Catcher in the Rye on Crack
I am doing a photography project in the slums of Costa Rica.
It’s called Catcher in the Rye on Crack.
There is a place called the Coca Cola. It is the grimy, crime ridden central bus station in San José, Costa Rica; far different from the sweet bubbly so many of us enjoy on hot days. The first time I landed in the Coca Cola was to catch an early morning bus. The day was just beginning, the sky was grey and blue, and people were wandering everywhere. Local vagrants spying on tourists. Tourists sheepishly clutching onto oversized backpacks.
A cup of coffee, an empanada, and the foreigner is gone, out into the glorious wilderness of Costa Rica. Few people stay more than 24 hours in San José, and no one stays in the Coca Cola. Even fewer dare to venture into the surrounding neighborhoods to the east and south: La Zona Roja, and (personally nicknamed) Cracktown.
But I’ve been making pictures here.
I am a photographer. This doesn’t give me license to be an idiot, but it often grants me the opportunity to go where I don’t belong. I know what life is like in suburban America, but I don’t know what it is like to live below the surface. This place, the slums, keeps calling to me. I can smell the piss, and hear the low grumbling of Spanish around me, but there is more here. The constant knot in my stomach that always gets me into trouble, keeping me up at night with drugs by my side, relates to this place. And so I keep coming back to look.
But looking isn’t enough. There has to be a reason. I’ll portray this place, in all of its shit and glory. In 10 photographs. I won’t go too deep, because I’m moving across the world in a month. I am scratching the surface while I can.
10 Photographs (A Checklist)
1. Homeless
2. Drugs
3. Violence
4. Sex
5. Religion
6. Prostitutes
7. Drunks
8. Meat
9. Trash
10. Landscape
I am photographing with a Polaroid #403 Miniportrait camera. It is a beast. A big, rectangular, black box larger than my head. With the large, attachable flash the beast transforms into a monster. I stand out in this neighborhood. My flowing red hair doesn’t blend in either.
So far trash and homeless photographs have been easy to get.
The trash heap is here. His legs are also here. He is asleep. I am awake. Framed. Picture made.
I see him everyday, his face covered in a thick matt of hair and dirt. He sits on a wilting piece of cardboard, while hoards of people walk by him. One rainy day I sit next to him. I initiate the conversation, albeit selfishly.
“Hola Señor. ¿Cómo estás? ¿Quieres algo?”
“Estoy bien.”
“¿No te quieres café?”
“No. Estoy bien.”
He tells me of his cardboard, and how he moves north for the night to get away from all of the dangerous people. This is all he has, and wants nothing more.
“¿It must have been a lot of money to come here from America?”
“Yes, it costs money to fly on an airplane, it is true,” my oversized Polaroid camera seemingly growing larger while sitting on my lap.
“¿En serio, total bien? ¿No te quieres café?”
“Esta bien.” And as the hair on his face moves slightly to signify that his mouth has closed, I look at him. His bright blue eyes piercing through me.
I stand up, walk back, and make the picture.
The Day I Almost Took a Picture of Two People Having Sex.
I finally get up the nerve, hail a taxi, and hop in when one pulls over.
“Vamos ala Coca Cola.”
My housemate Leland told me about some nightclub south of the Coca Cola, in a small barrio I call Cracktown. I am going to find that nightclub tonight because I want to check off one of the most important items on my list: sex.
Nearing the Coca Cola I direct the man to go straight and not turn. It is daytime, maybe 15:00, but as we continue down this beat up city road it seems we are traveling into night. People are moving slower, store windows are boarded up.
I see it. At least, it fits the description: Desolate corner, old sign, something about dice or gambling.
“Aquí, Aquí.”
He stops the cab.
I realize I don’t have small change.
“Yo tengo 5,000 colones. Solamente. Lo siento.”
“Eew, gringa… Esta bien.” He rolls up the window. I get out of the cab paying about half of what I owe him.
I gain some petty change, and he probably lost money to buy his wife dinner. I ignore my reflection of shame in the window, and move onward.
I go up to the door of the nightclub, ring the doorbell and wait. Some gruffly man with a beer belly comes to the door and peers at me through the bars.
“Hola. Yo tengo una pregunta un poco loco. Yo quiero fotos de sexo, con dos personas. Un hombre y una mujer. No se, como en sexo.”
“¿Foto? ¿Sexo? No, no.”
