DO YOU KNOW THE WAY TO SAN JOSE?
“Ah folks, we’re cruising at 20,000 feet on our way up to 37,000 feet
passing over St. Louis on down to Houston and Central Mexico, then over
Belize, Nicaragua on into Costa Rica. Local San José weather: Scattered clouds,
light rain, 72 degrees…”
Hours later, touch down.
The ride in was a half-hour testament to global air-emission standards;
carbon monoxide fumes from belching buses, eighteen-wheelers spewing the
stuff. Black monsters of mountains surrounding a teacup valley, lights on the
horizon, the city of San José.
Here was Pauly Vegas at midnight on some pitch-black Avenue Zero. Clueless as he drove into a shuttered, ramshackle, seemingly abandoned Third World city, hoping this cabby would bring him safely to his destination and honest enough not to fork the fattest turista lamb he’d likely to see this year, a bit worried and more than a bit paranoid when the car stopped in a lurch. What the? “Que pasa?” I asked. The cabby pointed to a sign: PARK HOTEL- EXPERIENCE THE ELEGANCE.
Nondescript two-story building, bar along one side, long dull white and
undecorated corridor leading to the front desk and English-speaking night
man. Goofy tourist feeling as I changed a hundred bucks for colons. “Funny money,” said I. The night man forced a smile. “Bar closes at two, check out at noon,” he shot back, obviously the eloquent conversationalist.
Onto my room. Again, nondescript. The centerpieces, a pair of double beds with caved-in centers like potato chips. Beat and overwhelmed, I had one immediate need: A drink.
Downstairs to the Park Hotel bar. A dozen men burned Cuban Cohibas
watching the Florida-Auburn game on ESPN. Jimmy Buffet’s ‘Why Don’t We
Get Drunk And Screw’ dueled for attention with a mariachi strumming ‘La
Bamba.’ Two more signs were posted:
FREE BLOWJOB TUESDAYS. TICKETS SOLD HERE!
VIAGRA- 100 MG- 20 BUCKS!
Then I heard the voices.
“Problemas! She’s got problemas! Penniless, then her beeper goes off!”
“My gal gives me any shit I just go down to the market for a new coconut.”
“Fuck it, I’m going to Managua! Seven buck lays.”
“$7? They screw in Managua for toilet paper!”
Happy Boys. Too old to rock ‘n roll, too young to die. Hawaiian T-shirts over
prize Idaho spud bellies. Once chiseled bodies now muscleless, less the powerful right
arms due to lifting the nightly dozen cervezas. Looking at the flesh on these men was
scary enough, but the voices...
“Bitch wants 3,000. No way, I says. Six bucks. “Vamos!” She grabs my dick in the hallway. Picks my pocket at the same time! Wallet falls on the floor. Nice move, baby. Rate it an A, for almost. Open the door to my place and she stops. “Tienes una pistola?” Yeah, I got a gun, right here. Doesn’t even close the door before she’s slurping. So I spew on her face. She doesn’t say shit, just wipes off, gives me the finger and splits. Wasn’t ‘til later I realized—bitch picked the watch right off my arm!”
Laughter all around the bar, except from my stool. The Happy Boys stopped talking, almost as one, and looked at me.
One of them planted himself to my right, an introduction with no handshake.
“Stormin’ Norman, how y’doin’? Just get in?”
“Me? Yes. Just now.”
“I could tell. You look lost.”
2,000 miles from home, surrounded by twelve pathological sex-freaks. “I just arrived. This is quite a place.”
“Cowboy Bob Granger started it up. Died in ‘93. He had a good run. Had
a Tica wife who didn’t mind his drinking and whoring. That’s his hat in the case.
Bob died only way a man should, with his boots on and his dick out.”
“Is that right?”
“That’s right!”
“Stick with the women here. Don’t even think underage. It’s 7 to 17 if you’re caught. Seventeen years in a Costa Rican jail, that’s a death sentence for a gringo. And watch the chupulinos. Local gangs. They hit and run with pepper spray, leave you right in the gutter. Or kidnap you. Never hear from you again.
I smiled. “Could you excuse me a minute.” Coolly moving for the john, I closed the door, locking it.
What. The. Fuck?! Rampaging pepper spray gangs? Rotting away in a Costa Rican jail? Rum-red Viagra Joes making me look like Tom Cruise? And the wall graffiti:
SOMEBODY, PLEASE, STOP ME
BEFORE I FUCK AGAIN.
I come back out and Stormin’ Norman Calling to the barmaid, “Hazel! Un Imperial para el nuevo gringo! If you want, I’ll take you around tomorrow night. Take a bite out of the Big Pineapple.”
“Big Pineapple?”
“That’s what they call this place.”
“Why do they call it the Big Pineapple?”
Stormin’ Norman looked at me sideways, like I had ravaged his mother in some
previous life, like I had scraped a shank and shoved it into his brother’s excretory
aperture twenty-two times, a momentous first impression had been made, a
cataclysmic conclusion, before he fired back with the enormity, weight, and weariness
of the world: “Because it’s shaped like a big pineapple.”
THE APARTAMENTOS FERSO
The Apartamentos Ferso were located on Calle 2, Avenidas 6 y 8. I rang a bell through a blue prison-style gate. The 10-by-10 image of an executioner on the wall, El Verdugo, was from the nearby electronics store, and in no way resembled the shoeless fellow passed out fetal in a cardboard box in front of the Apartamentos Ferso. I, and the flow of people, stepped over him as the patrona, Anna, answered.
“I’m looking for an apartment. You have?” asked I in pidgin Spanish.
“Si, baby, you come. Come!” said she in pidgin English, opening up, leading
me down a long tubular corridor.
She informed me proudly of her five years cleaning apartments in Miami. “I get good Engleesh, hah!?” said she, opening a first-floor apartment. No light bulbs, dark. Was that, yes, the famous painting of dogs playing poker. The rest of the place came into focus. Single bed, no pillows or bedding, no hot water, no toilet seat. The john worked, so long as I put the used toilet paper in a trash can. “No flush dirty paper baby, ok?”
Ooook.
Apartment 14 was better; a working toilet, a shower with hot water; A “sun
room” that resembled the room in Silence Of The Lambs where the killer throws the
governor’s daughter, open-roofed three stories deep with a square of sky. Ritzy, only
the walls hadn’t been painted in what, ten years? I noted necessities: Cleanser, three
cans of paint, new curtains and toilet seat, pots ‘n pans, and wall art.
“How much?”
“$200 a month, baby”
“I’ll take it.”
Rube! What kind of negotiating was that? Still, $200 a month = $6.50 a day. I had found a home.
THE HOLY CHRIST TOUR
“Dwell in possibility.” --Emily Dickinson
Party night in the Big Pineapple. Downstairs to the Park bar, meeting Shay who was late, and the women, eyeing me like a fat pork chop. One of them sat next to me.
.
“Ho-la,” said I, flexing my linguistic muscles. “Como esta usted?”
“Bien,” said she, sticking her tongue in my ear.
From the other end of the bar I heard, “Treat her right, man. Marcela’s a grandmother.”
