HOOKED ON COCALAND

st. mj's guide to paradise for lost gringos

 book three:

Cartagena Amable:

back in the city again

craving a paradise fix

(cont’d)

Robbie in Mexico 2005 the summer he became a U.S. citizen

wednesday morning, 10/12/94.

87.  STAVE OFF DEATH.  INDULGE OBSESSION WITH THIRD WORLD YOUTH IN ANY FORM.

today, sammy, we look for Chalo.

i'm chomping at the bit, and Robbie's sleeping.

i don't know what's wrong with me.

the more he sleeps, the more restless i get.

after we left Pozón last night we came to Efrén's, where i'm sitting now, in the sala. crying again, this time over nothing but the vallenato on the radio.

what is going on?

it's simple, approachable music. friendlier than other fast-beat Caribbean music. but then i should be singing and dancing, not crying.

had i stayed in Cartagena the whole trip i might have ignored vallenato. but i can't now. it takes me back to Santisima Cruz, its mud, chickens, pigs, their keepers and all the feelings they stir up.

that's why i'm crying, maybe. until now, my life has denied me such places.

i'm obsessed with the town. last night when we got here, i tried to explain to Brenda why i can't stop thinking about her hometown. i described the boys as i saw them – how from the moment i sat on Yazmín's porch they stared from the bench, then gathered around at the beauty contest, drew me out and gradually made me a part of their neighborhood gang. i told her how we got drunk – i did anyway – how Ibrahim gave me a hand to get me across the caño.

i didn't tell her my attitude improved. i didn't want her to know i'd had an attitude, since it was about her land and people.

then Efrén came along, and i still couldn't keep quiet about the boys. i told him they seemed caught between political poles. i knew a little about it, because one night in your low-ceilinged living room in San Juan, sammy, if you remember, we watched a program on public television. it told how in Argentina or Brazil, a nun from a French-speaking European country had tried to help a few simple people get ahead. her work must have offended somebody, because she or her young South American helpers, or both – i can't remember – had suddenly one day 'disappeared'. that's what the program had called it: 'disappeared'.

Efrén confirmed that at times in Latin America young men got too close to politics, and ended up dead or ‘desaparecido’ (disappeared). Efrén used the same Spanish word as the TV program, 'disappeared'.

i've never had a brother, so i can't compare my feelings in that way.

but i've had a son, and you've seen me lose it over Freddie, who in his own way managed to disappear. all spring, the calls came in from Denver. all spring in San Juan with you, i cried as my own flesh and blood fell from grace, his life washing away in coca. that's how you got me talking, wasn’t it, about exactly when and how i had used it. remember?

i've mourned a few young patients, too, over the years, who went haywire and foiled my best efforts to help them.

but how in the world did i end up feeling after only four days, that the young men of Robbie's hometown were an intimate part of me, like brothers or sons? to the extent that if anything went wrong in their lives, i'd feel a loss? after just four days? i don't get it. it's hard to explain, why, overnight, i would become obsessed with a remote canal-side barrio and every one of its bright-eyed bushy-tailed youth. i felt that way about no one in your pueblo after two years of holing up there. and from the young men in my family, i've kept a distance for years.

i used to obsess about Jaime, i admit, but i had to let go, just as i had to let go of Robbie years before.

and maybe that's how it will end with my new protégés in Santisima Cruz.

i'll go there to stay. the closeness will last a few months or years. i'll teach them what little i know that they might use. some English maybe. or U.S. civics. Robert's Rules of Order. who knows what? things i can't foresee, that i happen to know, that they don't. knowledge of how to run a business. i did that once. or how to survive emotionally in a rapidly changing world. granted i haven't been good at it, but i've been around and seen a bit, and i’m still learning new ways to not be done in by it.

all this teaching and mentoring will keep us friends. but then, as they move away to school in Cartagena or Barranquilla, or to jobs with their uncles in Sincelejo, like Pedro, i'll have to let go again. they'll get married and forget their old friend from the U.S.

or they'll teach in a rural school, like Ibrahim. one Saturday night they'll end up drunk, say something that offends political powers that be, and get knocked off. disappeared.

i'm exaggerating, i hope. not everything bad on TV has to happen here, does it?

besides, if i'm dying, it shouldn't bother me what happens to other people, should it? and i'm dying, right?

yet i'm obsessed with the boys of Santisima Cruz and their well-being.

and nervous about meeting Chalo.

when i get home, sammy, i want you to tell me, honestly, if all dying people obsess about youth, or just me.

“they’ll move away to jobs with their uncles in Sincelejo like Pedro”

Pedro straightening and folding his net for storage

it's raining.

i'm at the dining table by the balcony window, trying to get air from the street. it’s the first time it's rained in the morning. usually it rains for an hour at four in the afternoon, or at midnight, or not at all, like yesterday.

rain or no rain, if Robbie gets up and dressed we'll do our best to find Chalo. don't ask me why. i have worries enough by now, but i've missed him and worried about him since we went to Santisima Cruz.

he has no family, nothing to fall back on. nobody. what if he doesn't sell enough cigarettes?

we didn't look for him last night as we’d promised him, poor thing. we were too tired, and had to get back here to Efrén and Brenda's early, for once, even though Chalo was expecting us.

there might be other reasons i didn't look for him, reasons i wasn't remembering last night. he could be a problem. no wonder i'm nervous. he'll want my help, like Robbie says. he'll be desperate to get to the states. if i don't give him the help, he might try to steal it. he's had six days walking the streets to think up a move. that's why, if i had an ounce of sense, sammy, i'd find a young friend of a higher social bracket and forget Chalo. who knows where the penniless punk might lead me?

yet i want to find him. he needs me more than the boys of Santisima Cruz do. they can turn to each other. he deals with life alone, so his chances are slimmer, his future bleaker. he's a species unto himself, close to extinction. it's not a given that he'll make it on the uncaring street.

and i'm tired of living in fear, sammy, always afraid to reach out a hand.

