lost client-- REWARD! If found please contact aspiring mountain guide.

I have not done much guiding work. It usually doesn't work out for me. I have a tendency to get lost, I'm a bit reckless, and inappropriate things tend to come out of my mouth occasionally, making me a poor liaison to the foreign cultures I encounter. But sometimes the best work is the only work, and vice versa.

Currently I am working as a mountain guide. My job started 2 days ago when my client, a 22 year old from Utah named Abe, telephoned me to say he was at the airport in Delhi, but with a beer in one hand and a hookah in the other, I was unable to answer the phone and I missed the call, forcing my one and only client to get a hotel in the tourist ghetto and wait until tomorrow to call me from among the loud car-horns, scam artists and garbage munching cows of Pahar Ganj, a place where friends don't let friends stay. I went so far as to purchase a train ticket for him, and I made it pretty clear in an email how he was to use it. I thought for sure he would figure it out, but I had forgotten that people who hire guides often do so for a reason.

The next morning, I had one desire and one responsibility, and I had to yet again balance these conflicting forces, in a day that would unfold as metaphor and microcosm for the eternal struggle in my brain. My responsibility was to get Abe on the train, and my desire was to meet a girl. As soon as I woke up, all hung over from the previous nights "double fisting" the sense of responsibility crept in like the headache which had seemed so distant mere hours earlier in the consequence-free environment of perfect inebriation. Responsibility is a sort of hangover I suppose. I realized I probably didn't have enough time to meet the girl. But desire doesn't accept defeat that easily.

I called her and we made plans and as any girl would, she showed up later than she promised only to find me hectic, my sense of responsibility driving me into temporary insanity, which looked like pacing back and forth, thumb tapping on any hard surface, and a look of being elsewhere. I was so powerfully enamored of the girl though that I soon forgot this and we piled into a rickshaw to drive several miles in the opposite direction of the train station, an act which my sense of responsibility found irksome, at this point taking the form of that annoying little angel on my right shoulder. I didn't have an accompanying little devil figure. I don't need one.

Disembarking our rickshaw, the girl and I walked and talked and I found her to be agreeable in a way which caused me to separate myself from her at the last possible moment, giving myself just enough time to fight traffic to North Delhi and meet Abe at the train. My sense of responsibility was especially nagging here, as we were very uncertain as to whether we would get to the station before the train departed. We got there with 7 minutes to spare and made our way to the platform as the train was pulling away. Abe wasn't there.

Assume what you may about my character based on certain irresponsible actions you may have observed me doing, but know one thing-- when something goes wrong my sense of responsibility can take over, almost to the point of becoming obsessive. On the train I was frantic. Where the fuck is Abe? Why couldn't he get on the train? I bought him a ticket! Why didn't he call? Is he dead in a ditch, did he fall victim to a hijra scam, did he get bit by a cobra, why can't I calm down, could he be elsewhere on this train, what does he even look like, and is he going to pay me back for the ticket? I raced through the cars on the train tripping over old ladies haggishly begging in the aisle, the dirty dust reshuffling char-boy, the circus acrobat contortionist, the men shoveling trash out the open window of the train, the rank latrines which spill their waste out onto the tracks, all the time calling Äbe! Abe!" over the louder voices of the vendors selling Chai. He wasn't there. I used my ipod to help me calm down and talked with my friend Nate Meyer (Nate Meyer!)the temporary victim of my obsessive personality, and slowly soothed myself into a fitful sleep.

The following morning I read this in my inbox.

Hey John, I fucked up. I came to the train station and my naive american dumb fucked brain fell for a scam. I was told by a young indian man the train was delayed by 9 hours, tooken to a government indian travel agency, and took a private ride down to Agra, where I am now, and will be taking a train to Veranasi from Agra tomorrow at 9pm. I shelled out $200 dollars, plus bought some cool crafty shit that the driver led me to. Anyways I will be in Veranasi at around 9am on mar 5. A thousand apologies for the anxiety and worries i caused you, I realized I should have waited and meet you at the indian tourist beaureu at the train station, but I fucked up. So I hope your train ride goes well and I will meet you on the 5th. I'll check my mail tomorrow to see how everything went for you. Oh, and I will reimburse you for the ticket money that I lost. First day in India...yea fuck it. I'll see you in Shiva land.

Ok. I'm relieved and quite entertained. My skills as an English major have endowed me with the power of close reading-- just as the body language expert is able to tell you the seemingly obvious fact that crossed arms mean closed mind or anger or something, so also am I able to tell you that Abe might be needing a guide based on the fact that he used the word "tooken." But I also know I'm going to like this guy. He also said "fuck it." Abe, we're going to get along just fine. Just call me "Mr. Responsibility." And say it respectfully.