I have to write this before the details fade. It blends too much together already—the bitter into the sweet, chocolate into cream.
It started with an offer. A simple meal for three. It was late but it was warm and humid like Lima always is in summer, and I knew we could cook quickly. From me, fresh green lentils, miso, carrots, huacatay. Their contribution, rice, onion, and olive oil. And a bottle of wine I had bought, something special but so ordinary that I insisted we open it.
Cooking was easy, I told them, but their eyes opened in that awe-struck way when I talked about meals I’d made: pho’ ga from scratch with a headless, barely plucked chicken that had hung from a hook at the central market. Just a series of steps, followed. The purple sweet potatoes from the Saturday morning Bioferia organic market combined with Chef Henry’s miso, Peruvian honey, and key lime. And gas stove-blackened baby eggplants with sesame oil and miso and green onions—pure comfort.
What about soba noodles? his friend asked. Could I make those from scratch?
Yes, but there was no buckwheat in Peru so I’d do it with ground canihua flour instead—the cousin of quinoa, it was dark purple, rough, and wonderfully bitter. Rolled by hand with water and salt, boiled 2 minutes, cooled, and dipped in locally-fermented wheat-free tamari and lime. He friend didn’t come to this meal, leaving the two of us alone despite having requested the meal itself.
But for days after our first meal together, we walked. Three nights walking all around Miraflores. I wanted to show him El Enano. He already knew it, so we sat on a bench in the middle of José Pardo and talked about how the district was changing with tourists and banks and rich locals. We walked through the busy park in the middle of Miraflores where pickpockets used to operate in hordes south of the Ovalo. Sometimes it’s closed at night. Sometimes not. That night Peruvians and tourists alike were out with ice cream cones, and we watched it all unfold.
We walked through La Calle de Pizza, the tourist alley lined with restaurants serving overpriced Peruvian and North American specialties to travelers, sometimes with live music. Wedged between them all was the salsa club that was rarely full, and running the spectacle in the alley were the 20 or so people hired to accost walkers with invitations into the restaurants and clubs, or offering drugs and prostitutes (because that’s what all tourists want, yes?).
In the day on the weekend when he was off work and I wasn’t rehearsing, teaching, or writing, we walked to the Malecon and talked about yoga, Buddhism, and zen. He, a non-practicing Buddhist; me, a non-Hindu yogi. He, American, blond, tall, born for the water, then Peace Corp, then a medical researcher of endemic disease, here two more months. Me, small, brown hair, percussionist, teacher, writer, adventurer, climber, here three more weeks.
He led me through a yoga series by the water. I led him through another. He said I’d make a good yoga teacher. I took it as an insult, but thanked him for his intention.
I showed him my favourite calming pose—hips against the wall, back on the floor, legs straight up, all the blood draining from swollen legs back to the heart. Peace. We talked like that most nights, stretching our backs. It was sweet and simple. Our minds open to each others’ opinions and ideas, I felt. In retrospect, his permanently closed.
I met his American research friends from the university. We’d go for sushi or burritos or to parties. He made a comment about not having a girlfriend at his friends’ apartment once, two weeks into our relationship. My heart cringed. I was less to him than I thought. But we put our legs up and my heart released.
“What does it mean to be romantic? I don’t think I know,” he said to me in the Miraflores park one night, a few days before I had to leave. It was warm, and we sat on a bench partly hidden behind a short wall that afforded some privacy in the public space.
“Maybe it’s easier to say what romantic isn’t. It isn’t forced demonstrations of love. It isn’t necessarily swearing your eternal love for someone, or serenading them, or calling them endearing names like so many Peruvians do. Everyone here says they’re in love and it’s passionate. They fight. They cry. They swear their worlds are collapsing when he or she leaves. They beg. But I think romantic is more an issue of respect. It’s more the reasons for the actions. Holding a door open for a woman or bringing her flowers to honour her, to respect her, not because you’re supposed to because you’re her boyfriend/husband/lover.”
And he looked at me, and his eyes said he respected me. And he held my gaze with the same awe-struck look.
“That’s romantic,” I told him.
One night I broke his desk. I sat on it and it just collapsed. Miniscule me. His television that he never watched fell to the ground, his bowl, plate, spoon, and mug fell. Nothing broke. He didn’t yell but he was upset. I apologized, repeatedly, like a Canadian. And I left, wondering if he was angry at me or just unable to laugh at the situation yet. We didn’t talk that evening, or walk, or think.
