John is an all-American guy who possibly doesn’t harbor any evil, so I look at him from the corner of my eye sometimes. He wants to volunteer on an organic farm in Dominical, even after the brochure said, "Bring candles, books and good vibes with you." You can’t get more questionable than that without involving NAMBLA. But I agreed to go with him to check the place out, and he drove us in his mini-van, 100 pukey, shaking miles through the almost-roads of the jungle.

Dominical has few locals. It is all Gringo surfers with straw hair, shell necklaces and hot girlfriends, all hanging in hammocks from the trees. It’s legal to sleep, camp and build fires on any public beach in Costa Rica and an hour before the sun goes down, the weather shifts from relentless Florida-esque swelter, to perfect sleeping outside weather. John and I didn’t know this about Costa Rica, so spent $3.00-a-night, doubling up in a hot outhouse-style cabina. So did Blake and Buck and Weston.

Blake is a sardonic dude with hair in a brown, manicured ponytail. He is an American living in Austria, visiting Costa Rica for the purpose of surfing. I never saw him surf during my four days in Dominical, but I somehow assumed that he was good, unlike Buck and Weston, who had met elsewhere in Costa Rica and then traveled to Dominical together to learn to surf. They rented and shared one board and every day we’d watch them getting their asses kicked in the waves. Weston, a lank fellow as tall as John, looked especially broken when paddling back to shore, breathless, Jesus hair and beard eclipsing all facial features as he passed the board off to Buck.

Me, John, Blake, Buck and Weston: this was our posse for the weekend nights of drunk which left me with the vision of Dominical as a grand beautiful breathtaker, over which once must have flown a giant pelican, as big as a blimp, who ate Daytona Beach at spring break, and then shat a bit out as it hummed over poor Costa Rica.

Friday night we attended Dominical’s full-moon disco. Beforehand we ate and drank on the desolate end of the beach in a very loud restaurant which sent vinyl waves of distorted guitar out over the quiet ocean. The restaurant is a large patio with iguanas slipping on the slick cement through the chairs, between legs. The owner of the place is not Costa Rican but Spanish. His name is Angel. He speaks the baritone Spanish of a radio announcer and his face is like a distinguished Spanish author, or doctor. But framing all the straightness is a long mane of grayed out, sun-damaged hair. He wears T-shirts of North American independent rock and death-metal bands. The loud music in the restaurant is his and it is The Seeds, or Polvo, or Jimi Hendrix or Operation Ivy. I didn’t understand much of his answer when I asked, in Spanish, "Is this your music?" But when we talked about music for minutes after, I caught the phrase, "hard-core-punk" several times, curling with Spanish Rs.

When I’m with Spanish speaking gringos like John and Blake and Buck and Weston, I lazily allow them to negotiate the land for me as my Spanish abilities wilt in my throat. I should have talked to Angel more, but I was timid. I thought of my friend Brian Repetto, who sings in a good band; he would have twisted and jumped and played air guitar to get his point across if it meant NOT talking to such a musical anomaly, out in the jungle.

By the time we finished eating we were drunk and my Spanish was, if not better, at least braver, and I suggested a list of bands to Angel, with no idea how he’d buy them. I told him I played in a music duo with my sister, which inevitably led to a discussion of Prince. "He is a little man with a big genius," Angel said before I adios’d and walked with John and Blake and Buck and Weston out through the tents and the trees back out onto the dusty almost-road, smoking another joint on the way to the disco.

Local Tica women my age work the disco bar, which also serves great breakfast. One of the women had a little mustache and she was the one I fell in love with. The rest of the bartender Ticas all spoke English and one had a tongue ring. The tongue ring girl earned the distinction of being the only girl I hit on during my whole time in Dominical, and only the second since arriving in Costa Rica. She was lame though. which means the toungue ring reads the same in every culture.

At the end of the night I was stuck with a 15-beer tab ($20) and no luck for any of us, but Weston hit a Ping-Pong ball out the window and had to search for it in the dark jungle. As we walked home on the dust road, we all laughed a lot at that.