“Una abuela? Cuántos anos tiene?”
“Trenta dos.”
“Thirty-two. She’s a grandmother at thirty-two.”
“Start ‘em early down here!” the Happy Boy informed me.
“Well, my grandma doesn’t look like her.” And to Marcela, “Look, it’s my first night. Yo no interesante.” My limited Spanish couldn’t speak to the truth—that at 37 I had never been with a prostitute in my life. This whole setup was freaking me out.
She smiled and left. I turned a moment, turning back to find Michelle, white thigh-length disco boots, red lingerie top, and white micro-mini skirt. “Oh, hello to you!”
She told me I was better looking than the other gringos. Sure, so was Yogi Bear. When I told her I didn’t have a girlfriend back home she asked, “What do you do for sex?” I threw up my hands, one of which she held, making a masturbating motion. “Manuela?”
Huh?
“Señora Mano, si?”
“Mrs. Hand? Yes. Mrs. Hand is very tired.”
“Ella necesita una vacación,” she replied, working me for all she was worth. “A vacation, yes.” How to say this in Spanish? “Look, you can’t understand this, but...I need some time. See, it never happens in the Land of Lincoln. Beautiful women in white disco boots and leather micro-minis don’t sit next to me, let alone want to—
“Veinte cinco.”
“$25? Twenty-five dollars and we...I... I’m...waiting for someone.”
In like the cavalry came Shay. “Michelle, luego. Regresamos en dos horas.” “Gotta walk before you jump in a Lamborghini. I told her you’d be back.”
“Jesus, Shay.”
“Let’s go break your cherry.”
Hotel Del Rey, Blue Marlin bar. Betty Davis Eyes on the juke, sport fishing trophies on every wall, Hemingway’s ghost on the prowl. Over-the-hill, marlin-mad gringos outnumbered five to one by the sexiest ladies in the land. “Rico!” cackled Shay, surveying the sexual pageant, pointing to the rail. White top, red top, white top, red! The women liquefying the joint in flesh. Coalescing, congealing, long black hair red tube-top six inches of belly, medium black hair five inches of belly white tube.
“Coochie-coo!” gargled Shay, pointing to the women, women everywhere; Nica
Veronica Lake dangling cigarette; supermodel Panamanian spitting gum; gringo in
backward Cleveland Browns cap sporting gold earring and a flawless pair of
Colombian blondes.
“If I hear ‘What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?’ one more time.” Shay croaked, walking
us past two sideways baseball cap-wearing, Creatine-jacked gringos, a pair of short
dyed-blonde Colombian boob-jobs bouncing in their laps, black pants applied with Crisco as they giggled under the mounted amberjack. We flowed through dark chocolate Nicas and silver-haired mongers far from their wives in Iowa City, fat-calved Miamians puffing Cuban Cohibas, red ‘kill Dillinger’ dressed Ticas laughing on Nokia cell phones and ancient, limping and ruby red Jack Daniels sippers gawking from inside the very mechanism of the human carwash. And the voices.
“Can’t believe you ate that girl’s ass and the ice came out!”
“Can’t keep a squirrel out of the woods in timber country!”
“Every year, new girls! I get older, they stay twenty. Forever!”
“Let her put one of those Monteverde pepper sausages up your butt!”
“Put your dick in her armpit. That’s called bagpiping.”
“Teabagging’s better. Speak to her in a British accent, like: ‘Pip pip,
cheerio, time for some teabagging, luv!”
“Let her strangle you as you.re about to get off. This crooked cop did
that in an Irvine Welsh novel I just read.”
“Put an Altoid on her tongue while she’s giving you a blowjob. Cosmo
says it’ll have him begging for more and confessing his true love and affection.”
“The fuck y ‘doin’ reading Cosmo, Manny?”
Onto Key Largo. Gauguin’s Tahiti come alive. Lush tropical garden of
palm trees, banana plants and women, one of them waving at me. “Gordo! Venga!”
I looked to Shay. “Fatty?”
“It’s a sign of affection.”
A brown beauty sat next to me. In no Wrigleyville could this happen.
“Hi-How-Are-Ya-Ya-Look-Great-How-Much-Let’s-Go.”
“Down here we walk like kings. In the States a beautiful woman walks into
a bar, every guy in the joint gives her the once over. Here, a fat pig gringo walks
into Key Largo and every beautiful woman in the joint gives him the look.
It’s the closest thing to heaven you or I will ever know.”
Shay looked at his watch. Time to beat it back to the Park.
Hotel Park bar. Windows shuttered, armed bouncers at the door. A private
affair indeed. Inside, the air raucous, a dozen Ticas laughing and drinking, carousing
with two dozen gringos each of whom clutched a bottle of baby oil. What the hell was this about?
A music change, from Jimmy Buffet’s Cheeseburger in Paradise to The Beach Boys. Surfin’ U.S.A. The women leaving, together and at once. The bar cleared of all beer bottles, coconut shell ashtrays, peanuts and other breakables as Dan, the owner, pitched his Free Blowjob Tuesdays and Millennium Super Bowl pool, tossed out bottles of baby oil to the “rookies” in the crowd, the biggest roar of applause as he finished the spiel and cleared out.
Cue new music, Pat Benetar’s Love Is A Battlefield. Now the ladies, out of Deer Hunter Vietnam, strutted into place atop the bar, stripping off bikinis, dancing naked. There was Michelle without the disco boots. There, Marcela moving like nobody’s grandma. Dulce laughing, spraying mother’s milk two feet on the gringos below, Katia in Pocahontas braids and 3 percent body fat. A dozen of them bending, laid out on the bar in a daisy chain. The Happy Boys of the Park Hotel taking their cue, descending upon the women, an orgy of brown flesh and gringo hands and petroleum products and...
With that first body smear you had a choice. Flee to salvage your soul. Or stay.
I stayed.
THE PAULY VEGAS EXPERIMENT- LINEUP CARD
“Men are the merriest
when they are far from home.” --William Shakespeare
Thanksgiving, twenty days gone. I was reborn.
The religion was Costa Rica. The experiment that was Pauly Vegas was a
success. Only one fly in the ointment: Nobody told me how to say no to them.
The Tica ladies seemed to love the cock-in-pocket, mischievous stud-muffin Super Hero you’ve come to know as Pauly Vegas. Here was the lineup card, my starting nine:
Tanya, a stripper at the Flamingo Club, lap-danced me into dust. Her blonde hair and body somewhere between Brigitte Bardot in And God Created Woman, and Charo, Xavier Cugat era. She was Nerval’s blonde eating a peach in the Pompeii ruins. She was pole dancing to techno one eye to the mirror and fake pearls. She was the vision of unearthly desire and ultimate proof of the Divine.
Basically, a routine night for me.
Or Monique, pouring through the gates of the fabulous Apartamentos Ferso like a hungry animal turning on its trainer. I didn.t have time to mutter the useless, “I can’t. Really, I—" Undoing the buttons of her dress, she dropped it to the floor in a single motion. Only in the Tierra del Suenos did such things happen. Eating a custard pie, pinning me to the bed, curly-cue hair and dimpled face, 21 years of age, a machina de sexo.
