Welcome Abroad
A Subjectively True Story
by
David Michael Smith

My week of diving done in the Sea of Cortez, I leave the boat in Loreto, about half way up the Baja Peninsula, for no other reason than it might prove interesting to travel through the desert on a Third World bus.

It is a dilapidated affair, a battered vehicle which may or may not have looked better when it was new twenty-five years earlier. Years of traversing the scorching peninsula give the bus a sagging, tired appearance. The driver looks no better. At least everyone has a seat, and there are no chickens on board.

Gulping a quart of mineral water just before departing proves an unwise survival strategy, despite the early heat of the day; we are hardly out of sight of the city limits before my need for a rest room becomes pressing. Attempting to occupy my mind with other matters proves entirely futile. (Why do we call them "rest rooms"? I rarely retire there because of fatigue.) As I look towards the back of the bus, I see that there is no handle on the bathroom door, only a place for a key to be inserted. Oh, fine. Now I must ask the driver in my non-Spanish Spanish for a key to the crapper.

Distended bladders afford great motivation, however, and I reel down the aisle, emboldened by discomfort. My attempt at communication -- a series of grunts, hand gestures and the words "bãnos" and "gratias" -- at first bring only a searing look of disgust from the driver. Apparently only gringos, unlike the local stock who have learned how to manage every precious drop of bodily fluids, are weak enough in their physical constitution so as to require relief on a bus ride through the desert. After an agonizing moment in which I am convinced the driver will affect further ignorance and shrug me away, he grudgingly reaches into his pocket and extracts a bundle of keys, fumbling for the specific tool of access to my salvation.

I press my way to the rear of the swaying bus, teetering on the ragged edge of a panic brought on by now blinding pain. Visibly fumbling, I insert the key into the door and tug. Nothing. The lock is bent and jammed from years of use and abuse. My first thought is that the door will not open, not now, not ever. From a far rear seat, a young man looks on impassively, vaguely curious how this slight diversion from heat and boredom will play itself out. I am in too much discomfort to consider the broader implications of cross-cultural embarrassment, but become instantly haunted by visions of my reduction to uncontrolled urination in the aisle, huddled in the midst of a crowd of indignant citizens who stare unbelievably at my exposed and soggy member.

Worse fates enter my imagination. I consider the potential sensations and repercussions evolving from a ruptured bladder. Moaning and capacious from the exploded viscera, I am taken from the bus, passed to the front over the heads of passengers standing shoulder to shoulder in the aisle, rushed to a local animal hospital where lack of sterile conditions leads to my quiet death. My bloated body is secretly buried in the desert. Were I to live, I would forevermore be required to wear a little plastic bag under my cloths which would gather an involuntary reservoir of piss throughout each day of the remainder of my wretched existence. Other people could excuse themselves to "go to the John". I would be required to frequently and secretly change pouches, like a mechanical device whose fluids and filters must be attended to after a certain mileage.

As these and other terrors mount in my floating brain, the door suddenly yields, and... ¡I'm in!

Gratefully returning the key to the driver, then slumping into my seat as every eye on the bus turns towards me in idle loathing, I try to shrink into an unobservable lump, hoping to enjoy the remainder of an uneventful trip. Almost immediately, I can feel the tiny sensation of pressure and pain beginning to build once more. Within the half-hour, the entire process must be repeated. I shoulder my way to the front of the bus, and again confront the mouth breather who drives it. With all the disdain he can muster, he hands me the key, holding it between the two fingers of an extended hand, as if he were having me dispose of a dead rodent.

The crisis has escalated in record time, and I am forced to sprint to the rear of the careening vehicle. I insert the key again. Once more, I am met with immobility. Did an unseen trickster weld the door shut while I was occupied at the front of the bus? Frantically, I begin pulling and tugging, trying various body postures in order to gain maximum advantage over the twisted metal. After several minutes of wrestling, sweating, and quiet swearing, the door mercifully yields once more. Inside the cramped and stuffy room, the temperature must be in excess of 110 degrees. For a moment I consider staying here for the rest of the trip, but realize I will require resuscitation should I remain here longer than necessary to complete the task at hand, or in hand, as it were. Instead, I decide to keep the key.