I stand there at the door, a white gringa, explaining in broken Spanish with arm gestures only embarrassing enough to be American why I should get into the club to make my pictures. Meanwhile, a tall, scraggly bum overhears my conversation with the club owner, and walks over. He stands there watching us.
“Eew, gringa. Yo se una local. Vamos.”
We start walking to another other place the Bum knows about, located around the corner. I buy the Bum a Fresca, and quickly guzzle a beer. Neon blue and pink lights dimly light the bar. I admire and criticize how the waitress behind the counter lets her big, hairy belly spill out over her tight, white pants.
Damn, I wish I had that kind of confidence. Damn, that bitch is nasty.
I pose my question to her. The question about her getting paid to have sex so that I can make my picture. She says she is willing, but for 7,000 colones ($14).
“But, ¿Con quién?” she asks.
I glance at the tall, haggard Bum and he gives me an affirming nod. But it is agreed, 7,000 colones is simply too much money. I only have 5,000 colones, and my friend, the Bum, has nothing.
We start walking out of Cracktown, cross the bustling, healthy Aveneda Central, and approach La Zona Roja. I get scared in La Zona Roja, because it is so foreign, isolated from the rest of San José, and has a lingering smell of urine and cum throughout the streets signifying to me some impending doom.
One day I was taking a stroll with my camera in La Zona Roja when I noticed a man gagging and coughing. I wondered what was wrong with the fellow, but then I saw him throwing up. He was walking down the street, just as I am walking down the street, but he was throwing up. He actually did a good job, maybe as though he had done it before. The vomit just sprayed to the side. It didn’t seem to smudge his shirt. Some women, very possibly prostitutes, just mocked him while strutting ten paces behind.
La Zona Roja. The Red Light District. It is a section of town where sometimes I turn down a street I wish I hadn’t, where suddenly I feel surrounded by people with cold, bloodshot, detached eyes.
Walking in the Coca Cola, the bus station block west of La Zona Roja, is different because there are many people there just like me: working people getting from one place to another. But many of the people in La Zona Roja are here because they choose to be here. Some work here, possibly not by choice, but many come here for certain things: drugs, sex….
I have yet to see anything violent happen in La Zona Roja, which may be the reason I am still allowing myself to wander around here.
The Bum takes me to a whorehouse. I have never been to a prostitution parlor before. At the entrance there are women sitting in chairs against the wall, and a few ladies are standing in the doorway. A little further inside there is a slimy group of men standing around inside the parlor. Looking for pussy.
Deciding if anyone is good enough to fuck for a few thousand colones.
We leave; there is no one good enough.
In the next whorehouse, we have to walk in past a few wall dividers, like panels that would have appeared at one of my elementary school science fairs with information about the ocean. Once inside there are again prostitutes and some men standing against the wall.
I am scared to go inside, but I feel tied down. I need to see a prostitute having sex with some man, because it is part of my project. My nonsensical art project constructed in my head out of my desire to do something dangerous and to experience a world so different from my home. My home where we smoked pot and walked to Taco Bell for kicks. Where I watch cable TV and relax in the spa. Where life is comfortable and humdrum. But here I am, putting myself in danger, contemplating my justifications to be acting completely insane.
He and I keep going deeper and deeper. If a lady won’t do it here, then let’s go there, and well, if not there, they are cheaper here.
I feel myself losing more and more control. The Bum has complete power over me and I keep following him. I am teetering on that brink of danger, at the moment just before I’ve lost total control. It feels so fucking good: my pulse pumping and sweat building on my back. This is living.
We end up on a street. It is dusk. There is a girl with sores all over her face. She is holding two crack pipes. She is visibly drugged, staggering, and chomping on her face.
“Señorita, yo tengo una pregunta.”
“¿Qué?” And the Bum takes over.
He asks if she will have sex, “¿Conmigo?”
“¿Si, tienen 2,000 colones?”
“¡Si!” We say the word in unison. So excited we might both instantaneously cum in our pants.
“¿Dónde?”
Now, while this rather important issue is being discussed, some cops roll up in their patrol car.
They get out of the car and ask me what I am doing.
“¿Do you realize that this is a dangerous part of town?”
Oh really officer?
They ask me for my passport. I tell them I would be crazy to carry around my passport in this neighborhood. Luckily they understand that much. The cops make me more nervous than the bum or the girl on crack. I want the cops to leave. I let the Bum put his arm on my shoulder and tell the cops that we were friends. I want them to go, but as soon as they are gone, a part of me wishes I had left with them. The lifeline is cut.
