Quote of the Weekend: “Just hold that watermelon rind until a donkey appears.”

Is a fin de semana (weekend) an end, as the word “fin” would suggest, or a beginning, as the definition of Sunday as the first of the week would suggest? Or might it be a continuity?

Here at schoolie-land, I think we tend to consider the week as a workable unit, something that perhaps is later built off of, but is nevertheless its own hermeneutically sealed center of existence defined by the tic-clicks passed between its initiation (Monday) and its grand finale (“Friday,” whatever the Friday may be). I understand that this is the way life in the modern world generally goes; perhaps the phrase TGIF is nothing but an earmarker for our little human time-frames. But I also know that school has a way of emphasizing the unit, because you have X time to build to Y achievement, and X usually begins on a Monday and ends on a “Friday,” in such a way that,… say, House Construction… does not. Constructors could argue with me, but if I were to point out how X week gets re-arranged due to Rain while pouring the foundation, etc, my point might be somewhat grudgingly accepted. Time in the School-Zone is different.

A stronger example, of course, than the Construction-one is Farming or Fishing, both of which are dependent on the wily ways of nature to such an extreme extent that Weeks or Hours become laughable units.

Do I have a point? Good question; there is always the possibility that I’m just wagging the fingers.

Initially, my point was something along the lines of about needing an End to 11 days of pure toil and hell without remarkable pleasure or enjoyment.

Exception: going out and shooting the shit with some extremely shit-shooting fellows, two of whom speak like they’ve been lifted out of the Bronx and deposited in Guayaquil purely for my own amusement.

“Know what I mean?”
“Ja, nigga, I gotcha.”
“Addrriiiiiiannnne.”
“He’s da master of talking crap, man.”

S and G are two amazingly funny entities who I’ve hung out with, at T’s invitational pleasure, a couple of times. G told me the greatest story of his experience in a Guayaquil prison, even adding dimension by admitting that he was shitting-his-pants scared, a very un-macho admission for South American standards (or so my stereotyping mind would have it). But my favorite story was the one he told about when he first left New York, and came down to Ecuador with the self-appointed mission of getting laid ten times a day.

“I brought three boxes of condoms, and it wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t easy either. I got slapped a couple of times.”

He also, somewhere along the line, contracted a rash “on [his] dick” that “was very red and nasty-looking, but swear to God, not crabs or the clap.” So, his grandmother noticed him inching around the house uncomfortably and made him drop his pants. At which point, she noted that something was definitely wrong, and insisted on taking him to the doctor. Doctor took a look at this rash (grandmother’s in the room, don’t ask me), and said,

“Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
“Nah, man. Ask.”
“Do you do anal sex?”
“Hell, yeah, if she’ll let me.”

At which point, the grandmother, who understands just enough English to get the gist of the English conversation, bursts into tears, and starts moaning,

“Ah, Dios, no. Eres un maricon. Dios no.”

Translation of maricon = gay man, derogatory term. Note, coming from the grandma who took the rash with svelte style and grace. Assumption, anyone?

Yeah, so over a two-week period of time, that was the highlight, and I admit, it was a large highlight, especially with a little beer in the system, the gentle lights of the Urdessa district, the little kids in Nikes selling flowers to gringos who pitied them and bought flowers for sus novias gringas, and the enjoyment of being bad and not at home grading papers. But it wasn’t a great highlight, especially with any number of tantrums transforming me into Hulk.

I’ve never been such a tantrummy girl. I don’t know what’s happening: a ten-year regression? Well, listen to my Thursday.

I knew that things were getting desperate, that I was exhausted, sick of bad papers (bad being the key indicator of my crankiness), finicky coffee pots, endless hours, paperwork launched on me unaware 5 minutes before my bus is leaving so that I am spending 9-hour days in an office, waiting waiting waiting, and not eating until I get home of course, which makes everything somewhat worse. So, I decided to hit the road, and asked L if he was going out to his little hostel near Montanita this weekend, and if I could join him if he was. He said yes, and I was ecstatic.

I went to bed early in prep for the 8 o’clock wake-up call (“we’re leaving at 10 o’clock at the latest”). I got up at 8:30, packed my bags,… and waited. I waited until 10:30, and then gave a call, apparently rousting L out of bed. 12:00 is the new time. I crunch fists into ears, the sounds of house construction, drills, hammering, etc., starting up and running near my bedroom. 12:00 rolls around, and a new text message… “bad hangover, it’s looking more like 2:00.” I hate flakes. I hate flakes. I hate, above all things on earth, people who flake out on you. Not the people, really, or I’d be friendless, but the act.

