by Gates, Moses
Our current destination is Felipe’s friend Pedro’s house in Jacarepaguá (“Alligator Harbor” in Portuguese), a middle-class neighborhood next to the Cidade de Deus, or “City of God,” well off the tourist path in the western zone of Rio. In true Carioca fashion, we show up about two hours late. Pedro is none too happy with our tardiness but quickly changes into his outfit (an old woman, complete with cane), and we hit the street.
Now, there is “drag,” and there is “guys wearing dresses.” This is definitely “guys wearing dresses.” No one is bothering to look good. And, if anything, the guys are acting even more boyish and rambunctious than usual. A group of six hairy Playboy Bunnies meets us with various gestures and chants as soon as we get there. The whole thing is a blast, the sheer exuberance and energy nothing like I’ve ever experienced.
It starts to rain. Everybody cheers. The light tropical sprinkling quickly turns into a driving maelstrom. Nobody leaves. We hear thunder, and huge winds threaten to blow down electrical wires. Everybody climbs onto the roofs of the houses. Then, in unison, everybody starts to chant “Ah! Ah-ha! So de Jacarepaguá!” If your Portuguese isn’t up to snuff, that basically translates as “Ah! Ah-ha! I’m from Jacarepaguá!” I don’t feel out of place chanting along; Felipe said he was pretty sure I was the only gringo in attendance, and that was enough of an honorary membership for me for the afternoon. After all, I am standing on the street in the torrent, wearing women’s underwear right along with everyone else.
LOOKING GOOD!
By this time, the rain has completely soaked through my negligee. Now, I do have something else on. True to Brazilian form, I have slipped a Speedo on underneath. The problem is that it’s Felipe’s Speedo. Felipe’s got a good forty pounds on me. I take off the negligee and end up in my three-sizes-too-big Speedo, drenched, in the middle of Brazil.
In addition to being a ton of fun, the whole experience is great for another reason: it reminds me of a fundamental truth about cities. While things like climbing bridges and exploring tunnels can provide a great, seldom experienced perspective, ultimately cities are products of their citizens—infrastructure is there only as a means of support. The experiences that most capture the essence and character of a city are almost always social, not structural, encounters.
We finally make it home, where hot showers, not to mention dry men’s clothes, are extremely welcome. I’ve managed to make it back without flashing half of Rio, but just barely. Of course, La Cidade Maravilhosa is pretty much the only city in the world where you can still feel comfortable wearing nothing but a pair of falling-down Speedos while just walking down the street.
TWENTY
Bolivia, March 2007
After Brazil I take some time to do some backpacking, heading through Argentina before crossing the border into Bolivia. One bus ride later and I’m in a town called Tupiza, bargaining with a tour operator over a fairly standard four-day trip through the Altiplano, a beautiful, remote area in the southwest of the country, fifteen thousand feet in the air, with salt flats, pink flamingos, and rock formations that are straight out of a Salvador Dalí painting. It’s an amazing, otherworldly landscape, and the remoteness means that it’s generally visited by the young, Lonely Planet–bearing backpacker crowd. As a result, tours are still fairly cheap. I get the operator down to $105 U.S. for the ninety-six-hour excursion, they throw me in a 4x4 with five other tourists, and away we go.
Fifteen-thousand-foot altitude can do weird things. One of the weird things it can do is wreak havoc on your digestive tract. For three days I eat a pretty normal diet, consisting mostly of hearty helpings of rice, beans, and vegetables, and have absolutely no urge to move my bowels. And now those last three days have suddenly hit me all at once. I have to take the worst shit of my life. And I can’t.
The problem is that I’m currently riding in the 4x4, on the way out to our last stop. And the five other tourists with me are all girls. Sarah, a frizzy-haired Canadian backpacker. Mathilda and Hanna, two Danes on a trip around the world together. Kate, a cute and sassy young Irish lass with a whip-smart sense of humor. And Natalia. Natalia is a lovely creature, a nurse from Barcelona with sad eyes, a beautiful face, and a certain vulnerability to her that makes it hard for me not to hug her each time she talks. She wants to improve her English, which is halting, and I likewise want to improve my Spanish, which is far from fluent, so we’ve been getting to know each other in a strange bilingual manner: I speak Spanish to her, she speaks English to me. Our lack of proficiency makes for a linguistic directness that precludes the subtleties of flirting. It takes only a couple of stumbles on the constraints of our communication style before it becomes embarrassingly obvious that we have a mutual attraction.
