@Preocupado

(Some lore for my die-hard fans)

A bit of background on my username: it’s Spanish (bonus point if you’d figured that out), but not to worry, fellow monoglots; it’s a cognate, meaning it’s more or less the same spelling/definition as its English equivalent (Preoccupied. No bonus point for that one). It’s a reference from my book: it was a title bestowed on me by a rabidly horny - Mexican guy during my first trip to South Africa as a volunteer. (To clarify: he wasn’t, at that point, horny for me (…yet), but certainly was for the girls with whom he was living.)

To set the scene: one of the volunteer houses was (in this layman’s opinion), particularly poorly set up: it had bunk beds, and could thus sleep more than the other houses (so, about 24 kids in total), and for some reason was also co-ed. It got worse: there were only two bathrooms, neither of which were en-suite, meaning people were always coming and going down the hallways various states of undress. Lots of temptation and hormones and free time - a dangerous combination, especially since there was no shared living space, meaning there wasn’t anywhere for these guys to get it on even if the girls had been interested.

To those of us in the other houses, it began to look less like a wholesome volunteering trip and more like like a social experiment to see how blue-balled you could get a barracks-full of young men by the time they left the country (some were stuck there for up to six months!). (Now that I think about it, it was surely a bad idea to get these guys into such a dangerously horned-up state before sending them into the local schools. In fact, we almost had a disaster on this front. But that’s for another post.)

Anyway, on a couple of occasions (all of which are, of course, recounted in the book), I provoked the mob, and nearly paid the ultimate price.

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Regarding the “preocupado” night in question: the sun had set, and folks were planning their night out. My amigo was chastising me for voicing my concern that we might not be safe if we were to walk to a dive bar across town that was hosting karaoke. Two volunteers had been mugged at knifepoint on the same route just a week before, so I felt my concern was justified. But this, I came to realize, was irrelevant: we were not in an arena where rational thought would be of any use - nor one where it was even welcome.

For the record, it’s not that I didn’t - or don’t - appreciate his side of the argument: my being a nervous Nelly likely did risk killing the mood. For him, I failed to realize, the math was simple: getting mugged was a more than suitable trade-off for an increased chance of getting laid (at some point before or after the mugging). And, in his defense, I imagine the ability to “just live in the moment” and operate with blinders on had been something instilled in him from birth: (as he was all too happy to inform the girls right after he finished telling me off,) his father was a close friend/business partner of Carlos Slim, and also had ties to what the boy did [a bad job of pretending to not want to tell us was] the cartel. I’d bet it’s pretty easy to live by the easygoing/“changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes” credo when you grow up with a pet albino tiger and when any trouble you run into can be solved by a quick phone call to your “crew.”

Anyway, I didn’t put up much of a fight: I withdrew my motion to call a taxi, and thanked him for his constructive, thoughtful assessment of my character. Although I skipped karaoke, I think we both walked away winners: I was pretty proud of my exotic new name; it had a nice ring to it, and wasn’t nearly as offensive as I could tell he wanted it to be. (Maybe the word has more of a stigma south of the border…? No idea.) Any Spanish nickname sounds cool, I guess, but the way I saw it, it wasn’t too different to being called “El Diablo” or “El Matador.”

All this to say, preocupado will remain in use. And not even ironically. In this house, we do not shame concern, apprehension, failing to “live in the moment,” etc. Quite the opposite. As for him, I think he made it there and back without getting mugged. I don’t know where he is now, but I like to imagine him in his element as a booze cruise captain or club promoter in Cabo or Cancun, spending his free time holding court in a hot tub full of spring-breaking sorority girls.

“You okay over there, compadre? You’re lookin’ a little nervous. Maybe you’d feel better if you subscribed…”