"Never trust a man who tries to give you advice about women, especially if he claims to know what he is talking about."
Thursday, October 30, 2008
advice about girls
The best advice I was ever given regarding the fairer sex came from my acquaintance Innocence Finn -- a man who, if barroom banter is to be believed (and it often is not), has loved more women than Casanova with both the purity of Romeo Montague and the depravity of the Marquis de Sade. We bumped into each other by pure coincidence on one uncharacteristically balmy February night in the pub of the Drumnadrochit Inn which sits on the Western shore of Loch Ness. If you ever go, order an ale and some steak pie, but don't mention the monster. I was passing through on my way to Thurso while old Innocence was en route to Rome where he had "a long overdue appointment with an old acquaintance". Over ale and darts, he told me what I am about to tell you and encouraged me to pass it on. This is what he said:
Friday, October 24, 2008
Argentine Apartheid vol. 1
The room went cold when I asked them about the No Argentine Rule. Thermostat dropped right out -- my nose cracked on the inside and my fillings ached. And that was when I had tried to do it innocently: “La di da…so I hear you don’t let Argentines stay at this B and B…”. No telling what would have happened if I had blundered into it.
“No.” The young man who was writing down my passport details said, without looking up from his work. He sat behind a high desk in the lobby of the B and B. It was really the living room of a converted mansion done up in art deco with each room named for a famous Argentine. It was One of those majestic turn of the century deals that gets abandoned when dictatorships fall and wealthy politicians have to take the money and run.
I scanned the rack of tourist excursion brochures. A night of Tango en Buenos Aires (starting at 40 dollars)! Sky Diving over las Pampas! White Water Rafting! The concierge, who had until then been excitingly inquiring where I was from and if I followed Argenting football, declined to elaborate.
“…Porque?”
He stopped writing and looked up at me gravely. His friend on the sofa filled a mate from a large silver thermos but left it steaming on the table. In the depths of the house, a toilet flushed.
“Lamentablemente, Argentines are always the ones causing problems. It’s not just them, though. Its Latins in general. We don’t let any Latins stay here. In the past, whenever there were problems, it was people from this continent.” He had a “surely you understand” sort of tone.
“Oh yea?” Face neutral here, don’t want this lunatic feeling threatened.
“Lamentablemente, yes. Of course, this is not how we would prefer it because obviously…”
“You are Argentines as well,” I added, feeling that the obvious somehow needed to be stated. He flinched slightly under the observation.
“…Yes. Of course. And its not like we never allow Latins to stay here. Obviously if we know them or they come recommended we can make allowances, but in general…”
“Claro, of course,” I agreed, words tasting like sand.
“So we do it not only to protect ourselves, but to protect you, our customers.”
“And you never had problems with other, uh, types of foreigners?”
“No, it is always people from this country who cause trouble…”
He left it hanging like he had more to say but couldn’t quite find the words. I let that silence drag itself out.
“In fact,” he said, scrutinizing me, “I thought you looked a little Argentine when you came up the stairs because of your features…” he motioned to his face and nodded at me knowingly. Apparently hinting at something. I grabbed my passport off the counter, caressing the eagle on the front like a protective talisman. Where’s the room then?
“No.” The young man who was writing down my passport details said, without looking up from his work. He sat behind a high desk in the lobby of the B and B. It was really the living room of a converted mansion done up in art deco with each room named for a famous Argentine. It was One of those majestic turn of the century deals that gets abandoned when dictatorships fall and wealthy politicians have to take the money and run.
I scanned the rack of tourist excursion brochures. A night of Tango en Buenos Aires (starting at 40 dollars)! Sky Diving over las Pampas! White Water Rafting! The concierge, who had until then been excitingly inquiring where I was from and if I followed Argenting football, declined to elaborate.
“…Porque?”
He stopped writing and looked up at me gravely. His friend on the sofa filled a mate from a large silver thermos but left it steaming on the table. In the depths of the house, a toilet flushed.
“Lamentablemente, Argentines are always the ones causing problems. It’s not just them, though. Its Latins in general. We don’t let any Latins stay here. In the past, whenever there were problems, it was people from this continent.” He had a “surely you understand” sort of tone.
“Oh yea?” Face neutral here, don’t want this lunatic feeling threatened.
“Lamentablemente, yes. Of course, this is not how we would prefer it because obviously…”
“You are Argentines as well,” I added, feeling that the obvious somehow needed to be stated. He flinched slightly under the observation.
“…Yes. Of course. And its not like we never allow Latins to stay here. Obviously if we know them or they come recommended we can make allowances, but in general…”
“Claro, of course,” I agreed, words tasting like sand.
“So we do it not only to protect ourselves, but to protect you, our customers.”
“And you never had problems with other, uh, types of foreigners?”
“No, it is always people from this country who cause trouble…”
He left it hanging like he had more to say but couldn’t quite find the words. I let that silence drag itself out.
“In fact,” he said, scrutinizing me, “I thought you looked a little Argentine when you came up the stairs because of your features…” he motioned to his face and nodded at me knowingly. Apparently hinting at something. I grabbed my passport off the counter, caressing the eagle on the front like a protective talisman. Where’s the room then?
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Soul of a Sandwich
When it comes to listing great sandwiches, the country of Uruguay is not often considered. This is perhaps justified by the fact that the United States, grand-masters and innovators of the sandwich making tradition, have so fervently embraced and diversified the field that there often seems little room for competition. Indeed, amongst such favourites as the Grinder and the Hogie in the Midwest, pulled pork sandwiches in the South, hot pastrami on rye in the East and countless specialty designs in every roadside diner from sea to shining sea, what country could possibly compete with the near culinary monopoly that the U.S. holds over the art of putting food stuffs between two pieces of bread?
Uruguay is a place that, as a friend recently pointed out: “you have probably heard of, but can’t point to on a map”. It is a small country squeezed into the South-Eastern corner of South America between regional giants Brazil and Argentina. Its 3 million inhabitants of mostly European decent don’t get into the international news much. They don’t suffer through hurricanes and earthquakes, don’t produce narcotics and haven’t staged many revolutions in the past 50 years. They are a low-key people living in a low-key place, and that is the way that many Uruguayans like it. Another thing that many Uruguayans like is meat, in fact they love it, and they have proved this love by creating one of the best sandwiches in you have never heard of – the Chivito.
If you believe the old bit of bumper-sticker morality that “meat is murder,” the Chivito is barnyard genocide. Its most basic permutation consists of three types of meat – steak tenderloin, ham and pancetta – grilled together on a hot plate, topped with hard boiled or fried egg, lettuce, tomato, and melted mozzarella, and sandwiched between a large white roll. The ingredients can be expanded to include relishes like olives, peppers and mushrooms as well as an encyclopaedic list of sauces from perennial favourites like mayonnaise and thousand island dressing, to spicy, green chimichurri.
One of the only meats not present is the “chivito” or “young goat” for which the sandwich is named. Instead, the name pays homage to the story of the sandwich’s invention one dark and stormy night during the early 1940’s in the resort town of Punta Del Este. It was there, in a small restaurant called El Mejillon, owned and operated by Antonio Carbonaro, that the sandwich was first thrown together on a whim.
“It had been a tough night,” Antonio said in an interview before his death in 2003 “There had been a black out. A woman arrived who was from Northern Argentina or Chile and she asked to be served baby goat because she had eaten it in Córdoba before coming to Uruguay. Since we didn’t have goat, we made her a sandwich with toasted bread, a slice of ham and a juicy cut of steak. She loved it and without meaning to, we invented the Chivito.”.
All in all, the sandwich takes no longer than ten minutes to assemble, but calling it “fast food” would be a disservice to the quality of the ingredients – especially the meat. Most of the beef in Uruguay comes from ranches located in the vast, fertile plains in the interior of the country. These are lands where the last of the Gauchos (South American cowboys) still roam on horseback through undulating seas of green interrupted only by the occasional farmhouse or gnarled Ombú tree. These are also the lands where, every year, Uruguayans produce 600,000 tons of beef, 450,000 of which are exported to 80 different countries. That means each Uruguayan is still eating 53 kilos worth of steaks, ribs, hamburgers, tongues, roasts, tripe, hooves, flanks and tails every year.
“Beef is part of our pop culture,” Explained Pablo Atúnez, a food columnist for Montevideo’s largest paper El País as we gorged ourselves on Chivitos and French fries in La Pasiva – one of the city’s most emblematic restaurants for the dish. “I would say 95 percent of our national dishes are based around red meat, and that is only because I’m leaving room for error,” he added, daubing an errant smear of mayonnaise from his cheek.
As a matter of national pride, Uruguayans don’t eat low-grade meat, or at least don’t admit to it. Given its quasi-sacred status in the national cuisine, doing so would seem almost perverse. “Our meat starts at grade ‘A’ and gets better,” boasted my friend, Rafael Rey who also works as a journalist in Montevideo. Exaggerations aside, it is rare to find someone making Chivitos who doesn’t swear by the quality of their cow. The tenderloin is almost always a medallion of the highest grade Uruguayan free range, exclusively grass grazed beef pounded almost paper thin to ensure tenderness. The ham, pancetta and eggs come from domestic distributors with similarly exacting quality controls. All the vegetables are both locally sourced and exceedingly fresh. Even the buns are freshly baked in local bakeries.
The other factor setting the Chivito apart from run of the mill fast food is the precision and attention to detail with which the sandwiches are made. When it comes to putting the monster together, there are three important rules, explained Marcelo Peralta, and they start with the tomato always going below the meat. Marcelo is the general manager of Chiviteria Marcos and the son of its founder for whom the chain is named. He has been working in his father’s restaurants since he could carry a tray and talks about the Chivito as if it were a member of his family. Even given his expertise, such an inversion of the stacking hierarchy seems counterintuitive to most people from the Northern hemisphere. It brings to mind a famous map sketched by the Uruguayan artist Joaquín Torrez García that shows North and South America inverted so that Tierra del Fuego approaches the North Pole and Canada Dominates the Southern oceans . His was a political statement, but in the case of the Chivito, it is a matter of tradition and functionality. If the tomato goes on top of the meat, it is prone to slide off which then threatens the stability of the whole sandwich. Rule number two is that, after adding ham, pancetta and relish, everything is topped with thin slices of mozzarella and run through the broiler thereby “sealing” the ingredients into place, as Marcelo put it. Finally the bread, referred to locally as “Australian bread” is neither as soft as a common white roll nor as crusty as a baguette. Instead, it is the perfect consistency to hold all the ingredients together without stressing them when bitten into. All of this delicate construction gives life to that rarest of dishes – a gigantic sandwich that doesn’t fall apart. Of course, structural integrity also depends on a fourth, supplementary rule stating that you have to eat the thing with your hands. As Marcelo told me, this is the only rule they don’t enforce, offering silverware at the counter, but there was no mistaking in the look on his face regarding the general opinion of those who dine on Chivitos using knife and fork.
Eating it with your hands, the quality of the ingredients and the order in which they are placed are all traditions that, in truth, have little or nothing to do with the taste or general appearance of the sandwich. However, they remain integral to the concept of the Chivito. “You can eat a steak sandwich with cheese and lettuce and tomato, but a Chivito is something entirely different,” Explained Rafael. “If you try to change it too much, it loses its essence.”
