I even love the bigger brown girls; I give eternal leeway to the darker cultures. But when the white guy sits next to me at THE GRINGO BAR and I don’t understand his Dutch, nor his German, nor his Spanish, I cock my brow patronizing as he murders English to speak with me just because he needs conversation.

"I’m sorry, man, I don’t understand what you’re asking me." I said when he pointed at the empty chair at my table and asked, "Is it allowed?"

"Sorry, man." And I shrugged, because I was writing, and the rest of the place was empty, every seat, and my food was fresh in front of me. I wanted to eat, alone, and then take a shower and then go to EL RANCHO to start drinking before the town dance tonight.

He was confused but then there was epiphany in his voice as if the lock had finally come undone and he cried out, "YES! Is it allowed that I sit here?" He pointed again at the chair.

"Uh, yeah, you’re allowed to sit anywhere in this WHOLE restaurant." I answered, gesturing to his many other options.

"You are not busy?" He said more than asked.

"Well, I was just gonna eat."

I closed my notebook with a sigh when he sat down. He was bald and gray and bespectacled and his English picked up momentum but my brow was still cocky as I waited for him to prove something. With white people I am mercilessly presumptuous. An ass; straight up. I sat listening and watching him struggle to engage me and I felt how I thought women must feel with endless streams of clumsy men approaching them for no reason.

He said he comes to Costa Rica once a year. This time he came by himself, and I wondered what marital problems brought on that arrangement. Then I wondered when he was going to offer me money to ‘keep him company’.

But instead he told me that, as well as indulging in self-navigated nature tours, he owns a DAT recorder and goes out into the rainforest to record the noises, then he publishes CDs of the sounds. "Not many people buy but…" He said, and I thought of Milton going on about the importance of senseless things, and my brow relaxed.

As I finished my meal and we finished our conversation, Orlando walked by the café with his new perfect American girl. Orlando is perfect too, especially by American white girl standards, I can picture them saying he’s the most beautiful they’ve ever seen; hair to his brown shoulders, a model’s full mouth, no reason to ever wear a shirt, so he doesn’t. From across the bar (or wherever: just like everyone else in this town, he is everywhere) he looks stoic with that strong jaw, but talking with him, in English, he is goofy and loves pussy in a good-natured way.

Since I’ve been here, he has been dating one of the UBIQUITOUS TRAVELING WHITE GIRLS; the cutest one of course. She is petite with long hair and has lived between this village and New Jersey for three years. She is the belle-of-the-ball here in town. But when she went away three days ago, there came to visit a new, white belle-of-ball; a fifteen-year old American with a mouth like a black woman. Her height gives her the appearance of womanhood and within hours of her arrival the town had memorized her and Orlando had taken up with her in his old girlfriend’s absence.

I paid my bill at THE GRINGO BAR and skipped my shower and followed Orlando and his new belle to EL RANCHO for beers and to meet up with the rest of the town. Everyone else was already there when we arrived and they all stared at Orlando and the new belle because they knew the situation.

I ordered an 80cent Heineken and sat by the Tico kid Ashley. He promised me from under his baseball hat, through his sunglasses as he drank and watched Orlando with the new girl, "Tonight, this dance, it will be packed man." I went to a dance/concert at the same place two weeks ago; a giant cage of chicken wire out in the jungle next to the bullfighting ring. When I’d gone there was a band playing from San Jose and the door was 3000 colones ($10) so only eight people paid to go in. 30 people watched from outside. The bar at the back of the cage was set up to sell beers to everyone, even those who didn’t come in. "Everyone from the whole town come tonight." Ashley promised again. "Orlando other girlfriend gonna be there too." He laughed. And soon after she came into EL RANCHO.

When she entered through the back door, Orlando split from his new girl and sat on the other side of the bar. His new girl knew the situation and it seemed his old girlfriend did as well; her friends must have warned her. Orlando and the two girls spread out around the bar in a literal triangle peeking at each other, and trying not to peek at each other and looking away fast. Everyone in the village watched with smiles and no shame.

