Out of your worst nightmares

Imagine that you're a bride. 

You met a guy, a foreigner, a couple of years ago. Got to know him, fell in love, and almost a year ago, he proposed. You said yes. A date was set, and now you counted the days.

He called you every day, you wrote encyclopaedic E-mails to him.

He sent you flowers and gifts, you sent back photographs and real, perfumed, letters.

Love was in the air, connecting two souls an ocean apart. You could hardly wait.

A New Year came, promises of everlasting love. Not even a month remained. Every date you crossed on the calendar seemed like a new feather to attach to your wings. Hello sweet romance!

And, finally, the last week came, and with it, the day he would board his plane to make an transoceanic flight, a quick stop on the capital, and then a hop across the sky to your city.

Hours pass, and kept passing. Only that, he never showed up.

It's now the early morning of the next day, and a phone call awakes you. He's in an hospital in the capital. He's also comatose.

The first seat on the first flight available is yours. You run next to him. Kiss his lips, hold his hand, stand by him. When you can't, you spend the night sitting on a couch, right next to his room. 

The day you were supposed to become his wife you spend it guarding his immobile figure.

The days pass. Friends come and go. You haven't sleep for almost a week now, while the doctors tell you he's unconscious, but improving, he had a fever they barely contained, but he's alright, he might wake up tomorrow, he might wake up in hours, he will be awake soon.

And you keep your guard because you love this man. You love him, enough to wait till the end of time for him to wake up. A macabre sleeping beauty you kiss hoping against hope this will be it, what will breath life back to him.

And one morning, they tell you they are sorry. He's dead.

And that's how it ends.

Only that it doesn't. 

Because the results of the autopsy roll in, and the coroner, a friend of your sister's husband, calls you in private, tells you to sit down, and continues telling you things.

Things like, someone had offered money to tamper with the results.

Things like, his body had pretty much fallen apart on the dissection table.

Things like, his cells had been pumped full of formaldehyde.

Things like, he hadn't been dead for a couple of hours when he got to the morgue.

Things like, he had been dead for almost a week.

The problem with those horror urban legends is not that they have some kind of basis in reality. The problem is that the real history might be more horrific than anything in the legend. The monsters are not horrible freaks. The monsters are human beings, just like you, who you cross on the aisle every day, who you trust your life, your love to. Who will smile at you, and tell you "Everything is going to be fine" at the same time they pump a dead man full of chemicals so that he would pretend to still be alive one more day.

Because every day in your hospital is worth enough money to, in a week, spirit away the life savings of a broken bride and her dead groom into the pockets of greedy doctors and nurses and managers.

Taking their souls at the same time, of course.

-- --- --

I wish I could tell you this story is just a product of my twisted mind, but it isn't. The bride is one of my most cherished friends, one to whom I own more that I could ever repay. I took her to the airport the morning of the call, I hold her while she was crying not knowing what would happen, and I stood with her at the door of her groom's room - only for some monsters to break her apart.

I only heard about the whole thing it a week ago. That's what was needed for her to fix herself enough. Enough. For she will never be able to heal completely. She has no hope left. No hope. For fucks sake, what are we, if we have no hope?

Really, what kind of person could be so rotten as to willingly play with and crush a woman's hope?

Love (Part I)

Define love.

C’mon, what is it? I’m asking this because, all things considered, I just can’t define a single idea of love. It’s too big a word, too complicated a feeling, but at the same time it is something that we live with on a daily basis. Love, it is in our lives, but in so many different ways, working with so many different mechanisms, tasting in so many different flavours, and all of them basically equal at the same time, that sometimes I believe that, when they were inventing words, they just gave up trying to differentiate them and put them under a sound; let people sort stuff up later.

And we had to sort it out later whether we like it or not because, truly, love is, or can be in, pretty much in every action of our lives.

Both the evicted mother who stops eating until she starves to death so her child has something to put in his stomach and the boy who chooses not to stare down the loose strap shirt of a girl he adores to see her unbound breasts while she’s sleeping, even though he and she are just in the right position to have a rather glorious view (and, darn, those are some really nice breasts), act out of love, totally different iterations of love, but love still.

So, let’s say we can’t define love. It is something, everything, and nothing at the same time. f(x) = x/0. Not even Chuck Norris can pull that off (and those Chuck Norris jokes got old a long time ago, anyway).

What about what love makes us do?

Well, that’s just rephrasing the question. I just went through the undefined love in whatever action thing, so let’s just say that love can make us do anything. Once again, not much of an answer, but a sincere one at least. However, there might be a clue there. What about the anything? Can love really make us do anything? Not anything in a moral sense, for it has been proven time and time again through history that love can push us to do acts that are capable of putting a devil to shame (when a rather perverse version of love comes to town) or humbling angels. Rather, anything in a sense of capability.

Love, sheer love, how far can it push you?

How well can it fuel you?

I'll follow this up later, I need to sleep now.

