Being in Cusco has been a bit like being the protagonist from the first act of Cabaret (before all the Nazis show up and things start getting all Brechtian, I mean). In my first week here, I met Megan Steinkirchner, and we proceeded to spend a lot of time at a bar called "Temple". A super-waitress from upstate New York, Megan is loud and ridiculous in the best possible way. Despite having completely opposite ways of reacting to things, the two of us make exceptionally good partners in crime, which does tend to make things a little distracting. I would open my laptop and settle in to work on this piece, and she would come in and go "Hey, you want to go to Temple?" and I would immediately realize that I would much rather be doing that.
Given our frequent presence at the bar, when I asked Megan for a prompt her answer was "a story about Temple." It was kind of broad. Between constantly being at Temple, constantly being inexplicably sick with some sort of respiratory thing, and constantly heading out to the black market to buy misspelled CD's, it took me a while to get myself together on this one. I rewrote it about a thousand times. Even when it was finally finished, I typed it out today and then rewrote the entire thing yet again. At the moment, I'm not really sure how I feel about it, but if I fiddle with it any more it's going to drive both Megan and myself completely insane. I have a feeling the world isn't really read for both of us to be insane at the same time.
I should also note that though Megan apparently wanted herself to be a character in the story, I didn't really realize that was in the prompt until after I'd planned out the story. So, sorry Megan, you're not really in it. But, you're in this blog post, so, there's that!
I'm going to go use my inhaler.
Payaso Turismo
I’d like to tell you a story.
There was once a city I can’t entirely remember the name of. It was rich in culture and arts - many considered it to be one of the “great civilizations” like the Incas or the Romans. People came from every part of the Earth to see it.
But then, one day, someone pissed someone off. No one’s really sure who. It might have been a proud local, or it might have been an ignorant foreigner - the details don’t really matter. Someone angered a god, or a spirit, or possibly a witch, and as a result, the entire city was eternally cursed. Their rich, interesting, unique culture was completely destroyed. Though the city was still beautiful, and it still attracted an outrageous amount of people, no one could entirely remember why it was such a popular destination. Their history was gone. Their traditions slipped away. All that was left was a culture of commerce - a civilization whose only way of life was to sell themselves to strangers.
Tragic, isn’t it?
But fear not, this story ultimately has a hero. Or at least, it has someone who very much wanted to be the hero. When the world turns to petty commercialism and inauthentic glitter, there is always someone who will rise up and try to find true humanity - someone who isn’t led by the bullshit of the modern age, and is thus fit to lead a generation of mindless peons back to who they really are.
That hero might have been me. My name might have been Ramona - though I might have used a screen name - and I might have been an internet celebrity.
It’s difficult to decipher your level of celebrity these days. Long ago, you were a celebrity if you slayed a monster, or won a war, or heard the voice of God while hiking up a mountain. If you had a great enough story, everyone would know it, and everyone would share it, and you would be guaranteed immortality. As society progressed, though a celebrity remained a person who had done something “great”, the idea shifted from being an idol passed down through oral tradition, to being a beautiful person plastered on every possible wall of your living room. Everyone knew them simply because they were constantly surrounded by them.
With the dawn of the internet, no one was quite sure who their celebrities were anymore. A new type of hero, someone who spoke through a webcam in their living room and beamed it to every computer on Earth, was suddenly an acceptable way to be great. Sure, not everyone on the planet might have heard of you, but you still had people listening and paying attention to you. Somewhere, someone was taking you seriously and would probably remember you. Isn’t that, ultimately, what being a celebrity was?
As far as I was concerned, it was. Though I might have seemed humble and unconcerned with status in my well-subscribed to videos, when the camera was off I considered myself a person of influence.
So, when it was suggested by one of my many followers that I travel to the aforementioned cultureless city and make a video about life beyond all the tourism, I eagerly accepted the challenge. As an influential figure, a celebrity - a hero, even, I was sure I could find the authenticity of a tourist trap and save a disconnected culture from themselves.
“Hello,” a young, slightly scruffy looking man in face paint said to me, “Would you like a keychain?”
“No, I would not,” I said, looking down at the clearly plastic souvenir keychains. They were small, plastic cabaret clowns - closer to mimes than anything you’d see at a circus - poorly painted with faded colors that might have once been bright.
