Losing my Riñones

To recap the story so far: In 2013 I lost my job, my house, and my car, got divorced, and moved to my hometown of Grand Rapids, Michigan. By 2019, both of my kids had come to live with me. In 2020 I got remarried to my long-time girlfriend. Then things fell apart once more. In 2023 I was divorced again and, thanks to a series of financial setbacks, struggling to pay off my debts.

Catch up on previous posts!

Part 1: Untapped Potential

Part 2: What’s My Age Again?

Part 3: Before the Fall

Part 4: “How Much is That Going to Cost Us?”

Part 5: “It’s Unacceptable That You’re Sleeping”

Part 6: Breaking Down

Part 7: “Stupid Kid”

Part 8: “Let the Hate Flow Through You”

Part 9: Get Your Shit Together

Part 10: Getting My Hopes Up

Part 11: Getting My Hopes Up, Part 2

Part 12: Things Fall Apart, Again

Part 13: “I’m sure glad I’m not that guy”

Part 14: “We can see how it goes”

Part 15: I’m not OK. We’re not OK

Part 16: “Taxes were forgotten”

Part 17: Un Verdadero Hombre

In my last post, I wrote about a brief relationship I had with a woman from Ecuador, and how that relationship led to me chatting with another Ecuadoran woman, named Karen (if she were a character in one of my books, her name would be Isabella or Maria, but in the real world, Ecuadorans often have American-sounding names). Karen lived in the beach town of Salinas, where I would be spending two weeks in January.

Karen was very pretty and also 30 years younger than me, which led virtually everyone who knew about my plans to warn me that I was going to wake up in a bathtub full of ice in a motel room in Guayaquil, missing a kidney (or two). I couldn’t blame them; I didn’t understand why a pretty 24-year-old Ecuadoran would want to meet me either. But I’d traveled enough in Latin America and elsewhere to know that as long as I was careful, I probably wasn’t in any real danger.