Within minutes of this ill-fated resolve, we stop at the small town of Insurréction. Two burley police officers hop aboard and slowly saunter up and down the aisle, evidently looking for some hardened criminal. As my pulse synchronizes with my racing thoughts, I attempt to maintain a passive, indifferent expression. Has the driver betrayed me, somehow radioing ahead to the authorities that a gringo has stolen the key to his bathroom? Will I be carted off to a bug infested jail, electrodes attached to my groin, shocks indiscriminately administered to my most private anatomical parts until I confess that I've absconded to the back of the bus with the only available bathroom key, perhaps intending to skulk it across the border as an anthropological memento of my visit to Old Mexico? Or perhaps, I surmise, because of the nature of my crime, a rubber band will be tightly installed around the external portion of my urinary tract, there to remain until I internally erupt in a gigantic explosion of accumulated pee, a variation of my earlier fantasy, this one also leading to an unmarked grave amongst the cacti.

The officers wander back and forth. I cannot keep my eyes off their side arms, which appear massive enough to seek revenge against a large army of English speaking key thieves, payback for the Alamo and decades of other perceived cultural injustices. Slowly, the officers and their guns walk off the bus and disappear into the fetid ether as mysteriously as they emerged. I waste no time running down the aisle to quickly return the key to the driver, grateful that an international biological incident has been narrowly averted.

At the next stop, the town of Constitutíon, I notice two intensely pale young women, one just beginning to gray at the temples, the other a sandy blond, waiting in the small terminal to board the bus. Their distinctly northern European faces bear no evidence of ever having been touched by cosmetics. Their eyes are clear and bright and, even from a distance, convey a sense of mission. Everything about them -- buttoned down collars, precisely pressed, drab dresses, tightly-bunned hair, quiet, measured mannerisms -- harkens to a long gone, no frills era when boys and girls went on chaperoned dates. They chat amiably with those around them so that, despite their Anglo appearance, it is evident they speak fluent Spanish. They are assigned seats directly behind me and, sensing my hunger to speak to someone in my only tongue, the mostly dark haired one leans toward my ear.

"Where are you heading?"

The bus has but one final destination, so despite the fact that the answer is obvious, my need to communicate forces me to dutifully fill in the blank.

"La Paz. How 'bout you?"

"We're headed there too. We live there, and make this trip once a week so we can see our friends in Constitutíon. I'm Joan. And this is Jill," she says, indicating her slightly younger companion. I soon learn that Joan and Jill came up the hill to fetch a pail of Catholics; they are Christian missionaries from some mysterious, unnamed, non-denominational sect devoted to spreading the non-Roman Catholic biblical word to the masses of Mexico.

Joan has the aura of an older sister and it is soon apparent that Jill defers to her as such. Jill's eyes are more inquisitive than those of her stoical companion, her manner softer, less hardened than the elder proselytizer. I detect a slight and pleasantly innocent sexual tension between us, though I'm certain she would ardently deny the existence of such an energy, consciously unaware of its playful presence in the air between us.

In the midst of the small talk, Jill suddenly shares an unsolicited intimacy. "It's been so unseasonably hot here this June," she tells me, "that after we shower at the end of the day, we wrap ourselves in bathrobes while we're still wet, and then lie down and let the one small fan in our room blow cool air on us."

My eyes enlarge slightly, and a small bead of perspiration begins its journey down my nose, as this image of a proper fundamentalist Christian evangelist, hair undone, sprawled out in body clinging, sweat and shower soaked underwear, takes full form in my mind, till now lumpish with the vapors of the day.

As casually as I can structure the gesture, I wipe away the tell-tale bead now hanging precariously from the tip of my nozzle. For a moment, I cannot breathe, but simply wheeze my respiratory response to this titillating vision of a languid, liquid strategy for dissipating the tropical heat.

"Oh! Uh huh...", I squeak.

It is the only rejoinder I can manage. There are deep, unexplored currents in this young woman and I eye her for culpability. Is this the overture of a repressed coquette desperate to break the bonds of Old Testament subjugations taken too much to heart? Is her humid testimony intended to elicit a lurid signal of my desire to assist in these afternoon bathings? Unblinking and ingenuous, she stares back warmly. Her guileless comportment somehow suggests a curiosity that may someday propel her beyond the limits of an exclusionary world view. For the time being, this secret is held dear, a barely visible sheen in the recesses of her eyes.