“Five dollars,” the man said, “but for someone sexy like you, four.” I probably rolled my eyes.
“No thank you. I’m actually hoping you’ll tell me a bit about yourself,” I said, “I host a webshow on YouTube, and I’m making a video about the real city, not the one you show to tourists. Would you be willing to tell me about your life?”
“Sure,” said the man, “if you buy a keychain.”
“I really don’t want a keychain,” I said, “I know they’re not real.”
“Oh, but they are,” he insisted, “they’re handcrafted by local artisans.”
“No they’re not,” I said, dryly, “They’re made in a factory for locals to sell to gullible tourists. I’m trying to figure out what this country has to offer beyond plastic clowns.”
“But clowns are an important symbol of our culture.”
“Are they?”
He shrugged, and gave me a wink.
“For you, three dollars.”
“No,” I said, sighing, “Tell me more about the clowns. What do they mean?”
“Two dollars.”
“No. Tell me about the clowns. How are they culturally significant?”
“One dollar.”
“No.”
“Then how about a drink?”
Here, I’m absolutely positive I rolled my eyes. I scowled at him, realizing this was a completely pointless endeavor, and turned to leave. He took my arm.
“Baby,” he said, “Come on. You’re not really looking for the ‘real culture’ of this place, or whatever the fuck you said you were doing. You’re just here to have a good time.”
“I am not.”
“Oh yes, you are,” he said, “Everybody is.”
“I’m not everyone.” I said, pulling my arm back from him, “I have a job to do here.”
“What, your YouTube show?” he smirked, “Yeah, ok. So, online you pretend you’re this serious journalist or whatever, but offline, I bet you’re just like everyone else.”
“I don’t pretend,” I said, “I’m not the one in the clown make-up.”
“It’s traditional.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Well, why couldn’t it be?” he demanded, “I mean, seriously. Nothing’s real these days. No one gives a shit if their souvenirs have meaning, they just want to get drunk and pretend they got cultured. Nothing’s what it fucking says it is.”
“I am.”
This time, he rolled his eyes. He pulled out a pen.
“Look, you want to be a serious journalist and not have any fun?” he asked, scribbling something on my hand, “Meet me tonight. Temple. Only locals. I’ll introduce you to a bunch of people, you can interview them for your thing, and you can be out of there by midnight.”
I glanced down at my palm. He hadn’t just written the address.
“Zeb?” I asked.
“My name.”
“It is not.”
“You’re right, it’s not.” He grinned, picked his keychains up, and turned away. “See you tonight.”
I sighed. There were flakes of his white make-up on my hand, despite his face being the only thing painted. I was insulted, and annoyed, but continued to act cordial as I wandered the city trying to find something actually real. I was surprised by how few people were willing to talk to me. None of them seemed to understand that what I was doing was for their benefit. I was trying to find and resurrect their culture - to remind them that they didn’t need to define themselves as Vacationland.
“But I like Vacationland,” a woman selling clown T-shirts insisted, “I mean, it could be worse. We could have been cursed with death. Instead, we got millions of people traveling from all over the world to enjoy themselves and support our economy.”
“You don’t really mean that.” I said.
“How do you know I don’t?”
I simply couldn’t understand it. The only marginally authentic thing I’d heard all day was Zeb’s speech about nothing being authentic - and even that, I was determined to prove, was bullshit. It was beginning to look more and more like following Zeb to a nightclub was my only chance at proving my point.
Of course, that probably wasn’t actually the case. There are a thousand ways to understand a culture, even one that pretends it doesn’t have one. Going to a club with a handsome man in somewhat enigmatic face paint to engage in somewhat irresponsible behaviors was only one of these options. And yet, I was convinced it had to be done. In the name of responsible journalism, of course. Pleasure was not to be involved in the slightest. I was a hero, after all.
I stepped into the club dressed to the nines, holding my head up high as I fought my way through the throngs of grinding dancers. The drink I ordered was, if I recall, purely aesthetic. If I was going to mingle with people in an attempt to learn the inner truths of their daily lives, I imagined it would probably make them more comfortable if I was drinking with them. I wasn’t there to party.
“You’re not wearing a mask.” the bartender observed.
“Should I be?”
