Rosa Done Lost Her Mind and San Jose
I see the end of me and Rosa coming soon. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you may have gathered that I am not in love and I cheat on her whenever possible. But I always liked her enough to keep her around. She has started to go a little crazy, which happens with all women in my experience. After some time, they begin their efforts in trying to change a man. Standard operating procedure. The future of the couple depends on (A) if the woman cares enough to change the man and (B) if the man cares enough to tolerate it. In my case, I don’t like her enough. She has started nagging me to clean my room and polish my shoes.
She really lost her mind last week. I’d been making plans to leave the country in September to renew my tourist visa. I was juggling different options between visiting Chuck in Hong Kong, meeting an American friend in Caracas, or going to Santiago with Karin and another Dutch girl. I couldn’t pull the trigger.
So Rosa came up with an idea and, before explaining it to me, she told me to not take this the wrong way. Then she explained that, to make it easier on me, and because it is a hassle that I have to leave the country every ninety days, and as a favor to me and to help me out, she would be willing to marry me so I could get Peruvian citizenship. I laughed. I told her I’m not worried about it.
I laugh now over how much she phrased it as a favor to me, given that she would stand to gain many more benefits from American citizenship than I would from Peruvian citizenship – the grand total of which include legal work in Peru and legal entry into Brazil without a visa (the second of which is tempting).
Peruvians say that Rosa is not a brichera. She doesn’t speak English and has never dated a gringo. Those are two key traits of a brichera. However, she’s lost her mind regardless and we’re basically finished. I met two potential replacements in the last couple weeks, one of which is a 28 year-old lawyer who I’m going out with after tonight’s game.
I’ve gotten into the habit of telling people that I joined Arequipa’s ‘championship’ basketball team. San Jose are the current champs, were the champs three of the last four years, and are widely recognized as the best in Arequipa. However, this year I worry that we won’t be. The Finals start tonight against La Salle, who beat us in both regular season games. Tonight starts our best of three series.
I’ve been questioning how committed I am to this team. I only play about ten minutes per game (Wednesday I played twenty). While I usually break a sweat, it’s hardly an efficient use of time considering the workout. It’s especially inefficient when our games start an hour or so late, which is often. The team meets at least four times per week.
Besides the time commitment, I don’t have the natural competitive nature to feel the thrill of victory / agony of defeat when I’m on the bench three quarters of the game. So I decided to consider the practices the worthy part of being on the team. I could work hard, improve, and have fun. The first month or so of practices were focused on conditioning – the coach would run us hard for an hour and we’d scrimmage for an hour. Lately, however, we’re focusing less on conditioning and more on tactics, plays, and defenses. Extremely boring stuff, especially in Spanish. So I don’t even enjoy the practices anymore. What’s the point of being on the team then? I don’t know. We’ll see.
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