So, by this time, I’m cursing under my breath and thinking seriously of taking a Goddamn bus, just to be out of the cacophony and away from the place I’ve been for hours and hours and hours and hours of too-much. 2:00 rolls around and the new text message is “hangover is really bad. More like 5:00.” And that’s it. I smash my cellphone to pieces. (In my head, since I can abstractly recognize the folly of such an action and enact a modicum of teeth-gritting self-control).

So, then I go to catch the bus about an hour later when I realize that it’s pointless waiting on someone else’s hangover, and that you can’t trust anyone, just as Tom loves telling me every day. But right before I leave, I realize that my phone is still not working… receiving but never sending text messages, and so none of my messages to anyone have gone anywhere. So, I ask for advice from housemates and end up having my phone taken away from me in generous solicitude – the way of the house… (I’m really not being sarcastic here… they most certainly were being helpful and kind and generous with their time to sit there with my phone and try to figure out what the hell was going on.). The long and short is that I arrive at the bus station to find out that the direct bus has already left, and the last time I took the not-direct bus, I ended up having to pay a 20$ cab fare because the buses weren’t running anymore at the transfer pueblo.

So, back to the house in tears and humiliation and frustration and dislike of the human race, solemnly swearing never to talk to L again, or to patronize to his hostel, or to ever try to make friends again. Halfway home, I had the Realization.

When I was traveling with S in Europe, there were those, um, uncomfortable moments when I got wound up tighter than Alison in her childhood bankie (the one my dad had to cut the fringe off of to prevent Strangulation). And S, being extraordinarily resourceful and semi-impatient with my sullennesses, would settle the whole affair by going to the store and picking up a bottle of cheap green-bubbly wine, or cheap red sour wine, and shoving it unsurreptitiously into my hands.

By the time L and his wife rolled around my neck of the woods, I was seriously deep in a tasty bottle of rum and its alter-ego, Coke. And I wasn’t resentful at all! Maybe even embaressed of my bad temper and quick judgment...














Truly, truly the best way to launch into a weekend, an eternal truth that has me cringing about my potential alcoholism. But really, there’s no reason to Start something wrong, to make a continuity from one week to the next. Sometimes we just have to insist on an End to things, and make it happen, whether we are inclined or not. And alcohol helped me.

I had a delightful journey, only made slightly uncomfortable by the growing bladder issue. I sat in the back seat and chatted with L’s wife M (in Spanish, I’m getting better!). She just got back from a trip from Florida and NY. Ecuadorians love Florida and NY. Florida because it is almost exactly the same as Ecuador, and NY because, well, it’s NY (although they unanimously hate the weather). M used to own a business but doesn’t any longer, and L talked a bit about his plans for growing his hostel, and we stopped in a little town along the way and purchased fruit and fruit, and then we stopped in at a gas station where I relieved my bladder and rescued a grasshopper from having to die in a nasty-stinky human habitation instead of the grass (the hopper was on last legs… sure to die, but if I were to pick my place of death, it would never under any circumstances be a bathroom facility, and ideally would always involve the out-doors or proximity to a wood-stove). By the way, if you are wondering about the degree to which I remember this Huge Grasshopper Event,… as it is detailed in my head, down to the way the grasshopper was huge and missing one of his hoppers, and brown-crinkled like a leaf that has fallen away… well, I will just point you to the sure knowledge that I was very happy and drunk and on my way somewhere, always the best possible thing for me to be doing.

We stopped in another town and ate a meal L told me was great called “Seco de Gallina,” which was indeed very good, made better by hunger. I whistled at dogs scratching their fur, watched the kisses on cheeks, and smiled at people. I love looking, taking a good measure of something, and then slamming a smile out there like nothing else. It’s my new Ecuadorian technique… if I smile in this particular manner, Ecuadorians can’t help smiling back. The more cheeky my smile, the better, too. And it always seems like an interaction of genuine amusement at something Good to be amused by… not each other, but something, the way stars are always chuckling at us if we look at them long enough.

We arrived around 10pm in Manglaralto, which is about 4km south of Montanita, the big surfing beach that I visited my first week here. I was still tipsy and drinking, managed to sucker M into a pool game, only to discover that she wears a glove and gives bossy advice (I hate advice, for some reason it unnerves me until it pisses me off, and then sometimes post-pissiness, I play better because I’m striving to show that I’m an independent type player that needs no advice until it is asked for). But I had fun and stopped being pissy, and went for a midnight walk through surf, shouting drunk at K, who is an older woman I knew there.

She told me stories she’s told me before. Interesting. Lately, I’ve been stemming my impatience at being told stories I’ve already heard and know well, and instead looking for the why’s of story-repetition. What makes it so important? What’s not being said that makes it need to be said over again? I have this theory that we tell stories over again that we are still trying to sort out, or convince ourselves of something we’re not yet convinced of, to let ourselves know by sheer re-telling that we acted appropriately, or to turn the story, degree by degree into a fiction we believe. Maybe one day I’ll write a story that does that. Yes, I like the idea.

