It’s the predictably sparse six-bed dorm found along the arteries of any beating city. The city is Santiago. The time is early and late and doesn’t matter at all to the lead-footed receptionist leading me triumphantly through TripAdvisor’s 2016 ‘Best Extra-Large Hostel’ to a corner of the establishment that definitely feels ‘Extra-Large’, maybe not ‘Best’. Aloof, he fumbles at a stubborn door lock, waking the world in the process. He is a proud man; points at a bed and so I pick another.
Now, I am standing on my head killing time, naked if not for a new (unwashed) pair of tartan Gap boxers. Blood rush thoughts tell me to be thankful. My Therm-a-Rest Z-Lite sleeping pad is among the few items not stolen earlier this trip. With my entire wardrobe robbed, the pad was quite critical for the cold bus shelter sleeps before Smith sacrificed a grand or two on the rental car. Now, the pad comforts my headstand. Warmed up enough, I am now sustaining a less-than perfect backbend, maintaining rhythmic breathing, allowing time to reoxygenate my heart and organs. Palms folded flat, elbows partially flared partially locked, legs about shoulder-width apart, toes pointed ribcage to the moon (no sun at night) etc. I feel the tightness mostly in my groin for I have been sitting docile in the driver seat for days and also, I have an unusually tight groin. Truly, this feat of superior mobility (years of training) is important for my nervous system which has acclimated to automobile air-conditioning and thus become dependent on exogenous thermoregulation. This simply will not work anymore. Santiago is hot hot hot. I am replacing my stagnate blood, embracing a clinging sweat, feeling it dribble up my limbs and face and hearing it drip quietly into a mess on the façade wooden floorboards. The window’s fully open but I don’t hear nothing.
The drive is nought. It is over, it is done! No more rolling across the open lanes of Route 5 that carried us gentle-now down North via South from all the way up in Africa (or Arica maybe), through those flamingo salt planes we forgot to see, volcanoes we almost found. Glorious Route 5 with ceaseless shades of grey then green then grey again in a blink you’ll miss it. Good old Route 5 stretching tanks of petrol until a parched exhaust moans in hushed, hoarse tones for something oily. Screaming bright lights off and on in high-beamed driver talk. Swerving at the whims of suicidal stray dogs, catching ourselves in cheerless driving delirium and momentarily transcending said delirium at the harrowing sight of incinerated petrol trucks (the drivers ought to have painfully perished), busted guard rails blown open to hellish death drops, graves; little plus signs lit by battery operated Christmas lights built into the guts of Route 5, tallying the road deaths along this cherubic tarmac line that bifurcates Chile Este y Oeste.
Harrowing indeed, that traffic jam regret, that burnt baby seat. Shames me true with recognition of recklessness. I will drive safely in the slow lane, I will sit safely and be content behind this frequently stopping minivan, I will be damned this van’s stopping a lot and frankly I’m wired on another Mango Loco and I should really make the most of this caffeine gusto for who knows where I will be psychologically in another 20 minutes and also it cannot be understated just how profound I am finding this whole experience – Shady Nasty et al. rhapsody on stereo – so why not push on once more twice more here I go again I’m back fast as an inevitably. Slow down now. My breathing slows down now. My blood rich and new. My back bend steady. Clutch.
I am here.
Route 5 and fast.
Pothole Pilgrim,
how fairs the rain?
Make way for my bigger
car!
Rhythmic breaths in this steady back bend, I reclaim the practiced patience of civility. I understand the futility of the petrol hurry. I know too, the Order I obeyed in that petrol hurry: I know that this rental car, this Suzuki branding, this generally SUV-shaped silhouette is low on the Order, an obstacle to pass. I understand that it is my duty to make way for bigger cars. Merge into the normalcy of the slow lane. Observe said bigger cars driven by men (always men arguing behind safety-glassed windscreens) with frightened families (to hurry on like that with your family? Oh, burden!) and then in a spasmodic observation, challenging entirely this so far rational realisation, that I am a Being of Infinite Potential. I am capable of embracing the world. Moreover, I myself am no better than any other being. Henceforth, it follows, as such, that we are all Beings of Infinite Potential, capable of embracing the world! And so I ignore the ominous whine that has been growing louder for hours from this subpar Suzuki engine and I punch a blistered foot down onto the accelerator and I pull down a gear and I let the car cry out and I cry back and swing around the minivan with a honk-honk-honk-howl for no good reason and I don’t even indicate my manoeuvre and off I am into this wonderous fast lane heading North via North via North on the 5. Route 5.