Since getting divorced, I’ve had dalliances, hookups, and other assorted fun and friendly encounters. But they’ve all had that feeling of “We’re mostly doing this because we’re both just kind of bored.” I haven’t had anything resembling romance. No girlfriends, not even something that could properly be called a “fling.” And certainly not a beautiful Catalan woman looking at me with trust and desire in her eyes. The returning feeling is unexpected and wonderful, nostalgic but also still familiar: it’s like running into an old friend from high school and remembering how much fun you used to have before life got so complicated. It’s only a matter of time before we hook up. But not if I stop the car and take a giant shit on the road right in front of her.
And that’s pretty much the sole option. The terrain is currently completely flat and featureless for miles. There is nowhere to hide, no pretending I’ve just got to pee and ducking behind a hill. And the only other guy in the car is our Bolivian driver, Pedro, who, while a nice enough fellow, I’m fairly sure will not understand the nuances of what is happening. Essentially, I have no wingman. Nobody I can grab and say, “Hey, cover me so I still have a chance with Natalia.” I’ve got two choices: be the disgusting guy who has to stop the car and crap in the desert, or sweat it out.
I never have that moment of decision where I choose to sweat it out. I have to shit so bad I can’t really tell if this is even going to be a matter of willpower: there might come a time when my body might betray me against my brain’s every command. I reevaluate every minute, every mile, of the trip, resolving to hang on as long as I can. After not too long, it takes even more of a turn for the worse.
When I was a child, my mother would not let me say I was starving. “You’re hungry, you’re ravenous, you’re not starving. Children in Ethiopia are starving.” Starving is a completely different thing from simply being very, very hungry—something those of us who have never experienced it can’t even imagine. I’ve heard it described as a maddening gnawing deep in your muscles for nourishment. What I’ve got is the “Have to take a shit” equivalent of starvation. It’s totally alien from anything I’ve felt before. It goes well beyond the uncomfortable feeling of fullness in my lower abdomen, the piercing desire to relax my gluteus muscles. I can feel it in every inch of my body. I start to sweat. It feels like I have a bad case of the flu, except somehow I know that as soon as I release my bowels the nausea, cramping, and general feeling of illness will vanish. I’m shifting uncomfortably around in my seat, trying to find the best position. Some are better than others—folding my legs under me and shifting my weight onto my left hip seems to be the best—but the problem is they deal only with the “hungry” part of having to shit. No matter how I shift, what muscles I half relax, the “starving” part stays with me at full throttle, growing steadily worse with each mile.
Still, I manage to hold out. Eventually, I see the town we’re heading to, Uyuni, off in the distance. I’m exuberant. A light at the end of the tunnel. I forget we’re in the desert. After an hour, the town appears no closer. As we rumble forward, each mile covered bringing no corresponding change in the size of the dots off in the distance, I feel like my spirit is being ever so slowly crushed in a vise. If I had some idea
of how long it would be, how much longer I had to endure this, it would be bearable. But I don’t. It’s a mirage in the distance. I can’t tell if we’re going to be there in five minutes or five hours. All I can do is somehow manage to not spill the contents of my colon all over the seat every time we hit a bump in the road. “No sé—no creo que es esto. Espere aquí,” says Pedro. I almost cry.
• • •
After about an hour and a half of agony, the town starts to grow perceptibly larger. Twenty minutes later we roll by the first building. Cities in the Bolivian Altiplano are not large. It shouldn’t be too long now.
The problem, as I find out, is that Pedro doesn’t know where we’re staying. And I have no idea how to find a public bathroom in Bolivia. We stop for the fourth or fifth time. Each time I’m sure we’ve made it, only to have Pedro continue on. This time I can’t help it. I have to ask if we’re almost there.
