Daniel, Abril, Victor
Sex money violence
I’m walking around Cusco, Peru. My eyes are open. There are rainbow flags all over the place. Is that the flag of the gays? Who cares. I’ve been having stomach problems for a few weeks. I had a normal poop today and now my brain is working.
If I make eye contact with someone on the street, they try to sell me something. If I look away, they still try to sell me something. If I say “no gracias,” they try to sell me something.
I see condemned souls everywhere. Why do I see this. I go through a cycle of emotions and end up back where I started. So it goes.
Paradise is sex.
I’m at Jonas Restaurant, again. Paradise is Jonas Restaurant.
I look up from reading Slaughterhouse-Five. El waiter is picking up my empty taco plate.
“Diez mas por favor,” I say.
He laughs. “Todo bien?”
“Si, todo bien, solo la cuenta.”
“Claro.”
It’s my fourth time here. Maybe fifth. I keep buying the pork tacos. I would not have guessed that Cusco, Peru has the best pork tacos on the continent. But here we are.
I was here with Abril yesterday. She’s a mid-twenties Mexican staying at the same Airbnb as me. She confirmed that the tacos are indeed very good. She used her Spanish to verify for me that there is no mono-sodium glutamate in them.
Good woman.
She ordered carrot cake for lunch.
“The principal of my kindergarten was a fucking bitch,” she tells me. “I have some trauma. I don’t like that smell because of this. But no worries.”
My tacos come out. Her carrot cake arrives.
I look at the flowers on the table. I noticed them earlier but didn’t look at them. They are real. There once was a time when “real” did not need to be specified.
Taco trip
I also met Victor, from Mexico, and Daniel from Brazil, at the Airbnb house. Daniel is 25 and speaks perfect English. He used to live in a favela. This is his first international trip. Most people in Brazil can't speak English. Daniel got a scholarship to an English program and his grandmother paid for the other half. Now he’s a freelance English teacher in Brazil, making $9/hour.
“Let’s go for tacos,” I say, to Daniel and Victor. “I went to this place for lunch today with Abril. These are the best pork tacos—"
“That you’ve ever had,” says Daniel.
“That I have ever had.”
“Is this place expensive?” he asks. “That is important for us.”
"It's not too bad," I say.
"I bought groceries today, so I will eat here, later. I should have brought more money to Peru,” says Daniel. “We can still go though. I will just watch.”
So we go to Jonas Restaurant. I order four tacos and lamb ribs with potatoes and vegetables. 48 soles. $12.50.
Daniel doesn’t order anything.
The waiter brings us house-made potato bread with chimichurri sauce. Daniel and Victor scarf it down. I don’t eat bread.
My mom texts me about my great-uncle. He is wealthy and just about dead. He wants to contribute to my IRA. The problem is that I don’t have an IRA.
“Any luck opening a Roth IRA?” she writes. “Can I move this forward with an account number tomorrow? Call me please.”
I call her. As it rings, the waiter sets down a plate of four of the best pork tacos in South America.
She answers. “He wants to give you a cash gift,” she says.
I look to Daniel and Victor and point to the tacos. Their eyes go wide.
“He wants to do $6,500 for tax year 2023 and $7,000 for tax year 2024,”
I slide the taco plate to them.
“Do you understand?” she asks.
“Yes, I understand...Right now I’m at dinner with Daniel from Brazil and Victor from Mexico.”
“Hi Daniel, hi Victor,” she says, although they cannot hear her.
I wrap up the conversation by listening.
My lamb shank arrives. The fat is sweet. The meat is falling off the bones.
“How much for a pack of tacos like that?” asks Daniel. “Man, that was just awesome. I nearly had an orgasm. You want to split another? I’m going to record a video.”
I write notes as Daniel, Victor and I walk down the stone steps to the street.
“That was such a great dinner,” says Daniel, “Thank you Chris for bringing us to this place.”
I'm stuffed. I want sugar. We go to a market and I buy berries. Then we meet Abril at a party hostel. I don’t eat cakes, and I don’t drink drinks, so I sit at the bar eating my blueberries.
I dance lightly with Abril.
“Are you Christian?” I ask.
“No. I’m Catholic.”
“That’s Christian.”
“No it’s not. Christians go to church all the time. Catholics aren’t like this.”
“Not in my country.”
We shoot pool. Somehow I win. I think she likes me. We played music together. Went to the gym. Ate dinner together. Then lunch the next day. We went shopping. She’s seen me with my shirt off multiple times. We have made a lot of eye contact. We’ve touched many times. I would regret it if I did not at least extend the opportunity.
