I lost him. When I woke up on the beach they were gone. And so the truck ride out to Angelica’s, to wait for another truck back to town, was not as fucking great and prophecy fulfilling as last night, coming out to the beach from the party with Milton and the three maybe-prostitutes, all of us standing in the turbulent truck’s bed, grabbing the metal roll bars and laughing, lit on drink and pot. The arms of the jungle, gray in the headlights, stretched across and connected in a roof over the almost-road, all the way to the beach. We rode rocks, dug tires into pissing streams and almost-rivers. Milton stretched out guffaws so long and hard that everyone else laughed too. It was a great fucking ride.

But the whole time, I couldn’t help thinking of The Enchanted Forest; Disney World, Orlando, Florida, USA. And that correlation stinks corrupt, but it helped me feel safe when the truck was on its side, climbing a wall; I knew we were on tracks, nothing bad could happen. I thanked Disney for any bravery I have in regard to wild rides.

My first ever time sleeping on a beach wasn’t a struggle either. Except for talking Milton into letting me have the tent after the maybe-prostitutes set it up for us. In the dark, I wouldn’t have been able to set it up. I have no experience, even in the daylight, with those kinds of things. Also I was wasted. Milton and I both. And at the time, Milton didn’t care if anyone set it up because the one women really seemed to like him and the stars really were amazing.

The one Tica had found an aloe plant and Milton was laying on his stomach in the sand as she applied the slick, clear aloe to his blistered back. He was drunk and horny and looking up at her over his shoulder, and when I asked who was gonna put the tent up he said to her, but really to me, since she didn’t speak English, "I’m way too drunk to mess with that. It’s nice outside man, look at the stars. Just spread the canvas on the ground if you think you’re gonna get sand in yer pussy."

The girls didn’t speak English but, like I do sometimes in miracle moments, they discerned our foreign argument, and rose, long and brown and hardly any clothes on, bent over, loosened the mouth of the canvas tent-sack, and got it up in 10 minutes. Milton and I watched.

Mitlon’s Tica returned to him to apply more aloe. The other two walked off, probably because I hadn’t even flirted because of Alana. So they aimed themselves at the orange lights of a jungle gringo house and their backs, their soft brown shoulderblades like wings, gave no good-byes or smiles to me.

Milton, his Tica and I were quiet for a while. The stars were the brightest and most abundant I’ve seen, ever. In the silence, Milton sat up straight and changed his mind about tent life.

"Hey man," He prefaced, "Since there’s two of us; me and her should get the tent." He pointed at himself then her. "It’s economical. More people’d get use out of it."

"Now that her friends took off," I said, as if I were disappointed at not getting any pussy, "We can all fit in that tent. No problem."

"No, maaaan." He stretched his a’s into a whine. I hadn’t heard him whine before. His big voice didn’t sound pretty when he whined.

I went serious, "No, you have no reason to whine; you get sex, I get the tent. That’s fair."

"Man, what are you talking about?" He asked, with one of his arms around his Tica’s shoulders as he grazed the inside of her elbow, with the red hairs of his knuckles. His drunk head lolled in her direction and he declared in her face, "I have a girlfriend back home. I’m not fuckin nobody." Her flat brown hand shifted sideways like a crab, landing on Milton’s inner thigh, but he didn’t laugh when he reiterated, "I’m not fuckin’ nobody."

"Well anyway, you get the comfort of a warm beautiful woman." I said, looking at her. She stared back at me as they tend to do here and my intimidated eyes dove away from hers, landing on her stomach, which hung delicious and brown like hot fudge over her black stretch-pants. "You get her." I rose to meet Milton’s swimming eyes. "And I get the comfort of the tent. You’ll have a good night no matter what and I still might not, even with the tent."

He went down easily, "Good call. I won’t argue with you." He squeezed her tight around her soft coffee shoulders. He seemed to really like her.

Victorious, I crawled into the tent and lay and outside they giggled. I wondered why I was already in the tent, but I didn’t move to go back outside. I was so happy to win the argument that I devoured the winnings straight off, crawled in and zipped up when I should have been outside with the virgin sky, which I won’t see for a long time after Alana and I return to the US. Milton and his Tica were out there under it, while I chose the shark-gray ceiling, lit from behind. I lied down and dug my ass and shoulders into the thin, canvas floor and wiggled to mold the sand underneath. Big wave sounds dragged me under and not even the faint smacking of Milton and the Tica’s spitty mouths kept me from a hard sleep on that beach.

