Sunday, February 7, 2016

Glue sniffer plays guitar

I want to make a documentary of Nicaraguan glue sniffing street kids. Pretty cheerful topic. This kid thought he was Johnny Cash. You can see the bulge by his waist that is a plastic bottle of contact cement used for shoe soles. He huffs it all day and night and that would explain the utter glaze in his eyes, like a zombie he walks the streets. In his strumming hand he can't let go of the cap to the glue bottle because he's totally addicted. I tried and tried to demonstrate and teach a chord but he was beyond my reach, beyond help, beyond this world as permanent brain damage has reduced him to the level of a howler monkey. These kids are called "Pegas." because Pegamento means glue. I was driving at night, miserable and sweating, police constantly asking me questions and a group of Pegas were wandering exactly like zombies in the middle of an intersection, huffing the glue and dancing to music only they can hear and I thought...man, it would be interesting to follow those kids around in their daily lives. Yes, it would exploit them but I'm trying to expose the truth to people who think the world revolves around the next Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor.


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