In earnest, I tried to stop and give the rental Suzuki a little time to cool off but these suicidal stray dogs are less suicidal more murderous up close. They yelp and bite at your ankles, slobber over my egg sandwich – take it you beasts, these eggs aren’t gourmet, aren’t pasture raised, aren’t 1000 hens per hectare or less (am de facto vegan) I can tell these things – and I never got a rabies shot and I don’t so much want to kick them (de facto vegan) so I drive on North, lulled once more by hurling highway winds, drowsy, albeit awake in the hum-whum-whum-whum-whum-whum of air pressure that pushes unevenly against the open driver’s side window. I enjoy the sensation until I don’t and then it makes me sick. I’m sick right now, there is a Devil awoken in my guts. The Devil – most definitely reignited from that unethical egg sandwich, first summoned after naively ordering the fake-meat pad thai at a pizza restaurant near Machu Pichu – is awake at last. I’m sick in the back bend which is a first and the whole experience of vomiting upside down is exhilarating. I’m sick on someone’s bedsheets and then I’m sick in a little bin. Between hurls I notice I’ve sullied the legibility of a tossed-out receipt, hoping no one will need that receipt. I would’ve thought myself the fool for worrying on the use of a tossed-out receipt if I myself had not wished to still be holding on to a receipt I threw out yesterday that would allow me to trade in these new barefoot hiking boots I’m wearing for a half-size bigger. My right pinkie toe has blistered bad over the course of the drive. It’s all infected with puss now. I tried to DIY stretch the suede pig leather (dead animal – de facto vegan) by wearing all two pairs of my socks (three socks in total, one was on the other foot) and blasting the air-con on full-heat foot-mode but the caffeine and lack of sleep in me had me worrying that the foot-mode heat would melt the shoe and thus ruin the shoe entirely and so I simply sat there in the misery of a blistering foot and didn’t once think to take off the two extra socks and managed to change the air-con from foot-mode to face-mode but forgot to turn down the temperature and instead blamed the setting sun. Ironic as it is, crowded feet, blistered toe, them being barefoot shoes with a wide toe box designed specifically to allow for proper toe spread and all.
My good old friend,
Devil, you
have been given notice to leave
and yet you remain.
Machu Pichu itself now seems a feverously disjointed memory, a hot digestive mess that leaked out of me in shades of archaeological Inca green and onto many a ruined hostel bedsheet and an old pair of boxers – hence the new tartan Gap boxers – and only seemed to settle after a horizontal day of unapologetic doomscrolling, untranslatable medicines and the generally supportive (but, importantly, distant) energy of the Pisac hippie community and of course, the medicine, that carried me into the New Year. It was New Year’s Eve when the Devil first stopped stirring. I think fondly now on the comfort of that hippie hostel, how far it all seems. I am pregaming my AEST jetlagged time zone shift. I must become 14 hours into the future and avoid all jetlag on the other side for I am working the day I touch down. I simply must endure sleeplessness for another seven hours or so which seems a frightening task for I have been up for a day and a bit. Guts active, Devil awake, caffeine throbbing in me hard, 7ish hours to go before sleep and 17ish before a flight. I will destroy jetlag.
Mark and Ryan roll belly-first into the room, fumbling hard, as all must, at the lock. Temporary friend types, each of them odd-looking and genial and frankly a little old for all this. They have beautiful little bellies and normal clothes and foggy eyes and beery breath and compliment my near nude physique which would usually make me blush but frankly they’re not much to look at and too inebriated to see or smell my sweat and vomit and then unbeknownst to any logic of mine the whole vibe becomes a little arousing. I am the everyman’s fetish. They breath words on my tight, tanned skin, my tattoos, my tranquil demeanour, my acne-free face (it’s a good day, I’m cursed with the stuff). I see the blood rushing to their lips and faces and for a moment I picture their loins. I entertain some carnal scene of the three of us howling nude and uncertain under a waxing half-moon.
