Me and Hugo Chavez used to go to Machu Picchu when all the tourists were gone.
He’d take off his red shirt and flex his pecs back and forth, back and forth–okay Hugo, I get it, you’re ripped, Jeez. He’s got nipples like Hershey’s Kisses.
I’d crack open a few cervezas and we’d sit on the edge of some high stone wall, getting drunk and throwing the bottles against the ruins.
Our best time together–and he’d back me on this–was when I brought a bunch of old CDs up there and we doused them with lighter fluid, set them on fire and flung them into the jungle below. They didn’t stay lit the whole time. The flames died out before they even hit the canopy.
But for those few moments while, say, my old Color Me Badd album was burning across the sky, me and Hugo shared something. Unspoken, of course–you know Hugo–but it was palpable. A velvety shawl flung over our hearts.
Ah, but that’s Machu Picchu.
A time or two after that we brought up some fireworks from Honduras, but nothing ever matched the flaming CDs. After all, a whole string of Gato Negros couldn’t touch the pure dazzle of that second Counting Crows album that I never really got into falling like some great comet that we’d set in motion. My lighter fluid, his Zippo.
I’m sure no one would believe it, but he always let me toss them.
Now he’s married and we can’t stay out as late.
I don’t blame his wife–I don’t–we can still get drunk and stuff–as long as we tell her where we’re going. She wouldn’t approve of our late-night trips to Machu Picchu–our shirts off, the two of us lighting my entire PM Dawn collection for a one-time meteor shower of pure Peruvian splendor. She’d just call it reckless…and maybe it is. Maybe you shouldn’t litter or bring lighter fluid to an Ancient Wonder of the World.
But me and Hugo didn’t care. Fuck the Incas and their forty-million stairs.
Hugo can’t say that, but I can.
Sometimes we smoke out in his brother Jorge’s garage. It’s cool, but I miss the helicopter ride.
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i lol’d. i think that some of the most interesting stuff you do involves fictional stories about real people– it’s very engaging. and hilarious.
That is some of the funniest stuff I have read in a long time. I just laughed outloud in my cladd and it was really quiet. I thought I was the only one that had nipples like hersey kisses…