Slimy Little Bits

Slimy Little Bits

The whole weekend had started off wrong. Things were planned last minute, I was in a foul mood and nothing seemed to be going smoothly. The entire semester abroad seemed to boil down to that one cup full of slimy white bits covered in dripping red ketchup that I now held in my trembling hand. How, I wondered, could things go so wrong?
It had seemed like such a good idea all those months ago. Study abroad, learn about the world, get away from it all. San Juan, Puerto Rico had sounded like such an exciting place, so full of promise.
I had hurriedly accepted an invitation to stay the weekend at a friend’s home in the town of Humacao. I suddenly found myself confronting all the issues that had come up that semester. It all seemed to culminate in the form of those slimy awful things that had come out of the trunk of a passing car.
The fact that she had bought them from a man selling food from a Styrofoam cooler in his trunk set off the first alarm bell in my head. My stomach churned at the sight of them. I looked at my friend, she was laughing. Laughing at me, laughing at the situation, laughing because I knew something was not right and the conflict was evident on my face. I had tried so hard to be gracious, accepting, to be open, to want to learn; but this, well, this went beyond all of that.
How could a good friend like Dianette put me in such a position? We had gotten along so well. We shared many of the same interests and she could always make me laugh. She had big, dark eyes and long curly black hair that I was extremely jealous of. But now, as I stood on her porch on a warm day in October, I loathed her. She was forcing me to eat something so disgusting looking that she refused to tell me what it was until I had eaten it.
I could hear the voices in my head, as I often do, telling me to be polite while at the same time, laughing at the predicament I found myself in. Be polite. Don’t offend. Try new things. Don’t be such a gringa, white girl, the typical American in a foreign land. You can’t say you don’t like something until you’ve tried it. Oh, just get over it! The voices in my head were drowning out even my common sense.
I looked once more at the cup of quivering little masses. The smell, the second alarm bell, was revolting — like stewed socks. The grayish white pulp reminded me of something that I couldn’t put my finger on and the toothpick speared through one of the ones on the top stood up in a gruesome way.
I looked once more at my friend, and once more at the cup. Sizing the little blobs up, I picked one that seemed to be small enough to get it over with quickly and yet large enough to hold lots ketchup so as to drown out the flavor that, I was sure, would taste like stewed socks.
Somehow, the toothpick made its way to my mouth. Mechanically, my mouth opened and the blob went inside. The plan that had formed in my head was to chew quickly and then swallow it immediately so as to avoid any bad taste in my mouth.
In my mouth, however, the tiny bit I had chosen for its smallness and heavy ketchup content, took on new dimensions. It was smooth on one side and bumpy on the other; it was larger, it was chewier, and far worse than I had imagined it could be. The quivering mass that had sat so innocently in the cup became stubborn and resilient in my mouth, refusing to be chewed as if resentful that I doubted its culinary appeal. I stood there for what seemed like an eternity, scenes of “Fear Factor” flashing before my mind. I was getting nowhere with the chew fast method.
My stomach and my brain were both staging a rebellion. My brain could not believe that I had been so stupid as to allow such an awful thing into my mouth and my stomach wanted no part in digesting the slimy piece of cultural torture that my dear friend found so amusing. I eventually did manage to chew that piece and swallow it.
The look on my face sent Dianette into hysterics. Once she had wiped the tears from her face, she told me, between fits of giggles, that I had just consumed a piece of boiled pig’s ear. Cuajitos, they are called. The mere word brought on thoughts of coagulation. If stewed socks could coagulate, that’s what they would look like. My stomach continued to protest at such an indignity as I handed my friend the small Styrofoam cup.
That night as I lay in a borrowed bed, listening to the sounds of the fan next to me and the coquí outside, I thought about all that had happened. Having grown up as the daughter of missionaries, I had lived first in Paraguay, later Chile and eventually back to the United States before going to Puerto Rico for the semester. Adapting was nothing new, it was just a continuing saga. I thought about how different things were here than where I had grown up, and the silly house number in New Jersey I wrote down for identification purposes that meant nothing to me. I wasn’t from anywhere.
I missed my family and friends. I was tired, tired of meeting all things new, of always being alone, of being paraded around as some sort of oddity. The uncomfortable situation I had found myself in earlier that day had far reaching effects, beyond that of my queasy stomach. Those slimy little bits had left a worse taste in my mouth than that of ketchup and stewed socks. A taste of disappointment. I was disappointed in myself, in my inadequate attempts to be like everyone else around me.
This feeling had haunted me for as long as I could remember. As a child, I had never fit in anywhere, always been the loner. My mother tells me that I never spoke in public because no matter what language I chose people were surprised. If I spoke English everyone would make a fuss over me for being American and if I chose Spanish they marveled at how I could speak Spanish so well at such a young age. Three years old, and I already felt the need to not be different, to shut up and conform.
What was it about that slimy bit of boiled pig’s ear that had upset me so much? Maybe it was the fact that I was willing to do anything to fit in. Maybe it was because I had tried to do something to fit in and it hadn’t worked despite my attempts. Nothing I ever tried to do helped me fit in any more. Even though I had tried everything I could think of to fit in, I would never fit in anywhere, no matter how many strange delicacies I tasted, how many slang words I mastered, how much of the pop culture I understood, I would never be accepted in Puerto Rico or any country. I realized I was tainted with too much of everything and too little of something more definable. I was just too different, like a nice shirt that just never seems to match any of the other clothes in your closet and eventually gets pushed further and further back.
It wasn’t the first time it had happened either, there was the time when I said something to a group of friends speaking Spanish in the hallways of my public high school in New Jersey and someone said, You speak Spanish? But you’re white. There were the customs that I could never seem to fully leave behind that always came up at the wrong times. And no matter how hard I tried, I always failed to assimilate completely.
Worst of all, I had grown accustomed to pretending to fit in, to masquerading as someone who knew, who understood. I had begun to suppress parts of myself in the interest of fitting in. It was an exhausting job and I was tired. It was time to stop pretending. Time to be comfortable with not fitting in as much as I was comfortable with the few times I seemed to blend in.
I tend to think that I live by the rule: you can’t say you don’t like it until you’ve tried it. I live my life by trying new things, going new places, meeting new people. I would rather try something and regret having tried it than regret never having known something. As much as those slimy little bits grossed me out, as much as I found them revolting, I had tried them. I could say I had been there, done that, tried it, and moved on. The situation helped me realize that I didn’t have to fit in, that it was impossible, but that by trying new things I was not gaining more of someone else, or more of a different culture. I was gaining more of myself in the process.