11 March 2009
Rain finally gave up. It all got soaked. Passport, clothes.
Clothes mildewed. No more "most likely" in:re shoes. Shoes
ruined. All I have to wear. Will apologize for shoe stink on
plane if sitting next to pretty girl. Otherwise, fuck it. If
pretty girl non-English speaking Panamanian, fuck it. Fuck it,
maybe, even if English speaking girl pretty girl. What use do I
have for pretty girls?

Eaten alive. Mosquitoes? Panamanian mosquitoes are fucking kil-
lers. I've read the history books. Promised mosquito netting ne-
ver put up. Sleeping in room with roof, but no door or window
coverings. If panther climbs stairs during attempts to sleep,
may be mauled. Stairs are climbable. Father's dogs do it. Fa-
ther's dogs wake me, won't leave. Have enough trouble sleeping
as is. Howler monkeys howl. Earplugs only so useful. Covered
windows and a door would help muffle sound. At least there is
roof.

Beat stepmother in game of Scrabble. First word--FUNNELER--a
bingo. Seventy points. Less impressive game than first word
might indicate. Final score: 310-276. Narrower margin of vic-
tory than I have enjoyed playing Scrabble on-line with
friends. Difference is not having up to a day between moves.


12 March 2009
Sun came out yesterday. Sunburn resulted. Also, yesterday,
Father and I left his house ("The Octagon"), and we won't be
back. Not a part of the original plan. Am secretly miffed a-
bout it. Why:

Came into the city to pick up one of Father's fraternity "bro-
thers" (really a kid younger than I my father mentored, hence
non condescendingly intended quotations; whatever the case,
same fraternity, so same terminology used to describe rela-
tionship). Is spending rest of trip with us. He and five o-
thers supposed to come week after I left, but the five others
all bailed, and, somehow, it happened he came this week in-
stead of next. Father sounds more like a choad (chode?) when
around another frat boy.

Also invited one his old military buddies to come in on Fri-
day. (Circumstances behind invitation, but do not feel like
relating them.) In both cases, Father set it up and then
asked me if I minded. Would have said was fine with it.
Would have been a lie. This was expensive trip for me.

Frat brother and army buddy aren't so bad. Decent guys, I
suppose. Drink beer, talk politics, talk economy, talk sex-
ual conquests. Not my preferred topics of conversation.

Haven't had time or agreeable conditions to do any work.
Only sitting surface in what is referred to as a bodega but
is not (glorified tool shed where Father sleeps in hammock
suspended from screws in north and south-facing walls, keeps
generator-powered laptop, propane-powered refrigerator) is a
plank on a mini work ladder. Sitting on that plank wrecked
my ass. My ass is wrecked. Luckily, can't feel much of it,
anyway. Or unluckily, maybe. When you have nerve damage in
your ass, you don't notice you are wrecking your ass until
it is too late. Muscles give when you try to walk. That is
how you tell.


13 March 2009
In Panama City since Thursday. First night, stayed in while
Father, frat brother and army buddy went out drinking. Hoped
to grade. Managed to grade one paper. Papers still damp.
Satchel destroyed by weather and clumsiness. Replaced with
too-expensive backpack father insisted on buying for me.
Will miss that satchel. Second night, went drinking with the
three. Alpha male posturing tiresome. Out-machoed group by
eating eyeballs of seaside-served fish. Head and tails still
on. Reminded of Chinatown scene with John Huston. ("Fine,
as long as you don't serve the chicken that way." Forget it,
Beau. It's Panama.) Tagged along to strip clubs. Depressing.
Kissed by stripper. Smelled like stripper for rest of night.

Alone, now. Father & Co. left me in Panama City to fend for
self with non-existent (Panamanian) Spanish. English use-
less, here. German is useless, here. Not like I have much
German left in me. Dread gesticulating for cab driver. Have
rehearsed canned phrases. Hope they will be enough to get me
to airport. Had bad experience at laundromat. Got clothes
back, at least. Could understand maybe quarter of what wash-
erwoman said to me. Only understanding quarter can be deadly.
("Are you American?" versus, "If you tell me you are Ameri-
can, I will shoot you in the face.") Lowered head in shame
and left. She was saying something about money. Mildew smell
less pervasive in everything but shoes. Said already, but
begs repeating: shoes ruined.

Had hoped to use services of specific cab driver one last
time. Cab drivers set own prices in Panama. If you find
reasonable one, is possible to get cell number. Father had
told this cab driver in broken Spanish that I needed ride to
airport first day we were back in Panama City. Father be-
came angry with him for hiking price on long drive, tossed
number, closed window. To be fair to cab driver, Father was
asking him to drive unreasonably far away from inner city.
When price was hiked (can understand some, even if cannot
participate), Father shouted, "No mas!" made exaggerated
circle with index finger, and followed with "Regresso!"
every time driver tried to speak. Trilled R with every "Re-
gresso!" Thirty minute ride back uncomfortable.

