HOOKED ON COCALAND

st. mj's guide to paradise for lost gringos

book five:

washing paradise out

of every last cell and synapse

mj lorenzo in 1990 with New Jersey family

mother and sister, her 3 kids and their spouses and children

and the Dr.’s two children and their half-brother

for Jo Lorenzo’s (front and center) 80th

sunday, 10/16/94.  Jackson Heights, Queens; to San Juan Pueblo.

112.  DON’T BURN YOUR TRIP JOURNAL.  YOUR SHAMAN/SHRINK/FRIEND/EDITOR/APOLOGIST WANTS IT.

last day of vacation.

i'm sitting at Caridad's kitchen table, with fall yellow leaves rustling out an open window behind me. 9 AM.

the house is still, air coming in fresh, for a change, not sultry.

the sky is bluer than i've seen in weeks, perfect for a flight across country.

planes go by, one after the other, in and out of La Guardia.

Caridad's apartment is the whole second floor of an old Jackson Heights row home. Tobías’ bed is a sofa in the living room, which sits next to the kitchen at the back of the house. Robinson and Caridad's room is entered through the living room. she’s just showered. Robbie's in bed. my spot at the kitchen table is as far as possible from the un-curtained doorway to their room, to give them privacy. they haven't been together in weeks.

Caridad comes out and putters in the kitchen. she says there's no coffee and i say it's an emergency, a tragedy.

it's supposed to be a joke, but nobody understands my humor, including me.

she decides to go out and buy coffee.

i may have to stop writing, sammy.

yesterday on the plane, Robbie saw that when i wrote 'Rb' i was writing about him. he got freaked and said he'd sue me for violating privacy. he seemed serious.

he was tired and sad, an intolerable bobito fool, at times. he might get over it, but meanwhile what do i do?

two days ago, during a wild Cocaland cab ride, he said i should definitely publish a book about his family and the trip, hiding no names. now he's suing for breach of privacy.

it's bad enough worrying if you’ll hurt your own family. i don't want to hurt him and his family and friends, after all he's meant over the years, and what they mean now.

it’s depressing.

how can i stop writing, sammy? i'd be giving up thinking. unless i write, i can't think.

and if i don’t think, i’ll die.

i can't voice my craziness out loud in person, so i've developed writing as a way to voice the unspeakable.

who writes to whom, when you write to yourself? if i knew myself thoroughly, i would not bother to write to myself. but what ‘me’ am i writing to?

i used to think i was writing to my future self, or to later generations who would read me after i was gone, when i couldn't lose my license to practice psychiatry, or be sued or killed for what i wrote. they'd find my diary in a spidery corner of Nico's garage, call it a voice of its time and publish it, making it a TV movie of limited popularity.

maybe i'm writing to a part of myself now, a part that needs to wake up and pay attention.

maybe i’m writing to YOU! i tell myself.

today i'm writing to sort out my feelings about Cocaland, sammy. i wish i could see everyone again, but it seems unsafe.

maybe my writing just helps me feel better, and shouldn’t be shared with anyone.

they could use it as toilet paper in Santisima Cruz.

i could give it to you. you could take out what's hurtful, or embarrassing, working with Robbie.

in the meantime i have to write. i'm sorting myself out. i can't think unless i write.

“I’m writing to myself,” i explained to robbie, “I’m using sammy’s name as a trick to focus. I don’t know if i'll show it to him or anyone,” i said.

“i could burn it,” i said. “You could help me. Right here.”

he wanted to see what i wrote first.

he won't like it.

Caridad's little Javier runs out in shirttails and hides behind a suitcase, growing as small as he can, then runs down the hall and pounds on the bathroom door. his mother lets him in and yells at him affectionately, in a squeaky baby voice.

every kid in the world has a mother but Chalo.

if Robbie doesn't get up, i won't make my plane. his stuff is in my suitcase.

113.  THE BEAUTY QUEEN'S ASS AND OTHER SANTISIMA CRUZ TAILS.

12:45. "Que le falta la reina?" "Ai, no le faltan nalgas."[1]

i was telling the nalgas story to Caridad and Tobías after lunch, in English. Robbie kept interrupting in Spanish to add and correct, until i told him to be quiet so i could tell it myself. after i finished, he explained it his way, showing i had it wrong. thus we've come up with the revised biblical version, as revealed just now.

