring too, meaning Dr. Lorenzo.

Fabién talks to himself slurping suero. it’s a white gloppy drink Angel has tried all day to get me to taste. some type of milk, warm and thick like sour cream. it sits there, unappetizing as house paint, and i worry i'll have to give in and slurp suero too, or look like a gutless nay-saying Yanqui.

my work’s cut out for me, sammy.

but that’s what i need.

it’s what we all need, if the world is to remain a livable place a little longer.

“five or six kids shout loudly”

83.  PERMIT YOURSELF TO MAKE MULTIPLE OUTRAGEOUS GRANDIOSE CLAIMS, DISMISSING REASONABLE WORRY AGAIN AND AGAIN.

Angel asks if it's a diary i'm writing.

yes, it's real, i say. not fiction. my experiences here.

gradually the last two days i've been telling people this. and in the cab returning from downtown i checked it out with Robbie. he wanted me to publish it. he thought his family and friends wouldn't care what i said about them.

i told him they'd never know what i said. i'd publish it in the states in a language they wouldn't understand.

but then i found myself thinking, sammy. why not publish it here too, in Spanish. wouldn't it be of interest in both places? maybe a book that was read in both hemispheres at once, would fix the understanding gap faster. it could bridge the gap from both sides, saving the world before it destroys itself.

thinking i was now going to publish a book about him and his family and friends, Robbie said that Victoria's life was the most noteworthy. she had no idea, he said, how much value her life had to the outside world. i wanted to ask what he meant, but the subject changed.

i have to find out about Victoria’s life, sammy.

Victoria, mother of Ibrahim, Gustavo and Sandi
with three friends in the butcher shop

i knew there were reasons to return to Santisima Cruz i hadn’t discovered yet.

"Publish it with her name and everybody's," he said. "That's what García Márquez did."

"No," i said. "Some of his fiction was based on real events, but even in fictionalized documentaries like A Death Foretold he changed the names."

i got an inscrutable stare which may have translated as, 'How can you know more than i do, about my country and our Nobel prizewinner in literature?'

i’m a writer! that’s how. i think about writerly things. i pay attention. he was standing right there when his own mother told us Gaby changed the names. the murdered guy’s ‘real name’, she said, was Cajetano Gentil.

and i've spent a lot of my life reading. that's how. Robbie hasn't. he's never thought about it. he doesn't appreciate his country. he left it thinking that gold and glory lay in mine. whereas, i'd leave the wealth and glory and comfort of my country, for the simple human, down to earth life in his.

the world's problems for the next hundred years, sammy, are here in a nutshell. i'm about to shine light on them and publish the findings.

Robbie can't solve problems of this dimension. he doesn't study and reflect. he's feeding his family night and day, all three generations. there's no time for reflection.

reflection! whoa! today in the bank waiting for Robbie to exchange U.S. cash he's carried on him all this time (never having heard of travelers checks, apparently), i did something he would never have bothered to do. i stopped and studied a huge wall map of coastal Colombia, one bigger and more detailed than i've ever seen, painted on the wall as a mural. i hadn't seen a map in days, because when we went to Santisima Cruz we had to travel light, and left guide books and maps in Cartagena.

and i felt the lack of maps, believe me. usually when i travel i study maps every few minutes to stay oriented safely; so i landed on this map like a magpie on roadkill.

on the wall i found the highway the bus took from Cartagena to Magangué. then i located Santisima Cruz on a blue bending line called Rio Mojana. i traced the only route the motor launch could have taken south from Magangué, up the Cauca then Mojana. Santisima Cruz sat on the bending blue line surrounded by green paint, with no little painted brown lines to it from the outside world. no roads. all the towns in southern Sucre ‘department’ (state) were like this.