This “essence” is something that exists in all emblematic dishes from fish and chips in Great Britain to paella in Spain, to the much-loved American hamburger. It is a combination of the cultural and the culinary and it imbues each dish with a sort of life, making it more than the sum of its parts. The composition of the Chivito can and often does change slightly from restaurant to restaurant but the most popular locales for eating the sandwich – places like Chiviteria Marcos, la Pasiva and Chiviteria Fergus – are neither the most-high end nor the most innovative. Instead, they are the restaurants that capture the intangible essence of the sandwich through a vague alchemy of pragmatism and propaganda, affordability and ambience. Like the all-night diner in which the sandwich was born, the best modern-day Chiviterias are no frills establishments with napkin dispensers on the tables and old TV’s in the corner set on a constant loop of soccer games and telenovelas (latin soap-operas). The beer is usually domestic and only comes in liter bottles to be shared between friends. The service is invariably warm and inviting, radiating a certain small town friendliness that is distinctly Uruguayan, feeling neither forced nor self-conscious. These are the diners that ensure that eating a Chivito isn’t simply gorging yourself on more meat than is medically recommended, it is tasting a culture – consuming an ideal produced by countless generations of friendly, low-key, meat loving Uruguayans.
The soul of any dish is not an easy thing to grasp completely or understand wholly. However, it is safe to say that at least part of the Alma del Chivito lies in the embrace of one’s inner glutton. To enjoy this sandwich is to romp in the playground of guilty pleasures. You are not savouring the taste of one high quality meat, but three stacked on top of each other. The other ingredients are so fresh and of such quality that each flavour explodes on your tongue before mixing sensuously with the others. Despite the undefined, but undoubtedly stratospheric calorie content, it would be hard for any meat lover to resist. It is a culinary coup de tat against your better judgement.
“You eat this sandwich when all you want to do is eat and enjoy consuming large quantities of red meat,” explained Rafael as we wolfed down Chivitos around 10:00 pm (the normal hour for dinner in Uruguay) on a Sunday at the Chiviteria Fergus where they serve the sandwiches in small bags to catch any sauces or relish that might escape.
Regardless of where you eat them, the experience is messy, vulgar, unrelenting, and unfailingly glorious. Considering this behemoth as you hold it firmly between two hands feels somehow epic, like staring down the opposing forces before making that final charge. It is not an experience for the faint of heart or small of stomach. You attack the sandwich, straining to fit your mouth over it without smearing the rest of your face with mayonnaise or thousand island dressing. When it’s over, the plate is scattered with fallen soldiers -- stray onions, red peppers or mushrooms that you pick at half-heartedly through a blissful, endorphin induced daze.
However, just like a hamburger from an anonymous greasy spoon will never be as good as the one grilled in the back yard during a late summer afternoon with friends and family, a Chivito eaten outside of the of the Plane tree lined streets of Montevideo or beachside diners of Punta del Este would invariably lose something. Just as Uruguayans need this sandwich as a popular expression of their infatuation with meat, the Chivito needs the Uruguayan context – late nights, close friends and family, intimate diners and big bottles of beer passed around the table – in order to be more than just a lot of meat between two slices of bread. In small, externally independent countries prone to devastating economic crises, food trends come and go very quickly. Perhaps, then, it is the staying power of the culinary and cultural traditions embodied by the Chivito that have made it so popular in this country of European transplants. As Pablo explained to me: “Consumer habits have always changed when our economy was in crisis, but our traditions never die”.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Blue-Eyed GIrl
I stood in the book store, paralyzed, with Marquez in one hand and Borges in the other, trying to remember what life was like before she walked through the door. Dark skin, long dark hair, a white chemise and eyes that were the palest blue things this side of the Caribbean. She looked right past me and I ceased to exist.
Did she really not even notice me?
The clerk slid my change across the counter and turned to help her. I fumbled it into my pocket, suddenly idiotically clumsy, then drifted away, wraithlike to inspect the rest of the bookstore. Of, course, I had already inspected the bookstore, but I had no choice, I was trapped in her orbit. Philosophy – Kant, Heigle, Marx, -- I tried to look interested but couldn’t concentrate on anything. I had to say something, get her attention, impress her, enthral her, invite her to dinner, then drinks, a walk on la Rambla, Sunday morning breakfast in bed…but I was mute and invisible.
The clerk shifted positions and obstructed my view so I floated over to the Art section, grasping for something to anchor me, gasping for life, feeling weightless but trapped. She examined two different copies of the same book, carelessly brushed an errant lock of coffee coloured hair off her face. Here eyes flickered up for just a second, then back down passing right over me without the slightest hint of recognition.
I couldn’t escape a sense of panic coupled with despair. I wafted over to the counter, unwilling or unable to leave her presence for some mysterious, perverse, and altogether masochistic reason. She took a sheet of paper from her purse, a reading list and compared the titles on it to the books in front of her with a frown. I leaned over the counter, close enough to smell her light perfume and whisper in her ear. Instead, I read the books on the list. They all had to do with law. She looked up, as if remembering something or sensing my presence, but of course she did not see me, her very own ghost.
A draft whispered through the shop disturbing papers and fluttering through stacks of tomes. It blew me right out into the street where I snagged a table of books laid out for display. Science fiction and thrillers. I stared at her through my own reflection in the window. I needed time, I thought. Time to get to know her, find out what she liked and disliked, time to languish in the pools of her pale blue gaze.
She closed the books she was looking at, handed them to the clerk and walked out, never once turning my way. I debated whether to follow, to prolong the pain of her presence, or accept the pain of her departure. I decided to follow, but too late. She was too far ahead in the crowd. I flitted down the narrow sidewalk packed with shoppers, and antique vendors and fruit sellers and old men selling pots and pans and parrots and mayonnaise, ever one step to slow. Up ahead, her coffee coloured hair came into view for fleeting moments through the crowd, then disappeared again beneath the waves, every time disappearing for longer periods until finally vanishing forever into the sea of people.
I recovered myself then. It felt like waking up after a fever has broken. I was me again, whole, strong, confident. Still, there are some dreams one never forgets, and some illnesses which leave us just a little less than what we were. I have already begun to forget her face, or the exact colour of her skin, or the way her hair fell over her shoulders, but I will not forget those eyes, even though I would very much like to.
Did she really not even notice me?
The clerk slid my change across the counter and turned to help her. I fumbled it into my pocket, suddenly idiotically clumsy, then drifted away, wraithlike to inspect the rest of the bookstore. Of, course, I had already inspected the bookstore, but I had no choice, I was trapped in her orbit. Philosophy – Kant, Heigle, Marx, -- I tried to look interested but couldn’t concentrate on anything. I had to say something, get her attention, impress her, enthral her, invite her to dinner, then drinks, a walk on la Rambla, Sunday morning breakfast in bed…but I was mute and invisible.
The clerk shifted positions and obstructed my view so I floated over to the Art section, grasping for something to anchor me, gasping for life, feeling weightless but trapped. She examined two different copies of the same book, carelessly brushed an errant lock of coffee coloured hair off her face. Here eyes flickered up for just a second, then back down passing right over me without the slightest hint of recognition.
I couldn’t escape a sense of panic coupled with despair. I wafted over to the counter, unwilling or unable to leave her presence for some mysterious, perverse, and altogether masochistic reason. She took a sheet of paper from her purse, a reading list and compared the titles on it to the books in front of her with a frown. I leaned over the counter, close enough to smell her light perfume and whisper in her ear. Instead, I read the books on the list. They all had to do with law. She looked up, as if remembering something or sensing my presence, but of course she did not see me, her very own ghost.
A draft whispered through the shop disturbing papers and fluttering through stacks of tomes. It blew me right out into the street where I snagged a table of books laid out for display. Science fiction and thrillers. I stared at her through my own reflection in the window. I needed time, I thought. Time to get to know her, find out what she liked and disliked, time to languish in the pools of her pale blue gaze.
She closed the books she was looking at, handed them to the clerk and walked out, never once turning my way. I debated whether to follow, to prolong the pain of her presence, or accept the pain of her departure. I decided to follow, but too late. She was too far ahead in the crowd. I flitted down the narrow sidewalk packed with shoppers, and antique vendors and fruit sellers and old men selling pots and pans and parrots and mayonnaise, ever one step to slow. Up ahead, her coffee coloured hair came into view for fleeting moments through the crowd, then disappeared again beneath the waves, every time disappearing for longer periods until finally vanishing forever into the sea of people.
I recovered myself then. It felt like waking up after a fever has broken. I was me again, whole, strong, confident. Still, there are some dreams one never forgets, and some illnesses which leave us just a little less than what we were. I have already begun to forget her face, or the exact colour of her skin, or the way her hair fell over her shoulders, but I will not forget those eyes, even though I would very much like to.
Ghost Story
“Men of Reason will define a Ghost as nothing more otherworldly than a wrong unrighted, which like an uneasy spirit cannot move on, -- needing help we cannot usually give, -- nor always find the people it needs to see, -- or who need to see it.”
--Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
I was eating a late dinner at Bar 61 with Eliana and her boyfriend Leo. It was a typically pleasant summer night in Montevideo. The Pampero was blowing stiff and cool from the south, roaring off the great, lonely plains of Argentina and over the River Plate, past fishing boats and cargo liners before funnelling into the wide, shady lanes of that city by the sea. We sat at a sidewalk table watching groups of people pass by on evening walks, mothers and daughters strolling arm in arm, young couples pushing prams and friends sharing warm mate.
I think she invited me out more out of pity than anything else. Uruguayans are like that – they can’t stand the idea of someone being alone, find it almost grotesque. So she invited me to come eat with her and her boyfriend on a Friday night. It was awkward and even more so because he and I had hated each other since shaking hands, but she was beautiful and I didn’t know many people.
“How did you choose Uruguay?” Leo asked, sceptically, as he tore a roll in two and used his end to pick a bite-sized piece of meet off the parilla sampler we were all sharing.
I had answered that question so many times that I recited my response as if I were reading it out of a book. Eliana looked on politely, smiling encouragingly and pushing a few strands of long brown hair away from her clear blue eyes. When I finished, I changed the subject and asked how long they had been together.
“Three years,” came Leo’s response, popping another piece of meat into this mouth and reaching down to rub her leg.
I reached over and took a sip of watery beer, more out of nervous habit than desire. When Leo didn’t offer any more, Eliana began to tell the story of how they met. It was another one that had been told many times. Leo stared off into space, not bothering to conceal his boredom. I liked how expressive her face was, how it changed and morphed according to what she was saying or which character in the story was talking. I could watch her face all night, I thought.
Unexpectedly, a shadow moved over it, darkening her eyes, stealing her smile, knitting her brow into a slight frown. From behind me, a dark, scrawny boy, or something that looked very much like one appeared next to our table with its hand out. I hadn’t heard it approach and was startled to find it right next to me, smelling faintly of mould and old shoes. It was a tiny, young thing, maybe eight or nine with an oversized head that looked like it had been shaved violently, in the dark. More than anything its gaze held my attention, or rather, didn’t hold my attention. The eyes were unnervingly dim, the stare vacant like an empty masoleum, rusted door creaking back and forth in the lonely wind that blows through the graveyard.