“he deals with life alone”

3 Pozón boys ride rudimentary home-made toy horses with toy reins

Robinson's up, sitting at the phone in a white towel. he agrees we should find Chalo right away before he quits looking for us. but if we call New York first, it’ll make the December trip more possible.

he calls his girlfriend Caridad in Jackson Heights. her teenage brother, Tobías, has gone to the hospital with ulcers. he's lived with them lately, and has gotten closer to Robbie.

since we've come to the homeland without them, it might arouse their envy even more if we came here again inside two months, in December; and to arouse their envy at all is inadvisable. we need their support if Robbie is to come back in December. and i need his support, so i can come back. thus the phone call to New York.

in Santisima Cruz i need Robbie as guide and interpreter, and to answer questions about living there, or i'll be lost.

he wants to come back and has a plan for making it happen – talk Caridad into coming with us.

if she refuses, he'll have to forget the trip in December with me, and come back later with just her.

i have to come back right away, sammy, or i might die, literally. December is hardly soon enough. with or without him, because i need these people and they need me. Ibrahim needs help teaching English to campesinos. his friends need help, each in his way. exactly how, i can't say because i don't know. i'll find out later. but i know from the way they kept crowding around me they need me.

if Robbie can't be my guide and interpreter, my December trip will be handicapped. many situations will arise where no one else can help. i told him yesterday in the taxi that though Ibrahim passed back and forth in front of me on his kid-size dirt bike all morning, he seemed indifferent or on guard, just as he had – the more i thought about it – at Gustavo's birthday party. who else could have helped me understand this but Robbie? it's fascinating and silly, i guess, but i confessed my worry and told him the story, how i felt ignored by the multiple dirt bike passings, but relieved when Ibrahim finally went out of his way to have people along the caño show me, that he was waving goodbye from the boat.

Robbie didn't tell me i was ‘soft on Ibrahim’, sammy. he didn't say as you might have, i was obsessed, or 'addicted' to these guys. that's what you would have said. he didn't accuse me of making him or me look gay. he kept his word and didn't mention the banned subject. instead, with care and consideration, he explained how Ibrahim had been preoccupied all morning. he should have left as early as seven to teach in the countryside, said Robbie, but his transportation had broken down. all morning they'd worked on the boat, till twelve or one. that's why he would pass by on his beat-up kid's dirt bike again and again. he'd head for the docks down by the main plaza every fifteen minutes, to check the boat. people do such things when they don't have phones, apparently. then Ibrahim would tear along muddy paths back to our place on the tiny kid’s bike and try once more to convince Robbie to stay in town until he, Ibrahim, got back from the countryside Thursday. that way he wouldn't have to say goodbye to us then, a day before we were leaving. the two of them would debate this for fifteen minutes, then he'd tear off for the docks again.

Robbie didn't reduce my preoccupation with Ibrahim to a sexual one.

someone else might have made the mistake, however. like you, sammy.

you're always hoping and praying in your psycho-shamanic sex therapist mind, that my interest in sex has returned.

sammy, my interest in sex has not returned. it’s not going to. if it did, it would not focus on boys or men, but women. don't try to push off on me your kind of interest in racer. i'm not interested in someone like racer or you, or any guy, in that way. that is not why i let you take me home with you to San Juan, from the ‘gathering’.[1]

did Lorenzo de Medici heap devotion on Michelangelo and a townful of young artists just for sexual reasons? no one who knew Florence, Italy, during the Renaissance, ever said so. was Socrates' feeling for his students, like Plato for instance, at all sexual? you wouldn't say such a thing, would you, sammy, as well educated as you are? i hope not. he might have experimented once or twice like i did, when young and randy, but he got over it. when he matured, he applauded if an older man loved a younger, but said it should stay nonsexual. after he was gone, history called this 'Platonic Love' and thought it a good, pure, even disciplined and ennobling affection that made the world a better place.

but i know you, sammy. you're saying to racer right now that i sound defensive. as if i were hiding something.

i'm not defensive, and i'm not hiding anything. i carry on about young men because my favorite teacher at Naropa used to. he demonstrated by his own example how important it was to carry on about a taboo subject, and how to do it. if Allen Ginsberg could do it, why can't i? he would wander from a brilliant lecture on a poet like Blake, Kerouac, or Whitman, to a tangentially related subject, his own intense attraction to young men. then he'd hammer away on that subject, even harder than he'd preached the poets. it made no difference if most of the class showed little interest. he knew his classes liked and respected him and would never laugh or interrupt his poetic and prophetic eminence. using us as a captive audience, sammy, he'd go on defending his relationships with young men, sexual though they were – he made no bones about it – until either he tired, or some young student offered a tactful, well-expressed question showing him the way back to Blake or Whitman.

now that i think about it, Allen might have obsessed about youth aloud in public for the same reason i do. he might have thought he’d die soon. it makes sense. he was pushing seventy.

my case is different, however, because you, sammy, are an ‘interested’ audience. you've been studying my life for years, especially its personal and private aspects. and it’s different because my interest in young men is not sexual.

since you always like juicy stuff, like sex, and sex therapy, i'll toss you a juicy tidbit. are you ready? the only love i seem to have left in me, to tell you the honest-to-God truth, is same-sex. and it's old-to-young, like Allen's, and like yours for racer. but here's the kicker. are you sitting down? have you got your shin guards on?….: it's NOT SEXUAL. it's Platonic. don't think you're going to change me like you've changed your other sex therapy patients, into a 'satisfied, naturally sexual animal,' as you say.  i'm too close to the grave to care about sex. there's too little love in the world already, for you or anyone to mess with what little there is, or to find fault with the small amount of harmless nonsexual affection one gringo feels for a streetful of South American boys.

i can just hear you saying, that first i gave up addiction to cocaine and sex, and fell into depression. and now i've found a way out of depression, but what i’ve found is nothing but another addiction. i know you, sammy. i know this is what you're thinking. it's what you would say if you were here in person, and i don't like it. you put me down when you talk like that.

but you'd say, "I never said such a thing." you'd play innocent and say i was just imagining you were thinking that thought.

"You're the one thinking that thought,” you'd say. that's how clever you are with your 'therapy'. you want me to think it came from me. of course it's my thought, but only because i know it would have been yours!!!

"Go ahead," you'd say. "Fight depression and early death any way you can. It's okay. ‘Es oké!’ Any interest in the world will do for now, any reason to go on living a little longer. Go ahead, exchange your old addiction for a new one. Instead of sex and coca in whatever form, indulge obsession with third world youth in whatever form. It'll help you to feel you're doing something to save yourself and your civilization a little longer. But ultimately, it won't save you or your civilization, if one or the other is meant to go. It'll just be a temporary fix."

that's the kind of devastating, lengthy, detailed interpretation you've tossed my way daily the past few months, sammy, and i don't want to hear it any more.

it's unsympathetic. it undermines my self-esteem. and it's not true.

i don't think i ever told you, maybe because for two years i hardly talked to you, that i gave up cocaine and sex in 92, not to save the world from infection. no. i gave them up to reduce the number of my addictions. i had to stop ruining relationships. i hoped the sacrifice would make me a better person, and i think it's starting to, so don't try to nip it in the bud. not everybody in the world should be like you, you know, sexual day and night.

i was hoping my example might challenge others, like you and racer, to better themselves in a similar way.

okay, it's overblown.

i'm overblown.

my self-denial has had no effect on you and racer, obviously, or anyone else probably.

to people raised with a healthy respect for sex, like you two, i sound twisted and grandiose. but remember, sammy, that Saint Augustine agrees with me, and nobody ever said he was twisted or grandiose, not on this subject anyway. he was clever and convicted, that's all. he said very clearly, that when he gave up physical cravings for the sake of something greater, it made the sacrifice easier. it made an ordinary person feel like a saint, in other words. i can vouch for that. there's nothing wrong with feeling like a saint for a few minutes, is there?

i know your rebuttal. kicking the sex habit isn't required for becoming a saint, you'd say, or for being content and successful in this world or the next, either, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

i don't want to hear it.

i'm tired of the whole discussion...

