Close Call in Quito

This took place around January, 2007, some nine months back or so. Maybe the wrong place to put this story, but I felt like telling it, ya dig?

“Punch me in the face, Ross,” Jud was saying. “I know you want to, man.” 

Jud had just finished explaining to me why I had spent the previous several hours walking around the south american city of Quito searching for him. Apparently, Jud had spent the previous four hours staggering around the city with a few crack whores and a pimp he bought some ’stuff’ from. And apparently, he also spent part of those four hours with a cop who had discovered the ’stuff’. Furthermore, Jud had no money in his bank account to pay for a taxi back to La Merced, where we needed to be that night. Apparently, he had used some four-hundred dollars bribing the aforementioned cop to lower the assault rifle out of his face and go away. Oh, and he couldn’t even get any money off his card because he had gotten pickpocketed shortly thereafter…apparently.

“No Jud, I don’t want to hit you,” I said calmly, as I lowered my voice. Jud’s drunken English was already attracting unwanted attention, most particulary from the corrupt cops that seemed to be eyeing us at every street corner.

“Yeah you do, man. I disappeared in Quito for four hours, I’m completely wasted and clearly not appreciating the sensitivity of the situation, and now you have to overwithdraw your account.” Jud was pretty convinced that it was all I could do to restrain myself from not smacking him upside the face.

And apparently he was right, because as a parade of dressed-up Ecuadorians came to a stop in the street in front of us, I turned around and nailed him in the stomach. He didn’t feel it.

“I’m guessing you finished that wine, Jud?”

“Yezz zir,” said he.

Is the entire parade staring at us? Well, maybe it wasn’t quite the entire parade, but it most definitely was enough of them to make me feel a tad uncomfortable. I guess I had forgotten that we were two gringos in the heart of Ecuador, a country in South America where a couple of white kids from the U.S. are probably just as unwelcome as they are everywhere else in the world. I helped Jud up and apologized.

I made Jud sit on the steps as I crossed the street to the ATM and overwithdrew my account. I was pretty sure he would’ve died if he tried crossing the street with me. As it turns out, he did walk across the street a few minutes later without getting hit, but I knew he was coming because of drivers honking their horns as he stumbled through the road.

Finally, after about an hour in the pouring rain, we found a taxi that didn’t charge twenty dollars for the eight dollar ride to San Rafael. From San Rafael, we got on the bus to La Merced (after we had eaten at Dollar Pizza, of course), where I tried to tell Jud not to act too drunk when we got there, as we would have to go back to the college campus, and the college just so happened to be a Bible college and, being a Bible college, it didn’t exactly tolerate our behaviour, to say the least.

Not surprisingly, Jud didn’t exactly care for the topic, especially when he learned that the passenger in the seat adjacent to us was a stoner. They made plans to smoke that night. Whatever, I thought, Jud can go get high with the Ecuadorian and figure out how to get back into the dorms undetected by himself. As we got off the bus, I headed back to campus as Jud headed off with his new friend to go smoke some ganja. I guess he didn’t quite make it though, because he caught up with me five minutes later hopping towards me on one leg. He had sprained his ankle. I laughed.

When we finally got back, everyone was laughing hysterically at Jud’s drunkenness. I was thinking that Jud had crossed the line and had gotten too wasted that night, but, as it turned out, it was actually just material for a damned good story.

Circumcision: a metaphor about the painful process of moving on

Well, the plan was to have Wednesday be my last day at McDonald’s, but that sort of backfired on me.

My manager, Chris, wanted me to finish off the scheduled work week and work six more days until Tuesday, but I refused to do that because that was right when my math exam was.

Manager Chris would say something like, “Why can’t you just finish out the week for us?”

I always had a coy response. “Look Boss, it’s been great working for you. I had fun, it was a good learning experience and all that. But honestly, you were just a fling. Don’t take this too personally. You’re a great guy Chris, and I’m sure you’ll find someone else who’s a little more committed, but trust me, it just never would’ve worked out.”

I don’t think he quite understood. “What? Why?”

I tried explaining it in layman’s terms. “Look at it this way…some tribes, in Africa, they have this whole ceremony thing when a boy becomes a man. They get circumcised. Then, they go out into the woods by themselves, dig a little hole, and bury their flesh. It symbolizes burying their old selves.”