If we were wolves, would I be
King Wolf?
Does it work like that?
Is the most handsome wolf the King Wolf?
I would like to
be King Wolf.
I know nothing of wolf packs and begin to contemplate how the qualities of a human would translate to a wolf and how it is selfishly anthropomorphised to think that just because I have a six-pack and they don’t, I would be King Wolf. I really would want to be King Wolf. The image fades and is replaced by gulps of adoration. Or were they sardonic gulps? Hard to tell. Either way I’m aroused and they welcome me kindly to their spartan quarters. ‘Wanna smoke?’ Ryan. I decline.
‘Bad for your health and stunts your growth.’ He appreciates this, his growth’s stunted.
‘Mark will bum a fag.’ Begs Mark in the third person. I will entertain this third person rhetoric in forthcoming conversation.
‘Don’t got any spare.’ Lies the stunted one, who proceeds to wiggle off and out of the room under the sorrowful excuse of a solo cigarette. I can tell he’s excited to shake the itchy burden that is Mark from his stunted, hunched back. My back is not hunched; I pride myself on posture. I myself am a little stunted. Built for stability perhaps. I know and see all of this because I am aware of these things. Next time I know and see Ryan it’s tomorrow and he’s curled up there in one of the top bunks all cute like, coddling his little pot belly, gestating trepidatiously as if he were about to become a mother and I will go on to rummage around his back right, no, back left, pocked and find his wallet and take the rest of his medicine.
Frankly, I’ve been stoked since they waddled through the door. Ryan’s wired and I wanna be. I ask Mark for rack and Mark doesn’t have any so I ask him if Ryan has any and he says ‘hasn’t offered Mark any all-night so I assume not’ but I’m out of the room hurrying after little Ryan before Mark says whatever he said. “O’course mate.’ He gulps. Great I’m wired, that’ll settle the Devil. I’m propped up on Mango Loco and sugar-free Redbull and the fear and the constant state of hurry that fills one’s bones for days after a long and powerful highway drive and now gawdam am I wired, so wired I just wanna shut up and soak it all in! It’s 0345 or thereabouts and I’m too many hours into this futilely pre-emptive attempt at jumpstarting myself back onto Sydney’s schedule and as such am disinterested in the prospect of sleep. ‘Take off the cowboy hat Mark sit down, sit cross legged it’s good for you I heard.’ He obeys the King Wolf and we sit cross legged because it is good for us. Him on his top bunk, me on another top bunk (not my bed, I’m scared of heights). ‘Fergus, you see this empty hat?’ I do; I’m Fergus. The hat is leather (dead animal). Not cool. ‘I would sooner fill it with all the despairs tonight had to offer me and pass it over in your direction for you to rummage around in until you find an interesting point of discourse from which we can use to dive further into an ocean of conversation. I do not feel much like sleeping, do you?’
‘You-a speaking mai language!’ I say in a vague and probably racist somewhere accent. ‘I am awake Mark and I have packed my snorkel.’ I thought this to be an apt extension of the metaphor, ocean and all, but he’s more caught up on the accent bit, finding it amusing, probing for further racist undertones. He rolls his vowels in a vaguely American sort of way. I let him talk and talk. The whole time I’m sitting dead still: Cross legged, straight back. I’m even rolling my pelvis a little to make it look like my six-pack is more prominent in a rested position than it actually is. I do not know why I’m doing this or what I’m hoping to get out of it. King Wolf; AI Beat. It begins as any sobering story of denial and rejection etc. I’m not totally listening. ‘You’re different Fergus, you listen. Other boys at the pub didn’t listen. They closed off their circle to me Fergus because they see that I am different and they think that’s a threat. And I’m fine being different. I like it.’ He really emphasise the word different, says it a lot, says it like his dad said it to him a lot. He gesticulates his arms the way any socially awkward person gesticulates their arms: with stiff and bent wrists, pointing at things and generally gesturing with said bent and stiff wrists, leading all arm movements from the elbow in a clumsy sort of way. I tell him as much. ‘I am fond of your gesticulation. Elaborate on it.’
