Forgive me if I screw up the timeline. I'm piecing the details of this together from a story I was told by a friend a long time ago. I think I'm getting some of it wrong because I only vaguely remember the details, but whatever.

June 26 –

There are many kinds of embarrassment. Sometimes you say something that is slightly inappropriate. Like a Freudian slip. I do that quite often. I'm so glad that my family can't read my mind. Those moments are fleeing embarrassment and I can't remember the individual instances.

But sometimes things are so utterly humiliating that you'll look back on it and always shield your eyes. I'm using second person here as a way to distance myself from my humiliation, you see. I find myself uselessly proclaiming to Radioshack that it was his fault every five minutes and he laughs at me.

I feel that it would be better not to write this down. I should forget it.

No, I must write it out or die.

Radioshack complained last night that he wanted to sleep in a motel since we were camping so close to town. We had a little money between us and I was really longing for a hot shower. I didn't grow up showering regularly, but I didn't grow up in 100% humidity and I couldn't abide my own odor any longer. True, sewers smell badly but… the air is so thick here. I was very sticky and uncomfortable. And a bed. I missed a bed. I've become such a spoiled pet. So I reluctantly agreed, or I pretended to be reluctant. He said we could watch telenovelas and I feigned disinterest. I reminded him that I have work to do. We could have a respite for one day, but after that it was back to work.

There is a ring of thieves in this village, working the foreign tourists. I'm going to visit the ruins nearby when I get the chance. It should be very inspiring. I would take pictures, but we must go at night.

So there are two motels in town. One of them boasts that they have TV and hot water. I wasn't very fond of their pride in such basic necessities. See. Look how aristocratic I am. I grew up without running or even fresh water. No plumbing. Without any light. And now I'm too good to sleep in a motel without hot water or a television. I can see why Master Splinter sent me on this mission in the wilderness.

The other motel looked much nicer. The paint wasn't chipped and there were many patrons coming in and out and I assumed that more patrons meant better quality. I wondered if tourists frequented the place. Radioshack said probably. There was a sign out front with a phrase that I couldn't read, but I didn't bother to look it up in my dictionary and I told Radioshack that I would rather room in this place.

He gave me such an odd look. I wondered if I really looked as bad I thought. Like maybe he was suddenly struck with my disgusting hygiene. But then he asked if I wanted one or two. I told him one. We could share and we couldn't afford two anyway and he'd been bugging me to share my hammock. So now he would get the chance. He made a strange giggling sound and said, "Whatever you say, chief." And he left to get our room.

I stayed behind until he retrieved me. He had a room key and I snuck into the room through a window, carrying some of our things. The room wasn't as nice as I'd hoped. There was no television. I was disappointed. I'd hoped to watch a Spanish soap opera. Then I rebuked myself and decided to spend the time planning a way to make contact with the ring of thieves and then wondering if this was a good idea.

Then Radioshack came to the room with a woman following him. She was young and marginally pretty. Not remarkable. He was saying something like, "He's weird looking and green, but he's cool. You'll like him. But you're being to paid to like him, right?" She took a few steps in the door and froze at the sight of me. I was covered in sweat and mud and not wearing a stitch of anything because I was about to take a shower. I normally only wear a bandanna, belt and elbow and knee pads, but I feel so incredibly naked without them.

She babbled at Radioshack in Spanish and he babbled back. It sounded like they were negotiating.

And then Radioshack said… Oh, I can't even write it… He said, "She's going to charge you extra because you're weird looking, but that's only if you want the whole thing. She said she'll charge the same for a blow job after she sees what you have. And she's going to charge me extra if we both bang her at once, so why don't we take it in turns, right. No sense in me losing money just because she thinks you're too ugly to fuck."

I didn't understand what that meant at first. I know what a blow job is. I just didn't understand the rest of the statement. I finally understood that she was a hooker and I wish I could say that I said something really witty and took charge of the situation. I should have given her a speech about how prostitution is wrong and she should go back to school, but I honestly just sputtered incoherently and then pushed her out the door.

He knew all along that this place was a brothel. The motel is a front. He said that he thought my demand for one room was a demand for one hooker. I took my shower and I was very humiliated. Celibacy is hard enough without this.

At least the shower was very nice. The water was hot and didn't smell like rotten eggs or anything as I'd expected. But I would have bathed anyway if it had. I forgot how wonderful it is to get clean after you've been dirty for so long. I remember enjoying that feeling when I was younger when we finally could take real warm baths and showers.

I spent the next hour or so after I went to bed sitting up and saying things like, "Too ugly to fuck? I'm very good looking for a turtle. There are plenty of human men who are much uglier than I am."

Radioshack said, "Yeah, you're real sexy. Let me sleep." I had a very strong urge to smother him with a pillow. He was very disappointed that I'd thwarted him out of the hooker because there wasn't a TV and he couldn't find a way to entertain himself.