Robinson says that this great moment regarding the beauty queen's ass was a game; a barrio ritual for the boys. when the question came, every mother's son was supposed to lie silent, letting the question ring on the air. if your sense of form was so spoiled by booze that you fractured the sacred silence like i did, answering when every self-respecting man in sight knew the game and answer and remained properly silent, you proved yourself a dunce, an outlander, an upstart; and were punished by having to pass the aguardiente.

which illustrates two things, sammy: (1) how quickly an outsider misperceives a culture, when his viewpoint is warped by inadequate language and knowledge of the culture, wrecked by drunkenness, fantasy and projection; and (2) how happily a gringo's drunken error, caused by a wish to be one of the boys, is turned from flub to success when all of them want that. because Ibrahim said, in a way that made it sound a definite honor, "You won! You get to pass the aguardiente!" and everybody howled! that much i remember with certainty. and it definitely felt very much an honor to pass the aguardiente as the best of them had, as if they were making me one of them. the temporary host, in fact.

each one of them then took part in that final stage of the ritual happily, one after the other, receiving in turn his aguardiente portion from me.

i'll accept that punishment any day.

it's what i want, to be made one of them, even if it means waiting on them.

i flunked their two biggest tests, sammy, (1) the narrow railing-less footbridge and (2) the nalgas challenge, and still they made me one of them. what does that tell you?

Robbie is being difficult today too, just like yesterday. i can’t believe he never heard me say on the plane that i'm not going back to Colombia. didn't i write that? i know he heard me. he's playing dumb. he thinks it's a phase to be dismissed as crazy. he says, "You' goin', don' worry."

we may end up arguing over this.

i'd argue now, but it's his house and friends, and he's recounting Victoria hagiography.

now it's the story of Victoria, Ibrahim, Robinson and the burro.

after which i ask, with a tone that surprises me, "And after that, she still let you baby-sit the kids!?"

"Yes," he says, puffing his chest, "because fuckin' a burro is like bein' a man in Santisima Cruz."

no further comment.

“you can see, if you watch as she works, that it's all hardworking muscle”

(Victoria busy at her meat stall)

now it's the story of Adriana's having a baby. fittingly, it's a version of No Room at the Inn.

this was before Adriana moved to Cartagena, when she still lived in Santisima Cruz. she got bigger and bigger, and bigger yet, and was ready to deliver little baby Jesús. as in the original story, the honest to God father was nowhere within physical sight. she had no doctor either, and there were complications. so Victoria took her to the medieval looking hospital on the riverbank and they wouldn't let her in the huge wooden doors because Adriana had no doctor. Victoria didn’t give up and take her to the stable behind the hospital to deliver there. she pushed the guard aside and pushed her weight through the heavy carved doors, grabbed a doctor and said, "You are going to deliver this girl's baby!"

so he did; and charged Adriana nothing, as ordered by Victoria.

later, for no charge, he tied her tubes at Victoria's behest. for Victoria had said to Adriana, "Look, you've got two children like I had four, and no father. It's tube-tying time, and maybe then you can get married."

"He tied her tubes?" i ask. "Adriana's?"

Yes, says Robbie.

"i like that story," i say, with its funky parallels to Mary and Jesus, and very funky differences. at least one person in Cocaland, Victoria, has actually done something about the boom in babies. she has helped stop the assembly line production of children whose parents can't feed, clothe, house or educate them. she's willing to start among friends, and stick her neck out. it leaves me liking her and her family even more.

plus the tale confirms my suspicion, from the day i arrived, that Jesús’ origin was extraordinary and part of an important greater story.

as for my psychopathic vision that Adriana is now pregnant with my child, we needn’t worry about that one, apparently.

Robbie's stories entertain me. they give me hope for humanity.

a messed up part of me would like to forget Santisima Cruz and Chalo, but Tobías and Caridad want to hear about it. i do too, if truth be told. so here we go. now it's the story of Victoria's adolescence.

at thirteen Victoria was a beautiful Sucreña girl, something like her daughter, Sandi, probably, who i danced with at Gustavo's party. i'd forgotten how muscular and solid a young woman could feel, sammy. Victoria still looks very solid. she’s got to be twice as solid as her daughter, because she's twice her size across the beam, and you can see, if you watch as she works, that it's all hardworking muscle.

the most famous doctor in the area began “fuckin' her,” as Robbie put it. he'd gone to Belgium – Bruges, i think – or Leyden medical school – to train and had come back. she got pregnant and had a baby, Flor Divina. the doctor, who was married, said if she kept it quiet he'd buy her a house and land, and he did. she used to live there. later she met the politico – who was already married too – and had Ibrahim, Gustavo and Sandi by him, in the house they're in now. there were men after that, and she never married. such a pattern is apparently somewhat common in Santisima Cruz.