Robbie is really rolling. maybe he'll get dressed. he’s talking to Tobías in the hospital in New York, charging it to my calling card.

i ask him to tell Tobías i paid for the call. i care. i want him to get better. also, i insist he take the ulcer medicine he's refused – he’ll get better faster, and it won’t hurt him – and not be jealous of the fun Robbie and i are having in the homeland he misses.

Robbie does this and comes back smiling. Tobías will be out of the hospital today and will be there with Caridad Saturday when the plane lands at JFK.

Robbie was going to play one of his famous practical jokes. he'd tell them he'd changed his plans and was staying another week. then he'd surprise them and show up at the airport a week early, the date originally planned. but i said such a change would upset them and make Tobías' ulcers worse. fooling around with their feelings was risky, and could make it harder to talk Caridad into coming with us in December. so he scuttled the prank and told them we'd be coming as planned, this Saturday.

now we'll have breakfast: Boca Chica fried fish, yuca, and lime.

you put the lime on the fish, not on the yuca, says Robbie. however i like my lime on the yuca and plan to eat it that way.

Colombian yuca, by the way, the tasty root they feed me two or three times every day in Cocaland, the food i've spelled 'yucca' in my head until now, is not the yucca that grows in the U.S. southwest, says my big hardcover Spanish dictionary. it's yuca in Spanish, ‘leached cassava root’, the source of tapioca. sometimes it's called ‘manioc’.

i hope i'm not boring you, sammy, but when they push it at you, and you like it and can't figure out what it is, you tend to get interested.

food is less deadly than sex and drugs. you should be glad it gives me diversion.

Victoria contemplating it all

"you put the lime on the fish, not on the yuca, says Robbie

however i like my lime on the yuca and plan to eat it that way"

once we've eaten our fish and yucca, or yuca, we'll shower and head for town and change our tickets so we can leave Cartagena Saturday, not Friday.

we’ll give up a day in Bogotá, and have an extra day here for family and street urchins.

after we change tickets i'll look for Chalo. i'll take him shopping for vallenato CD's. we'll fool around downtown. he'll be my trusty guide to Cocaland like before, hopefully, and keep it simple and lighthearted. he won't pressure me to get him into the states, in other words. i've got enough to worry about already. i need his kind of fun and entertainment to relax a little and forget, like before. i think i'm about ready, sammy, to forget all the poor, underprivileged boys of this world for just a few minutes. after a while it's overwhelming.

it's made me a fanatic, as you can see.

instead of fretting over them, i want to just enjoy one of them for a while.

'Goof time is God time', as Ginsberg's young poet pals used to say.

“'Goof time is God time', as Ginsberg's young poet pals used to say.”

—

Victoria with friends at the family street stand
sign reads:

KIOSQUE
of

JESÚS ALBERTO
WE SELL:

MEAT, SOUP BONE, LIVER
TRIPE, HEN
CHICKEN BREAST & LEG
GIBLETS, VEGETABLES
BEER, AGUARDIENTE
MEDELLÍN RUM, CARBONATED DRINKS
PURIFIED WATER
CHOCOLATE BARS AND CIGARETTES
HOURS: SERVING
CUSTOMERS 24 HOURS

88.  PREPARE TO MEET YOUR LITTLE STREET URCHIN GUIDE AND NEMESIS; FIGHT NERVOUSNESS.  MEDITATE ON ORDINARY THINGS AROUND YOU.

10:20 a.m.  i've showered under the single faucet of water, which is always the same temperature, cool, never hot. shaved and swept soapy water across concrete into floor drain. dressed; and am waiting. i've virtually made a show of being ready.

Robbie meanders about the house doing plenty of nothing.

Brenda digs out my Avianca ticket from a secret spot in their bedroom. she finds me more travelers checks.

in case Chalo gets expensive.

what if i don't find him in the rain, sammy? do cigarette boys work the streets in the rain?

Brenda puts on a tape and i commit the apparent faux pas of asking if it's Rocio Durcal. i pull on a shirt and it sticks at once. air has stopped moving. rain does not lessen heat in Cocaland, apparently. i'm ready to get out of this sticky place, down to the Caribbean breeze of Boca Grande. ready to think about something besides Santisima Cruz, sammy. i'm jumpy and nervous. a little depressed.

okay, rub my nose in it. i used to crave coke when i got like this. now i crave Chalo.

give me credit. i consider it progress.

waiting for Robbie, i take my morning Doxycycline and spill Brenda's orange juice between ladle and plastic cup, then mop up the mess with a disgusting kitchen towel used as dish rag. Robbie plays a tape a California friend sent him. Persian music. black flies land in my orange juice.

Robbie's in the kitchen talking with his sister, Brenda.

getting this show on the road may take weeks.

maybe it's for the best. the longer we take, the later we get there. the later we get there, the greater the chance it will have stopped raining. the less it's raining, the likelier Chalo will be on the street.

and i do need to find him, sammy. depression has surrendered its stranglehold, and i need Chalo to keep it at bay.

plus Adriana might turn up here. that could get complicated.

i want to get out of here.

Brenda calls a neighbor, Anita, in the shrill female tone heard all over Latin America. 'Ah-nEEEEe-tah!!!'

she turns off the singer who isn't Rocio and turns on TV. a daytime soap from Mexico.

Victoria washing dishes in her AIR-conditioned

back patio-kitchen in Santisima Cruz

10:30 a.m.

Efrén's home is the nicest of the four Colombian homes i've seen inside. his Sony TV is the latest model and gives a big, clear brilliant picture. granted, the overhead fan causes screen static, but turn it off and you asphyxiate.

products in the commercials are gringo. Pantene shampoo. Borden mozzarella. Nescafe. the ad models are pale, Caucasian types who speak clear, educated Spanish. i don't know where they find pale Latinos in such large numbers. they must import them, because i haven't seen this many in the parts of Cocaland i've visited. but one ad shows how to use Puro when you wash clothes in a tub in the mud patio, or in the muddy river, not the awful powder clothing detergent that wrecks your hands. the female model they've used in this unusual case, washing a huge pile of her family's clothes in the flowing water of the real outdoors RIVER under real outdoors TREES, is much browner than the ones that ate Borden mozzarella, probably because most rich Latin Americans are more pale and live in big cities, and in this ad they are trying to sell Puro to the poor, backward, rural, mostly ethnically indigenous-blooded parts of the country like Santismia Cruz.

