Chapter 4

Cold Showers

Home

TOCAYO
Part 1
Prologue
Playa Norte
Charly the American
A Catholic Education
Cold Showers
A Peruvian Name...
Tossing Armando...
Bob Cousey's Shorts
Inside Immaculada
Warming the Bench...
A Little Socrates...
Running From Lola
Ping Pong Politics
A Perfect Basketball Day
A Man Needs His Friends
A Pig In a Hole
Condors Over Ticlio
Wrestling in the Plaza
Handcuffs and Curfews
Rochabus
A Hero Hiding
Hitting A Brick Wall
Part 2

We had endured five days of this. Each day there were fewer boys. On Friday only 12 players showed up. Coach Phil Rink looked happy. He actually made the practice a tiny bit easier for us.

Why was I still there? I am not sure. It’s not what I would normally have done. Maybe because it seemed so easy for Charly. In any case, there I was. I had made Santa Maria's basketball team. As a bonus, my older brother Armando would be irritated.

Sitting alone in the the locker room, I gave serious consideration to the thought of not showering, but my t-shirt was plastered with sweat against my chest and my sneakers were as soggy as my socks. They were turning cold, now. I forced my body to stand up. White dots filled the locker room. When they faded I grabbed my t-shirt by the neck and peeled it away over the back of my head. I had to take several breaths to recover my energy. Then I took off my shorts and socks. They did not want to come off. Why do they do that when you are so unbelievably tired? I forced them off with my last ounce of strength and tossed them on the cement floor. They landed like the wet mop of a janitor. Free at last, I walked stiffly to the torture of the showers.

The Brothers of Santa Maria, prolific with social causes that involved pain and suffering for the boys of Santa Maria, decided to expose the privileged students in their care to the deprivation their less fortunate compatriots endured in the barriadas of Lima. To that end they liberated the gymnasium plumbing from the oppression of hot water. I do not know how they did it, but the brothers managed to bring the gymnasium’s entire supply of shower water directly from the snow-capped heights of the Andes via an aqueduct cleverly designed to preserve its sub-zero temperature.

From inside the locker room, the showers sounded like a chamber of torture. If a boy went in, you heard terrifying screams echoing across the walls. Fists pounding the tiles. Prayers and curses. It was easy to imagine sweaty men in black hoods beating the boy with a large hammer.