“I'd forgotten how muscular and solid a young woman could feel when held”

Sandi by the Rio Mojana

now it's the story of Victoria in general. i'm enthralled, i admit.

apparently Victoria has always been influential and forceful, not just since the power of guerrillas has stood behind her. she is godmother to ‘half of Santisima Cruz’, as Robbie puts it. people come with prescriptions and say, "Victoria, I can't pay this." she says, "Don't worry." she sticks it in her dress. here Robbie sticks his hand in the top of his t-shirt. she marches off. here he marches off like a solid, all-muscle Victoria. and shortly thereafter she comes back with the medicine. everything in Santisima Cruz is politics, he says. everything. even getting medical help.

after the doctor had set Victoria up, he would visit her at three or four in the morning on his rounds around the pueblo. he told her everything. soon, by early teens, she understood local politics. he was a Liberal. he didn't know the guerrillas because this was before guerrillas, back when there were just those two classic love-hate Colombian political parties, ‘Liberals’ and ‘Conservatives’.

for some reason Victoria and Yazmín have always been extremely close, though there must be ten to twenty years between them. Victoria told Yazmín everything, and for this reason Robbie knows everything.

since a friend of his is a friend of theirs, now i know everything.

but what good will it do me, sammy?

it’s dangerous to go back. i can't even write about it any more.

there's one thing i still don't get. why did they treat me so well?

when i was in Venezuela with missionaries, during college, i learned there was a close connection in that country between medicine and politics. it wasn't like the U.S., where lawyers, not doctors, became politicos. for a while on this trip, when i saw how they treated me, i thought that if Colombia were like Venezuela, it might explain their interest in me. maybe doctors were looked on as politicos, or potential politicos.

why did Robbie's barrio treat me with so much special attention? they immediately made me feel i mattered. Robbie would have told them i was a doctor, right off. it couldn't have been because i deserved it. i didn't.[2]

yet that's how it felt, like i deserved it for being born in the world like them.

that's what i think it was about, sammy.

they'd have been that way to any human being.

that's the part i don't understand: how any community of humans on this planet, could be that accepting of weirdness.

if San Juan Pueblo treated you like that growing up, sammy, as i suspect they did, then you must understand it's hard to walk away from.

yet i can't see the wisdom in risking my life and everyone else's, just to have that wonderful feeling again. someone in this world has to stay sensible.

don’t you think?

i’m sorry, but i think Robbie has the nalgas story wrong. i know that my answer was: ‘Ai, pero tiene nalgas’. therefore it went like this. "OK, muchachos, what is it that the beauty queen does not have?" and my answer: "Ai, but she has an ass!"

i want that moment to be right, sammy. i have to know i didn't blow it with Robbie's people. i have to get it right with people who treat me superbly for no reason except that they recognize i'm alive like them and alongside them. it's the least i can do as a thank you.

in any case, even Robbie considers me officially initiated. i’m one of the boys of Robbie's barrio in Santisima Cruz.

“even Robbie considers me officially initiated

i’m one of the boys of Robbie's barrio in Santisima Cruz”

from a bridge: a stretch of Santisima Cruz' 'caño' (main canal) during dry season
with wading white egret

114.  WHAT TO DO ABOUT THE STREET URCHIN.

2:20. in Caridad's kitchen, talking about Cocaland.

i still have to repack from Robbie's huge suitcase to my own two smaller ones. in two hours i leave for JFK[3] and San Juan.

if everybody would just discourage my thinking about Chalo, sammy, it would help me forget him.

Javier watches English language TV instead of Hispanic for a change. the rest of us are at the kitchen table. on TV i hear the line, "She was forced to do terrible things in China, just to survive."

wouldn’t it have been sort of a 'terrible thing’ for Chalo, i ask, if he had come to the states to work for me, keep me company and entertain me, ‘just to survive’?

Robbie seems to think so. i'm not sure why.

Tobías and Caridad say it would be fine.

i don’t understand Robbie’s response, but he won’t pursue it. having a bad day.

i ask him in as neutral a tone as i can, "So, are you going back to Santisima Cruz in December?"

“Maybe,” he says.

Caridad says she doesn't know if she’ll go along, even though it’s her country too. she's been quiet since the stories. Robbie asks what's bothering her, but she won't say.

"Don' you think she's lookin' like tha'?" he asks me. he wants me to do his work for him.

"I don't know Caridad well."

he tries again.

"Yes," i give in. "She seems kind of quiet."

