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.