I believe I have my dates all mixed up. I'll go back and rectify that eventually. I like giving Leo awful things to think about. I'm just making up this haunting stuff. Seeing if I can weave it into the story. I remember my grandma saying that cute stuff about her nephew that she liked. I always thought it was both adorable and really sad.

July 1 –

Radioshack is the stupidest man on the planet. I really regret attaching myself to him. Nothing good has come of it.

I suppose I am in a bad mood because of the rape I intercepted. It isn't his fault. He obviously wasn't responsible. I have stopped rapes that were about to happen, but never in the middle. It is disgusting and the image keeps moving through my mind over and over. Sometimes I feel like I am truly an adult and that I know everything about the world. Of course I know about the harsh and evil side of humanity. I am a ninja and I've killed. Then I witness something like this. I am young and naïve and I shake a little now and I believe I need to do some katas.

I have returned from my exercise. Radioshack insists on watching me. I hate the staring. He cannot merely stare. He must ask endless questions to distract me. "So, you're a virgin, right?"

I mumbled something indistinct. I am a virgin in every sense of the word from any imaginable angle. It is nothing to be ashamed of and yet… I do not enjoy spreading the information around. At least at home my brothers feel my pain.

"Dude!" He was eating the last of our food at the moment with his mouth wide open. "You're eighteen and a virgin! Why'd you get rid of that whore then that I bought you? When we get to my grandma's village I'm going to find some chick to fuck you. I don't got any money, but I think my cousin Maria is a big slut and she'd do you for free, right."

I threw my katana to the ground. I actually threw it down like a child having a tantrum and panted out, "I do not need any help from you in that regard and I wish that you would keep these thoughts of yours to yourself. I have responsibilities that preclude carnality."

He laughed at me. The man laughs at me a lot and I said, "Do you have some kind of death wish?"

And then he had to sit on the ground because he was laughing so hard.

There is something about traveling with a person that makes you feel close. Even though I don't like Radioshack, I still tell him things that I wouldn't even tell my own brothers and I can honestly say that I'm close to them to the point of perversity. I said, "I'm here for others. Not for myself. It would be wrong of me to…"

He sat up and said, "You'd be doing it for somebody else, right? Maria'd be real happy if you hit her G-spot."

"Don't you talk about anything else? Isn't it hard enough being eighteen and celibate? Like I don't think about it every minute of the day on my own? I don't need your help and I certainly don't need slutty Maria's help. And yes, for the record, I'm absolutely sure I would 'hit her G-spot' even though I don't have a clue what that means."

My mouth is just unloading rubbish lately. Usually my rubbishy mouth is directed privately at Raph. I believe my last words to Raph as I headed out the door were, "Goodbye, asswipe." But I said it with a lot of love. I need to dispose of Radioshack as soon as possible and think about my technique and speed and such. And not G-spots. Whatever those are.

Radioshack just explained the concept of a G-spot. I feel both sickened and aroused at the same time. I seriously need to get rid of him.

July 1 pm –

We just visited Copan. Radioshack did not want to go with me. I ordered him to follow me and told him it was revenge for unnecessarily sexually frustrating me. He said that the Copan ruins are haunted. I told him that it was ridiculous and then I jumped out at him from behind a tree while he urinated and he screamed like a girl. That was amusing. I feel avenged.

It was so surreal and eerie. All the ancient stone stair cases around the open plain and the intricate carvings. Radioshack cowered behind me. There is some ridiculous story about a ghost that haunts this jungle. It is creatively called The Ghost of the Jungle. If I were him, I'd ask for a new stage name. He is the ghost of the first white man to be sacrificed to Quetzalcoatl. He comes back looking for revenge and he wears a cloak sewn together from the skins of the people he finds wandering in the jungle.

I read quite a lot about Central American history and know something about the Mayan people. They were not around when whites invaded the land. They were gone several hundred years previously. What they met was the Aztecs. Copan had been deserted long before Cortez arrived in Mexico City and betrayed Montezuma. I explained this to Radioshack, but he didn't seem to listen.

It was quite enthralling. I love that sublime feeling of the picturesque and I actually enjoy feeling frightened and awed. The snarling serpents that covered the architecture gave me a great thrill. I told Radioshack it was like you could sense the spirits of the people who lived here, just drifting in the moonlight. He whimpered.

I told him to imagine the stone walls covered in bright white and the serpents all brightly painted. It would be amazing. Then I ran ahead of him towards one of the bigger pyramids. There seemed to be a small structure at the top and I wanted to see it. I wanted to sit on top of an ancient pyramid and look around at the city beneath my feet.

The climb was not as easy as I thought because the stone was loose. Radioshack stayed on the ground, shrieking after me that the Ghost of the Jungle would skin me for daring to go up to the top of the pyramid. "That's where they killed people, RIGHT!" he yelled up to me.

