The Long Trip Home: Archives

I like to read and there are bookstores but as you'd expect they sell books in Spanish. Actually English or maybe French is the most intellectual language in the world though, so in the topoftheline bookstore downtown (libri mundi) they sell English books and French ones imported from Europe at twice the cover price. I can't afford this since I've been spending ten bucks a day on individual spanish lessons and i'll have to quit soon or i'll starve. But i really needed to buy some books because I read in one week four of the six i'd brought. Fortunately there was this girl from California at the Spanish school, and she was going home and felt bad about leaving, so she spent a day teaching me the ins and outs of Quito (at least HER ins and outs!). This day included a trip to a bookstore called Confederate Books. It's in the restaurant district, and it has a big confederate flag out front, and they don't buy or sell books unless they're in English. It was closed when I went there with Kate (the California girl; she's going to law school next year in San Diego, and her last name is spelled funny but sounds like "nice"), and we were about to leave but out came the owner. He was short but not short like the Ecuadorians and was balding and had a green beer bottle in his hand. His name was Tommy. He was about to go get some coffee and in his brusque Louisiana drawl (actually his voice is not unlike yours, but the tone is milder while the accent is more attacking) he invited us to go get some coffee with him. We'd already been to the Magic Bean, a coffee house that serves juice and salads and coffee (of course), but we decided to go along with him and sit around and talk anyway. Soon enough Kate was overly disgusted (i wasn't so much disgusted as numbed, but she was really pissed off) by Tommy. He told us about having broken up with his girlfriend, who was a prostitute, and how he had asked a poor Indian woman on the street who was breast feeding if he could have "some of that titty". He also told a beggar girl to fuck off. We left him after that, and it was traumatic for Kate because she'd planned to sell all of her books to him but couldn't now because he was an asshole. You don't give your business to assholes.

I didn't see Kate anymore after that although it was nice to get her tour of the city and her suggestions about where to get salsa dancing lessons (are you wondering if i went?), but I did go back to Confederate Books because when we'd been there for thirty seconds before I'd seen some Charles Bukowski posters and clippings. The first time I got some books and didn't talk to Tommy about anything but the weather—something about the rain here, which comes down suddenly every afternoon and you are inevitably drenched within fifteen seconds. The next time I went in, we talked a little, mostly about life here and what in the hell possessed an American to up and move to South America. A couple of years ago he was involved in a nasty divorce, and he decided to leave the USA (since he didn't think it was taking him anywhere) in favor of a sort of dream he'd always had to come to South America. Somewhere it came in that he'd lost his license in the states for drunk driving. After they'd allowed him to drive again he'd refused, just to spite them, as if he'd actually chosen not to drive (although I imagine they were pleased that he stayed off the roads). Anyway, he came here and was a real mess; he'd only come to "drink beer and fuck whores". He hung around for a year or so, and then he got married and started his bookstore. He also said a lot about how there is no American dream. He said you can't get anywhere in the USA anymore. He scoffed at college, saying that he'd made a lot of money and he hadn't even bothered to finish college. Travelling is better.

The next time I went there he told me about his visit to Coca, a city in the lowlands/rainforests, and how it'd been a disaster and he'd been sick ever since with diarrhea. I told him that I too was thinking about leaving the city and that it kind of bored me here. An Ecuadorian was there buying hardbacks in English, and he and Tommy both insisted that I go south to Riobamba or something. When the Ecuadoran guy left, Tommy told me that i shouldn't go for too long because ther's never anything to do. The only reason he'd gone to Coca was that there are nice whorehouses there. I wonder what he thinks of me, because after that he said something like "well, to each his own..."

Then there were a few minutes of not much and I told him about my morning excursions through the poor neighborhoods on the side of Pichincha (the active volcano whose enormous shadow is saving me from skin cancer). That got him going. He got out some pictures that he had taken in his free time. apparently he goes out sometimes and just takes pictures with an old pentax. He cared a lot about these photos. they were all of Ecuadorans with strange expressions, doing things like frying chiflas (banana chips) or sleeping on the ground. They are black and white. He gives the people copies of the photos when he goes back to the same neighborhood, which is really a thoughtful gesture, one he makes because he doesn't really have permission to take their pictures in the first place. Some of the people (eg the ones sleeping on the ground) don't even realize their picture's been taken, but I guess they're always warm and receptive. Can you see him there in the poorest part of town, tracking down people he saw weeks before and handing out snapshots? He told me he's planning to make postcards out of them. All you can get in this place are postcards of snowcaps and old Catholic churches.