(Note: This article is a continuation of Sexy
Woman, Part 1)
Here’s
what happened: when Rocky went downstairs to the bathroom,
there was a bit of a line, so he struck up a conversation
with Katy. Then, when it was her turn, she asked him
to guard the door for her since the lock on the women’s
restroom didn’t work very well. Then they switched
places, Katy guarding for Rocky. Instantly, they had
a connection, and the rest is history.
I
sat down next to the best looking girl out of the three,
Vanessa. In fact, she has most of my infamous “grocery
list” under control: she’s short, thin, ethnic, 30
years old, has a great body, and has never been married
or had kids. She and I talked for a few hours while
Rocky and Katy danced. Vanessa’s English is actually
pretty good; good enough that she knows that I’m a funny
guy (or at least that’s what she kept saying).
At
some point in the evening, it seems that things are going
way too well. Rocky, Tesh and I remember the gypsies
that we met in Lima, so we start wondering what these girls
want from us. That, compounded with the fact that
we were explicitly told that we could find “anything that
we want” in this club, makes us suspect that the girls very
well may be prostitutes.
Felling
quite confident and somewhat drunk, I decide that it’s a
good idea to tell Vanessa that “my friends” think that she
and her friends are prostitutes. I have to say, I
come up with the most brilliant ideas when I’ve been drinking.
Luckily, I didn’t get slapped, but Vanessa did become quite
offended, which made me believe that they probably weren’t
prostitutes. Actually, had I been sober, her reaction
would have convinced me 100%. Why would a prostitute
claim not to be one? Wouldn’t that be bad for business?
Eventually,
Vanessa gets over the fact that I had falsely accused her
of being a “working girl,” and becomes progressively friendlier
with me, but only verbally, not physically. In fact,
I tried to kiss her (there I go again, having a few drinks
and trying to kiss a girl that I’ve just met), but got shot
down. To make matters worse, I look over and see Katy
giving Rocky’s tonsils a thorough examination with her tongue.
“Hmmm,” I thought, “I guess Rocky isn’t quite ready to leave
after all.”
A
little later, Tesh, Rocky, and I conference. Tesh
informs us that his drink tastes funny and he’s convinced
that something has been slipped into our drinks. So
we gather our jackets and get ready to leave. I look
for and find the waitress (who had been flirting with me
all evening), and I tell her that I’ll come back on Thursday
night to see her. She only half believes me since
I’ve been talking to Vanessa for the past few hours.
Just as we’re about to leave, the most unexpected thing
happens.
All
of a sudden, the DJ starts playing the only Bangra song
ever to be played on American radio stations. Bangra
is the South Asian version of hip-hop, and since Rocky and
Tesh are both Indian, and I’m an honorary
brown guy, we all start dancing. Somehow, we’re
no longer leaving and I find myself back on the couch, again,
unsuccessfully trying to convince Vanessa to kiss me while
Rocky and Katy resume doing exactly that.
A
few minutes later, Rocky informs me that Tesh left to go
back to the hostel. I then come up with a great idea,
particularly in light of the fact that I’ve had several
drinks. I tell Rocky that we should leave together.
I somehow realized that it probably wouldn’t be the safest
thing for us to split up. Needless to say, about 45
minutes later, Rocky decided that he wanted to leave.
I’m torn because Vanessa had been inviting me to go with
her to another club, alluding that the other club might
be a little more private, but I kept declining because I
was sober enough to be paranoid about getting jumped by
her friends at the other club. However, against my
earlier rational thinking, I allow Rocky to leave me behind,
but not before I give him most of my money. “That
way,” I thought, “if I get jumped, I’ll only lose some pocket
change.”
Just
then, Vanessa informed me that we were all leaving, so I
waited for them downstairs. We walked out of the club,
and Katy was completely drunk. She could barely even
walk and pretty much had to be carried to the cab.
Plus, she started to become belligerent, and kept asking
me to take her to America. Aha… so, they weren’t prostitutes
after all—they were looking for green cards.
Even more convincing was the embarrassed look and excessive
apologies from Vanessa.
We
finally get to the other side of Plaza de Armas, where there
are cabs lined up to take partiers back to their beds.
The third girl assists Katy into the cab, but, being belligerent,
Katy thrashes around, trying to get out of the cab from
the other side. After nearly a minute of this struggle,
the taxi driver finally kicks them out and another cab pulls
up. By now, a male friend has joined our group and
actually lifts Katy up and the two of them get into the
back seat, with the guy restraining Katy to the best of
his abilities. The third girl jumps in the front seat
and the cab takes off.
So,
Vanessa and I were now alone. She hugs me and tells
me how sorry she is that I had to witness her friend’s behavior.
