There had been a man groping around under my seat at various times on our bus trip from Buenos Aires to Rio. Late at night, on one of the two nights of bus riding, he crawled around on the ground, down in the aisles, loudly, very noticeably, because he was a big man. I grabbed my bag and held it. He’d tug at it, making strange noises. Maybe I woke Ed. “Ed! Ed!” I don’t remember. It was a twenty four-hour bus ride. I had a Walkman playing Like A Prayer by Madonna. “You’re not in love with me anymore”, Madonna sang, filling my heart. My ex-boyfriend in Boston was not in love with me anymore either. Ed said, “How can you listen to that crap?” And then he’d put on his Walkman and listen to Black Sabbath.

Was Ed in love with me? No. But he was in South America with me. I was twenty-two. My hair grew past my shoulders and was dirty. Bathing in cold showers in South America grew old quickly. Ed’s hair was shorter and therefore less nasty. I wore the same fucking canvas espadrilles every goddamn day and my feet smelled like vinegar. “Your feet smell like vinegar”, said Ed.

Rio was fun. We stayed for a week? Two weeks? We splurged on a decent hotel in the Flamingo district. Something like fifteen bucks a night. Ed loved the women. All those round, brown asses shining at us as we visited the city beaches. Their thick, black hair cascading down their backs. I bought a Brazilian bikini, one with a thong that rides up the crack of your ass. I was trying to fit in. But I had given up shaving my legs and pits, so the effect wasn’t quite what it should have been. Ed let me know that. One night, a secretary/prostitute attached herself to Ed. She was lovely. She wanted him to buy her dinner, drinks, whatnot. Ed blanched. If he bought her stuff, would he get what he wanted? Was it worth it? We were on a budget.

We left Rio on a bus. Fucking buses! We decided to make some stops along the coast. Florianapolis was one of them. I can’t remember the others, or if there were others. I think there were. Walking with our backpacks from the bus station to the nearby hotels, we passed a line of extremely young girls, in tight, tiny miniskirts and four-inch heels, all standing there patiently and waiting for some work to come up. They all had the same large tattoo on their muscular calves. A dragon, I believe. Ed and I checked into a hotel. We wanted separate beds and so paid ten dollars for a room that smelled like mildew. It wasn’t just my espadrilles. After resting up, I showered. There was hot water! I lingered. I washed my hair. My hand touched the shower head and stuck. Really stuck. I was being electrocuted. It hurt. I slammed around the shower stall. I saw white spots. I screamed. I passed out and the weight of my body pulling down broke my finger free from the electrified shower. I screamed and cried and ran back to our room. I told Ed what happened. “Fuck” he said. “I thought you’d been raped.” We went down to eat at the hotel. It was a disgusting buffet. The girls with the dragon tattoos were all there with their trays, filling up on spaghetti noodles and red sauce.

Later, in Montevideo, where we spoke the language and where everything made sense, where we had a beautiful room overlooking the main plaza and I showered in hot water and didn’t get hurt, we went out for an amazing dinner and drank a bottle of expensive, bloody red Chilean wine. Afterward, we went dancing. We danced until four in the morning. When we returned to our room, in the darkness, from his separate bed, Ed said, “Come over here.” I did. “Do that again,” he said, at one point. I did it again. “Can I put it in there,” he asked, and I let him. We fucked one more time, the day before I returned to the States. It was broad daylight and looking at his dick like that bummed me out. I flew back to Boston after two months in South America. I never taught English there, but when I arrived in Boston, I knew I had to pack my shit and move. And I did.