It looked toward us, but not exactly at us. Instead, staring at a space just in front of our noses so that I wouldn’t have been able to meet its gaze even if I had wanted to.
“Good evening. I come from a family of 10 and although my mother and father work all day we often don’t have enough money for food and clothes…” voice monotone, eyes flicking back and forth, no pauses for breathing or thinking because this had all been said one thousand, maybe one hundred thousand times before. But no one’s keeping track. The words had no meaning– they were just sounds being repeated with no more comprehension than a parrot, or a robot at Disneyland. “Me and my brothers and sisters work everyday in order to make enough money for our school supplies and milk for the young ones. Thank you for your time and God bless you”
Leo looked down at his food and my hand went instinctively to my pocket.
“What’s your name?” Eliana said with a big smile that, if it were fake, I couldn’t tell.
“Oh, for God’s sake, not now, Eliana,” Leo whispered.
She ignored him and asked again.
“Maicol,” The homunculus replied distantly as if speaking in a dream.
“I’m Eliana, Maicol, and I work with La Paloma. Have you ever heard of that?”
Silence, then a slight shake of the head.
“Well, we work with kids in this neighborhood who work in the street like you. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we come with books and games and balls and jump ropes and we do different activities. Does that sound like something you might like to do?”
There was a tiny glint in those dull, drossy eyes. They flickered up to brush her gaze for the briefest of moments. She was wearing eye-liner and her cerulean smile seemed to sparkle in the night. But the darkness rushed back in, extinguishing whatever it was I thought I saw and leaving only a dead, hollow stare like a high tide line on the sand that plummeted back to the ground, unwilling or perhaps unable to respond.
Eliana sighed to herself and grabbed a napkin. She quickly filled it with a few pieces of meat and a roll, then offered it to the skinny thing. It considered the food mutely for a few interminable moments then asked again:
“Do you have any money?”
“No, we don’t have any money,” Leo said.
Without saying another word, it flitted off to the other tables, leaving Eliana with her arm outstretched, grease beginning to soak through the bundled napkin in little patches.
“Do you follow fútbol?” Leo asked, popping some more meat into his mouth and continuing as though there had been no interruption. “I don’t mean American football, I mean real fútbol,” Eliana stared off into space, hundreds of miles away.
I gave another stock answer as I watched the wraith drift away like a dry leaf on the wind. It paused briefly at each table to stick out a filthy hand and repeat the same rapid-fire, robotic pitch over and over and over like a penance. Some people dug into pockets or purses to give him money, others dropped their eyes and shook their heads, as if refusing their food. I looked down at our own table and took a sip of watery beer, more out of habit than desire. When I looked back up, the boy, if that’s what it was, had faded away into the darkness.
I was eating a late dinner at Bar 61 with Eliana and her boyfriend Leo. It was a typically pleasant summer night in Montevideo. The Pampero was blowing stiff and cool from the south, roaring off the great, lonely plains of Argentina and over the River Plate, past fishing boats and cargo liners before funnelling into the wide, shady lanes of that city by the sea. We sat at a sidewalk table watching groups of people pass by on evening walks, mothers and daughters strolling arm in arm, young couples pushing prams and friends sharing warm mate.
I think she invited me out more out of pity than anything else. Uruguayans are like that – they can’t stand the idea of someone being alone, find it almost grotesque. So she invited me to come eat with her and her boyfriend on a Friday night. It was awkward and even more so because he and I had hated each other since shaking hands, but she was beautiful and I didn’t know many people.
“How did you choose Uruguay?” Leo asked, sceptically, as he tore a roll in two and used his end to pick a bite-sized piece of meet off the parilla sampler we were all sharing.
I had answered that question so many times that I recited my response as if I were reading it out of a book. Eliana looked on politely, smiling encouragingly and pushing a few strands of long brown hair away from her clear blue eyes. When I finished, I changed the subject and asked how long they had been together.
“Three years,” came Leo’s response, popping another piece of meat into this mouth and reaching down to rub her leg.
I reached over and took a sip of watery beer, more out of nervous habit than desire. When Leo didn’t offer any more, Eliana began to tell the story of how they met. It was another one that had been told many times. Leo stared off into space, not bothering to conceal his boredom. I liked how expressive her face was, how it changed and morphed according to what she was saying or which character in the story was talking. I could watch her face all night, I thought.
Unexpectedly, a shadow moved over it, darkening her eyes, stealing her smile, knitting her brow into a slight frown. From behind me, a dark, scrawny boy, or something that looked very much like one appeared next to our table with its hand out. I hadn’t heard it approach and was startled to find it right next to me, smelling faintly of mould and old shoes. It was a tiny, young thing, maybe eight or nine with an oversized head that looked like it had been shaved violently, in the dark. More than anything its gaze held my attention, or rather, didn’t hold my attention. The eyes were unnervingly dim, the stare vacant like an empty masoleum, rusted door creaking back and forth in the lonely wind that blows through the graveyard.
It looked toward us, but not exactly at us. Instead, staring at a space just in front of our noses so that I wouldn’t have been able to meet its gaze even if I had wanted to.
“Good evening. I come from a family of 10 and although my mother and father work all day we often don’t have enough money for food and clothes…” voice monotone, eyes flicking back and forth, no pauses for breathing or thinking because this had all been said one thousand, maybe one hundred thousand times before. But no one’s keeping track. The words had no meaning– they were just sounds being repeated with no more comprehension than a parrot, or a robot at Disneyland. “Me and my brothers and sisters work everyday in order to make enough money for our school supplies and milk for the young ones. Thank you for your time and God bless you”
Leo looked down at his food and my hand went instinctively to my pocket.
“What’s your name?” Eliana said with a big smile that, if it were fake, I couldn’t tell.
“Oh, for God’s sake, not now, Eliana,” Leo whispered.
She ignored him and asked again.
“Maicol,” The homunculus replied distantly as if speaking in a dream.
“I’m Eliana, Maicol, and I work with La Paloma. Have you ever heard of that?”
Silence, then a slight shake of the head.
“Well, we work with kids in this neighborhood who work in the street like you. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we come with books and games and balls and jump ropes and we do different activities. Does that sound like something you might like to do?”
There was a tiny glint in those dull, drossy eyes. They flickered up to brush her gaze for the briefest of moments. She was wearing eye-liner and her cerulean smile seemed to sparkle in the night. But the darkness rushed back in, extinguishing whatever it was I thought I saw and leaving only a dead, hollow stare like a high tide line on the sand that plummeted back to the ground, unwilling or perhaps unable to respond.
Eliana sighed to herself and grabbed a napkin. She quickly filled it with a few pieces of meat and a roll, then offered it to the skinny thing. It considered the food mutely for a few interminable moments then asked again:
“Do you have any money?”
“No, we don’t have any money,” Leo said.
Without saying another word, it flitted off to the other tables, leaving Eliana with her arm outstretched, grease beginning to soak through the bundled napkin in little patches.
“Do you follow fútbol?” Leo asked, popping some more meat into his mouth and continuing as though there had been no interruption. “I don’t mean American football, I mean real fútbol,” Eliana stared off into space, hundreds of miles away.
I gave another stock answer as I watched the wraith drift away like a dry leaf on the wind. It paused briefly at each table to stick out a filthy hand and repeat the same rapid-fire, robotic pitch over and over and over like a penance. Some people dug into pockets or purses to give him money, others dropped their eyes and shook their heads, as if refusing their food. I looked down at our own table and took a sip of watery beer, more out of habit than desire. When I looked back up, the boy, if that’s what it was, had faded away into the darkness.
--Thomas Pynchon, Mason & Dixon
I was eating a late dinner at Bar 61 with Eliana and her boyfriend Leo. It was a typically pleasant summer night in Montevideo. The Pampero was blowing stiff and cool from the south, roaring off the great, lonely plains of Argentina and over the River Plate, past fishing boats and cargo liners before funnelling into the wide, shady lanes of that city by the sea. We sat at a sidewalk table watching groups of people pass by on evening walks, mothers and daughters strolling arm in arm, young couples pushing prams and friends sharing warm mate.
I think she invited me out more out of pity than anything else. Uruguayans are like that – they can’t stand the idea of someone being alone, find it almost grotesque. So she invited me to come eat with her and her boyfriend on a Friday night. It was awkward and even more so because he and I had hated each other since shaking hands, but she was beautiful and I didn’t know many people.
“How did you choose Uruguay?” Leo asked, sceptically, as he tore a roll in two and used his end to pick a bite-sized piece of meet off the parilla sampler we were all sharing.
I had answered that question so many times that I recited my response as if I were reading it out of a book. Eliana looked on politely, smiling encouragingly and pushing a few strands of long brown hair away from her clear blue eyes. When I finished, I changed the subject and asked how long they had been together.
“Three years,” came Leo’s response, popping another piece of meat into this mouth and reaching down to rub her leg.
I reached over and took a sip of watery beer, more out of nervous habit than desire. When Leo didn’t offer any more, Eliana began to tell the story of how they met. It was another one that had been told many times. Leo stared off into space, not bothering to conceal his boredom. I liked how expressive her face was, how it changed and morphed according to what she was saying or which character in the story was talking. I could watch her face all night, I thought.
Unexpectedly, a shadow moved over it, darkening her eyes, stealing her smile, knitting her brow into a slight frown. From behind me, a dark, scrawny boy, or something that looked very much like one appeared next to our table with its hand out. I hadn’t heard it approach and was startled to find it right next to me, smelling faintly of mould and old shoes. It was a tiny, young thing, maybe eight or nine with an oversized head that looked like it had been shaved violently, in the dark. More than anything its gaze held my attention, or rather, didn’t hold my attention. The eyes were unnervingly dim, the stare vacant like an empty masoleum, rusted door creaking back and forth in the lonely wind that blows through the graveyard.
It looked toward us, but not exactly at us. Instead, staring at a space just in front of our noses so that I wouldn’t have been able to meet its gaze even if I had wanted to.
“Good evening. I come from a family of 10 and although my mother and father work all day we often don’t have enough money for food and clothes…” voice monotone, eyes flicking back and forth, no pauses for breathing or thinking because this had all been said one thousand, maybe one hundred thousand times before. But no one’s keeping track. The words had no meaning– they were just sounds being repeated with no more comprehension than a parrot, or a robot at Disneyland. “Me and my brothers and sisters work everyday in order to make enough money for our school supplies and milk for the young ones. Thank you for your time and God bless you”
Leo looked down at his food and my hand went instinctively to my pocket.
“What’s your name?” Eliana said with a big smile that, if it were fake, I couldn’t tell.
“Oh, for God’s sake, not now, Eliana,” Leo whispered.
She ignored him and asked again.
“Maicol,” The homunculus replied distantly as if speaking in a dream.
“I’m Eliana, Maicol, and I work with La Paloma. Have you ever heard of that?”
Silence, then a slight shake of the head.
“Well, we work with kids in this neighborhood who work in the street like you. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we come with books and games and balls and jump ropes and we do different activities. Does that sound like something you might like to do?”