i wondered how many towns in Cocaland might look the same on a map – no brown lines to get you there. reachable only by river, as in olden days, like towns in movies about 19^th century Congo, or about the Amazon today. this whole planet of ours, in fact, used to be like Santisima Cruz – before wheeled transportation. in ancient days most population centers were on water, and to get somewhere you walked, rode on the back of an animal, or boated. if there were no roads or paths to a town or village – as in the case of Santisima Cruz – you sailed or rowed. we know this from books and movies.

but it's not the same as knowing from experience.

do you believe that?

it seems kind of important, don't you think?

now i remember why i thought Colombian guerrillas kidnapped people!!!!

here's proof that i'm not as paranoid as we thought!!!

forgetful, yes. how did i manage to forget for even a minute, that i had read that article and seen that map? what is going on??! these two tidbits, essential for survival, i forgot just like that!! if i don't want to be somebody's political pawn for the rest of my life, sammy, imprisoned somewhere in the boonies around Santisima Cruz, waiting forever for someone to volunteer the ransom, now is the time to put two and two together!

i could go beyond such worries, as i must have meant to.

but how?

here's what i think. i really, wholeheartedly, believe, that the guerrillas that came into Santisima Cruz Saturday night were not the kidnapping kind. or, if they were, they weren't after a drunk, befuddled gringo. otherwise, the boys would not have kept me with them at the party loudly talking and drinking, would they? they'd have taken me to the house, locked me inside and stood guard. they'd never have subjected me to a possible kidnapping, sammy, i'm sure.

not knowingly.

besides, how could kidnapper-revolutionaries disturb the one place on earth my heart feels drawn to? a God who cared, as you say yours does, wouldn't destroy my only reason to live, sammy. you know this. you're Catholic and know God from that angle. plus you talk to Father Sky, which gives you another angle. and you’ve learned the guru's meditation, like i have. so you know that the power behind all those approaches, a power that 'cares', as you insist that It, or He, or She, does, would not take away the one and only cure i've found for feeling sorry for myself. a God of love, sammy, wouldn't make paradise a death trap, not for a gringo trying as hard as i am.

would he?

no.

and so, the mayor of Achí must have deserved kidnapping. he must have breached the public trust.

i'm an outsider. a bystander. i've done nothing to breach public trust.

and there's always that other reason why guerrillas in Santisima Cruz won't harm me. they know Ibrahim a little bit. remember? they won't kidnap a friend of someone they know a little bit.[8]

thanks for your help. without your being there, listening, i'd have made myself paranoid again. instead, with you there, hearing me out, i've thought it through logically, and can quit worrying.

Angel looks at me as i write, then raises his head and eyebrows and calls to me – a question i can't understand, given his unique stuttering accent. it's either a defect in speech or some extreme version of costeño patois, or both. he drops final 's' sounds and does other wrong things i can't decipher. finally i understand him.

wearing his dark beret, of course, he says in Spanish: "Em-ché, in awl you travel in p-part of the wor-wd, have you seen a p-pla'e like Santi-ima Cru’?"

"Yes," i respond in enunciated, wooden Castilian: "I have seen a place something like Santisima Cruz. In Spain. But they had cars in that town. And no rivers or caños as in Santisima Cruz. And I didn't stay with a family."

that's the difference. family. when you live with a friend and his family, and meet his friends and become, overnight, an integral part of their neighborhood and town, it bridges the understanding gap in no time.

i'm for more, not less, immigration to the states from places like Santisima Cruz. especially if it’s done the way i propose. first of all, each immigrant from such a place should be assigned a white honky sponsor who really cares, the waspier and more Anglo the better. in the model case, Robbie made the first move, landing me as an unofficial sponsor, and snuck into the U.S. i sheltered and sponsored him, and really cared. and so we bridged the understanding gap between Colombia and the U.S. a little. gringo nations should set their immigration quotas with an eye not to race, economics and politics alone, factors which determine gringo thinking too much, in my humble opinion, but with an eye to knowing intimately, and understanding – and loving – our mud barrio neighbors on a shrinking planet.

that's a big thing that might help keep us from doing our world in.

in the cab coming back to Yazmín's, Robbie and i compared experiences again. if he hadn't noticed already, he saw how enthused i'd become about the boys.

he said i was such a sensation at times he felt left out of his own homecoming. i feared he might not come back in December with me. i pumped him with questions until i was satisfied. he agreed to return IF he can talk Caridad and Tobías into it.

that's how we finally came to the other subject, which i might be about ready to tell you.