ALL ABOARD!
a Cocaland dock (Santisima Cruz)

(doin’ the rio-town hustle)

Robbie sits down in his white towel again, still talking with Brenda, who has offered to put me up in December in case he doesn't come. she'll even take me to Santisima Cruz if necessary. i'm not as grateful as i should be. i don't want to encourage this type of thinking. Robbie has to return with me, and i tell him so. he'll get a second job, he reassures me. that's how he'll pay for the trip in December.

it’ll happen, that's all there is to it, sammy. i need another trip to lay the groundwork for moving here. we’ll get Caridad to approve.

Tobías, says Robbie, has agreed he'll take the ulcer medicine i insisted he take. earlier i explained to Robbie that medication has improved so much, people hardly need operations any more for ulcers. he has passed this on to Caridad, who worries about her brother for other reasons. Robbie says she fears her brother is caught up in some unspeakable, probably only imagined by her, intrigue between New York and Cocaland.

maybe it's true, i say. how would Robbie know? does he expect Tobías to tell him? maybe that explains his ulcer.

without knowing Tobías more than the single day i stayed with them in New York, i seem to have adopted him as a protégé‚ too, sammy. i don't know how it has happened, but i'm mothering and fathering every third world kid i meet.

taking care of them like you did me.

only in our case the roles were reversed. you were the third world kid, so to speak, younger than me, taking care of me.

how do we explain that aberration on top of all else?

more ads. Gelatina, served in glass cups. Cocoa. Klim powdered whole milk. Ariel laundry detergent, good even for mechanic's grease. back come the soap opera ladies who look like Spanish grandes dames. the lace on their dresses is so precious you’d think we'd all live forever.

Sandi in silhouette

out the door the rain on an upper balcony reaches a critical mass and crashes to the sidewalk in one falling mass. a dark youth walks by selling fresh Boca Chica fish. like other mornings, the milk boy comes, then the beer man. three trash trucks turn into the paved street in a row, honking horns. women and shirtless shoeless kids run out in the warm rain. they toss bulging plastic bags into the backs of trash trucks, then run back to their doors splashing through warm rain puddles.

in some parts of Cocaland they collect trash, apparently. that's a bright spot on the horizon.

i've finished the orange juice and discovered in the bottom of the glass a pile of black coarse powder. coffee grounds from the last person who used it, maybe. or ants. pieces of flies. the balcony upstairs spills another critical mass of overflow to the street. i pick up a disposable plastic cup from the stack where i found the first one, and discover water between it and the next.

so many objects in poor third world countries are infinitely, and not always gracefully, recycled.

and now i'm tired. i want out. Chalo needs attention and i do too.

we have our own soap opera to enact.

i track Robbie down. i want to leave before Adriana shows up, i tell him. if i have to be nice to her, she’ll think about marriage and end up hurt. he goes in the bathroom, maybe to get ready. maybe not.

Nestle's powdered milk for coffee. Nabisco Club Social crackers. FAB detergent for two waiters colliding in the swinging doors of a restaurant kitchen, dousing each other in gravy. Nestle's canned cream to pour over fresh strawberries. a girl in white lace, with a silver cross at the base of her neck, talks sadly to a turn-of-the-century lady in cocked bonnet.

are they trying to tell me something? it could be the answer to my biggest problem. but how would i know? i can't understand.

in our street a man goes by the balcony yelling "Plantains and fruit!" pushing piles of bananas in a metal wheelbarrow.

on TV an attractive nurse and a fine lady talk earnestly in a love seat. the nurse doesn't have the parents she thought she did. that was the preview for tomorrow. everything winds down. excerpts from past shows. more fine ladies. bare-chested men in fancy dark bedrooms with fully dressed ladies, implying sex. all the juicy things they put you through weeks ago. memories of past events, meant to whet the appetite for more.

Latino soaps[2] run for six months or a year. they air on Hispanic channels in U.S. cities too, as you know, sammy, and few non-Hispanics ever bother with them.

why do U.S. gringos shun the outside world? what are they trying to avoid?

i think they fear the things i used to fear, before i came here. and it’s all in their head, just like Robbie said.

a breeze comes in from the street, stirred by a truck stacked with red cases of Coca Cola in bottles, manned by three brown men in uniforms. a paint-flaked short bus goes by with windows and doors open, splashing water on the sidewalk.

i see no ringlets in puddles. the overflow from upstairs has been quiet. i go out on the balcony.

yes. it has stopped raining.

but robbie's not ready.

89.  ACT INTERESTED IN YOUR HOST’S PHOTOS, THOUGH YOU DROP WITH WEARINESS.

it was a sacrifice, sammy, to give up Chalo until today. i shouldn't have put him second, but i told Robbie we had to get home early last night. why? because the last few times we slept here we either came home after their bedtime, or rose at 4 AM to go to Santisima Cruz without them. we were always disrupting the family's sleep, without ever seeing them or visiting. he agreed and we made it back by nine; and our hosts, Efrén and Brenda, as if appreciating the effort, gave us a warm greeting.

this was when i told Efrén about Santisima Cruz. we were having a good time. then i found in my stuff the map of Cartagena he'd given me last week. i gave it back, explaining i'd bought another one for myself. his maps of the city were old and frayed, i said, and i gave him a new one i’d bought him.

a momentum of sharing built. Robbie was in jockeys in the makeshift bedroom they'd made for him out of the storage room. he laid himself out on the floor on an air mattress, fan blowing back and forth across his feet, and was dying to enjoy the cooling breeze and sleep, but the rest of us were having too good a time to leave his doorway. i gave Efrén and Brenda a John Fielder calendar for next year, '95, full of Colorado’s Rocky Mountains in every season, spread out in detail too beautiful to believe. Brenda studied every big photo for minutes, from distant peaks to orange lichen on rocks in foreground, while Robbie begged, laughing and whimpering, that we leave so he could sleep; he was tired after the trip back, he said. but Efrén stayed in the doorway, trying to explain to me what he does on the naval academy's wandering ambassadorial school boat. boiler repair or something. finally he said goodnight to Robbie and we closed the door.

