I have found a lifetime of study and wonderment living with the people of one such remote community, the Maxtanahuac, who speak a form of Pipil I have yet to find spoken elsewhere, but which corresponds to syntactical forms seen in Pochutec codices found elsewhere in the pre-Aztec world. I have learned the language from the Maxtanahuac people, as have I learned their ways. In many ways I consider myself more at home there, in the Northern Mexican desert, than I do here.

My first encounter with the Maxtanahuac as a young doctoral candidate was far from auspicious. I was travelling through the deserts of Northern Mexico, cataloging remote geographies and peoples. I was fluent in Spanish and had a passing ability in Nahuatl, and I found the people of the desert to be a generally kind and open people. I would come upon their clustered dwellings and, more often than not, would be taken in by the village youth, who would view me as a strange novelty, a pale alien to be brought to the town elders, who would receive me with great warmth. I ate well on those travels, feasting upon smoky legumes and gamey entrails, drinking fermented beverages that would leave my tongue tied in knots. I would often awake, in situ the next morning, a crowd of smiling faces peering down at my drunken, sleeping self. As I discovered Mexico, I was discovering myself, and I grew comfortable with the company of strangers.

One afternoon, I approached a wonderfully lush valley, an oasis of green in a fairly desolate landscape. I could tell that the people of this region had developed an advanced agriculture, capable of making verdant a sandy biome more suited to cactus than citrus. I forged ahead into the selvage, when I heard the unmistakable sound of an arrow shot--the taut string releasing, the hissing column of air trailing a projectile. I fell to the ground, an almost cartoonish feather-trimmed arrow protruding from the side of my torso. It must have been tipped with some sort of venom--to this day I am not sure what kind--because everything quickly drew dark, and when I came to, I had been not only relocated to the center of the village, but had been patched, a plaster of leaves and herbs twined around my chest.

The entire population of the village surrounded me, a hundred dark, shining eyes staring at me. There had clearly been some kind of impromptu decision made about my presence, because my hands and feet were lashed with thick, fresh vines to a recently slaughtered boar, which was still warm against my skin. They had also taken the liberty of undressing me entirely and dispatching with my personal effects, none of which were to be seen. In retrospect, I know that they had been caught completely off-guard by the appearance of the Pale One, who played a significant role in their folklore as a harbinger of endtimes, a sort of anti-Messiah. But at the time, I must admit that I was scared beyond words. I attempted to string several Nahuatl words together, to say my name, to say that I came in peace. I spoke out in Spanish, declaiming my academic credentials. I cried out in English that they release me and allow me on my way, never to bother them again. It was all to no avail, as they spoke none of those languages. I am embarrassed even now to admit it, but I lost control of my bladder at this point and urinated on myself. The Maxtanahuac people smiled at this display of debasement, gleaming white teeth flashing from between dark lips. Their eyes shined.

The eldest man of the tribe approached me, speaking softly in their dialect, full of clucking dipthongs and gutteral utterances. He probed my body, running his leathery hands over every square inch of my pale, exposed body. My penis grew hard, and he examined it closely, talking to it. He looked with great interest upon the fleshy, circumcised head. He rolled my balls between his fingers. He probed my asshole gingerly. He turned to the crowd and spoke in broad tones. I know now that he was explaining to them that I was not, in fact, the Pale One, but an earthly proxy sent by the Pale One to introduce the End of Time to the tribe and give a chance time to make their final peace before the Pale One places the world into its eternal coil, a snake eating its own tail.

The elder walked into a nearby clay hut and emerged with an elaborately woven basket. In the basket was a piece of beautiful woolen fabric, a long slender golden rod, and a gold-flecked obsidian blade, its edge rounded into a sharpened half-circle. I had seen similar obsidian implements in meso-american guidebooks--usually they were used as a scalp-splitter for human sacrifice. I was none too happy to see its appearance. The crowd drew in closer and I thrashed about, trying to free myself of that dead boar which served as my filthy, mortal cross. The elder drew out the golden rod, drawing ideograms upon my chest, which left slight red traces in the shapes of owls, eyes, trees, hands. He grabbed my penis, which had inexplicably grown hard with all that sensory input, and guided the rod down into my cock. I could feel it splitting the urethra--it felt like the world was being vaporized, the air burning my lungs, singing my eyes out of my socket, flaying open my skin. I couldn't tell if it was blood I was feeling, or the cold metal, or piss, or just the subzero chill of mortality. I looked down to see the rod sticking out of my penis, which was indeed bleeding slightly. A flurry of hands reached out, running over the gold rod, my speared penis. The elder spoke out loudly, and the crowd retreated quickly.

"Huac tanoc acatl taxactl quxoyot macahum. Axtahua ocopa hapultapetl maquex."

He brought the obsidian blade up to the golden rod and ran it slowly, very slowly down until the blade was touching my meatus. He then continued drawing it downward, pressing firmly against the rod. My penis was split lengthwise down to the base, falling away from the rod, which still protruded from inside my body.

"Acat mocotxl nahuept"

He cut around the base, cleaving away the halved penis from my body. Now the rod was sticking out from inside my body from where my penis used to be. I felt blood rushing around it. The elder called out to a young man, who ran away into the village and returns with a vessel filled with coals, and a earthenware jug of water. Using a thick green leaf, the old man reached into the coals and pressed a red-hot piece of hardwood against the gaping wound. I felt (and smelled) the tender skin of my pubis burning, and could even feel the metal rod conducting some of that heat inward. I'll never forget that feeling. I screamed out (in English, as we always scream in our first tongue), and he released the coal and ran cool water over the primitive cauterization. He heaped ash upon it, and anointed it with some kind of oil, likely palm. I thought I was probably dead, or near death, but in fact this was only the beginning of my life with the Maxtanahuac. I woke up the next day delirious, dickless, and deified, to put it colloquially.

TO BE CONTINUED.