“on that great big Bank wall map, there was the town i read about in the paper a few days ago

Achí, where the mayor that guerrillas had kidnapped was finally released last week

and i was astonished it lay no more than twenty some miles from where i had been
just up the Rio Mojana from Santisima Cruz”

84.  SEE NOTHING BUT GOOD IN PACKED LIVING CONDITIONS.  IN SHORT, IDEALIZE AND ROMANTICIZE COCALAND AS MUCH AS YOU CAN AS LONG AS YOU CAN.  THE TRUTH WILL HIT SOON ENOUGH.

whenever i run out of writing ideas – and here's one more thing i like about this part of the world, sammy – all i have to do is lift my head. there's always something to spark a halfway worthy reflection. Cocaland stimulates your mind like coca leaf but goes beyond it. it actually helps you think.

for example, take this midget hut of Yazmín's in Pozón. the two little bedrooms are entered from the sala, or main living area where we all sit now, each tiny bedroom through a hanging cloth, not a door. beyond the tiny sala, before the real door to the back yard, lies a small storage area. off this, on the right there's a small bathroom, and on the left, a tight kitchen. there are no real doors here either, only places where doors belong. where the bathroom door belongs, for example, they've hung up a rope and draped an old dress you can see around and hear through. experiencing all this gets you thinking, sammy. everything you do in this house is under someone's nose, every fart and peccadillo, every change of clothes, every tinkle in the toity. it's a way of life that makes you honest and humble. if you walk outside there's no privacy either because people are literally everywhere, unless, i imagine, you walk to the fields beyond Pozón.

how can they live like this, packed together? having to be considerate and sharing all day long? was it like this in San Juan Pueblo growing up? it must be why families and family-friend networks here seem better bonded than mine in the states. in some places here, crowding has even created whole bonded neighborhoods, like Robbie's in Santisima Cruz.

if you need a cure for depersonalization, sammy, Latino crowding might work better than Denver barbecues. that's what the Social Development Committee has tried in my Denver townhouse development, to break the ice and get neighbors talking. it hasn't worked. but in Santisima Cruz they need no committee to inspire it. people warmly share everything, including daily physical and emotional needs, to a degree you never saw in southeast Denver. and absent are Puritanical notions about everyone's mammalian bodies and the things they do, the kind of fearful notions which in the states interfere with bonding when they should enhance it. we all have mammal bodies; and all of our animal-mammal bodies do roughly the same funny things, so it should bring us closer together, shouldn't it?

Brenda, with the nicest home, back in the Blas de Lezo naval compound where i’m staying, has inside doors that shut poorly and don't lock, except the bathroom. but this house and the one in Santisima Cruz have only front and back doors, no inside ones at all. and the strangest thing is, sammy, people don't use the rooms to get away from each other, like i keep wanting to do. there’s none of this crap like we see in the U.S., of people wanting to go off by themselves and be alone for some reason, so each can watch his or her own TV channel or something. in Cocaland they herd together, like elephants, or wild horses. friends and family are the best entertainment going, apparently, as with monkeys and other primates. they're the best consolation, too. right now in the sala holding one big extended conversation are Robinson, his mother, two sisters, and i, all in a close semicircle in fan range, four of us in wicker rockers which Robbie sent them dollars all the way from New York to buy. Angel goes in and out, tracking the kids. there's no place left for him anyway, unless he sits on the wooden stool. the whole house is on one level, and measures less than 20 X 20.

Angel comes in from the porch and takes the last spot, the empty stool.

