Holy Shit

Garish American accent, designer sunglasses, a sunhat, a crown of blonde hair and a naive smile. A backpack the size of a bear cub behind, another smaller pack on the chest and a plastic grocery back of food in one hand.

To some, this girl looks like a young foreign college student travelling. To others this girl is a lost, wounded antelope, all alone in the savannah; an easy kill for a lucrative robbery.

So there I was, all alone in the Subte during rush hour practically asking to be robbed. And these predators are smart; I was only a little lost, and not wounded, but my backpack was loaded; we’re talking passport, macintosh laptop, Nikon camera and a wad of fresh $ar100 bills. But I’m not a dumb little deer, I knew I was a target. So with a vice grip on my backpack straps, an exaggerated “don’t you dare fuck with me” facial expression, and security camera eyes, I boarded the packed linea D for downtown Buenos Aires. Bring it, I thought.

Apparently, these precautions weren’t enough. A couple stops later, I glanced down to catch the hand of the man creeping from under a strategically placed sweatshirt like a trained cobra, about to strike on my zipper. SMACK! I swatted the little serpent, hissed “Fuck you”, gave the man a look absolute repugnance, and he hopped off at the next stop.

Minutes after it happened I mentally reenacted hypotheticals in which I yell a clever, painful phrase in quick Castellano, bust out a self defense move I saw in Tomb Raider and he leaves the Subte in tears.

After hundreds of warnings and anecdotes about the rutheless Buenos Aires robbers, I expected it would happen to me once. Maybe even twice. But three times in a week and a half?

That’s right. A few days later, leaving an ATM with crisp bills and a credit card, I thought felt something touch my backpack, anxious from the recent Subte episode, I casually shook my backpack to deter stray hands, kind of like how a horse flinches to deter flies. The, sure enough, some fine gentlemen at the next corner informed me that my backpack was unzipped. And no I didn’t forget to zip it thank you very much.

That weekend, I was on one of my weekly photography journeys, flittering through picturesque places in the city when I stumbled upon “La Catedral”, a huge, beautiful church. While inside a pigeon pooped on me! A couple of seconds later, a women who had a face just like Mother Mary in the idol to my right, tapped me on the back to inform me that she had a wet towel and wanted to help me. Phew, I thought, no embarrassing walk of shame! She proceeded to help me remove my backpack and DSLR camera and wipe the “poop” off my legs, back and out of my hair … all the while turning … wait … turning me? I thought. Why is she turning me? I turned my head just in time to catch another women who had been kneeling and “praying” to a baby Jesus, had quickly taken her hands out of prayer position and put them on my camera. Whoa! I thought! Whoa, Whoa, Whoa! I quickly snatched my camera, zipped the backpack and said “muchas gracias,” in a voice that got my point across. Get your grimy hands of my shiny stuff.

As I walked out of the church in a confused daze, I still couldn’t believe it. Did I just get robbed in a catholic church? No way, no one does that in a cathedral. And she looked just like Mary. And where would that poop come from? This was eiterh a grand, nasty plan, or that women wasn’t an accomplice, but someone else trying t help me? Hmm.

Maybe the bored security guard could help. Uhhh Hay uhhh palomas al dentro de le iglesia? He laughed.

I then got home and the first words out of my host mom’s mouth were “What is that stuff on your backpack?” (translated, of course). “Caca, paloma caca.” She looked at me weird and said “No,no,no,no,no, no es caca!”

It was then that I finally admitted that I’d been robbed in a Catholic church. Or attempted to be robbed.

Unfortunately, now I'm suspicious of just about everybody: children in school uniforms, pregnant women, neighbors, our sweet house cleaner; everybody’s a suspect. What a transition from trusting little Sebastopol, where suspicion is looked down upon. Theater seats and restaurant tables are held by purses: "Hey man, if I leave my wallet on our seats, don't you think people will know they're occupied?" Homeless people make more cellphone calls than some people who actually pay for a cell phone: "Bro, will you lend me a minute on that cell, I really gotta talk with my homie real quick." And everybody goes with it, fearful they might appear too suspicious, uptight, or worst of all "not chill."

I've been raised surrounded by hippies, storybooks and parents teaching me that we are all one, everyone has a good heart, blah, blah. And a beleive this. But. I also earned real quick that even if someone has a good heart, they still may want my stuff. And here, most people want my stuff. Because few people have my stuff.