i was as dead as Robbie. i’d gotten up at 4 AM too, in Santisima Cruz, so we could catch the very first chalupa downriver. but just when i thought i could go wearily to bed, Efrén pulled out his photo albums and piled them on the dining room table.

i had to go along. he and Brenda had been generous, while we, due to our several unmentioned rendezvous with Chalo, then our trip to river country, had been distant and inconsiderate. so i let him take me through thirty pages of Robinson's family in recent years, item by item. i had to get up off the chair to stay awake. if i stood, i figured, i’d HAVE to stay awake, or i'd keel over and crack my head.

then he reached to the left for a second album.

this one told the story of his life sailing around the globe with the Colombian navy. there stood Efrén in a flashing white uniform and a white sailor’s hat, with a single flashy yellow, blue and red medal on his chest. Efrén at the US naval base, Jacksonville, Florida, called Mépo, he said: ‘Mayport’ with a Spanish accent. Efrén with a pal on the dock in Athens or Piraeus. the Parthenon. the Balearic Islands – a regatta that Efrén's ship won, though usually they lost. the wailing wall in Jerusalem. the Panama Canal. Panama was part of Colombia till the U.S. found it ideal for a canal, he said. i didn't know that, and you didn't either, i bet, Sammy. then it was The Moros, two rocks in the southernmost Colombian Pacific port. the story of the rocks and how they got their name was dreadfully detailed. i didn't understand a thing, because when i'm tired i can't grasp much in Spanish. there were more pictures, about a hundred, and i was dying.

on the last page i thanked him tactfully, practically tasting the pillow under my head, but he reached to the right for a thick album. i said i was tired. he said he'd go faster. we did his childhood and handsome youth in fifteen excruciating minutes, and i got to bed.

feeding the chickens in Santisima Cruz

blessed by church steeples

90.  DON'T BE SHY.  THE WORLD NEEDS YOU AND YOUR STREET URCHIN GUIDE.

7 pm. at Yazmín's, in Pozón. showing off what we bought downtown. justifying why we were gone so long – with Chalo, of course, a critical detail we don’t mention.

Robinson gives Adriana the casette tape he bought her. into the miniature boom box it goes. he tries to teach little Jesús to dance to the huge vallenato hit of the day, Diomedes Diaz' ‘Santo Cachón’. Yazmín smiles, bearing plates of rice from the kitchen. two places she sets. everyone's eaten but us. we're an hour and a half late, from fooling around with Chalo and a kid Chalo's age Robbie promised Caridad he’d look up, her ‘favorite cousin’.

7:30. Linda, Angel's wife, says i should write about how much i liked the comida, now that i've eaten, used the toilet in the bathroom that has a woman’s dress for a door, and finally sat down in a wicker rocker with the infamous yellow tablet in my lap.

in fact it was the tastiest chicken i ever ate, sammy. the most delicious gizzard i've ever had the pleasure to chomp into. probably because the subject and object of the meal was slain today in the yard, just seconds before cooking.[3]  that gizzard had a rich, meaty flavor, instead of the rancid taste you get when you buy a whole chicken and entrails in a U.S. supermarket. and the drumstick, instead of tasting like American supermarket chicken leg, tasted like animal meat. i don't know how to describe it. richer; gamier, maybe. fresher and meatier than the usual packaged chicken.

as planned, Chalo helped me buy a hundred dollars' worth of vallenato CD's in the old city. i'm not showing them to the family. it seems lavish. extravagant. i can't tell them i indulge myself like a millionaire playboy, even if it's over their own musical folklore i lose my head. i haven't shown them my spending side, Sammy. they may suspect i have one though. Brenda, my banker, could have counted the American Express travelers checks, and wondered where they went.

she’d never guess a fair amount went to some Colombian street urchin.

my latest investment in quashing world-weariness for ever and ever.

Robbie and i by mistake got on a wrong bus this afternoon that took us through rich neighborhoods, for a change, and straight to Boca Grande, the main beach and night club and hotel area. it was just as well. it was too late to get to the bank downtown before siesta anyway, so we went straight to the Café Pelican, where we’d told Chalo we'd meet him once we got back.

as soon as we sat down i turned into mush again, despairing of meeting the kid, wishing we had set a definite time rather than saying vaguely, Cocaland style, "At the Café Pelican, after we get back from Santisima Cruz."  but in twenty minutes there he was, coming down the sidewalk with his rosy golden brown face, dark eyes, understated Celtic nose, and dirty stained clothes. short and trim. no wasted flesh. just enough protoplasm for a fun little person to get along in the world. and looking for us.

when he saw us, his eyes smiled warmly, as before.

he came inside the rail, with three big red and white cartons of Marlboros under one arm.

"I thought you'd be here last night," he said, confirming my fears. the poor thing had stayed out till 11 looking for us. then he'd given up. he’d ended up following around some Germans, Americans and Italians. he hadn’t gone with them to their hotel rooms, he claimed.

for some reason i asked him that question.

i've noticed, by the way, that sometimes when the subject of Chalo comes up, i can't write about him, sammy. i have to work up to it. don't ask me why, because i don't know why, and i don't want to think about it.

you probably have it figured out, though.

above my head a voice rings. i turn around. three little plastic cups of red gelatin come through the built-in ventilation in the side wall. they’re delivered by two black hands. probably the same morena lady who sat inside here a few minutes ago with her little moreno boy doing homework. he looked so much like Mariela's Fabién, they could have had the same dark father. maybe they’re cousins on his father's side.

the whole family goes out and stands on the bare porch with folded arms, ten adults and kids in a small unfurnished concrete space, watching the action in the unlit street while Robbie holds court about something. the unpaved street, though mud to a large extent, is worth watching. it's as full of people walking amiably, as Ocean City boardwalk on a July summer’s night.

a typical ‘street’ in late afternoon Pozón

many days tropical streets come to life only after dark when men are home from work
and kids from school
and scorching temperatures drop a little

and men women and kids come out into the street for air and fun
and every little stubborn third-world imperfeckshun seems more romantic
with less glaring equatorial sunlight on it
but now -- here -- it's still daylight -- and dead

Mariela comes in and replaces the vallenato i like, with FM radio salsa i don't like.

they may wonder why i stay in here and write, when there's so much going on in the street. i like writing. i'm working myself up to writing about Chalo. anyway i'm only beginning to follow conversations in the local patois.

tonight, for example, i told the taxi driver to go straight, or derecho, which he took to mean right, because derecha, with an 'a' at the end instead of an 'o', means right. here at the coast you have to say directo if you want to go straight. you may find deeper meaning in this, sammy, but that's just not the kind of Spanish i'm used to and, on the surface, as the rest of us look at things, it just means that when i disappear into my yellow tablet, the family has more privacy.

that right turn which became a wrong turn, was one of the many reasons we got back late.