There was a tiny glint in those dull, drossy eyes. They flickered up to brush her gaze for the briefest of moments. She was wearing eye-liner and her cerulean smile seemed to sparkle in the night. But the darkness rushed back in, extinguishing whatever it was I thought I saw and leaving only a dead, hollow stare like a high tide line on the sand that plummeted back to the ground, unwilling or perhaps unable to respond.
Eliana sighed to herself and grabbed a napkin. She quickly filled it with a few pieces of meat and a roll, then offered it to the skinny thing. It considered the food mutely for a few interminable moments then asked again:
“Do you have any money?”
“No, we don’t have any money,” Leo said.
Without saying another word, it flitted off to the other tables, leaving Eliana with her arm outstretched, grease beginning to soak through the bundled napkin in little patches.
“Do you follow fútbol?” Leo asked, popping some more meat into his mouth and continuing as though there had been no interruption. “I don’t mean American football, I mean real fútbol,” Eliana stared off into space, hundreds of miles away.
I gave another stock answer as I watched the wraith drift away like a dry leaf on the wind. It paused briefly at each table to stick out a filthy hand and repeat the same rapid-fire, robotic pitch over and over and over like a penance. Some people dug into pockets or purses to give him money, others dropped their eyes and shook their heads, as if refusing their food. I looked down at our own table and took a sip of watery beer, more out of habit than desire. When I looked back up, the boy, if that’s what it was, had faded away into the darkness.
I was eating a late dinner at Bar 61 with Eliana and her boyfriend Leo. It was a typically pleasant summer night in Montevideo. The Pampero was blowing stiff and cool from the south, roaring off the great, lonely plains of Argentina and over the River Plate, past fishing boats and cargo liners before funnelling into the wide, shady lanes of that city by the sea. We sat at a sidewalk table watching groups of people pass by on evening walks, mothers and daughters strolling arm in arm, young couples pushing prams and friends sharing warm mate.
I think she invited me out more out of pity than anything else. Uruguayans are like that – they can’t stand the idea of someone being alone, find it almost grotesque. So she invited me to come eat with her and her boyfriend on a Friday night. It was awkward and even more so because he and I had hated each other since shaking hands, but she was beautiful and I didn’t know many people.
“How did you choose Uruguay?” Leo asked, sceptically, as he tore a roll in two and used his end to pick a bite-sized piece of meet off the parilla sampler we were all sharing.
I had answered that question so many times that I recited my response as if I were reading it out of a book. Eliana looked on politely, smiling encouragingly and pushing a few strands of long brown hair away from her clear blue eyes. When I finished, I changed the subject and asked how long they had been together.
“Three years,” came Leo’s response, popping another piece of meat into this mouth and reaching down to rub her leg.
I reached over and took a sip of watery beer, more out of nervous habit than desire. When Leo didn’t offer any more, Eliana began to tell the story of how they met. It was another one that had been told many times. Leo stared off into space, not bothering to conceal his boredom. I liked how expressive her face was, how it changed and morphed according to what she was saying or which character in the story was talking. I could watch her face all night, I thought.
Unexpectedly, a shadow moved over it, darkening her eyes, stealing her smile, knitting her brow into a slight frown. From behind me, a dark, scrawny boy, or something that looked very much like one appeared next to our table with its hand out. I hadn’t heard it approach and was startled to find it right next to me, smelling faintly of mould and old shoes. It was a tiny, young thing, maybe eight or nine with an oversized head that looked like it had been shaved violently, in the dark. More than anything its gaze held my attention, or rather, didn’t hold my attention. The eyes were unnervingly dim, the stare vacant like an empty masoleum, rusted door creaking back and forth in the lonely wind that blows through the graveyard.
It looked toward us, but not exactly at us. Instead, staring at a space just in front of our noses so that I wouldn’t have been able to meet its gaze even if I had wanted to.
“Good evening. I come from a family of 10 and although my mother and father work all day we often don’t have enough money for food and clothes…” voice monotone, eyes flicking back and forth, no pauses for breathing or thinking because this had all been said one thousand, maybe one hundred thousand times before. But no one’s keeping track. The words had no meaning– they were just sounds being repeated with no more comprehension than a parrot, or a robot at Disneyland. “Me and my brothers and sisters work everyday in order to make enough money for our school supplies and milk for the young ones. Thank you for your time and God bless you”
Leo looked down at his food and my hand went instinctively to my pocket.
“What’s your name?” Eliana said with a big smile that, if it were fake, I couldn’t tell.
“Oh, for God’s sake, not now, Eliana,” Leo whispered.
She ignored him and asked again.
“Maicol,” The homunculus replied distantly as if speaking in a dream.
“I’m Eliana, Maicol, and I work with La Paloma. Have you ever heard of that?”
Silence, then a slight shake of the head.
“Well, we work with kids in this neighborhood who work in the street like you. On Mondays and Wednesdays, we come with books and games and balls and jump ropes and we do different activities. Does that sound like something you might like to do?”
There was a tiny glint in those dull, drossy eyes. They flickered up to brush her gaze for the briefest of moments. She was wearing eye-liner and her cerulean smile seemed to sparkle in the night. But the darkness rushed back in, extinguishing whatever it was I thought I saw and leaving only a dead, hollow stare like a high tide line on the sand that plummeted back to the ground, unwilling or perhaps unable to respond.
Eliana sighed to herself and grabbed a napkin. She quickly filled it with a few pieces of meat and a roll, then offered it to the skinny thing. It considered the food mutely for a few interminable moments then asked again:
“Do you have any money?”
“No, we don’t have any money,” Leo said.
Without saying another word, it flitted off to the other tables, leaving Eliana with her arm outstretched, grease beginning to soak through the bundled napkin in little patches.
“Do you follow fútbol?” Leo asked, popping some more meat into his mouth and continuing as though there had been no interruption. “I don’t mean American football, I mean real fútbol,” Eliana stared off into space, hundreds of miles away.
I gave another stock answer as I watched the wraith drift away like a dry leaf on the wind. It paused briefly at each table to stick out a filthy hand and repeat the same rapid-fire, robotic pitch over and over and over like a penance. Some people dug into pockets or purses to give him money, others dropped their eyes and shook their heads, as if refusing their food. I looked down at our own table and took a sip of watery beer, more out of habit than desire. When I looked back up, the boy, if that’s what it was, had faded away into the darkness.
Bus Drivers
I was sitting on a city bus late one Sunday night in Montevideo, Uruguay, with no idea where I was, only a vague idea of where I was going, and not a clue when to get off.
“I’ll tell you when to get off,” the driver had assured me before ratcheting up the volume of the Cumbia blaring from the radio and zoning back in on the road. That had been half an hour ago. Now we were the only two carbon based life forms in the cavernous vehicles and I was beginning to worry. There are certain situations in life that I generally try to avoid – gambling with criminals, talking politics with Basques, associating with people who kiss their dogs, etc. Paramount among these situations is putting more of my fate than is absolutely necessary in the hands of bus drivers. I respect them, I always do what they say and I am even somewhat in awe of them, but I won’t ever trust a bus driver.
They aren’t like you and me. They are made of different stuff – eyes like falcons, the reflexes of professional athletes, nerves that are made from twisted coils of sheet metal and barbed wire. They have ether running through their veins like summer ice flows in the arctic and less pity in their hearts than tiger sharks, which is to say nothing of the inscrutable mysteries of their minds. Like truckers, pilots or Hell’s Angels, they are creatures of that rare order who base their lives around being neither sedentary nor nomadic; instead choosing to inhabit a constant stage of en-route. They are always moving, but never arriving. Most people, including those who travel professionally, construct their lives around specific points on the map. House, office, school; Ohio, California, North Carolina; Paris, London, New York. Bus driver’s lives are dominated by the lines in between these points, by the dizzying infinity of unreachable horizons – momentos sin mori. There is a certain kinetic romance to all of it; answering the call of the road while providing societies with a valuable service, that is both paradigmatic and slightly sinister.
Like many American kids, my first bus drivers were the men and women who piloted the classic yellow clunkers that shuttled me and every other rowdy little bastard in my neighbourhood to school. For one reason or another, most went by their first names preceded by Mr. or Mrs., i.e.: Mr. Bill, Mr. Mike, Mrs. Cheryl and so forth. I don’t remember them as being an overly amiable bunch. But then, can you imagine what you would be like if you had to drive while trying to maintain control of 30 kids without ever being able to turn around and face them? A few days of that, and most people would be parking on train tracks. Not Mrs. Carroll. No siree, Crazy Carroll bussed me for 5 years and was harder than old rebar. She could scream the glare off a pit bull if you pushed her far enough, which was rare, but everyone has their limits, and when we felt those massive air breaks lock and grind us to an abrupt halt, we all knew that someone had pushed too far. The only time there was ever complete silence on bus 13 was when Crazy Carroll pulled that mother over with a great hiss of the breaks to stalk back through the aisle and pluck some unfortunate troublemaker away from their friends like a dues ex machina with tinted prescription glasses. That person was condemned to the front seat (naturally being the least cool spot on the bus) for a few days or weeks, or until Mrs. Carroll forgot she was punishing them. I feared her like one fears the abandoned, supposedly haunted house so common in neighbourhoods across the Midwest: with equal parts love and aversion. Without her piercing scowl and the threat of biblical wrath that it promised, throwing things or shouting curse words out the window or switching seats in transit lost all the fun. For 178 days of the school year, she was my mortal enemy, but she always got a gift at Christmas and hug at the end of the year.
By the time I was old enough to start getting on buses by myself that weren’t yellow, I was living in Scotland and using the Fifelink to get just about everywhere I needed to go between Edinburgh and the historic port city of Dundee. The bus drivers of the kingdom of Fife, who like all Scots, consider themselves stronger, heartier, funnier, smarter, and better drinkers than their English counterparts are one wild bunch of Jacobites. Many are local boys from fishing towns like Arbroath, St. Monans or Crail who sport faded tattoos on their forearms and speak in rolling, guttural Scottish accents harshened by smoke and booze. They drive harder and faster than most sane people would even imagine over country lanes whose only berms are low stone walls that hug the sides of the roads like something out of a bucolic Monaco Grand Prix. Oncoming traffic always made me nervous; the wheels on the left side of the bus flirting with the edge of the road as the wheels on the right rubbed hubcaps with unlucky Peugeots, Renaults and Datsuns. Passing trucks or God forbid, other busses, was like jousting with side view mirrors. Those men seemed less like drivers to me, and more insane physicists, their demented minds working out angles, quadrants and trajectories while they were buckled to the front of 15 tons of steel doing fifty miles an hour down a windy, pot-holed strip of asphalt.
