LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL

The continuing adventures of Joe, as he settles in to his life in Ecuador and Rio Muchacho.

Philippe is leaving Rio Muchacho tomorrow to go on to another project. I’m gonna miss that guy. He’s like one of these stereotypically disillusioned French guys you see in old French (Godard) movies. Like the kind of guy who sits sullen on the beach, looking out at the waves and smoking French cigarette after cigarette, saying:
“Ah, what is thees life all about anyway?” in a heavy French accent.
Good dude, though.
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Oh Mariposa… Mariposa Traicionera.
Huge hit song in Ecuador. All over South America, in fact. It’s playing rather loudly over the scratchy boom box uneasily mounted - or tied - on this hilariously ancient bus, which is complete with no windows. I'm just really digging the ride as it creaks it’s way up this series of potholes that I imagine is supposed to be some sort of a road back to Rio Muchacho.
I love this song, Mariposa, man.
I love the mellow instrumentation of it, the Latin beat. The whole thing. I’ve been hearing this song everywhere I go, since the minute I first arrived in Ecuador nearly six weeks ago. It’s very comforting, like the essence of Ecuador.
In any case - the song, the sea breeze, the white sand, the aroma of corvina (fish) frying from the bamboo thatched hut restaurants dotting the shoreline… man, this feeling sweeps over me.
I lean out the frame where the windows used to be, look up at the sun, and take it all in, thanking God for the deep sense of satisfaction I'm feeling right now. Like - this is the exact place I should be at this moment.

ADVENTURES OF A BROKEN NOSE

A continuation of the 2nd chapter of my latest memoir - Escape From The Planet of The Arts. Joe has just downed a few cups of Aguardiente - and adventures follow!

In any case, these kids offer me some - and even though I am thoroughly wasted already - I down a few cups. Philippe is urging me to go back to the hotel with him before we get into trouble, but I drunkenly refuse. He finally just leaves by himself. That’s the last thing I remember.
Next thing I know - it’s the fuckin’ morning! I wake up in a strange bed - and Seinfeld is on TV - I begin laughing.
“Don’t you wonder what you’re doing here?”
I immediately recognize the British accent belonging to Trevor, one of the volunteers at the farm.
As a matter of fact, I do wonder, I think.
“Look around you…notice all the bloody towels?
Last night, around 4 o’clock in the bloody morning, mind you, this bloke knocks on my door, this huge Ecuadorian brute - and he has you hanging over his shoulder - and your face is all busted up.
Bloody hell, what the devil happened to him? I ask.
You’re bloody shit faced, dead to the world, and we have to deposit you in the bed here. Apparently, a couple of hours pass, you wake up to go to the loo, stumble on the step - and fall flat on your bloody face! Blood spurting everywhere - and I have the honor of picking you up, cleaning everything - and dragging you to the bloody bed! You can take a peek at all the soiled towels, if you dare.
Really, no offense, but aren’t you a bit too bloody old to be doing this sort of thing!?
In any case, you’re going to have to move on now and find your hotel, because I’ve got to meet up with my mate in a bit.”
I can barely stand. I weave and wind out of the hostel, staggering along the streets of Bahia for the next hour, with the vague hope of trying to locate my hostel. Finally, I do arrive there - and - the seńora at the reception desk lets out a gasp.
“Oh! Dios mio!! What happened to you!?
“Long story”, I mumble as I begin the sleepwalk to my room.
“Your amigo has been out all morning looking for you, he is very worried!”
I queasily unlock my room door, immediately crash onto my bed, perhaps with a case of alcohol poisoning… and maybe 10 minutes later, a distraught but relieved Philippe bursts into my room.
“Oh my God!”
He examines my rather battered face and now throbbing, swollen and bloody big toe.
We better get to the hospital!”
So we take a taxi to the nearest one. The doctor can’t do much with my nose, which is of course, broken - but he does shoot me up full of anesthesia - before removing the shattered toenail on my also broken and throbbing big toe. He wraps it up heavily in gauze, and with nothing more he can do - we head back to the hostel. Or rather, Philippe practically carries me there. He then departs back to Rio Muchacho to spread the tale of my plight.
As for me, I’m still so drunk it’s going to take days to recover - if not a week. Apparently, during my convalescence, the tale of my escapades has become legendary around town. When I finally venture outside to buy food, my toe is wrapped in gauze - probably three or four times the normal size.
I learn I have become something of a celebrity. It is at this time that I slowly begin to piece together the story of my adventure! It seems that when I was drinking the Aguardiente with the teenagers on the malecon, I excused myself to take a leak over on the side - and fell flat on my face - breaking my nose for the first time.
Barely conscious now, the teenagers attempt to help me to my feet - but as fate would have it - we are right across the street from a nunnery. Apparently, however, the sisters, alarmed by all the noise, yell at the kids to leave me alone - believing it to be a robbery.
Immediately, they dispatch the porter (the huge Ecuadorian guy) to rescue me - and as I am now dead to the world - he tosses me over his shoulder, proceeding to carry me to all the foreigner hangouts in town - before coming upon Trevor.
The rest, as they say, is history - and it becomes some sort of semi-urban myth.
The main gist of it is that because I am wearing flip flops with my heavily bandaged toe as I limp around town, I become known to the locals as “El Dedo”, which is Spanish for ‘The Toe’.
Oddly enough, this is the first time I actually feel accepted by the townspeople - and begin to really feel comfortable in my adopted home.

WHAT A LIFE!!