Adriana worked Club Arcadas. Enchantress. Serpent. Strawberry ice-cream for a starving man. Pay the mariachi to sing Besame, besame mucho to her. Passionate stuff from Pauly Vegas! Two sweethearts and the summer wind.
Mariana was stuck in the $12 a lay Molino Rojo. I bought her a locket, wooing her. You must woo them, especially the twelve-dollar gals. before our first time, asking how much. “5,000?” Thinking herself not even worth twenty bucks. I shook my head no and she held her breath. “10,000.” Arms around my neck, kisses, a semblance of passion not supposed to happen with hooks Nica or Tica, which is why I light candles for her here. A Mariana 2 was also on the scene, all gorgeous twenty-year-old gorgeousity, but she disappeared from her corner of the world, thus Mariana 1 becoming the Mariana.
Mari also disappeared. Cheetah-sleek Dominican dancer at the Bikini Club, we never consummated matters though I had hopes. Her friend instructed me that another flaccita was around, Marina. “But I came for Mari, she was special, I can’t just forget her one two.... oh...who’s that?” “Es Marina.” “Marina, hello.” $10 bought me a baile privado downstairs in the abandoned poolroom, two borachos to my right likewise being humped into submission. “How much to do this alone, for real?” I asked. “$40” “Next time, ok? Remember me. Remember this special moment.” Goodbye Mari, hello Marina. The Queen is dead, long live the Queen!
Melissa worked at VIPS. First saw her in a red ‘Kill Dillinger’ dress. “And you cost?” “$12” I gave her $20 and indulged in a half-hour of aerobics. I asked Melissa if she wanted to come back to my place and make three times the money. She said she’d try. Then I asked why such a beauty was selling herself for $12 a go when lesser lights at the Del Rey made $100 an hour. She flashed a sad smile. “No lo se. Tengo problemas.” Fucked up self-esteem, always a turn-on for your humble narrator.
Nicole. Black as night, wild blue hair extensions and acrobat. The hell is she
doing, a backwards crab? “Look at us, nena. In that piece of shit mirror in this piece
of shit $9 a go room. Look at us.” I was born a prospector. Dig that Nicole, Dominican gold!
Vanessa, twenty-nine, hard as nails. Wicked cut on her cheek given her
by three chupulinos who jumped her with razors. Vanessa pulled steel and
fought the bastards off single-handed. In a street fight Vanessa would do me in.
But we were pals. Besides, her kid Priscilla loved the Tweetie Bird toy I gave her.
Kimberly, I found in Tentaciones, a Gringo Gulch strip-club. Under disco
ball and sequencing Christmas lights, some Tico tool was doing pushups with
Kimberly on his back. He did eight. She waved me over. “Get on,” I told her, and
proceeded to do nine. Kimberly wore a Catwoman outfit, major streak of kink
in her armor, coming at me with blindfold in hand. “Spanky spanky!” she
growled, leaving her mark on Pauly Vegas and then, like the others, leaving
period.
That was the team. I was a fortunate skipper, Joe Torre of the San José
Yankees. Vegas odds makers said it was the club to beat. Speed and power, deep
bench, starting four live arms, deep bullpen. Pennant Fever? Let just say I
liked my chances.
A DAY IN THE LIFE
“To all our escapes.” --David Hare
The day had been rather busy. Rather. The schedule of sin was supposed
to be.2p.m: Vanessa. 4:30p.m: Mariana. 7p.m: Nicole. Two came and went,
no Vanessa. I went looking for her. In a buyer’s market the buyer did not
pursue, the buyer was pursued. But, Good Reader, you know your hero Pauly
Vegas had a yen for hen and alley cat Vanessa such a hot chiquitita, he did
make the effort, walking the streets before coming back to find Mariana.
“The hell you doing here?”
Her brother was in the hospital, she had to get over there, would I mind
very much if I fucked her now? Inconvenient baby, but because you’re special.
Of course. scheduling women this close, it was only a matter of time before
one showed at the wrong hour. Perhaps not such a bad idea except, as you know,
Pauly Vegas treated each and every lady like she was the only woman on earth.
Call it Pauly’s Sinatra complex.
It was 4:15 as Mariana showered and left. Within an hour it was time for
a little smackeral again, heading over to Vanessa’s club, Femme International.
“The fuck happened?” She called, no answer, emergency with her daughter, yada yada.
“Tranquilo baby, you’re here, I’m here, it’s vanilla ice-cream and butterscotch.”
She grabbed my balls, led me up the stairs, paid the jefe and onto the
Matrimonial Suite. Awful green neon, the skin appearing copper deficient blue,
not a turn-on. But I was with Vanessa, my cleanup hitter. Nothing like Mariana,
but one doesn’t get violins with an alley cat, one gets clawed. “Que diablo!” said she.
“Me?! I’m an innocent in this! You’re the bad influence!”
Take my busted ass home at 6. Destroyed. Crash, but forced myself up,
realizing: Nicole! Due at 7! I raced outside, thank Christ she didn.t show.
About to split when Monique appeared! This was getting out of hand!
“Come in baby but I can’t fuck. Please don’t make me fuck!” She was a
swindler, but had pity, only taking me for cab fare and a medio pollo.
9 p.m. I was a wasted cipher, but the night was young. Up to the Hotel Del Rey. Scores of gringos and stuck up, Modigliani-faced Ticas, Cha Cha beat, and the English voices.
“Hold out longer than five minutes, Freddy!”
“Hahaha!”
The roosterfish on the wall had a spiny body like a mohawk cut. The
wahoo hung like a seven-foot dick with tail. Pictures everywhere: “Captain Mike
Aikins helps Client proudly display this ninety-pound sailfish before release.”
A Tica Reese Witherspoon, no more than eighteen, with sexy friend
between two sixty-five-year-old Norte Americanos, feigning interest as the
silver-haired men showed them match tricks. Even sitting together, old age
somehow contaminating youth. Sweet child, where and when did you learn to
fake a smile that like?
I needed to rejuvenate. A smaltzy mariachi serenaded at La Belle Mansion.
Six bored hooks drank Imperial watching a disco ball. Feeling the need? They would
accommodate it for ten dollars. Not the steel cable Ticas of the Del Rey, they slashed
the cost of advertising, passing the savings on to the consumer.
On over to Bar Tangas. Two sex kittens in the corner, legs intertwined, I
walked over and began a discourse. It was Joanna’s first night on the job, Raquel’s
third. “Masaje y sexo?” I asked. “Claro,” says Raquel. $70 for both. As in both. Together.
“Imaginate!” said Joanna.
Paradise, I Sing Thee! But I had a pressing engagement across town. My
feet taking me out the door to Adriana, into the armpit that was Club
Arcadas. Hip-hop music with nobody dancing, six bored and broke Ticos, six
bored and bedraggled strippers, and Adriana.
Oh.
Skin-tight black top, long blonde braided hair. Killer. Three kids and
responsibilities, but time enough for five workouts a week. She showed me,
standing against a wall, lifting her leg over her head for a split. I couldn.t take it,
and after telling her she was the center of my universe, asked if we could go to the
broom closet to have our first English lesson.