If there is very little room for error in the Scottish country- side, there is none on the Amalfi coast where the Italian land mass loses all hope and plummets into the Mediterranean. When I was 17, I took a tourist bus from Sorrento to X with one very cool Italian behind the wheel. His name was Andrea, and he apparently modelled himself out of a villain in Speed Racer. His uniform was composed of tinted sunglasses, tight, cream coloured trousers and matching shirt un-buttoned to reveal dark chest hair and a gold chain with icon of the Virgin Mary. To top off the ensemble, he sported an immaculate, cream coloured racing scarf, that I never saw him take off regardless of the temperature or time of day. Another thing I never saw him do was back up. This is a common practice among tourists and locals alike in the claustrophobic, zigzagging streets of towns along the Mediterranean. Drivers cut turns too closely and realize that they are going to rake their car across one of the roughly one million high stone walls in the province, so they stop, back up, and try again. Not Andrea. Perhaps he just had a good week, but the man never miss-judged a turn, and this in a vehicle twice the size of the puny rental cars that were forever clogging his playground.
Driving along that coastline can provoke intense vertigo. On one side of the road, mountains shoot straight upward, on the other, there is nothing but air and sparkling greenish blue water 100 feet below. Andrea cruised that two-lane death trap like he had been born to do it, cool as a polar bear in a snowstorm. The only time he even breathed was to chain smoke cigarettes when his human passengers stopped at overlook points to take pictures and vomit away car sickness. It takes a certain type of mind to be able to endure the daily pressure of knowing that 30 lives hang in the balance every time you turn the steering wheel or ease down on the accelerator. In Scotland, if you make a mistake, the worst that can usually happen is a few dead sheep and an irate farmer. On the Amalfi coast, the best case scenario is that you die from the impact of hitting the water and don’t have to wait to drown. I don’t know how he endured it, perhaps is had something to do the potent mix of nicotine and adrenaline that came with the job.
One thing Andrea never had to worry about was third world traffic. This is traffic ranging from bicycles to 18-wheelers to mule carts that clog the streets of many underdeveloped countries on any given day like a perversely anachronistic circus act. The well-worn surfer’s path between San Jose and Jaco, Costa Rica runs thick with just this type of traffic most days. It is a thin ribbon of unmarked black asphalt that sneaks through steamy rainforest-covered mountains in search of the pacific coast. Its impossible cut backs, harrowing descents and improbable curves give one the impression of a coil of rope thrown haphazardly on the ground. For drivers, travelling on it is a two and a half hour exercise in trying to keep yourself and your passengers alive while also not sending any one within your swarm of fellow commuters over a cliff to certain death. It’s a free for all with no quarter given and none expected. Engaged in battle are cars filled with commuting Ticos and long haired Californians stoned silly (Pura Vida, man!), animal drawn carts loaded with fruits and vegetables piloted by toothless, leathery skinned old men with wives and grandchildren in tow, motorbikes stacked with two and even three people hugging on to each other as they squirt between opposing traffic and as the piece de resistance, young boys between 10 and maybe 16 years old bombing past everyone else on one speed bikes sans breaks, sans helmet and sans any concept regarding the fragility of human life. Amid this chaos, Tico bus drivers, stone faced and sweating through their shirts in the tropical heat, crank up the salsa music and show everyone exactly who is boss. Thinking back, what strikes me most about their driving is that it was probably the smoothest of any that I have ever experienced, despite the unpredictability of the setting. They never jerked the wheel, never had to break abruptly and only once did I see someone misjudge a turn and have to back up. These were men that conducted their automotive monstrosities like they were out on a Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside. If you subtract animals, motorbikes, small trucks and bikers of the divine wind, I suppose that’s what it was.
Although the roads in Latin America are often challenging, the natural bloodlust of the conductors, their need to tempt laws of time, space and physics is limited by the overall age and unreliability of their vehicles. Not in Spain. Never have I seen or heard of a group that wasn’t an explicitly criminal organization brazenly flaunting more laws. An often employed Spanish curse is: “Me cago en dios” which refers to an improbably scatological act that Ernest Hemingway sometimes translated as “I profanity on God”. In a country where traffic laws are largely ignored in the first place, the bus drivers in Spain profanity on everything and everyone with hearty aplomb. They are like the Mafia, the Yakuza and the Teamsters all rolled into one fiery Latin syndicate. They ooze so much machismo that even the bullfighters look up to them.
In Alcalá de Henares, a dormitory city of Madrid where Cervantes was born, traffic in the centre of town often grinds to a halt for no apparent reason. There is no wreck, no road works, but instead two bus drivers, travelling in opposite directions who have recognized each other, stopped, and decided to carry on a brief conversation between their open windows. If they weren’t bus drivers, people would be profanitying on God, Jesus, the holy trinity, and most of the apostles. Instead, everyone chews their lips and resists the innate Latin urge to honk until the conversation ends. One gets the feeling that these men are less co-workers and more of a rolling fraternity. When they aren’t stopping to talk, they’re not tossing newspapers to their brethren in passing busses or making relay style hand-offs with books of crossword puzzles in the middle or rush hour.
Spain is also the country where I had the most singularly harrowing bus experience of my life. It happened on a trip from Madrid to the Southern port city of Cadiz. About halfway through the journey, the flat, straight roads are interrupted by a narrow belt of scrubby hills and steep, rocky ravines that the road winds its way through before coming out into more arid chaparral. I was sitting in the second row of seats behind the driver staring out the window as the final rays of sun disappeared over distant, sandy hills when a silver Mercedes cut us off. The driver slammed on his breaks, narrowly avoiding rear-ending the other car and released a string of expletives that involved a lot of profanitying on things like mothers and grandmothers and other distant female relations of the Merc driver. There was a moment of panic that quickly passed as the Mercedes sped up and our conductor eased off the break. Then something funny happened. Our driver sped up as well. Foot to the floor, he whipped around sharp curves and flew through narrow straightaways apparently pursuing the poor soul who had made the mistake of cutting him off. As we neared the Mercedes again, the conductor swiped on his high beams and laid on his horn, illuminating a woman in the back seat who had turned to look back and frozen in terror like a deer about to become venison. We came within inches of the other car and still our conductor persisted with his horn. I could see the terrified woman in the back seat screaming at the driver of the Mercedes to speed up or slow down or apologize or God only knows what else. Without warning, our conductor swerved into the left lane, and punched the gas. He flew by his opponent and cut him off with one fatal crank of the steering wheel throwing his arm out the window and shaking his fist in victory.
Just like that, he slowed down, turned off his high beams and everything returned to normal. Stunned, I took a deep breath, wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and looked around at my other passengers, hoping to find some acknowledgement of the insanity we had all just experienced. Some munched happily on Serrano ham sandwiches, others dozed and many gave each other knowing looks and nodded in agreement. “He shouldn’t have cut off a bus driver…”
Which brings me back, more or less, to the question of trust. The famous statistic is that many more people die while driving than while flying, which is supposed to make me feel better about flying. It doesn’t though, because the worst part about air travel isn’t rocketing through the air like a bird, it’s having to trust someone I’ve never met to get me into and out of the sky in a semi-controlled fashion. I wouldn’t worry about flying if I were behind the controls or, perhaps wearing blue and red tights with a big S printed on my chest. But I don’t like explicitly putting my safety in the hands of people I don’t know. At best, I tolerate it. I can fly by telling myself that the pilots aren’t drunk or fresh out of making bombing runs from the USS whatever and I can use buses because I know that no one has more to lose than a driver who gets in a wreck.
Sitting on that bus in Uruguay, I remembered a similar experience in San Jose, Costa Rica where I was going to see a friend one afternoon. I had asked the bus driver in polite, heavily accented, mostly butchered Spanish if he could advise me when we got to a certain stop.
“No te preocupes,” he assured me.
So I didn’t preocuparme, until an hour later, when I found myself at the exact spot that I had gotten on the bus. He turned around and shrugged, opening the door for me to get out and try my luck with someone a bit more compassionate.
So that was running through my head in Montevideo, squinting out of dark windows, trying to make out familiar landmarks, already beginning to curse the silent conductor for having forgotten me. Then he turned around.
“Flaco! La próxima es tuya.”
Slightly surprised, I snatched up my bag and got to the door as quickly as I could, lest he deem that I was taking too long and drive on to the next stop. As I walked through the double doors into the chilly night, I turned back and thanked him. He looked at me with an indecipherable expression, shrugged as if to say: “What did you expect? I’m a bus driver.” then slammed the doors shut and roared off into the night.
“I’ll tell you when to get off,” the driver had assured me before ratcheting up the volume of the Cumbia blaring from the radio and zoning back in on the road. That had been half an hour ago. Now we were the only two carbon based life forms in the cavernous vehicles and I was beginning to worry. There are certain situations in life that I generally try to avoid – gambling with criminals, talking politics with Basques, associating with people who kiss their dogs, etc. Paramount among these situations is putting more of my fate than is absolutely necessary in the hands of bus drivers. I respect them, I always do what they say and I am even somewhat in awe of them, but I won’t ever trust a bus driver.
They aren’t like you and me. They are made of different stuff – eyes like falcons, the reflexes of professional athletes, nerves that are made from twisted coils of sheet metal and barbed wire. They have ether running through their veins like summer ice flows in the arctic and less pity in their hearts than tiger sharks, which is to say nothing of the inscrutable mysteries of their minds. Like truckers, pilots or Hell’s Angels, they are creatures of that rare order who base their lives around being neither sedentary nor nomadic; instead choosing to inhabit a constant stage of en-route. They are always moving, but never arriving. Most people, including those who travel professionally, construct their lives around specific points on the map. House, office, school; Ohio, California, North Carolina; Paris, London, New York. Bus driver’s lives are dominated by the lines in between these points, by the dizzying infinity of unreachable horizons – momentos sin mori. There is a certain kinetic romance to all of it; answering the call of the road while providing societies with a valuable service, that is both paradigmatic and slightly sinister.
Like many American kids, my first bus drivers were the men and women who piloted the classic yellow clunkers that shuttled me and every other rowdy little bastard in my neighbourhood to school. For one reason or another, most went by their first names preceded by Mr. or Mrs., i.e.: Mr. Bill, Mr. Mike, Mrs. Cheryl and so forth. I don’t remember them as being an overly amiable bunch. But then, can you imagine what you would be like if you had to drive while trying to maintain control of 30 kids without ever being able to turn around and face them? A few days of that, and most people would be parking on train tracks. Not Mrs. Carroll. No siree, Crazy Carroll bussed me for 5 years and was harder than old rebar. She could scream the glare off a pit bull if you pushed her far enough, which was rare, but everyone has their limits, and when we felt those massive air breaks lock and grind us to an abrupt halt, we all knew that someone had pushed too far. The only time there was ever complete silence on bus 13 was when Crazy Carroll pulled that mother over with a great hiss of the breaks to stalk back through the aisle and pluck some unfortunate troublemaker away from their friends like a dues ex machina with tinted prescription glasses. That person was condemned to the front seat (naturally being the least cool spot on the bus) for a few days or weeks, or until Mrs. Carroll forgot she was punishing them. I feared her like one fears the abandoned, supposedly haunted house so common in neighbourhoods across the Midwest: with equal parts love and aversion. Without her piercing scowl and the threat of biblical wrath that it promised, throwing things or shouting curse words out the window or switching seats in transit lost all the fun. For 178 days of the school year, she was my mortal enemy, but she always got a gift at Christmas and hug at the end of the year.