And we never talked about it. Some day it would be funny, I thought.
Two days later we were back to normal. Nothing had happened. He helped me buy a local cellphone, almost. We’d gone to several stores but I didn’t have my passport, which one requires, and it was too expensive at another. I ended up getting one on my own several days later. I got a better deal, despite my poor Spanish. We would meet up later that night, we’d decided. But he never texted me back. I went to his place down the road where he said he’d be to wait for him. He was there. All was well. He just hadn’t answered the text.
I met more of his co-workers. Me, the only non-medical student. Them, all American. We sat in the second floor of a sushi restaurant in Miraflores in a private tatami room, sitting on cushions. They respected my knowledge of Peruvian food, and my not being a regular tourist. I was there to perform in a music festival, teach a masterclass, give private lessons. And to write a travel article for a local paper at home. Yes, I could do all that, I said. Each makes the other possible. We didn’t hold hands around them. He didn’t kiss me around them, but they knew we were together. I didn’t need more than that.
The next time we cooked at his place: fish and rice with Andean spices. I put my arms around him as he stirred a pot. He asked me not to stop. I trusted him. I told him I never lied and that I thought he was a good person. He told me I thought everyone was a good person. He didn’t like my friends where I was staying. He didn’t like cooking there. He liked cooking at his place. I liked the privacy of his place, but I liked the people where I was staying. They were good people, even if he didn’t see eye to eye with them. One Peruvian and another Canadian. Both very different from him. Travelers, both, but one young and idealistic. Smart and opinionated. The other older and passionate. Not letting the world take advantage of him, complaining when it tried.
I wanted to be friends with the American friends of my American, but something didn’t click with them. They stayed American in a South American context, never adapting. They weren’t friends with many Peruvians. They worked all the time together and then went out together, spending the money Peruvians don’t have because of the poor exchange rate. We were rich by local standards. Fine restaurants and expensive bars catered to us, not to Peruvians. If we’d wanted, drugs and prostitutes. Instead, chain frozen yogurt in the tourist area and another plate of sushi. Surfing and bus trips. Taxis everywhere at poorly negotiated rates, because what was an extra $5?
I had three days left. I insisted we go to the Magical Circuit of Water. Multiple fountains in a giant park. Families, couples, tourists, all watching tacky projections, walking through big lines under shoots of water, nothing special. Nothing like the Bellagio Fountains in Las Vegas. Not coordinated to music. One with projections of traditional dancing made at least 20 years ago. Peruvians loved it. Lovers kissed. We laughed, rolled our eyes, and gave in to forced romance. Knowing how fake it was made our smiles more sincere. The last water-less tunnel explaining the making of the fountains and the water resources in the rest of Peru was the most interesting part of the grounds for both of us. And we smiled because of the shared sentiment as much as the quaintness of the fountain park experience.
And we spent our last night together, his eyes telling me he loved me, neither of us saying it. “How much of what we feel is because this is an adventure in a foreign, exotic place?” he asked. “Is it more serious for us because it’s something exciting and not real? Will we go home and it won’t mean anything?”
I considered it seriously. I’d considered it already.
“Because, for me,” he continued, “that’s not it.”
“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t part of it for me. How could it not be? But I also think it’s real. I don’t want to go home and give up and forget about us, and think ‘well, that was fun.'”
“I’ll look forward to hearing from you tonight when you get home, then.”
And he did. We skyped every other day.
At first.
“I’m looking forward to getting to know you better this way,” he said sincerely the first time we talked. He was making dinner. It was as though I was making dinner with him, listening to him move around his small kitchen, chop my favourite sweet potatoes, just without my arms around him.
I shouldn’t have believed him. Like I shouldn’t have believed much of what he said in Lima.
He stopped answering my emails. No reason. Just stopped. When we did work out an hour to Skype, and he eventually showed up, hours late, he would say he just didn’t read them sometimes, the emails. He was busy. He was stressed. Managing time was hard for him.
One night he was drunk. He told me he missed me so much. Why wasn’t I there with him? Why had I left? I would show him how to handle the stress of the work situation he was in so much better. I was so good at that. I’d be a cool-minded third party to talk him through it. I was practical and beautiful, he said. I didn’t wonder if those really went together.
And then he disappeared. He was coming to New York to check out a graduate school. I could meet him there, I’d said, if he’d like. He said he wanted me there, but he didn’t tell me where he was staying. He didn’t tell me when he was arriving. He didn’t know yet, he said. He missed me, though. I missed him. And I did.