Earlier I had told her I wanted to go where the fucking happens and lay
together, take out my English/Spanish book and... read to her. I told her she was
too special, that I wanted our first time to be something more, in some place with
romance and heart. She approved of this, if sparkling eyes meant anything.
7K ($18) got you a half-hour in the broom closet at Arcades. Shaped like a
wedge of Jarlsberg cheese, single bed, angled ceiling.
She stripped, and we sat on the bed with my English book. She picked out passages: “I
love your eyes,” “Oh my God!” and her favorite, which she said over and again in her
sweet sing-song voice, “Stay with me tonight.” I faked a sexual howl for the bored
waiters— “No more, please, no mas!”
STREET OF LOST SOULS
“The apparition
Of the faces in the crowd,
Petals on a wet, black bough.” --Ezra Pound
Thanksgiving began early that auspicious day outside the Apartamentos
Ferso, between two blue, prison-style gates, in a pair of rotting maplewood chairs. The
area had become the unofficial waiting room for the Fersoites, the one place we might
take time from our busy schedules to commiserate on the day’s events. And so it was,
waiting on Shay Dugan behind rusted iron bars, I greeted 72-year-old Dick The Banker.
“Spend half my time waiting to fuck. The other half fucking,” said he, voice trailing
off in fatigue.
“How many this week, Dick?”
“Shit, I don’t count.”
“Tica time. They always come late.”
“Fuck ‘em all,” said he, not entirely in the holiday spirit.
We waited.
Calle 2 washed over us. Noxious gas doused us from twenty-year-old school buses. The carniceria blasted Duran Duran, Girls On Film. Cantina drunks staggered out 8 a.m. from the Bar Margoth, papayas rotting in November sun. Spent coconut husks, the milk sucked away, dropped purposeless into the gutter. Orange sparks, a welder working our front gate where the crowbar and hammers had been applied by thieves attempting a break-and-enter the night before. Dick The Banker kicked at a cigarette butt left by the Skeleton Man
during his morning constitutional.
We waited some more.
Sophia, Queen of the Calle 2 crack trade, dealt piedra to a megabass rumba from the Pio Pollo chicken shack, looking up only as a butcher ran by with cleaver in hand, chasing a ladron in a Donovan McNabb jersey. Two cops, fortunately for the thief, took him into custody. Minutes later the same kid, shoeless, ran by scot-free, the cops not far behind, stopping only to rouse two Nicaraguan refugees passed out in a cardboard refrigerator box. As they called for the paddy wagon, Dick The Banker and I watched in silence.
“Ugly,” slipped from my mouth.
“Uglier than a barrelful of red assholes,” replied Dick, pointing routinely. “Calle de los perdidos.”
“Huh?”
“Street of lost souls.”
Anna hadn’t mentioned the nickname for this place when I first arrived. She
never told me most Ticos lived outside San José in safe American-style suburbs, far
from the homegrown chupulinos and Nicaraguan illegals. The human pageant,
beguiling as the smell of men unbathed for thirty days, rounded up for deportation
upon a shining silver-blue Fuerza Publica police van. In blue-cherry paddy wagon
glow a dyed blonde from Desamparados, via Castille and Leon, via Columbus
discoverer of Costa Rica off Puerto Limon 1502, this blonde fused by past and
present Imperialistic realms. Indigenous pressed-in nose but Spanish blood coursing through, launcher of thousand bloody Spanish galleons, haughty, arrogant, cruel, soulless, this blonde licked a Good Humor creamsicle as the Nicaraguans were taken away.
“Fuck ‘em all,” chimed Dick. “All but six. Use them as pallbearers.”
Would Dick The Banker remember these days? Days when beautiful women delivered
themselves to him along the street of lost souls?
THE TAIPAN CLUB
“I’m heading for those trees over there.
If that’s not a destination, I don’t care.” –Throwing Muses
The rain came down.
It was in this wild excitement that Parker handed me a green card. The green card, which opened a pair of green doors. Crazy as life was here, nothing compared to the secrets which lay behind the green doors of the Taipan Club. I had heard about this most private place in almost mythical terms. In the cab over Parker told me the story of its famous proprietor, Taipan Bob. He was just Bob Albright once, sitting in his living room when he was
blinded by the idea. Bob saw the future, and it was Bob.
Take the world’s oldest profession and add a twist. Build a Roman palace of luxury
with a dozen spas, whirlpool, massage, outdoor pool, cable TV, bar. Add an all-inclusive
price tag, make it appointment only and throw in the hook, the kicker, for
free. Ready for the concept? Here it is: Cheerleaders.
Calle 27. Brown Mercedes, lanky fellow in white suit and open-necked
pink silk shirt, Taipan Bob, extending his hand in greeting, gesturing us past the
famous green doors, and the sign:
ONLY THOSE WHO KNOW HOW TO DO
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, AND DO IT WELL,
ARE WELCOME HERE.
“Jesus Bob, this place is out of Scarface,” said I. “First you get the power, then you get the money, then you get the women...”
“Actually,” said Bob, with the cultured airs of Hugh Hefner, “I think it was, ‘First you get the money, then you get the power, then...’”
We stopped. Before us, a dozen beautiful Ticas pompoms in hand, every male high-school fantasy made flesh. My Hawaiian t-shirt and one other anatomical item, stiff as a Bleacher flag at Wrigley, as a coconut-cookie blonde handed me a beer.
“We’re nouvelle Southwestern architecture crossed with reproduced Ming-era Chinese decor. After dinner one of the girls will show you the whirlpool and spa.”
“Dinner?”
Bob pointed, and we turned, seeing the Thanksgiving preparations. Two rubia cheerleaders were setting fine china for a table of twenty, four others overseeing a pair of twenty-pound birds, perfectly bronzed, the remainder of the girls attending to cranberry sauce, chestnut stuffing, corn pudding, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, the same marshmallow sweet potatoes Mother Vegas herself was so fond of making!
“Excuse us a moment,” apologized Parker, moving off with Bob, who motioned back like few men in the world could. “Alma.” A Cuban beauty came across, sitting on my lap. “Alma will take care of you.”
Oh.
Alma. Means soul. She asked me, “How did you come to the Taipan Club?” “A Pokemon stock brought me here. Tom Parker’s green card, the dynamics of chance, mathematics of possibility and...mi amor, maybe God just wanted us to be together.”
She smiled, taking me by the hand back toward the spa rooms. Now back there they had...They had! Earl Shibe, $39.95, chrome bumper guarantee! Alma wanting to partake but I, noticing Parker and Taipan Bob’s return, managed to stall the soulful Alma, rejoining the festivities.
And we had a Thanksgiving. We had a Thanksgiving like I’d never known.
I snapped pictures of Taipan Bob and his harem of cheerleaders; of Alma feeding me a
gravy-dipped drumstick; of three other men who had been “in session”, two Mexican
doctors and a Chilean auto factory owner, who joined us. Small fish, Parker assured
me. Political figures, sports celebrities, stars of every corner of the Latin world came
through these doors. Almost on cue, a towering man in a black suit and tie strode by,
every fiber of his demeanor screaming politician. Nodding to Parker, the man was
briskly escorted out by a pair of his minions, as politicians are apt to do exiting houses of prostitution, into a waiting limousine and whisked away.