In the morning, the tent was steamy and it smelled like fish. I crawled out to find the meat and bones of 200 pompano drying in the sun, surrounding my camp site in all directions. 100 feet away, a Tico family smiled and waved at me from their camp under the trees. The beach was rocky and wild and out in the water were tiny surfers avoiding pointy, brick-red formations. Milton was nowhere around. My feet burned as I hop-scotched between the fish bodies to the water.

When I’d cooled my feet, I burned them again hopping back through the pompano to the tent. In a cloud of fish smell, I tied on my shoes and broke down the tent, by myself. It was easy in the daylight. When I had stuffed all the tent parts back in their canvas cocoon, the three ubiquitous traveling white girls from town emerged onto the beach. When they said their passive hi’s, it occurred to me that I had no way to get back to town. So I attached myself to them. I clung to their backs figuring I’d follow them to town when they were through laying in the sun.

I waited. I waited more. I had a hard time relaxing. I wished Milton were there to talk with about how I don’t relate to these traveler kids I’ve met.

Last night, before all the shirtless gringos showed up at Angelica’s, it was a smattering of the younger, white travelers; the activists, the civic minded, the yearning, and Milton talked in my ear, spreading a blanket statement over the traveler kids like a Southern picnic. He told me, "Don’t trust these kids, man. They’re not positivity eternal, like they seem…they’re negative…they’re just sneaky about it, man. They hide it and shit, even from themselves."

As I waited to follow the traveler girls back to town in the morning, I thought of Milton’s words and watched the girls talking and playing a board game in the sun. Their positivity seemed to occur at natural intervals, but then, where there would have been negativity, tasteless jokes, beautiful, mean laughter like normal people, there were long blanks. And the girls had the ability to lie around in the blanks, like dogs, and I was jealous of their adept relaxation as I hung impatient in the armpit of a big tree, out of the sun, tapping my fingers on the bark and counting pelicans and wondering what it would take to get the white girls to dislike me.

Eventually the solid one from New York said, fast, "I need to be at work at 4. I should get started trying to find a ride back. Sometimes it takes a long time to find a ride."

"Can I follow you?" I asked. She gave a vague affirmative and walked 10 feet in front of me and I followed her colorful back-pack to the almost-road.

"Sorry for being such a tag-along." I yelled up to her as we walked.

"It’s O.K." She answered.

Soon there was a wooden truck, driven by a surfer who looked like a young Ted Nugent. He was at Angelica’s party last night.

"I’m only goink bach to Angelica’s to pick up some CDs I left zheir last night." Nugent said. He had a German accent. "But you should let me take you zhere, it’s a better place to hang out vhile vaiting for a ride."

We jumped in the back in the bed. I sat down, unlike last night’s truck rides. And instead of sharing the ride with Milton and three maybe-prostitutes, there was now a sweet-faced girl and her curly-haired, spiritual, surfer guy beau. They were travelers, negativityless. But I liked her short curly hair and sexy crooked teeth and as the truck challenged my testicles, slammed them, vibrated them, stirred my reproductive organs over the same Disney rocks, I stared at the sweet-faced girl’s hot white and she smiled once when she caught me. But as my eyes explored her, her and her surfer were shaken together by the turbulent truck, and to support her, he put his hand on a part of her body I really liked, and it was so loud in my head that it almost came out my mouth: ‘You mother fucker.’

I worried for myself, and didn’t look at her for the rest of the ride.

Her and her boyfriend bailed out of the truck with me and the New York girl when Ted Nugent dropped us off at Angelica’s bar. At hot 1 p.m. the vast patio was almost empty and Angelica was adding seeds to the bread she was kneading with her big tattooed arms in her long, open air kitchen in her open air house on vast shiny flat cement which served, last night, as a dance floor.

Angelica is German too and she knew who I was: Alana’s boyfriend. "Her momma is nice," Angelica said in pointy German English as she crushed the bread dough. "You be nice to her."

Everyone else, the travelers and surfers, all laughed when Angelica said that, but I’m not sure why. They were drinking cokes in the heat and talking about how great the party last night had been, but Milton and I had thought it stunk. The average age was 36, Milton’s age, nine years younger than me. But the problem, as Milton pointed out, was that, "These rusty, straw-haired, red gringos are like…people who left Florida cause they couldn’t hack the fast pace there." We had smoked a lot on the ride out last night and he was giving an inspired performance. He was drinking faster tonight and just going and going. He pointed into the crowd, "And you notice how few gringo women there are here. It’s cause only dudes want to retire at 36 and surf and live out some Jimmy Buffett record turned down to 33rpms!"

