Chapter 15

I deciphered a bunch of poorly organized Argentine web sites well enough to learn that Paul McPherson's next home game was in eight days. Then I had my new Bahía Blanca liaison confirm my findings just to make sure I wouldn't miss any precious P-Mac play time.

Having eight days to spare allowed me just enough time to make the trip down to El Bolson, only a 2-hour bus ride south of Bariloche. Before I learned of P-Mac's bearings, I thought El Bolson would be the climax of my trip. Its reputation as the hippie capital of Argentina and its notoriety for its microbreweries piqued the interest of my vices. Being a fan of reefer and beer, I thought this might be my kind of town.

My dream consisted of a tie-die-shirt wearing populace who always had a cloud of smoke hanging over their dreadlock-covered heads. When I got to El Bolson it surpassed all my expectations. Before I even got off the bus, I looked out the window and saw a gaucho riding his horse as he took a swig from his liter of beer.

I picked the closest hostel to the bus stop and walked in to find red velvet couches, hanging bamboo gardens, walls covered in tapestries and incense burning in the quaint two-story abode. A sweet old woman named Nora ran the hostel with her husband, Rogelio, the two of them had lived in El Bolson for the last 40 years.

I explored the small town, which has a population of just under 30,000 before I perused the street fair ran by shoeless hippies. Returning to the hostel I found an old, unkempt man who resembled Rick Rubin, if it were possible for Rick Rubin to look more homeless and dirty. I began talking to the man in Spanish before he cut me off in English.

I asked the typical traveling questions: Where are you from? How long have you been traveling? He introduced himself as Russ, told me he was from New York City and he was down here to write a book.

OK, I thought to myself. I want to live in New York City and I consider myself somewhat of a writer, perhaps this vagabond-looking fellow and I have a lot in common.

Then he told me he was down here because the United States government was persecuting him for his beliefs and he settled in El Bolson because a government agent betrayed his government-ordered mission to kill Russ told him he could find safe refuge in El Bolson.

I then realized that perhaps we don't have as much in common as I first thought. I responded as if it made perfect sense and left the kitchen allowing him to finish his meal in solitude.

Later on in the evening I cooked up my own meal and joined him in the dining room, falsely assuming I was ready to learn why the government persecuted him and why government agents followed his every move.

He then began the longest story of all time, revealing he was The Chosen One in the process.
He began by starting with his college years, at Middlebury (he didn't attend Middlebury, he just hung out there and in his mind became a legend to the town). He also dated George Herbert Walker Bush's niece, which eventually lead to his father being killed.

It was actually during his time in Middlebury he first learned he had healing powers and may be The Chosen One. He first discovered these special powers when his girlfriend at the time had a mild headache the night before she had an important exam. Russ then touched his head to her's and transferred the headache to himself so she could feel better.
I initially thought perhaps Russ was confusing an acid trip in the 60s with a subplot from a Michael Jordan, Bill Murray, Bugs Bunny movie. I also thought he could have saved himself the headache and just gave the girl an aspirin, but I decided it was better to not question The Chosen One.

I wanted Russ to prove his healing power, but nothing was really wrong with me at the time, except for this minor infection that comes and goes on my big toe on my left foot. But I figured it might be a little forward to ask The Chosen One to heal my toe on the first night I met him.

Later on during his Middlebury years The Chosen One seriously dated Bush's niece, before the Bush family decided his special powers were powerful enough to challenge their reign, therefore they allegedly sent him an indirect threat by killing his father. Russ later admitted that the small caveat that his father may have died of natural causes, but he still believes government agents poisoned his food.

Tragically Russ is all too familiar with food poisoning as the government agents constantly poison his food to this day, which explains why he always carries his toothpaste in his fanny pack, preventing the agents from poisoning his toothpaste, a feat they have stooped to the past.

As I sat there eating my dinner Russ explained that the poison frequently causes him to lose control of his bowels, in an effort to humiliate him. Therefore when Russ is working as taxi-cab driver in New York City he always carries a spare pair of underwear as a precaution in case the agents attack. He claimed the poison has additionally shrank his genitals and made him impotent.

His taxi cab profession is an even more cataclysmic story as he claims the government stole the hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from his bank account, as well as destroying his mansion and Mercedes Benz he owned when he lived in Vermont. Today Russ' only way to make more money is to return to being a cabbie in New York City and his pending lawsuit against a hotel in New Jersey, which he is suing for their collaboration with the government in which they placed bugs in bed which left hundreds of scars all over his body.

One hour into our conversation I confirmed that I was not a government agent or at least if I was I did not know it myself.

