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WE ARE BOTH MEN

Posted by Erik Frey Tue, 31 May 2005 09:22:00 GMT

In the States, we have a clear notion of the shyster: he is a swindler. A scammer! We would have nothing to do with such a vagrant, except to label him for exactly what he is, and recoil in the appropriate manner. After all, those people are out to get our money, and who knows what they might do to get it?

Think of telemarketers! Faith healers! Those insistent squeegee guys! People who organize Tupperware parties! They are offensive and often in-your-face, because you have something they want.

What about the grungy, stringy-haired homeless guy who walks up and asks for a buck? Perhaps you are among friends, and one of them quickly motions everyone away with a silent shake of the head. “You can’t give those guys money,” your friend says, “they’re just going to spend it on booze.” He might add, “You don’t want to encourage them, you know.”

How about the droopy highschool kid holding a box of candy bars? He’s the one leaning against a coke machine as you wheel past with your supermarket cart. He never actually looks up, but mumbles “scuze me sir you like to buy a chocolate bar…” These kids know the answer before they even ask, and turn away at almost the same moment you shake your head “no,” so refined is the feint that the uncomfortableness of the breach of space lasts only a sliver of a second. And yet for all his shame, this kid stands tirelessly for hours under a big blue sign that says “NO SOLICITING”.

None of those people really deserve your help, do they? Otherwise, you would have offered it. Right?

While in the States this distinction seems easy to recognize, in places like censored there is a very fine line between being charitable and being scammed. Stocky old women with pleading expressions work the crowds, holding out gnarled hands. Everyone has a line, wants to know where you live, and most likely has a cousin that lives in whatever country you answer. They aim to make a cousin of you by calling cousins with you. And they all want something from you, often very insistently so.

My first night, I was walking into a bar with the two Norweigan girls I’d just met when an animated young censored approached me, extended his hand to shake mine, and said (in poor English), “Congratulations!” I didn’t shake his hand. He pointed at one of the girls, smiled widely, and said “For you girlfriend… is very beautiful!” Naturally I ignored him completely at this point, and walked past without even a word.

Not long afterward, he sat next to me as I was ordering and addressed me (in excellent Spanish).

“Escucha me,” listen, he said. He gave me a strange, intent look. “There’s no need to be like that.”

He continued, “Nosotros dos somos hombres, no?” We are both men. I looked at him because I didn’t understand. He tapped his chest and said (in English), “I a man.” He tapped my chest, “You a man.”

We are both men? What does that mean?

What a shyster!

Right?

They are all shysters! They are trying to take advantage of you! Thus, they don’t deserve your help. Right? Only certain people deserve your help: the ones that really need it, and in a country like censored, you are now the keen arbiter of need.

Right? Right?

The Portuguese girl I met in censored later wrote me this:

From my first few hours in censored the word “pain” kept coming to mind, somehow. I couldn’t shake it. For all the local beauty, colour, and warmth of the population, I felt this undercurrent of sadness that seemed to come from beyond the general poverty and hard living conditions. At a deep personal level, I felt more ill-at-ease in censored than anywhere else I’ve visited. Those haunting houses, so many of them! The cars, the smells, the sad dragging on of life; policemen on every corner, control, control; the elections (!?), censored on TV around the clock, 40 year old Che censored slogan posters, the absurdity and anachronism of it all! Overwhelming… the censored pride mixed with the despair in the voices of those who begged me to please find a way to take them with me, por favor, quiero ser tu amigo, tu amante, tu amor, tu novio, tu esposo. They were 17 years old following me on the censored under the bright sun, they were 67 years old sitting in the cool shade of a cafe in censored, and everything in between.

No es fácil.

In reaction to this phenomenon, I saw many tourists become complete pricks to every single local that approached them. A few fell into the opposite category, being suckered at every turn by one story or another. But almost all these tourists had one thing in common: they couldn’t come to terms with having in the face of all that poverty.

To come to terms with having, one must understand what it means to need. This, more than anything, kept most tourists always at arm’s length from the censoreds.