The Rebirth of a Population (or how I met Mr. Copacetic and got my hope back)

"I am a stranger, I am an alien inside the structure. Are you really gonna love me when I'm gone?"
- Of Monsters and Men

I was in Cusco, the belly button of the world, staying at the unassuming and yet beautiful hostel Qaleidoscopio had recommended me. I was sitting (it's a broad interpretation of the word) while reading a Stephen Hawking book, trying to make myself more intelligent than I actually am. I was imagining universes inside nutshells and half-mindedly preparing Shakespearean speeches against the Richard III that has taken the world stage with its own people thunderous applause. If it's not evident by now, I was alone. And then I saw him. 

Was he real or imagined? A Great American Novel character, the hopeful restlessness of a man who was joyfully and unequivocally eager to... play foot tennis. Yes, he is attractive of course, I usually write about attractive men, but this one is the kind you would expect to find on a Fitzgerald novel. Who was this guy? I closed my book, cursed for the fifty-seventh time about my aching shoulder and stood up. 

I walked up to him and asked him if he wanted to share a beer with me, lowering my voice, trying to be cool. I don't remember the exact words but there was an "of course" involved, and of course he'd say of course. Of course we'd share a great conversation, of course I would curse for the fifty-eighth, fifty-ninth and sixtieth time while trying to pour beer on our plastic mugs (glamorous, I know), and of course I wanted to keep talking to him. He was a force of nature, like the terrifying free-fall acceleration I had willingly bungee-jumped to a few hours before, hello shoulder pain. That face, that voice, he himself was gravity. I wanted to kiss him, but I just offered him a shower in my room. 

Yes, yes, I know, that sounds a bit forward but remember that 1) I am forward and 2) this was a hostel, so a shower in a private room is a bit of a luxury. Besides, I try very hard to steer away from dead horse heads when playing the "offer he couldn't refuse" card; a shower seemed very tame. So he went to his room, grabbed his stuff and took a shower on my bathroom (closed door, closed door sweetheart, don't get any ideas yet) while I tried to calm myself tidying up a bit and listening to Robyn on Spotify. Guess who sang along to the lyrics?

Me, of course, Mr. Daniel Copacetic (his given name) would have not been that silly. 

He left a trail of good-smelling man smell on my room and a hint of male-nip that I couldn't get enough of. For the first time in Cusco I actually put eyeliner on and a bit of lipstick, and I even went for a dress. He came back with jeans and a black shirt and c'mon, when had been the last time I had felt genuinely attracted to someone? 

September 2015, if you wanted to know. 

Mr. Copacetic and I walked on the streets of Cusco till we found the place I wanted to go to, a tucked-down restaurant near the plaza with a great view. Now that I think about it I guess I was luring him in, an Alexander the Great strategy, my only weapons my good (great) taste in restaurants and my brain: no cleavage, no mini-skirts, no heels, minimal make-up. No need for click-baits on a real-life conversation. 

It turned out we were a population, which is a term I currently (and hopefully also in the future) use to signify that we are, well, copacetic. On the days prior I had been talking to different people on the hostel, software engineers, Canadian carpenters, Australian fishermen, German college students and even young Swedish smokers, all on an attempt to expand my horizons, reach out to the conceptual "people" I usually shield myself from. None had made me feel the tingling I felt with Daniel, the flame that peeked through a veil I had almost given up hope to lift. His was a sophisticated mind and he is an extremely articulate communicator, a fucking intelligent man, c'mon, when had been the last time I had met one of those in person? Nope, not September last year, he wasn't an extremely articulate communicator. 

I want(ed) to touch Daniel. 

So I let him pay for the bill on the condition that I would pay for the next round of drinks because going perfectly Dutch on that moment would have been a bit of a buzzkill. We walked through the plaza and I "accidentally" bumped into him with my good shoulder and apologized saying that I had already lightly bumped into him three times, to which he answered that he may had been the one bumping into me. 

Oh yes! He wanted to touch me too!

I bumped into him a bit more forcefully, we were walking on the cathedral's terrace, and a couple of bumps later he held me by the waist. I felt like a happy seal, closing my eyes and enjoying the physical contact with him. We held hands and I told him I would take him somewhere (the drinks place, I suppose) but he held my hand and said he was the one taking me. In an incredibly graceful way he pulled me closer and we kissed. 