The entire trip I’ve been quiet. I’m worried that any diversion of concentration will prove fatal to my efforts at bowel control. I have never concentrated on anything this much. Not while taking my graduate school admission exams, not while walking in a four-track mainline subway tunnel during the middle of rush hour—never. Every ounce of focus is on my anus. I slowly, carefully tear away a tiny corner of my brain and manage to get the question out. I hope the tremble in my voice is noticeable only to me.
Upon hearing his tepid response, and being told to wait in the car, I almost lose it. I can’t worry about being conspicuous anymore. I slowly make my way out of the 4x4, hoping Natalia doesn’t notice my halting shuffle as I slowly follow Pedro into the hotel.
“No, no, esto no es el hotel,” Pedro says, but now I don’t care. With Natalia out of sight I can afford to blow my cool a bit.
“Necesito el baño,” I reply.
Pedro starts to protest, but after seeing the desperation on my face understandingly points to the back of the place. I drag myself down the hall. I don’t care what the bathroom looks like, what it smells like, what diseases might be floating around in there, nothing except that it’s somewhere Natalia can’t see me. I find the place and hurriedly enter a stall. It’s actually not so bad—fairly clean, as far as Bolivia goes.
I can’t believe it. I’m actually going to make it. As soon as I let myself believe this, though, my concentration lapses and the strangest thing happens. My anus starts to spasm. It’s always remarkable when your body does something you didn’t know it could do. Generally this happens under the influence of drugs, or maybe at the chiropractor’s office, not as a result of not pooping for four days. But I don’t have time to stop and marvel at nature. Already I can tell this spasming is going to end soon, and I don’t want my pants on when it does. But it’s OK. I’m here. All I have to do is pull down my drawers and this whole horrid nightmare is over.
I unzip and yank on my pants. They stay up. Fuck. I forgot I was wearing a belt. The spasming grows worse. I contemplate surrender for a split second. Maybe I can somehow throw away my soiled pants, get new ones, and explain it as an impromptu fashion choice when I see Natalia. It would all be so easy.
It isn’t the implausibility of this plan that keeps me from giving in. It isn’t even the thought of the look of horror on Natalia’s face when she realizes what happened. It’s the fight. It’s like getting knocked out in the last round of a boxing match when you’re ahead on all the cards. I see flashes of Rocky making it up at the count of ten while Apollo Creed is still down on one knee. I’ve come this far. I manage to muster up every remaining ounce of mental strength for this last hurdle.
The moment when mind and body truly come together is amazing. An almost Zen-like calm comes over me as I realize I can control the spasming. I am completely in tune with a part of my body; it’s like the spasms are in slow motion and I can feel every different muscle fiber expand and contract. I imagine it’s the same feeling Tibetan monks get when they realize they can willfully slow their heartbeat. In the moment it seems like I can control it forever, but intellectually I know it won’t last. I’m a novice, and not really even that. Extraordinary circumstances have temporarily gifted me with mental powers it takes a lifetime to develop. I know they’ll soon vanish. Still, there’s no panic as I unbuckle my belt, slide my pants down, and take a seat. I take one last nanosecond to enjoy the moment of victory and discovery, and then I let it all go.
After I’m done I realize there’s no toilet paper, but I don’t care—I actually prepared for the contingency by tearing out a few pages from my guidebook while I was still riding in the car. I sit and relax for a while, use “French Guiana” to wipe, thoroughly wash my hands, and head out, a happy man.
• • •
Later on, when we’re alone and I’m quite confidently in control of my bodily functions once again, I speak with Natalia. Again our language barrier eliminates the option of smooth talking. I tell her, in horrible Spanish, that I want to kiss her. She raises her head and the look in her eyes turns me to jelly.
“I like to Moses,” she says in her heavily accented English. “I like to much. But I don’t know. I don’t know it is good. You are, are . . .” She struggles for the English word. “You are . . .” Frustrated, she reverts back to Spanish. “Estás cerrado, Moses.”