* * *

And that's all I wrote, journal-wise, while in Panama.

When I got back, I landed in JFK. Funny thing, though, was that my "connecting flight" was out of Newark, NJ. It's not like this was a surprise sprung on me at the last moment. It was right there on my ticket. My assumption was that this was a common thing, and that there would be constant shuttling out of the City That Doesn't Sleep to Newark. I was even dumb enough to think it might be free. Turns out there were shuttles, but they didn't start shuttling until 6:00 a.m. I had taken the red-eye into JFK, had landed at 2:35, and had gotten myself on the U.S. side of customs by 3:30.

I had a bit of a wait. During this wait, I discovered that one could not ride the shuttle without a reservation, and that one could not make a reservation until the desk opened at 6:00. This would mean that I would not be able to take the 6:00 shuttle, and would have to wait for the 6:20 shuttle. The shuttle price, at $27 dollars was fairly attractive, but less so than a free shuttle ride's price would have been. Since I needed to arrive at least two hours early for my 9:00 flight, and since I was warned that the shuttle ride could take up to an hour and a half, I opted for a cab ride there. (Why the fuck would the scheduling folks schedule it so that a person who landed in JFK would have to fly out of Newark, anyway, unless it was doable?) The cab ride cost me an uncool ninety-five dollars. I'd already blown six hundred on the flights. Why they gotta go and add more traveling expenses for me?

So, anyway, I made it into St. Louis.

But let's back up for a second to the day I flew out of St. Louis. I had had to drive to the airport, since my flight to Panama was scheduled to leave earlier than the MetroLink began running. A friend offered to drive me, but I didn't want my friend to have to get up at three in the morning.

On the drive, my car started acting amiss. Blown spark plug, I guessed. (It would turn out to be a correct guess.) No time to get it fixed. I sputtered into the long-term parking complex rather pathetically, withdrew a parking card from the dispenser, and left my car to stew in its wanton jalopiness. (I can only assume its jaloposity is a wanton one. Do I not treat it right? Do I not keep its various fluid at agreeable levels? Do I not air and rotate the tires as needed? Do I not have its leaks professionally patched, its belts replaced, its occasional wheel unevennesses aligned? (The trip was an off one from the very start, as you can see.) And it repays me an almost dependable refusal to work properly. *sigh*

You want to know what's really annoying about those money pits we call automobiles? We sink all that money into them not so they can perform spectacularly well, but just so they can work like they are supposed to work. Five hundred on a clutch replacement doesn't give you a car that can fold laundry, feed the cat, dust your bookshelf, or file your taxes for you. No, it just gets you a new clutch, which new clutch clutches clutchily, and does nothing more.

Wouldn't you know it? I've gone and digressed.

Remember that parking card I got from the dispenser? Well, it had gotten completely soaked in my wallet. I was afraid the card reader would not read the card, as it had become flimsy and wrinkled. Miraculously, it did. Less miraculously, I was charged for an extra day because I did not make it out before noon. I pulled up to the window some five-ten minutes too late. If the card had been damaged, I would have had to have paid extra. I am currently not in a position to pay extra.

Remember those insect bites from way back in the journal excerpts? Once I had gotten good and comfortable in my knowledge that the whole Panamanian ordeal was through with me (and I with it), I was happy. Then the itch started. And it persisted from one day to the next. I did what people do: I got on the Internet and tried my hand at a self-diagnosis. It must not have been mosqitoes, right, since the itch would have gone after a day or so? All my symptoms seemed to my untrained eye to be consistent with scabies. I went to the university health center and discovered that it was, indeed, scabies.

I have mother-fuckin' scabies! One last parting gift from scenic Panama!

Did I mention the scabies?

I did?

Oh.

Well, I got mother-fuckin' scabies.

Wow.

Sounds like you won't be visiting your dad again any time soon. Sorry to hear you had such a bad trip. That's one of my biggest worries about vacations. You save up you time off from work, not to mention the money and look forward to it for weeks or months, only to have it suck! Given that your trip was to visit family, it just adds to my theory that "vacations" to visit family are not really vacations at all. Which is why I'm dreading the possible trip to visit my parents in early April. I don't really want to waste my vacation time or the money, but am being guilt tripped into going.

Thurston McQ wrote:Smelled like stripper for rest of night.

You say that like its a bad thing. I go out of my way to smell like that!

Did I say "stripper"? I meant to specify "rundown Panamanian stripper."

Also, I won't be able to visit my father for a while. He is moving to Iraq to train some soldiers in the art of sumpin-sumpin. It's all very hush-hush.

I added two paragraphs I had left out of the original transcription. I would have added them sooner, but I just found them this morning. They were scribbled on scraps, and were/are thus technically not a part of my actual journal.

The first one involves Austrian restaurateurs, the second one a Panamanian cab driver.