am in La Paz. I am in La Paz alone.
I am outside a travel agency, talking to a big, clumsy guy I think works for the travel agency, but when he puts his face up to mine, I can smell the booze on him and I realize my mistake.
"I am from Chile," he says in sloppy English, and now I can tell he is swaying. "I like speaking English with pretty American girls."
O-kay. So I head for the travel agency inside, leave him annoyed and incoherent on the corner. But when I get out, he is still there.
"Hola amiga," he says, walking alongside of me.
For blocks, I say nothing, just try to walk faster.
"Do you like Latin American men?" he asks.
I say nothing.
He is walking way too close, pushing me into the street vendors. I smile at them apologetically as I pass. "Lo siento, lo siento," I say.
The drunk Chilean puts his hand around my waist, and I flick it off.
"Do you like Latin American men?" he asks again.
"No," I say.
"Stupid," he says. "Stupid American girl." Then he laughs.
I want to go somewhere he won't follow, but I don't know this city. I head to the post office, but it's closed for lunch. Everything is closed for lunch. I don't know anyone. I don't know anywhere.
"Do you want to, uh, fucky-fucky?"
Good Christ.
"Leave me alone," I say. "Stop bothering me," I say.
I find an Internet cafe open inside a fourplex building of smaller stores, and I head in.
"Adios," I say.
"Adios," he says. And then he follows me in. That's when I start to get nervous.
I enter the Internet cafe with him right behind me -- drunk, stinking, loud. I sit down and he sits beside me.
"You need to go," I say. But he doesn't. He takes out his flask and takes a swig.
I look desperately at the woman behind the counter.
"Can you help me?" I ask, pointing to the man.
For a minute, I think she is actually *going* to help me, and when she disappears from the room, it is my silly American fantasy that she is getting some authority, some Big Man -- the Internet cafe bouncer! But of course, she comes back empty-handed and avoids all eye contact with me. The big, drunk Chilean is my problem. And I better figure out how to solve it.
The thing is that he just won't go. I tell him to leave -- ask him nicely, tell him rudely -- and he won't budge. He is poking at the keys, blowing his disgusting breath in my face, putting his dirty hands on the computer screen. I am getting really scared, trying hard not to show it. And while I plead with the ugly, stinking Chilean to go, go NOW, the rest of the Internet cafe carries on so civilized, as if they are trying to ignore a little domestic squabble.
My only option is to find a policeman on the street. I get ready to leave when another Bolivian at the Internet cafe barks out, "Leave her alone."
My drunk Chilean friend is taken by surprise -- he didn't expect this -- and soon they are engaged in a rapid, incomprehensible argument. The drunk Chilean yells something and then turns to go. But before I can even exhale, there is a loud crashing noise.
He has punched the window of the shop next door with his fist.
The little old man who owns the store runs out and down the stairs to catch him, and I cannot move, will not move from where i am standing. The woman behind the counter and I are staring at each other, our mouths open, the clatter of broken glass still echoing in the stairwell.
Everyone is staring at me.
"No lo se," I say -- only that's wrong, because I don't know my goddamn pronouns. Those goddamn pronouns! "No le se," I say again, thinking that's probably wrong too and not knowing how to explain that I don't know him, that he followed me here on the street, and why didn't you help me because I asked you to help me, goddammit. And now I feel like Pamela Anderson Lee and I'm afraid to ever leave this place and I feel just terrible about the old man's broken window, only I don't know how to say any of this, so I say, "I'm sorry. Can I use the computer again?"
(*This story took place last Thursday afternoon, and since then, I have yet to run in to the drunken Chilean. I swear, La Paz really isn't so terrible.)