A Friendly Crocodile

So I met a boy.

… Just kidding (but did ya fall for it?).

No, this is not a story of boy meets girl. Nor a story of girl meets boy. It is not a love story, but merely a very average moment in my extraordinarily ordinary life.

So actually, I was eating lunch. I pour myself a glass of Coca-Cola because hey, when you are in Bolivia, do as the Bolivians do. My family’s restaurant serves its drinks in small, tin glasses. When you tip the rim toward you, the rush of fizz leaves the rim ice cold and soon the contact between your teeth and the tin leaves your mouth abuzz with wincing gulps of pain. I chug my coke and lower the rim to see a boy sitting in front of me. He smiles at me, and I can only muster this kind of twitching upper curve of the left side of my mouth thing because I had been making a game of counting how many times I could swish the liquid around in my mouth without letting any drip (I was on 7).

He introduces himself as the boy who helped carry my bags to my room when I first moved in with my host family back in August. He’s a good family friend of my host family. He starts asking me questions about my time in Bolivia, and I fumble through all my responses, waving my hands every which way to articulate just how big that one mountain in Tocoli was. He tells me that he is staying at the house down the street and has moved from Beni (an eastern province) to Cochabamba to study medicine. As soon as he mentions that he is from the eastern part of Bolivia, I start to catch the nuances in his accent. He doesn’t pronounce every ‘s’ in full, which leaves me a little confused at first until I realize his Spanish embodies a full and blooming kind of melody. I eventually fall into the new rhythmic pattern, nodding along the way.

Then he asks for my number. That twitch I had earlier spreads to my whole body in a kind of feverish panic. Honestly, the last time a boy asked for my number was almost two years ago, and I was wearing questionable neon-orange short-shorts with the phrase ‘DIRTY BEATZ’ blazed across the back. Like, the shorts spoke for themselves. This time, I was mid-twitch, downing a leg of fried chicken and sweating because I hadn’t done my laundry so I was forced to wear a thick sweater in the summer heat. I had no neon defenses.

After yanking one more bite off my chicken leg to stall, I finally start my string of excuses: I am leaving in a few days for a project, I don’t really think I have time to- “But I have a motorcycle that I could teach you to ride”, he finally interrupts. Not going to lie, this was a bit of a game changer. I start to daydream about channeling my inner Sandra Dee. I could totally buy some leather leggings, maybe dig up some black eyeliner, OMG I need some sunglasses, definitely a pink jacket… But eventually the daydream ends with my strong resolve to tell the truth, so I say: “I don’t know my number.” (Yes, I know, I know, I’m working on it).

He smiles even brighter and announces that he’ll just ask my mom for it. I smile as he leaves, but I already know this is probably going to end awkwardly. I eat my chicken.

~

I am so late. I run into the Internet café and beg the guy to help me print something. My essay is due in 20 minutes, and I haven’t even made it to the street to hail my trufi to school. Just as I finish my desperate half-sob for help, my phone starts ringing. I pull it up to my ear and answer it without glancing at the caller ID, “¿hola?”

A boy answers in a fast drawl. It dawns on me: this is THE boy. I don’t answer his hello and now he is repeating my name into the speaker. I breathe harder. I know that a normal, sane person would answer, “Hola, ¿cómo estás?”. He or she would begin a friendly conversation, dripping sweet comments like honey and building something like love. But instead, I grab the first page of my essay, crumble it up into the speaker and grumble loudly as if ‘I am going through a tunnel’. And then I kind of manage an estranged scream before hanging up the phone. I can’t breathe.

The Internet café guy looks concerned and slightly offended that I just ripped apart the paper I only moments earlier demanded he print. I just shake my head and offer 3 bolivianos as a token of my shame.

~

I turn in my essay and decide that I am going to reclaim my dignity. I dial the number and fluff my hair, just in case, you know, he can see me. He answers, ¿hola?.

“Hi! This is Aly, I am so sorry about earlier. I lost your call when I was in class and couldn’t find a connection…” I pause. He answers, “Don’t worry! When do you have time to talk?” I repeat that I am leaving the next day for el Chapare and that I won’t be in town to hang out or ride your motorcycle but that it was really lovely meeting you. I apologize, and I really am sorry. He had nice eyes.

He responds: “But, when are you going to come into my office?”

I freeze. For a split second, I think he is offering some perverted pick up line and I am about to tell him that I am no secretary from his fantasies when I realize something much graver.

“I’m sorry, I think I might be confused- with whom am I speaking?”

“This is Alejandro, I am conducting research on La Cancha. You called earlier this week to ask me if I could advise your project?”

Alas. A day in the love life.

~

A few weeks back our group was staying in the small town of Santa Rita on the western edge of the Amazon. The day was hot and sticky, so we dribbled the hours of sun away in the small lake. The water was warm and thick, leaving spirited trails of mud along the hairs of our bodies. After leaving the lake, I made my way back to my house and found my host mother. As soon as she saw my dripping hair, she announced that a crocodile lives in the lake.

My mouth kind of dropped open in surprise, but she only smiled a wide grin, giggling: “Don’t worry, it’s a friendly crocodile.”

And this small statement puts me totally at ease- a sharp contrast to utter terror at answering a phone call from a boy. So I wonder about all the origins of my fear.

I had spent the whole day at peace with an animal that was supposed to be against me. The crocodile could have grabbed me at any moment, but I hadn’t been afraid because that possibility was a great unknown. A big ?. And I knew that if the crocodile had decided to embark on a mean streak, he would have brought me under when I was most unguarded. I would have been laughing wildly, facing huge splashes of water that crisscrossed little shimmers of heaven- I would have had ecstasy flowing through my fingertips. I would have been dancing uninhibited. Yes, he would have dragged me under, but I would have brought all that joy and ecstasy to the depths with me. I knew this, and so I felt at ease with the idea of the friendly crocodile.

So where does that thought leave me in relation to love? Maybe I need to let the wild ecstasy fill me to the brim more often. I should dance more often, so that if I do meet someone, I will not really be facing a person or the scary idea of love. Rather, I will be dancing uninhibited, alive in that split second of fractured time. I will be dancing, and maybe I will instead face another uninhibited spirit. In that fractured corner of time, we will both be so alive that the future will become this great expanse of unknown depths.

And the only thing this kindred soul and I will share for certain is the elation that we might just go down to the depths together.