‘I didn’t used to gesticulate. Used to not be proud of my body. I was closed off and different…” I’ve started predicting when he says different and saying it in chorus with him. Mark loves this. “Closed myself off to the world and worked through it in exhibitionist chatrooms. Now those young boys, they’re scared of it so they try to close me off from the world themselves…’
‘Mark, protect your energy from those younger men, you owe them nothing more than a wish of good health. Leave them to carry that negative behaviour forward until they figure their own path to nirvana as I see you have done. Frankly, Mark, I’ve tired of this line of conversation.’ Buzzwords all but it gets him to shut up about the pub thing. He’d explained a while back that he’d felt unwelcomed at the hostel pub event, excluded from the ‘clique. When I probed as to how many people went, ’12.’
‘And how many were in the ‘clique’?’
‘10.’ Ah, you were lascivious Mark, I hear you not saying aloud.
‘The other boys would just wait to talk. You don’t wait to talk, you listen, you’re different, I can tell you’re just listening.’ Which isn’t quite true, I’m not just listening. I’m enjoying that out of focus thing your eyes do when you’re tired. I’m thinking about wearing fake Gucci sunglasses and e-scootering uphill towards a yawning dawn sun, squinting. Thinking about flat car batteries or jumpstarting flat car batteries. How often to shampoo? Should I shave my head? I’m reminding myself of all the things I’m yet to take accountability for and whether I’m ready to do so or how to keep deflecting blame. I’m coming down hard off the caffeine and rack and wondering where Ryan’s at and whether he’ll offer more or if I’ll have to take it out from the black leather (dead animal) Diesel wallet he keeps on his left side, no, right side, rear pocket. Thinking about using my free time to mime in the city CBD and take on a full-time job I like. Thinking about the plus signs and burnt truck drivers. Thinking about if it’s safe anymore to look things up that aren’t legal. If it ever was. Thinking about an inevitable future whereby They don’t let us hold our devices in our hands anymore and only sell stuff that straps to our pale faces and how They’ll let landowners lease out the sides of their buildings or the pavement or private car doors and They’ll turn these empty surfaces into personalised, data-supported, predictive advertisements that only the user of the iGlasses can see and how it’ll finally become obvious how important it was to prevent the data harvesting that we haven’t so far been preventing and still show no interest in preventing. Thinking about how if I don’t wear the iGlasses I won’t have to put up with any personalised ads and in fact advertisers find it a waste of money to continue leasing normal billboards so maybe I won’t have to see any more ads, so it won’t all be bad. Thinking too much on ads. Thinking about how I used to be small enough to squeeze through things. How I knew the ends of my Earth. ‘Mark. ‘ere me now. You are a ‘eing of Infinite ‘otential.’ My mouth is frothing with toothpaste. I am brushing my teeth to combat the cotton mouth and energy drinks and drugs and vomit and so this entire monologue of mine is barely comprehendible. ‘You are ca’able of em’racing the worl’. You are yourself; no one wi’ do it ‘etter.’ I’m silent for effect. “’ere is the ‘athroom?”
He’s talking again as I clamber back up onto the bunk. Talking about his newfound passion for exhibitionism. Slowly drawing a comparison between the young boys that stood him up at the pub and Indian people. Both don’t listen to him, I believe. Stretching said comparison even further to encompass the tenants in his rental properties that refused to pay him during COVID and how he couldn’t litigate his lazy tenants over lost income because the courts were closed. ‘Mark still had to pay the interest repayments, had to pay the land tax. Mark didn’t get the break those Indians got.’
‘Your tenants were Indian?’
‘Mark didn’t say that.’
I mention the robbery. He empathises. He too was robbed. ‘I’m fast, you see. And it hurt me because I am fast and this little kid, I just looked the other way just a second and I look back my phone’s not there, my wallet’s gone and I’m up like a reflex not even thinking Fergus and I’m chasing him but he’s fast. And I feel bad ‘cos I’ve always been fast.’ I’m looking at his waxy, bloated feet, imaging them being fast. Then, the kicker. He’s spun me an intricate web and let me get all sticky in his silk. Good sticky, not like the muggy sticky I’m feeling right now. We are the both of us moaning on sexual desire. Me with my laggard libido, save tonight. Mark, ugly in youth, full of nothing but yearn, late to love. ‘These chatrooms…
‘Like a live stream?’