"You tired?" Robinson asks her.

they go into their room.

he's got something up his sleeve. it's a Robbie maneuver. they’re discussing me, or the trip.

i shower and shave, and begin to repack.

if Robbie would forget about going back, sammy, i could quit worrying about it. i would never go back without him.

maybe Caridad will talk him out of it in the room.

they're in the kitchen.

i ask, "So you like my idea of not going back, and sending the ‘gamín’ money instead?" i'm looking at Caridad because Robbie is messed up.

"That's fine," she says.

"What makes him look like a ‘gamín’?" i ask Robbie, who has been using the Spanish word for ‘street urchin’ repeatedly, to remind me of Chalo's disgraceful social level. he knows i can't see it in the kid. platonic love is blind too, apparently.

"Oh," says Robbie. "His clothes all dirty."

"But I bought him new ones. Did he still look like a gamín with new clothes?"

"Yes. He's carryin' cigarrillos."

"But after we hid the three cigarette cartons in a double plastic shopping bag and put him in new clothes, did he still look like a gamín?"

"Yes," says Robinson.

"Why?"

"Well, the way he talk," he says. "He tell the waitress she have a cute ass and he pinch her. He's yelling, 'Hey Mamí, come here!' I have to tell him, 'Aquí, in this part of Barranquilla peoples don't talk like that'."

"So should I help him?" i say. "I was going to bring him to the states and have him work for me, but now I’m worried."

Robbie is the only one aware of Chalo’s sexual come-on to me.

Caridad says, "It depends on how you feel about him."

"I liked him," i say. "He was fun. He was happy. He sang every song on the radio. He was full of life. He kept rubbing up against me like a puppy. He would have brightened up my life in Denver."

Tobías says, "He was happy he'd found a rich gringo who could take him to America."

"You don't think he's always that happy?" i ask.

"No," says Tobías.

"You wouldn't have liked it much, i bet," I say to Caridad, "traveling around Colombia, the four of us, one being a gamín."

"That's fine," says Caridad.

she's being polite.

i know Robbie would like it. we just did it.

but i say, "Now we don't have to show him to your family. Aren't you relieved? What would Yazmín have said? What," i ask Caridad, "would your family have said if we'd taken him to Cali?"

"They'd have thought you had a good heart," she says.

this surprises me. it gives me an idea. "We could have said I was just helping him out."

we wouldn't have had to tell the whole world he was my hired boon companion, sammy, a Sancho Panza and future houseboy in the states, whose joyful heart would help me survive AIDS and self-imposed insanity longer. i don't add these details, but they get the drift.

"Right," they say. "Of course."

Caridad and Tobías know my health problem, sammy. it's probably why they're being so nice. they just haven’t heard about the Augustine stuff yet.

Robbie still doesn't answer how Yazmín would have reacted. i assume i know, and tell Caridad we had planned to hide Chalo from Robbie's family.

all three of them get up to do things around the apartment. if Robbie would just discourage me, this discussion would be over. time is running out. we leave for the airport soon.

the TV movie proceeds in the sala, and four-year-old Javier brings me things from my suitcase, saying in Spanish, "Mj, this is yours." he leaves them on the kitchen table.

i say in Spanish, "Thank you. Could you please put it on my suitcase?"

he resumes karate chops at the air. Fweeah! Hhoaah! more stuff piles up in front of me.

i get up, looking for Robbie and Caridad, and can't escape a mock karate bout with Javier. they're coming out of the bedroom.

everybody's worried about Tobías' ulcer. maybe he needs a second rest in the hospital. what's wrong with him?

maybe he wants to go to Colombia too. it’s his country.

we're at the table again, in the kitchen. Robbie finally answers my question, what i should do about the gamín.

"But he's young," he says. "He's moldable."

Robbie should know. he was moldable when i met him at Chalo’s age.

and as to what Yazmín or Efrén would say, he finally comes out with it.

he says, "They would look at Chalo the way those two students did, make faces." he twists his face into a ferocious pre-Columbian wooden mask.

"But we aren' takin' him to meet them," he adds, as if we were going and would see the kid.

apparently, sammy, when you kick Chalo out of your life, he fights to get back in.

everybody and their uncle helps him get back in, except me.

this means that a trip to Cartagena, Santisima Cruz, Villavicencio, Bogotá and Cali would not be impossible for the four of us – Robbie, Caridad, Chalo and me – starting around 12/28.

and it makes things worse, sammy. i was hoping they'd decide not to go. they easily could have. all their money gets wired to Colombia and they can’t afford trips. they could have rejected Chalo, at least, and helped me out that way. what’s so hard about that? i could have forgotten him.

