The Sick Horror at The Lost and Found (5 page)

This was not the end. Osiris’ brother
was infuriated and when Osiris returned for his throne, he brutally
cut him into 14 pieces so Isis could not resurrect him again. But
Isis, ever devoted, recovered all body parts save one – the penis –
which had been cast into the Nile and devoured by a crocodile. Isis
would not give up. She assembled all 13 body parts and crafted an
artificial phallus and used it for copulation. She could not raise
Osiris as she had before, so instead she conceived their son,
Horus, who was actually the reincarnation of Osiris. Osiris’ soul
entered the womb of Isis at death and conception.

This is why Osiris is known at once as
the god of death and the underworld and the god of rebirth. This
archetypal ritual of death and rebirth spans primordial cultures to
modern secret societies and it is personified in the greatest of
phallic symbols. And that is the millennium old symbol I gaze up at
while drinking my wine near the crypts of Panama City – the obelisk
– a giant penis. But it is more than a phallic symbol. It marks not
death but the hope for rebirth. The obelisk here was raised for the
noble French canal workers that died in their failed attempt to
build a sea level canal. The French cock sits atop the obelisk. And
just meters away is the former French embassy.

That is why Casco Viejo so richly
deserves its World Heritage status. Underprivileged neighborhood
kids kick soccer balls on cobblestones in front of decaying French
colonial apartments as Jazz floats from restaurants in preserved
Spanish Colonial architecture. But Casco Viejo and its status is
again under siege. Not from English pirates this time but urban
development. From Casco Viejo you can see the ships lining up to
enter the expanding canal, and high rises across the bay will soon
be home to the highest apartments in the world. A new highway is
proposed to encircle the fortress walls. Now I feel that it is I
and others like me chained to the outer wall – not to be swallowed
by the rising tides, but by the rising cars. If only we could
reload the cannons.

Where to
Disappear

By Mathew Hope

María and I both knew the tattoo was
only the pretense behind going to her hotel. She was staying at the
Hotel Ideal, located in an area filled with pawn shops and cheap
strip joints. The hotel was what Walt Disney would have built if he
lost all his money on cheap acid and hookers. There was a lot of
kitsch, from the red plastic lights near the 60’s vending machines
to the mermaid guarding a quarter¬-filled swimming pool now flush
with fat goldfish. The receptionist sat behind grated metal and a
row of old telephones that María told me could not be traced. I
have been told that as the money laundering capital of the
Americas, Panama has long been the place to disappear, for everyone
from the Shah of Iran to Patty Hearst.

She led me by the hand to her room.
Before the door to her room swung shut she jumped onto the bed. She
stared at me without saying anything and peeled off her pants and
underwear. They were still wet from the cave. In one go, she kicked
them to the side. Then she motioned me closer. Well below her
navel, in the area where there would be hair, I saw a small tattoo
of the moon eclipsing the sun.

“
The moon is a mirror,” she
whispered. “It holds the sun.”

I don’t get girls this beautiful… I
should say I have never had a girl like María show interest in me.
It was so otherworldly for me that the rest of my memories are
faded untrustworthy and surreal:

There was a painting of scene from the
States -- you know two mountains, water in the middle. What was
home peeking out to tell me in such tactless way? What do you
want?

The smoothness of her skin.

And the air conditioner sputtering off
instantly sending in the hot humid night.

And the sudden momentum crash just
after her orgasm.

And the smell of old smoke and fresh
sex.

And listening to the heavy breathing
of deep sleep and the screeching and wailing of Panama City’s pawn
shop/sex district. Then the sound of heavy rain as I drifted into
semi-consciousness.

Unwrapping the paper from around a
glass in the bathroom.

Feeding from the tap.

The moon pouring in through a window
and seeing María, naked, in the mirror.

Her finger over her lips and then her
arms suddenly around me. She sat on the sink and used her toes to
slide off my boxers.

