Petr

So January was fantastic, and February is turning out reluctantly like total shit.  Things do that sometimes, so be it.

What I do want to do is start posting more often.  I write a lot, but post nearly none of it – just the big stories, or bulk diary entries ever make it in here, really.  The day to day stuff, the funny anecdotes, the people I meet, those get lost in the shuffle, and so I’m going to make more of a concerted effort to show off that side of things.

An example:  The last 3 days there has been this Swedish guy living in my dorm room, Petr is his name I think.  He’s absolutely crazy, in that sort of “this guy is  the stereotypical crazy fucking Swedish guy” way.  I don’t know if anyone really understands that.  Look – there’s a certain sort of image that you get of traveling Swedes.  Most of them are normal, if outrageously blonde, backpackers, all unusually pretty, mostly very well educated and mannered.  Then there are the few, the proud, the Petrs of the world, and these guys are just plain fun, like a roman candle fight or doing drugs – immensely destructive, but a hell of a ride.

Petr shows up Friday night right as a group of us are going out  to get dinner, and we invite him along out of camaraderie.  Nobody enjoys eating alone all that often, and he was brand new in town, so off we all go.  Over the table he’s telling wild stories – sex with models, all the women he’s met in Colombia, the drugs, the wild parties – you kind of get used to this stuff on the road, but there’s a certain line – the bullshit Maginot – the third rail of conversation – where if you touch it, you’re dead.  You’re a liar and nobody wants to hear it any more.  Petr came pretty damn close, but out of humor and politeness, nobody was going to call him on it.  Plus, they were funny stories.

Still, later that night I’m looking for ways to avoid thinking about my recent past, and Petr is the only other person who wants to go out.  Well, might as well be him and I as opposed to just me, right?  Kinda hurts my chances of meeting women if I bring my own 6’2″ blonde supermodel around, but from the sound of things, that is much more his sort of party.  I just want to have a few drinks, dance if I care to, and force a smile on my face.

Instead, we get shitfaced.  I’m talking shots in the hostel, drunk before the taxi.  “Forgetting the name of the bar you wanted to go to” drunk.  It’s economical, but not what I was planning for the night!  Better, as soon as we find a nightclub, Petr is walking around openly asking for cocaine, bumming cigarettes off strangers, talking to everyone about anything, and flirting with the entire world at once.  He’s talking to people’s girlfriends in front of them, making dangerously good friends with some drug-dealer looking types, and generally attracting way too much attention for how conspicuous we both are.  This is going to be great, so I just grab a table and a beer and start watching the fireworks.

I was wrong – dead wrong.  This guy, instead of getting his face punched in, makes friends with everyone.  Someone not only gives him coke, but refuses to take his money.  The hot bartender is giving him drinks on the sly.  The “silicon valley” girls are all over him, and generally the new money crowd is loving him.  You’d think he was being smooth and social, instead of overly drunk and dancing alone!   I just stare, and try to find some lesson in the madness.

By 4am, when I give in to the urge to pass out facedown into my small table, he’s the most popular guy in town.  A model for the local beer company is all over him in a corner somewhere, and neither he or I have been able to pay for anything all night.  I haven’t learned anything, except that this guy could probably pull his cock out and slap someone across the face with it, then make best friends with them 2 1/2 minutes later.  He’s a phenomenon.  I grab my jacket, say my goodbye, and barely make it home without falling asleep.

I don’t see Petr until 10pm the next night, and I’ve just about given into fantasies about commandeering his fancy laptop if he ended up dead when suddenly he appears in the doorway in his clothes from the night before, and pitches facefirst into bed.  “Oh man, you shouldn’t have left!  Where did you go last night?  Did you sleep?  Should have had the coke man.  I took that girl to a hotel in the morning.  You know, to fuck.  Then we went to her mom’s house and she cooked me breakfast.  The mom!  Crazy man.  Then this girl and her friend and I went to a pool on top of a hotel somewhere.  I don’t know where, far from here.  Anyway, they live together in Bogota, and I’m going to go visit them.  They told me they both want to have sex with me at the same time.  Such nasty girls here man!”  A few minutes later he was snoring, after burning all my phone credits texting.

The next day is more of the same, with Petr out all day, coming home looking disheveled with more wild stories and insane adventures.  He invited me out, but I felt lousy and heartbroken and said no, only to regret it as soon as he left.  We didn’t see each other again.  Today, I found his bed empty, bags gone, just some money for the phone and a note that said “should have come”

I really should have.  Probably would have been the time of my life.