Sunday, August 23, 2015

Last 24 Hours

I went down to the village to print photos for my neighbors before leaving. I did this even though everyone has a phone with a camera that has better quality than my camera, but the novelty of a gringo taking the photo appealed to everyone so I played the hero at great expense. The engineers all went off in a troop transport and I decided I had missed my ride home so started to walk the 4 hours into the mountains...but it turned out that I hadn´t missed my ride and went back to town and waited...and we started up the steep mountain road in his truck with the photos tucked into a case of soda.

The driver stopped to talk to his mother about 3-4 of the way to the top and as we were leaving crossed path with a motorcyclist going down the mountain...who turned out to be a policeman...who then slipped his sunglasses off his nose slowly like he was acting in a movie and revealed his eyes were crossed with moonshine/everclear poisoning.

I am illegally in this country because I can´t do anything right and am a pitiful fuck up who merely entertains dick smackers on the internet with my lame travel porn, so I tried to play dumb as the confrontation began, involving accusations, dogs barking, roosters with their legs tied tight so they have to walk like Contra prisoners in chains...and the policeman insists everyone is going to jail...and to prove his superiority turns his bike around, stalls, drives back up the mountain, turns around, crashes to the ground, struggles to stand up and almost hits the truck on his way back down. The confrontation lasts a little while longer and it occurs to me that the policeman is totally shit-faced drunk and about to navigate the worst part of the worst mountain road but I can´t say anything though I consider jumping on the bike and offering to drive down for him....or else handcuffing him in a citizen´s arrest and taking his keys for the safety of the community. I do none of this and eventually the policeman gets back on his bike, adjusts his sunglasses and helmet, says something with disdain and anger and revs his throttle like T-1000 and peels out at high speed and drives directly off a steep mountain cliff at the first curve. We flee, of course, because we don´t want to get involved or implicated and I am glad because I have no legal documents. We heard reports he died and also reports he merely broke his jaw and collarbone.

So I hand out my photos and spend one more night playing evangelical christian cajun music from a piano powered by solar batteries...and the next day drive down the mountain, picking up a woman who literally jumps out of the moving van after two dangerous curves and some ugly sounds from the suspension. It takes 50 minutes to descend 5 KM but I eventually get to the bottom and pat myself on the back because I survived the worst road I´ve ever seen and built a bridge in the process. I have video of the descent that will be archived until the fuckhead voyeurs find somewhere else to troll while they wait for their tranny porn to download. The brakes are ruined, my piano is upside down on the wood stove but I survived and drive south...

...and am stopped at the first police checkpoint I pass. The conversation in Spanish was painful and went like this...

Police - Your paperwork has expired.
Oggy - Why?
Police - Because it expìred one week ago. You have no legal documents and I am going to take you to jail.
Oggy - What day is today?
Police - The 22nd of August.
Oggy - Isn´t today the 15th of August? I am driving out of the country right now. I just spent three weeks volunteering to build a bridge. I had no phone service. I don´t understand.
Police -  Today is the 22nd, sir, so I am placing you under arrest and confiscating your vehicle until you pay the fine and acquire legal documents.

What followed was a delicate bargaining process to keep me out of jail as the cop was looking at my guitars like I was Santa Claus in a big blue and white sleigh. This is the second time in Southern travels that I undeniably broke the law and was caught and had to buy my way out of jail, which certainly is a better solution than what happens in the United States. This is good because I don´t want to have to ask anyone for help since I only know worthless assholes who sit around their lonely apartments and beat off and wouldn´t know how to bail a person out of a Central American jail if Moe's gave free seminars on the process.

I escape with a much lighter wallet and flee south, the van is still plagued by water in the gas and I have been sick for a week with vomit flowing from my mouth. I set the piano up in a random hotel and play some Cole Porter. Then I get into my hammock naked and it rains on me all night through the windows. In the morning I jerk off like a horny teenager who just found his father's stack of Penthouse magazines and then take a giant shit in a toilet I make of newspaper and nearly knock myself unconscious trying to get out of the van. I wash my hands and my ass right there on the street sidewalk and then I vomit in the park and try to walk to the lagoon but see and internet cafe and decide I should write this down quick because I might not have another chance.


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Man in the Van by Oggy Bleacher is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.