It’s three in the morning and she’s nestled next to me like a delinquent to an over forgiving mother. Kind of cute but then I realize I might be being too generous and just trying to find something good in her that won’t make me find something else to disguise who she really is.
      She half snores and half winks at me. I groan and tie her hair back as to express somehow that I still care about her and will take care of her. As if by doing something so spiritless and lame could express something so lovely and captivating. After tossing and turning and trying to hold a conversation with me when I just keep trying to force her to doze off, because I’m tired of watching her be tired, she gets up to go to the bathroom. When she comes back she starts ranting on about foreign policy.
      I see myself through the mirror in front of me looking confused and emotionless so I start doing a mental crossword puzzle. Twelve across. The capital of Vietnam. She climbs back in the bed and says something about imperialism. Sixteen down. 1991 best picture. She tells me to start taking my clothes off after she is already done with the task and then I realize I only have one left and I can’t find the answer. Twenty two across. A three letter synonym for the person you despise the most. And since the word ‘myself’ doesn’t fit I jot down ‘her’ and continue with the act.

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      It’s raining and you’re on a beach that has never once been touched by European soles before. Your velvet cotton leather expensive imported threads stick to your blistering white skin like black leeches in thigh high murky waters. You have to cross the rivers to continue progressive exploration. Know your boundaries. Your hair is in tight curls and you see people that just boarded off the ship drop to their knees to kiss the dirt. You wonder if it was just your lucky day or was this really delivered divine salvation.
      On the second day, when you’re all voting… no, scratch that. When just the males are voting on whether or not to wreck the ship for lumber to make a small village, you hear others saying that that first night was the absolute worst. You catch yourself saying “I agree”. You slept in tents and barely had enough supplies or food rations from the perilous weeks at sea to pass around to everyone who actually survived from scurvy or starvation. There was almost mutiny. You know you would have joined the mob if it meant you wouldn’t be thrown overboard. You catch yourself saying to yourself “why did I even volunteer for this?”
      So you decide to split up into groups. It’s primitive survival. The hunter/gatherer way of life comes back into play. Some go out and look for food. Some of you build up homes from what some of you break down for usage. And some of you breed when some of you die. Some of you decide who is going to be mayor and some of you decide who is going to enforce the laws that some of you obey and some of you break. So years pass and you slowly flourish into a community and then you feel the need to spread trade and goods with other villages that have crashed on shore after you. You trade what woman sew and weave and grow from vegetable gardens for a brown product that will kill millions in the next two hundred and some odd years. You start to wonder if they still would have harvested this much tobacco if they knew it was going to demolish so many in the years ahead. And then you wonder how much they can profit from the convenience of our easily manipulated addictions and then you get your answer.
      Your companions kill the natives. They are a threat to the expansion of your noble heritage and blood. They’re dirty and are not clothed properly. They speak other languages and have war paint. Different gods and religion. They’re savages. They’re unkempt. They use spears and wear feathers in their hair. Their skin is a darker pigmentation than yours. They must be evil. You catch yourself saying “they need to be vanquished before they murder our children” but never catch yourself saying “lets try to be their friends for we could learn a lot from them and they might be able to learn a lot from us.” Instead, through the course of the next couple of centuries, you annihilate their culture, rape their lands, and drive them to live on reservations no bigger than a thumbtack in the midst of a buffalo stampede. Oh, by the way, you killed pretty much all of them, too, for meat.
      You wonder if alcohol really is a true solution to life’s problems.
      You wonder if racism is real.
      And then you might or might not travel to an Indian reservation, as a tourist attraction and see a young kid clenching a bottle of hard liquor and notice that there is not one white person in sight for the next eighty six thousand miles. Unless they’re a tourist like you. Collaborating on watching these people drink themselves to death.

she)(i heard that the spaniards used to throw blankets of european disease on the indians to kill them faster
he)(yah well they also had horses and guns that shot these wonderful inventions called bullets
she)(why do you have to be sarcastic all the time
he)(well how do you not know this already their technology was incredible its no wonder they completely wiped out almost the entire native american population
she)(still you dont have to be rude
he)(you dont have to try to teach me stuff about christopher fucking columbus i went to school just like you 1492 he sailed the ocean blue

      It’s four in the morning and she finally stops gasping for air. We’re both wrecked from the exercise, her from jolting and romping around on the bed and me from pretending to be a conquistador. The sheets have sailboats on them. I want to start to wonder that they could be accurate representations of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria but then she interrupts by talking again. I’m practically drowning in a discussion I don’t even want to participate in.
      I remember hearing somewhere that the Spanish landed to Florida in search of the infamous Fountain of Youth. It was supposedly hidden in the jungle surrounded by a spot with an endless array of daffodils and daisies and dandelions and those that discover it are granted immortality and everlasting youth. They spent their entire lives looking for a hoax. It’s incredible the lengths that some people will go through to try and make themselves become happy. And then I take a glance at her.
      I whisper under my panting “it’s incredible the lengths that I’ve gone to try make myself try to be happy.”
      This isn’t happiness. It’s just comforting.
      I’ll never love her. I wonder if she knows I think about the new world development and human suffering when we’re making love. I’ll never love her though. I think if I did I wouldn’t have to think about the things I dwell upon when I’m inserted between her legs. I wonder what she is thinking about. I wonder if she knows I’ll never love her.
      After I’m done surviving Montezuma’s revenge she says “I love you, baby” and of course I say it back.

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