The bartender pointed to the dance floor, and I suddenly realized that I was the only person in the bar not wearing something elaborate and sequined over my eyes. It was like a sleazy, intoxicated masquerade ball. It hadn’t mentioned anything about masks at the door, and as far as I knew, it wasn’t some sort of Halloween-esque holiday.
“Why masks?” I asked.
The bartender shrugged.
“Why not?”
I felt an arm slide around my waist. I almost leaned back into the embrace before I remembered why I was there, and pulled back. Predictably, it was Zeb - grinning insufferably, still made up like a clown.
“Welcome to Temple.” he said, handing me a red, sequined mask.
“Thanks,” I said, attempting to sound stoic, “Do I really have to wear this?”
“You’re the one that wants to be culturally aware,” he said. I sighed, and tied it on.
He led me to a floor upstairs, overlooking the party downstairs. A group of people around our age sat on couches in the dark. The table in the center was covered in shot glasses, cigarettes and bottles. There were a few other things there as well that, at the time, I couldn’t quite identify. Like the dancers downstairs, everyone in the group was masked.
“So this is the chick I told you about,” said Zeb, “the internet star.”
A thin girl in a blue and silver mask opened a bottle of something and poured it into a shot glass. She smiled, and handed it to me. “Have a shot,” she said, “Welcome to Temple.”
The group turned out to be mainly street performers, all of whom Zeb had met while studying drama at a university outside the city.
“We figured,” said the thin girl, “being on YouTube might be good for us, you know? Exposure and everything.”
“Makes sense,” I said, “is theater really important in your culture?”
“As much as it is anywhere, I guess.” she raised an eyebrow, and looked down at my glass, “Are you going to drink?”
Not wanting to lose my subjects, I picked up the drink and chugged it down. It burned the back of my neck, and made me shiver, but it left the group smiling.
“Awesome,” said the girl, “let’s do this.”
It began with a drinking game. Someone shared three things about themselves, and the rest of us tried to guess which one was false. If we got it wrong, we drank. It had, initially, seemed like a good way to get to know these people, and ultimately, their culture. As I was the one most unfamiliar with the group, I frequently gave the wrong answer, and found myself drinking quite a bit. Despite that, the further into the night we went, the more successful I was feeling.
“You know,” I said, grinning, “I feel like I really know you!”
“What’s my name?” the thin girl asked. I thought about it for a moment, then smiled.
“I don’t know!”
We clinked glasses. I had been accepted into the group. That was what I had wanted, wasn’t it? I had almost forgotten. I realized at about my fifth drink that I was probably partying more than I should, but I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t really being irresponsible, after all. It was purely for research purposes. I was better than that.
The drinking continued. After another hour we were theoretically still playing the game, but we’d lost track of when we were supposed to drink. There seemed to be an endless supply of alcohol at the table, and though I do remember wondering how a group of street performers could afford it all, one shot later it stopped bothering me.
Eventually, a joint was passed around. When it got to me, Zeb held back for a moment.
“Don’t you have a job to do?”
I grinned, and plucked the joint from between his fingers - taking a slow, meaningful hit and blowing it in his face.
“I’m doing my job.” I said, “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”
“I don’t need to.”
“Because of all the makeup?” I asked, running my finger over his lips.
“Something like that.”
I might have giggled. At that point, there was really no telling what strange things I might have said or done. The weed dulled my already fading mind, and there’s a good chance we didn’t stop there. A certain amount of time passed. As if on cue, physical contact began, the masks somehow managing to stay on through it all. I started with the thin girl, digging my fingers into her hair while our lips and tongues attacked. I felt her arm creep up the back of my shirt, and I followed suit, reaching into her bra.
“Nice job, internet star.”
I made my way around the rest of the group. By the time I reached Zeb, my bra was unclasped, my shirt was half-off, and my mask was dangling somewhere near my neck. He pulled it off, and started biting my neck. I might have groaned. I closed my eyes, groping for every part of him in the dark.
“So,” he whispered, between breaths, “having fun?”
“Yes.” I said, somewhat delirious.
“Good.”
I should have noticed that the group was gone. I should have noticed that they might not have been there to begin with. He may have asked me if I knew who I was, or he may have simply said “Welcome home.” The details of stories get so foggy. Either way, I tumbled into the dark, and when I next saw myself, I didn’t know me. The girl in the reflection was pale, with dark blue eye makeup, and smudged red lipstick. A cabaret clown.