I was fairly hysterical and I can't believe the claims I made. I remember saying to him, "Well, she's the one who missed out because I'm sure I would make a very good lover." He didn't answer though, so hopefully he was asleep.

He was too tired to laugh at me. And we stayed the night in that place because we'd already paid for the room. It came free with our whore. People knocked on the door every hour or so and I didn't get a very good night's rest. Plus, I was so horrified at what that woman had said that I kept having bad dreams about it when I did sleep.

So I got out of bed and meditated and then I felt a little more at ease. Meditation feels so homey. I can almost smell the incense and hear Master Splinter's voice.

This is an adventure that I guarantee will not make it into a letter back home.

June 27 –

I wish to find a computer so that I can check my email. I want to look at my Facebook page. I may need to break into someone's house.

I'm not really sure about what to do with the tourist scams here. They are widespread. It isn't just one group of criminals working in a gang. There two common types of hustling. The first and most common type is quoting two different prices for merchandise for sale in the local shops. One low price for locals and another exorbitant price for foreigners. They also purposefully short change them because they know that they don't understand the currency. That seems more like general dishonesty. I can't fight that. I probably can, but I have no idea how.

There is a more outright criminal scam here in this village. A tourist spills something on their clothes and then all of the helpful villagers rush over to brush them off and before they know it their wallet is missing in the confusion and enthusiasm to clean the tourist. If I could find the individuals responsible for this, I could put them on the front steps of the police station.

I just checked my Facebook. Raph left a long message for me a few days ago. It was mostly a very mundane account of his activity that day. He lifted weights, sparred with Don and Mikey and then he pulled a hamstring. He ate a chicken sandwich and drank an old cup of soda that someone left out from Subway but it was full of mold and made him choke. Then he urinated in a sewer tunnel for some reason and thought it was noteworthy. Mikey dared him to bounce a bowling ball off the roof of the lair and it knocked out a chunk of brick. He sounds lonely. He doesn't usually send detailed messages like that.

I told him that I'm too ugly to pay a woman for sex and that he'd probably agree. I would never tell that to anyone else. I know he would never tell. I didn't say very much. I didn't have much to say and didn't want to admit that so far I haven't really done anything. I gave him some boring training demands. I won't list them here. He hates that, but it has to be done. I'm still the leader, even if I'm out of the country.

Don left me a few snarky comments about confusing the locals by speaking Spanish with a Japanese accent and to send him a mail order bride or else some illegal artifacts from an archaeological site. He said that he has seven computer monitor hooked up now. Why? He only has two eyes.

And Mikey mostly spammed me with lolcats.

Radioshack keeps laughing at me now. He thinks that the whole brothel episode was really funny. I told him that I would be forced to act out some violence on him if he didn't stop and now he's quiet. Thankfully, he knows that I don't kid about that kind of thing. Sometimes he stares at me with a look of paralyzed wonder or horror or something when I do my katas. Most likely imagining himself on the other end of my blades.

We will move on towards his grandmother's village tomorrow.

June 28 –

I finally helped someone.

We got up early and gathered our things together. It was quite a letdown sleeping outside again after the relative luxury of the motel room, even if we could hear people in the throes of passion at all hours of the day from all sides. The water was warm and the bed was soft and that was all I needed.

As we headed towards the outskirts of town, I heard a little scuffling. It was inside a house. Now the houses here are not the houses we picture back home. They're made of mudbrick mostly with corrugated metal roofs. I was idly picking wrappers out from between the bricks of a building once and Radioshack said, "What, do you want them to get sand blowed in their eyes?" That's ingenuity.

Anyway I heard a scuffling and I didn't like it. We were creeping in the dark towards the outskirts so that we could reach the road out of town. I decided that it wasn't far enough to risk another stowaway trip in a truck. Well, I gave Radioshack the signal to stop and crept up to the house. Someone was whimpering inside.

I won't go into the details because it isn't necessary and because I have a hard time thinking about it. But I stopped a rape in progress. I beat that one as much as I dared and left him at the police station.

As we left town, walking through the darkness of the jungle, Radioshack kept saying, "You're like a superhero, right? You stopped that girl from getting raped."

"Not exactly. I wasn't there in time." It was in progress. I won't say any more.

I told him to be quiet. I didn't want to think about it. I needed to concentrate on the task at hand anyway.

June 29 –

My guide has been sending us in the wrong direction. Now we must double back several miles. I heap curses upon you, Radioshack. I'm being kind of melodramatic, but I couldn't sleep last night because I kept dreaming about Raph throwing a bowling ball at the roof and about walking in on that girl getting raped. And now we're going the wrong way. But I'll keep it to myself. I suppose he can't help it if he's an idiot with no sense of direction.