After dinner I brought an unexpected laugh by offering to help wash dishes, not realizing that was part of the job description of the Tica cheerleaders. The men strolled into the smoking room where Cuban Romeo y Julietas were broken out and, shortly thereafter, each man retiring to his own spa room.
Steam and eucalyptus, enveloping. Gloriously alone, until the cedar doors opened. Tom Parker entered, not as one of the most powerful men in this country, but naked, less one bath towel and two Tica cheerleaders, sans skirts and pompoms. Alma moved to me, laying me face down gently, Parker took the same position opposite, the women atop us, Geisha-style, beginning their massage. If there were two more fortunate men on the planet, I couldn’t imagine them. Silence. Minutes like hours, until I heard, “Do you know what they call Costa Rica?”
“Who?” I asked, about to pass out from Alma’s caresses in eucalyptus mist.
“They call it a state of cultural sexual terrorism. They say I’m part of the problem.”
I lifted my head, peering at Parker. “What do you do, Tom?”
“I inject American capital into Third World economies.”
Feeling no urgency, only Alma’s fingers, I dropped back down onto cedar.
Parker went on. “I’ll tell you a story,” he said, perched against the cedar, naked and stroking his Tica’s hair, who didn.t fathom a word he spoke. Iliana. I was with her on Dia de la Madre. One of the better single hours of my life. In the middle of it she stopped,
and began to cry. She said, “Will you wish me Happy Mother’s Day? Nobody wished
me Happy Mother’s Day.” Weeping. I bent to kiss her. “Happy Mother’s Day.” I
kissed her again. “Happy Mother’s Day.” Five times. I didn’t ask about her kids.
Were they ok? Were they abandoned in Nicaragua? Were they taken from her?
Were they dead? I couldn’t look her in the face. I just cried with her.”
PURA VIDA
(*For Karina Medeiros, Dick The Banker, and Julie Ocean)
“If there’s one saying that embodies
Costa Rican life, it’s Pura Vida.
Although this translates literally as
Pure Life, it’s actually a more
profound concept expressing positivity,
harmony and well-being something,
but not quite, like--Right On, in English.”
--Lonely Planet Costa Rican Handbook
Good Life, loosely translated. But Pura Vida meant more. Pura Vida, for all
intents and purposes was the national philosophy. One heard it on every corner, every
day. When a waiter wanted to know if your eggs were ok, when a cabby thanked you
for a tip, or when two friends met. But what did it mean, exactly?
From the fruit stand radio, Enrique Hernandez and his All-Stars played
‘Mambo For Maniacs’. Stepping outside the fabulous Apartamentos Ferso you would
note, everything moving according to that mambo, a grand plan conceived by a
lunatic. That was Pura Vida.
Cup of tea, late night greasy spoon. Fifteen children pushed inside by
their mothers, selling chewing gum, refrigerator magnets, bum lighters. This was Pura
Vida. It’s what made a meal in a greasy spoon in San José more valuable in life terms
than a greasy spoon in Chicago. You could lose yourself in these worlds. Not
understanding anyone, not being understood. Vanishing to salsa along Calle Dos.
Cut flowers in my bedroom, a three-foot palm tree soaking it up in my sun
room. I would water them regularly. Weekly I’d go to the flower market to find
exotic blooms. This was Pura Vida, a revelation. Because the only thing growing in
my $325 a month sub-basement Aurora apartment was a Marine-force cockroach
wave.
I came to know the number of days it would take my azucenas to bloom. The
difference between Upright Heliconia and Bird of Paradise. Ideal conditions for
maracas and ginger. Pomas, yerbera, cala, helecho. Gotta be Pura Vida!
You could find Pura Vida in statistics. Costa Rica gas 50,895 square miles, 119
kilometers separating Caribbean Sea from Pacific Ocean. I could eat a tortilla
breakfast at sunrise on the Caribbean, then drive six hours west for lunch of red
snapper al ajo overlooking sunset along the Pacific rim.
San José population, 1.3 million. Heart of the Mesete Central, surrounded
by volcanoes and mountains, part of the Andean-Sierra Madre chain running the
length of the Americas. Mean temperature 27C/82F. Low 60s brought cries of
“Que frio!” And some Pura Vida for Chicagoans: Record low, 49 degrees. It had
never snowed in San José!
Movies? In no Chi-town multiplex would I be caught dead holding a ticket for David
E.
E.
E. Kelly’s Lake Placid (renamed El Cocodrilo.)
I’d sooner be shot at dawn without blindfold than be forced to witness
Jean Claude Van Damme’s The Legionnaire. Welcome to the Central American
movie experience! In glorious Technicolor, all the movies you ditched back home.
Eagerly anticipated current releases like The Corrupter and Universal Soldier vied
for attention with such rerun classics as The Glimmer Man and Maximum Risk.
Imagine the dilemma, having to make the unbearable choice between First Wives
Club, Flipper or Jack The Bear. Que verguenza! Being caught by a friend at the 7
o.clock show of First Wives Club. Why the hell would a sane person pay for these
movies? Time and tide, budget or exhaustion? Mostly, wasn’t anything else to do!
A few downtown theaters were ancient, seating upwards of a thousand people.
Reminiscent of shuttered Chicago vaudeville houses like the Uptown, strict economics
did not dictate survival. Twenty people paid in a house of 1,000? No problema! Here,
it wasn’t maximum utilization of square-foot profit potential, but in underdevelopment
that the human was forced to the surface. Flying in the face of free market economics, such was the stuff of Pura Vida.
But this was confusing! No counter-productive vagaries! Specifics! Where
and what was Pura Vida?
How about in nature? How about a country the size of West Virginia, filled
with magnificent beaches and endless sun? Or twenty-two active volcanoes? Or cloud
forests, or leatherback turtles coming ashore to nest, or sport fishing unmatched in the
world?
Buses to these Pacific beaches cost $2.50 for a five-hour trip. I could smoke onboard and though I don’t partake of that vice, it was allowed, just in case I felt the urge to light up a Cuban Robusto which were, likewise, banned in the U. S. of A.
The seafood here was like seafood back home, though eighty cents for sopa de mariscos might be hard to match. I’m sure some chowder house in ‘Frisco could do so. Afterwards laze under a palm tree and dream, or listen to rumba or meringue played live at a dozen clubs. But there were plenty of palm trees and Latino clubs in the country of my birth.
Clearly this couldn’t be Pura Vida. Nothing truly, objectively special about
any of this.
Narrow it down! Definition! Pura Vida was:
Cha Cha music from that red ice cream van.
Racing three-year-old in Parque Central, the eternal pigeon chase.
Morning sun, afternoon rain, day after day, clockwork of the Gods.
Pollution on Josefino shoulders, black stardust from Guardian angels.
Panhandlers calling out to me, “Macho!” instead of “Big Guy!”
The Tico diet. Fruit, chicken, beans. No frills. No chichi East Village fare.