3:45. i've packed and dressed and confirmed the flight. i've found out what i wanted to know about a would-be return trip to Cocaland in December. i'm sitting here waiting till it's time to get a cab.

soon there will be no Robbie, no Rivera family. no gamín, no boys of Santisima Cruz. no sammy or racer. just me.

the situation where world-weariness began is where it will most quickly return, sammy, alone in the U.S.A., no one to talk to. the country around hasn't changed, only the country inside. and my mood, if it’s improved as Robbie says, must be fragile. the Ibrahims and Chalos of this world could lose their curative potency any minute.

“a trip to Cartagena, Santisima Cruz, Villavicencio, Bogotá and Cali

would not be impossible for the four of us

Robbie, Caridad, Chalo and me

starting around 12/28”

(Bogotá, January 1995 – the Dr.’s photo)

115.  ONE LAST MOOCH, & HOW TO HANDLE IT.

5:00. in the cab to the airport.

a great big, roomy one. quiet on the road. careful as heck in American big city traffic. so smooth i can write.

in the back, in Spanish so the cabby won’t understand, Robbie and i remember cab trips in Cartagena out loud, just to entertain ourselves.

“Reeling through dark narrow streets at 50 mph,” i say.

“Never knowin’ if dog or kid is crossin’ in fron’,” he adds.

“Like a Disneyland ride, where everything that can go wrong, does.”

“Mj,” he says, “can you lend me twenty dollar’ so I can get home from the airport?”

why didn't he ask before? we had the choice of his staying at the apartment, before we went out the door, if he was broke. we don’t have that option now.

he could have bummed money off Caridad or Tobías.

Queens row homes. block after block goes by.

he's mooched off me two weeks and doesn't know how to stop. whatever he could. big or little. and this is his last chance to mooch.

one last mooch.

we get on the expressway. cars are big, traffic quiet as if they'd inflated cars like balloons, so they'd float. as if you’d plugged your ears. no honk honk. no blare of vallenato. no city-wide cacophony. i've come home to the states many times from abroad and had this experience. why i’m not more jaded i can’t imagine. it all seems refreshing and new, as if my first time coming back to the states from anywhere.

there's evidence i've changed, sammy. after years of holding back from getting to know people on trips to the third world, i gave it my whole heart this time. it may have done me good.

as for Robinson Crusoe, what a Man Friday he was! smoothing the way for me everywhere with savoir faire and humor. as bad as it got, it would have been far worse without him. it might have been one never-ending hairy Cocaland roller coaster ride, making you throw up till you felt like dying. instead, most of the time it felt like vacation, like a two-week spree in Disneyland and Universal Studios, with River Country, Pirates of the Caribbean, Back to the Future, and ride after crazy ride, all thrown in free. okay, i admit some rides felt out of control. one should have been called ‘Guerrilla Country’. another one or two, ‘Volcano Country’.

Robbie is more like family to me than my own family, actually. he wants to take me to Cocaland again. he'd put up with my gamín tour-guide for two more weeks. he's enough of a friend to see me off now. for years he’s been a great friend.

which makes me a paranoid jackass fool, sammy. still needing help.

needing a second Cocaland trip to complete the cure.

if i buy something at one of the shops in the terminal, they might take a travelers check and i’ll have cash for him.

......................................

at JFK i buy a Sunday Times with a fifty dollar travelers check. all change goes to Robbie. “Take Caridad out to dinner,” i say.

he talks about seeing me in December.

i'm too tired to argue.

“needing a second Cocaland trip to complete the cure”

Santisima Cruz schoolgirls cross the town soccer field during a cattle drive

116.  WELCOME HOME, TO THE WORLD THAT MADE YOU WORLD-WEARY.

in a window seat, finally alone.

i’m worried i’ll start getting depressed again, sammy.

the plane taxies. sunset over Brooklyn. all orange, a light blue cast above that. the orange turns to lavender. the temperature is 63 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with partly cloudy skies, says the pilot. a steward hands out magazines.

maybe Robbie’s right. no one should see this diary. it’s thoughtful, and most people want action these days.

in early Rome they loved thoughtful writing, but in late Roman times, all over the empire all they wanted was bloody violence in the coliseum.

i first heard this claim when i was in my teens. all my life i assumed this was a put-down myth spread by Christians like my parents about the un-Christian ‘pagan’ world, an exaggeration. but it’s true, apparently. everything i’ve read about Augustine and late Rome confirms it. Augustine himself confirms it in his Confessions in great and telling, storied detail.