And I now am walking with the homeless crack bitch and the Bum to a hotel. When we go inside I give the Bum my money for the room. I have 3,000 colones left in my pocket. He takes it all.
I can tell that the large man working the place thinks it is a little weird that the three of us are going into one room, but I assure him it is just to make a photograph. I am not going to be having any sex. I tell him this, but really I am telling myself this. Needing to find my grounding.
When we get in the room, the Bum sits on the bed. The girl is standing, and pacing, as much as it is possible in a room just larger than the twin bed inside of it. I am standing there, close to the door. The Bum gives the girl 1,000 colones, and she gets pissed.
“I will do this for 2,000 colones, not 1,000!”
Her frantic behavior throws me into a panic and I demand of the Bum, “¿Where is the other 2,000 colones?”
She’s staggering back and forth, and he is violently holding her arms.
“We used that money to pay for the room. ¿And, why am I not getting any money?”
Because you are going to have sex, you worthless piece of shit!
And the girl is extremely upset, and fear overtakes me and I am upset too. And the Bum is sitting on the bed now and the crack bitch is still holding her crack pipes and I realize I have to get away. I tell them I don’t want to make the picture. The girl runs out. The Bum follows her out the door.
I take a picture of the empty room. The owner is now standing outside of the door.
“I don’t feel well. I don’t feel safe.”
It is dark outside and I do not want to be here. I am broke. The girl ran off with my 1,000 colones, and the hotel attendant or the Bum has the rest of my money. I tell the attendant to get me a taxi. I am too scared to walk out on the street. He goes out and hails me a taxi. I sit in the waiting room with the other whores and men, waiting for rooms, or too poor to afford one…just waiting.
I get in the taxi and the Bum kisses me on the cheek.
I hate him and I hate myself. For always lying, for smoking, for my ignorance, for my destructiveness, for not telling others how much I do care, for being self absorbed, for having this fucking camera in my hands, for trying to feel, for not living day to day, for exploiting those less fortunate.
Why don’t I just go home and watch movies like a good girl?
I look at my camera and realized that the back part was still in place. A black piece of plastic created the barrier. It stopped the record. The photo I took of the room was never actually taken. It is a moment of relief.
When I get back to the Tico Times the security guard loans me 1,000 colones to pay for the taxi. I go upstairs and start crying, shaking. Feeling scared and shaky is now the only way I can feel. Feel myself digesting. Feel myself regurgitating.
I sit in my office chair, staring at a blank computer screen wondering: What the fuck is wrong with me?
In a week I’m back. It is the middle of the afternoon and I am staring at a vacant street. A homeless man tells me I’m not safe. I ignore him and look around. But the hotel isn’t here. Maybe none of that happened. But now I feel addicted to this pain.
Luis.
Luis is my Cracktown boyfriend. He is 24, just like me, and is pretty attractive. Luis gave me his necklace and once we held hands. That is why I sarcastically, and endearingly call him my boyfriend.
I am walking around the Coca Cola. Wanting to go deeper into the deep, dark depths of danger, but feel a little scared. Luis sees me walking by and yells out to me. This is how our six-week relationship began.
“¿Are you trying to go to Monteverde?” Monteverde, a cloud forest loved by tourists.
I laugh. “No.”
Actually, “I am looking to do something a little bizarre, but maybe you could help me?” I tell Luis that I want to make a picture of someone smoking crack.
“Vamos.”
With Luis I have a guide into the darkness. We walk up a desolate street, desolate except for a few vagrants, onto a bustling street with the Mercado Bourbon. Bums, people, fruits, vegetables, pig heads. I am simply following Luis through the busy streets. He walks with a bit of a limp, almost with a too-cool-for-school sway. I think it is lack of sleep that makes him walk like this.
“Uno momento…”
He walks away from me and towards a scraggly big man. He walks back.
“¿Do you have 200 colones?”
I hand him the change, and he staggers back to the man. With the crack rock in his hand, Luis and I walk back to the street where we initially met.
We sit down near some other young street dwellers flopped out on cardboard. I recognize one of them from another picture I took a few weeks prior. I had seen two dogs wearing little clothes, and their owner, a male dressed like a woman, was very proud of his puppies. I asked him if I could take his picture with the dogs and he posed with them. He told me he was a prostitute and that I should pray for him. That day he seemed happy, hopeful, and eager to seek redemption. And here he is, sitting on a pile of trash, high on crack.