He goes on to tell about how he practically becomes a legend in Roxbury, (the black ghetto of Boston), when he gets picked up by this fine white woman, a blonde he calls Sophia, which was like totally forbidden in those days. She had her own car, a convertible, and her own cash. Which she was spending on him, and pretty soon, he’s parading her all over the black clubs and bars in Roxbury. All the big time hustlers and gamblers were salivating over her, and he says he felt like all eyes were on him when they were out together. And he’s still only sixteen! I know that feeling - that’s how it is when I am around Esperanza.
I fall asleep for about an hour and a half, before I have to wake up for school again and I’m only on page seventy-two - the book is four-hundred and sixty-six pages long. I can’t wait to get at it again!
For the next few days, it’s like I’m not even living my life. I’m not Joey Montaperto, in Roselle at this moment in this world anymore. Instead, I find myself cruising along on this odyssey, this journey with Malcolm X, our lives somehow oddly intertwined. Every opportunity I get to sneak away and satiate myself with this adventurous addiction, I grab it. I’m poring over every passage, sometimes three or four times, intent on slurping up each morsel of flavor, and bathing in the particular mood of those words.
He becomes known as Red, or “Detroit Red,” because of his reddish toned skin, and his bright red ‘conk’, which is what they called this process of using lye, to burn their hair straight, to make it look like a white man’s hair.
But my favorite part, no doubt, was the way he described how he got out of the draft in 1943, for WWII. The prevailing consensus among the young ghetto dudes was:
“Whitey owns everything. He wants us to go and bleed for him? Let him fight.” Which of course, I totally agree with, in the first place. So I love it when he said he went down to the draft board totally bugging out, wearing his wildest zoot suit, frizzing up his red conk and talking a mile a minute with ghetto slang, like, “Crazy-o, daddy-o, get me movin’.”
He said a lot of the prospective white inductees in the draft room looked at him with that vinegary, ‘worst kind of nigger look’. Freakin’ hilarious. Anyway, he finally convinces the Army psychiatrist to 4F him, which is the rejection card for the physically/mentally incompetent, when he comes into the room all jumpy. He’s peeping under doors, and tells the guy he wants to get sent down South so he can organize the Negro soldiers, steal some guns, and kill them some ‘crackers’.
Now my admiration grows for him by the minute.

RIO MUCHACHO

Here is the 2nd chapter of Joe Montaperto's new memoir - Escape From the Planet of the Arts

Young German girls. They are everywhere at Rio Muchacho. All around twenty one, twenty two. Dreadlocked hair. Nose rings, armpit bushes. Tattoos. Also, they seem to be radical anarchists.
I imagine though, that in five years or so, most of these girls will be wearing sensible shoes and corporate approved haircuts. When you’re in your very early 20s, you have a lot of romantic ideals. Let them have fun while they’re young though, y’know? They’re not hurting anybody.
I have to say though, Rio Muchacho has been a sweet landing spot. The other volunteers are mostly a bunch of 20 something pseudo-hippie types from all over Europe. They all speak excellent English, pretty good Spanish, and we’re all mixed in here with the local Ecuadorian workers.
Everybody has been very kind though, and have really helped me settle in - even though I still feel a little awkward from not really knowing anyone.
There’s this one German kid who’s kind of hilarious though, he’s absolutely been an ice-breaker... he always tell me to go up to these German girls and say:
“Ya, fraulines, Ich möchte dein Lederhosen sein" - and - "Ich möchte dein Venischnitzel sein."
I go up to them and say this, and they laugh hysterically, which of course, cracks me up. Later, I find out this means, “I want to be your lederhosen '' (German tight leather pants), and “I want to be your venischnitzel'’.
Complete nonsense, of course. It makes no sense. But it’s good for some hearty laughs, and definitely helps me connect a little better, y’know?.
Also, miraculously enough - I’m sleeping pretty well!
Thank God.
Everything changes drastically, however, one day, maybe ten days after I get there... one of the Rio Muchacho staff tells me to move my stuff off the top bunk, where I’m the only one staying - because there’s a new volunteer coming in.
“Gimme a minute, and I’ll have all this shit outta here, ok?”
The new guy walks in and, oddly enough, seems to be studying me for a minute.
“I know you”, he says.
I’m immediately suspicious.
“What?! From where?!”
“Weren’t you at Omega Institute (this holistic center in upstate New York) - maybe nine or ten years ago?”
“Oh my God… yeah… yeah… you’re the … the… French guy - right?!
Olivier, or something…
Philippe.
Yeah… yeah.. Holy shit, man, that’s crazy! You worked with me in the cafe that summer, right?”
We shake hands, embrace, and start catching up on the past 10 years. Then we make plans to go to town next week to celebrate.
This is where it gets interesting..
So, we go to this bar in the next town, Canoa, where everybody goes to hang out, right, and for some reason - this bar has no vodka! I mean - a bar with no vodka… that’s kind of insane, y’know?
I have a lot of congestion, I don’t know, maybe a cold, or something, so I wanna drink a few screwdrivers (vodka and OJ) and even though I’m pretty annoyed about it, I say yeah, gimme gin and orange juice then, alright? Me and Philipe are talking, and I’m throwing down one after another like a madman - to the point of where I lose count.
Pretty soon, I get into this absurd argument with this Colombian guy sitting next to me - about shrimp - and whether the shrimp they have at Rio Muchacho is really organic or not! It soon becomes really heated - we’re actually on the verge of exchanging blows - and Philiipe has to separate us!
Next thing I know, the bartender kicks us all out! Me and Philippe immediately proceed to another bar - which does have vodka - and now I’m downing a bunch more screwdrivers - until the bar closes at, like, two in the morning. Somehow, we then wander onto the malecon (kind of a cement boardwalk), where we run into this bunch of teenagers who are drinking Aguardiente. Little do I know that this is some extremely potent shit, man! One hundred and 20 proof, or something!
Deadly