Singapore Airlines. Delta. planes of all kinds on the tarmac. Pakistan Air, Egypt Air. the moon almost full, in a blue sky. a dark blue watery bay, right by the ocean at the end of the runway. all of this, as the plane turns then comes to a stop before takeoff. and sits.

a deep orange now above the western horizon, clouds lavender. in front of that, the towers of the Verrazano Bridge. the plane builds power and heads down the runway, bouncing, accelerating, making the ball point pen jerk.

we’re riding on air now. it’s easier to write. Jamaica Bay. Coney Island, or is it Jones Beach? little undeveloped pods of green, some with trees. the Atlantic. a deserted beach. the wingtip behind me flashes red, then white. the south end of Brooklyn with its coastline, or are we over New Jersey? Staten Island? isn’t it too green to be New York City? maybe not. those are homes buried in trees. how can Brooklyn be this big? lakes, parks, football fields, and always the coastline. cultivated fields. this must be New Jersey.

i can see all the way to Cape May, sammy, the whole state of New Jersey where i grew up, in a glance. Atlantic City is lit and i can see it, though we’re practically over Trenton. Delaware Bay and the River. from the Chesapeake to Atlantic City, in one sweep. Philadelphia, all of it. amazing. the Schuylkill River now, and all the bridges over the Delaware, one named for a poet who loved young men more than platonically. Walt Whitman Bridge.

thanks, Camden, New Jersey, for honoring a man who loved his comrades and made no bones about it.

North Philly. we’re at 22,000 feet, says the pilot. the grid-work of central Philly, laid out by war-hating Quakers. the Chesapeake Bay entire, an orange-pink-blue, its northern arms in clear outline. highways west out of Philly. Main Line? Pennsylvania Turnpike? yes. we’ll trail it to the Susquehanna. the Chesapeake widens, no longer seen from such a severe angle to the earth’s surface. i can’t pick out Baltimore. Pennsylvania’s farms are visible in the growing darkness.

i don’t get it. it’s lighter here than it was in Colombia at this hour.

US 30 and the Turnpike are still visible as we near the Susquehanna River and Harrisburg. now cirrus clouds interfere. we’re headed for 36,000 feet, says the pilot. we’re inside the towering cumulus cloud that was purple and orange, seen from New York. here it has white. below us: cirrus, letting light through from Harrisburg.

i’m not depressed yet, sammy.

now an intense white light hits. lakes in central Pennsylvania. a long vapor trail shoots into the sunset. the Susquehanna, wider, not distorted by angulation of viewpoint. we’re over it.  river’s dark, no longer reflecting sunset. we skate inches above another vapor trail. a third one floats past, far beneath us. a plane goes by, far below, flying sideways.

they come with food.

“Something to eat?”

western Pennsylvania is a dark patchwork with a few light areas. towns.

it’s a beautiful country. how could it have depressed me, Sammy?

food wins over the window and writing.

sunrise over the Rio Cauca near Magangué
reveals a thatch-roofed cottage and a soaring white egret

117.  LOST IN GRINGOLAND.

maybe i can survive emotionally in this country. i don’t think i’m depressed yet.

a U.S. sandwich. first home-type food in two weeks. wheat bread, ham and Swiss. nothing in Cocaland like it, just Americanized places i tried to avoid. Pizza Hut in Boca Grande. El Torito in Barranquilla. i’ll take yuca soup any day.

“No McDonald's!” said Efrén, speaking English and Spanish both at once the last night in Boca Grande. he'd traveled the world and was tired of 'McDonal'.

the Romans, too, spread their Roman habits everywhere, and non-Romans grew weary of them as much as Romans did.

the red wine is August Sebastiani, says the steward. he's extra friendly about it.

i smile too. i'll take it, i say.

every wrinkle of the Alleghany mountains, orange sky still to the west. we’re crossing the country, chasing the sun as it sets, almost keeping up.

more Alleghany ridges. the far side of each ridge is lighter than the near, putting it in relief.

a big lit area, probably Pittsburgh. it’s green everywhere in Pennsylvania. hilly, picturesque. with small town life.

i’d prefer Santisima Cruz.

sunset brilliant orange.

sandwich dry and pasty. goes down slowly. wine's ripe, tasty – dry, slightly acid, with a wood aftertaste.

lakes down there, a surprising number. Western Pennsylvania. Ohio maybe. can't tell fields from woods. it’s getting too dark. lakes reflecting light from the sunset, barely. lit up towns and cities. Youngstown maybe.

second course, macaroni salad, tomato wedge. won't find it in coastal Colombia, sammy. goes with Cabernet.

