I’m doing all right here accept for my intense shyness with the ladies; partially due to the language barrier, but also just the same symptoms as always. Currently, my hair is drying from the shower I just took to rinse out the saltwater; I took a dip while walking down to the beach to smoke a joint. As I walked I noticed, up ahead, a flock of eight, laughing teenage Tica girls in bikinis. I smiled all the way up to them, but my heart was racing unpleasant as I traversed the flock. They smiled and waved, and said, "Hola," then giggled like they’d dared each other, and when I had passed they whispered after me, "psssssst" like North American construction workers. And I even knew one of the girls, a nineteen-year-old who had kissed me on the cheek one night. But still I didn’t turn around. So my question to you is; how much of a man am I for not taking advantage of that fantasy? Especially after my male-dog persistence last night? Which I will tell you about in a second.

But first let me frame the story with this; even though I pay them well, I am indebted to the family I stay with, who allow me use of this computer. They are the benefactors of my productivity. I’ve made such good use of their computer that yesterday, their old, padded swivel office chair busted in the middle of my sentence. I’d wore it out. But falling to the ground, I had a great idea; to show my appreciation, I would buy them a new chair. A nice one! To really express my gratitude, since I have such a hard time doing so in Spanish.

I ran out into the sun, into the bright dirt village and found the perfect chair, in the first store. Most of the import goods that come to this little village are pretty shitty; but this chair was almost Sharper Image. Man, it would have been great to work on.

The price was 11,000 colones (about $30), and I cringed, but ran around the corner to the tiny bank. I have only been taking out $15 a day, so I don’t spend too much (I came here to live like a pauper – which truthfully, I am) but I removed the $30 from my account. On the way back it dawned on me that I should go to the other places, shop around.

I walked around the village, every store, unable to find a better price, and thinking about what $30 means here: 3 nights of lodging, 10 hours in the Internet café, 30 bottles of water, a fishing trip, a trip up the waterfalls, a pound of marijuana, maybe a hooker.

I returned to the store but was un-successful at chiseling them down at all, so in the end, my magnanimity balked. But on the way out of the store I found a cheap lawn chair, $3,000 colones ($10 – still too much) and brought it back to the cabina. There was no parade for my return. No ‘mucho gusto’s. Just a floppy white plastic chair.

Remember that as you read about last night...

Also keep in mind that, in my day, I haven’t seen shit as far as The Seedy Underbelly of This World is concerned. I saw an old lady get her purse stolen in a K-Mart parking lot once. One time I saw cocaine. My friends who actually do cocaine, call me a bumpkin. I’ve never interacted with a prostitute either, until last night, partly because the hookers in Tampa are mostly men dressed as women, and I don’t do that. And partly because it’s illegal in Tampa, unlike here.

But I have driven down Tampa’s Nebraska Ave. with a rare, wild drunk something in my eye, on several occasions after working into the single digit hours at some restaurant that closed so late the manager would have been an ingrate not to open the beer taps for the crew as we mopped the floors and dragged endless trash cans. And when I was a wasted blur, driving slow home with a knot of tip money in my wallet, I knew in my heart that I would stop if I saw a pretty one.

I never did. But the women here are the prettiest I’ve seen anywhere; I haven’t determined how much social stigma surrounds the profession here in Costa Rica, but these are women I would pay to sleep with, regardless. Yes. It would definitely be worth it. But I am poor. The word here is ‘pobre’ (I remember relevant words – I used it with this women last night). And so I haven’t entertained the idea except when talking drunk on beer with my friend John, and when he said it out loud: "I know I’m gonna do it at some point in my life," somewhere far away and faint in me, something commented, ‘Exactly.’

And so I decided that since we’re here, and it’s legal, and since I haven’t spent any money doing touristy things, like fishing trips, I vaguely decided to do it before I leave in three weeks. We were really drunk during the conversation, and I’m not sure if John agreed to it. He laughed and didn’t object and I took that as yes. Though the next morning the whole thing was a joke, put away in the liquor cabinet.

