Stupid American!

The last time I traveled extensively abroad, Obama had just been elected to his first term, and people around the world were in love with America. Europeans in particular were enamored, due to part to Obama’s tour of Europe while he was campaigning---I remember one pundit saying that his loop was “the first time an American Presidential candidate campaigned in Europe.”

Unfortunately,  Obama has since not lived up to the Euros astronomical expectations. Not being able to address Obama directly on his failings, Europeans have decided to confront me about them.

“Obama said that he was going to leave Afghanistan and Iraq immediately, but look---you guys still have troops in both countries.”

Europeans also take it as their charge to confront me about the failings of the American Education System. I guess it’s nicer of them to blame the stupidity they perceive in Americans as an institutional fuck-up as opposed to a failing of character, but it does get very irritating to hear things like:

“Oh, Wow…you know a lot of stuff for an American.”

I will give the Europeans (and Canadians and what-have-you) one thing off the bat: Americans are not very well-traveled. In Nicaragua, you see more Canadians than Americans, which is only surprising when you realize that America has 11 times the population of Canada, and, on top of that, we’re technically closer. It’s pretty standard for Canadians and people from Australia and Europe and Brazil and…well, most places, to travel extensively during their 20s.

Of course, this negative fact doesn’t apply to me, or any other Americans traveling down here for that matter. Like the people I know from New Paltz, most travelers view themselves as detached from the bumbling hoard that they perceive as the American swarm. I’ve always had a bit of a problem with this. When a drunk traveler of the European persuasion started demanding to know why there was no cheese on the hamburgers Poste Rojo was serving at the family dinner, one of the American volunteers snappily responded with,

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were American…can my fellow Americans at the table please tell this guy what an American he’s being?”

I suppose she was trying to keep the levels of aggression down to a degree, but the fact remains that she was directly comparing the Euro’s boorishness to being American---she was trying to embarrass him into shutting the fuck up by saying he was acting like…like…one of us…

A particularly anti-American German fellow in his early 40s was really getting in my face about such things. We started talking about the ridiculousness of the Republican candidates during the 2012 election, but I became miffed by his usage of the word “you,” as in “you never elect anyone who really changes anything,” or “you create an education system that makes most people stupid.” I had to stop him.

“You hafta stop using ‘you‘…it’s not like I created these problems, or got these people elected.”

“But they represent you, no?”

The German was particularly educated, even by European standards, so I didn’t need to fill him in much about the Electoral College system.

Later on, he plopped himself down on a bar stool next to me and immediately opened with, “so, how many languages do YOU speak?” He knew goddamn well that I didn’t speak any languages other than the one he was addressing me in.

“Uh…just English, really, and the Spanish I’ve picked up down here.” I thought about mentioning my French basics, but I knew that he was probably fluent, and I wasn’t about to go through the humiliation of stumbling through a conversation in that tongue.

After several conversations like this, a couple bordering on arguments, I had to address his overall viewpoint.

“Here’s my overall perception of the conversations we’ve been having:”

“Yes?…” The German slyly slipped his stool towards mine.

“I am very critical of America…I have a lot of problems with it and I often discuss them with other Americans, but, when a foreigner uses the same arguments, I automatically become defensive.”

We talked for a bit longer, during which he said I couldn’t do basic math and that I needed to lose 7 kilos (about 15 pounds) to be a healthy weight by European standards. He showed me his abs. Then he said something that was just too much.

“I mean, I know more about your political system then you do…”

“…I very much doubt that.”

“Oh?” He cocked an eyebrow.

“Yes…I’m not trying to antagonize you, but it’s kinda my realm…I definitely know more about he American Political System.”

I knew he was going to try to test me, to make me look like a Stupid American.

“So…according to you, why did you drop the atomic bombs on Japan?”

Again with the fucking you. I wasn’t even born yet. I leaned back.

“What you want me to say is that Truman dropped the bombs because a land invasion would cost an estimated million American lives, but the actual fact is, Japan was getting ready to surrender anyway. The reason Truman actually dropped the bombs was because he was aware the Soviets were working on their own nuclear program, and wanted to rattle their cage and show them he was willing to use the bombs.”

The German leaned back, impressed that I knew this basic history. He stuck his hand out to shake. In his mind, I was not American.

Granada/Treehouse Vortex

Granada’s market is a multihued riot of shrieking-fresh products and booming sales-pitches: capitalism before The Man took over. Crooked wooden stands haphazardly jut in from the boring buildings-proper, allowing a stream of shoppers, motorbikes, three-wheeled tuk-tuks, and the occasional car, horn wailing, to slowly pass through. In the maze, you can cop gutted fish, backpacks, phones, bananas, guavas, 17-cent coffees, kilos of salt, vinegar in translucent plastic bags, sacks of beans, sacks of kernelled corn, quart-bags of filtered water, sugar, pineapples, shoes, electric cables, loose cigarettes, moonshine, Frescas, guavas, ect, ect, ect.