I never did figure out who that was. It could have been me, but then, I’m not really sure who I am anymore. The story of Ramona - the fallen internet idol determined to find reality - could have been mine. At the same time, like the story of the city itself, so many details have been lost that I could have simply made it up. Do I really want an identity that badly? Probably. We all do. But in the end, do we really need one? No matter who or what we are, our stories are only half-remembered.
If you come to the city today, you might see me. I’ll be painted like a cabaret clown. Would you like to buy one, maybe? They’re very cheap, and so representative of our culture.
I’ll even cut the price down for you.
There was once a city I can’t entirely remember the name of. It was rich in culture and arts - many considered it to be one of the “great civilizations” like the Incas or the Romans. People came from every part of the Earth to see it.
But then, one day, someone pissed someone off. No one’s really sure who. It might have been a proud local, or it might have been an ignorant foreigner - the details don’t really matter. Someone angered a god, or a spirit, or possibly a witch, and as a result, the entire city was eternally cursed. Their rich, interesting, unique culture was completely destroyed. Though the city was still beautiful, and it still attracted an outrageous amount of people, no one could entirely remember why it was such a popular destination. Their history was gone. Their traditions slipped away. All that was left was a culture of commerce - a civilization whose only way of life was to sell themselves to strangers.
Tragic, isn’t it?
But fear not, this story ultimately has a hero. Or at least, it has someone who very much wanted to be the hero. When the world turns to petty commercialism and inauthentic glitter, there is always someone who will rise up and try to find true humanity - someone who isn’t led by the bullshit of the modern age, and is thus fit to lead a generation of mindless peons back to who they really are.
That hero might have been me. My name might have been Ramona - though I might have used a screen name - and I might have been an internet celebrity.
It’s difficult to decipher your level of celebrity these days. Long ago, you were a celebrity if you slayed a monster, or won a war, or heard the voice of God while hiking up a mountain. If you had a great enough story, everyone would know it, and everyone would share it, and you would be guaranteed immortality. As society progressed, though a celebrity remained a person who had done something “great”, the idea shifted from being an idol passed down through oral tradition, to being a beautiful person plastered on every possible wall of your living room. Everyone knew them simply because they were constantly surrounded by them.
With the dawn of the internet, no one was quite sure who their celebrities were anymore. A new type of hero, someone who spoke through a webcam in their living room and beamed it to every computer on Earth, was suddenly an acceptable way to be great. Sure, not everyone on the planet might have heard of you, but you still had people listening and paying attention to you. Somewhere, someone was taking you seriously and would probably remember you. Isn’t that, ultimately, what being a celebrity was?
As far as I was concerned, it was. Though I might have seemed humble and unconcerned with status in my well-subscribed to videos, when the camera was off I considered myself a person of influence.
So, when it was suggested by one of my many followers that I travel to the aforementioned cultureless city and make a video about life beyond all the tourism, I eagerly accepted the challenge. As an influential figure, a celebrity - a hero, even, I was sure I could find the authenticity of a tourist trap and save a disconnected culture from themselves.
“Hello,” a young, slightly scruffy looking man in face paint said to me, “Would you like a keychain?”
“No, I would not,” I said, looking down at the clearly plastic souvenir keychains. They were small, plastic cabaret clowns - closer to mimes than anything you’d see at a circus - poorly painted with faded colors that might have once been bright.
“Five dollars,” the man said, “but for someone sexy like you, four.” I probably rolled my eyes.
“No thank you. I’m actually hoping you’ll tell me a bit about yourself,” I said, “I host a webshow on YouTube, and I’m making a video about the real city, not the one you show to tourists. Would you be willing to tell me about your life?”
“Sure,” said the man, “if you buy a keychain.”
“I really don’t want a keychain,” I said, “I know they’re not real.”
“Oh, but they are,” he insisted, “they’re handcrafted by local artisans.”
“No they’re not,” I said, dryly, “They’re made in a factory for locals to sell to gullible tourists. I’m trying to figure out what this country has to offer beyond plastic clowns.”
“But clowns are an important symbol of our culture.”