But when the handsome, long-haired Tico guy, Orlando, sat with me at breakfast at the busy Soda yesterday morning, I mentioned, laughing, "So, I’ve been told there are a lot of prostitutes in this village…ha, ha, ha."

Orlando’s bright eyes brightened, "Oh, yah, yah." Nodding his head.

We laughed again, together. "I haven’t seen one." I said.

"Oh, many, many around here. All around." He pointed in circles out to the street.

"Well," I said, trying to place my laughter perfectly so as to sound interested only in a purely ironic sense, "You’ll have to point them out to me when they walk past…ha, ha, ha."

He thought I was joking and failed to point any out but for the next half hour we were silent, eating outside, watching the Ticos and Ticas passing buy, staring, all the time playing ‘Who’s a Hooker?’.

A homely female friend of Orlando’s, an American girl, came and sat with us and ordered eggs and tortillas when Orlando blurted, "Her!" pointing out into the street again.

"Her what?" his friend asked. I didn’t see who Orlando pointed at, but I answered for him. "He’s showing me which women in this village are prostitutes."

"Oh god, most of them are." She said. I was bewildered. Am I blind? This place is so small I feel like I know everyone’s business. How am I missing this? She said, "At the next dance I’ll show you; you point to the prettiest girl in the place and I’ll bet you she’s a hooker."

That sounded great to me, and I hoped it didn’t show on my face. She joined in on Who’s a Hooker and continued, "All the prostitutes are all fifteen, fourteen, thirteen." She said, disparagingly. "And even if they’re not prostitutes, they’re still having sex here when they’re twelve, and having babies. 12; that the average age! But they’re bored, y’know? There’s nothing for them to do here. I want to start a storytelling program, or music lessons; some kind of after school program that shows these girls that there are other things they could be doing besides having sex."

I sat quiet for a while, thinking. I agreed, I suppose. But some vague notion dragged words out of my mouth, "That’s the reflexive reaction all Americans…excuse me…North Americans have when they see how things operate here." I said, listening to myself, wondering where it was coming from, but continuing, "If their bodies produce children…then why shouldn’t they? It’s just relative values. We have ours and they have theirs. They are only 7,000 people here, they could use a few more. We shouldn’t try to change the way other people do things…"

I almost believed myself, but she withered under it, conceding, "Yeah, I know…" And we all stared into the street.

The breakfast ended with her introducing me to some Tico she knew who said he could get me weed. He took my money, said "10 minutes amigo," and I sat waiting at that restaurant an hour for him to bring me dust and seeds. $15 worth; he’d said it was a half ounce, but, back at my cabina I rolled a mere nine joints with it. I smoked one and wrote for a few hours, and every time I snuck away to smoke another crappy joint I passed pretty girls and wondered, ‘Is that a…?’

At dinner I again found myself eating with Orlando and the idealistic American girl. We drank enough beer to start us going and then decided to meet in a couple hours, at 9 p.m. at that bar down by the water where everyone goes every night; El Rancho. When I turned back to finish my last half-glass of beer, a fly had landed in it and I said, "Shit." And everyone at the table looked my way.

"What, a fly in your beer?" One of the girls asked. She shrugged, "Just drink it."

She was joking, but I had already thought the same, in the most utitlitarian of ways; weighing the waste of beer against the real detriments of drinking a fly. I paid for the beer. And who cares? It’s just a fly. So I gulped it down as I stood to leave, not even wanting a laugh. Not only did they refrain from laughter, they gasped in horror. One of the girls asked, while covering her mouth with her hand, "Did you just drink that?"

I was embarrassed and said goodbye to them and went back to the office to write. At 9 p.m., I smoked only ½ of another joint on the way to El Rancho, placing the other half in my breast pocket.

I didn’t go inside El Rancho, just stood on the tip-toes of my flip-flops, outside, peaking in the windows. No one I knew was in there yet, and I was too stoned to take sitting in there with 50 locals staring at me, so I ran in fast, bought beers and ran outside by myself to sit on the sea wall reading Hunter S. Thompson (never read him before – great shit).