Robinson holds court from one of the rockers. after years away, given where he's been and what he's done, his sisters strike him as poorly informed. he speaks in a scolding voice. they listen and accept. only his mother talks back.

it's hard to picture him like this before he left Santisima Cruz eighteen years ago, but he says he was ‘always head of the family’. which makes no sense, of course, since he has complained for years that he was ‘abandoned’ by his mother, left a 'complete outsider' around his family.

we must all talk in contradictions. i probably contradict myself on every page. not that it should stop me from living with them, or trying to understand. i can publish my findings like the gringo sociologist, Oscar Lewis, who studied a family in Mexico and wrote The Children of Sanchez.[9] maybe the world will be saved from self-destruction a few days longer because of such effort.

don't ask me how. i feel it, sammy. i know it.

i want it to be so.

people like you, smarter then me, can sort through the contradictions and figure out how. maybe i’ll just supply the raw data.

Angel's wife looks the nicest i've seen her, in a trim lavender dress with sparkling thread and tiny little holes in the weave. she has put lipstick on, and added two golden earrings. she's so obviously happy to be going to Jehovah's Witness – Kingdom Hall, i think it’s called – she invites me and i beg off. i'm tired, and for once Robbie and i must get back to Brenda and Efrén's before bedtime. we've been rude, staying out every night so late.

such a change in plans means we won't see Chalo tonight, but there's no time left to get downtown, find the little urchin, visit with him, and get home at a decent hour. he'll have to wait until tomorrow and trust we haven't forgotten him.

things quiet down after Angel and his wife leave. one or two of the kids have gone with them – i've lost track of how many they have – and four are left, three of Mariela's. one of Adriana's.

that's another thing i have to get straight, sammy, which kids belong to which parents.

85.  CALMLY REASSURE EVERYONE THAT DESPITE A PASSIONATE INTEREST IN COCALAND YOUTH, YOU ARE NOT GAY.

Robbie was outshone at times in Santisima Cruz, maybe, but most of the time, like at the moment, right here in the sala, he was the center of attention. in the cab i told him that the biggest shock of all, in my opinion, was neither one of us alone, but the combination, an exciting and noticeable event whether in Santisima Cruz or Jackson Heights, Queens. the combination as friends is unexpected. we're opposites in many ways.[10] it would startle people in any country.

here occurred the discussion i've been trying to get to.

my comment unearthed a mother lode of gems.

what he really worried about at both parties in Santisima Cruz, he said, was that i might say or do something to make them think we were gay.

that's a gem, right?!!

he said the boys in Santisima Cruz were asking both of us personal questions.

i was aware of that. i was there. my head was attached. i paid attention. as paranoid as i was at times, that particular kind of paranoia never happened to me in Santisima Cruz. but for some reason, sammy, though he's had girlfriends and lives with a woman, it did happen to Robbie. i didn't laugh myself silly in the back of the cab, though i was tempted; or have a conniption either, telling him he was an imbecile. that was tempting too. i didn't ridicule him for making no sense. it didn't make sense, but his confession was too historic and delicate to tell him that. it's hard enough for men to talk about delicate feelings, especially face to face in the back of a careening cab they can't escape, with a sister listening in front, no less; it would be impossible if one laughed at the other.

instead i went calmly over everything that might have tended in that direction. i reassured him that every one of those boys, each on his own, had asked me the same questions: one, are you married? two, do you have kids? and three, did Robinson work for you? i always said i was divorced. i showed them pictures of the kids.

“one, are you married?  two, do you have kids?  and three, did Robinson work for you?” [11]

mj lorenzo’s two children and their little half-brother around 1992
(photo damaged by Mexican sun and rain)

"Robbie," i said, "that always puts the suspicion of being gay to rest. And you," i reminded him, "have told everyone that you lived with a Colombian woman who had a child. You should have brought pictures to show them like I did. Why didn't you? As for your working for me," i said, "I told them you lived with me but didn't work for me."

he said with a worried look he had told everyone he worked for me.

