Christopher K

I’m a fan of street food. I say, take a mediocre hot dog and cook it in a cart next to some dim alley at 3AM and it becomes a magic hot dog… which I imagine is literally possible given enough strange bacteria. Tom was from Yellowknife up in Canada – imagine the iron gut this guy has – so when he bit into a hamburger from a street cart and swore it was the worst hamburger he’d ever tasted, I thought he was overreacting.

“No, seriously, take a bite of this – it’s incredible. How did he do this? It’s not food. Try it!” he said, waving it in my face. I declined, although it was tempting.

He kept eating it anyway, wincing with every bite, and between swallows loudly announcing how terrible it was, dancing around, holy sweet fuck, why am I eating this? Halfway through, he gave up and threw it on the ground. I felt embarrassed for the hamburger seller, who presumably didn’t understand English but surely noticed what was happening. Pretty rude there, Tom.

A scruffy, scrawny stray dog had been lingering near us, and he immediately made for the dropped hamburger. He sniffed at it cautiously, a whole hamburger, meat, bun, lettuce, the works – and decided against it.

A hamburger so bad, not even stray starving dogs will eat it.

I didn’t feel so bad for the hamburger vendor.

It was maybe midnight and I was walking home alone when I saw a cat. In between kitten and cat, actually, a teenage cat, and it was sitting casually on a stoop. Odd – in La Candelaria the streets are owned by dogs while stray cats live on the rooftops. Seeing a cat at ground level is rare, and even more rare, it let me approach and pet it. I must have sat playing with the cat for five minutes before a voice said: hey!

I turned. Across the street, sleeping on a piece of cardboard in the cold drizzle, was the crazy homeless lady who hassles me for sex. Whoop, time to go. She tried to call me over but I waved her off, looked wistfully at the cat, and hustled away, trying to move quickly before she could fully wake up and assault me.

I’d seen her a few times recently. In the Zona Rosa, she grabbed me and tried to prevent me from walking up to an intersection infested by hippies selling hippy trinkets on blankets. “Don’t go that way,” she insisted, pulling heavily at my arm, “come back this way with me! The hippies are gossipy!” She peeled off before I reached the hippies, but sure enough, as I passed they sniggered and said, yeah, go with her, gringo. The next time, in La Candelaria, she clawed at me in a way that was even more unsettling than usual. “Just give me one kiss,” she said, grabbing the back of my head and trying to pull it towards her, “I washed my mouth today!” Well, that is thoughtful, but still. I ducked into a hotel where I knew a friend was staying and told him I needed to speak to him urgently for about fifteen minutes, until the crazy lady forgot about me and wandered away.

I don’t feel weird about it anymore, though, because I know it’s not just me – Richie from Scotland got the same treatment, so dollars to donuts there’s plenty more spooked-out gringos.

I left her and the cat behind and turned the corner, grateful that I’d escaped cleanly. But I felt like shit. I was happy to give love and attention to a stray cat, but a person sleeping on a piece of damp cardboard on a cold dirty sidewalk, get stuffed. What kind of fucked-up world is it, anyway?

Back home, wherever that is, you can probably coast. I always say I appreciate Bogota because you can’t. Walk out your door and you may have to consider who you are and what it all means, on a daily basis.

I was walking and thinking about what a douchebag I must be when, a block later, I bumped into Eamon and his girlfriend. Eamon’s American but his girlfriend was born and raised in Colombia, only living in the US since her teen years. They came back to visit and see her family, and she was appalled that her rose-colored memory of Colombia didn’t fit the reality she found – her parents obviously cheating on each other, her old friends using drugs, the deep distrust between everyone, she went on and on – “oh, infidelity is only one color of the rainbow of fucked-up here,” she’d said. Let’s go for a beer, Eamon said, and I said, great idea. I told him what had happened with the cat and the homeless lady and how douchey I felt. Why would I pet the cat and then fuck off a woman who obviously needs help? Shouldn’t we be trying to care for other humans first? Crazy and obnoxious or not, can’t we at least be decent to one another?

“Wait a minute,” said Eamon, “yeah, the homeless woman who attacks gringos for sex. She’s hit me up, too. One time she started pulling all this lingerie out of her bag and offered me 500 pesos to do her. Crazy, man.”

500 pesos, about 25 cents.

“Goddammit!” I said. “That slut! She never offered me 500 pesos!”

Walking at 3AM with a friend who trains special forces troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He takes off his belt, attaches a padlock to the buckle, wraps it around his fist and tucks his hand inside his jacket pocket. I share my street wisdom with him, and he shares his with me.

“See,” I say, “the streets here are narrow and sometimes it’s dark. You walk in the middle of the street. Only get on the sidewalk if a car comes. Makes it harder for someone to ambush you from the sides. Plus, it makes you look at least twice as badass – I mean, Chuck Norris? Not using no sidewalk.”

“How’d you learn this stuff?” he asks.

“Just worked it out,” I say.

A scraggly guy approaches us and babbles for spare change. My friend sprints across the street and tells him to keep his distance. I’ve got a different take. Somehow – body language, instinct, experience, something – I know this guy isn’t a threat. I take another approach I figured out on the street: talk like a parent.

“Listen,” I tell the guy, “I was talking with my friend and you interrupted me. It’s very rude. I already told you no. You’re done here.”

Take a polite but authoritarian parental tone with these guys, and three times out of four they react like a chastised child. Go figure.

This guy walked away and we didn’t even have to beat him with our belts.

Two guys dressed like mid-80s-era Prince pass by, flanking a girl holding an umbrella against a starry night sky. They flash big smiles beneath goofy Elvis shades and I swear they tell me “que futuro!” as they pass. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, and it pleases me.

Sam nods toward a group of big guys loitering outside the store. I stare. Fuck, they’re gigantic for Colombians, and all sporting clean shaved heads. Sam jabs me and tells me to stop staring. We have to walk out through these guys, and sure, our matching bald heads may buy us passage, but you don’t antagonize the local Nazis unnecessarily. Sam points out they even have Doc Martens and little red emblems on their jackets.

Sorry for the stare, gents, but I never expected that the first real live white supremacists I ever saw wouldn’t even be white.