As I stared at the boats stranded on the sand flats, and laughed and drank by myself, a woman walked up the back sidewalk of the El Rancho and pulled the same peeping in the windows bit that I had. She didn’t see me watching her over my book. I recognized her, because the town is small, and I stay up late and alone, I know her patterns: she’s out late when everyone else here is asleep. I see her at night, walking empty roads, only to turn around and walk back, around the soccerfield, down by El Rancho, then back through the empty main strip of the village.

I also see her in the daylight, sitting on her front porch. She’s pretty, but older than the other pretty ones, if only my age, or two years more. She has a very nice body, long curly black hair, small hands, thin ankles. She dresses provocatively, as do all the women here; mainly because it’s hot as shit. But she dresses like that at night two, when it’s perfect weather, and she’s the only one around.

She didn’t find who she was looking for in the windows of the bar, and as she left to go walk around more, I went back to my book and beer I thought, "She’s definitely one…"

After a while I was drunk and I smoked that other half a joint on my way home, counting: I’d smoked two earlier, half on the way here, half now; that’s four. I had to watch that I didn’t smoke all nine before the sun rose. As I walked and took tiny puffs, the phrase, ‘$15-dollar-a-day-habit’ rang in my smoky head.

Suddenly, in the dark, coming around a corner under some overhanging jungle, was another person, and I hid the joint, until I saw it was her. The prostitute woman from the bar. I took a big hit as I walked past her and we said to each other, very slowly, "Hola," as smoke escaped my smile. There was no one around anywhere and I felt pretty cool being the only one out there with her; the whore and the drug addict passing in the jungle night. For a minute I didn’t feel so soft.

I looked back at her. She was beautiful from the back as well. I wondered how much she cost, since everything else is so cheap here. Then it dawned to wonder why she hadn’t even paused on me. Hadn’t winked. Nothing. Did I look poor? Did I look like I wouldn’t need to pay for sex. Why? What?

Then the real worry set it; she thought I was gay! Living here, I have wondered this often. These Tica girls are used to ‘dudes’ far more masculine than I. Even in the U.S., people ask me if I’m gay all the time. One Tica girl even asked if I was gay, and since then I have assumed this to be partially to blame for my having such bad luck with the local girls. It doesn’t offend me to be thought gay. But anything that impedes my chance of having a beautiful naked night with some perfect foreigner; anything like that would piss me off.

I almost turned and followed her wanting to prove myself, but instead I just kept smoking and walking. As I approached my cabina, I noticed, on the front balcony, an older Tico man with no shirt and a mustache. His hand moved fast in the lap of his swim-trunks as if masturbating. This was because he was masturbating.

But he was also smoking and at that moment all I wanted was a smoke. That would make me smile. He stopped the hand jive when I yelled up, asking him for one. When he flipped it down to me, I pitched the lit roach up over the balcony railing, into his lap.

"Cambiamos!" I yelled: we trade!

He didn’t seem enthusiastic about the free pot. I’m not sure he even picked it up and I walked over and sat in front of the bank. Soon after, she walked by, going in the direction of her house. The head rush of the cigarette topped off the beer and pot and had me knocking on cloud nine, horny as hell thinking about all the ways I wanted to prove to these Tica women that I am not, in fact, gay, and when she disappeared around the corner. I went ahead and followed her.

But halfway there my brain kicked in, ‘Bring a joint, when you get there, ask her to smoke.’ And I spun around and headed back. All that walking around on dusty gravel in the silent night; the rocks are loud and my sandals slap in the night like fast, sweaty lovers. The only others out with me are the hookers and Publica Fuerza; Public Strength; the police. And they would know what I was thinking if they saw me out here, walking back and forth on the same road. Sweaty. Trailing her, looking after her like a jealous lover, all the time followed by a cloud of sweet burning pot smells. And I felt crazy for a little while, out in the drunk night. I need some fuerza for myself. But at the same time; crazy, dumb, writing, vacation, fuck it, go. I grabbed a fresh joint and walked to her house.