yuca soup goes with chickens and pigs, and vallenato over canal and barrio.

lit up cities, lots and lots and lots. Northeastern Ohio? the sunset's still ahead.

i ask the steward for another wine. this one was only two dollars.

if i run out of U.S. cash, you and racer can help. right?

when i fly, i like to figure out where i am, from the air. it's a game. you have to know geography and have a map, both.

a river reflecting light, north to south. Cuyahoga? Wabash? where are we? can't be the Mississippi yet. lit up towns all along. not the Alleghany. where are we?

this is an old river with history of heavy traffic. there's lit up development all up and down its curves and twists, way into the southern distance. doesn't it have to be the Mississippi? no, that would mean we were halfway home and time-wise we're only one fourth. i look at the map. one fourth of the distance puts us at the Ohio-Indiana line. the horizon is crimson, with yellow above, then light blue, and deep blue above that. a Stella hard-edge. a plane floats by below us slowly.

i eat cake.

according to Caridad's scale i gained five pounds only. it's amazing. i wish i could eat that much here in the states, and gain as little.

if the pilot turned, we might have been crossing the Ohio River, where it comes down sort of Northeast to Southwest, from Pittsburgh.

a huge city of light, clear as a whistle, as if only fifteen feet away. the sky is incredibly clear. no river. Indianapolis or something. St. Louis maybe. a huge circle with radiating spokes. all other lights have been little pueblos compared. it's huge, impressive, ringed with beltways. there's a river far to the west reflecting light, with development along it. the pilot likes this city. he banks and circles. now he banks heavily, heading southwest, if not straight south. i don't know what's gotten into him. we've been hijacked to Colombia. i’ll see Chalo. that might get me there again, sammy. a force bigger than me. the plane lurches and banks. there aren’t any clouds. there's no visible explanation.

now it's really dark. the horizon is a translucent darker blue, a little orange way up at the front of the plane.

there's a tremendous splotch of light ahead now, sprawling every which way. not organized and delineated like Indianapolis, or whatever that was. since i can't see a river i can't say it's St. Louis. where the heck is this? it's the huge unknown U.S. city, not on a river, with great suburbs sprawling northward. if the dark area south of the city is a river i can't see, then it's Cincinnatti, which would make Indianapolis Columbus. the big city to the south could be Louisville.

the sunset's crimson now.

it's a big country, sammy. way too big, with enough huge cities to tilt the planet. depressingly big, you could almost say. Cocaland’s size is human, and its importance is graspable.

i feel like sleeping.

“Cocaland’s size is human, and its importance is graspable.”

a downriver launch seen from an upriver launch
(as both pass a river town between Santisima Cruz and Magangué)

118.  THE MORE YOU FORSWEAR IT, THE MORE YOU CRAVE COCALAND.

i'm sorry i stole Robbie's limelight in Santisima Cruz. i said that to him this afternoon. he'll get more attention if he goes alone, i told him. i'm jealous of the attention he'll get already. i won't get any in Denver. that's plain, and it’s depressing me.

the picture he paints of Ibrahim and him is cute. when Robinson was fifteen he used to throw little Ibrahim up on his shoulders and say, "Come on Ibrahim, ride the burro."

one day after Victoria said goodbye to them and took off, leaving the boys at the house, Robbie started carrying Ibrahim out to the fields a couple blocks away. he was going to show five-year old Ibrahim how to fuck a burro. meanwhile Victoria for some reason was trying to find them. while they were in the middle of it, first Ibrahim holding the burro so Robbie could do it, then Robbie doing the same for him, Victoria came along and found them.

part of becoming a man in Santisima Cruz, as they say.

i can't get it out of my mind.

we were sitting in Caridad's kitchen. Caridad added, "They're known for that, in that part of the country."

they don’t think of it as a perversion, sammy, or call it ‘bestiality’, as here. in Santisima Cruz they think it's normal. they celebrate it.

maybe the U.N. should teach it as birth control.

animal rights groups would have a fit.

and what about bestial sex acts with five-year-olds? in Denver every one of those bright-eyed life-loving guys would be in jail, and on top of that, once they were released, an officially listed persona non grata for life, unable to live in any normal neighborhood or get normal work, shunned and rejected forever by the dominant neo-Calvinist worldview.

Robbie says fucking a burra, a female burro, is incredible. a burra has a larger vagina than a woman, so it's spacier and squishier. plus when it's really enjoying itself, it has muscles it uses to clamp down tight. he was very enthusiastic about this.

i said, "Women have the same thing."