“Are they?”
He shrugged, and gave me a wink.
“For you, three dollars.”
“No,” I said, sighing, “Tell me more about the clowns. What do they mean?”
“Two dollars.”
“No. Tell me about the clowns. How are they culturally significant?”
“One dollar.”
“No.”
“Then how about a drink?”
Here, I’m absolutely positive I rolled my eyes. I scowled at him, realizing this was a completely pointless endeavor, and turned to leave. He took my arm.
“Baby,” he said, “Come on. You’re not really looking for the ‘real culture’ of this place, or whatever the fuck you said you were doing. You’re just here to have a good time.”
“I am not.”
“Oh yes, you are,” he said, “Everybody is.”
“I’m not everyone.” I said, pulling my arm back from him, “I have a job to do here.”
“What, your YouTube show?” he smirked, “Yeah, ok. So, online you pretend you’re this serious journalist or whatever, but offline, I bet you’re just like everyone else.”
“I don’t pretend,” I said, “I’m not the one in the clown make-up.”
“It’s traditional.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Well, why couldn’t it be?” he demanded, “I mean, seriously. Nothing’s real these days. No one gives a shit if their souvenirs have meaning, they just want to get drunk and pretend they got cultured. Nothing’s what it fucking says it is.”
“I am.”
This time, he rolled his eyes. He pulled out a pen.
“Look, you want to be a serious journalist and not have any fun?” he asked, scribbling something on my hand, “Meet me tonight. Temple. Only locals. I’ll introduce you to a bunch of people, you can interview them for your thing, and you can be out of there by midnight.”
I glanced down at my palm. He hadn’t just written the address.
“Zeb?” I asked.
“My name.”
“It is not.”
“You’re right, it’s not.” He grinned, picked his keychains up, and turned away. “See you tonight.”
I sighed. There were flakes of his white make-up on my hand, despite his face being the only thing painted. I was insulted, and annoyed, but continued to act cordial as I wandered the city trying to find something actually real. I was surprised by how few people were willing to talk to me. None of them seemed to understand that what I was doing was for their benefit. I was trying to find and resurrect their culture - to remind them that they didn’t need to define themselves as Vacationland.
“But I like Vacationland,” a woman selling clown T-shirts insisted, “I mean, it could be worse. We could have been cursed with death. Instead, we got millions of people traveling from all over the world to enjoy themselves and support our economy.”
“You don’t really mean that.” I said.
“How do you know I don’t?”
I simply couldn’t understand it. The only marginally authentic thing I’d heard all day was Zeb’s speech about nothing being authentic - and even that, I was determined to prove, was bullshit. It was beginning to look more and more like following Zeb to a nightclub was my only chance at proving my point.
Of course, that probably wasn’t actually the case. There are a thousand ways to understand a culture, even one that pretends it doesn’t have one. Going to a club with a handsome man in somewhat enigmatic face paint to engage in somewhat irresponsible behaviors was only one of these options. And yet, I was convinced it had to be done. In the name of responsible journalism, of course. Pleasure was not to be involved in the slightest. I was a hero, after all.
I stepped into the club dressed to the nines, holding my head up high as I fought my way through the throngs of grinding dancers. The drink I ordered was, if I recall, purely aesthetic. If I was going to mingle with people in an attempt to learn the inner truths of their daily lives, I imagined it would probably make them more comfortable if I was drinking with them. I wasn’t there to party.
“You’re not wearing a mask.” the bartender observed.
“Should I be?”
The bartender pointed to the dance floor, and I suddenly realized that I was the only person in the bar not wearing something elaborate and sequined over my eyes. It was like a sleazy, intoxicated masquerade ball. It hadn’t mentioned anything about masks at the door, and as far as I knew, it wasn’t some sort of Halloween-esque holiday.
“Why masks?” I asked.
The bartender shrugged.
“Why not?”
I felt an arm slide around my waist. I almost leaned back into the embrace before I remembered why I was there, and pulled back. Predictably, it was Zeb - grinning insufferably, still made up like a clown.
“Welcome to Temple.” he said, handing me a red, sequined mask.
“Thanks,” I said, attempting to sound stoic, “Do I really have to wear this?”
“You’re the one that wants to be culturally aware,” he said. I sighed, and tied it on.