Estás cerrado. You are closed.
TWENTY-ONE
I thought Rio would be the prime example of people building a city in a place that God never meant for urbanity. But that was before I made it to La Paz.
There are many cities throughout the world set on hilltops and mountains. It makes sense, as high ground lets the city have a natural defense. But La Paz is one of the only that’s essentially the opposite of this—a city set into a giant canyon. On the rim of this canyon is El Alto, a sprawling souk-like neighborhood. Our bus winds down the valley from El Alto for what seems like miles, until depositing us about three-quarters of the way down. There are still hundreds of feet to descend before it picks up again. Usually my instinct is to go up, get to the highest point around me. But I know my destination in this city is going to be different. At the bottom of the canyon, running through the center of La Paz, is the Choqueyapu River, the dirtiest river in the world. And it runs underground. How can I resist it?
I’m not sure if it’s actually the “dirtiest” river in the world. Bolivia is a country somewhat given to hyperbole. For instance, I’ve just biked the Yungas Road, billed as the “Road of Death.” It’s a tricky descent down a winding mountain road with no guardrail, with an overall drop in altitude of almost twelve thousand feet. Counterintuitively, the group leader gave us the advice that going faster is safer.
THE “ROAD OF DEATH.”
“The reason people die is not because they are going too fast and can’t stop,” he told us. “What happens is that people get nervous about going too fast and spend the whole time squeezing the brakes. Their hand muscles get exhausted, and then later on in the ride when they need to brake, their hands are too tired to do it hard enough, they can’t slow down, and they end up going over the edge.”
I kept this advice in mind, and the ride ended up being pretty fun, but nothing that deserved its billing. It actually got the name in 1995 when the road was still regularly used for two-way vehicular travel: most of the deaths would come when buses and trucks would go over the edge while trying to pass each other. They’ve since built another, safer road, and the Yungas is now used mostly by tourists who want the cheesy “I Biked Death Road” T-shirt with a skull and crossbones that we got upon finishing the ride. It’s all a bit silly, reminding me of tour operators trying to convince me that I was somehow going on an “adventure” instead of a tour. Of course, the week after I did the ride I did learn that two people had died biking the road the same week I did. So much for my take on Bolivian hyperbole.
And it turns out “dirtiest” very well might not be hyperbole in the case of the Choqueyapu River, either. Gravity is the ult
imate arbiter of this: because the river is at the bottom of the canyon, it’s the final destination of the runoff from the city and its environs—a metropolis of about two million people, all of whose sewage, garbage, and pollution are eventually going to make their way downhill. I head down the canyon until I find the top of the tiered concrete tunnel that covers part of the river. I’m on the upriver side of this tunnel. There’s no way in, so I decide to try the downriver side. The journey is tricky, and I have to head back up into the canyon a few times before finding a way to slide down a hill to the downriver section, where it exits the concrete tunnel, now several dozen feet lower.
CHOQUEYAPU RIVER.
Up close, the first thing I notice about the river is that it’s a disgusting shade of brown. The second thing I notice is what I suspect is the source of this—what appears to be a sewage hookup flowing right out into the river, which I can only assume is one of many. Just as in Naples, it looks like the official sewer system is taken as just one of many options for waste disposal. Even if it isn’t an illegal sewage hookup, the pipe is, at best, for storm runoff—runoff that’s made its way down a hill of several hundred thousand people and the accumulated garbage that they’ve thrown in the streets. I’ve been ignoring most of the advice the guidebooks have given about eating and drinking, which is heavily geared toward making sure you don’t imbibe any liquid that isn’t the result of an industrial bottling process: you’re supposed to avoid all fresh juices and anything with ice cubes, for instance, as well as anything that may have, at some point, been touched by someone who, at some other point, may have touched a local water source. I’ve dismissed all this as paranoia, happily quaffing and chowing down on whatever happened to be close by and cheap. But upon seeing the river, I resolve to stick to bottles of Coca-Cola for the remainder of my stay here.