I sat closest to Orlando’s old girl and sniffed the air around her for hate. But she was cool. Nothing. And while, on paper, THE UBIQUITOUS TRAVELING WHITE GIRLS’ inability to produce negativity sounds ideal, I suspect it is a lack of feeling that levels them out. In the same scenario, Alana would rip me apart, no matter who looked on. There would be no mercy. But Orlando’s girlfriend opted for talking to her friend about a spider bite she’d incurred on her three days away, while her boyfriend was fucking someone younger and sexier. She repeated the same story to the same friend three times, until I finally heard the F-word: "…but this FUCKING spider bite is just…" It wasn’t a passionate F-Word, but I knew it was in her somewhere.

As I sat reading the tension with everyone else and writing about it in the little note pad I carry, an old local named Roberto talked drunk at me. But I understood his Spanish better than I do with others, so I let him go on, considering it a drunk Spanish lesson. As he told me about his work and how important his friends are to him and how proud he was to be a Tico, he fed me beers; the locals are very into buying the white people alcohol. But I had little money and I was afraid he would eventually expect more than the one beer I was able to afford to buy for him (poor in Spanish is pobre), so I moved away when Roberto was distracted.

My entire time in Costa Rica I have been a follower. I stay here in the village and write and if someone happens to invite me somewhere I follow, I take notes, I don’t talk much. At El Rancho, I was to follow the Tico kid Ashley and his friends to the dance…as soon as one last person finished one last drink. As that last drink dwindled, some girl who’d been done and waiting for five minutes went to the bar for another while she waited, until eventually she was the one saying, "As soon as I’m finished with this last drink," as someone else went to refresh their empty glass. Before we followed this pattern into eternity, Ashley leaned to me and said, "Fuck this, let’s go." And I followed.

Our posse of eight walked a half mile out into the jungle to the dance. On the way we tripped over rocks in the almost-road and smoked joints and as I looked around to pass it or take it I realized I was ten years older than any of them. I hadn’t noticed before, since they talk about the same things, care about the same things, act the same way as my 30-year-old friends in the states.

We arrived when the dance was already thick with dancers. The mobile disco DJ pumped Spanish music and his heavy-handed lighting disoriented. Wild shit. Tico couples danced in practiced synch and even the white boys with the good Spanish were pinned against the chicken wire walls by the cultural divide; none of us could dance like that. So we leaned on the chicken wire with Ashley and his 17-year-old friends. An hour later we still waited there, drooling over the sweaty, brown Ticas framed in back-less shirts and bending like sex. I wished I was born here.

As we held up the wall, I looked around and it was truly EVERYONE from in town dancing; the local guys and girls from the village bank, the Internet café, the post office, restaurants. And they all stopped by me and slapped me on the back and yelled, "Pura Vida!" drunk as hell. It felt good to be liked.

After the traditional Spanish music the DJ switched to something I’ve heard and liked since I’ve been here; it’s Jamaican dancehall but sung in Spanish. Hard shit. Bass. The couple-style Tico-centric dancing broke up into cross-cultural whatever, and when Tweety, the bartendress from El Rancho passed me I grabbed her arm and asked her to dance. I’d seen her with a guy earlier and when she stopped she smiled and said, in Spanish, "No, Michael, he just bought me a drink and he’s waiting for me over there, Michael, and I should…" I nodded, pretending I understood. I looked into her trying to silently tell her that I love how she says my name every five words. She paused and then said, "Si," and led me out into the masses to dance. Next to us, Ashley bobbed and wobbled side to side, drunk, with the sexiest girl in the place. She was my age and I thought maybe she was his older sister. He didn’t know how to dance but played cool and sucked on his beer bottle whenever she dipped down on her knees, her hands on his hips, her nose almost against his zipper. For two songs I watched them and danced with Tweety until she went back to her boy and her beer, the DJ went back to Spanish music and I went back to the wall.