Explosive Catharsis - Day 32/28 - San Pedro.

Half Way Crooks

Life has been crazy since my last post. I’d previously explained how I felt like a leaking coconut. Well, life popped. 

I had been hermit-ing for a good while; since I'd injured my shoulder and Ecstatic Danced. I was feeling overwhelming anxiety and I was not looking people in the eye. This happens to me sometimes. There's no shelter out here.

Looking for an outlet, I left my apartment after a day of work and went to La Parada, my favorite little dive bar; known for its support of the local alcoholic population. There, I saw a new-friend I'd once gotten drunk with. Leo had a wild personage.  Upon meeting him for a second time, he sensed something was off with me. Quickly his recognition turned to  disappointment. He said he saw bullshit in my eyes. He quickly became irate: taunting me.

Initially, Leo's aggression flummoxed me. While he was antagonizing me, it seemed ... good-hearted. I asked him a childish question; was he my friend or enemy? I could see in his eyes honesty when he said 'friend.' I then knew what Leo was; a friend pushing me out of the place I'd been. I sensed Leo wanted to help me and was playing heel. I wanted to help myself and so I signed on for a ride. 

What I needed to do was to let go and to stop fighting; which, ironically, led to fighting. 

 

Leo was drunk as shit. This is La, Parada. This is Guatemala's San Pedro...

La Parada, San Pedro

La Parada is probably this bohemian lake-side town's only classic dive bar. I havent met another person who likes it; only ever people who dislike it or go there to drink -- heavily. I wouldnt need to ask those people if they like the bar.

La Parada has an unassuming metal door and steep staircase leading up to a 2nd floor bar that manages to be spacious, yet cramped, as well as dingy, despite having an entire open-air terrace hang out. Because the buildings on the other side of the street are taller, La Parada gets no view of the beautiful lake nor very much sun. 

For me, La Parada is a great place to sink into alcohol with great company. I've loved and hated the bartenders and few patrons.  Their live music always sucks. The place is coursing with crawling life. 

I usually don't trust myself in conflict... I don't like having no control over an outcome and it makes me feel impotent. Rather than confront this situation, I avoid it.

 As uncomfortable as it was, I decided I'd flow with Leo and pick up what he was putting down. I'd trust... Tonight Leo was a great deal drunker than the first time we'd gotten drunk together. He was becoming more belligerent toward me each moment. He seemed fixated on his declaration of their being bullshit in my eyes. I think what he really saw was fear.

Leo began openly mocking me, intoning "bullshit” ... "bullllllshit" over and over. I tried to talk my way through getting him to leave me alone, but everything I said felt like tippy-toeing around the real issue.

No matter what I said, I still felt the way I felt and he saw what he saw. There was no move to make, so I moved -- away. I moved to the other side of the bar but Leo wouldn't stop. I could still hear Leo's slurred heckling.

Now Introducing ... The World Champion...

 

On the other side of the bar, I was alone.  There was a couple to my left with their backs turned, apparently disinterested. The man looked like Tyson Fury. The girl was a petite, pretty Guatemalan girl. I didn’t think much of them and did not intend on talking to them, or anyone. I was focused on hoping that if I continued to ignore Leo, he'd stop taunting me.

Over my drink, I heard a voice beckoning my attention. It wasn't Leo. The Tyson Fury looking man had risen and come over to introduce himself. He was about 6”2, maybe 220 pounds, and had a smile that said I love to snort cocaine. He was out of shape; He was some sort of something New York had spit out.

Tyson Fury said his name was ~ I can't remember ~ and his girlfriend said hello as well. He asked me where I was from, and I told him Washington DC. Tyson Fury leaned his head back, rolled his eyes, and, through a smirk, he asked rhetorically if it was a bit arrogant for me to introduce my city, instead of my country, in a foreign land. 

I told him that I did not consider my response arrogant but that I'd remember he said that and think about it when I wasn't drinking. 

  

New York Tyson Fury must have been picking up on Leo's lead, because he responded by mocking my answer... I couldn’t win at this bar, and that's precisely what NY Tyson told me.

 

 

"Nobody likes you here. Why don't you just go away?" 

 

I thought to myself, maybe I should leave. I scanned my surroundings.

The bartender was a demure, rail-thin gay man. He busied himself around the bar -- generally abstracted. When me met my searching eyes, though, he looked at me with the sympathetic gaze of a deer watching it's partner in the headlights of an oncoming truck.  

Tyson was hurling sidelong insults at me, to which I'd generally had no response, while his girlfriend tried to calm him down. He was an ornery sort and wasn't going to stay down for long. All of our buzzing caught Leo's on the other side of the bar and he started up with his chorus of “bullshit!” “buuuuullshit!”

When the Going Gets Tough...

I ordered another drink, hunching my shoulders up to block my hecklers on both sides. 

In my periphery, a sort of out-of-breath fat man in his 40's leaned on to the bar. He sported spiked hair from the 90's and sunglasses (indoors). Through a cigarette, he announced "I'm the DJ -- and nobody's vibing ... What kind of music should I play?" I'm not sure Leo took Guy Fieri's meaning, through his drunken stupor. I piped in, "hip hop." With a jaunty nod, the DJ pushed himself off the bar and returned to his station. 