We continue to chat congenially, we three, as the blistering macadam passes underneath, Joan dominating most of the conversation as I ask questions about the religious teachings of their sect. It's all garden variety bible thumping as far as I can glean, and I try to keep my heart unfettered by judgment, probing their belief system for the love I pray is at the foundation of their devotions and duties. They inquire about my activities in Mexico, and I give them a synopsis of the Sea Watch adventures. I learn that summer began this very day, June 21, at 9:48 a.m. Joan carries an obscure little book filled with such idle fancies.

I learn that Mexico wanted to sell the Baja Peninsula to the U.S. in the mid 1800s, but that southern congressman, fearful a new non-slave state would be added to the Union, voted against the purchase. This from a book Jill is reading that offers "a brief history of Mexico". As I look out over the garbage strewn desert along the road, I wonder what Las Vegas-like fate might have befallen this region had it slipped into our hands more than a century earlier. Jill's book tells me too that the peninsula was victimized by pirates in the early days of the New World, especially by the infamous Englishman Sir Francis Drake. To this day, Mexican mothers threaten their disobedient broods with kidnappings by "El Drako", a sort of Mexican boogie man who carts off unruly children who are never heard from again.

The impulse to bring the conversation back to religion, specifically the credo of my companions, is one I cannot resist, despite the realization I'm likely to uncover some prejudicial unpleasantness. They keep to the high road, and I temporarily avoid asking about hell fire and damnation. Seeing yet another opportunity to avoid having to speak my pidgin Spanish, I ask the ladies to negotiate a ticket for me from La Paz to Cabo when we arrive at the La Paz bus station. They agree and, in return for their kindness, I ask that they allow me to buy them lunch upon our arrival. At first, they politely decline, but after my continued assurances that I am basically harmless and well intentioned, they acquiesce. I do my best to keep all thoughts of cool afternoon showers and wet bathrobes from taking cohesive shape in my libidinous imagination.

The bus finally clatters and coughs into a sweltering La Paz. It is 104°, the air thick with sunlit exhaust from pre-siesta cars, motorbikes, buses and trucks, an ultraviolet atmospheric condition which no doubt prevailed on the surface of Venus just prior to its non-habitability. We head for a small beanery across the street from the bus terminal. Until this moment, I have been superficially dispassionate while listening to the Girls of the Gospels explain the tenets of their religion. In the main, it seems loving and uplifting, but we have yet to explore its dark underbelly. Over the midday meal I drop all pretense of casual inquiry and initiate a full court press. I wish to learn the ultimate fate of those of us who are not "Christian".

My companions sit upright and stiffen as they resist giving an immediate and forthright explanation of their belief in this matter, choosing rather to walk gingerly along the edges of this issue. As I move in for the informational kill, they softly inform me in the manner of a physician who carries the unhappy news of a patient's fatal malady, that those of us who don't embrace God the way the ladies say we should cannot dwell in the eternal presence of the lord.

"Where do the rest of us go?," I ask incredulously.

Just above a whisper, Joan replies, "There's only one other place..."

As blood rises to my already sun-baked face, I discover myself sitting again in the dreary, familiar place reserved for the infidel by the True Believer.

"Well, ladies, I think you ought to know", I inform them, "that you've just been fed by a Buddhist."

Attempting to remain non-plused, Joan feints curiosity. "Oh. And what's the Buddhist view in this matter?"

Tight lipped and demure, they listen as I explain that, from where I sit, there are as many roads to Rome as there are travelers. "We each discover our own way to the center of things. A rain forest dweller's way to God is different, but worth no less than that of a devout Christian, Buddhist, Muslim...or pantheist. God's too big to fit into one religion."

An awkward silence falls over the table, the hiss of a small television across the room the only sound permeating the charged atmosphere. Mexico has just lost a world cup soccer match to rival Ireland, and the announcer is screaming like a mortally wounded animal.

I raise my watch arm. "Well, ladies, I can see by Micky's little hand that it's time for me to catch my bus..." We are saved from further inabilities to bridge the gap of intolerance by the mercies of the clock. Perhaps this is the intended function of time; it allows us the interludes we need to grow through our varied prejudices, our unwillingness to accept the unknowable nature things.

Still, there is something in Jill's eyes that says, "I want to know more." Before we part, she writes their names and addresses on a small piece of paper. I promise to write.

As I watch my former companions walk deeper into the intolerably bright streets of La Paz, assured of their own rectitude, I am weighted down by luggage and an aching heart. Within moments, I am boarding the bus for the next leg of my adventure. As I mount the steps, a small piece of paper drops from my hand and is caught by the late afternoon breeze, floating over the bus towards the vast and empty desert.