Luis starts talking to me.
“I love crack. These are my crack brothers and sisters. They are my little family.”
He is rocking back and forth, getting the necessary tools out of his pocket.
I take a picture of crack in his hand. Then he lights his little pipe – warming it for the glory goods. The pipe is made from a car antenna. A car antenna cut to about three inches. He puts a little of the crack in the top of the pipe and heats it by swirling the flame from his lighter around the part of the pipe with the crack.
He knows it is ready and starts sucking on the bottom. That is it. Now he is smiling and swaying a little. Happiness. Crack.
Despite his heavenly bliss he is still able to think about practical problems and asks me for money.
“I can give you a 1,000 colones… payment for the picture.”
When I rustle my hand into my bag I realize that I only have a 10,000 colones note ($20). I want to be as open and honest with him, so that he too will be honest with me.
“Oh Luis, yo tengo solemente 10,000 colones.”
We are building a trusting relationship.
We walk to a little shop, I buy him a Fresca and he becomes greedy and asks for 2,000 colones. Fine. I hand him payment for the picture with a 1,000 colones tip.
“I am very tired.”
Crack must have a short high.
“I will give you a full tour of the Coca Cola, but…” He staggers backward. “Now I just need rest.”
He takes off his necklace and puts it around my neck.
I wear it now, and I will wear it in the future. It is for safety.
I see Luis again. He is walking down the street. His eyes are bloodshot.
“¿Cómo esta?”
“I am starving.”
He looks really bad.
“¿Can you help me?”
“I don’t have anything for you.”
It is a lie, I do. I give him one Halls Piña Colada.
He laughs, “¿Just one? Shit.”
“Take care of yourself Luis.”
It is Mother’s Day. I see Luis. Actually he sees me first, and comes over to where I am talking to my other slum acquaintance, Hans. After I am done talking to Hans I turn to Luis. He looks really bad. Shaky and haggard.
We walk across the street and sit down on some cardboard.
“I am feeling sad. I am thinking about my mama.”
“She lives in Pavas,” and although Pavas is only a long walk or a short bus ride away, it is too far. I understand. Distance always grows with guilt or fear.
I hold his hand while we talk. He tells me that he has been living on the street for four years and each year on Mother’s Day he gets sad.
“It is always the same. I will feel better tomorrow.”
He jumps up and takes an unfinished cigarette from a bus driver. Then sits back down next to me.
“You make me feel better. Mejor. Mejor because of you. Be my girlfriend. Help me.”
He writes the phone number of his mother, and of his house on a slip of paper. He hands me the paper with longing and loss in his eyes. I will lose the paper and will never call.
I leave Luis and start walking around. After a few hours I decide to go to a bar and get some beers. I still need to get the ‘drunk’ photograph for my project. I am alone and some older men start buying me drinks. We are having broken conversations, more men mull around, all while I stare at the wall – the old photographs, the dim red lights. The empty beer bottles grow in front of me and my head fills with twirling thoughts. He touches my back with his thick sticky hand. The fog around me expands.
“Gringa linda. I know another place we can go.”
“¿Sí?”
We walk there. Him, another man, and myself. Stumbling through the dark streets, I don’t comprehend my vulnerability. White, rich with a wet pussy. Everything these men crave when they’re at home fucking their poor, chubby wives.
In the next bar everyone stares at me when I walk inside. I pull out my big Polaroid camera and start photographing the drunks, the bar tender and the tough guys. We all look at the photographs.
“¿Why are they blurry?”
“Because I like them this way.”
I don’t come out with my art jargon in drunken, broken Spanish. I don’t tell them that I want them to be blurry because I could never capture the crisp harsh lines of this reality. Those lines would inevitably be false. And such a conversation would be inevitably stupid and one sided.
I’ve had enough, and am starting to realize that the men are just waiting to see when I pass out so that they can pass me around for a good fuck. So I leave.
In my drunken stupor I walk by where Luis and I were sitting before. He told me this was going to be his bed tonight but he is not here. I want him to be here and I want to curl up next to him and sleep. I want to sleep next to Luis all night; to hold him, for him to hold me.
To help me understand what I never will. And maybe make my role playing a little more real.
Calle de los Muertos.
