To Shake the Sleeping Self

by Jedidiah Jenkins

“Jed, what does that mean?”

  We’d hiked a long way. I could see the café in the distance, surrounded by trees and steep cliffs high above. I looked up for a minute, and felt the strange juxtaposition of incredible beauty, and the fact that Weston and I had hardly acknowledged it. I broke the flow for a minute. “Weston, look around. Holy shit, we’re so deep in our dismantling of the patriarchy and religion that we’re missing this.”

  He laughed and brought it back. “Are you kidding? I’ve been seeing it all. What better place to destroy God than surrounded by His best handiwork? Or what better place to replace the white man’s God with the god of nature?” He capped off his pronouncement with a few fist pumps in the air.

  But we jumped right back in. “Paul says that the Gospel is a mystery,” I said. “Look at Job. At Ecclesiastes. I think the Bible is teaching us how to think about God. It’s a journey of understanding. It starts with a very humanlike God, because we were so primitive in the beginning, and as we advanced, so did our understanding of God, which reached its high point in Jesus. That’s why God sent His son there, because then we could understand Him.”

  “Maybe so, but that was two thousand years ago. Why would our understanding of God have frozen two thousand years ago? All these pastors talking about what the Bible really means. They’re trying to make this ancient document relevant. It’s retarded—”

  “Don’t say retarded—”

  “—sorry. It’s ridiculous. As we learn about the universe, and ‘God,’ we have realized that He isn’t a he, or human at all, but the universe itself. It isn’t humanlike at all. This is the next step. Religious people are just stuck in a feedback loop of old information.”

  “You think I’m stupid for still calling myself a Christian?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “You think I don’t—”

  “I think you’re a coward.”

  “Whoa…” I said.

  Weston realized how intense and heavy it sounded. “Okay, okay, listen, you want me to tell you what I really think?”

  “And here I was, thinking you were just high all the time,” I said jokingly. “Yes, go ahead.”

  “What I mean by coward is that, Jed, I think you know that your beliefs are old and archaic and meaningless in the modern world. I think you think that you know that, and have reasoned and rationalized faith so you don’t have to be controversial, don’t have to upset your family, or your mom, or whatever. I think your sexuality caused you to go extra on your faith, to be a good boy. You’d be a super Christian in order to overcompensate. You’d prove that being gay wasn’t perverted. You’d prove it was reasonable and something good boys do. I think you are wearing the costume, hiding from something you know is true. I think that you’re scared, and that’s bullshit. I just want you to be free.”

  I realized then, after traveling down half the globe with him, that he had been analyzing me as much as I had him. Perhaps seeking safety, I tried to pivot. “Free, like you? Chasing one high to the next?” I asked, surprised by my response.

  “I don’t expect you to understand. I have been where you are, dude. Well, I’m not gay, but in every other way I know. I know what it’s like to want to be good, to want to be a good boy and a good son and think that God loves me because my teachers love me, and my friends’ parents trust me. You don’t love God, man. You love feeling like you belong to something. That warm feeling of order in the universe. Of having the universe on your side, but really, having people on your side. I just want you to be free from all that shit.”

  “I hear you. I hear you. I know you do. And I love you for that. I’m just figuring it all out. I feel like some days I’m arguing for God, and another day I’m arguing against Him. I wish I liked weed and it didn’t make me puke in my underwear.”

  We both laughed. Weston was visibly relieved to see me playful and not offended. My mind was busily weighing all that had been said, wondering what scaffolding inside me had been knocked away. I thought about Weston’s worldliness, his rugged edges, his impurity. He carried a cloak of wisdom, covered in dirt.

  We reached the base of the stairs to the café above. It was a wooden cabin with a large wraparound porch and several hikers enjoying coffee, looking back at the trail. Something buzzed past my head. We both got wide-eyed and looked around us. We were surrounded by hummingbirds. Fifty. Maybe a hundred. A species I’d never seen in my life, with long hooked and split tails, like two opposite facing “J”s hanging behind them. They were everywhere. Shining purple and black and blue like an oil spot in a heavenly parking lot.