It was pretty much it on that moment, that kiss. What an amazing kisser, yes, but now that I remember it I almost want to cry. All that year in Pomabamba, all that time aching for human contact, even kneeling down on the floor praying for a WhatsApp conversation and there I was, kissing an amazing guy in the Cusco plaza. I think that is one of the memories I'll take with me, like an old photograph inside a grandma's wallet: Daniel and I kissing in front of the Cusco cathedral. 

That was the point of the trip, actually. When I decided to go to Cusco my main reason was to mend my broken relationship with Peru; the rigorous solitude I had submitted myself to had gotten to me, hate was distinctively forming in my heart. Was I really that alone in my country, was I really that much of an alien? I had tried to fit in enough times to understand that I don't, but Pomabamba was unlike anything I had ever experienced before. 

In the end, hell, even in the middle, I used to feel like those 1950's baby monkeys holding onto fur because they had nothing else to hold on to. In my little blue room I sat and laid and kneeled and jumped, longing for the day I would not feel the hate in my heart, glancing to a map of the United States with a dot drew on Baltimore, looking at pictures of my dog back home, waiting. I felt the ache on my arms, wanting to be held. I struggled with an undertow of melancholy that took me over like a really bad hangover for the couple of weeks after I came back to Lima.

I guess the title of this post is not perfectly accurate: the rebirth of my population started before Cusco on excellent conversations with Qaleidoscopio, on rounding on Mondays with my dad, on walking through the Malecón with my dog. But it was in Cusco, and it was particularly on that night with Daniel and I being copacetic that I felt that my impossible year had finally ended. It was on the pessimism I freely expressed with Daniel that I found a resonance, hands and fingers intertwined. 

So, two conscious adults who feel attracted to each other and can have a private room to themselves usually leads to one thing: secretly hoping to be the first one who gets to pee. Each one had had a couple of generous drinks, and though I'm not going to concede I was in any way drunk I will admit I wasn't stone cold sober. My hands on his skin, his lips on my mine, the incredibly sexy scratch of his beard, the next day I found our clothes on the most unexpected places and configurations; c'mon, we even tilted one of the paintings on the wall and none of us is particularly tall. It was amazing; it was literally fucking good. 

Yes, I want to share details, no, I won't because I still am somewhat of a prude when I write and I can't quite sweat it out (except that one time September last year), but had it been an equation the answer would be some ears and couches involved, 4x(amazing)² + 3x(amazing)² and fuck my shoulder, I like it when it hurts.

While recounting the Mr. Copacetic affair to a friend she (somewhat naïvely) asked me if I wanted to pursue something more with him. I laughed heartily, aware of the (almost unsurmountable) logistic inconveniences such a relationship would require to solve. She is younger, like I used to be; maybe she thinks relationships are like in the movies and I could spend the next eight years writing a best-seller about one fateful night to later meet the love of my life outside a bookstore while signing copies. 

I mean, who knows, right? Maybe I mend my relationship with romanticism but the truth is, though I'd consider myself lucky to be his girlfriend, I don't think the best thing for him right now is to get a girlfriend. And also... 

... can we go back to Mr. September 2015, also known as Dr. McStuffins?

He wrote to me on the night Donald Trump won the presidency. He was angry, surprised, ashamed. He felt like I had felt back in Pomabamba, if only for a day. He felt like he didn't belong in his own country. How could his fellow Americans have done something like that? How could those be the real feelings that lived on their hearts? A decent, brilliant human being was struggling with the frustration I had dealt with before, and all I wanted to do was hold him and kiss him on the forehead. I wouldn't say "it's going to be alright" because I don't know that. I wouldn't say "we'll make it through" because I don't think there is even a "we" now. I would just sit next to him and hold his hand because I know it's better to have someone to walk with through Hades. 

The next day after meeting Daniel I went inside a plane's belly back home, to my mom and my dog. The day after that, yesterday, my mom and I held my dog as he took his final breath. His death marked the end of an era as the beginning of another approaches, and I don't hold enough gravity on my patch of space-time fabric to bend time around me. Daniel and I will follow our own paths, and maybe we'll find another loop that brings us together.

But you know what? We orbited around each other for a day, and it was amazing. We engaged on a luxurious dance neither of us had expected and both profoundly enjoyed, knowing it to be so precious. We as population rejoiced a form of carnival hoi polloi would never understand, talking theoretical physics, sublimely debating metacognitions and holding each other in bed at night.