Guilty gold, and that means yours

Five years ago, I hadn't heard of Tegucigalpa and it's been at least that long since I've played a game of pool, but still I found myself there in October, teaching a group of Guatemalan Mayan men the ropes. Honestly, I wouldn't have been so confident as to teach them had I thought they'd ever played before, because I am a fraud. Knowing only the basic rules, I'm not qualified to be a teacher, but they were eager to learn and I couldn't refuse an opportunity to bond with them outside of the day's more serious agenda.

We were there together, in my most hated city, to learn about the business of gold mines in Central America, how they spray cyanide from sprinkler systems adjacent to the road into town to extract the gold, and how complicated it can be to hold Canadian companies accountable in countries suffering from rampant high-level corruption. Some rules are not meant to be broken, not by anybody, like the ones designed to protect people.

It was nice to relax and shoot some pool after a long days of speaking with locals suffering from heavy metal poisoning, human rights lawyers and doctors.


I was OK, and coming to terms with the effects of environmental ruin and disregard for quality of life, until we met a two-year-old girl with a rigid spine and underdeveloped leg muscles, incapable of walking - a typical result of heavy metal poisoning according to a volunteering Canadian doctor with us. Looking around at her home environment, its steep hills and muddy paths, I knew as well as her mother, that not even a wheelchair will help her. I cried because I was overwhelmed, and so were the Guatemalans.

The group were community representatives had travelled from various areas of the Guatemalan highlands, where the same and more Canadian goldmining companies plan to establish and expand operations. They were here to visit a Honduran community where such a mine has been operating for eight years, and see whether company promises had been kept. For them, everything is at risk, their health, homes and livelihoods. Mining companies have made them lots of promises, touting development and prosperity, but the Guatemalans wanted to see for themselves the reality of the deal on-site in Honduras. So, these few elected representatives travelled by bus from isolated mountain areas, where they live in modest homes, without regular access to phones or internet, to Tegucigalpa. They weren't impressed by what they saw, not at all, and neither was I. They are, however, the ones who'll suffer as they inevitably lose their battle against these major and powerful companies.

I am ashamed that this company is one in which all Canadians are forced to invest through the Canadian Pension Plan and the Quebec Pension Plan, and that I didn't know that before this trip. I tried to communicate that to my Guatemalan companions, when they asked me, an unlikely ambassador, why Canadians allow things like this to happen. Ouch. Apparently, they have more faith in Canadians than I do. The days, hard questions and difficult stories to hear, left me emotionally exhausted, and by the time we shared our nightly meals of overcooked meat, beans, rice and corn tortillas, I just wanted to go to bed.

Limited by our shared vocabularies, we eventually ran out of words for each other. There was nothing more to say but, "godspeed", and we didn't know how. So, we played pool and didn't keep score, instead. We'd shared the human experience, and there were no clear winners.

For more information:
http://www.rightsaction.org/articles/goldcorp_siria_valley_012508.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0K1XzNPTcMA

Mice and manimals

To provide a little context, my suitor bears the name of a medium-sized carnivore, and while he blames his draft-dodging, naturalist parents for this, I couldn't help but notice some physical resemblance to his namesake. Thankfully, his looks are more intriguing than freakish, and I appreciate a little chest hair and a healthy bite.

This manimal is a musician, another one. As usual, I assumed I wouldn't adore the sound his band produces, but they’re doing fine without me. Plus, I seem doomed to date short, touring musicians, so, that up to that point, everything seemed normal.

He called the day after we’d first met, twice. First to argue about who picked up whom, and then to arrange to meet. Not knowing much about him (nothing at all, actually), other than his ability to make me laugh, I thought it best to begin with an easily escapable afternoon encounter. Thinking that if we met for a casual beer, we could opt to continue into the evening or simply escape with a politely believable excuse and without awkwardness. It's a technique I learned from a master, another short musician I dated and occasionally re-encounter.

When the time came, however, he was tied up and asked if we could meet later in the evening, negotiating a "nine-thirty neighbourhood bar date." He said the “d” word, and he said it with confidence. I panicked. I'd been in pleasant denial thinking that at worst I might make a new friend, and at best we might identify some common ground and arrange a real date, sometime later, more than five days after breaking it off with the previous candidate. This guy, I realized, plays hardball. We'd be stuck together, consciously and uncomfortably assessing our compatibility. If it didn't go well, someone was going to feel like a wanker.