When I’ve first reached any new place in this country there has been a period of disorientation at so much time and not knowing how to spend it. I found my routine, my schedule for sanity in Puerto Jiménez. But though there was no computer in Dominical the new routine settled itself within a couple days: wake at 9 a.m., go to the disco bar where the same hot Tica waitresses serve great breakfast with the only bottomless cup of coffee in the country, stay and write and stare until noon, at noon go check email then go to the beach and swim and stare at those women while playing with various wild dogs and watching Buck and Weston get their asses kicked. At 6 p.m. the sun sets and the population of Dominical pours onto the beach to watch the surfers turn to silhouettes against the crazy light show. Then we eat and get drunk. Then keep getting drunk until it wears us out.

Saturday night in Dominical the moon still looked full and we were drunk again at Angel’s restaurant, laying outside in homemade, wooden recliners with the peaceful view and hard-core-punk. Before heading out to the dance in a club imbedded in a mountain, Angel told us, "If you don’t have a car you must take the beach. And if you take the beach you must walk through water."

During our days in Dominical, it was all high tides smothering the beach to the left; just against rocks and rough waves with a spray like the mouth of a boxer when he’s punched hard in the stomach. White mist hung in the air down there.

But on full-moon low-tide Saturday night, the water went way out, the beach opened up, and as we walked out to the disco, the waves were lit from the inside. That day, before sunset, when Weston was out with the board and John and Blake were somewhere else, Buck and I had discovered tiny blue animals with tentacles; hundreds squirming on the beach and I guessed they were sea-cucumbers but even I had no clue what they really were. But at night, as we walked far into the un-explored, jungle-end of the beach, the little animals lit the sand with phosphorous glow and the life threatening waves sparked up green-white for a moment when crashing, before disappearing in the natural dark.

As we marveled at the glow and smoked joints and climbed wet rocks, a big, fast crab ran across our feet. Showing off, I reached down and plucked him up in the rare spot on his abdomen where he couldn’t reach and nip my fingers. I held him up to show the other guys and Buck leaned in and blew pot smoke in it’s face and we laughed so hard we almost slipped off the brick red, mountain boulders.

The disco was packed, beautiful, oceanic and psychedelic jungle disco with too many lights and 100s of Tica girls with sweaty brown backs, lowering to the floor as a deep-voiced Spanish DJ enticed participation from the mass of locals singing the refrains of popular Costa Rican songs whenever he cut the volume with fader. Wild, hard, loud. The bartender girl with the faint mustache flailed and I watched her unable to stop smiling and kissing everyone. I watched her talk to men, sliding into them, putting her hands into their front pockets as she spoke up into their faces, and though she never paid attention to me, and I never accosted her even though I knew she probably spoke English, she reminded me of Karolina and this girl Christina I used to love, and over the course of the night I projected a great personality behind all that fun she was having and giving. There is real love in such situations.

But I just danced alone and sweated and watched and wondered what I looked like in this crowd. Buck and Weston and John had disappeared and Blake was giving it the "Ol' College Try" with this German girl he’d met, when I decided to walk home by myself.

The beach was silent and longer on the way back and in all my crooked exploring I ended up at the main road, flip-flops stumbling drunk in the loose rocks. Within minutes a line of trucks, full of people, brightened my back before flying past yelling laughs with each other in front. The disco was over. From one of the blurs I heard, "Mikey, go to the beach!" I assumed it was Blake.

I was wet by the time I reached my cabina and rolled another joint and smoked it myself before trying to find the rest of the party, which wasn’t hard to find; the fire raged, god bless it, and Blake was sitting in its glow with the German girl who wasn’t affectionate. I sat in back of them, sort of hiding because I didn’t want Blake asking me to come sit with them out of obligation.

