]> Sharon McGill lives in State College, Pennsylvania. If you Google &openquot;Sharon McGill,&closequot; her website is the first thing that comes up, which is convenient because the URL is long and complicated. However, in uncovering this fact, Sharon McGill found she&sapos;s one of many Sharon McGills, which is disturbing because she&sapos;s always thought of herself as an individual when, in fact, there are dozens of her.

Todos Santos Cuchumatán is a remote place—a tiny, indigenous town accessible only by a torturous, three-hour bus trip through Guatemala’s western highlands. I traveled there thinking the only other gringos I might run into would be of the mildly feral, Lonely Planet set like myself. So when the local Spanish school offered visitors the chance to witness a Mayan ritual, I expected four or five smelly backpackers to show up—not a dozen evangelicals and a red-faced, Baby Boomer from New York dressed as Indiana Jones.The Christians looked like some kind of student group. Worse yet, they sounded Midwestern. As I stood there trying to make them disappear through sheer force of will, the tallest of the pack approached me with one of those fluorescent, blue-white smiles you see on vampires and talent agents. “Hi, I’m Scott. Have you accepted Jesus as your personal savior?”“Let’s get it on, motherfuckers,” said Indiana, sipping from a leather flask with a Lynyrd Skynyrd logo burned into its side.At that moment, Pedro and Juan, the two Spanish teachers, arrived. They led us to Tojcunanchén, a sacred site overlooking town where we sat in an ill-formed semi-circle before the shamana, Isabel, a little brown woman who looked just shy of three hundred years old. The teachers built a fire and Isabel orated in clucks and clicks of Mam, which Pedro translated into Spanish and Meredith, one of the Spanish students, translated into English.“The first part of the ritual is to place two turkey eggs in the fire,” Meredith announced as Isabel did so. “For twenty days before the ritual, you must abstain from sex. If you fail, the eggs won’t burst and the gods will become enraged.” For my part, I’d been traveling alone for the past month and hadn’t scored any action. Scott, however, sat next to me with a look of slight concern. “Oh, Meredith—would you please ask her—does masturbation count?”“¿Importa la masterbacion?” Meredith asked, but Pedro didn’t hear. Then I got to wondering: what are these Christians doing here? Why is that guy dressed as Indiana Jones? And why does the shamana have an enormous knife?Isabel burned some incense, lit colored candles, and told us to clear our minds and think of the earth so the ancient gods could direct their power toward growth and fertility. Then the cigarettes came around. Smoke is a vital part of ceremony, so we all had to suck down five or six Rubios. After that, the drinking began. The shamana explained that liquor made her demand more of the gods, so Pedro and Juan circulated among the crowd with shots of aguardiente, the local firewater. The evangelicals knocked those back pretty fast, and although drinking the stuff was not unlike sucking a chainsaw, I was determined not to be shown up by a pack of Christians. But they did that anyway. Scott began speaking in tongues, yelling, “Mama-say-mama-sa-mama-ma-ku-sa!” as Indiana began a confused recitation of “The Pledge of Allegiance.” Some of the Christians joined in, perhaps on reflex. I couldn’t account for the sudden patriotism, except maybe because Pedro and Juan wore the traditional Mam costume, which included red and white striped pants. I suppose this could bear a passing resemblance to Uncle Sam if you pictured him shorter and Guatemalan.After these outbursts, Isabel filled her mouth with liquor and we each took turns getting spit upon. Then she told us to turn around so she could spray the back of our necks, which gave us the pleasure of spying Pedro taking a copious leak behind us, out of the firelight.By this time, the moon had risen and I started to sense this was all a ploy to have some fun with the gringos. But we’d reached the end of the ceremony, the point at which the mysterious twitching cloth bag at the shamana’s feet would be explained. And with a few clicks of Mam, she did so—picked up the bag and extracted a fat, thrashing chicken. Suddenly—drunk and disbelieving alike—we gringos sat in sick fear. “That’s a real fucking chicken!” Indiana yelled. And it was a real chicken, soon to be a real dead chicken as Isabel whipped her knife up, sliced the neck and directed the blood into the flames, all the while chanting as the bird squawked a futile protest, beating its wings slower and slower until they stopped. Then she twisted off its head and tossed it like a party favor into the fire. Pedro and Juan went around with the aguardiente again, offering shots until the fire died. We gringos took them, speechless.