18-19 November 2024: A nasty encounter & a happy ending

My final days at the School of Hope meant my final days lodging with Violeta and Fernando.  They were great people and made me feel very comfortable and welcome.  However, on Monday the situation with Michael (the weird guy staying at their place across from my room) finally got nasty.

Michael and I had seemed to have reached a sort of truce.  We said “hello” when we saw each other but mostly stayed out of each other’s space.  When I arrived back from the school on Monday afternoon, the 18^th, Michael was sitting in the common area outside our rooms engaged in another of his long phone conversations.  I had wanted to write in the common area because of the comfortable chair but figured I could try to write in my room.  There was only a stool without a back and a small desk in my room, so I had to sit on the bed which had a very uncomfortable headboard.  I persevered for close to an hour listening to a waterfall on my white noise program.  When my back couldn’t stand the headboard anymore, I turned off the white noise and, lo and behold, Michael’s phone call had ended and he was back in his room. 

I immediately took my little tablet computer out to the common area, claimed the comfortable stuffed chair, and started writing.  Soon, I could hear Michael coughing loudly in his room.  Now admittedly, given the poor air quality in Antigua, half the population seemed to be coughing now and then.  But with Michael, it almost seemed like he coughed as loudly and as long as possible to get attention or maybe sympathy, who knows?  Well fine – cough away, dude.  On went the white noise again and I turned it up the volume rather high so I wouldn’t hear him. 

After maybe 10 minutes, Michael suddenly came out from his room, obviously quite irritated.  “We have to have a talk,” he declared indignantly. 

I could feel my blood start to boil from his tone of voice.  “What!” I declared sharply.

“You are breaking the rules we agreed upon for the common area,” he announced arrogantly.  “You are playing that white noise really loud.  It’s very annoying.”

“I was trying to drown out the noise of your coughing,” I replied.

“We both cough.  I have a lung condition and you have allergies,” he said dismissively.

It’s true that I caught a cold or the bad air was affecting my sinuses the first week I was in Antigua.  At the time, I told him it was my allergies (my sinuses seem to flare up at the slightest provocation).  However, I got over that after a few days and only coughed or cleared my throat occasionally.  It pissed me off that he implied that my occasional coughing was equivalent to the loud bodily noises coming from his room that sounded like he was in the throes of death. 

“Look, when you got back I was on the phone out here, but after 15 minutes, I vacated the space.’

“It was closer to an hour,” I noted.

“I have an important phone call in two hours so you have to stop playing that white noise!”

“In two hours?  What’s that got to do with the current situation?” I asked.

“I can loan you earbuds for your white noise,” he said but not in the usual pleasant tone one gets with such an offer. 

With normal people I would have accepted his earbuds as a good compromise, but I wasn’t interested in compromise.  “I don’t want your damn earbuds!” I retorted. 

Our voices were getting louder and the “temperature” in the common area was climbing.  By now, it was certain that everyone in the hostel could hear us.

“You are one of the most selfish, self-centered people I’ve ever met!” Michael declared.

“That’s funny,” I shot back.  “I feel the same way about you.”

“I can tell you are a very angry person,” Michael added with a tone of certainty.

“Yes, I’m angry,” I agreed.  “I’m angry at YOU!!!”

“I hear you swearing at your computer in your room.”

Yes, I have a detachable keyboard that I use to write on my tablet and even if I shut off the mouse pad and use a little cordless mouse, the damn cursor jumps around frequently.  I’ve learned to really hate the annoying piece of shit for writing (it's a Surface Go 3 which I bought from Best Buy last year), but it sure is portable and light weight for travelling.  So, I angrily swear at it, if it interrupts my train of thought when I’m trying to creatively put together sentences.  My partner, Judy, has noted that I like to take out my ire on inanimate objects.  Well, that’s better than swearing at people, wouldn’t you agree?

I don’t recall swearing at Michael, and I don’t remember what other choice epithets were exchanged.  But after five minutes or so of this unproductive excuse for communication, I grabbed my tablet and retreated to my room, and he retreated to his as well.  And, after that gnarly, poisonous encounter, a beautiful thing happened – I NEVER saw Michael again.  Oh, I still could hear his voice in his room sometimes, but he was talking softer and seemed to deliberately stay in his room when I was around.  I don’t think he even went to dinner that night and was nowhere to be seen on Tuesday night when Violeta, Fernando, Diana, Maya, and I had a long dinner together.

When I saw Diana at dinner on Monday, I told her I was sorry for the loud confrontation.  She replied that she was sorry I had had to endure that explosive scene with Michael.  I sensed she felt I had, in a sense, spoken for her.  However, her room wasn’t right next to his, she never used the common room, and she spent lots of after school time at the gym or out with friends in the evening.  I told Diana: “When you first shared your negative feelings about Michael last month, I thought you were being a bit harsh.  I was wrong – you were ‘spot on’”!

Two weeks ago, I received an email from Diana.   She reported that Michael had moved out on December 8.  “I thought he was never going to leave!!!!” she added.  She didn’t say where he went – perhaps back to Illinois where he came from.  Diana noted that a few days after I left Antigua, Violeta had a talk with Michael and asked him not to bother her anymore.  Diana could tell something had changed because Michael would eat his dinner in a chair next to his room and, as a result, she no longer felt a need to eat in her room to avoid him.

My apologies to my readers for expending so many key stokes in several of these posts describing Michael, his strange eccentricities, and our unfortunate interactions.  I must admit that I’m both repulsed by and very curious about bizarre, dysfunctional people like him.  I suspect some of you readers are as well, which is why I wrote all the gossipy crap about him.  In a way, I feel sorry for him.  He had told me during one of our more civil conversations that his father was an alcoholic.  I suspected that he had felt his father’s lash on more than one occasion, and it may have done a number on his head.  

Now, on to a more pleasant subject.  On Tuesday night (my last night in Antigua), Violeta and Fernando surprised me with a delicious cake after dinner that we all shared.  Diana gave me a scrumptious torte slice in a small container to take with me on my trip home (it didn’t last long – I scarfed it down on the way to the airport the next day).  I felt much appreciated.  Getting to know Violeta, Fernando, Diana, and Maya was one of the more positive aspects of my time in Guatemala.