Gallo pinto over fennel-infused lamb shanks.
The Pauly Vegas diet. Sugar and sex. White chocolate Choco-Keks, McDonald’s vanilla conos, and caramel flutes! The more you ate, miraculously, the more weight you lost!
Fruit markets all over the city, so cheap even the shoeless were well-fed. A king’s ransom of tomatoes, mangos dropped in gutters, left to stray dogs, likewise well-fed and thriving.
A health care system where an uninsured person walked into an
emergency room, signed minimum paperwork, waited no more than fifteen
minutes to be examined, was treated by a qualified doctor, received medication
and exited within the hour for less than fifty bucks. Where qualified doctors
were found at drugstores, over-the-counter access to necessary drugs cutting
out red tape and profiting pharmaceutical middlemen.
A crowd looking up outside my breakfast joint. The spectacle? Three men all of eight stories high, washing windows. Finishing and descending, they were greeted with applause. These Ticos, these good people, with a curiosity for all things.
Dave The Dude, infamous English DJ on 107.5, waking me at 8 a.m. with the station’s bright mechanical voice, “And now, the Cultural Calendar!” Dave the Dude hung-over, barely able to speak the words, “Well, not very much happening actually.” Two lousy movies mentioned, he hit the mechanical voice again. “And that’s today’s Cultural Calendar!”
American pensionados on $1,000 a month Social Security ducking the retirement home grave, settled here and doing “Just fine, Jack!”
Endless Dick The Banker stories. Pinky’s Boulevard Club in Detroit which Dick won in a craps game in ‘56. Scandal at the high-class Rooster Club, where the Andrews Sisters played. Dick’s pal with a PhD in Economics, driving a cab in Chicago, not wanting to get lost in the “complexities of society.” Another pal, “hornier than a two-peckered billy goat,” setting himself up as a bogus porno-movie producer, banging ‘em two at a time in Detroit airport hotels. These and other tales told in a single-hour session 1:13 a.m. above the all-night hamburguesa palace jamming to Super Radio, Discos Greatest Hits: 1977.
Disappearing--for Costa Rica, if nothing else, is the place to disappear. Corner of Nada and Nadie, up a decimated stairway into purple massage parlor neon. Discovering a lady friend forced to work her tenth hour on a Sunday with a stomach so bad she had vomited the day away. Gave her twenty bucks, kissed her cheek and walked off, expecting nothing more.
She, thinking me from some strange planet, with a grateful expression worth more
than any penetration or fleeting touch.
Mortal moments, goose bump stuff. Bands of strumming mariachis spilled out into Saturday night as a red fire truck leads a torchlight procession up Avenida Segunda, followed by brass marching band and a dozen ke-blanging fire engines, firemen like statues held burning torches as they rolled by, the spectacle stopping the mariachis, who stood and applauded.
La Esmeralda! Country’s greatest mariachi bar. Dozens of spaghetti-Western cowboys hustling three songs/thirty bucks. Botero bellies bursting from outfits out of The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.
There! There was the all-encompassing image! Pura Vida was:
La Esmeralda, 11:04p.m., Julie Ocean and I walking in, and it began. A button burst, through a guacamole-stained vest a belly poured, the guitar player belting out ‘Cumpleanos Feliz!’ His crew: two trumpets, two acoustic guitars, finished to hoots from dapper locals at thirty white-linened tables. The boys in black tuxes: three violins, accordion, balladeer. Came out jazzy, a snappy Mexican ditty. Julie and I downing tequila as a Tica grandma was crooned to and danced with striking, black-haired balladeer. There, bored trumpeter holding Pilsen with one hand, blowing miraculous and in-time with the other. There, greasy waxed-mustached Pavarotti in tux hustling business cards.
There, Accordion Pedro, face etched on no Warner Brothers lot, each line a testament
to life’s illusion and thirty-three years of dime-a-dance service to the mariachi Gods.
Now came seven powder blue cowboys: two trumpets, two guitars, violin, accordion,
balladeer. Singing ‘Besame, Besame Mucho.’ A bottle broke, whoops and catcalls,
ambitious cowboys hard-sold, passed out cards as the less ambitious played chess,
chewed chorizo, laughed with camalleros flying by drink trays held high in green neon.
Five cowboys gold buckled-and-braided in a fifteen-year-old Toyota ripped into
Cuban salsa as a fry pan caught fire sending cooks in panic fleeing the kitchen but the
music did not stop the music did not stop, reverberating from arcing sixty-foot ceiling
launches and tower-like cathedral pipes, like Lourdes, Cologne, St. Peters. Julie Ocean
and I out from the chapel/madhouse 2:12 am, singing on rainy Josefino cobblestones.
Viva! Viva, La Esmeralda!
THE HOTEL FUCK (AKA, THE FIRST TIME I USED VIAGRA)
“She temptated me Lord.
She’s a wanton woman!”—Archie Bunker
Flamingo Club. Tanya danced under a spinning disco ball, misty neon purple
obscuring her face, reams of blonde hair, black leather biker shorts, black metal halter
top. Into my lap. “You feel nice?” she asked, snuggling. “Yes. Kiss?” Unwrapping a Hershey’s chocolate kiss, popping into her mouth, kissing me deep, the Hershey’s Kiss and 20,000 germs happily relocating.
Tanya was Pam Anderson on opium. There were no words for the things she did.
Driving.
Pounding.
Slamming.
Humping.
Cutting.
Dicing.
Slicing...
Po-peeling me.
This wasn’t lap-dancing. She needed my lap, three chairs and the foot of the
stage. I was transfixed, melting beneath her.
She left to change, coming back in a skin-tight black leather body suit,
V-back design, two-inch slits up and down the entire length of her body.
She had me.
Standing one foot between my legs, the other on the stage, straddling me
from behind, full back exposed and long blonde hair, and long blonde hair. Face to
face, thrusting against me, arms high as she rocked, making history every time she
moved.
I loved her dark roots.
I loved her pockmarked face.
I loved her body that snaked like the thing in Eve’s apple.
I loved her blonde hair snaking all around all around, snaking all around me.
The ether of her.
Somewhere between Valium and Ecstasy, she was a chameleon, Chandler’s
tarantula crawling on the angel food cake. On stage for the coup-de-grace, she knelt
in front of me to tell me what shit the Billy Idol music was, Tanya stripped down to
her tanga, dancing to Titanic, ‘My Heart Will Go On.’
I had to get out of there. She saw me to the door, told me she could leave early
if I wanted, maybe we could go somewhere.
Days before, drinking at the Park bar with some great white Moby, I was
handed a tab of Viagra. “Try it! You’ll like it!” Thinking Mark McGuire without
Creatine was worth 45 homers, with the drug he was good for 70. I pocketed the V.
Now, with Tanya and the possibilities of this night, I pulled out the V and downed it.
Better fucking through chemistry. Turning so many gringo Clark Kents into telephone
booth strippin’, faster than a speeding bullet, leapin’ tall buildings in a single bound
Caped Crusaders. Who the hell wanted to be merely mortal anyway?