Robbie says no one cared that we got here late. yet i noticed Yazmín going into detail about who had been here and who had left, because we didn't show in time to see them. he chooses to not see this as 'upset', or guilt-provoking. or he thinks it too low on the scale to worry about, maybe. or he's too good-natured to care, but in any case what's done is done, and our lateness was for a good cause.

when we found Chalo, or when he found us, i should say, we had just finished ordering hamburgers for lunch. for a change he came in and joined us inside the railing. we invited him to sit down with us at the table. he wanted a steak, so we ordered him one.

soon Robbie got the paranoid notion that restaurant personnel were mistreating Chalo, since cigarette boys belonged outside the railing that enclosed the Pelican's restaurant patio, not inside. to their chagrin, thought Robbie, this poor cigarette boy in his seedy shirt and jeans had left his rightful place, the sidewalk, and had entered the space inside the fence. he was sitting at a table with two grown U.S. Americans ordering flank steak, making other customers uncomfortable with his lowly appearance. Robbie thought the waiters disapproved. Chalo and i sensed nothing.

"It's all in your head," i said, and Robbie shrugged, easy to get along with as always. with that the problem vanished.

while Robbie and i ate our funny tasting Cocaland ‘hamburgers’, Chalo answered questions about his street life of the past few days. i finished and Chalo was just starting his steak, when suddenly street vendors descended on the Pelican like the plague, breaking the usual rule and coming inside the fence too. after all, one of their number, Chalo, was sitting there chewing on a big fat steak. worse yet, Robbie was now waving them in.

and it was my turn to feel uncomfortable. seeing this, Chalo told them they weren't allowed to cross the line and come inside. but Robbie, as usual when in a party mood, didn't know when to stop. he went on buying T-shirts from them, then coral bracelets and beach outfits for babies. before you knew it the manager of the Pelican himself was at our table buying a watch from a street kid, right in the middle of the noontime meal in his own sidewalk patio restaurant, well-heeled customers seated and eating all around. once again, as so often over the years, Robbie had created such a party with his clowning, boisterous and extraverted costeño spirit, that no one around, not even restaurant staff, could help getting swept along in this breakdown of social barriers. after all, they were all party-spirited Costeños too.

everyone here at the coast, starting with Robinson's family, is on more or less permanent partying vacation, it seems to me, sammy. more accurately they're actually working – slaughtering chickens, cooking, sweeping, rustling and killing cattle, waiting tables, selling CD's, even changing money in the bank – but doing it in an attitude of play or vacation. the distinction between work, play and party is not as clear as in the states. any ordinary event may turn into a festive one in no time, be it buying a bracelet from a street urchin or riding in a cab. when we found ourselves caught in rush hour traffic just now, coming home In the cab, Robbie said to the taxi driver, "Ai, por favor, put on some vallenato!" [4] as if to say, "This is a party, isn't it, after all?"

Adriana stares at the TV like something awful happened. she's so worried about tonight's Colombian soap opera, she hasn't noticed her little Jesús has pulled two stools and a rocker together for a bed. he puts his head and upper body on the rocking chair, ending with his butt and feet elevated on the stools, six inches above his rocking head. now his widely opened brown eyes blink and close. aunt and cousins one after another tell him to stop but he shrugs them off. finally it's the commercial and his mother notices. she takes his hand and he whines and wiggles away. she sits him up in a rocking chair and gets him a drink, and this puts him at ease. i ask her where he usually sleeps and she says, "In the bed but...". i miss the rest. one of his cousins from out of town is in his bed, no doubt, or all of them at once, more likely.

Adriana deserves a man, sammy, you have to admit.

the insert for the new cassette tape Robbie gave her sits in water on the small beat up dining table. it’s the only piece of furniture in the sala besides rockers, and thus the only surface that can hold silverware, TV, boom box, food and drinks. (and cassette tape inserts.) i grab the paper and dry it off.

91.  HOW TO LOVE THE WORLD LIKE ST. AUGUSTINE, IN SEVERAL EASY STEPS.

anyway, Chalo finally finished his steak, fries, lettuce and tomato, every last crumb and tomato seed, and we headed to Cartagena's universal meeting place, the ancient clock tower. Chalo and i got impatient waiting for Caridad’s favorite cousin, and went to look for CDs without Robbie.

i had warned the kid CDs were one of my addictions, and not to be shocked if i spent 'a lot of money'. i did exactly that, and he took it in stride. once they'd made a fortune off me, i asked the lady for an extra plastic bag, one that wasn't see-through, so we could stash the three telltale red and white cartons of cigarette packages Chalo sold single cigarettes from on the street. i thought it should be a little less obvious, all over thronging madcap downtown Cartagena, that a moneyed midlife dying gringo had picked off the street a nineteen year old Cocaland cigarette vendor for entertainment. what might they think?

frankly, sammy, i don't know why i pursue a Cocaland street urchin for entertainment. i don't need another dirt-poor third world teen in dire straits to worry about. it seems to be making me paranoid like Robbie, that people will think i'm gay. i don't need that stress, either.

by the way, Chalo's cigarettes were now threefold the number they'd been last Thursday when we'd left him to go to Santisima Cruz. because he'd taken all of the 16,000 pesos i'd given him when we 'negotiated in private' the first time, at the restaurant last week, and invested them in his business. instead of one carton of cigarettes to sell, he now had three. he’d tripled his hedge against starvation.

i should explain the phrase that Chalo has been using, 'negotiating in private', because it seems to be growing more important with time, as you'll see, sammy.

'in private' means without Robbie's help, a condition Chalo has required for talking with me about financial matters. that was how we 'negotiated' his pay the first time, back before we left to go to Santisima Cruz, for being my personal guide in Cartagena – ‘in private’, in a restaurant without Robbie.

anyway, yesterday, just as Chalo was stashing his three full cartons of Marlboros in the plastic bag, in walked Robbie, still sans cousin. he wanted to use up more time waiting for Caridad’s cousin, so we all three went to the bank. here Robbie once again changed $100 in U.S. cash he'd carried insanely all over cocaine-trafficking land, having never heard of the safety of travelers checks, apparently. every night in Nueva Your he’d watched TV. he’d seen ads for American Express travelers checks hundreds of times, and yet...

while Robbie got his pesos, Chalo motioned me outside. i followed him through the cool air-conditioned bank lobby, and found myself outside the door in heavy street noise and breathtaking tropical torpor, looking at him bewildered.

it was time to negotiate in private again, he said.

it had to be more private than a restaurant, though, like a hotel room. the best way was to rent a cheap one by the hour, he said. everybody did it. a few thousand pesos. just five bucks. it was easy. that way we could get a quick shower to cool off, too. after that we could talk business in the room all cooled off and comfortable under a ceiling fan, and have more privacy than was possible in a restaurant.

i frowned. it was kind of endearing, the way he had coined a phrase, 'negotiating in private', which described what was fast becoming our signature piece. i was pleased and intrigued, sammy. but it made me nervous. the cool shower was fine. but wasn't an air conditioned restaurant just as cool?

i wanted time to think, and Robbie came out of the bank just then.

as the three of us walked back to the clock-tower meeting place, i asked Chalo, so that Robbie could hear, why he needed so much privacy to talk about his pay. just when he was starting to answer, Caridad’s college age cousin showed up, trailing a school friend on crutches.