Chris: “Uh…”

I exbound. “Chris. You are my foreskin. I am cutting you off. It’s a painful process, I know. I am burying you in the woods. My association with you, with this genocide franchise, and with all the rednecks on this mountain, is gonna suffocate six inches underground in the woods. Metaphorically, of course.”

“Alright, that’s all well and good, but you still haven’t explained why you can’t just finish out the week.” Chris thought he had me.

“Yes, I have. It’s all in the story, man. And we’re at the part where the boy is becoming a man. Working any longer would just be delaying the inevitable.”

Right here is when I got fired, or asked to leave, or whatever he called it, but in any case, the idea was that I wasn’t going to be coming back. I really didn’t see it coming. I mean, I’m pretty sure he was asking me to stay one moment, and then, a moment later, he was telling me to leave. Whatever though, I’m not complaining.

Maybe he’ll never get the pure poetry of the story, but no matter. I’ve grown up into a man and cannot be governed by children any longer.

And so ended my first job.

C’este la vie, Micky D.

So I’m pretty sure today at work I’m going to tell the powers that be that I won’t be working for much longer. Today is Monday, so I’ll probably make Wednesday my last day, as that’s the last day in the pay week. They’ll probably be pissed because I’m kind of screwing them over by not giving them hardly any notice, but I’m sure they’ll get over it. I mean, seriously, I’ve worked my ass off for them for six months for $6.25 an hour, so they really can’t say shit.

And here’s why this is so great:

• It means I won’t be so busy and I’ll be able to relax, which is really good.
• It means that I’ll be able to catch up on some reading, which is just great.
• And lastly, it means that I’ll be able to go to bed with a clean conscience because the slaughtering of the lovely cows will not be perpetuated by any contribution of mine!

     I love my life and I can’t wait to not have a job!

I need to learn about Buddhism. I’ll put it on my to-do list.

Another day at McDonald’s, a Jack Kerouac quote, and moving to Juneau in a van

I’m getting really tired of work these days. Work being McDonald’s (absolutely horrible, I know, what with their turning precious cows into ecoli-infested burgers and poor rugged potatos into french fry-chomping fat people, and me, working there – believe me, it weighs on my conscience). The evening shift is really killing me. I feel the narrow-mindedness of the people I work with is really stifling my creative flow. They thought I was a bit of an asshole today. I was however, justified, seeing as I quit smoking the other day. And honestly, can you really expect someone to quit smoking and be a nice guy? I think not. In any case, though, it is something that I will have to keep a closer eye on, and hopefully I’ll be able to stay quit at the same. But in all seriousness, I was just joking around.

“Believe that the world is an ethereal flower, and ye live.”

I read that the other day; it made me happy. I think it’s magical, perhaps something that’s best whispered. Here’s something weird I never thought’d happen: I feel as if I’m becoming more peaceful the less I use drugs. I feel medicated even, as if Mother Nature is nurturing me or something. Well, Mother Nature or God, I suppose. Probably God, as in the Holy Spirit part of God. Ya know, the one that floats around, fills people up, and lets them know that everything is gonna be alright, cuz “all you really need is love.” Yeah, that one.

I think maybe I’ll move to Juneau, Alaska. In a van. I think that’d be just lovely, standing out “by the grey ice water, out in the wind, above the ground, out in the weather.”

Veganism

I am becoming increasingly interested in veganism. That and anarchy, but anarchy’s more off-topic than we need to be. I feel veganism would be a moral lifestyle. I figure that if I would never kill an animal myself, then there is no justification for me to pay someone else to do it. But it would be inconveniently challenging, which is not to say that the moral or ethical (or whatever description one’s little heart befondles [befondles..? I know, probably not a word, but I liked it]) decision is supposed to always be easy.

Now, I happen to work at McDonald’s, which may be surprising and a little oxymoronic, especially for a supposedly striving vegan. But I live on this mountain, this redneck mountain in southeast Tennessee, and I don’t have a car yet to commute off the mountain. Honestly, I was forced into this position by my circumstances.

And what about boycott veganism? Meaning one couldn’t buy meat, but was permitted to eat it otherwise. This would be just as effective, more or less. I think the reason no one does boycott veganism is because it’s not really about the change occuring. People don’t actually believe their veganism is going to change anything. It’s about being symbolic and making a statement, or maybe for some it’s just for the image. Am I not right?