When I hung up with him, there was a sweet voicemail invitation waiting from a film-maker I'd met months earlier. Coincidentally, he happens to be named after a common plant. I called my mom and told her I was officially, though perhaps not happily, through with the Moroccan Jew and have inadvertently found myself mingling with flora and fauna in his wake. One at a time, I reminded myself, and began carefully selecting the kind of outfit that says: If I look this good in these crappy clothes, imagine how hot I'll be when I try.

On my mother's advice, I checked to make sure I had enough cash in my purse to cover an escape taxi, and some consolation drinks should I meet with my girlfriends later to commiserate. Save for some coins, my wallet was empty, so I ran to a bank machine just before heading out to meet him.

Anxiety was building because not only did I have to admit I was on a real date, but I'd agreed to meet at a place with some foul shui. I've endured more than a few awkward moments at the resto-bar, and I prefer to blame the venue rather than my own inability to learn from experience. Still, I was willing to give it another chance.

With fifteen minutes to spare, the ATM ate my bank card. I prayed as I ran to a friend's house to beg for sympathy and some cash and continued on my way. I was feeling off my game, sideswiped by fate and $20 in her debt. It was all she had on her. I could only hope that chivalry would pay for what friendship could not cover.

I was torn between wanting to arrive a few minutes early to physically recover from the sub-zero temperatures before he walked in, and not wanting to seem too eager. Deciding that Canadians consider red cheeks and the sniffles inevitable rites of winter passage, I got over it as best I could, and went straight away. We arrived at exactly the same time. I kiss-kissed him, as is customary in Quebec, and began peeling and unravelling woollen layers from my head, neck and body, to reveal my carefully planned attire.

The manimal was very sweet and did and said everything he could to make me comfortable. Still, I was a little anxious, and both talked and drank too much and too fast. I saw him notice my depleting pint, and only then did I realize I was way ahead of him. Way ahead. Resorting to deep breaths rather than gulps, I recovered. Conversation soon flowed faster than ale. We laughed for nearly an hour’s time before I saw my recent ex’s friends settle into seats not especially far from ours. A second, lesser bout of panic set in. I rationalized. I’d never been to this bar with him, so there was no need to worry he might show up. Right?

Losing myself in conversation, I enjoyed the fun-loving doofus' company (and I say that in the kindest way). We shared more drinks, decadent snacks and I laughed like a fool, a drunk one. He laughed until he snorted, and then he laughed some more. I appreciated his humility, his exquisite humanness, and the ease of the encounter. Then, I noticed at the table to my left, a familiar perfectly shaped head with soft, thinning hair, crowning an ever-tasteful collared shirt and his favourite wool sweater.

I had no idea how long he'd been there, his back to me, barely out of earshot. This is the kind of fun I never had with you, I thought. The shortcomings of the new candidate before me were tannic, as were the few but sublime merits of the other, and I felt a little corner of my heart chip off and lodge itself in my throat. I cursed feng shui once again.

I stumbled back into the conversation and struggled to maintain focus. Think of the awkwardness in terms of minutes rather than severity, I coaxed myself. This is no big deal, I told myself. I am here with a sweet guy who is trying really hard to be great, and I should enjoy that for what it is. It was a pep talk.

At that moment, he leaned in, his eyes wide, and blurted, "What the hell is that?" He was looking right at me when he said it, and I felt a wave of insecurity rush through me. I was terrified of the possible answers. "Oh my god, is that supposed to be there?" I turned my head to my right shoulder, the one that seemed to have captured his attention, and there it sat. A little grey mouse was clinging to my sweater, also wide-eyed, and looking back at me. Seconds later, as I registered what was happening, it ran back down my body and slipped through a crack between the floor and the wall. My date and I stared at each other, mouths agape.

