F**k My Girlfriend

A true story about a bizarre encounter in the jungle in Brazil.

I vaguely remembered someone telling me that I had gotten a job as a journalist but I woke up on the same bus 83 hours later and the same grey seat and the same bouncing afro appeared and so I dozed off again thinking I’d accidentally accepted the wrong career as an eternal bus rider.

The exhaustion was building. The road had been disintegrating for decades without repair and each time I closed my eyes I fell asleep without delay. And each time I fell asleep the bus hit a pothole or possibly a cow because the jolt would throw my head into the window and the pain would flare once more. This was my eternity. Falling asleep for a split second, maybe two, then a forehead to glass, ribs to plastic armrests, a moment of flat roads, a second of sleep, and so on.

I don’t remember waking and I’m sure I never fell asleep for more than a moment. But like coming out of blackout drunkenness I was suddenly standing outside the bus in the middle of the jungle. The driver handed me my bag from the stowage and began walking away without a word. I looked up at the bus windows. There was no one left inside.

“Excuse me. Where are we?” The driver quickened his pace. “Hey! Where are we?” He turned.

“Caranheiras. The bus station.” There was no station. Only a single green bench next to the road cutting through thick Brazilian jungle. I showed him my ticket.

“I’m looking for Novo San Antônio. You heard of it?” The bus driver frowned and pointed at the bench.

“Wait here,” he said. His Portuguese was barely intelligible. He spoke as if simultaneously gargling creamy soup. “Your bus will arrive at 3 in the afternoon.” I checked my phone. Dead.

“Que horas?” I asked. He checked his watch.

“Two.”

I sat down with my backpack and duffel and watched the dust rise in front of the fortress of trees. It settled reluctantly and the bus was long gone by the time it did. The sun looked to take lives. Inexplicably I wore jeans. The bench had no cover. The dense thicket could protect from the sun but strangely I felt uncomfortable leaving my bench, as if the second I stood and walked away, I’d lose my ride. The bus would speed by and I’d be stuck in the Brazilian version of Rock Bottom.

I sat in a pool of sweat, contemplating how I’d survive the next hour. My seizure-esque state on the bus was preferable to this paralysis where the sun sapped so much energy that time itself felt the heat induced laziness. Shorts were the key. I surveyed the scene. Across the dirt road lied one hundred feet of dead grass, with only trees beyond. Behind, less dead grass, and just as many trees. To my left the road cut through the grass and continued forever into the bush. I looked to my right, down the same dirty gun barrel on the opposite side. It disappeared into nothing as well. The sun had evaporated any wind or breeze and all life but the trees, which seemed like a painted background on a movie set as I sat alone on my bench.

An uncomfortable feeling began to rest in my stomach. It started off small and barely worthy of attention, but I paid it some anyway. And it grew. It effloresced into a monster fed by the combination of stressors hanging over me and my bench: dehydration, exhaustion, heat stroke, loneliness, uncertainty, and complete and utter lack of wifi or even a charged phone. All I needed was to change into shorts and couldn’t. I was caught in complete panic, stuck in a state of abulia. Not a creature I could see but the idea of undressing seemed too vulnerable. This bench was center stage and those trees were a one-way curtain with the entire world watching on the other side, waiting eagerly for the gringo to expose himself. But only one man was watching.

He emerged from the wall of trees, dressed as a normal Brazilian man in his forties: jean shorts, a pink shirt with a collar and oversized black graphic, and ugly tennis shoes. I frowned at my mind’s inability to come up with interesting hallucinations. But then again, it wasn’t impossible that there was another man in this area, walking out of the jungle to greet me. Perhaps he was just hiding away from the sun, lacking the cartoon-referencing paranoia that had stopped me from doing the same.

“What’s up,” he said, in perfect English. So I was hallucinating. But then he sat down next to me and I continued to stare with a frown and he patted me on the back and smiled, and his hand touched my back, and my back touched his hand, and I realized I wasn’t hallucinating and then became quite frightened. Chills ran so strongly from my head to the base of my spine that beads of sweat dove down my neck. “Do you speak English?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he said. “We can speak English then.”

“I wasn’t expecting anyone else to speak it here. How’d you learn?” I asked. He smiled and took a long pause. Too long of a pause.