I am with a group of friends and co-workers at an idyllic costal town for a brief holiday from the city. Surrounded by jungle, beach, and mosquitoes. My skin is stickier, and the heat is saltier. Away from the barbwire and city grime. We are all sitting contentedly on the beach, when a few people decide it is time to go swimming. I stay on the sand longer than the rest. Soaking up the much-needed sun, quietly day dreaming and performing the considerate duty of watching over everyone’s belongings.
But the contemplation in the sun has gone on long enough, and I decide to join the rest in the water, ignorantly leaving no other watchman on duty. My logic is slightly numb from a couple afternoon cervezas. I haven’t seen a single person, other than my friends that are joyfully splashing in the water, for two days. There’s nothing but monkeys in that jungle!
I run down to the water, and start splashing around with the rest. I ride on the shoulders of my co-worker. Chicken fighting in paradise.
After the fun we stagger back to our stuff. I realize that my bag and my camera are gone. My bag, out of all of the bags. I am irate. Shaking, feeling the vomit rising.
I run into the jungle, dizzy and sun burnt looking for the asshole that took my things. For me it isn’t the objects so much as the fact that someone has slipped one past me that turn my insides to fire. Someone came in and took away my control. Although, losing a camera when my money is tight is highly distressing. How am I going to keep working? My camera is my skill.
I am running through vines and brush, and can hear my friend hollering after me. I keep the image of a man in all black in my head. He is jumping out of the jungle to take my personal things, sees my bag, grabs it quickly, and runs back into the jungle. He takes my bag from a space I deemed as safe. And he’ll make a few bucks. I see him dumping my journal into a trashcan, and stuffing my Swiss Army knife into his pocket. I’d like to think he steals to feed his family, but more likely it is just to get money to buy drugs. I run, and run. And my breath becomes weak, and I stop.
My friend passes me a huge joint. I suck it down. My co-workers console me and tell me the facts.
“Theft is common in Costa Rican beach towns; the disparity between average tourists and local Ticos is so great it is only a practical assumption that theft would be commonplace...”
As I am sitting on the porch of the beach bungalow slowly drowning my frustration in beer after beer, joint after joint, they keep telling me of the underground network of thievery in Costa Rica.
“All of the beach towns south of Límon, where I am, are cluttered with small time thieves. These guys will go about stealing things on beaches, in restaurants, in the street, in peaceful beach bungalows, and will sell them up to the bigger thieves in Límon. Almost inevitably, those thieves will sell their newly acquired items to the top criminals who run the black market shops in La Zona Roja, San José.”
I decide to go when we get back.
Within a few days, I am looking for my camera.
The biggest black market in San José is on a street ominously named Calle de los Muertos. The Street of the Dead. It is a few blocks from where Luis sits on his cardboard box while smoking crack, and where Hans directs city buses. I have never been to this street before. It is farther than I have ever gone away from the bustling city center. It is slightly up a hill and while I am walking up, alone and ready to pick a fight, I can’t help but notice how poor people look. On the opposite side of the street there is a line of people resting on cardboard boxes. One man is sleeping, wrapped around the corner of a building, the shabby structure hardly holding itself up, let alone able to shelter a person. And here I am, sad that I don’t have a camera?
I know I’ve reached the street when I see shit stained store windows with car radios, televisions, and cell phones. I start poking my head into shops. The usual animal grunts and hollers come at me from the local men. I ignore their pelvic gyrations, whistling and lip sucking and stay focused on my goal.
Find my camera.
Finally I find the right shop. Its small and worn down like all the rest, but has cameras of all shapes and sizes. The man behind the counter is slouched over smoking a cigarette. I can’t help but notice his big belly, and the hair on his stomach protruding from where one of his shirt buttons has come undone. I talk to him briefly, look around at the cameras, and ask him if he has anything new.
“¿Maybe a Digital SLR came in recently?”
“No.”
I leave.
A week later I return, only this time in the rain.
When I walk in again he gives me a dirty smile. He remembers me.
“¿What are you looking for today, linda?”
“A Digital SLR.”
I am hoping to find my camera and buy it back from him. Still feeling like a sucker, but somehow getting my way.
But he doesn’t have my camera in his shop. By now I have realized that all of the cameras sold in the black market usually make it back to this dirty old man, so I know I have nowhere else to go. I am hopeless and my droopy face shows my disappointment. From behind the counter, he grips my hand, grabs my head and starts kissing my mouth. The sour sweet taste of tobacco is suddenly pressed against my lips, as he holds my face tightly in his stained and rough hands. I pull away, smack him hard across his face, rip my hand from his and walk away. I’m not crying. I am pissed off. Violated again and over the mind-fuck.