"Where were you at two o'clock?" said Robbie.

"I got here at three," said the kid, as if it were as close to two as it sounded.

"But I said two," Robbie insisted, then let it drop. for he wasn't going to fight over a tiny little hour like a gringo would, right when a party was brewing.

the five of us made our way through thronging narrow sixteenth-century streets, deeper into the heart of Old City, to a place they called the Swiss Bakery. it was near the boys' university, i believe. we got a table and the two students, in clever Cartagenan college-boy subtleties, proceeded to make fun of Chalo, unadorned and unaffected as he was. i didn't get the words but i did comprehend the raised eyebrows and sidelong glances. Chalo seemed too well-mannered and sure of himself to care, and for that i thought him better mannered and more tolerant than they. he rose in my estimation. they sank. in this little battle to gain my allegiance, between city sophistication and street simplicity, the latter gained the upper hand immediately. it didn't seem to occur to these schooled imbeciles, that if they treated Chalo rudely, they might have to deal with me.

tired of it, i explained to Robbie, in English, that Chalo had to 'negotiate in private' again. Robbie looked at me a second and changed the subject. he and his friends were irretrievably caught in a heated debate on an important subject apparently. i knew we had to get home to Yazmín's for dinner at 5:30, so i kept chomping at the bit to get the thing organized and approved. several more times i interrupted and he ignored me, as if English were no longer understood. Chalo looked nervous too.

finally we were in the street, and i had to scold Robbie in English to quit mamagallo farting around in Spanish with juvenile students we didn't know or care two hoots about, and talk straight. in English. with me. about Chalo, who needed us, just like we needed him.

i looked Robbie in the eye: "Is this your way of trying to avoid leaving me alone with Chalo? Could we discuss it, please?"

we did, in English so they wouldn’t understand, and in no time i had Robbie agreeing that if Chalo had wanted to rob me, he'd have done it by now. but, he said, in a warning tone, the kid wanted something.

i said we'd never know what it was, unless i went with him to the hotel.

that didn't answer the question, said Robbie, of why, if Chalo wanted something, he had to ask me in a hotel room, of all places.

it made me uneasy too, i confessed; but i was too much under Chalo's delightful spell to discuss it further.

Robbie said courteously that i ought to think about it. as sure as he was my host, he would see to it that we both thought about it.

it was obvious what Chalo wanted, he said after a pause, as if surprised i hadn’t responded. Chalo needed the privacy of a hotel room, clearly, couldn't i see, because he was going to offer sex in exchange for something, most likely money to get him to the states.

i said the kid would never sink that low, no matter how broke he was, and neither would i. even if we would – yet of course we wouldn't – there'd be no chance of it anyway, since i was infected; and celibate, if not completely saintly; and besides, i was more homophobic than at any time in my life. furthermore – and this was the kicker, as i saw it – there wasn't a lay in the universe worth the cost of entry into the United States from Colombia, which had gotten unbelievably expensive.

that was the end of the discussion, sammy. what did Robbie take me for anyway? i wasn't any gayer than he was. had he forgotten his promise?
 

finally we agreed on a time and place to meet, and with concern on his face, Robbie stood on the sidewalk and watched with his friends, as Chalo and i went in the front door of a forsaken ‘hotel’.

i admit i feared the little scamp might rob me – despite my professing confidence. but i didn't think he'd steal from me, as the famous manual of mental disorders put it, "while confronting the victim," his only friend in the world, me.[5]  and i trusted my judgment, sammy, because over the years i had treated many young working class sociopaths. my better psychiatric judgment told me he was more likely to try when i was not looking. so the plan had to take this into account. i had to keep the key. i had to stay with him, never giving him access to my clothes, wallet or money belts, especially not when he was dressed and i was undressed, unable to chase after him if he took something.

we got upstairs in the hotel. i required that we leave clothes and valuables in the locked room while we went together down the hall in towels to take a shower. as we left the room, i made sure he left first. i maintained control of the key, holding onto it tightly.

the kid was more nervous than i was, and horny like Robbie'd warned, which showed when we got to the funky deserted public shower room. it was three in the afternoon and no one was around, or they'd have wondered what we were up to. we soaped up and enjoyed the cool spray from the only shower head working, and i wondered how a kid barely able to feed himself could be so muscular and well proportioned. he couldn't afford the gym or a set of weights. walking the streets couldn't have helped his upper body that much. so he must have been born that way, a natural mesomorph.

after a few minutes cooling off, he asked me to wash his back. i was reluctant. he explained it was normal behavior in Colombia for men to wash each other's backs – as long as it was just the backs, he said. i agreed. soon after that something turned him on again, more this time, either scrubbing me or my scrubbing him. as you know, sammy, nineteen year olds can get a hard-on at the drop of a hat. that reassured me. but i couldn't help thinking of Robbie's warning. maybe the kid would offer sex after all.

we dressed and sat on the bed. he wanted to know if there was something he could do for me. some kind of help i needed my last two days. something 'big', much bigger than being my guide. something for which i'd be willing to pay him a lot of money. i told him no. he was persistent, sammy, almost desperate, saying he'd do anything i wanted. he said it several times. it made me feel bad i couldn't think of a single damn BIG thing i really needed or wanted from him.

finally i told him he was a resourceful businessman. it would take him far, i said. as a result of our 'negotiating in private', he ended up with another gift of 16,000 pesos to invest in his cigarette business. that translated to $20, quite a bit for him. i asked nothing in exchange, of course. just his playful company and guidance for the rest of the week, whenever i could get away from the family to tour all the interesting spots in the ancient center of Cartagena, which was twice as ancient as anything in the states and fascinatingly exotic in a variety of ways.