Into a taxicab, racing toward regions unknown. I had heard about El Paraiso
(Hotel Paradise) but never been there. A long twisting drive through a suburb called
San Francisco, pulling into a sprawling complex lined with shrubs, high, rectangular,
manicured for privacy not looks, driving up to a booth and stopping. A man sat like
a toll collector, asking through a microphone, “Con Jacuzzi o sin?”
Tanya volunteered con. the man giving us a room number, McDonald’s
drive-through style, and we moved on. The car in darkness past rows of modern
garages, red and green lamps in front. Pulling into a green-lamp garage, Tanya
tested a door. It was open.
Hotel Paradise, aka the Hotel Fuck, Costa Rican equivalent of a North Jersey
three-hour quickie motel.
Green neon emanated behind an oak framed, King-size bed, porno from overhead TV,
wall control panels adjusting heat, air, volume, tacky floor to ceiling mirrors, Jacuzzi
with prepackaged towels and bubble bath.
Oh, and one other item of note: The Viagra was kicking in.
Tanya looked at my bulge. “Oh my. What’s got into you tonight?”
We tested the King Size bed, about to begin the festival of sin, when...a
buzzer? Loud, game show like. What the...? Where’d it come from? I went to the
dumbwaiter, putting my head inside.
Four feet away, a face. The Night Manager, bending to collect his twenty
dollar room fee. I paid him and he straightened, looking at his knees when he
asked, “Something from the menu, sir?” “Sandwiches and tequila,” said I, noticing Tanya readying the Jacuzzi, dumping in bubble bath, putting on plastic bathing cap and squealing with laughter. “Anything else, sir?” “Two cokes, please.” “With pleasure, sir.” “No, the pleasure’s all mine.”
Tanya stripped off her clothes, testing the rising water with her toe. Off came my clothes, piling them upon hers.
Here
come
the
warm
jets.
Hog nosed Pit Viper! Black Speckled Milk Snake! Burrowing Rear Fang
Snake! Tropical Racer!
Combine a dyed-blonde nymphomaniac with that stud muffin Pauly Vegas
and you created magic, you created Oz, the end of the fucking rainbow, only it
wasn.t my heels I was clicking three times.
The goddamn Viagra wouldn’t let me go and she was quicksand, man!
Venus Fly Trap! Eveready bunny gone mad for procreation! Drowning in sweat
and blonde hair, thinking: I was going to die! I was going to die at the Hotel Fuck!
With my boots on and…oh my God! My poor mother and her plastic heart! The
things they’d say! The worst things she always feared! I had to do something! I
had to...get free!
In at 11:30, we stumbled out of the Jacuzzi at 2, barely enough strength to
click off the porno channel. Tanya lit candles, put on 97.5, canciones romanticos,
Spanish mood music.
We commenced again. She was the fuck machine. The pink bunny that kept going, and going, and...
I begged, literally begged for sleep. Crashing, together and at once.
Recuperating within the hour, to begin anew. 12:30, 2, 3:30a.m. This fucking drug!
Losing track, consciousness. I recall, or think I recall: Tongue-diving into her pussy and coming out with a fully wrapped Hershey’s kiss. Two buck Independence Day undies, red white and blue, hung carefully upon the doorknob, hundred-dollar black cocktail dress heaped on the floor. English lessons, she, whispering the alphabet in her sweet 4 a.m. voice.
4:40 a.m., Tanya peeking out of the bathroom cigarette in mouth, looking at me once, dropping cigarette to floor, coming forward again to fuck me into dust. “Jacuzzi?” she wondered at 8 a.m. “Shower,” said I, a spent, wasted cipher.
Time blurs, if you live fast enough.
A DEATH AT THE PARK HOTEL
Walking streets. A young boy lay in tatters in the gutter. I, and others,
walked over his body to cross the street. He appeared dead. Mouth gaping open,
was he breathing? Concerned citizens did doubletakes. A cop nudged him, nothing.
Kicked him. Ah, there. He moved. Noon time traffic rolled.
Inside Barrio Badass, so many Nicas and Colombians on piedra, crackhead
windmilling of arms as they crossed Avenida Segunda, coming at me like zombies.
“Moneda! Macho, porfa!”
This was why the women prostituted themselves. Kids, drugs, Third World
economics.
Mix Christian Costa Rica, machismo, slack birth control standards; abandoned
women with children, often one by sixteen, two by twenty. Unable to work poorly
paying factory jobs, without goods or services to trade, turning to the one thing they
could sell in the marketplace.
No sanctuary in the street. Maybe I needed to simplify matters, back to the
Womb-- The Hotel Park.
Inside, I noticed something strange. Ticas were crying. Why? I asked Greta,
who told me. “Moira, se murio.” Moira died. “Moira?” She reached into her
handbag, showing me a photo. Oh God. Moira was the day bartender at the Park.
Died of a stroke. Thirty-three years-old.
Wished she hadn’t shown me that photo. I couldn’t see Moira’s face, but now
I did.
Greta went back to her stool and sat. Greta fed three fatherless children
every morning. Saw them off to school before heading to a shirt factory where
she made fifty dollars a week. At 5 o’clock she went from the shirt factory to the
Hotel Park, changing in the bathroom and sitting on a stool for seven hours until
midnight. If she was lucky she’d bring in twenty-five dollars for one hour of service.
No luck, no money. No money, what do the kids eat? Greta lived in a two bedroom
apartment with nine other people. She had fourteen brothers and sisters, none of
whom knew she prostituted herself at night. She was one of thousands doing the
same.
The other Tica hooks, usually bored to tears, today were shedding them.
Same music at the Park with or without Moira, same rhythm that applied when
selling one’s body for twenty-five dollars was the best you could hope for, the best
you could do.
A drunk fell off a stool and people stepped over him. Same rhythm, drink
by drink, tick by tock. Can you conceive of this rhythm?
Gringos just in from Miami, who never knew Moira, were having a fine
time.
“Smokey says: The worst I ever had was tremendous!”
“Hahaha!”
“Smokey says: I don’t work for it down here, bitches!”
“Hahaha!”
I started drinking. With purpose.
GOODBYE
“Oh woe, woe,
People are born and die,
We shall also be dead pretty soon,
Therefore, let us act as if we were
dead already.” -- Ezra Pound, Mr. Houseman’s Message
Birds into blue, one every twenty minutes. That’s the number of planes
leaving Juan Santamaria International Airport. So few that each takeoff was an
event. Puffy cumuli, patterned and patternless. Lazy hawk floating, Bimbo bread
truck in no particular hurry, horse-drawn cart hauling rusted metal sheeting, taxi
drivers waiting for the next inbound flight, listening to Radio Uno under 72-degree
November sun. Black Costa Rican volcanoes in black volcanic earth, red-roofed
houses and in the gusts, red, white and blue, the Costa Rican flag. Hand of
the painter shakes upon seeing the worthy image. The god-awful beauty of it all.
And so goodbye to you Parque Central, perpetual seventy-two degrees in
geosynchronous bliss.
Goodbye to .70 cent-a-beer cantinas, hundreds of borachos singing drunk
every Sunday until dawn.
Goodbye to wastrels crashed on sidewalks thereafter, and the goodly folk
who stepped over them with care.
