Backstreet South America: Frantic Tales From a Romantic Land

A three year South American adventure lands Chuck Hagen in prison, but not before rediscovering himself as a drunk junkie hellbent on investigating the road less travelled.

*excerpt from ‘Frantic Romantic’

Long distance bus travel will suck a man dry. The incessant vibration menacing the loins, the monoxide air altering the structural integrity of the oesophagus, the incremental llama splatter complimenting the bloodlust in the eye of the wild Patagonian night. South America is like a shitstorm; many may find it dirty and disgusting, but to the adventurous fecalpheliac, it’s a goddamn paradise.

Then, there’s the oxygenated mugshot seated beside me, slouching adjacent to my stirring crotch, tainting my headrest with his oversized head and extra chromosome, khaki trench coat draping over my right knee. I flick the thick gabardine material back to his side of our bench seat, it recoils in mocking tedium. Maybe it’s concealing an FAL Battle Rifle. Maybe he’ll murder us all. At least my haemorrhoids will stop itching.

I offer him a potato chip and he says no.

I turn to my travelling companion seated behind me and now my balls are blue. Ahhh, yes… sweet Talia. Seems but a pittance ago, contorted within the confines of a San Telmo toilet cubicle, when we first bonded over our fascination with genitalia of the opposite sex. One leg propped on a grimy handrail, and me, drunk, poking from behind with all the gusto of an anaemic broomstick, staving off leg-cramp in much the same way a drunkard staves off an erection. She’s white-knuckling the cistern in a theatre of showmanship, and me, I’m pondering the electrolyte content of a standard Cuba Libre.

In essence, Talia is the Kabbalah 2.0; a stoic mystique wrapped in Israeli military training and denim shorts. Surveying her Zionist eyeballs, borne within swirls of almond and old-world wisdom, one can’t help but admire her cutthroat resolve. Nothing fazes her. Not the potential mass murderer cheapening my personal space, not the rum-soaked driver of our vintage Scania autobus, not even the steady stream of military toy-boys barricading the dusty road ahead. I offer to service her behind the sacks of rice weighing down the rear suspension. She says no.

I pretzel my vision to the abomination seated beside me. Staring into the wretched hominid’s vacuous soul, I consider the passion of war, its primordial violence, its purpose and consequence. During the latter stages of the 1982 Falklands conflict, industrious British soldiers smuggled crates of FAL Battle Rifles onto Argentinian soil to sell at a premium to opposition infantries. This farcical battle, fought across a ten-week period over two British-dependent territories, highlighted both the anti-human nature of statist zealotry, and the pro-human integrity of free-market capitalism. Flag or freedom? Acquiescence or acquisition? Loyalty to false frontier or sovereign self? It’s these philosophical conundrums that inform the core value of travel.

Besides, who says no to a potato chip?

*due for release in 2025