Cartagena ‘Old Town’

Robbie was a better guide, actually. he spoke English and knew Colombian history. but Chalo was getting me off like coca used to. he was adventurous, energetic and unpredictable, like an upper, coke or speed. he made me feel better. his effect on me was salubrious. i told him so. when it was all over, i wanted him to go away with the experience of feeling proud he’d made money doing something ennobling, like being a gringo's private guide, with so much class and style. once he had learned with me how to perform that kind of work, i said, he could make bigger money with gringos that he met after me. it promised more money than cigarettes, and might get him off the deadly streets faster. maybe in that way he'd gather the large sum he wanted.

in the end i was right. Robbie had judged him wrongly. despite opportunities and inviting moments, Chalo never said a word about sex. as we went down the decrepit stairs, out into the light of the street, i quietly celebrated his victory over any temptation he might have felt.

there was a half hour left before we had to meet Robbie and his bozo friends, so i asked Chalo to show me the way to a shopping center. he took me two blocks to a pedestrian alley of makeshift wood-plank stalls, a shacky flea market cramped and mobbed with people. in a stall where he seemed to know people, i bought him $20 worth of clothes to replace his only outfit. we got a colorful shirt to replace the one with the ripped pocket and bleach stains; and brown jeans to replace the filthy green ones with torn crotch he'd sewn crudely since last Thursday.

it felt good, sammy, to help somebody for once without wanting a thing back. just a smile and a bit of tour guiding, maybe; yet that was nothing but a ruse to put money in his pocket. the truth was, since we'd met he'd hardly tour guided at all. the CD store and shopping stalls, that was all; and i could have found them myself. it was a tougher deal for me than for him, i think, because working as a doctor for decades had somehow made me think it my rightful due, that people pay something, no matter how small, for the least little help they got.

knowing YOU have helped people including me, without expecting a thing back, is inspiring me to give up that way of looking at things. another inspiration is Augustine.

tonight i feel as cleaned up, purified, and almost as convicted, as St. Augustine after his conversion. i feel like i've had the most thorough shower in years.

92.  GO AHEAD.  LET THEM TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR GOOD MOOD.  IT ONLY COSTS PENNIES.

the family comes back in and sits down around me, looking at me, for some reason.

maybe they've seen what i've been writing.

no.

Yazmín says 'thank you' for the rotating fan. Robinson has put her up to it, apparently.

he's always putting somebody up to something. at times i resist it. other times i go along like a burundanga victim, submitting to every ploy and prank that strikes his fancy. today i might have resisted his capers if Chalo hadn't put me in such a partying mood.

in no time Robbie saw my mood and took advantage of it. in one afternoon, as we passed here and there through the streets of Cartagena, he put me up to buying T-shirts for Caridad and Tobías; a coral bracelet for Jaime; a post card, also for Jaime; and for myself a brightly colored cloth Colombian shoulder bag to replace the dirty faded Mexican one i'd worn out over the years. he also talked me out of pocket coins to hand beggars; bummed smaller bills for taxi drivers and tips; and talked me into going out again tonight at ten.

that was the easiest. Robbie had planned it before we left Brenda's this morning, then forgotten to mention it. and so we are scheduled, in an hour, to meet Chalo again under the clock tower, and i hope the little squirt has his new clothes on.

tomorrow the five of us – Robbie, his two banana-head friends and Chalo and i – are supposed to meet and go to the beach at Boca Chica. coming up with a scheme for getting all five together was a major effort, sammy, since Chalo had no phone and we couldn't give him Brenda's number to call from a street phone. the family mustn't know about Chalo, insists Robbie, and we don't trust the little tramp enough yet to give him our number.

i need to get a word through to Robbie. he’s listening wearily but politely to some emotional story from Yazmín, while Adriana, Angel, his wife Linda and their two daughters also listen. little Jesús sleeps in his mother's rocking lap. the girls stand between legs of rocking parents. the new fan sweeps a close 70° semicircle, hitting everyone in the little sala. though i've showered three times today, i'm sticky all over and pull my rocker forward several times to get a bigger chunk of the only moving air between the hot sea and the mountainy sierra.

the discussion seems to have something to do with putas. prostitutes. maybe in the family. it seems a more serious conversation than usual. Angel is quite affected.

now it's talk about contraceptives. renewing his theme of the superior advancement of things in the U.S., Robinson says everybody in the U.S. carries rubbers or pills for contraceptives. he exaggerates. it's his way, apparently, to get his sisters, or somebody, to change behavior.

Yazmín looks emotional. she's on the bar stool and her crossed brown bare feet swing, twisting and wrinkling with feeling. four people talk at once, now five. they think i don't understand.

a superb vallenato comes on, something like Diomedes Díaz, who is tops. i recognize and admire him sometimes when i hear him now. in one week i've learned the difference between good and ordinary vallenato.

i remind Robinson we have a deadline at ten.

the vallenato we're listening to is one my brain has made me whistle like a musical robot for a week. others in the room complement the song, seeing i like it, but no one knows its name or who sings it. i don't tell them that i hope my extravagant new collection includes it, so i can play it endlessly when i get to Denver.

93.  A FEW BEER-Y THOUGHTS, RELEVANCE UNDETERMINED.

later.

Robbie, Chalo and i just did another horse-and-carriage ride through warm nighttime old-town Cartagena. Chalo has been a good little guide, so far. now we're at a streetside bar drinking ice cold Barranquilla Aguila beer, entertained by live salsa. Chalo calls the waitress. "Hey, mamí!"

she comes over and accepts his beer and food order playfully, and as she turns away he slaps her behind. Robbie gives him a talking to.

even in Colombia, sammy – even in poor coastal Cocaland, i mean, even in social realms as low on the pole as Robbie's – this is not done.

i'm deep in beer-y thought.

profound beer-y thought #1: Every Robinson or Chalo is special and individual.

profound beer-y thought #2: Chalo has something against the salsa. i don't understand, and ask, "What did you say about your abuela?"  i thought he said something about his grandmother, and for some reason the mention of abuela in this context puts them in grannie spasms.

i laugh as i write.

the two of them have laughed all day, but to bring me there it took a tour through Cocaland; some beer; Chalo; and Robbie; all in heavy protracted doses.

that has to be one of the biggest differences between me and Cocalanders, sammy.

why?

profound beer-y thought #3: The little child selling odds and ends on the street walks like a man.

profound beer-y thought #4 (drunker now):  "Norrrrrmal. Ese niño en la calle..."[6]

profound beer-y thought #5:  Midnight. Time to leave. What does it matter?

“Robbie, Chalo and I just did another horse-and-carriage ride

through warm nighttime old town Cartagena”

spire of the fortressy 1575-1612 Cartagena cathedral

which, partially destroyed by England’s Francis Drake during construction, had to be rebuilt
(the Spaniards in droves were conquering Mexico and South America for a whole impressive century
 before a single Pilgrim father ever stumbled upon Plymouth Rock)