And, yes, in an ideal world I wouldn't need to go over a moral dilemma about whether I should look at those breasts or not; I'd be doing something really kinky and funny and romantic and awesome at the same time with them and that girl I adore instead of writing as a madman on my Macbook, trying to ignore the savage combat of hormones and feelings maelstroming my mind. But I'm in Lima, my mind is thinking in Spanish, and all that I could ever be got lost in translation. Now, that's an idea for exploring the difference in attitudes depending on the language you operate in. Hello multiple personality syndrome. Grab a seat, take a cookie, there's free soda on the back.

Jumper

A friendship is not an obligation.

It's never supposed to be that. You're supposed to do only what your heart tells you to do. If you ever feel you're doing something out of duty instead of out of love, please, I beg you,

WALK AWAY.

And don't come back until your heart tells you to do it. Even if it means never coming back.

'Coz I'm leaving on a jet plane...

Live, from San Salvador! Or something like that. This was supposed to be a pre-boarding post giving instructions about what to do if I died or something like that (in the unlikely event that my plane crashed - yeah, right.) However, I got delayed in the whole pre-travel follies, so I only got around to write a couple of lines before leaving for the airport. Now I'm halfway between the gutter and the stars after a five hour flight; and waiting for my flight to Lima, which is to depart in half an hour.

That means I don't have time to write right now either. Stuff happens.

Nevertheless, I liked the idea of a 'Things to do if Amadeus dies' and a 'Things Amadeus will be doing while dying on a commercial flight' post, so I'll be writing it anyway after I get home. As for now, I'm logging off, gotta hit the restrooms. C'ya in Lima.

Das Flü

Gosh, I hate being sick.

As systems go, my immune system is quite strong, so strong that sometimes it even attacks me (psoriasis for the win, wake up and smell the sarcasm). The rather fortunate by-product of this is that I don't get sick a lot. Actually, you can say I only get sick once a year, which is frakking awesome. The problem is that, when I get sick, I get bloody sick. I get so sick that if were a little sicker, I would be treated not by a doctor but by a coroner.

Yeah, it sucks.

This year, the only illness that had affected me so far was depression. Totally understandable, with all the whole "move to another country to get on with the rest on your life probably leaving everything you know behind and even if you come back it won't be the same" thing. Nothing that my leukocytes could work on, too. So, on the medical front, you could say I had had a good year.

Until I got the flu (complicated with bronchitis, but that's a minor thing).

You see, it is winter here right now. Last time I checked, the lowest temperature was 4ºC, four degrees Celsius (for the Fahrenheads out there, that's 39ºF). After that I didn't check the temperature anymore, I was too scared. That's the coldest I've ever been in my life. As I told Vicky, I'm not cold, I'm Peruvian. Born in Lima, I'm just not made for these temperatures. Not even in Cuzco it had been so cold, I went there in spring.

But, then again, I'm a cold person, so I went along with my life with a shirt and a couple of t-shirts tucked under for good measure.

No problem. I'm hardcore. Hell yeah.

Ok, ok, I'll say it: "You Moron! That's like tying Satan's shoelaces while he's not looking, telling him that the ice cream truck is coming, and staying to see the fun!" (Shamelessly stolen from Strike Fiss's "Shinji the Casanova", but, hey, it IS an appropriate quote, and darn cool too).

So, when it finally came, it came with a vengeance.

Monday 17: I felt fine. Top of the world , ma! I was in such a good mood that I even made a little holiday shopping.

Tuesday 18:

All systems go. Press to MECO, Houston. MECO. Welcome to space, guys. We're flying HIGH!

Wednesday 19:

All systems nominal. Standard stuff. And after Andrea's final, I was almost singing Still Alive, the Portal Song. That was a triumph, I wrote a note there, "Huge Success." Words couldn't overstate my satisfaction.

Thursday 20:

Hey, I think my throat is itching a little bit. Thankfully, Vicky's final was more writing goodness, so I didn't care much about it. Alternative learning for the win.

Friday 21:

It is starting to hurt a little bit. That's not good. Not good at all. And where the hell was Kushal, anyway? Sucker and me never got to meet to integrate stuff for the Calc I final. I waited for him until almost 6 pm, but nothing. Kill kill kill. Oh, well, at least I got some really tasty cinnamon sticks, which tasted almost as incredibly good as the "Churros" sweet-sticks we've got back home (courtesy of Miss City Liu, a girl made of awesome and win, who would play a role in my eventual undoing 24 hours later - this is called foreshadowing, kids).

Saturday 22:

Calculus Final. As I'm made of godly amounts of awesome and Spartan win, it was a breeze, except for ONE problem in which I spent almost two hours working. Tough luck. Oh, well. Problem was that for the moment I finished the final (and officially finished the Fall 2007 Semester), my throat wasn't hurting anymore. It was on FIRE. Of course, being the proud bastard I am, I didn't say anything to my brother as we spent our first free day basically hanging around and shopping stuff (that shopping stuff part ended up in The Victoria's Secret Predicament, but that's material for another whole post altogether).

Until that moment, no problem. Yeah, my throat hurt like stepping on barbed wire, but I'm strong and I could handle it, and I had lots of experience making Spanish sounds with a sore throat. Things began to complicate when, right after walking out of Victoria's, I run into City. Since she can't speak Spanish and my Mandarin doesn't go beyond "Ni hao," me and my throat revert into Basic English Communication Mode, Sub-Rutine 1.