  We came out of our spiritual stupor, our high-octane conversation, surrounded by fairies swirling around us.

  The forest had taken on that other layer. It was beautiful, the air was clean, the light angled just right. I was wondering what it meant to be Christian. I wondered if I was going to heaven, if Weston was. I saw the other hikers, sipping coffee and speaking various languages. I saw them as eternal souls. Each one destined for something. For relationship with God or rejection of God. Or nothing at all. Just death and worms and eternal sleep.

  We got coffee and I talked about the hummingbirds to think about something else. My mind turned them into a sign from the Holy Spirit, that God was with me. I didn’t say that to Weston.

  Chapter 14

  SEX HOTELS AND HERE COMES MOM

  (Cali to Quito)

  7,111 miles to go

  Our conversation rattled me, though I didn’t show it. Instead, in a move perfected by most men, Weston and I moved right into joking around and didn’t speak about God or sin again, outside of the occasional “the universe made you do that, huh?” joke. On the hike back to the bus, I barely said anything. My mind felt twisted like a wrung-out washcloth, my theology bludgeoned and embarrassed.

  We stayed one more night in Salento before heading south to Cali. Nicely paved highways and medium-sized towns and a comfortable ride. Farms and fruit stands and stray dogs. We arrived in Cali as the sun was setting on the second day. En route, I hadn’t been able to find Wi-Fi, so we hadn’t lined up lodging. We approached a cab driver, who was leaning on his cab smoking a cigarette, and asked for advice. He lit up and told us we could walk our bikes to a hostel nearby. The Hollywood Hotel was adorned with a painting of Marilyn Monroe on the wall. That should have been a clue, because it ended up being a sex hotel. Weston and I shared a queen bed with a mirror above it and the wall rattled with the sounds of people having sex in the next room, or perhaps in all the rooms. We laughed ourselves to sleep.

  We didn’t like the feel of Cali, probably because of the grime of the hotel, so we didn’t hang around. Besides, we needed to get to Quito to meet up with my family. Over the next few days, we pressed on to the border of Ecuador and Colombia, to a town called Ipiales. By then, the Andes had begun. The mountains were still green but showed snow in the distance. Deciduous forests gave way to green grass and shrubs and evergreen trees in the narrow places where mountains met.

  Ipiales was small and pretty clearly built for tourism. People came from all over to see the nearby basilica of Las Lajas Sanctuary, jutting out into a narrow canyon over the Guáitara River. It hangs in the sky like something out of Lord of the Rings—white, comically ornate, and built on top of giant stone arches over the canyon and river below. The jagged white spires made it look like the lower jaw of a dragon, or a dangerous wedding cake. We walked to an overlook spot, where I gave Weston my camera to take my photo. As he stood back, a group of thirty Colombian teenagers walked up behind us. They were giggling and it was clear they were talking about us. One of the braver ones interrupted and asked, “Gringo, are you from America?”

  “Yes,” Weston said.

  “Can we photo? With you?”

  “Oh, sure!” Weston said.

  Suddenly the teenagers lined up, and their chaperone began taking photos of them with us. I thought i
t would be a group photo. But each kid wanted their own. And then each kid wanted their own and one with their two best friends. For thirty minutes, we were celebrities.

  “What was that?” Weston said, laughing, once they’d left. “It keeps happening.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it.”

  “I bet you have a theory.”

  “Of course I do,” I said. “They watch a lot of American television and movies, right? Full of white people.”

  “Yes, definitely.”

  “But there aren’t a ton of white people around here. On the backroads we’re on, I mean.”

  “That’s probably true,” he said.

  “So they’ve seen white Americans in all these movies, and all these TV shows, and so the concept of a white person is, like, famous to them. They’ve been staring at people like us their whole lives, and only seen a handful up close. Like, think about a Masai warrior. Have you ever met one?”

  “No.” He laughed.

  “But you know who they are, and what they look like.”

  “Of course, they’re famous.”

  “And if you saw one at your local mall, you’d look at your friend and say, ‘Oh my god, a Masai warrior in our mall!’ and then maybe ask for a photo.”