‘Like a live stream?’
‘Mark live streams himself?’
‘Mark live streams himself masturbating. It’s mostly boys on the stream but I’m not interested in the boys, I’m not different in that way.’ There’s venom in this spider. I probe his political incorrectness.
‘Not a faggot?’ I can say this, my brother’s gay. And my best friend’s gay. And my best friend’s brother’s gay. Marks leg twitches. He loves my roughness, my rugged King Wolf fur.
‘Mark’s not a faggot.’
‘You shouldn’t say that.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Return to your story.’ So, he does, spinning his web. I pretend to buzz my wings, pretend to be his prey. I listen and I get it completely. Mark took a risk at the pub tonight. He took these late sexual lessons learnt so crudely in digital chatrooms and attempted to actualise them in that corporeal pub. Sure, he creeped out the women he tried to seduce. Sure he ruined the vibe, he’s an IRL flirting virgin. Blame the world! Mark tells me he pays women to watch him pleasure himself. Exhibitionism. ‘Just a couple bucks, yeah, its digital but it’s… it can feel real. It’s different, but it’s real. They talk with you. They’re like you, Fergus, they listen, it feels reals.’ He’s earnest, embarrassed even. I never once mock him, it is real. It is real. I genuinely agree with him. I ponder momentarily on what his advertising data profile must look like. What ads he will see on his iGlasses. The spider reads my mind and the web spins on. Mark doesn’t like when people don’t like him, don’t understand that he’s different. He doesn’t like the young boys at the pub, mocking his burgeoning sexual agitations. He doesn’t like his rent-skipping tenants for the same reason; not understanding his disappointment, exploiting him. He doesn’t like Indians, however, because he has compromised himself online. Pleasuring himself on video, throbbing climax and all! This moment of orgasm shared so vulnerably online in a public chatroom… perverted by these Indian prospectors. He is currently being blackmailed by two Indian dudes who, clearly, the boys in the pub remind him of. The Indians want money in exchange for the video’s deletion. Mark knows it will never be deleted. Each of them, boys and tenants and Indians, exploiting Marks attempts at physical love – explored through digital means – and triggering memories of prior financial exploitation. It’s tragic.
I am still so racked, my mind is adrift. I have the fear in me. I am also morbidly aroused and thinking of a way to excuse myself once more to the bathroom. Thinking of a way to wrap it all up, tuck him into bed. I remind him who I am, King Wolf. And remind him that he is no spider, he too is King Wolf. Mark is King Wolf. I am King Wolf. Ryan, even, is King Wolf. Smith is King Wolf. We are all King Wolf. All Beings of Infinite Potential, capable of embracing the world. It is the new lunar year. It is the year of the Fire Horse! I recall the looming shadow of a packhorse not long ago. The sporadic rhythm of its trots, neighing with bated breath in fear or anticipation or stupor at the startlingly white full moon. The moon, full and wide and bleached, casting the horse’s silhouette across the wall of our tent. I know the horse’s woes. Smith and I watched the horse in its woes. I have those woes. The full moon, so bright, crept up and over us, deep into the stars, whitewashing the world in its nocturnal strides. It climbed over the very same granite walls Smith and I had climbed earlier that day. We watched it scurry towards the stars. Saw each other’s teary cheeks, knowing the drive is nought. It is over. Smith is alone now in Antarctica or thereabouts, on a discounted luxury cruise. Or perhaps tying knots with old legends, hanging off other granite walls. I forget. Last we left it he was heading South on the 5, me North on the 5. I have the car. The low Chilean sun has burnt his thumb, thrust out to oncoming traffic, begging to hitch to the next town down, to learn a word or two of Spanish, maybe shout some fuel.
Soon, I will be home and it will be muggy and I will shave my head as is manic tradition. The old Chinese snake sheds its yearly skin. It is the year of the Fire Horse! We are Beings of Infinite Potential. We will embrace this world.