Now, my throat wasn't expecting that. Since English has a couple more sounds than Spanish, I was extending and relaxing and in general moving along inflamed muscles that weren't trained and didn't have the endurance to withstand the pain that came with their use when sick. The result: you could have detonated a nuclear warhead in my throat and I would have felt better.

Bloody hell.

Thankfully City was busy so we (actually, she - I wasn't up to the task) didn't talk much, and as soon as she was out of sight I was running up the stairs to get a Chai Latte at Starbucks. Mmm, Chai. Hell yeah. The pain soothed for a while, and I was on my feet, on the floor, good to go, as soon as I finished it. Dude (my brother, from here on called Dude just for the sake of it) came along and told me to beat it because he had to write a letter to the lady he was buying stuff at Victoria's for, so I beat it and parked myself somewhere quiet where I could call Mili (Miss Milagros Laguna; for reference, read Five Girls in Lima, if I ever get around to write that) just to waste time and because I just love to talk with her.

That was the second big mistake.

Although my throat was used and trained for action under Spanish fire, the new hurting put forward by crossing the English Channel had totally obliterated any kind of endurance my vocal chords had. Even worst, since I was used to throaty pain, Spanish Inquisition Style, I didn't even know I was aggravating the catastrophic damage I had already incurred.

Wow, those were two fancy sentences.

When I finished, my throat was on NUKULAR FIYA. I could only think of one thing: Chai. Latte. NOW! Since by that moment Starbucks had a line a mile long, I hunted the mall for any other venue that could provide me some tea. 2.35 minutes and a couple of killings later, I got my tea.

Yup. Tea. Good. Oh yeah.

Dude finally finished his letter, and he had arranged for some backup to help him pick some panties for his significant other, so he was back to Victoria's Secret for the kill. By then, it was time for me to leave to pick up mum from her work. I goodbyed Dude, and run into City again. Under most circumstances I would consider it a most fortunate situation; as I said before, that girl seems to be made of awesome and win. Unfortunately, this was not one of those, so I blurted out as much small talk my nuclear furnace of a larynx could endure and I bolted out. I don't think she understood anything I said - I sure as hell didn't and I was the one doing the talking.

Thus, it is possible to deduce that I was screwed. 

With the fire of  a vengeful god licking away the walls of my throat, I walked fast and swiftly to the car. The door closed and locked before it even was half opened, I rev up the 4.7 litres of my Ford Escape 2005's engine to their structural limits, and manage to make a ten minutes trip in NINE minutes (traffic, enough said). A totally futile haste, for mum still took another 20 minutes to come out. Dayuuum. By that moment I was thinking about drinking hydrochloric acid - even if the damage to my nerves didn't stop the pain, the acid would eat away my stomach and kill me, which under the circumstances was more than acceptable. No such luck, though, as there is not a single drop of muriatic acid in The Great Escape (TM).

When mum finally got in the car and said the Spanish equivalent "Hi," I could only mumble a guttural grunt from the very bottom of my innards (produced more by the duodenum than by the diaphragm) as a bloody answer; bloody not because I could feel the blood sweeping through my throat, but because I was very bloody willing to kill the next person that forced me to emit a sound. With the skill provided only by utter desperation, a murderous instinct, and years of practice in the extreme export known as Peruvian Driving, I took off again, back to Stonestown to pick up Dude and whatever he coerced Sheila (Backup Girl) to get into the store instead of him and buy. Five minutes late, he was in the car, and I wasted no time in hitting the 280 and 75 miles per hour, for my throat hurt and needed tea to prevent me from losing my sanity out of sheer agony.

And that is how we finally headed home, and I headed into a night full of misery, pain, House MD. episodes, and lots and lots of tea with milk and honey. Since misery, pain, and agony are no fun when it applies to the real life instead of a poor innocent literary creation, I shall not write about that, but let's say that the only time I've been in more pain was that time when I jumped out of a speeding (and very kidnapping) taxi and cracked my head. No awesome, and utter fail for that night.

Sunday 23:

I was feeling much better (I mean, I could TALK, hell yeah!) that morning, so I went to the 49ers game. As expected in an American football game (no matter what you say, it will always be "American football;" the real Football, which you call Soccer, is played with the feet: Foot-ball, get it?), loud, thunderous screams ensued.

...

Ok, now, that was moronic, and I'll never do that again. Once was enough. I screamed so much that by the end of the day I didn't have a voice anymore, and I didn't get it back until yesterday. I cannot even sing at all now, and I had worked so hard for the past four months to get my voice to a "Make cats scream/People laughing at your sucky singing" level from the "People burst their eardrums with pens to escape your singing" level it was before. And don't get me started on the whole staying in bed coughing my lungs off for the whole Christmas week part. Bloody hell.

Well, on the bright side, at least I had a lot of practice with hand signs. Now I can rapidly and efficiently send someone to the lowest circle of hell and hurting with a few gestures. Awesome. ^_^