Lady.
It is another day of walking around in a haze of hung-over thirst, looking for photos, not knowing what I will see. Wanting to finish, yearning to keep going. Not wanting to finish.
I walk from the Coca Cola to Hans’ room. Hans lives in a small little cement blockhouse right next to where the buses leave the Coca Cola. Hans’ job is to direct bus traffic, and if he sees me when I get off my bus he blows me kisses and comes over to talk. I see Hans coming out of his room.
“¿Se viva aquí?”
“Sí.”
“¿Can I take a picture of your room?”
“Sí.”
In Hans’ room there is Arabic scribbled all over the walls. He tells me that he likes war because it changes things and it is real. I don’t understand everything he says, but listen. I have never really liked Hans. He scares me, and being in his room is a little unnerving. He could shut the door at any moment, throw me down with a knife to my neck and rape me on that soiled sheet. No, I don’t feel in danger.
He has little keepsakes everywhere. A teddy bear in a bucket sits on the floor. A small stamp collection is stuck to his wall. And Arabic everywhere.
“Hans, what do you think of me, a gringa, from America, working on a photography project in the Coca Cola?”
“You are working, it is your job. It is OK that you have interests and are curious.” Also, he says in his sensual Spanish tongue, “You are pretty. ¿Can I have a kiss?”
“Oh Hans, I have boyfriends all over the world: I am taken.”
He gives me a doubtful look. He does not get a kiss.
I leave Hans. I walk.
The market is closed today and I am nervous walking around with so few people.
I look for my stolen camera in the black market.
I watch people get harassed by the cops.
I make the photos I need to make.
I go back to the Coca Cola.
I am wandering like a fool. Looking around. Thinking, wondering. A woman comes up to me. She tells me she needs help. She looks like a typical drug addict, scraggly hair, disheveled movements, and wearing piss stained clothes. But she has scars all over her arms, her neck, and her face. She looks horrible and more desperate than the rest. She is wearing a little Pokemon t-shirt. It is very little, just covering her breasts. While talking to me, she sees I have interest in her and she pulls down her pants. I see pubic hair, blood and a wad of toilet paper.
“I have been bleeding for two weeks. The pain. The dolor. It is horrible.”
She pulls up her top and squirts milk out of her nipple. Her name is Lady Fernandez.
”I had a baby a month ago. A little boy. He is in Guadalupe with my family, and he is gordo.” I understand that she means he is healthy. But she is not.
“I need money.” To go to the clinic. To stop the pain in my stomach. No. For a good meal.
Fine. Lady needs money. First I need something.
I make a photo of her. I focus on the scars all over her body. The thick lines of flesh rising from her skin, covering every inch of her arms, her neck, her chest. She tells me she is from Nicaragua. These are wounds from her childhood.
“Scars of oppression.”
We walk to a food stand and I buy her a small chicken, fries and a coke. She eats like a pig. Pieces of chicken falling from her cheeks to the table, while grease oozes from her lips. Within moments the food is gone. I give her 1,000 colones ($2) to get new pants, a new shirt, or some underwear.
“I don’t smoke crack. Because of my baby.”
“I don’t care.”
I don’t trust what Lady says. She will either go to buy new pants, or crack. I’m not concerned with how she spends the money; she needs something. Apparently I have something to give today.
I hug Lady goodbye and we cross the street in opposite directions. I look at her and then she turns and looks back at me. I see her smile. I turn my head and when I look back she is gone.
Oh Lady, you are so sad and pathetic. Where is your baby? You squirted milk out of your breast. And yet, when you smiled at me, I could see a glimmer of the innocent, pure woman inside of you. Fresh from your own mother’s womb. And now your shell is ugly.
The rest of the day is a blur. A fog of depression.
I am thinking about my new friends in this new place.
I ring the doorbell of a typical scum hotel in La Zona Roja. The buzzer rings and I push open the thick bared door. I walk the rickety staircase until I reach a door that opens onto the roof. I look out over housetops, and onto the streets. I feel wonderful up here. I am above it all…and the breeze…and the feeling of acid in my stomach is gone.
I wait and look, digesting.
Back on the streets below I look for Luis. I can’t find him.
I try to take a picture of my reflection in a puddle but it doesn’t turn out. I don’t belong here anyhow.
And so I leave.