AGAIN, I try to kiss her (am I persistent, or what?), and
AGAIN, I’m denied. Vanessa tells me that she doesn’t
want to do anything in such a public place. But, she
does ask me if I’d like to go somewhere more private.
Now,
I know that I’m pretty much a retard when it comes to understanding
women, and there was definitely a language barrier problem,
but I still think that I’m fairly adept at knowing when
a woman wants to sleep with me. So, I told her, “Why
not?” and we started walking toward her house.
As
we walked, I realized that I was considering breaking a
travel rule that had more grave consequences than all of
the other rules I had broken combined. I did not have
a condom with me. Mind you, we hadn’t even kissed
at this point, but I was fairly confident that she was leading
me to bed.
As
we continued to walk, I found myself entering the same pattern
I’ve followed with every woman that I’ve dated: when
things aren’t going perfectly, I do whatever I can to sabotage
the relationship. I started complaining about how
steep the streets were and how tired I was getting from
walking. It worked like a charm—Vanessa started
to get upset and told me that I could grab a taxi and ride
back to my hostel if that was what I wanted. However,
the angel and devil on my shoulders both wanted me to stay
with Vanessa—the devil, to see if there was some way
that we could still hook up, and the angel, to make sure
that Vanessa got home safely (it was almost 4am).
So,
I continued to walk her home, but I did tell her that I
was ONLY walking with her because I was concerned about
her safety. She just laughed and told me that she
is the one that knows these streets and these people, so
really it should be the other way around.
We
got to her house and hold each other in a long embrace on
the doorstep. She moved in to kiss me, and I actually
had the audacity to back away from the kiss momentarily
before letting her plant one on me. After a few minutes
of kissing, she tells me that I can’t go inside with her
because her mother is home (I guess in Peru, mothers of
30-year-old unmarried women think that their daughters are
still virgins). I respond with an understanding look
and by saying, “I know,” but thinking to myself, “OK!
This is not so bad after all. I can avoid risking
getting Hepatitis B or something worse!”
However,
even though she’s made it clear that I can’t go in her house
with her, she has also become more explicit with the fact
that she wants to sleep with me. She keeps asking
me if I want to “be with” her and keeps telling me that
she will take care of me. She then asks me how much
money I have with me, because she wants me to rent a hotel
room for us to share for the night. Even though I
had given most of my money to Rocky, I still had enough
cash. Not seeing an easy way to back out, I say, “Why
not?”
We
walked up half of the block and stop in front of a youth
hostel (not an actual hotel—not, at least, what Americans
think of as a ‘hotel’), and she rang the bell. We
heard a woman walk up to the door, but she didn’t open it
for us. Vanessa rang again, but the door still did
not open. Vanessa told me that I needed to ring the
bell because the lady wasn’t going to open the door for
her. “Hmm…” I thought, “Could that be because you’re
here several times a month having sex with American tourists?”
So
I told Vanessa that my Spanish was very poor and that I
wouldn’t know what to say when the lady opened the door.
I refused to ring the bell; we were at an impasse.
After standing there for a minute or two, we started to
walk back to her house. We hugged and talked briefly,
and she seemed sad. I asked her for email or phone
number, but neither of us had a pen. She started sobbing
a little. I think that she had really started to get
her hopes up that I might marry her and take her back to
America with me. Abruptly, she said good-bye and went
inside.
Now
the real adventure began. It was 4am and I only had
a faint sense of where my hostel was located in relation
to where I was at the moment. I knew that we were
somewhere near Macondo, since we had been there earlier
that day, and I knew there was a direct route to the hostel
that didn’t involve walking down to the Plaza and then back
up the Steps from Hell. I walked up the street and
found the dirty waterfall that we had passed that afternoon,
and I started heading in the general direction of the hostel.
However, I soon got lost and started feeling a little paranoid
because there were a very few people out on the streets—just
few enough so that there wouldn’t be any other witnesses
if one of them jumped me. So I started turning down
random streets in order to avoid walking past people, acting
like I knew where I was going.
Somehow,
I managed to end up in the Plaza de Armas, although I had
done everything I could to avoid it. Mythology had
quieted down, though I briefly considered going inside to
see if the waitress was still there. Slowly, I trudged
up the stairs that seemed so quaint just yesterday, but
now made me feel nothing but torture. I reached the
door to the hostel out of breath (the high altitude didn’t
really help the situation) and rang the bell. I apologized
profusely when the small man who worked the night shift
opened the door, but he responded only with a stern look.
When I got to bed, it was nearly 5am. We were getting
up before 9am to go river rafting. At least I’ll get
4 more hours of sleep than I did last night!
Oliver
can be reached at oliver@babblog.com.
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