"Well," i said, "by the time a third person asked me that question, i figured you must have told them that. i have no idea why you would," i said, "but since in a way you did work for me, cooking and cleaning whenever it was your turn, i went ahead and confirmed it."

he looked relieved.

i couldn't imagine why he wanted people to think he had worked for me. what difference could it make? it was beyond me, so i dropped it. i would never have understood it anyway, sammy, given the language barrier and his sensitivity at that moment.

come to think of it, if this is how i've reacted to him in the past, it might explain why i still don't understand him at times.

i told him that several times at Gustavo's birthday party when he wasn't there, they'd asked if he'd had a baby in the U.S., and i'd said he hadn't. they'd kept asking, and i'd kept saying no. finally somebody had said loudly, almost as a public challenge, "Robinson told us he had a baby in the U.S."

they all stopped what they were doing and turned to listen. it was their way of saying, it seemed, that it was time i dealt with it correctly. so i did.

"He did? Well," i said with a thoughtful delay and a look, "it's possible."

they howled over that one. "It's possible! Es posible! That's RawBEANsawn!"

when Robbie heard this in the cab, he said he indeed had a baby in the U.S.

i looked at him the way he'd looked at me before, speechless.

no wonder i don't understand him! it’s impossible to know if he's kidding at times. he clowns so much, i've never taken half of what he said seriously, now that i think about it. this might be why i didn't know in Santisima Cruz how to take his statements about guerrillas. yet his clowning is one reason i've liked him as a friend. he doesn't take me seriously, either, and often that's what i need. at times i take myself seriously enough for forty billion people in three solar systems.

kidding a person in a serious tone goes on quite a bit along the Colombian coast. apparently it's a major costeño trait. it seems to include the understanding that the recipient of this kind of attention can take it seriously, if he wants, but isn't required to. it gives you the feeling that people here have less ego to protect than a lot of the people you and i know, yours-truly included.[12]

Robbie wasn't finished with me, though. he went on to say that from the way i looked at all the younger guys, and showed so much interest in them, they might have thought i was gay.

was he kidding, or serious?

did he mean i shouldn’t live there? is there no end to obstacles to my living there?

i’m getting tired of battling obstacles, sammy. i’ve been battling obstacles all day.

he seemed more serious than usual, actually. there wasn't a kidding angle to it, that i could find. he seemed worried. he was serious.

in this miserable world, oh shaman martinez, especially given the terminal condition in which i find myself, am i not allowed to fall in love with whoever and whatever i want, even if it's a streetful of Cocaland teens? God knows i've been homophobic enough lately, thanks to the infernal bug, to absolve myself of any guilt in that area. especially considering that fact, Robbie shouldn't hold Santisima Cruz against me.

how much of a fight is it going to be, to get back to that little town, sammy? do i really want to go through it? fighting my own friends?

if Robbie continues this line of thinking, it will cause serious tension between us. i have to fight back. i only have a little time left in this vale of tears, sammy, and he'd better not deny me a little love and friendship. after all, it's not sexual, my attraction to the boys of Santisima Cruz. and what if it were! i'm on my last legs, for Pete's sake. what if i did relax my standards and do something like that in my last days – keeping safety ever in mind, of course. we only live once. some of us love less often than that. should we spit in the face of friendship, if it rises up and stares us in the face at the last minute in some unusual form?

i spared Robbie this tirade. it shocked me when it roared through my head, i admit. the tirade went contrary to my tastes.

plus, it undermines the celibate stand i’ve been so proud of lately, sammy. there wasn’t the hint of an erection the whole time we were in Santisima Cruz. more proof i was not attracted to anybody.

and another reason to live there.

i admit it was a real turn-on watching and getting to know them, each one, but there was never a single millisecond of sexual attraction.

instead i said to Robbie – quite calmly, considering my almost violent emotion – that the fact that Ibrahim went out of his way to wave goodbye, and Gustavo came over to the house to do the same, and Pedro kept smiling over the patio wall, all indicated i had won acceptance and passed the test so important to fiercely straight boys the world over, who must assure themselves that older men showing an interest are not just soft on them, meaning, wondering what's inside their jockeys. such young men want to respect older friends, not throw up on them.

anyway, i told Robbie, i don't worry about whether people think i'm gay any more, the way i used to when i was young and confused like he still is, obviously. if i worry about it at all, it isn't in the way he does.