“I uh…lived in….Idaho!” he said excitedly, as if the state’s name leapt from the tip of his tongue. “For…sixteen years.”

“Oh. What were you doing there?”

“Working. Construction. Lots of construction in Idaho,” he said. I didn’t respond and faced the trees. He put his hand on my shoulder and I shrugged him off. He put it there again and leaned forward to make sure he was in my peripherals. “My wife left me,” he said. I feigned a sympathetic expression and told him I was sorry. He smiled. “But that was three years ago.”

“Okay.”

“I need you to help me out,” he said, and squeezed my shoulder. I scooted to the edge of the bench.

“I prefer women,” I said. He laughed.

“Nothing like this. I saw you and knew you could do me a great favor. But don’t worry, I’ll pay you.”

This man was thick but muscular and would have had no trouble overtaking me. I had no interest in talking to him for a second longer, even less in doing him any sort of favor. You can’t let these kinds of people gain any momentum.

“Sorry, I’m taking the next bus to Novo San Antônio. I have a job there and don’t have time to help you.”

“Not a problem,” he said, “I’ll take you to Novo San Antônio tomorrow.”

“No. I’m getting on the next bus.”

“I’ll pay you one thousand dollars.” This was a laughable offer from 99 percent of all Brazilians, let alone this random man who appeared from nowhere. I felt better then. Maybe he was just mentally deficient and didn’t have any intentions of robbing, killing, or raping me.

“Okay,” I said with a laugh, “I’ll do it.” He pulled a wad of one hundred dollar bills out of his pocket and shook them in front of my face. At this point I knew I was in deep s**t.

“Great. Here’s what I need you to do.”

“I was kidding. I already told you I’m getting on the next bus.”

“And I already told you, I’ll take you tomorrow.”

“No chance.”

“Just listen to my offer.” I stared straight ahead, tempted to pull my bag with my camera and computer closer but not wanting to make any quick movements or draw attention. “I think my girlfriend is cheating on me,” he said.

“Then dump her.”

“I don’t want to do anything irrational. I love her. And I don’t know for sure.”

“Then confront her.”

“She said she didn’t.”

“Then trust her.”

“But I’ve heard people talking.”

“Then ask them to their faces.”

“I did. They all said she was cheating.”

“Then dump her.”

“I can’t. I have to know for sure. That’s why I need you.”

“Sorry, I can’t. I’m getting on this bus.”

“Just listen to my offer.”

“Fine. But I can’t help you.”

“Great. I’m going to take you to my girlfriend’s house…I need you to…persuade her.”

“Sorry.”

“You know what I mean?”

“Yes. Can’t do it.”

“I want you to try to f**k my girlfriend.”

“I said I got it.”

“She’s very beautiful.”

“Congrats.”

“But I need to know if she’s cheating.” I looked him directly in the eyes and decided to see where this was actually going.

“I’m not going to do it. I have a job and it involves going to Novo San Antônio in one hour on the next bus. I’m not taking your money and I’m not going to your girlfriend’s house. I’m done talking about this.” I stared into his eyes and waited for a response. His nostrils flared and his forehead creased. He stood up and raised his voice.

“What would you do?! If you loved someone and you thought they were cheating! My wife left me! Now my girlfriend…that s**t! that w***e! what would you do if you loved someone?!”

“I wouldn’t ask someone to have sex with her.”

He took a deep breath and sat next to me. He smiled. Practiced liars have a way of reversing their emotions. I waited for him to say something but he leaned back against the bench and stretched his legs. He stared straight ahead with a gentle grin. Sharp squeaks from old suspension broke the torrid silence. The bus that rolled up was clearly unofficial. Painted with a sloppy green, the black letters escolar could still be seen under the thin coat. The driver opened the door and looked at me and ignored the man.

“Are you Montgomery?” he asked. I nodded. “You’re writing for the crew in Novo San Antônio?” More nods. The driver waved me onto the bus. I looked at the man next to me. He still had the hundreds sitting on his knee. He sighed and returned them to his pocket. Then he shook my hand, wished me good luck, and left the bench. I said nothing and gathered my things and got on the bus.

The bus churned forward and I watched the man walk into the forest through a cloud of dust. We hit a pothole and my head slammed against the window.