Galápagos dream
Last night I had calenture and I dreamt I was in a boat and had mal de mer. I was with everybody. But
even though everybody was there I was pensive and sad and had no intention of talking or laughing. The
boat was headed for the Galápagos Islands and I was headed for destruction as you shall see toward the
end of this story.
Anyways, as I said before, I was pensive and sad (byproduct of the calenture I assume) so I started crying
silently because I did not want everybody to notice I was such a wimp. My tears however were not real
tears for I was dreaming, although they felt real in my mind and my mind was telling my body that I
should be crying. In this respect I was indeed crying with real tears, but this is not a good writing topic so
I shall continue with my story.
We arrived in the islands and all of us started wandering around, stepping on the same soil that Darwin,
Melville, Captain Porter and Davis, and many others had stepped on years before. My first thought was
of despair because the fauna was so tame that my American family started touching them and, as they
got hungry, started killing them and eating them. We had a barbecue and I don’t know why I ate some
iguana stew and tortoise soup myself. This, indeed, was the most ravenous behavior but at least I was
dreaming and felt no remorse at the time.
This story makes no sense, but then it is not a story but a dream. I shall continue. After having supper I
started walking down the beach and I met a few Ecuadorians. One of them sold leather belts at the
beach. He had many beautiful belts. I asked them how he made the belts and he told me they were
made of iguana skin mixed with turtle oil and chemicals. “What kind of chemicals?” I asked him but he
did not know for the chemicals were imported from abroad and they came in a can, ready for mixing
and making the belts. I bought two belts, one black and the other black as well (different kind of blacks
in the spectrum).
After buying the belts the Ecuadorians started making mean jokes at the expense of the Americans and I
took offense by a few. My Spanish, even though rudimentary from undergrad courses, served me well as
I picked up the mean jokes and the insults. I insulted them back in Spanish and they started laughing, so
I switched to English. In English, surprisingly enough, they understood me well. I was ready to fight and
kill (evolution had taught me to defend myself) and I took out my knife. The Ecuadorians began insulting
me in English as well and upon seeing my knife their tone grew madder. Here are some of their insults:
“fucking negro” (for I am African American), “your mama is my bitch”, “motherfucker gringo get out of
here” and so forth. All the insults were drawn from movies and hip-hop songs I recognized. This allowed
me to fix the situation: I started singing along with their insults and they started singing as well. We
immediately got to be friends again. We forgot everything and I put my knife away.
Suddenly it got so cold and obscure that it reminded me of a Boston T stop on the Green Line. I felt so
much cold in the dark (for it was well past my bedtime) that I was inebriated with night. I took out my
matchbox and I lit one match. I saw no one. They had left me. Then I saw a pair of eyes that seemed to
me were the eyes of a Mameluke before battle. I was frightened and wanted to flee. I ran towards the
sea for Mamelukes cannot swim with their uniforms. This approach proved fruitful for I lost the violent
bastard, but to my disgrace I was wet, cold and headed for destruction as I said before. The sea at the
Galapagos Islands looks like a film of grease (sooo beautiful). I swam toward the boat but I did not make
it because it is impossible to swim on grease. I drowned. When I sank I saw the dark coarseness of the
bottom and a clumsy hairy crab. This whole thing killed me.