  Weston gave me a head nod. “It’s not the worst theory I’ve heard,” he said.

  Back in Ipiales, we walked uphill by the cathedral and past a row of touristy trinkets and guinea pigs on rotisserie spinners. They looked like skinned rats glistening with glaze over a fire. I had heard that guinea pigs—cuy, pronounced “coo-ee”—were native to the Andes and had been a major source of protein before the Spanish brought over chickens, cows, pigs, and goats. Now they were eaten at special occasions, for sacred holidays, and so on. They’d been domesticated thousands of years ago, so long ago in fact that there’s now no such thing as a wild guinea pig. But this was the first time I’d seen these cute pets roasting on the sidewalk.

  Little furry sacred creatures—for sale to tourists. Speaking of sacred, it was April, almost Easter. That meant Mom time was almost here!

  * * *

  —

  MY MOM, BROTHER, and sister-in-law were due in Quito in two days. We had to get there, quick. It was 155 miles away. That would have been doable on flat land. But from Cali we had crawled up to 9,000 feet elevation, and with these winding mountain roads, we didn’t think we could make more than 40 miles a day. We walked our bikes across the border, got our stamp out of Colombia and into Ecuador. From there, we decided to bike for a day, then bus or hitchhike the last bit.

  As we entered Ecuador, the land felt different. For the first time we were truly in the Andes. The trees grew only in clumps of dark green evergreens on the mountainsides. The light was sharp, the air thin. We’d grown accustomed to wide swings in temperature, but up here, it was worse. If the sun was out, we’d bake. By midnight, the puddles had frozen. And the people we passed looked very poor and almost exclusively indigenous—worlds apart from the urban populations of Colombia. The Quechua people of this region date to the Inca empire. They are short, stocky, darker-skinned, often with sloped noses. They live in small clay houses in the treeless world of high-altitude mountains where they keep sheep. As Weston and I biked past, people would stare at us with sullen expressions. If I stared back, they showed no sign of relenting, or caring.

  Rural Ecuadorian women wear felt bowler hats. The ones you’ve seen in old photos of British businessmen, or that famous painting of the guy in the bowler hat with a green apple in front of his face. Those hats. They love them. I kept asking people why, and they didn’t know. I found that curious. You live in a country peopled with this interesting culture, and you don’t know why they wear their very distinct costume?

  Then I thought, why do some Native Americans wear suede coats with frills, or headdresses, or why do some black people wear picks in their hair or do-rags? Why do businesspeople wear ties? I have no idea. I’ve never asked.

  Eventually, though, I got to the bottom of this bowler hat situation. When British companies were connecting South America through a vast railway system in the early twentieth century, the railmen wore them, and the Quechua-speaking people liked them, especially the women, so they adopted them. It was that simple.

  As is to be expected, after I’d met a few Quechua-speaking people and heard a few locals explain how they live in the Andes, I drew firm and sweeping conclusions. My lazy brain saw the same patterns everywhere. Travel can do that to you.

  Oh, I’ve been to Italy. The Italian people are so relaxed. So welcoming.

  Really? How long were you in Italy?

  Oh, for forty-eight wonderful hours.

  The two-lane highway coiled around the switchbacks where buses geared down to puff enormous clouds of black smoke into our faces. Up a mountain. Down into a valley. We made it to the sweet little town of San Gabriel, slept there for a night in a small hotel, woke up early, propped our bikes up and put our thumbs out, hitchhiked to the larger town of Ibarra with a proper bus stop, and took a bus from there to Quito.

  As the bus crested the final summit, we saw the bowl of human civilization in the valley below: Quito. This was becoming a South American norm, cities at high elevations built in mountain valleys. It looked much like Bogotá and Medellín. Red brick buildings. A few tall condominium and office buildings. The spires of massive cathedrals piercing the sky. Wispy, low clouds hugging the cold mountains. Quito had one main mountain standing right over the city, just like Bogotá, and, just like Bogotá, a gondola rising to the top, leading to an overlook and visitors’ center.

  From the bus station, we tracked down a hostel, where we showered, and had beers with some Israelis and Germans. The next day, my mom, my brother Luke, and his wife, Anna, arrived.