I booked the trip anyway, planning to drive down with friends and stay with him. Hoping he’d get in touch at the last minute. He was home in California with family right now, which was probably why he wasn’t answering my email. He didn’t have a phone. He wasn’t on skype. Why wasn’t he contacting me if he wanted me there? I contacted a colleague of his in Lima. She said he was probably fine. I was worried. Could she contact his boss and ask if he’d heard from him? It wasn’t like him to disappear completely, I thought.
The day after he was supposed to arrive in New York I finally reached him. He’d had hotel trouble. “I could have come if you’d just gotten in touch with me. I was worried. I didn’t know where you were. Do you have any idea how inconsiderate that was and how much it hurt me?” I tried to keep the pain out of my voice.
He didn’t apologize. He had only a minute before his computer died. He’d lost the charger. I gave him my phone number. He didn’t leave his hotel to get a phone card. He wouldn’t pay international fees. I heard from him two days later.
“The hotel is so expensive.”
“I could have gotten us a place to stay…” I said.
“Why didn’t you tell me!”
I couldn’t breathe. The air stopped.
Finally, “Because you didn’t answer my emails…”
“But you could have told me!”
How?
But I kept talking with him for the next month, on and off, when he wanted to. I missed him. He said he missed me. Sometimes more than others.
He missed Skype dates. I waited for hours. My bitter tears falling like drops from the magical fountains where we’d held hands and laughed at the silliness of it all. I put my feet up on the wall and looked right and he wasn’t there. No amount of blood flooding back to my heart could calm me. And he wouldn’t answer my emails.
One day while I was at work he messaged me on Gmail chat. Sorry he’d missed our date the night before on Skype. Where was he? I asked. Busy. He couldn’t tell me? If he couldn’t respect me how was this going to work? I asked.
“Give me another chance,” he said.
“Why should I?”
And that was the last thing we said to each other. I’d expected an answer, but he never did send one. Ever. I sent him an email a few days later saying in a year I hoped to know how he was and thanks for the time in Lima. No answer.
How do you forget someone like that? How do you take all the control in a relationship from their fingers that you loved so much wrapped around your chest while you stirred a pot of rice? How do you be so disrespectful when you understand even the first things about romance and love?
And he crushed me. With every day he didn’t hear from me he crushed me, and the Peruvian passion in me fought with the Canadian reserve, and I swallowed both.
And then seven moths later I went to the city where he was doing graduate school. And I sent him an email after hours of debating whether it was worth it.He probably wouldn’t answer. And he’d blocked me on skype and gmail so I didn’t see when he was online. He probably wouldn’t even get the email. Was it too painful for him? Or did he not want to deal with it? I’d probably end up going through more pain for nothing.
“I’m in the city until Thursday morning,” I wrote. “We should get together. Let me know if you’re free.” I kept it short, so there would be hope he’d read it.
And he answered. Out of the abyss of the internet came: “Hi! I have a midterm tomorrow night but we could meet after. What time do you leave Thursday?”
He’d actually answered! I wanted to tell him how much he’d hurt me, and I needed to show him that he couldn’t treat any more people like that. I wasn’t looking for a reconciliation. I needed closure. I needed the balloon in my chest to burst and let air pass again. What would I do when I saw him?
I didn’t tell any friends that I was going to meet him, because that would jinx it. It wouldn’t be real until I saw him. I felt that I wouldn’t see him yet. Something would go wrong.
I emailed him back and told him to name the time and place. I was near Chinatown and could meet him anywhere after his exam.
And this time he didn’t answer. Time ticked by, and I sent another email that I didn’t think he’d answer: “I don’t know if you changed your mind, but it’s getting late. If you still want to meet I’ll be up until midnight. If not, I leave tomorrow morning.”
No answer.
The next morning, “If you want to see me you could walk me to the bus to the airport. This is my address. This is my phone number.” He wouldn’t buy an international phone card to call me from New York so many months ago but I would let him call me on my personal phone and be charged roaming. Again, I held the olive branch.
And I never heard from him again. Now it’s days later and I’ve gone back to my life. I did a yoga class where my teacher pushed us and opened us. My heart lifted. And then, a pose I hadn’t done in a class for over six years: “Some poses are very good for the lower back. There’s one where you put your legs up against the wall,” she said.
I’d almost forgotten, and the memories came rushing back. And I knew I had to remember it all again, before I forgot.
Because it’s important to not forget. To remember the experiences, even the bittersweet.
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