At times I tried to offer some of my back story because I thought the whole drop-out, graduate, find your childhood hero in Argentina was a fairly entertaining story. However Russ quickly cut me off and continued on explaining why he is the most paranoid man on the planet. In the end I was glad I didn't tell my story because if Russ really is The Chosen One and he does actually have government agents following his every move, it's probably for the better that I don't let him jeopardize my mission to find Paul McPherson.

He then began recounting all the times Jesus and God have directly spoken to him as well as referencing Nostradamus scriptures which indirectly mention him. Indirect is not a strong enough word since the scriptures that referenced Russ were lost scriptures he found on the internet that may or may not have been completely fabricated. He remembered the time Jesus appeared to him in a window curtain and he offered to show me he had a picture of the divine face saved in his inbox. I interrupted, “Yeah, I'm probably gonna need to see that.”

Later on he pulled up his e-mail and began searching page by page for the e-mail. I thought to myself that for The Chosen One he sure as hell can't use the search feature of his inbox. He searched through the first six pages of his mail before he got frustrated when he assumed the agents had hacked his e-mail and deleted the file. Eventually he found the file, opened it up and displayed an image which looked eerily like a... window curtain. He was just as amazed as the day he saw it as he gloated over the image remembering the time Jesus came into his apartment.

After his two-hour lecture was nearing an end and after the dubbed-over “Lethal Weapon 4” concluded on the television which played during the entire conversation, we moved the conversation to the computer.

Russ sifted through his inbox and began searching page by page for the photograph of Christ in a curtain. “For being The Chosen One you think he would be able to use the search feature on his inbox,” I thought to myself. After seven pages of nothing he became worried and thought perhaps government agents had hacked into his Hotmail account and deleted the e-mail.

Eventually after five more long minutes of searching he found the file. Russ acted just as excited as the day he saw Christ in his window as he pointed to the dark blotch on the screen. I pretended like I saw something in the tan curtain with darker tan mark, that could have been dust, a stain or simply dirt on the computer monitor.

“It's really incredible that the image remained there long enough for you to take a picture of it,” I said.

“It was actually there for three years,” Russ replied. “In fact Jesus actually spoke to me and told me to rent a good camera to take a quality picture.”

“Fuck,” I thought in my head. “You had three years to get the picture, and you may have rented a camera and the best image you have is this grainy, low-resolution shot of your curtain.”

“Wow,” I plainly said. “That's just amazing.”

Russ told me he tried to make the image into a greeting card, but the government prevented him from putting the plan into action because they didn't want The Chosen One to make any money.

Then I asked Russ to show me the e-mail he talked about earlier, in which a government agent told him about the tracking devices which were implanted in his brain.

And then I lost it. I could not read the e-mail with out bursting up laughing. So I looked at the screen and tried to think about sad things such as my parents getting divorced or getting my heartbroken. But none of those things were as powerful as the hilarity of the e-mail so eventually I just closed the screen to avoid cracking up.

The e-mail killed me because I pictured somebody just like myself, meeting Russ then claiming to be a soldier of the messiah/government double agent and typing him this work of art. Russ forwarded me the e-mail, which I am posting unedited in its entirety because this man is a far better writer than I could ever be.

Hi russ

hope you managed to get back to grand central in one piece!
just a few things that you need to know.
the implants that you had inside were two class three surveillance nodes and one class five node (optical). all three are biologically based and are very hard to track on standard MRI because of their likeness to normal human tissue.
all three have now been taken off line by an EMP burst that was administered while you were here.
also with respect to the bugs inside you, these were not placed in your bed by a british agent. they're chinese in origin, and can be time delayed. they do burrow into your skin - they are designed to burrow OUT. they do no long term damage.
you should also for the next six months, begin a course of 5,000 mg of vitamin c each day - take it all at once. this is way over the FDA's recommended dosage (but i'm sure you can appreciate how unreliable some advice can be!)
you should also take a high potency dose of vitamin e each day.
ding this will create an environment within your body that will make you immune to any further infestations or implantations.
only one dose of sabadilla and arnica is needed to clean out your system.
you'll also fine that over the next three to four months that your body will begin to heal up - this will include a remarkable improvement in your throat and genitals.

that's the best honest health care that i can give you my friend. your voice is heard in places you can only dream about - and your work is being done.
i wish i could tell you who i really am, and who i work with, but unfortunately that is out of the question. please keep in touch, and keep my identity to yourself for now. they cannot harm you anymore.

best wishes

wayne (sigma 116818)

After two and a half hours of listening to Russ I was exhausted and wildly paranoid, so I went up stairs to pass out.