By the time I was old enough to start getting on buses by myself that weren’t yellow, I was living in Scotland and using the Fifelink to get just about everywhere I needed to go between Edinburgh and the historic port city of Dundee. The bus drivers of the kingdom of Fife, who like all Scots, consider themselves stronger, heartier, funnier, smarter, and better drinkers than their English counterparts are one wild bunch of Jacobites. Many are local boys from fishing towns like Arbroath, St. Monans or Crail who sport faded tattoos on their forearms and speak in rolling, guttural Scottish accents harshened by smoke and booze. They drive harder and faster than most sane people would even imagine over country lanes whose only berms are low stone walls that hug the sides of the roads like something out of a bucolic Monaco Grand Prix. Oncoming traffic always made me nervous; the wheels on the left side of the bus flirting with the edge of the road as the wheels on the right rubbed hubcaps with unlucky Peugeots, Renaults and Datsuns. Passing trucks or God forbid, other busses, was like jousting with side view mirrors. Those men seemed less like drivers to me, and more insane physicists, their demented minds working out angles, quadrants and trajectories while they were buckled to the front of 15 tons of steel doing fifty miles an hour down a windy, pot-holed strip of asphalt.
If there is very little room for error in the Scottish country- side, there is none on the Amalfi coast where the Italian land mass loses all hope and plummets into the Mediterranean. When I was 17, I took a tourist bus from Sorrento to X with one very cool Italian behind the wheel. His name was Andrea, and he apparently modelled himself out of a villain in Speed Racer. His uniform was composed of tinted sunglasses, tight, cream coloured trousers and matching shirt un-buttoned to reveal dark chest hair and a gold chain with icon of the Virgin Mary. To top off the ensemble, he sported an immaculate, cream coloured racing scarf, that I never saw him take off regardless of the temperature or time of day. Another thing I never saw him do was back up. This is a common practice among tourists and locals alike in the claustrophobic, zigzagging streets of towns along the Mediterranean. Drivers cut turns too closely and realize that they are going to rake their car across one of the roughly one million high stone walls in the province, so they stop, back up, and try again. Not Andrea. Perhaps he just had a good week, but the man never miss-judged a turn, and this in a vehicle twice the size of the puny rental cars that were forever clogging his playground.
Driving along that coastline can provoke intense vertigo. On one side of the road, mountains shoot straight upward, on the other, there is nothing but air and sparkling greenish blue water 100 feet below. Andrea cruised that two-lane death trap like he had been born to do it, cool as a polar bear in a snowstorm. The only time he even breathed was to chain smoke cigarettes when his human passengers stopped at overlook points to take pictures and vomit away car sickness. It takes a certain type of mind to be able to endure the daily pressure of knowing that 30 lives hang in the balance every time you turn the steering wheel or ease down on the accelerator. In Scotland, if you make a mistake, the worst that can usually happen is a few dead sheep and an irate farmer. On the Amalfi coast, the best case scenario is that you die from the impact of hitting the water and don’t have to wait to drown. I don’t know how he endured it, perhaps is had something to do the potent mix of nicotine and adrenaline that came with the job.
One thing Andrea never had to worry about was third world traffic. This is traffic ranging from bicycles to 18-wheelers to mule carts that clog the streets of many underdeveloped countries on any given day like a perversely anachronistic circus act. The well-worn surfer’s path between San Jose and Jaco, Costa Rica runs thick with just this type of traffic most days. It is a thin ribbon of unmarked black asphalt that sneaks through steamy rainforest-covered mountains in search of the pacific coast. Its impossible cut backs, harrowing descents and improbable curves give one the impression of a coil of rope thrown haphazardly on the ground. For drivers, travelling on it is a two and a half hour exercise in trying to keep yourself and your passengers alive while also not sending any one within your swarm of fellow commuters over a cliff to certain death. It’s a free for all with no quarter given and none expected. Engaged in battle are cars filled with commuting Ticos and long haired Californians stoned silly (Pura Vida, man!), animal drawn carts loaded with fruits and vegetables piloted by toothless, leathery skinned old men with wives and grandchildren in tow, motorbikes stacked with two and even three people hugging on to each other as they squirt between opposing traffic and as the piece de resistance, young boys between 10 and maybe 16 years old bombing past everyone else on one speed bikes sans breaks, sans helmet and sans any concept regarding the fragility of human life. Amid this chaos, Tico bus drivers, stone faced and sweating through their shirts in the tropical heat, crank up the salsa music and show everyone exactly who is boss. Thinking back, what strikes me most about their driving is that it was probably the smoothest of any that I have ever experienced, despite the unpredictability of the setting. They never jerked the wheel, never had to break abruptly and only once did I see someone misjudge a turn and have to back up. These were men that conducted their automotive monstrosities like they were out on a Sunday afternoon drive through the countryside. If you subtract animals, motorbikes, small trucks and bikers of the divine wind, I suppose that’s what it was.
Although the roads in Latin America are often challenging, the natural bloodlust of the conductors, their need to tempt laws of time, space and physics is limited by the overall age and unreliability of their vehicles. Not in Spain. Never have I seen or heard of a group that wasn’t an explicitly criminal organization brazenly flaunting more laws. An often employed Spanish curse is: “Me cago en dios” which refers to an improbably scatological act that Ernest Hemingway sometimes translated as “I profanity on God”. In a country where traffic laws are largely ignored in the first place, the bus drivers in Spain profanity on everything and everyone with hearty aplomb. They are like the Mafia, the Yakuza and the Teamsters all rolled into one fiery Latin syndicate. They ooze so much machismo that even the bullfighters look up to them.
In Alcalá de Henares, a dormitory city of Madrid where Cervantes was born, traffic in the centre of town often grinds to a halt for no apparent reason. There is no wreck, no road works, but instead two bus drivers, travelling in opposite directions who have recognized each other, stopped, and decided to carry on a brief conversation between their open windows. If they weren’t bus drivers, people would be profanitying on God, Jesus, the holy trinity, and most of the apostles. Instead, everyone chews their lips and resists the innate Latin urge to honk until the conversation ends. One gets the feeling that these men are less co-workers and more of a rolling fraternity. When they aren’t stopping to talk, they’re not tossing newspapers to their brethren in passing busses or making relay style hand-offs with books of crossword puzzles in the middle or rush hour.
Spain is also the country where I had the most singularly harrowing bus experience of my life. It happened on a trip from Madrid to the Southern port city of Cadiz. About halfway through the journey, the flat, straight roads are interrupted by a narrow belt of scrubby hills and steep, rocky ravines that the road winds its way through before coming out into more arid chaparral. I was sitting in the second row of seats behind the driver staring out the window as the final rays of sun disappeared over distant, sandy hills when a silver Mercedes cut us off. The driver slammed on his breaks, narrowly avoiding rear-ending the other car and released a string of expletives that involved a lot of profanitying on things like mothers and grandmothers and other distant female relations of the Merc driver. There was a moment of panic that quickly passed as the Mercedes sped up and our conductor eased off the break. Then something funny happened. Our driver sped up as well. Foot to the floor, he whipped around sharp curves and flew through narrow straightaways apparently pursuing the poor soul who had made the mistake of cutting him off. As we neared the Mercedes again, the conductor swiped on his high beams and laid on his horn, illuminating a woman in the back seat who had turned to look back and frozen in terror like a deer about to become venison. We came within inches of the other car and still our conductor persisted with his horn. I could see the terrified woman in the back seat screaming at the driver of the Mercedes to speed up or slow down or apologize or God only knows what else. Without warning, our conductor swerved into the left lane, and punched the gas. He flew by his opponent and cut him off with one fatal crank of the steering wheel throwing his arm out the window and shaking his fist in victory.
Just like that, he slowed down, turned off his high beams and everything returned to normal. Stunned, I took a deep breath, wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and looked around at my other passengers, hoping to find some acknowledgement of the insanity we had all just experienced. Some munched happily on Serrano ham sandwiches, others dozed and many gave each other knowing looks and nodded in agreement. “He shouldn’t have cut off a bus driver…”
Which brings me back, more or less, to the question of trust. The famous statistic is that many more people die while driving than while flying, which is supposed to make me feel better about flying. It doesn’t though, because the worst part about air travel isn’t rocketing through the air like a bird, it’s having to trust someone I’ve never met to get me into and out of the sky in a semi-controlled fashion. I wouldn’t worry about flying if I were behind the controls or, perhaps wearing blue and red tights with a big S printed on my chest. But I don’t like explicitly putting my safety in the hands of people I don’t know. At best, I tolerate it. I can fly by telling myself that the pilots aren’t drunk or fresh out of making bombing runs from the USS whatever and I can use buses because I know that no one has more to lose than a driver who gets in a wreck.
Sitting on that bus in Uruguay, I remembered a similar experience in San Jose, Costa Rica where I was going to see a friend one afternoon. I had asked the bus driver in polite, heavily accented, mostly butchered Spanish if he could advise me when we got to a certain stop.
“No te preocupes,” he assured me.
So I didn’t preocuparme, until an hour later, when I found myself at the exact spot that I had gotten on the bus. He turned around and shrugged, opening the door for me to get out and try my luck with someone a bit more compassionate.
So that was running through my head in Montevideo, squinting out of dark windows, trying to make out familiar landmarks, already beginning to curse the silent conductor for having forgotten me. Then he turned around.
“Flaco! La próxima es tuya.”
Slightly surprised, I snatched up my bag and got to the door as quickly as I could, lest he deem that I was taking too long and drive on to the next stop. As I walked through the double doors into the chilly night, I turned back and thanked him. He looked at me with an indecipherable expression, shrugged as if to say: “What did you expect? I’m a bus driver.” then slammed the doors shut and roared off into the night.
Conversations with Savages
Every time I spend more than a holiday in a foreign country, there comes an inevitable moment when reality finally hits home and the last of the romantic notions that I once harboured about that nation expire quietly, gasping and anaemic like someone suffering through the fatal throws of emphysema. It’s the moment in which my prejudices are laid bare and I’m belted across the face with the realization that I’m neither as smart nor as cosmopolitan as I like to think I am. It feels like rock bottom, bitter like swallowing bile.
My friend Virginia celebrated her 20th birthday in the traditional Uruguayan manner. She and her mother made pizzas and empanadas, then invited friends and family over to pass the afternoon eating, reminiscing and drinking mate. When she’s not studying to become a high school literature teacher or giving classes to underprivileged youths, Virginia lives with her parents, sister and two brothers in a small, three-bedroom house in Toledo, a dormitory city of Montevideo. By Uruguayan standards it’s a working class neighbourhood – dirt roads, small ranch houses, everything is built from either concrete or cinder blocks or a combination of the two; there is no landscaping except periodic lawn maintenance entrusted to grazing animals. By the standards of anyone from the first world, it’s a slum.
The party was full of diverse characters, and most of my close Uruguayan friends were in attendance. These were people who had all but adopted me as their younger, clueless brother even though I had only spent a few months in their country. They showed me around, corrected my Spanish, helped me find an apartment and generally kept me out of trouble. Even though it was Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t easy for everyone to get off work, but they had all managed. Rafael the journalist greeted me with a big hug. Behind him was Hector, who works early morning shifts at a bakery and moonlights as a tattoo artist when he’s not helping to build houses at the co-op where he lives. His girlfriend, Marianella, who came with a big pizza, is studying primary education while teaching dance classes with a local NGO. Sebastian was late as always. He works nights as a systems analyst in order to support his son and be able to study Design during the day. We all sat outside eating, drinking, talking story and enjoying the last rays of mottled, late summer sunlight as it sank behind the eucalyptus grove across the street.
