Background information: I have a small scar along the right side of my face. It begins somewhere along the lower part of my cheek and extends down to the front right side of my mandible.

After my senior year of high school I headed to South America to visit a former tennis teammate and good friend. I will refer to this friend as Diego. Diego and I had grown very close during his stay in the States. My family had hosted him under a strange set of circumstances that involved his former host family selling their house, moving to another state and refusing to return $50 of Diego’s change from a department store purchase. But I digress. My flight arrives late in the night to Asunción – under more interesting circumstances which involved an underage Asian girl on a missions trip insisting on using my tray table as a headrest. No joke. But once again, another story. I am greeted by Diego and his family promptly at the airport and we make our way over dark roads to their home.

Soon after arriving and unpacking a few things, Diego and I leave the house for the night. We ride in the back of pickup truck driven by a friend of Diego. I notice the texture of the roads – rocks met with some sort of natural cement. We arrive at a small diner that serves empanadas. We sit outside on plastic chairs where I consume my first legal alcoholic beverage. A bottle of Pilsner. I force it down. Damn, these empanadas are delicious.

We leave the plastic chairs and head to an undisclosed location. Diego asks me how my shoes are.

“They’re fine,” I reply with disregard as to the question’s nature. Diego gives my shoes a second glance and gives a shrug of sorts.

My patient disregard of the question is awarded as we pull up to a small cement football field. I’ve never really played soccer in the States. While I considered myself fairly athletic, I was by no means fit to play a game with a group a people who had been playing this since they could crawl. I’m encouraged to experience it and I play anyways.

Saying I felt out of place on the tiny court, sprinting back and forth in my featherlight Ascics trainers, would be a gross understatement. On a large grass field I could use my distance running skills to my advantage. And the grass – I would give anything for a grass field now. Instead, my knees throb in pain from my purposeless movement on the asphalt hell I’ve found myself on.

While my team is on a short offensive I am unexpectedly struck by a short, stalky Paraguayan. I fall on my hands. Interesting, I think to myself. I cuss a few times in English and once in Spanish for the sake of my location. Soon after, a loose ball approaches me and I scramble to get rid of it. In this escapade I manage to receive a few kicks to my shins and fall to the grit of the court once again. I decide defense might be my best course of action. The game becomes increasing physical and I let myself in on some of the damage. The man-to-man coverage brews a hatred between my stalky friend and myself. We exchange recklessly placed elbows and small shoves.

Things escalate and small shoves become irrational throws of the body, which in turn produce a twisting of the stricken individual’s limbs. I’m ready to throw punches when my nemesis deliberately throws me to the ground with both hands. No one notices – everyone seems to have their own battle, some more noble than others. I take matters into my own hands and tell the kid to fuck off. Surprisingly, a verbal assault catches his attention. He replies in a mix of Spanish and the native language Guaranine of which I understand very little. I coax him further with some cussing that means almost nothing to me when said in my non-native tongue. While my words fail to stir or settle my own emotions, my nemesis seems to be irked – displayed by his short burst towards me.

I grab his arms and torso as he reaches for me and our struggle becomes the business of several onlookers. An onlooker, perhaps previously enjoying a Pilsner and friendly chatter, approaches me from behind as I struggle halfway to the ground. The onlooker changes his role as he grabs my left shoulder and delivers a fist to my rib cage in hopes of ending the scuffle. My original nemesis continues to pull me to the ground and I make a silly decision. I clench my right hand and deliver a short distance punch to the face of my nemesis. His grip loosens on me and I pull myself erect in time to create a memory.

The edge of what I maintain was a fist holding a bottle of Pilsner meets my jaw with surprising force. I am unaware that I am cut and bleeding until several minutes later. From the ground all things seemed to settle and I found Diego rambling at my side within seconds of falling from the hit. When I rose all seemed to be well. Just a daily occurrence to everyone? Hands were wiped on knees then shook with other hands and we were on our way with the game. Or rather, they were. I finish the night playing cards on the sidelines, taping a small piece of an old shirt to the side of my face, taking a short walk and scribbling a journal entry of my first night.

Tags: travel