He led me to a floor upstairs, overlooking the party downstairs. A group of people around our age sat on couches in the dark. The table in the center was covered in shot glasses, cigarettes and bottles. There were a few other things there as well that, at the time, I couldn’t quite identify. Like the dancers downstairs, everyone in the group was masked.
“So this is the chick I told you about,” said Zeb, “the internet star.”
A thin girl in a blue and silver mask opened a bottle of something and poured it into a shot glass. She smiled, and handed it to me. “Have a shot,” she said, “Welcome to Temple.”
The group turned out to be mainly street performers, all of whom Zeb had met while studying drama at a university outside the city.
“We figured,” said the thin girl, “being on YouTube might be good for us, you know? Exposure and everything.”
“Makes sense,” I said, “is theater really important in your culture?”
“As much as it is anywhere, I guess.” she raised an eyebrow, and looked down at my glass, “Are you going to drink?”
Not wanting to lose my subjects, I picked up the drink and chugged it down. It burned the back of my neck, and made me shiver, but it left the group smiling.
“Awesome,” said the girl, “let’s do this.”
It began with a drinking game. Someone shared three things about themselves, and the rest of us tried to guess which one was false. If we got it wrong, we drank. It had, initially, seemed like a good way to get to know these people, and ultimately, their culture. As I was the one most unfamiliar with the group, I frequently gave the wrong answer, and found myself drinking quite a bit. Despite that, the further into the night we went, the more successful I was feeling.
“You know,” I said, grinning, “I feel like I really know you!”
“What’s my name?” the thin girl asked. I thought about it for a moment, then smiled.
“I don’t know!”
We clinked glasses. I had been accepted into the group. That was what I had wanted, wasn’t it? I had almost forgotten. I realized at about my fifth drink that I was probably partying more than I should, but I wasn’t worried. I wasn’t really being irresponsible, after all. It was purely for research purposes. I was better than that.
The drinking continued. After another hour we were theoretically still playing the game, but we’d lost track of when we were supposed to drink. There seemed to be an endless supply of alcohol at the table, and though I do remember wondering how a group of street performers could afford it all, one shot later it stopped bothering me.
Eventually, a joint was passed around. When it got to me, Zeb held back for a moment.
“Don’t you have a job to do?”
I grinned, and plucked the joint from between his fingers - taking a slow, meaningful hit and blowing it in his face.
“I’m doing my job.” I said, “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?”
“I don’t need to.”
“Because of all the makeup?” I asked, running my finger over his lips.
“Something like that.”
I might have giggled. At that point, there was really no telling what strange things I might have said or done. The weed dulled my already fading mind, and there’s a good chance we didn’t stop there. A certain amount of time passed. As if on cue, physical contact began, the masks somehow managing to stay on through it all. I started with the thin girl, digging my fingers into her hair while our lips and tongues attacked. I felt her arm creep up the back of my shirt, and I followed suit, reaching into her bra.
“Nice job, internet star.”
I made my way around the rest of the group. By the time I reached Zeb, my bra was unclasped, my shirt was half-off, and my mask was dangling somewhere near my neck. He pulled it off, and started biting my neck. I might have groaned. I closed my eyes, groping for every part of him in the dark.
“So,” he whispered, between breaths, “having fun?”
“Yes.” I said, somewhat delirious.
“Good.”
I should have noticed that the group was gone. I should have noticed that they might not have been there to begin with. He may have asked me if I knew who I was, or he may have simply said “Welcome home.” The details of stories get so foggy. Either way, I tumbled into the dark, and when I next saw myself, I didn’t know me. The girl in the reflection was pale, with dark blue eye makeup, and smudged red lipstick. A cabaret clown.
I never did figure out who that was. It could have been me, but then, I’m not really sure who I am anymore. The story of Ramona - the fallen internet idol determined to find reality - could have been mine. At the same time, like the story of the city itself, so many details have been lost that I could have simply made it up. Do I really want an identity that badly? Probably. We all do. But in the end, do we really need one? No matter who or what we are, our stories are only half-remembered.
If you come to the city today, you might see me. I’ll be painted like a cabaret clown. Would you like to buy one, maybe? They’re very cheap, and so representative of our culture.
I’ll even cut the price down for you.