(note to self: MILTON GOES OFF HERE ABOUT NEWK’S CAFÉ STORIES, PARROTT HEAD CONVENTION, BUFFETTITUS…admitts to conflicted feelings about Buffett, that "There are times when he really knows what’s good about Florida…but there will always be something about Parrottheads that I hate." THINK ABOUT THIS MORE))

Angelica took a break from her jungle bread and opened a beer and since I was the only other one having a beer at 1 p.m., she talked to me while the New York girl and I waited for a ride back to town. Angelica also knew through town gossip that I was a writer and it made me feel so good to be known as ‘the writer’ that I wondered if she were just saying it to make me feel good. When I showed Angelica my book (I always carry one), she liked the design and without reading it she bought a copy for $7 and a beer. When we’d made our exchange, she set my book down on the bar and went back to her bread.

The sweet faced girl was sitting next to me on the other side of her boyfriend and she picked my book up and opened it while her surfer talked about species of native birds and plant spirit medicine. Her sweet face grew a smile as she read and every 30 seconds she looked up at me smiling or laughing. Her boyfriend was talking to her and she wasn’t listening but I was, and his shtick was on my nerves. Even though Milton’s constant black social critique last night at the party was sometimes painfully dull, he gave moments of great insight. I felt like I understood this surfer boyfriend.

After Milton had outlined the older crowd, and then the back-packer kids, he talked about the, "Skinny Y2K hippies so full of helium and horseshit that they look like they’re gonna float away, like Perry Ferrell or some shit. Their heads wobble when they talk like they’re gonna roll off their shoulders…they look like they’re gonna fall apart…you’d wonder how they paddle kayaks…" He trailed off into laughter.

When I thought he was loud and rude, I walked him away from the party and out to the muddy car lot of SUVs. That Tico kid, Ashley, was sitting out at the picnic table in the dark with his sunglasses and baseball hat and some older white guy with his shirt off. Ashley was smoking pot and drinking beer. I had been smoking so much with Milton that when I talked to Ashley I noticed my voice was becoming deep and smoky and mature, like Alana calling me baby. Milton didn’t want more pot, but it’s always fun make him try and keep up so we smoked again.

Ashley rolled heavy wet joints and I pulled a hair out of my back as he told me he was 17, 10 years younger than me, and then he gave me advice, "There are certain things you need to do before you die, mine." Ashley said out of his nose, sounding tough and sarcastic, which is refreshing in this sarcasm-less land. "I read it some where, mine, that there are things you need to do before you die, mine."

The white guy who was there before me and Milton interrupted and said, "Ashley, when are you gonna quit speaking English like a Mexican?…Be a TICO, man!"

Ashley said, "Hey, mine, don’t gif me any shit O.K.?" With his sunglasses and brown skin in the dark it was hard to tell where Ashley was looking. I was very high and I thought he looked like a young Stevie Wonder. Ashley said, "So one off the things you need to do, mine, is to write a book before you die, and you already done dat. Dat’s good, mine."

It gave me the creeps, like, now I’m ready to die. Milton didn’t react. He was shut tight. But I knew his mouth was unstoppable when he was stoned; he had to be holding it in. I was also a little drunk so I passed Ashley’s rule onto Milton, asking him, "A book before you die; what do you have to say about that, Jon?"

"I really don’t want to talk about writing, man." He answered.

"Why?" Said Ashley, "A you a writer too, mine? You know, Patrick got a book out!"

Milton rolled his eyes like a fucking jerk and said to Ashley, "New topic man, I’m almost twenty years older than you."

One of the benefits of cultural difference is that sometimes the asshole moments don’t translate well either. Ashley kept rolling joints, blind to Milton’s pretension. Ashley’s a good kid.

"Anyway, mine," Ashley continued to me. "You also gotta get married before you die." I nodded, thinking of the shark cage. He said, "You say you twenny-seffen, mine? Then you still haf tree more years to get married, mine."

Milton wasn’t interested and he let escape a deep sigh and turned around on the picnic bench, pouting. He wanted to go back to the party and make fun of people. I wondered why he didn’t just walk back by himself. The party was growing but from our picnic bench we couldn’t make out if there were women yet besides the three white traveler girls we’d ridden out with. But between us and the far bar, was a flickering, pink fountain with two young ladies bending over, looking in.