However, she tends to go out at night, drink alcohol, and come back with guys who disappear shortly after. So that’s a bummer.
People mourn when a baby dies. People mourn when a baby dies in the womb. People don’t mourn when the sperm never reaches the egg.
Nature didn’t see plastic wrap on the penis en route.
So it goes.
I’m not afraid of creating. And that goes for children as well.
Daniel
Daniel is a nerd. He’s nice, smart, and looks like a Brazilian model. He plays the Ukulele and sings. We hang out in the living room every day. He says he came to Cusco by bus.
“You came here by bus? From Rio?” That’s on the other side of the continent.
“Four days by bus. That’s how I came here. They make three stops per day. For breakfast, lunch, dinner and shower.”
“Wow.”
We get to talking about 2020, and George Floyd.
I can’t help but ask about the favelas.
“There’s a special police force, BOPE,” Daniel tells me. “They don’t go into the favelas to make arrests, they go in to kill. Yes. That’s the idea. I have seen them entering a favela. They killed 28 in Jacarezinho.”
So it goes.
“That’s a favela I have been to. You will see people armed there.”
I listen with a poker face.
“They will not hurt you. But that’s not someplace you go by yourself. ”
“How does BOPE know who to kill?”
“Yeah, that’s a problem. In this case, the thieves and drug dealers tried to fight back. If you see a guy armed, you know that’s the guy you want to kill. One shot from BOPE is equal to ten from the thieves.”
I nod.
“There was a thief — a drug dealer — hiding in a man’s house. The man was there with his daughter. He said to BOPE, please take him away. BOPE said no, we’re going to here. Take your daughter downstairs, we’re going to kill him. As they were going down the stairs they heard the shots. There was blood all over their house. Yeah, that was bad. That was a sad story. They could have at least taken him outside.”
I try to hold my poker face but it’s not holding.
“When you saw them going into a favela, how many were there? Like ten guys or like a hundred?”
“Actually they have a black truck, like an armored van, and you cannot see inside. There is a movie about BOPE, Tropa de Elite. 1 and 2.”
I go back to eating peanuts and writing.
Victor
Victor is a goofy Mexican who learned English from Duolingo. He has a 456-day Duolingo streak. His English is not like Daniels but it’s okay.
"I have two friends who already have vasectomies,” says Victor. “And they don’t have kids."
"That’s a big decision because you can’t go back," says Daniel.
“I don't like kids.” says Victor. “I don’t want kids. You can’t do anything. And it’s expensive, I don’t understand how people afford kids. It’s impossible. Today, impossible. Maybe if you are rich. Maybe if me and my brother's business takes off…”
“I want to have one kid to get the experience of being a father. Two kids max. That’s the max.”
The human population is collapsing.
I ask him about Mexico. I ask about what they think about America. He says the best people want to go to America or Canada to work.
“Doctors in Mexico don’t want to work in the government hospitals because they will send you to a small town controlled by narcos. Narco traficos. They want you to save someone with bullets in them. If the doctor cannot save them, they kill the doctor.”
My eyes widen.
“Yeah.” He laughs. “That’s another reason people don’t want to work in Mexico.”
He shows me a meme about low pay in Mexico.
“The salary in Mexico is not much really. Four hundred per month. When someone is a professional in Mexico, a doctor, architect, or engineer, the salary is near the minimum. The best people go to the United States or Canada. I don’t want to go back there. I’m looking for a different place. I will go back in April or May because my brother has a wedding.”
“Come to America,” I say.
“Maybe I will like it.”
“The borders open, come on in.”
“The borders open?”
“Joe Biden won’t send you back, I promise.”
He laughs.
“I applied for a visa,” he tells me. “In the interview, they asked me three questions. Name, address, and reason for visiting America. I have family in Houston, cousins and uncle. I wanted to go to a wedding. The wedding was real. The problem was I wasn't studying or working at the time. They refused me.”
Daniel, Abril, and Victor have all applied for a visa to visit America. They all have extended family members in America. Daniel paid $160 to the American government for his visa application. That’s a lot for him. His interview had three questions, and like Victor, he was denied.
Part 2 of this series is about America, wealth creation, and how I help Daniel work with Americans, and ultimately become wealthy.
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Daniel, Abril, Victor, Zulma, Valeria, and Pablo, had an amazing time at the Airbnb house near the center of Cusco. We played music, sang, ate food, watched movies and had many laughs. It reminds me of this song.