Robbie is afraid of losing face. whereas the only thing i worry about is offending people so much they'll lose out on my friendship, and i on theirs. face isn't the problem. what will face be worth, eaten by worms?

he was quiet on hearing this. he stared at me.

i asked him to please not accuse me again on this trip – or any other – of acting in such a way as to make people think we were gay. fifty one years in the world should have taught me by now how to behave in a way to avoid that accusation. no one in all my years ever did accuse me of acting gay.

"if i had acted so," i said to him, "some helpful person would have pointed it out to me by now, after fifty years, don't you think?"

i came on pretty strong. and robbie, like the good-natured friend he is, and always has been, agreed to never imply such an accusation again, in what i think was a genuinely serious tone.

86.  DREAM YOU’LL SAVE THE PLANET.  IT'LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR.  BUT FOR NOW, YOU CAN'T BE EVERYTHING TO EVERYBODY, SO BE YOURSELF.

Mariela of the skinny cheeks has taken Adriana's place in the rocker next to mine and interrupts my writing. she wants me to be padrino (godfather) to the little girl that just turned 2 – the baptism is Saturday afternoon – and i tell her our plane to Bogotá leaves Friday, or Saturday morning. yet she keeps asking.

seeing that my absence on that day will not get me off the hook, i ask if i hadn't told her before, that i don't understand South America well, and don't know enough about being padrino, because i was raised Methodist, a gringo kind of Christian cult that denies its members the blessings of godparenting.

this flippant approach won't win friends, probably, but the truth is, at the moment, accumulating more friends and family with each passing day, i feel like i can't handle an ounce of responsibility more. i wish i could. in fact i want to take care of everybody, the whole world, i mean. for years i've wanted with all my heart to save the planet and every member of every species on it. and do you know what? i'm not too tired to attempt it any more. i've apparently started by taking on a townful of boys in the Colombian backcountry, and with all that responsibility, how can i be somebody's godfather too? i won't have enough time or money. or love.

i'll run out of love, sammy.

plus there's Chalo to think about.

i’m not saying any of this to Mariela, of course. she wouldn't understand. who in this world can understand what i'm feeling about Santisima Cruz, or Chalo, and about saving the whole world? i don't understand it myself. they’d think i was completely all-out mamagallo crazy, which i’m not. just half-crazy, as you know.

instead i tell her, if she wants to know what kind of parent or godparent i would make, she should look at my son.

i shouldn't have said that either. i don't believe it myself any more. i have more hope for him than i did a week ago.

the best reason to tell her no, is that she could hardly want a godfather who is about to leave the planet. but what's the use? they can't know about my infection here.

even though i have no proof of it, i admit.

really, sammy, i'm tired of having to censor myself all the time. it’s a drag having so many crazy secrets to hide. i'd like to talk to somebody about these things. it might do me good, but i'm afraid of how people here would react.

she says in her ghostly way that i didn't talk to her. i talked to Linda.

who's Linda? i ask.

"The cuñada, my sister-in-law."

Angel's wife, Linda. i knew i had talked to somebody about it.

she keeps looking at me. i look at her, then at Robbie, hoping for a change of subject. i look at her again, and at Robbie again.

"But the baptism is Saturday," she finally says to Robbie, and discussion takes off from there, aimed at the rest of the crowd. it's incomprehensible to me.

i remind Robbie to talk to his family about whether we leave Cartagena Friday or Saturday. today is Tuesday.

obviously everyone will have several lifetimes of unfinished business when we leave.