As I tried not to study their body language to predict his success, a young man of the same ilk as most of my Tampa friends, tapped me on the back and introduced himself as Bruce and then handed me a beer. There are very few people in Costa Rica who remind me of those I hang out with in Tampa, but Bruce was a skinny, un-athletic, short-haired white guy who looked like he might care too much about music, or making his friends laugh. Dominical was only surfers and naturalists and travelers and do-gooders, the civic minded juxtaposed against hyper-lazy jocks. Maybe Bruce was feeling this divide too when he’d spotted me at the mountain disco and said ‘hi’ as if he wanted more. But in a fit of awkwardness I returned his hello with a nod and walked off like a woman unable to be bothered with an overzealous man who’s been staring at her. But by the time I reached the fire I was tired and stoned and comfortable and when Bruce introduced himself again, I told him to sit down with me.

As he talked, he proceeded to lay on his back, lift his shirt up, break weed on his flat stomach and roll a joint, with his head bent forward, looking at his work like an otter. He rolled and talked on about a monkey that had climbed onto his shoulder and then he started in about the Bushmaster, a particularly venomous and aggressive Costa Rican snake. It chases people. We smoked and he obsessed about the Bushmaster and before the joint was gone I had fallen asleep thinking about snakes.

I woke with a loud shout and Blake and the German girl turned in front of me at the sound of my snake-nightmare. Bruce was still there talking about the Bushmaster; he was having bad dreams about it too, he said.

Bruce and his girl scooted over to us all and someone else joined too, but I dipped out of the conversation and sat falling back to sleep by the fire when the bartender girl with the mustache stumbled by, looking at me, and I said, "Holamiga," slurred into one word by sleep and pot and beer. My nerves were calm when she sat next to me in the sand, but I could barely talk through such a tight smile; it took my face hostage, wouldn’t let it move.

Her voice was higher than I’d expected and she did speak English, though her presence brought comfortable Spanish from my tired mouth. She glowed and told me three times that she was "drunken" and I tried to tell her that it sounded rare and pretty when she added the "-en," and I don’t know if she understood but she leaned on me, though mostly because she was really fucked. I should have just kissed her. She kept saying, "I need more music, more beers." She pointed around saying, "That is my ex-boyfriend," at every shirtless Tico who shuffled by with a can of beer. Her eyes were so blue they were white and she kept beaming them at me until she admitted, "I took the X and I NEEEEEEEED more music and more beer even though I am already so drunken." If any American girl sat next to me and told me she was on X, then said the word neeeeeeeed with such vehemence, I would have just kissed her to see what she would do. But I didn’t violate that pretty thing beneath her pretty mustache, and eventually she left to fulfill her needs.

The next day began with a sick stomach, which blossomed into my head trying to convince me that there’s so much I need to worry about. So, I stuck by myself and by sunset I was a mess; the beach littered with couples and perfect young mothers had me aching every moment, but especially when a naked little baby girl with loose red curls ran around in front of me, dancing like the angel of melancholy, reminding me of her. The whole time I’ve been here, so far away from her, I haven’t stopped thinking about her. I am ridiculous, or I am real, and trying to decide is maddening.

It’s been years now, there must be something wrong with me. I think I must need medication to make me let go of things. But hen I’m really worried I tell myself that it’s not going away because it’s real and real things don’t go away. But I still think about other women too, women I never belonged with; I hold onto my worst times with them, letting them make me sad today. Were they so real that I can’t forget? No, I just need to forget.

But with this, it’s like took an ice cream scoop out of my insides. I don’t cry over it now, and I try not to think about it, especially when I’m here writing and escaping. But there’s still a cold wind inside there, and at sunset by myself I was even talking about it, explaining it to her under my breath though she wasn’t there; just some baby girl with the same hair who reminded me of her and the baby girl couldn’t hear me either but I was explaining how, after the emptiness was empty for a while, that’s when I started writing. And I was trying to explain to her that I realized, while I’ve been here, that I so violently took to writing in an effort to build something bigger than her; something to care about more, something to eclipse the perfect sphere hole where the ice-cream-scoop laid waste, and doing that worked for the most part; I found my calling at least. But I am still empty and achy, and I don’t relate to anyone else, I never do, I never have, and if you don’t have one good, healthy, positively memorable relationship to look back on by 27-years-old; people don’t change after 25, they recede farther into their habits and experiences and if you don’t relate to people by then, then you are stuck there, or it will get worse. That’s when John and Blake and Buck and Weston came on me from up the beach.