She wasn’t on her porch. Her silent rippled-tin house was like a grand version of the shed where my father keeps his tools, only rusted. There was the bar next door, but I was hesitant to go in, not for the sex or money quotient, but for the fact that drinking more would shrivel my dick, and there’s nothing worse than a shriveled one when your soul is still full of raging lust. But when I walked past the window she wasn’t in there anyway, so I kept going, back down the street to my cabina again, climbing the stairs so very full of deviant imaginings. Up on the balcony, the masturbator was still going. He stopped when he noticed me and I thought maybe, since he’d stopped, that I could just sit out on the balcony and wait for her to walk under again. So I chilled next to him in a white plastic chair like the kind I’d bought that afternoon.

I tried to read more Hunter S. but it was dark out and after the masturbator offered me another cigarette, and I accepted, he handed me the lighter and then went back at it. I glanced over and saw it, yes, cock, being stroked, for sure. I was very surprised at my own acceptance of the situation. I was handling it all quite non-chalantly. I just didn’t glance over any more, except one time, and he saw me, and put his right leg up on the banister, to block the view, cover the scene with his thigh, which actually did the job, I couldn’t see it anymore, just his elbow shaking and his forearm pumping and...all right, enough…

I climbed back down the stairs hoping that maybe she had been in the bar’s bathroom or something when I’d gone by before. I was a less drunk now, so I wasn’t afraid of limp dick and decided on one more beer, so I walked, smoking half of the new joint I had planned for the both of us; some little undercurrent that, when the deal didn’t come through, would illustrate that, in some way, I hadn’t really been serious.

But after that half a joint how many does that leave me with? I vaguely decided that I would do it. Definitely, if it cost 4,000 colones (about $12). But no fucking. And I never saw the point of a blow job with a condom. So I practiced the phrase, "Con tus manos, solamente"

And she was there in the bar talking to a Tico. She was prettier than I’d thought during the day. Small, round cheekbones, almost flawless skin though she was, in fact, older than me. Regardless, she was a white-man’s dream which I wasn’t even awakened from when she smiled two missing teeth. And she winked at me. So I moved around the bar by her, to the dispair of her Tico.

She was silent to both of us when I entered their scene, she looked at me from the corner of her eye, still, except for one time when she coughed, hard, like an ax hitting wood. I wondered if a condom protected against TB.

When she had been silent for several minutes, the Tico walked off and I introduced myself to her. She was very cold, and my Spanish lacks, but I got her talking. Her voice was girlish but she looked even older, up close. She was drunk and her eyes were red. I tried to make her laugh. She seemed to appreciate the effort. She wanted me to take her to El Rancho, where I’d seen her earlier, where everyone goes.

It was that last part that got me: this village is like a highschool. You will see each person two times a day, minimum. And if I bring this woman into that bar, her ex-husband’s friends will be there, and two other of her regular customers, and the child of some woman who’s husband visits her, and a handful of my new friends who will wonder why I don’t just talk to all the women I’m introduced to, and try to fuck them, instead of sitting and drinking like a silent stone, then later paying for a handjob from an old woman. I was just too high for all that. Plus, since I’d drank that last beer with her, I was back to my limp dick limit; uno mas cerveza and the ship would be sunk.

She hassled me to take her to El Rancho until I admitted I was just too drunk, I didn’t need more. That she seemed to understand. She said, in Spanish, "We go to my house." And then she got up and walked out. I didn’t know if she meant, "We – me and my friends – are going to my house"? And I wondered about it as I stood up frantically and paid my one beer tab, slamming a third of it (no fly) and chasing her out the door. By the time I was out, she was in front of her patio, her pink tank top glowing 100 yards away in the dark.

But when I reached her she grabbed my hand and pulled me past the patio, past her house, down the sidewalk toward the road to the water.

"Que?" I asked. What?

We were a half block away from her porch, about five blocks from El Rancho, when she grabbed me and brought me to her and I looked down into her missing tooth, blackness in her mouth. He voice was very sweet and I was nervous as hell. She had grabbed my hand and even that felt awkward. "Vamos a El Rancho." She commanded.

When I told her ‘no’ very firmly she pushed me back into a wall with the loud sound of tin echoing in the quiet dead night. She pressed her body against me and wrapped my hand around her ass and I blurted out, in Spanish, "I don’t have much money!"