And her index fingers sliding between
her legs and separating her lips.

She told me we weren’t
done.

“
The moon holds the sun,”
she said again.

And then waking near dawn with the
sounds of car horns and buses.

I slowly opened the bedside table and
tore out a page of a bible. I moved to the desk and quickly wrote
my e-mail address on the limp paper trying not to poke holes in it.
And then getting down on all fours and edging toward’ María s jeans
that were half under the bed. I pulled at her jeans until they were
stretched out and I slowly slid the paper into her back pocket.
There was something else there. Another paper. I pulled it out. It
was a photograph.

I looked at it in the dim light. At
the time I was sure. I stopped breathing and stared and the photo,
squinting my eyes. It was a Facebook photo. My Facebook
photo.

When I woke next, María wasn’t there
and her stuff was gone. I waited a painfully long time. Finally I
paid the bill and entered hot steaming day wondering if that really
was my photo and why. Or was I going nuts?

Coiba – La Isla Del
Diablo

By Steven Banks

So I decide to show Estrella her own
country and teach her to scuba dive. In the surfer paradise of
Santa Catalina, we found a great dive master and the oldest Rasta
wannabe I have ever seen. We get on the boat and right off he says,
“Oh, please don’t you rock my boat,” when the rust heap didn’t even
move, “’Cause I don’t want my boat to be rockin’.” He had graying
dreads hanging past his waist and his face looked like the back of
my elbow.

My dive master is friends with this
dried raisin, and between the two of them they know every diving
and fishing spot in the waters off the protected marine park of
Coiba. National Geographic editors have collectively jizzed more
over photos of this place than their March 1976 topless pigmy
special. The dolphins that jump and swim off our bow are barely
noticed until the captain points and murmurs something like, “These
are the big fish, who always try to eat down the small fish. Just
the small fish.” There was a certain lyrical bounce to his speech
that seemed familiar to me.

After experiencing one of the best
dives of my life, I learned the history of the island, which now
makes me even smarter than I was. Let’s see if you are smart like
me. Pencils ready?

The region has had the most attacks
from one of the following: a) Sharks, b) Monkeys, c)
Chuckys.

If you guessed c then remove some ribs
and start sucking yourself off now because you are right -- Chucky,
or, more accurately, Los Chuckys along with their rivals, The
Children of the Cold Tomb (my favorite) and the Sons of God. All
are street gangs.

Los Chuckys took their name
from the movie
Child’s
Play
, and they were sent to a deserted
island where they were forced to sit through such cinema gold
as
Child’s Play 3
,
The Bride of
Chucky
, and
The
Seed of Chucky
, as punishment for taking
such a lame name. For that and for killing people.

Back in ’03 there were a couple of
ways to get to Coiba -- take a boat or kill someone. Aside from
every taxi driver in Panama, there has only ever been one
Panamanian I ever wanted to kill, but instead we had angry sex, and
I still haven’t been able to shake her. But anyway, the boat is the
only way to go now, since the prison was closed in 2004. That’s
right -- Coiba Island was one big ass prison.

At night, the guards would
lock themselves in their towers and let prisoners out of their
cells. I have no idea why they would do this. The guards must have
thought it was good fun. Imagine
The Most
Dangerous Game
in teams. Or Survivor Panama
with a twist. The bets would be somewhere along the lines of “I
give you three to one the rapist gets castrated tonight… or lucky.”
One night escapees floated on a raft to the rival gang’s area and
were greeted by having their heads removed. But they weren’t really
using them properly anyway—who would think they could navigate
through foaming, shark-infested waters patrolled by boats carrying
men toting machine guns?

The late afternoon sun came up, and a
flock of bright red scarlet macaws passed overhead on their way to
the island. The Rasta took his shirt off… he was not really black,
but he tans to reach that nice dark blend of Jamaican and dark
roasted Panamanian. He lights his joint, lays back, and then sings,
“Sun is shining, the weather is sweet now, make you wanna move your
dancing feet, yeah.”