He later confessed that it had been sitting there for a while. Having briefly dated a girl with a pet rat and another with a snake, he'd assumed the mouse was mine. Why else would it be there on my shoulder looking at him, while I remained unaffected? For minutes he'd silently debated whether he could be into a girl who would take a pet mouse to a bar for a date and fail to address it. Although I was probably flaky and weird, he thought, I was cute enough and he'd give me a try regardless.

The now manic waitress, who witnessed the mouse's escape down my back, apologized profusely, cancelled our bill and offered us anything more we could possibly want, so long as we kept the incident private vs. public. Oops.

Ultimately, my date determined that the mouse was a good omen, and a sign to leave the bad feng shui and ex to contend with each other. We donned our many layers of warmth and wandered off into the chilly Canadian winter's eve, returning to our natural state of red cheeks, runny noses and not a significant worry in the world.

Requiem for his moon, not mine

Nighttime on the canal with no one around, at the edge of the city on a floating pier, we had a late picnic of sushi and beer under the full moon. I had been thinking about how interesting it is that people from such different places can meet by chance and get along so easily, so well. How was it that I was able to invite a near stranger, a traveller, to stay with me for nearly two months, and not regret it? Luck perhaps, or instinct, or necessity. Or, good looks. We talked of choices and chance, and life philosophies.

He told me of a night a few years earlier when he'd suddenly realized that he would never walk on the moon. It was a thought he hadn't had since he was a child, but as that child, it was what he'd most desired and somehow it had transformed from a dream to an impossibility. With that realization, he cried, he said, and did for hours. He mourned for all the decisions he didn't make, for terminal inaction. His relationship with the moon was condemned to be the same as nearly everyone's.

Every decision we make is to the exclusion of something else. Not making a decision is, in a way, also a choice. I knew exactly what he was talking about. As time passes, our options and priorities change. As I reflect on decisions I have and haven't made in my time so far, some of my choices seem to make more sense than they seemed initially, and others less. One by one, little by little, though, certain routes were more attractive than others, and here I am. Somehow, I ended up this person. Me. A single twenty-nine-year-old, living on my own 2000 km from where I grew up, wishing I hadn't had a cappuccino so late at night so that I could just stop thinking and go to sleep.

Without suggesting that the alternatives would have made me any happier, I know that my life could be very different right now. I believe, for example, that I could already be married and possibly even divorced and remarried. I might even have children. I could be working nine-to-five and making a very competitive salary with benefits. I might be an investigative journalist or photographer. I might be fluent in five languages. I might live in Buenos Aires.

Ultimately, I didn't choose those paths, and I wonder if they ever really were an option for me, up to now. Such choices require a certain amount of conviction, and whenever I seem to get very close to one of the above, I buy a plane, train or bus ticket instead, and let my absence decide for me. Does that make me an escapist? Perhaps. But, when I think about it, missing out on any of those things does not affect me nearly as much as wishing I'd have been this independent and motivated sooner. I've never wanted to walk on the moon, and everything I want is still within reach. For that, I am thankful.

Me, Mom & Polish Sausage

There are some things you should never tell your mother.

I've learned this lesson late in life. I am not talking about the obvious stuff. Generally, I avoid telling her anything that might cause her to worry more than she already does. Why would I want to make more work for myself? As it is, she panics when I get a headache, something about tumours and microwaves.

Last summer, for instance, when I was injured by a bicycle-ramming pervert in a city park, I just didn't mention it to her. Though I was tempted to tell her -- particularly when I mused that the remaining scar on my knee is a perfectly shaped "p" for "pervert"-- I resisted. She wouldn't understand how I could make light of the incident. She would want to think that was the worst thing that's ever happened to me, and it would bother her that apparently it's not.

The year before, some drunk opened fire in my direction during Easter weekend celebrations in Honduras. I knew immediately it would be one travel tale she would never hear. It remains a favourite of mine, primarily because I didn't die, but I know my mother, and she would stop listening before I even got to the part about life mimicking TV, when my friend yelled, "Hit the ground!"

No. These stories are kept in the same box that I keep my how-I-accidentally-lost-my-virginity account. Now that I have been an adult for nearly twelve years, everything else is fair game. I've really opened up to her about my dating and sex life, likely for no greater reason than to see her squirm, and she has become a true, albeit reluctant, confidante.