  The Quito airport was new—all glass, giant TV screens, shiny coffee shops, and polished floors. My mom appeared in the crowd at baggage claim glowing, seeing me from across the room, shooting her hands in the air with a little jig, and then struggling to get her rollie bag to go in a straight line. She was feeling international. Even as her bag was rebelling, she danced and wiggled her hips and made a duck face, all representative of how cool she was, flying to Ecuador. Amid a flurry of hugs, my mom couldn’t stop talking about how clean the airport was. We picked up our rental cars—two tiny red ones—and drove to our Airbnb back in the city.

  “Oh, this is a huge metropolitan city!” she exclaimed. “So cosmopolitan! Much more advanced than I thought!” But she got a headache from the altitude almost immediately and needed to relax on the couch. Meanwhile, we planned out our time in Quito. To begin, we would walk around the old town, and take in a nice dinner spot with opera singers in the city center. She was thrilled about the prospect of that.

  It felt wonderful to be around family.

  The next day we set out on foot and my mom was mesmerized by everything. By the old Spanish buildings. By the high-rise condominiums. Inside the gold-leafed cathedrals, she took a thousand photos.

  “The Catholics really know how to build. This looks like Europe!” she’d say.

  Quito seemed glutted with churches and cathedrals. They seemed to be on every block. The largest, the Basílica del Voto, was visible from almost any point in the city, its dark gray and menacing gothic spires pointing heavenward. We made our way to it, and Weston and I got to the top of the imposing steps first. As we walked into the basilica, two girls greeted us from a table under a massive gilded doorway. “Dos dólares,” one of them said to us.

  “Perdón?” Weston said.

  “Dos dólares por persona, por favor.”

  “We have to pay to enter a church?” he said.

  “Sí,” she said.

  Weston spun on his heels to walk away. “This perfectly sums it up,” he fumed. “Jesus is spinning in the grave He never rose from. A place meant for God, for a mome
nt with God, charges money to enter. If that isn’t moral bankruptcy, I don’t know what is.”

  Back outside, I said to Luke and Anna as they walked up, “We’re not going in there, they charge.” My mom was taking a photo from the sidewalk. I just said, “It’s closed, Mom.”

  “Oh, okay. I didn’t want to walk up all those stairs,” she said.

  On Good Friday, we positioned ourselves for the parade through the center of town. We figured out the right streets, and drove our little rental cars to park and post up. All around us, people had brought chairs and coolers, claiming prime spots. My mom’s camera hung around her neck, her fanny pack bursting full of God-knows-what.

  As the parade began, so did the wonders winding through the narrow stone streets. Here came dozens of people in purple gowns and purple pointed hoods standing up from their heads.

  “Is this a KKK march?” my brother asked in shock. I had no idea, but a woman standing near us on the crowded street chimed in.

  “These are Catholic. Not like America. It is different,” she said, smiling meekly as if to apologize for eavesdropping.

  “Oh, thank you. We were so concerned,” Mom said. I had come to learn that all over Latin America, I couldn’t assume that the people around me didn’t speak English. I couldn’t gossip or giggle with Weston, because someone, in any café, no matter how rural, spoke English.

  I later researched the pointed hats and robes and learned that criminals were forced to wear the cones in humiliation as they were marched through town and pummeled with rotten fruit and mud. The Spanish Catholics adopted the pointed hat and cloak as a sign of guilt and humility during Easter week and marched through the cities as penance for their sins. The Ku Klux Klan co-opted the hood, for reasons unclear. Maybe in reference to holiness. Maybe to look like scary ghosts to intimidate blacks. It’s fitting that those hoods were meant for dunces and sinners.

  Some of the purple people paraded past with no shirts on, just the coned hoods. Some carried giant wooden crosses, so heavy that they had to put them down every few paces. The cross carriers were barefoot, and the pavement was scalding in the sun. A few of the crosses had green plants tied all around them. Other marchers, without crosses, had bundles of the green plants tied with string into a whip, and as they walked, they whipped their bare backs. My mom, worried, wondered out loud what the plant was.