She backed away with her head lowered and I thought, Oh shit, maybe she isn’t a prostitute. I remembered one of my friends telling me that you didn’t even have to pay the girls here for sex, that these girls liked gringos so much that all you had to do was buy em some dinner and they’d consider that to be showering them with gifts, and they’d sleep with you for free. Maybe I just blew it, maybe she just wanted me to get her a little drunk. I assumed she was a prostitute, when maybe she was just a slut.

But whether or not she had been a prostitute before she met me, she asked, in English, "You no like me?" And she ran her hands along her hips and stuck out her rear in display, it was good, but I still didn’t have any more money. Then she grabbed me again and put her lips on my mouth. My first reaction was to pull away, even though I’ve never cared the least bit about germs. Remembering that let me give in to her a little but she still felt my stiff reluctance and when I said into her mouth, "I only have 4,000 ($12)" She pushed me off again, her face officially put off.

Quickly, with a drunk giggle, I asked in Spanish, "What, you don’t like me?"

She sighed a huge gust and paced in front of me, back and forth as if strategizing, before saying, "No. No te gusto."

"Por que?" I asked. Why?

She started talking in Spanish, fast, left me in the dust, but I understood the end when she said she had four babies, and she held four fingers in my face, and counted them in English.

I replied, "Whoa." With sincerity, and she smiled, maybe in appreciation of my empathy, maybe because she thought she had me now. And she would have, had I had money; I would have thought her mention of four babies would be a jolt of morbid depression, but instead it made me feel as if my hiring her out would benefit a lot of people. I could do a good thing for the community. But not unless the bank opened right then. I told her I could pay her in the morning, and I pointed to her house to let her know I knew where to find her.

She said in Spanish, "Then come see me here in the morning." And she walked off. And through the blur I watched her walk away and thought about the morning and what I’d think about all this in the sober morning. Just when I was relieved, glad I’d have nothing to deal with in the morning, she turned and came back and pressed against me again. She kissed me again and this time I gave in further. Her mouth was nice and cool and she didn’t use her tongue at all. It was like a great first date kiss. Very clean seeming.

But when I repeated, "Tengo, 4 mil, solamente." Our love died and she broke away again.

"For sex?" She asked. And I remembered my mantra and told her, "No…con tus manos."

She shook her head no, and displayed her body again and said, in English, "Fifty dollars."

I said again, "Whoa!" And told her no way, noooooo way. And I asked her, "Cuanto cuesta para con tus manos, solamente?"

She said firmly, multiple times, "No." She must not have needed money too badly. But before she left me I conceded to walk her to El Rancho, which was on the way to my cabina. On the walk there I realized that my Spanish was good with her. She made me comfortable. I asked her if she would charge less than $50 for a Spanish lessons. She rolled her eyes at me and then we both laughed at the same time. We were still holding hands and it seemed very sweet. Maybe since it was legal.

We passed my cabina and the masturbating guy was gone from the balcony, but she wouldn’t follow me up to my room, even when I offered pot. She said she didn’t smoke, just cigarettes, so I asked her for one as we continued walking and she handed me her pack. But before I could pull one out, I heard a group of people ahead, coming from El Rancho, under the jungle overhang where I’d passed her earlier in the night. Before I knew what I was doing I had yelled "Adios" and broke away from her, back in the direction of my cabina. She yelled at me. I still had her pack of cigarettes in my hand.

As I walked back to her to give her the pack, I watched over her shoulder, five Ticos my age, three guys, two girls, a couple of whom I’d met, but I felt all right thought, that they’d think I was just bumming a cigarette from her instead of trying to haggle her down from $50 to 12. I lit my cigarette and handed back the back, standing at arm’s length, and when she snatched the pack from my hand I looked down into her face again and, though I do have a tendency to project these kinds of thing; I swear she looked hurt. Hurt that I didn’t want to be seen with her. I hadn’t masked the reasons for my surprise break, and when she waved goodbye to me we shared this intense moment of sadness before she walked off to El Rancho and the others passed me as if I were invisible anyway.