We drift past a wall of the
former compound and I see the words, “
Penitenciaría.
” The dive master sees
my face light up. He drops me and the Rasta man off there, but
Estrella won’t set foot on the island. I think she knew.

The faux Rasta led the way on foot,
chopping away at the undergrowth as we moved along. I saw rusting
gates and crumpling concrete and wondered what horrors had occurred
here. When I ask what happened to all the people, the machete
wielding boat captain understands and smiles. “Exodus, all right!
Movement of jah people.”

I stop with a sudden realization. I
confront the Rasta Man.

“
What is your
name?”

He has a big shit eatin’
grin.

“
What… is… your…
name?”

And he has an even bigger shit eatin’
grin. The guy can understand but he doesn’t really speak. “Can he
speak Spanish?” I ask the dive master when I return to the
boat.

“
He understands English and
Spanish but he only speaks… he only speaks Marleynese.”

“
Freedom came my way one
day,” Rasta Man said, “and I started out of town, yeah!” He pointed
at a cell with a caved in ceiling and dead palm leaves on its
floor.

“
He was a
prisoner?”

“
This was his home for
twenty years.”

I got a chill standing in front of
this smiling man with the big knife. I thought about headless
ghosts roaming the cells and wondered if Rasta Man was a Chucky.
Seeing him with a knife and a smile, I wouldn’t be
surprised.

The sun began to set as we motored
past the final leaning palm of the island. I stared into dark,
forbidding jungle.

“
La Isla Del
Diablo
,” the captain said. I wondered if
there were lost prisoners in the thick of the island that didn’t
know the prison had closed, just like the pockets of Japanese on
Pacific islands that still think the war is on.

Evil is a dark cloud roaming the
earth. It drifts over places like the World Trade Center and Iraq,
but when nobody is looking it usually comes to rest in remote
places like this -- places of natural beauty lie next to the evils
of humankind.

I asked my dive master what the Rasta
Man did to do time. The Rasta Man turned to me.

“
No woman no cry,” he said.
But this time he wasn’t smiling.

Climbing Volcán
Barú

By Mathew Hope

Steve has had many dumb ideas, but
this one was in a class of its own. We met up with him and Estrella
in a charming mountain coffee growing region in the town of
Boquete. Steve said it should be on everyone’s bucket list -- the
only place on Earth where you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific
Ocean at the same time – the summit of Volcán Barú. The dumb part
was deciding to go at one in the morning and learning that we had
to leave in an hour to get to the top to catch the sunrise. But
Pablo, the guide that Steve had met over some tequila in a popular
bar called Zanzibar, assured us that the trip was amazing. We would
jump up and down on the top of the world, where few white men ever
tread. When Estrella and María were persuaded to come, I was not
allowed to say no.

We decided to catch an hour or so of
sleep, and I was happily thinking this was the end to Steve’s
stupidity. But Pablo showed up, blaring the horn of El Toro Rojo, a
red Ford Bronco from the 70’s. I envied Dr. Mike and Usnavy,
snoring away somewhere in a tent on Isla Iguana. It was four hours
past our departure time – the one we had to meet to make it to the
summit for sunrise.

We started our climb from a ranger
station at the base of the volcano, and it immediately became clear
that Pablo was no mountain man. He constantly had a cigarette
hanging from his mouth, and Steve and I were the only ones who had
thought to bring water (which María and Estrella were happy to
drink most of). I didn’t have a day pack, only my big backpack
which Pablo eventually used to house a bottle of cheap Panamanian
rum called Panama Jack (which is actually pretty good). We learned
that Pablo had not been to the top since he was a kid, and even
then, that was by horse. María and Estrella looked as though they
were ready to quit, but I wanted to make them pay… I wanted to
reach the top… I wanted to see both oceans and reach a place where
few dare to go.