My little latin love story. Part 5 of who knows how many.

We had confessed our love for each other and decided that I had to go to Peru in order to find out if we were compatible.

I flew down to Peru the first week in May and I was going to spend a week. We would spend twenty-four hours a day together (except for the sleeping in the same bed or house) it was going to get a little weird, or so I thought on the way down. When I emerged from customs she was waiting for me. She was much more beautiful than I had envisioned her. She was wearing a long black sudo-leather jacket, a tight pair of camouflage jeans and gray t-shirt. When I approached her I had to stop myself from kissing her and I skillfully dodged to the right and allowed my lips to slip safely past her ear and we embraced. We held each other for what felt like not enough. Her older sister Jessica was there and as we hugged she quietly took my luggage so when I turned around I briefly panicked thinking that my suitcases had been stolen. Jessica didn’t look much older than Mili, the overall body structure was the same; about five foot six thin with long black hair. Jessica’s hair had more of a wave and ran down only to her shoulders while Mili’s hair was as straight as hair could be and ran down to between her shoulder blades. We loaded up a cab and drove home. It was three in the morning and I hadn’t slept all night. Mili’s sister was a chit-chatty kind of person so she continually tried to start a conversation; she never really got the point that I didn’t want to talk.

I had forgotten how humid and polluted Lima was. It felt like a sauna but you have all your clothes on and you just ran a five-minute mile in the gym. When we got to her grandparent’s house I crashed on the couch and Mili crashed right next to me. Jessica went to her room to put on something a little more comfortable. Suffice it to say but in Spanish this phrase has no sexual meaning whatsoever. She went and put on some sweats. I feel asleep with Mili on my shoulder. When I woke up it was about 8:00am. My body had built up enough energy to be uncomfortable and made it known with a crick in my neck and certain body parts that were entering the painful wake-up stage after falling asleep. Mili awoke when I began to stir.

“How are you, heaven?” Heaven? Where did that come from? I stared at her for a moment and thought rapidly about what she could mean by heaven. After a two-year mission I learned that the tone of voice and facial expression would give you a push in the direction of the meaning of the word. Her face had the same expression that my mom would use when she spoke to my father in an endearing way. I concluded that heaven was a pet name, like dear. It made a lot more sense to call someone heaven than dear, after all, dear can easily be replaced with deer. English is stupid that way.

“Still a little tired, but more or less ready to start the day. I just want to shower first.” I had showered every morning since I could remember; I just couldn’t stand facing people wondering what I smelt like. After her aunt Roxana got out of the bathroom, I went in.

For some reason I felt quite at home in this third world bathroom. The plywood door with a latch that Gringos usually used on outside gates, the cheap tile covering the floor and four feet of the walls. The walls and ceiling were made out of concrete, which was normal for Peru in general. They said that it was the best material to make houses out of, and whenever I would mention that houses in the US were made out of wood and a chalk–like substance they would laugh at me. But the highlight of almost every Peruvian bathroom was the one faucet for the shower. This was going to be a cold shower.

We went to the LDS temple later that morning. It was the first time I had ever attended a session in Spanish. When we arrived back home my body was being ever more intolerant about my insistence of keeping it awake and moving. So as soon as we got inside we crashed on her bed, we couldn’t sleep on the couch again because her sister, nieces, aunts and uncles were all moving about the house. I tried to make it as uncompromising as possible but I was just too tired to sin even if I wanted to.