Goodbye to CO2 belching buses, bus lines fifty deep, taxis braking off green
lights like Talladega, running red lights but breaking on Avenida Segunda for any
and all Tica elderly.
Goodbye to that scoundrel Pauly Vegas and his rapid response to emergencies,
an innate ability to cover his rosy ass. Just as Fred Flintstone, when backed into a
corner by Wilma, saved his greatest lies for last. Tatiana showing up for her 4:30
appointment at 5. Upstairs to entertain her when, minutes later, a knock. Opening
to find Andrea. Shut the door! Outside with Andrea, arriving at 5:30 for her 7 p.m.
She wants to know: “Why can’t I come in?” I lead her toward the gate. “Darlin.,
I’m going to tell you the truth, because I love you. I’ve got another girl in my room.
She means nothing to me. You.re the woman in my life. I’ll get rid of her. Come
back at 7, please. Here’s three bucks.” Out the door she went. Back upstairs to
Tatiana. “Who was that?” she wanted to know. “Baby, I’m going to tell you the truth,
because you’re the woman in my life, and I love you....”
Goodbye to all Tica hooks, asses of Biblical proportion, Bertha and
Bathsheba Butt, posing at Smart Set on pink Felliniesque love seats, enrapturing rows
of Ticos fifteen deep before retiring to twelve buck/thirty-minute sessions of sexual
virtuosity.
Goodbye to Park Hotel Marcela, at thirty-two, fourteen years in the biz,
with a pair of grand kids. Body unrivaled. Bolivian diet over Atkins. Leaving one
question: Was there another woman with two granddaughters on this planet that
looked like Marcela?
Goodbye to Arcades strip-club, 60s Vegas-style burlesque. Backstage with
semi-naked dyed-blonde C-cup girls making love to mirrors, techno shaking
cardboard walls, cock-jabbing Chino-style rear-entry pump-ecstasy squirt-porno
on the TV, day-glow green girl pole dancing under disco ball pull gravitational
and hot pink Christmas footlights, day-glow men in lawn and garden chairs
applauding her sheer artistry.
Goodbye to Tanya, dancing ‘til 5 a.m., sleeping ‘til 5 p.m., no marmalade
or pitted OJ for this girl. Didn’t get better than watching that cinematic
masterpiece The Corrupter, Tanya chewing on my right ear lobe, squealing in
Marilyn Monroe voice at the scary parts. Walking her down to the laundromat,
Tanya with nothing to wear but a $100 black cocktail dress, the two of us in sleep
deprivation mode watching the spin-dry-tumble cycle.
Back home, chaputes in the cantinas on their seventeenth beer, without the money to
drink and fuck, their howls filtered into the Ferso. Presenting Tanya with pure
Columbian trading truck; thift-store lingerie, two-buck perfume, Jordache-knockoff
tear drop earrings, chocolate bars, the King James Bible, whatever! If it took a
Persian map to get to her Orient, to uncover the Land of Gold and Spices, then bring
it! All hail the Infidels! Hail, Tanya!
Goodbye to the Hotel Del Rey. Clash of Titans. Chicas Greyhound-slim,
clock-watching, size three hit-and-run monster truck tit-job Murderer’s Row,
vamping on a Blue Marlin rail from hell. Mongers, in here and now present tense
drama, with so much of life back home meaningless, animal-dumb, Ground Hog Day
repetition, loving the grid, obeying the grid, a humdrum Bataan Death March of
wealth building. No one to root for in this clash. Ice Queen arrogance vs. pink Polo-shirted
mongers toting magic CD’s to seduce Tica hooks into BBBJs (bareback
blowjobs) or, in the best of all worlds, a GFE (Girlfriend Experience)
Goodbye to Pollo Sabrosa, eternal cumbia from hungry strolling mariachis. Home to the five buck, flaming pit pollo entero.
Goodbye to Dick The Banker, at seventy-four a new father, living off $890 a month Social Security, sitting with guaro y fresa, legs swelling and no old-age home candidate, knowing Third Acts come and go, sure to die alone in his first floor Apartamentos Ferso love nest, on his terms.
Goodbye to the Hotel Park, where it all began. Rainy Tuesday afternoon
with Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds, in phony pearls dangling cigarette ash
wondering what Chances number would hit. Plead The Fifth, a rubia just turned
eighteen and could give a damn about chronology. Reason The Need, with long
black implants for hair and combat-booted legs reaching new dimensions of
boredom in the corner. Betty Boobs, a count-the-curves morena scratchin’ to get
on the track, riders up! Wynona Ride This, a schwing artist from way back, loved
money, gold jewelry and quick lays in that order. Helen Of Troy, actually a Tica
from Alajuela, wrapping hair in a bun and asking $50 but knowing, as Shay so
often said, ain’t nothin’ worth $50 smells of shrimp. Katie Bar The Door stroking
a corn-fed gringo in yellow golf shirt, fat, balding and pony-tailed is no way to go,
Joe. informing him that for $40 a tour-de-force could begin between her legs.
Drunken gringos like ducks in a row under commemorative oil paintings, the
‘Women Of Costa Rica.’ series. Blonde, brunette and redhead with the titles:
Lily Of The Valley, The Dove Of Costa Rica, and Refreshing! Country
band plays ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart,’ Drowning out the Men At Work from the
juke. At 2 a.m. the last drunken white man grinding perpetual against the last earth-mother Tica, birth name Maria Jose, shifting her magnificently plump keister, chewing the
greasiest fries ever consumed in the human epoch, crossing legs and thinking: ‘My
God, I am tired of these gringos.’ Being of the same tribe, I suppose I was too. And
still to you I raise a glass. Viva! Viva Hotel Park!
Goodbye to you, Street Of Lost Souls. Pauly Vegas by night, in plastic lawn
chair behind Apartamentos Ferso’s “French” gates. Waiting for a whore who will
never show. For piedreros and marijuaneros, crack dealers and fried chicken freaks,
Rock Ice drinking borachos, anorexic motorcycle cops, pickpockets and sneak thieves,
revving thirty-year-old buses destroying the lungs of all of us to cantina love songs in
flickering Van Gogh suicide-café green, Hopper Nighthawks noir, or the basic black
of nightmares.
Pauly Vegas by day, walking back with flowers by the San Raphael Abajo
bus, a Fuerza Publica paddy wagon screeches by fruit venders hawking papaya
footballs, massive dick-shaped mangos. “Mangas! Dulces! Mangas!” Senora works
her vegetable cart, hanging green bananas, red chiles slip into the gutter as Donna
Summer pours out megabass from carniceria La Hacienda. Barefoot kid balances
three cases of Coke atop his head, passes the Christ-praising beggar pissing outside
Pension Lala, lays down under candles and frocks of the New Christianity store
window, not even cardboard between him and street.
One-Eyed Jack sells Chances next to Boozy Jilly selling doe-eyed puppies next to
the fabulous Apartamentos Ferso and like a sacrament, over all of us, as it begins to…
Rain.
Goodbye to you my Route 66, my East Hollywood, my Brooklyn Bridge, my
Book Of Hymns, my heart.
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