tomzompakos

[tomzompakos]

Novel Coming Next

Thanks for being here! I’m putting the Story Every Thursday on hiatus while I work on my second book, and first novel. It’s titled, The Drifter’s Curse. It’s the story of a young man who gets “cursed” in Morocco while traveling the world. It spans UK, Germany, Spain, Morocco, Romania, and Greece. I wrote it while on a 7-month trip to all of those places. It’s a tale that pushes the real world…

[tomzompakos]

Remember the Bowline

From the Mexican Rainforest Between Tepic and San Blas… My pal Juan and I, we’re going to guide the boss’s friends on a night hike. What could go wrong? Well, a hurricane is swirling over the Pacific. Surrounding storms have drenched this rainforest “resort” with its tin roofs, walls made out of chopped up RVs, and no-AC cabins. The corrugated roofs over the bar and reception rattle and ping…

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All is Lost

Let’s get out of here. It’s obviously friends and family night at the one nightclub in town, everyone else already has their people, we’re not going to meet anyone here, let’s go. We leave. Next stop is the beach at night. Lightning is visible but we can’t hear thunder as we stumble drunk and bored through this mosquito-bitten, quiet little town in Mexico. Anyway, we steal a couple plastic…

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Announcement: My Second Book is Coming

This week, I found a print shop in Tepic, Mexico, and spent thousands of Pesos on printing out the first draft of my second book. The printer whirred and clunked, and I paced as it spat out all 303 pages. It will be my first official novel. It’s titled, The Drifter’s Curse. It’s the story of a young man who gets cursed in Morocco after dating the wrong girl, and wanders from country to country…

[tomzompakos]

Spice

Heat. Sweat beads on every surface of my head, and runs in rivers down my temples. My mouth opens to pant like one of the skinny street dogs that scamper up and down the flooded mud roads, with their round rocks jammed together in ankle-rolling jumbles. On my plate are three tacos and a blistered chili pepper. We’re in a building that looks like a jail cell somewhere in San Blas, a largely…

[tomzompakos]

What Brought Me to Mexico

Where I’m living lately Though months of traveling across Europe and North Africa left me quite confident, Mexico City Airport is one of the most jumbled and chaotic I have ever seen. The layout forces you to retrace your steps across the entire airport to handle customs, your next boarding pass, get a bite, anything you need or want to do. The seats do not face the screens at the gates, so…

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Chocolate Fit for an Aztec King

A clapboard cafe in the hills of green mountains. Rolling mist. Mild hangover. A sip of chocolate. Quivering euphoria. A transportation. A sip of chocolate that leaves you surveying your silos of pure gold. Planning the next human sacrifice to appease the old gods. Brooding over the latest troubling news of this Cortez. Yes, a cup of hot chocolate so good it makes you an Aztec king for just a…

[tomzompakos]

Key Locked in Car Party

The road trip back from Guatape was going so well. We had all learned to trust the Colombian driver, who veered into oncoming traffic to get around big trucks and used every sharp turn as a kind of centrifugal slingshot through the mountain roads. And drinking laws! Very different here. No open container laws, so we have all been provided with cool Club Colombia beers, dripping condensation onto…

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Rain on my Toes - Manchester, UK.

Rain on my toes! To wake me up in the middle of the night. Water found a channel in the dark ceiling overhead, here on the top bunk of a hostel in Manchester, UK. Sleeping here because of a long train delay on the way to Wales. The room is under a convenience store. Mountain Dew, 7-Up, Mars Bars and vapes in the shop overhead. Cranky people shuffling to the basement rooms in basketball shorts,…

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Midnight Singers | Medellin

2019. Medellin has decided on a 6pm curfew for pandemic lockdowns. Spent the daylight hours exploring exploring Envigado with friends. Outdoor garden, open air restaurants, splashy wall art, and am ornate Catholic Church in the square. Tonight, as I llie awake in the closet-size AirBnB, a chorus of Spanish singing rips through the thin walls. Bohemian Rhapsody half translated to English.…

[tomzompakos]

Most vendors do candy

Coffee on some porch in Medellin. When a street vendor wanders by rolling a cart with candy. I shake my head no when he points at it. Then he takes something out from under the cart. Some enormous rectangular object as big as his entire wingspan. He leans it on the front of the cart and lifts it. It’s a copper relief of the last supper. In case I wanted to by that instead. Where did it come from?…

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Acting Class at the Hostel

Someone is dying. Someone is addicted to drugs. Someone else is heartbroken. Enraged at a lover’s betrayal. All poorly acted by students in the hostel courtyard. A brash instructor watches their scenes. Cuts them off if wrong, inadequate, or underwhelming emotion is displayed. The guys can’t cry on stage. When the guys can’t cry, the drama instructor makes them do push-ups. This man is…

[tomzompakos]

Shots at the Bodega

The guy behind the bodega has his mask down. He’s pouring aguardiente into disposable shot glasses for himself, his colleague and a someone who is either his girlfriend or another colleague. It’s a Saturday night in Medellin. These guys are partying right on the job. Salsa music on the JBL. Fans, but no AC. Chatting there among plastic tubs of dulce de leche treats, pressed guava sugar candy,…

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Don’t Look Left or Right

Don’t look left or right, that was the final instruction before we motorbike down this street in Medellin. Seems impossible, but if I understand the explanation correctly, the cocaine trade continues as long as it does so non-violently. This is the unofficial structure of the relative armistice of recent years. So making eye contact with nobody, we creep and crawl, stuck in traffic down the…

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Night Fell Before the Spin Cycle Ended

Nodding off in an all-night cafe/laundromat in Medellin. Listening to the deep rumble of fifty washers rolling clothing in sudsy water. Waiting for one fleece blanket to dry. Retracing the steps that brought me here. My Airbnb has a washing machine but no dryer. But night fell before the spin cycle ended, meaning. No sun to dry the blanket for the night. My host, an Italian grandmother…

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Lost on Horseback

Horses hip-check each other and stamp the dust on the dirt trail threading through the green mountains. Let me see if I can predict this one. Nick, they’ll give you that blondeone. It’s the most heroic looking. A blonde horse for a blonde dude, that’sthe logic they’ll follow. Rachel will probably get that smaller horse, seemsright for a girl. And Joel’s big, they’ll give him the big horse. See…

[tomzompakos]

Cookie Smuggler

Four shots of ouzo makes early morning strategizing a woozy challenge. Lesson of the road. Final night in Greece. Flight out in a few hours. Trying to figure out how to get pistachio cookies I bought on an island to survive reckless baggage handlers. Pistachio farmers on Aegina render their crop into every incarnation imaginable. Liqueur, soap, butter, bread, cookies, gelato, and of course…