On my way home that night I ran into an American acquaintance named Mike, a Californian in Uruguay on a Fulbright scholarship to study popular music. He was headed out to dinner with a group of young English and Canadian travellers who were on a shoestring tour of Latin America. The two English girls looked perpetually bored and stank of patchouli. Every time they spoke, they squinted wistfully off into the distance, a gesture apparently meant to connote deep meaning. They seemed so intent on appearing worldly that they threatened to float away into pure spiritual transcendence at any moment.
Mike invited me to come. I wasn’t very hungry, but I appreciated their friendliness, plus, there are few greater pleasures than socializing in your own tongue after extended periods of butchering someone else’s. I tagged along with them to restaurant called el Diablito, known for its large selection of empanadas.
As is so often the case at these sorts of traveller’s get-togethers, the group ended up talking about one of the only things we all had in common, travelling – places we had visited, things we had seen and how deeply impacting and life affirming it had all been. As I squinted through the reeking, eye-watering haze of patchouli, and threadbare, backpacker’s clichés, snatches of disjointed conversation drifted across the table.
“Yeaaaa, man, we lived for two months in Receef – you know, Northern Brazil…”
“…Afro rhythms really speak to me…”
“…different pace of life…yea, man…”
I was having trouble making much sense of any of it and entire situation was beginning to have a strangely stupefying effect on me. I felt like I was being sucked into a world where criticism was not aloud and everything was always just groovy, man. Suddenly, a sentence jumped out of the void and roused me from my travel-story induced lethargy.
“The poor people here are so happy, even though they have nothing. I just want to be close to that.”
I had heard that one many, many times before. It is often repeated like some sort of half-cocked mantra by the armies of young backpackers currently infesting every hotel, pension and hostel between Tijuana and Patagonia. They are everywhere – late teens to early thirties, liberal-artsy type people who care about things like carbon footprints, destruction of the rainforests, Tibet, animal rights and any other moral crusade which can easily fit onto a bumper sticker or t-shirt. They are American, Canadian, British or Australian, dressed self-consciously casual in expensive clothes made to look like inexpensive clothes, and usually on some sort of sojourn of self-discovery. Regardless of where they are from or where they have been, 99.9% say the same thing, almost to the word, about the poor people they have come in contact with in the region – “They have so little, but they are so happy.” Then they smile smugly, reflecting on the deep insight that they have bestowed on their less worldly brethren and begin rolling another joint.
Before I had even set foot in Latin America, I had heard about the famous Alegría Latina. I used to think that large populations of jolly indigents (between 35% and 40% of Latin Americans live below the poverty line, depending on who you ask) lived out their lives in a state of lazy, ignorant satisfaction in Whoville-esqe ghettos that lined the well-travelled backpacking routes throughout the entire region. The way they were described to me, I imagined noble savages retrofitted for the 21st century with Levis in place of loincloths, and big, toothless grins replacing stoic, painted faces. I used to day dream that, one day in what would undoubtedly be a life full of travel and adventure, I would be able to “meet the natives” and share some of their vibes.
For a long time, this was my idea of the ultimate, authentic travel experience. As a kid who growing up with plenty of material comforts, experiencing other people’s poverty had a strangely life-affirming allure. It was like going to the zoo and jumping in the gorilla enclosure. In my mind, people who dealt with the problems associated with having little or no money lived a more “real” or “legitimate” life than I did in my cushy, white bread utopia. Every young traveller alive knows that in order to really experience the third world, you have to at least make an effort with the Savages. Otherwise, you’re not getting the full, soul searching, life defining, anti-consumerism experience that Latin America offers, nay – owes you.
Suddenly, talking to those English girls, it dawned on me that my friends in Uruguay were the noble savages that everyone loves so much. What’s more, not only did I know these people, I had actually attended one of their primitive poverty parties that very afternoon. My gut reaction was one of smug superiority. I was living the traveller’s dream: the ultimate cultural insider seeing the “real Latin America” through the eyes of the natives. How intrepid, how wonderfully slummy! I would have to tell all of the less worldly people I knew that even though my little Uruguayan buddies were broker than a bad joke, they were still able to take time off from their meagre jobs to celebrate a friend’s birthday over pizza and beer on a Sunday afternoon. It was classic. This kind of person doesn’t mind skipping work, he doesn’t care about money – he doesn’t even need it. He subsists off dignity, happiness, and good vibes.
Smiling inwardly, I sat there and tried to think back to any instances when my friends had demonstrated that magical Alegría. Instead, and to my growing unease, all I could remember was a conversation I had had with Virginia about whether or not she was going to attend a certain function later in the week.
“I can’t,” she said, slightly irritated. “My dad and my sister will be working, my brothers will be at school and my mom will be running errands. I’ll have to stay with the house.”
What did she mean, “stay with the house”?
She looked at me like an idiot. “You know -- stay with the house! Someone always has to be in the house, because otherwise people will rob you! That’s how it is in my neighbourhood.”
No Alegría there, then – no upside to the constant fear of grand larceny.
“Considering how they live, they are so up-beat,” One of the Canadians, gushed. Well, yes, I supposed that was theoretically true, but there was a queasiness in my guts. Considering they live in neighbourhoods overrun by trash, drugs and crime. Considering they can’t get well paying jobs, can’t get good educations and can’t get good health care. Considering that, unless they get caught dealing drugs, robbing or killing they usually can’t even get the rest of their society to admit that they exist. Yes, they are “up-beat”. But in situations like these, how many options do you really have? Existentialism and ennui are the privileges of people who don’t need to worry about their children getting enough to eat.
“They aren’t caught up with materialism,” Insisted one of the English girls, emphasizing the last word like an epithet. “I have friends and family in London with great jobs, posh flats, nice cars, everything. But they’re not happy. They’re lives are still missing something.”
Hector, an unfailing friendly and positive person once showed me around the neighbourhood where he grew up. It’s a mix of small yet sturdy ranch houses and hastily constructed, decidedly less sturdy shanties located a stone’s throw from the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montevideo but separated by imaginary lines that will cut you into pieces should you try to cross them. Depending on how the wind blows, the entire area is filled with the spicy, vaguely sweet odour of putrefying cow carcasses wafting from a large meat processing plant. As we walked, we talked about his life. Among his many skills, he is a classically trained guitarist and has studied music theory. I asked him why he had stopped.
“Because I…well…” To this day, this is the only time I have ever seen him look embarrassed. “Because I had to start working – we needed the money.”
That’s how it is.
I guess even Savages need money. Music theory …that took me off guard. I couldn’t imagine there being much mindless grinning involved.
Back at dinner, in the company of more worldly young people, conversation drifted to which beaches in Brazil were the best for travellers, especially in the state of “Receef” as one of the girls insisted on calling it. My mind was on other things. Disillusion mixed with a strong dose of guilt had begun to set in and a dark thought occurred to me:
What if Virgina or Rafael or Hector or Sebastian were each born with lots of money, but without legs? Would wealthy foreigners still smile at them as if they were little children and say: “Oh, look at you! Even though you’re disabled, you’re still so up-beat.”? Would people still want to be close to their semi-divine, Legless Alegría? These were not easy, or comfortable questions for anyone, especially me. I decided not to mention them.
When the food came, everyone had their own plate, which is rare in Uruguay. To generalize a bit, Uruguayans are an intensely social people who like to share food as a matter of custom. Many cherish the tradition of taking a hunk of meat straight off the barbecue and cutting it into bite-sized pieces or passing around a big bottle of beer and drinking it communally. Personally, it drives me nuts.
One day I mentioned this to Sebastian, a man who will literally offer you a bite of anything he is eating – including sandwiches, ice cream cones, and tiny pieces of gum that he will break into two or three even tinier pieces.
“I never share food,” I said.
“Why not?” he looked at me like something was growing out of my head.
“I don’t know, its just not something I like to do…” I was about to go on to explain how my older brother and father had always tortured me by taking food off my plate in the interest of “tasting” something when he stopped me with four words.
“You’ve never gone hungry.”
“…”
That’s the way it is.
“How many countries have you been to?” asked someone at the table in a way that reminded me of excited boy scouts discussing merit badges. I had to stop and make a mental list, and even then forgot a couple. Everyone at the table had lists bigger than mine. If we combined our frequent flyer miles, we could have flown to Mars.
Can’t say the same for my company earlier that day. Savages don’t travel. They love their homes and their communities; which is to say nothing for their deep, sometimes spiritual connection to the land. Or so the stories go.
“I would leave tomorrow and travel the world if I had the chance,” Rafael told me once. “Yea, I love Uruguay, but who wouldn’t want to see other places?”
He had lived in the United States for two years with an uncle, but despite intelligence, work ethic and education, was unable to stay legally. Many times, when Savages go to countries in the first world, they lose their “Noble” status and turn into plain old Wet-Backs, Dirty Mexicans or Sudacas, as the Spanish like to call them. Uruguay doesn’t have many exchange courses, or scholarships, or volunteer organizations like the ones that send young, bright-eyed first world college graduates to South America. Opportunities for travel tend to run just one direction. Backpacking trails lead many people into Latin America, but very rarely lead them out.
That’s the way it is.
For them at least. As for me and the rest of the young people who sat at that table eating dinner: we’ll always have our own plates, locks on our doors, and enough money to allow us to study or travel or be most anything we put our minds to. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that when we are confronted with poverty, sometimes we see what we want to see despite, or perhaps because of all our good intentions.
I dropped some pesos on the table and made some sort of excuse to get out of there. When I got outside, my first instinct was to call Virginia and say, I didn’t know what. I’m sorry? For what? For being able to return to my warm, safe, upper-middle class suburban American home while you can’t leave your house for fear of it being robbed? I had my phone in my hand, I was mashing in sappy, nonsensical text confessions, I was apologizing for everything I could think of…but in the end, I didn’t pressed “send”. Instead, I put my phone in my pocket and began the long walk back to my apartment through the deserted, tree-lined streets of Montevideo. My guilt wasn’t worth a damned thing to any of my friends, I realized. They didn’t need my pity and they definitely didn’t need my condescension. They had more important things to worry about trying to make their way in a world that often isn’t very interested in letting them be more than just grinning, happy Savages.
Article published in the august issue of
My friend Virginia celebrated her 20th birthday in the traditional Uruguayan manner. She and her mother made pizzas and empanadas, then invited friends and family over to pass the afternoon eating, reminiscing and drinking mate. When she’s not studying to become a high school literature teacher or giving classes to underprivileged youths, Virginia lives with her parents, sister and two brothers in a small, three-bedroom house in Toledo, a dormitory city of Montevideo. By Uruguayan standards it’s a working class neighbourhood – dirt roads, small ranch houses, everything is built from either concrete or cinder blocks or a combination of the two; there is no landscaping except periodic lawn maintenance entrusted to grazing animals. By the standards of anyone from the first world, it’s a slum.