When a new guy I was dating avoided having sex with me, I called my mom. She suggested that perhaps he was just a little old fashioned and was taking it slow, that he was probably very sweet and respectful. She also said that any nice woman should take at least six months to get to know a man before jumping into bed with him. When I was done laughing, I mocked her until she hung up. Since then, she's redefined her idea of a "slut" because she doesn't want me to be one. You can imagine the pleasure I took in informing her that it wasn't that the guy was taking his time, it was that the anti-anxiety medication he was on had triggered some sort of erectile dysfunction. She muttered something about cows and free milk, and I said something about how practice makes perfect, and she let it go.

Still, she has become quite comfortable with the idea that, if not the degree to which, I am a sexually active woman. Perhaps I overestimated her level of comfort, but I definitely took it too far this Christmas. Mom, I am sorry.

We had a few last-minute groceries to pick up before settling in for the holidays, and as we pulled into the carpark, I recalled how much I used to hate shopping with her there. It had little to do with her, aside from her love of kielbasa, and everything to do with the deli counter staff. When I was sixteen, he was in college, and I had already nurtured a two-year crush on him. When I was in college, he became the deli guy, and every time I came home to visit, my mom would take me to the grocery store and have me stand in front of him and talk about Polish sausage. I would blush, he would smirk, and my mom was never the wiser.

He has since moved on, perhaps to bigger and better deli counters, and so I thought I might finally be able to tell my mom my story. I began gently, and tested the waters.

"Mom, you are comfortable with the concept that your daughter has sex, right?"

"Pfft!" she said. "By now? I'd certainly say so."

"OK, well I have a funny story about the deli guy who used to work here."

She tried to remember him.

"You know how you always bought his sausage? Well, he was the first guy I ever gave a blowjob, and so, in a way, he gave both of us sausage. Ha!"

That was my punchline. What was I thinking!? It's not even funny. She'd had been less disturbed had I defecated in the aisle. It threw me off my game, and I regretted bringing up fellatio. It was too much for my sixty-year-old mother.

"I thought you were comfortable with me having sex," I said, cringing.

"I said I was comfortable with you having SEX!" she yelled through her teeth, "but not..."

At first she couldn't bring herself to say it, and eventually she hissed and spit the words, "...not ORAL sex with the sausage guy!"

Her delivery was perfect and, momentarily, I forgot that I regretted telling her the story. Then, with a cruelty of which only mothers are capable, to punish me, her next sentence began with, "You know, your father and I..."

I didn't stick around for the verb. Even as I escaped down another aisle, I could hear her cackling in victory. There are some things you should never tell your mother and, likewise, your kids.

For a brighter f(l)uture

The sun rose and set every day this week. I am sure it must have. Someone would have told me otherwise. I wouldn't know though, not from the artificially induced gloom of my bedroom, or from under my millefeuille bed of blankets. I watched the goings on of outside from the comfort of my bed, filtered through my laptop via online news sources. It was an important week, like most weeks, but I had absolutely nothing to do with it.

My horoscope arrived via email and, to my relief, at least promised me a future. Some people emailed, others called to check in, but I didn't actually see or touch another warm body for three days. I wouldn't have known so many days had passed if it wasn't for a call reminding me of a friend's birthday party. I hadn't bought a gift.

The last interaction I remembered was ordering in. I knew I was falling ill, and decided to treat myself to a giant hot chicken noodle soup cure. The delivery man, like all delivery men, got lost in my building, and I ventured out in my pyjamas to find him with only that one thing on my mind. So I left the safety of my apartment, used the last bits of my stamina to run down three flights of stairs, and realized suddenly, coldly, that I was locked out. Mine is not a merciful god.

I shivered in the frosty entrance and buzzed the concierge. When she finally answered, she seemed unwilling to understand my predicament. We jostled the conversation between French and Spanish, both muffled through the fog of my fever, and finally reached an agreement. She would lend me her copy of my house keys, but she wouldn't like it. The deal seemed fair to me.

Nearly a full week later, I've come to.

I'm a few pounds lighter, totally exhausted, and all that has seemed to change is that crying is now en vogue for U.S. presidential candidates.