Robbie says his family will be more relaxed with me the second time around, in December.

this is in response to a worried look on my face, i presume.

i've been worried he or Yazmín or somebody would have found all of this – meaning ME – too much. i am difficult, don't you think, sammy?

that's why i never know, and probably never will, whether people accept me FOR my weird and difficult self; or DESPITE it, merely because i represent something they're interested in, like money, doctoring, booze, shoes, fans, gringo power, godfathering, laughs or something else. since i never seem to be quite sure which of these two things is really going on, i figure i should pick the safest approach. if i keep buying fans for Yazmín and shoes for Adriana as i did today, or paying trips to Santisima Cruz for one and all, and uttering million-dollar lines at the right moment during all-night drinking parties with the boys, then i MIGHT keep passing muster in this little corner of the world.

but godfathering is a taller order. if the real parents die, YOU become the parent!

most of my life i’ve rejected would-be friends. i was sure they would reject me as too different. i am an introvert. i am different, in a number of big ways, as you know, sammy. ninety-five per cent of the world’s population is extroverted and outgoing, according to the Jungians, leaving introverts like me a rare five per cent and seeming unusual, abnormal, stand-offish, weird, and hard to talk to.

in Santisima Cruz, however, they expected me to be ‘different’. everything they'd heard about gringos was ‘different’, incomprehensible and funny. with them, being different was a plus, not a minus. it was a source of distinction and laughing good times.

i always wanted to be one of the guys, sammy, and never felt i was. for all of my life i've felt i wasn't, until Saturday night at the beauty contest in Santisima Cruz, suddenly, for a few minutes, i was.

i do have points in my favor. maybe i've shied away from women since the divorce. maybe i don't have guts any more in that area. maybe i haven't kept up with the way sex roles have changed. but i can love a friend and be loved, if guys will get over their macho fragility and dislike of anything smacking of same-sex affection. in my opinion, even straight men should love good male friends very deeply. what's wrong with that? i don't know.

someone could say it was especially wrong if you were older, and the one you cared about was young. some of the guys in Santisima Cruz might worry, theoretically, that their friends could lose respect for them if they let an older man show too much interest in them. but i didn't see any sign they worried. each seemed open to every bit of interest i showed. i didn't announce or proclaim any special interest. i didn't send golden cockerels like men sent in ancient Greece to youths. Ibrahim and Gustavo and their mother sent us a gift. a live croaking gold and black chicken.

“I didn’t send golden cockerels like men sent in ancient Greece to youths”

a typical Santisima Cruz rooster

lots of times the simplest solution, in this stupid world, sammy, is to let no one know how much you care about another man, even when there’s nothing sexual. it's sad, because there's too little love in the world as it is. every bit of love anywhere should be expressed freely, because love heals us, even when we just watch it happening to someone else.

and here's a thought, my last for the night, because we're leaving for Efrén and Brenda's and i have to stop. but think about it, sammy. if there's one small town in the world with priceless youth in it like Santisima Cruz, there must be others. somewhere there are more young barber-fishermen with bright eyes, more Ibrahims with helpful hands.

in a way it would be nice to think there were no town in the world like it, that i’d been just one man in a thousand billion, sammy, more graced than anyone, the only one on earth to have found such a place and made such friends. but there's no basis for thinking like this. other towns on the planet lack roads and cars. in Colombia alone there must be dozens of towns with young men as fine as those in Santisima Cruz. there must be hundreds, even thousands more such towns, around the world.

there must be young men and women of heart everywhere, sammy. why should i think the world doomed? look at Chalo. he has heart in spite of everything!! if one or two boys in each town, or one or two girls, can survive the trauma of growing up without their hearts breaking, and can do it as magically as Ibrahim, Gustavo and Pedro have, or Chalo, something good may come of us yet on this hurtling ball of fire.

Dr. Lorenzo and his Mexican helper Hechizo in Mexico 2012

just before Hechizo was killed in a Mexican Saturday night street brawl[13]