I remember smiling so much that my face hurt by the time I reached the top. I should have been disgusted, but knowing that I stood on a spot that had known so much evil gave me a shivery thrill. And I sat at the top near the chacmool and sat with my knees to my chest, looking out at the surrounding countryside. I imagine that the Kings stood on this very spot, looking out at their kingdom, watching the city bustling at their feet.

I wish that I lived in ancient times. I would have made a good king. Sometimes I feel that I was sent to the wrong time. My talents are wasted. I could have ruled a country and kept peace and brought prosperity. Instead I rule three brothers who find no greater pleasure than urinating on me in the shower.

Sometimes I feel such a sense of power and then I shrink in shame. I am no greater than my brothers. Why do I insist on feeling that I am? Sitting up on the top of that ancient temple, I could almost palpably feel the strength of a king. Then I heard Radioshack's plaintive voice crying, "Leo, come back down! I can hear something moving around here! Get your ninja ass back down here in case the Ghost of the Jungle tries to tear off my skin." I imagined a horrifying zombie with a patch on his cloak that spelled "MS-13" and "Consuelo Forever."

July 2 –

I do nothing but fail. I endlessly fail. What's to expect from something as subhuman as I am?

I wrote that above sentence upon waking from a dream. I dreamed that I was a mighty king in an ancient city. It was not Copan. It looked vaguely Japanese. And Raph was there. I was so happy to see him in the dream and then as I turned to put my arms around him, he turned from me and walked away. I followed him down into a glowing golden tunnel and down at the bottom I found a girl being raped. Radioshack shook me awake, informing me that I was screaming.

There was a disturbing aspect to the dream at the end and it involved Raph, but I can't remember how at the moment.

We are closer now to Radioshack's grandmother's house. I will do a little dance of joy to be free of him.

My mind is truly a sick place. I cannot believe that it would produce such a sick image of my own brother. I need to speak to Raph. I need a phone. I need to know that he's alright. Radioshack says that his grandmother has a cellphone and that she might let me use it.

June 2 pm –

We have arrived at Abuela's house and are now settled in for the night. Radioshack's grandmother is 75 years old and still visits her own mother, who is over 100. She walks ten miles every week to bring her a large basket of some kind of unidentifiable tubers. She was in her garden wearing a black shawl over her head and Radioshack warned me to hide in the bushes until he explained me to her. I didn't want him to explain me at all. I had an urge to run away while he greeted her, but I knew that would be tremendously rude.

I watched as Radioshack approached his grandmother, arms wide open and then was smacked in the arm for his trouble and apparently berated. She put her hands on her hips as she listened to him give a speech with many hand gestures as if he were directing an orchestra. He held his hands out beseechingly and then eventually pointed in my direction. She squinted at me, but I'm sure she didn't see me. Then Radioshack retrieved me from the bushes and said, "She says okay. She don't like me, right. She said you can stay if you ain't MS."

That was a glowing approval and I told him that I am still ninja and that I would meet her in the barn. It looked like a shed with a bicycle wheel attached to the top as a TV antenna. I was not in the mood to stand in the goat shed making strained Spanish conversation with an old woman. I wanted to hear Raph's voice very badly. My dream nagged and ached into my mind and I felt so much guilt for maligning him, even if it was subconscious.

His Abuela stood in the middle of the crowded goat shed and greeted me as if she were a La Cosa Nostra Don. She gave me a complex speech in Spanish and I fumbled awkwardly for my dictionary. I paused many times and lapsed into Japanese more than once. Then I finally sighed and said, "Radioshack, will you please interpret for me?"

And Radioshack helpfully said, "She thinks you're ugly, right?"

I am quite used to such rude greetings and chose to take the high road and said, "Tell your grandmother that while I may have an odd appearance, I am just as human as she in intellect and I promise to honor my family and hers and I will not do her any harm."

We negotiated for quite a while and she reluctantly allowed me to sleep in the goat shed. They smell better than Radioshack and it's warm.

She walks five miles back and forth every day to milk a cow. She has a small pasture but it is quite a ways from the house. She talked to Radioshack for quite a while in Spanish while I tracked them in the brush and felt very foolish. Then she affirmed my suspicions by yelling in English at me in the hedge, "You, over there in trees. You look like Tarzan. Why are you creeping in the field like that? It makes you look less than honest."

I called back, "I am forbidden from showing myself." I felt like quite a fool.

The old woman jumped into the field as nimbly as a deer. Radioshack whined out on the road and she called him a "city boy sissy." I complained loudly of his fear of bugs and snakes all things that slither and crawl upon the ground.

She asked me some polite questions about my background and home life. She asked me the names of my parents, presuming that she knew them. I had to choke back a giggle. I do giggle sometimes, but in a very manly kind of way.