"There." Milton announced in a whisper to my ear, he motioned to the girls with his burned chin.

Ashley laughed and said to Milton, "Yeh mine, You should go over and talk to the chicks, mine."

Distinct features were lost in the night, but in the tricky pink light and shadows, we could see that they were pretty white girls, their hair stringy wet. They looked tight and freshly bathed. Milton used my shoulder as leverage to rise. I conceded in silence to walk over with him.

We approached and realized they were nine-years-old and so continued walking toward the bar patio which now hummed with 100 white men Milton’s age and 15 white women my age. Before we reached any of them, we stopped at a card table with various pieces of jewelry displayed, for sale, next to a tub of free condoms. The jewelry was strung together and carved from what looked like the same gray monkey toenails.

I told Milton the story about the dreadlocked guy who was here trimming monkey toenails and on the edge of very drunk we laughed harder than we had yet together. "I wish I’d made that story up about the toenails man, that’s EX-CELLENT!" Milton said, choking on guffaws. I scanned the crowd and everyone around us laughed with him. I also noticed the dreadlocked guy hovering around the card table waiting for people to look at his necklaces. I assumed he hadn’t descended on me since I’d told him ‘no’ before. But I wondered why he hadn’t said come by me to hello either.

When Milton was done coughing up laughs, he too noticed everyone’s eyes on him. He whispered to me, "Staring…I get so fucking sick of this…this is one of the reasons I left the U.S." I hadn’t a clue what he meant.

He turned and inhaled as if about to give the crowd a long didactic speech, but merely shouted, "Everyone loves to have their shirts off! Don’t they?" Then he made a big squawk noise like the macaws that fight in the trees above Alana’s house. Everyone still laughed.

Before he could make them stop laughing I led him away from the scene, seeing myself as his handler. As we walked across the bar I noticed that all the gringo men at the party, and there were over 100 at that point, were indeed shirtless; acres of burned flesh hung over surf trunks in all directions. Beer bottles rested cold against red guts and up above there was receding hair, salty like dry straw.

We stopped on the other side of the bar and I bent down petting one of the many medium sized dogs at the party. Ashley stopped by me and said, fast in his Mexican-sounding English, "It’s a lame party, mine, when the best looking chicks are a Ticas." And he pointed across the bar where Milton and I had just been standing. There were now three brown girls sitting side by side on the card table with the toenail jewelry. They were guarded by a shirtless and red, middle age white man, with his arms folded and his hairy back to the women.

The women were my age; the first gorgeous women I’d seen who weren’t teenagers since three weeks ago in San Jose. Even though I am loyal to Alana, the three Tica women felt like fresh air and promise, even to me.

When I turned to point them out to Milton, he had his shirt off too and he was smirking. His chest and gut were scorched, but not as bad as before. The scabs on his face looked better too. I knew he hadn’t started wearing sunscreen; I assumed he’d been staying indoors.

Behind him, those who had laughed with Milton had stopped laughing. They stared at his back. When he turned to face the bar to order his fifth beer from Angelica, his back was to me and I noticed what the people were staring at: his tattoo of Central America; a dark map from his left shoulder blade to the small of his back. Around the tattoo was a red sea of burned white.

As Milton and Angelica exchanged money for beer, I bent closer, trying to find OUR VILLAGE on his map. When I couldn’t even find our gulf, I realized I was actually scouting the geography of a long, purple blister. It was shiny around the edges where it leaked. I looked away fast, looked up, and saw that others were wincing and curling their lips at the painful sight.

"Milton!" I whisper-yelled without thinking. He turned and asked me, still smirking, "What?" He didn’t notice that he’d answered his real name. But I thought I’d call him on that later. His back was to the crowd and now they were turning away, trying not to look anymore.

I said to him, "You have to wear sunscreen or else I’m not gonna hang out with you anymore. That blister is horrible! You’re gonna die like Alana’s dad!"

"I’m gonna die like Alana’s dad." He repeated.

"Put your shirt back on." I requested on behalf of everyone.

"Hey man," He yelled loud and slow to the crowd of dudes, "We all have our shirts off. It’s HOT here, brrrroooooooooo!"