"Hey, there’s five of us and five of them." Blake said, pointing toward the water to five young white girls looking on with the rest of the town, out into the ocean with the painted sun and surfers and waves. I didn’t answer.

"I’ll take the ugly one." Buck volunteered

"That’s real sweet of you." John said, then asked, half-serious, "What should we say to them?"

No one answered.

"How about you walk up to em and say, ‘What are y’all looking at?’" I suggested.

Everyone laughed. Blake said, like a surfer guy, "We could just say, ‘Sup?"

That got laughs too and he said, "We could follow that with, "Y’all like darts?"

"Or else," Weston interrupted, "How bout, ‘Y’all like drugs?’"

"Definitely!" Blake said with a rare enthusiasm. "Let’s ask em if they wanna smoke out!"

I was already feeling better so I said, "What would be perfect, would be to just corner one of them and ask them to get high with you, and then when y’all ran off to get high alone, you light it and give it to her and watch her real close as she smokes, and when she tries to pass it back to her just say, ‘No thanks.’"

More laughs.

"And then," laughed Buck, "Ask her, ‘How do you feel now? Are you relaxed?’"

As we laughed loud with real tears, the girls down the beach even waved at us, but we never went and talked to them.

(After bad dreams about losing Alana)

Maybe I’d already had too much of the beach when I started to think my problem was just too much will to live, grating and buzzing all the time. I do things to lessen it. Mainly get stoned. But also I let the air out of my balloon in the mornings and at night; any time I’m laying down and alone. Today I let it out in the ocean; my will to live.

I was not alone, but I was hidden when I let it out in zero gravity, with no sand under my feet where the deep water was a neck-brace around the back of my neck, hugging the dip where the skull touches the spine, and around front, under the chin; I floated, one arm going, building toward letting it out. The beach was littered with perfect brown. I scanned them over my shoulder, making sure no one knew what I was up to under there. It was distracting, but not much. I might lose a size worrying if I was good person, I should stop, but the arm kept rhythm against the tide like a swarm of paddles on a Viking ship.

And when a big wave came, that’s when I had it all to myself; I’d face the wave and slide under it, feet first, holding my breath and laying down like I do in the mornings and at night, only now, the water’s so still that I barely feel huge waves breaking on the surface three feet parallel from me as I build toward letting it out. I run out of air and have to come up thinking that time under water almost got me there, as I scan the beach again for witnesses, still going with the arm, and I scan the beach one last time before it’s too much and a wave rolls toward, not as big as the others, but this is it, and when it rolls over, I let it out into the salt water, unable to see for the sun, toes stretched out as far as they need to, legs stretched to break, I’m lost in the little death, forgetting to duck under water, so the people on the beach can’t see my twisted face.

A Costa Rican Sunset by Michael Patrick Welch

"Just kidding, it’s not really about sunsets," I said before reading aloud my poem entitled, A Costa Rican Sunset.

But then, when I look up from the poem, around the beach, the closest person is still 100 yards away, strolling away down the sand with the second person closest to me, who looks to be his wife. Behind that closest couple, who are still too far away to hear me reading my poem, is a white bulldog. His testicles are pink with black splotches like a milk cow. He is keeping at bay a smaller wild dog with a swollen pink eye. The small dog antagonizes and the big male bulldog backs down, but I’d hate to see what happened if he retaliated.

And beyond his splotchy testicles is the Costa Rican ocean, mostly silver and white, with surfers silhouetted against the pale orange sherbet and baby pajama blue of the…
…as I said before…this poem’s not about that.