I said, "I have three brothers."

She asked, "Are they all iguanas like you?"

"We are turtles and yes they are."

Radioshack shouted from the road, "His papi is a giant rat, Abuela!"

"So are you," she spat back at him.

I like this woman.

She carried a large milk pail and I offered to carry it for her. Her shoulders are rather hunched and her skin is leathery from years of hard work. She has the gnarled hands of a hard life. She handed me the pail and I carried it with no problem and she yelled to Radioshack, "You see, he helps an old lady. That is what good grandsons do. Does Leonardo have a grandmother of his own? Is she a giant rat too?"

I have never thought of that. I must have grandmothers. Sensei must have a mother and I must have two grandmothers of my own. "I have no grandmother, ma'am."

"Oh, and he calls me ma'am!" she said. "He is a gentleman too!"

I believe this was wearing on Radioshack's nerves. I'd like to say that I was embarrassed by the flattery, but I rather enjoyed it. I was strutting as much as a turtle can strut while encumbered with a milk pail. Radioshack said, "If you like that thing so much why don't you adopt it."

And I was stung by that and I am still. He called me a thing.

"I will give him your inheritance then. Leonardo, you pick out a goat when you leave."

I am sitting in the barn, trying to decide on the goat. I believe I will have to sell it at the next village.

July 3 –

I survived the night in the goat shed and I have picked out my inheritance. I feel bad that I have robbed him of the riches he sought in this visit, but I cannot bring myself to feel very bad. I am nothing but a thing after all.

I ate a Honduran meal. It was some kind of fish soup. I believe it was a fish sliced the long ways and it tasted like fish flavored bubble gum because it was not cooked thoroughly. I do not care for fish that much, but I ate it anyway and tried not to show any distaste. Radioshack choked, spat it out into his hand because he won't use a napkin and said he was going to go buy something down the street. I was very self-conscious and ate quickly. She told me to relax and that I didn't need to eat the whole thing. I immediately put down my spoon and declared myself full.

Radioshack did not return for quite some time. I spent the afternoon in the house with his Abuela. She wanted to take me outside to putter in the garden because it was a nice day, but I told her that I couldn't risk it. She seemed sad for me and said it was a shame for a strong young man to be cooped up so much. I must say that I agree.

Abuela asked if I have any girlfriends and I became uncomfortable and said no. Then I asked if I may use her phone and call my brother. So I called Raphael and had a long conversation. I forgot my company and asked him if he had picked up any communicable diseases because he enjoys spending all his free time against walls with sailors in back alleys. Raph was actually happy to hear from me. We talked for longer than I thought was really polite on a stranger's phone and then when I was about to hang up I said, "I had a bad dream about you. I think about you all the time." That made him weird and he just cleared his throat and said that he only dreams about trains going through tunnels and that he had to go. But he seems to be alright and so I am satisfied and at ease about him.

She asked, "Are you close to your brother?"

"Yes, I suppose so."

"That is good. Even if he is a male prostitute." She smiled when she said it, so I think she caught the joke.

Radioshack didn't come back to his Abuela's house until nightfall and he was falling down drunk. I have been even drunker than that, but it felt wrong somehow to do it in the company of such an older lady. Maybe I am just unused to older women. It felt disrespectful. And he brought a woman with him. She wore tight purple jeans and many gold bracelets and she smiled very widely at me. It was the same predatory smile that Raph gets when he's about to attack. Abuela said, "Why did you bring Maria here? You know I don't let that whore in my house!" I believe she brandished a wooden spoon at them. Very brave woman.

He said to me, "I brought that slut cousin of mine. Cause you're a virgin and all and she said she'd go out to the goat house with you and she said you got to be quiet because her husband is out on the street, right."

Abuela grabbed Maria by the hair and tossed her out the door. Then she ordered Radioshack to go sleep in the goat house and I was given the bed of honor in his stead. I told her that I will move on tomorrow night. I should move on tonight, but I am worried leaving her here with Radioshack drunk.

She made up a little bed for me and insisted on tucking me in. "I have five sons," she said as she arranged the blankets around me. "They are all worthless. They are all like their father and so is Radioshack. Useless. I wish that I had you for one of my sons. You would have been such a very good son. I would take you to mass every week and you would be very clean and work hard."

It almost made me cry to hear such simple words of faith from a stranger and also that she had such lousy sons. I wonder sometimes what I would have been like if I were raised in a human family. Would I be the model son? I am such a failure sometimes. I thanked her and told her that I was very tired, which wasn't true.

Last night I did not dream about Raph raping some poor woman, but I dreamed about Don. It was a good dream and we were in a grocery store. He wanted to buy potato chips, but I said they were too salty. Rather boring, but comforting and homey.