"Yes," he said, "but just imagine the feeling in a vagina that big!"

i said i couldn't and didn't want to at the moment. he'd won that contest of machismo, i allowed.

Caridad grimaced. to a well-bred girl from Cali, this was a wee bit distasteful. churlish.

years ago when Robbie first told me about it, i thought it gross, comic and provincial, and probably a lie or exaggeration. now it's the most amazing sexual initiation on the planet. people who have the guts to be so original, and the simplicity to talk about it so shamelessly, i’d like to know better.

“people who have the guts to be so original

and the simplicity to talk about it so shamelessly

i’d like to know better”

multiple passenger launches arrive and leave Santisima Cruz' secondary town dock

i don't like fighting sex, sammy, anywhere in the world, least of all in me. when you're coming back to life after a mean depression, it's a losing battle. we don't fight hunger, do we? why fight sex?

the only sex i would fight, would be sex that caused harm to another person. even the sex that causes overpopulation doesn’t have to be fought. for it, there are condoms.

abstention from all sex is for perverts. Augustine was a pervert. celibacy is a sexual perversion, a perversion of our natural mammalian humanity.

pretending we're not animal is sick.

if it were safe, sammy, i'd live in Santisima Cruz with Chalo. i'd buy Yazmín's house and move there – with him as servant. we couldn't have people thinking we liked guys. one of us would have to chase women, and that would be him. he looks like he'd be up to it.

if he came on to me, begging for this or that in exchange, i'd tell him to go get laid. with his body and pep, he'd manage it.

meanwhile i'd keep a female burro in the yard, with high walls. burros don't get HIV, do they?

you're supposed to know these things, sexpert.

we're almost landing, and i have to pack up.

once i’m in Denver, i’ve got to pay bills.

after that, i want to calculate whether, if i sold the house and paid off debts, i could afford to retire in Santisima Cruz with what’s left. gringos do it in Mexico, in San Miguel de Allende. it should be possible in Santisima Cruz too. a friend of mine lived well in San Miguel on five hundred a month. six thousand a year, sammy.

Santisima Cruz would cost less!

what am i talking about? i’m not going back!

another idea i WAS considering before all that volcanic activity, was to stay in Denver a year or two, with Chalo as helper; get out of debt, letting the house appreciate; then sell it and go back to Colombia with him.

assuming i'd be around that long, of course.

assuming he'd stay.

as it turns out, sammy, i have no plans, and that doesn’t feel good. i’m up in the air, in more ways than one.

119.  OK YOU’RE A MUSH-MALLOW FOR COCALAND.  IT’S OK. YOU'VE GOT HEART AFTER ALL.

10 PM. San Juan Pueblo.

at the desk in the room that you still call ‘mj’s room’, sammy.

you don't 'recognize' me. i'm 'talkative'.

why did you practically grab at the yellow sheets, like i’d keep my diary from you?

don't tell Robbie i showed it to you.

Hearts of Space is playing mellow radio music, as always on Sunday night FM radio.

i miss Chalo and want him here.

it's time we revived squires and boon companions. every half-cocked Quixote needs a Sancho.

you've got one. Racer seems a little better, by the way.

i'm listing things to do in Denver tomorrow: get recently published books on Cocaland from the library, buy them if i have to, at Tattered Cover Book Store; pay bills; call about Master Card.

i've been to Cocaland. my heart's all recharged by something, somebody. i'm in shock. i'm tired.

i don't know whether to go to bed, keep writing, or do something else. i don't want my rut back. everything has to be different.

i want to live in Santisima Cruz.

to live in this country, the secret to happiness might be to keep a dream of somewhere else in your heart, whether you got to see it or not.
 

but that wouldn't work for me, sammy. i've seen the real thing and it’s all i want.

Nico calls. i say Santisima Cruz was ‘incredible’ and it sounds stupid. no word is good enough. burros. no cars. no roads. out in the boonies. motor launch the only access, two hours upriver. chickens and pigs in yard, house, on sidewalks, everywhere. friendliest people in creation. i wanted to help her see it without having been there. i don't think i succeeded, sammy.

how do i tell an eighteen-year-old daughter, how i, her intelligent, educated, professional, highly civilized and Calvinist-principled father, ended up like this?

choral music comes on the radio, unlike anything i've heard for weeks.

i feel like crying. the music is so beautiful, i haven't heard anything like it in ages.

am i a mush-mallow[4] or what?

“how do i tell an eighteen-year-old daughter how i

her intelligent, educated, professional, highly civilized and Calvinist-principled father

ended up like this?”

Pedro fishing in Colombia's Rio Mojana, old-world style, with a perfect toss