Over my hunched shoudler, I felt New York Tyson Fury beckoning for my attention. I turned. He had a wide smile on his face and he told me he wanted to play a game. He explained that he had an encyclopedic recollection of every flag in the world. If I could name one flag he didn't know, he would buy me a drink. If he named the flag, I bought him a drink.

 

I quickly discarded the notion of selecting an obscure autonomous region, like Andorra. I figure a weirdo like him would get off on knowing those random non-states. I searched my memory for obscure state-knowledge. I thought to the video game Rome Total War. With 100's of hours in the game, I had familiarity with the flags carried into battle by each of the games 20+ empires from 200AD.

What could I remember? I thought, first, of Scythia and Thrace. I discarded these ideas; they were too obscure. Then I thought SPQR - Rome - but that one might be a bit too much -- as it literally bore the letters 'SPQR' on the flag.

While I was deep in thought, the DJ was doing his thing. I heard the first haunting synth notes of Mob Deep's Shook Ones Pt. II...

 

 

All of a sudden, I had a thought. 

 The empire of Carthage! 

It was once Rome's greatest rival - a major player in the history of Western Civilization and also extremely obscure to a trivia douchebag. No way he'd know it. I looked up the flag and even I had no idea this was their flag.

I loaded up the image and flipped the phone to him. The lines on his face turned, spiraled, and dropped all at once. New York Tyson dropped his mouth open and puffed out "that’s not a country!” 

 "Not one that you know!"

New York Tyson Fury got up out of his seat, yelling at me, himself, and at nobody in particular. He was really in a tizzy now. His girlfriend's face was stricken, showing a mix of concern and familiar helplessness. I turned away and let him stew. Through his meltdown, he accused me of cheating, and his indignance transformed into vitriol. He began to hurl a new bevy of pointed insults directly at me... some of which were lost to the droning Shook Ones, blaring out of the DJ's speakers. 

Like a pointer dog, Leo alerted to the new evolution in the altercation and woke back to life with his his chorus of "bullshit" "buuuulshit"!!! Piggybacking off of Leo, New York Tyson also started telling me I was "bullshit" and that I was "just scared."

Maybe I was, but certainly not of him... At this point, something switched in me. I was being pushed to my own limit. New York Tyson and Leo had me in a corner.

Just then, the chorus of Shook Ones cut right in through the drama:

“You scared to move. You shook. Cus aint no such thing as halfway crooks”

“You scared to move. You shook. Cus aint no such thing as halfway crooks”

New York Tyson knew the lyrics, joyously singing at me. 

“You scared to move. You shook. Cus aint no such thing as halfway crooks”

I felt the tension building in me, and I did not want these people to uproot me. I let go of control over the outcome of this situation. I gave in to my emotion...

Some sort of an action was welling up in me. I hadn't realized Leo had stopped heckling me until I heard his voice, direct and forceful, as if he'd been just a foot from my ear:

"Do it!" 

I whirled on New York Tyson Fury. I got in his face and looked him directly in the eyes. I explained some things to him forcefully. 

I told him that that every name he'd thrown at me was projection. It was he who was the arrogant American. It was he who was actually scared of me. He had a wry smile on his face. He liked this.

"How eloquent," he intoned.

So then I got personal, and said something I hadn't previously even thought. I turned to his girlfriend and, pointing at her, said that he was acting out in order to impress her but that her passive response to his flashing emotion showed she didn't care for him and that she was un-suprised by his buffoonery, which ultimately meant she was already thinking of moving on. 

Check

He spit out, "she's my ex!"

"That makes even more sense... She's already talking to somebody else, and that's why you acting out doesn't move her."  

 

Check

"But you still want her to care and that's why you're acting like this."

New York Tyson Fury's eyes went cold. At the same time, we both looked at his (ex) girlfriend. She'd put a hand over her face. That could not cover that a look of disbelief was frozen across her countenance. I looked back to New York Tyson, who must have felt like Broadway spotlights where shining on him. He looked lost, confused, and unraveled. 

 

I took a breath and told him 

"Look, man. Chill out. You're in paradise. Enjoy the time you do have with her and don't bother me anymore..."

I turned and walked back over to Leo, who had turned into an entire team of cheerleaders. He took me in a rough, wrestling embrace (which has become our on-the-street greeting). 

Shook Ones Pt. II petered out in the background and things settled into silence as I took a deep draught of Gin and Tonic. I felt fire surging through me.

Before long, New York Tyson Fury had come over to me again. This time he had a different look on his face and energy in his body. He immediately apologized and offered his hand. I accepted. 

That is when I felt all that tension and fire empty out of me, leaving in surreal, swimming weightlessness.

Leo had wanted blood but conceded that what needed to happen had happened. 

Leo congratulated me. I asked him why that altercation had to happen. 

He said for people like us “it must be this way.” 

At that point, my night was complete. I was departing when the DJ was playing some rock song with a drop. I felt compelled to return and release on the dance floor. I ended up in a mosh pit with New York and we had some fun thrashing around before I felt complete and did depart.