The party was full of diverse characters, and most of my close Uruguayan friends were in attendance. These were people who had all but adopted me as their younger, clueless brother even though I had only spent a few months in their country. They showed me around, corrected my Spanish, helped me find an apartment and generally kept me out of trouble. Even though it was Sunday afternoon, it wasn’t easy for everyone to get off work, but they had all managed. Rafael the journalist greeted me with a big hug. Behind him was Hector, who works early morning shifts at a bakery and moonlights as a tattoo artist when he’s not helping to build houses at the co-op where he lives. His girlfriend, Marianella, who came with a big pizza, is studying primary education while teaching dance classes with a local NGO. Sebastian was late as always. He works nights as a systems analyst in order to support his son and be able to study Design during the day. We all sat outside eating, drinking, talking story and enjoying the last rays of mottled, late summer sunlight as it sank behind the eucalyptus grove across the street.
On my way home that night I ran into an American acquaintance named Mike, a Californian in Uruguay on a Fulbright scholarship to study popular music. He was headed out to dinner with a group of young English and Canadian travellers who were on a shoestring tour of Latin America. The two English girls looked perpetually bored and stank of patchouli. Every time they spoke, they squinted wistfully off into the distance, a gesture apparently meant to connote deep meaning. They seemed so intent on appearing worldly that they threatened to float away into pure spiritual transcendence at any moment.
Mike invited me to come. I wasn’t very hungry, but I appreciated their friendliness, plus, there are few greater pleasures than socializing in your own tongue after extended periods of butchering someone else’s. I tagged along with them to restaurant called el Diablito, known for its large selection of empanadas.
As is so often the case at these sorts of traveller’s get-togethers, the group ended up talking about one of the only things we all had in common, travelling – places we had visited, things we had seen and how deeply impacting and life affirming it had all been. As I squinted through the reeking, eye-watering haze of patchouli, and threadbare, backpacker’s clichés, snatches of disjointed conversation drifted across the table.
“Yeaaaa, man, we lived for two months in Receef – you know, Northern Brazil…”
“…Afro rhythms really speak to me…”
“…different pace of life…yea, man…”
I was having trouble making much sense of any of it and entire situation was beginning to have a strangely stupefying effect on me. I felt like I was being sucked into a world where criticism was not aloud and everything was always just groovy, man. Suddenly, a sentence jumped out of the void and roused me from my travel-story induced lethargy.
“The poor people here are so happy, even though they have nothing. I just want to be close to that.”
I had heard that one many, many times before. It is often repeated like some sort of half-cocked mantra by the armies of young backpackers currently infesting every hotel, pension and hostel between Tijuana and Patagonia. They are everywhere – late teens to early thirties, liberal-artsy type people who care about things like carbon footprints, destruction of the rainforests, Tibet, animal rights and any other moral crusade which can easily fit onto a bumper sticker or t-shirt. They are American, Canadian, British or Australian, dressed self-consciously casual in expensive clothes made to look like inexpensive clothes, and usually on some sort of sojourn of self-discovery. Regardless of where they are from or where they have been, 99.9% say the same thing, almost to the word, about the poor people they have come in contact with in the region – “They have so little, but they are so happy.” Then they smile smugly, reflecting on the deep insight that they have bestowed on their less worldly brethren and begin rolling another joint.
Before I had even set foot in Latin America, I had heard about the famous Alegría Latina. I used to think that large populations of jolly indigents (between 35% and 40% of Latin Americans live below the poverty line, depending on who you ask) lived out their lives in a state of lazy, ignorant satisfaction in Whoville-esqe ghettos that lined the well-travelled backpacking routes throughout the entire region. The way they were described to me, I imagined noble savages retrofitted for the 21st century with Levis in place of loincloths, and big, toothless grins replacing stoic, painted faces. I used to day dream that, one day in what would undoubtedly be a life full of travel and adventure, I would be able to “meet the natives” and share some of their vibes.
For a long time, this was my idea of the ultimate, authentic travel experience. As a kid who growing up with plenty of material comforts, experiencing other people’s poverty had a strangely life-affirming allure. It was like going to the zoo and jumping in the gorilla enclosure. In my mind, people who dealt with the problems associated with having little or no money lived a more “real” or “legitimate” life than I did in my cushy, white bread utopia. Every young traveller alive knows that in order to really experience the third world, you have to at least make an effort with the Savages. Otherwise, you’re not getting the full, soul searching, life defining, anti-consumerism experience that Latin America offers, nay – owes you.
Suddenly, talking to those English girls, it dawned on me that my friends in Uruguay were the noble savages that everyone loves so much. What’s more, not only did I know these people, I had actually attended one of their primitive poverty parties that very afternoon. My gut reaction was one of smug superiority. I was living the traveller’s dream: the ultimate cultural insider seeing the “real Latin America” through the eyes of the natives. How intrepid, how wonderfully slummy! I would have to tell all of the less worldly people I knew that even though my little Uruguayan buddies were broker than a bad joke, they were still able to take time off from their meagre jobs to celebrate a friend’s birthday over pizza and beer on a Sunday afternoon. It was classic. This kind of person doesn’t mind skipping work, he doesn’t care about money – he doesn’t even need it. He subsists off dignity, happiness, and good vibes.
Smiling inwardly, I sat there and tried to think back to any instances when my friends had demonstrated that magical Alegría. Instead, and to my growing unease, all I could remember was a conversation I had had with Virginia about whether or not she was going to attend a certain function later in the week.
“I can’t,” she said, slightly irritated. “My dad and my sister will be working, my brothers will be at school and my mom will be running errands. I’ll have to stay with the house.”
What did she mean, “stay with the house”?
She looked at me like an idiot. “You know -- stay with the house! Someone always has to be in the house, because otherwise people will rob you! That’s how it is in my neighbourhood.”
No Alegría there, then – no upside to the constant fear of grand larceny.
“Considering how they live, they are so up-beat,” One of the Canadians, gushed. Well, yes, I supposed that was theoretically true, but there was a queasiness in my guts. Considering they live in neighbourhoods overrun by trash, drugs and crime. Considering they can’t get well paying jobs, can’t get good educations and can’t get good health care. Considering that, unless they get caught dealing drugs, robbing or killing they usually can’t even get the rest of their society to admit that they exist. Yes, they are “up-beat”. But in situations like these, how many options do you really have? Existentialism and ennui are the privileges of people who don’t need to worry about their children getting enough to eat.
“They aren’t caught up with materialism,” Insisted one of the English girls, emphasizing the last word like an epithet. “I have friends and family in London with great jobs, posh flats, nice cars, everything. But they’re not happy. They’re lives are still missing something.”
Hector, an unfailing friendly and positive person once showed me around the neighbourhood where he grew up. It’s a mix of small yet sturdy ranch houses and hastily constructed, decidedly less sturdy shanties located a stone’s throw from the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montevideo but separated by imaginary lines that will cut you into pieces should you try to cross them. Depending on how the wind blows, the entire area is filled with the spicy, vaguely sweet odour of putrefying cow carcasses wafting from a large meat processing plant. As we walked, we talked about his life. Among his many skills, he is a classically trained guitarist and has studied music theory. I asked him why he had stopped.
“Because I…well…” To this day, this is the only time I have ever seen him look embarrassed. “Because I had to start working – we needed the money.”
That’s how it is.
I guess even Savages need money. Music theory …that took me off guard. I couldn’t imagine there being much mindless grinning involved.
Back at dinner, in the company of more worldly young people, conversation drifted to which beaches in Brazil were the best for travellers, especially in the state of “Receef” as one of the girls insisted on calling it. My mind was on other things. Disillusion mixed with a strong dose of guilt had begun to set in and a dark thought occurred to me:
What if Virgina or Rafael or Hector or Sebastian were each born with lots of money, but without legs? Would wealthy foreigners still smile at them as if they were little children and say: “Oh, look at you! Even though you’re disabled, you’re still so up-beat.”? Would people still want to be close to their semi-divine, Legless Alegría? These were not easy, or comfortable questions for anyone, especially me. I decided not to mention them.
When the food came, everyone had their own plate, which is rare in Uruguay. To generalize a bit, Uruguayans are an intensely social people who like to share food as a matter of custom. Many cherish the tradition of taking a hunk of meat straight off the barbecue and cutting it into bite-sized pieces or passing around a big bottle of beer and drinking it communally. Personally, it drives me nuts.
One day I mentioned this to Sebastian, a man who will literally offer you a bite of anything he is eating – including sandwiches, ice cream cones, and tiny pieces of gum that he will break into two or three even tinier pieces.
“I never share food,” I said.
“Why not?” he looked at me like something was growing out of my head.
“I don’t know, its just not something I like to do…” I was about to go on to explain how my older brother and father had always tortured me by taking food off my plate in the interest of “tasting” something when he stopped me with four words.
“You’ve never gone hungry.”
“…”
That’s the way it is.
“How many countries have you been to?” asked someone at the table in a way that reminded me of excited boy scouts discussing merit badges. I had to stop and make a mental list, and even then forgot a couple. Everyone at the table had lists bigger than mine. If we combined our frequent flyer miles, we could have flown to Mars.
Can’t say the same for my company earlier that day. Savages don’t travel. They love their homes and their communities; which is to say nothing for their deep, sometimes spiritual connection to the land. Or so the stories go.
“I would leave tomorrow and travel the world if I had the chance,” Rafael told me once. “Yea, I love Uruguay, but who wouldn’t want to see other places?”
He had lived in the United States for two years with an uncle, but despite intelligence, work ethic and education, was unable to stay legally. Many times, when Savages go to countries in the first world, they lose their “Noble” status and turn into plain old Wet-Backs, Dirty Mexicans or Sudacas, as the Spanish like to call them. Uruguay doesn’t have many exchange courses, or scholarships, or volunteer organizations like the ones that send young, bright-eyed first world college graduates to South America. Opportunities for travel tend to run just one direction. Backpacking trails lead many people into Latin America, but very rarely lead them out.
That’s the way it is.
For them at least. As for me and the rest of the young people who sat at that table eating dinner: we’ll always have our own plates, locks on our doors, and enough money to allow us to study or travel or be most anything we put our minds to. Perhaps it’s no surprise then that when we are confronted with poverty, sometimes we see what we want to see despite, or perhaps because of all our good intentions.
I dropped some pesos on the table and made some sort of excuse to get out of there. When I got outside, my first instinct was to call Virginia and say, I didn’t know what. I’m sorry? For what? For being able to return to my warm, safe, upper-middle class suburban American home while you can’t leave your house for fear of it being robbed? I had my phone in my hand, I was mashing in sappy, nonsensical text confessions, I was apologizing for everything I could think of…but in the end, I didn’t pressed “send”. Instead, I put my phone in my pocket and began the long walk back to my apartment through the deserted, tree-lined streets of Montevideo. My guilt wasn’t worth a damned thing to any of my friends, I realized. They didn’t need my pity and they definitely didn’t need my condescension. They had more important things to worry about trying to make their way in a world that often isn’t very interested in letting them be more than just grinning, happy Savages.
Article published in the august issue of
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