I wanted to leave. I wanted him to leave. I might have thought his rowdy act was funny; but the sight of his back was too much. No one could laugh with that blister around. It threatened to kill the party.

He was easy to guide away, back across the slick cement patio toward the three Tica women. I knew that he would calm down and act cool if there were women around, maybe put his shirt back on. The shirtless, middle aged guy still stood guard over the Ticas but Milton and I went over and sat in highback chairs at a long table to the left of them. Milton did calm when he saw them. He stared. They stared back. Their guardian didn’t notice.

Milton brought his legs around the chair so that his knees faced me. When his back to the Ticas, I saw their eyes widen. One of the girls reached long fingers out to touch it, but she stopped herself. Their guardian felt his girls fluttering behind him and turned to see what the commotion was about. When he saw the blister he grunted, then looked away.

I turned back to Milton. He was staring at me, leaning elbows on knees. He said, "As young and American as you are and as young and American as I act, if we knew 10 words of Spanish we could take this fat bastards girlfriends away like nothin’..." He paused. "That’s assuming their boy don’t know Spanish…but none of these Parrottheads do."

With his knees still aimed at me, he turned his top portion around on his spine, to face their guardian. The motion twisted and tightened the blister until it looked like it might bust and spray our table. I moved to the next chair, and heard Milton ask the guardian, "Hablas Espanol?"

"What?" The old guy said. Then Milton turned further around, clear fluid shifted inside the blister; critical mass.

Milton spilled some awkward Spanish words, "El es tu novio?," onto the floor in front of the girls, and they all shook their heads horizontal in synchronous, ‘no.’ I knew that novio meant boyfriend. Their guardian wasn’t their boyfriend. Milton smiled and said, "Bueno." Milton ignored their staring guardian as he barely managed a couple more Spanish phrases I didn’t understand, something about "la playa," the beach. Then there was silence before the girls rose, Milton rose, and I figured I should rise too. Their guardian uttered a, "Huh?"

Then he said to Milton, "Aw, hey man," The guardian had a Southern accent too, but he just sounded dumb. He said, "I been working on these gals all night."

"Sorry man." Milton said. Then nothing else. Milton knew how to use his quiet. The Tica girls crowded up behind us. It was exciting. Milton said to the guy, "If you have a truck though, I’ll give you some money to drive us to the beach."

The guy agreed easily and slipped his shirt and baseball hat on and I whispered to Milton, "Don’t you think maybe he said yes so he could drive us out into the jungle as revenge for taking his women?"

"No," Said Milton, "These old crusty dudes are pussies. He’d rather just have the couple bucks he’ll make on cabfare. They don’t get in fights over Tico women."

Before we headed out to the beach, I wanted to pee and I left Milton with our cab driver and the three Ticas. I said goodbye to Ashley on the way to the bathroom and closed the dark door behind me. The bathroom was small and I leaned one hand against the wall in front of me as I stood above the single toilet and pissed. I noticed I wasn’t wearing underwear.

When I was done I zipped my baggy surf shorts halfway up before the main zipping mechanism popped into the air, and into the toilet, broken, and I reached down in and grabbed it, without flushing the toilet. Of course it was gross but it was funny and laughter seized me. I was about to ride through the jungle with one of my favorite authors and the three beautiful women he’d stolen for us; the piss on my hands was just another crazy detail. It was a good night.

The bathroom sink was mounted outside the door. I came out of the bathroom and rinsed the metal zipper piece and set it by the soap dish. I picked up the bar of soap to wash my pissy hands, and underneath was a Junonia, one of Milton’s shells, covered in soap scum. I scrubbed my hands and arms as if in preparation to deliver a baby. When I was clean, I returned to Milton and the Ticas.

As I traversed the room on the way back to them was when I saw him handing the women money. When I was back at Milton’s side again I said, "I’m not messing around on Alana."

He spun to me, "I’m not messing around on my girl neither, man." He gave a few bucks to guy who was giving us a ride and put the rest of his money in the front pocket of his shorts. I assumed he was lying.

As we climbed in the back of the drunk, happy truck, Milton was talking to me in English, the girls didn’t understand him but his Southern accent sounded like the voice of some cartoon turtle my cheeks hurt from beaming all night and the girls were laughing now too and in that moment I wished there were no Alana. I wanted to be free to fuck these Tica women with Milton Chapman on the beach. But I knew I wouldn’t, so I simply decided that, in the morning, I would call his bluff about the fake name, and tell him I knew who he really was.