Something. A theory in motion. So: story repeats—she repeated the story about her father who is HIV and can’t come down to visit her. She repeated the story about being scared to open her mouth in the showers down here, and scared to take a shower as a result. And she answered my question back (Why?) the same way both times: because the water is dangerous here, and she’s not sure she won’t forget not to swallow the water. (I always refrain from commenting that the water here is not that dangerous!). And she repeated the story about her son doing much better in school than her. There were, of course, new additions that involved discussion of trial-separations, house-buying, etc.

And I was truly listening, but I was also spinning wild over the joy of being drunk on a windy dark beach in Ecuador. Sometimes, I like to pause and say that word: Ecuador. Miles and miles from where I’d ever expect to be. Parked right in an unexpected situation, and like any true survivor, not even noticing most of the time that I’m right in the middle of an unlikely and unexpected event. Every now and then, letting the surf chase you up the beach and wet your pants is a good way to remember that we are here. Here. And who knows what next?

Che Guevara, a nice piece of common black-white graffiti, watched on from a broken beach wall, hidden-mouthed and future-looking like always.

The next day, and indeed most of the weekend, was not all that qualitatively interesting, but nevertheless quite satisfying. I got drunk early in the day at L’s insistence. We talked about his experience as a refugee in America. Apparently, his dad was a governor under a 1986 dictator, who was apparently a moderately benign dictator who had nevertheless seized control of the nation via armed support. L’s father was part of the ministration, and they had to leave for 6 years when the dictatorship fell, and phone calls were threatening the lives of her children and people were tailgating their cars, etc. It was a nice conversation, that somehow ended up on the topic of disembowelment (we tried to trace the convolutions of conversation, but failed) and then ended by spitting me out onto the beach, where I walked along the shore and thought soft-sandy-footed on things I need to think soft-sandy-footed about. Pelicans. Men in trucks with their feet perched up on the windowsill, catching breeze during lunch. Girls giggling and bikinied. A woman with no bikini top on (scandalous here!). Salt. And me inside thoughts.

I then spent the rest of the day drawing, boogie-boarding, sleeping in a hammock, reading, playing pool, and in general enjoying myself.

Later that night, M’s extended family came because they were celebrating her cousin J’s 26th birthday. The rest of the evening turned into birthday cake, me drinking rum (but not enough to get drunk really), playing pool with J, who turned out to be very competitive and denounced my non-competitive rules (re-takes) as “trampas” or cheats. At that point, after playing with J for awhile, his family seemed to slowly decide that I was his Real birthday present and the rest of the evening was spent between dancing crazy-sexy in Montanita and having a group of Mothers/Aunts/Great Aunts encouraging me to “dance with their J, who is a very nice boy,” (but who couldn’t do much more than keep a beat, a fact that was redeemed by the fact that he knew it).

Nothing like dancing to boost the esteem. I received lots of comments, and lots of stares as well. What can I say? I love. Yes. Music love dancing. J told me repeatedly that, “nobody expects gringos to understand the beat, but I make him feel like the real gringo.”

Is that it? Yes, I feel beat. But also, I think it is just love. I never feel more happy or self-contained or privileged or loving than when I’m really dancing… not the self-conscious kind, but the real guts.

Anyhow, I made it home with nothing more than a kiss on the cheek and a content, and fell asleep.

The next day, boring stuff again… you know, boogie-boarding, walking down to Montanita, etc. Actually, the strangest thing was running into the girl I met in Cuenca, Selma, who was not supposed to be there, but was! Funny, but I had a limited time to chat with her. Mostly, I just enjoyed walking around in flip-flops on the dusty ground. I enjoyed feeling the lazy slow-down of places like Montanita. I enjoyed.

I also went to Dos Mangos, which was inland a ways, and bought some hand-made basket type stuff that was made by women in a collective designed to increase the economic affluence of a small, under-touristed, under-developed town where pigs and pups create holes out of dust-hills and yelp for love and attention as they scratch their flees. A sensation of having lived there before, of having gone barefoot mostly, and sat in the bars drinking and laughing with a group of people I’d known all my life. A sensation of making the living any way I could. I spend money in this place I’ve lived before.

Yah, so. My weekend… end to week. No, I tend to think of it as a Restart button. Pressed completely.

On the way home, we all squeezed into the back of L’s car… three heading home in the back seat this time instead of just me. But we clutched a watermelon between our knees (well, I did), and scooped its sweet-Ecuador innards out and juices and pelicans and white cranes and people biking and several pods of small dolphin-related whales riding the surf at La Playa de Bruhas, so named for the wicked undertows and turbulence tunnels. We scooped the sweet-innards. And when we were done:

“Just hold the watermelon rind until a donkey appears.”