The tourist population of Granada is the demographic opposite of San Juan del Sur. The average tourist age of San Juan was probably 25, while the average age of the Granada tourist is a good 30 years older. The epicenter of tourism in Granada is the mostly-unattended mustardyellow Cathedral. The small park adjacent and the European-style cafes serving cappuccinos and nouveau pull-pork sammiches have a population of probably 90% tourists, but the percent of cheles drops off rapidly after this like the continental shelf off the east coast of Florida. The tourists must be scared of the sharks and crocs, because, at the market, only three blocks away, there is not a tourist to be seen.

Grenada turned out to be a stop-over: I was there for about 36 hours, wandering the markets, avoiding the stinking, milky streams of water that flowed everywhere, street-dogs lapping…I ate cheap-ass nouveau pulled-pork sammiches, saw a trio of 70-year old American men walking hand-in-hand-in-hand with a clearly under-aged Nica prostitute like it was nothing, like they were putting milk in their coffee…they took her to a European café where they she drank beers and maintained her perfect posture before they all disappeared into a hotel…

                                                                                 ~

The Taxi kept blindly doing loops in the small field that may or may not have held some poor peasants crops until it was practically pulling donuts.

“Over there, maybe?”

“I don’t think so…” answered Byron, my traveling mate for the moment.

The Taxi Hustler pulled another loop, kicking up dust and pebbles. We passed too close to someone’s property, and five or so enraged dogs started chasing the cab.

I stared at the rudimentary map on the pamphlet advertising The Poste Rojo hostel. “I …think?…that’s the “bamboo field” over there…”

We passed another Nica’s property, and a half-dozen more red-eyed, unneutered hounds charged the cab and joined the pursuing pack.

“Maybe we should just get out here?” Byron suggested

“With the fuckin dogs?”

“Good point.”

~

Finally, after some loops and twists, both in the Taxi and on foot, we made it to the top of to the steep hill which held Poste Rojo, the treehouse hostel. The whole thing was a delicious hippie-lodge, complete with a hanging foot-bridge, outhouses and howler monkeys. The hill the lodge sat upon was only a couple hundred feet high, but the vista spread in front of it was flat, flat with fern and deciduous rainforest, so the high, sun-baked greenery stretched hazily to the vanishing line on the horizon. Most mornings, you were woken by the demonic cries of the howler monkeys as they crawled on hands and feet overhead….their small, rust-furred bodies let off noises that sounded  like the death-knells of hellhounds played in reverse.
There were Cicadas everywhere. They were loudest in the evenings, but their pitch was high and constant enough that it evaporated into white noise. But if you stopped for a moment and listened, their screaming buzzes moved to the forefront of your audio, and they were as loud as jet-engines.

                                                                           ~

Byron and I arrived on Valentine’s Day. Poste Rojo was throwing a Black Heart Party---an anti-Valentine’s event. Everyone was to dress up really fuckin metal and listen to the harshest music possible. Keys, a member of the Poste Rojo clan, had been in Grenada all day, picking up a goodie-bag of inebriants for the event. Keys was a semi-professional surfer, but referred to surfing as his “job.” His passion was building sensory-deprivation tanks. Although not much of a looker, Keys was a goddammned pimp.  He claimed that someone once bet him a hundred dollars that he couldn’t sleep with seven different women in seven nights. He lost the bet (as much as one loses in such a situation), only bedding six. The way the women at the hostel fawned over him, I believed the story.

He was currently shacking up with Raeah, one of the volunteers at the hostel. Like all the people staying and working at the hostel, Raeah was gorgeous. Some of the other beauts at the hostel included Cynthia, a slight, svelte, fair-skinned French-Canadian with black, dready sausage curls and a smattering of star-freckles across her cheeks; Alyssa, a curvy Mexican-South Cali girl with long, dark, twisting hair who padded around barefoot in a hippie-dress; and  John, a giant, broad-shouldered, long-haired hunk with sun-kissed abs who looked like some sort of fucking gigolo from a Mediterranean Cruise ship. 

Siena, who could do make-up like a pro, but whose only experience was “hanging out with a lot of drag-queens,” painted everyone’s faces for the event. The gang drank before and after dinner, and we were a lovely, stumbly shade of drunk by 8 o’clock. I was smoking a joint with Cynthia, overlooking the night-forest and the stars, when I heard a giant, splintering crash. Assuming some type of brawl, I scurried over to the edge of the balcony to find a blindfolded Mikey, who looked and kinda acted like Giovanni Ribisi, swinging a chair wildly at a giant blackheart-shaped piñata. After knocking over several more things, he managed to make contact, the piñata broke open, and out spilled myriad hard candies (no one really ate them) and a plethora of Jello shots (they were consumed instantly).

The night danced on. It was a sort of initiation at the hostel to eat a live cicada. My time came when Raeah popped one, then leaned into me, passing the crawling insect between my lips with her mouth. I didn’t know if it was sexy or disgusting---probably some weird combination of the two. I held it in my mouth for a moment, then crunched down. It splintered, and I chewed it to bits, washing it down with many gulps of water. 

~

“Dzis place is a vortex, you know? It’s just so….nice here, and so bEAUtiful.” Cynthia and Cynthia's sister Annie and Byron and I were sitting, watching the solar globe sink past the vanishing-line.

“Every day at dzis place just gets better and better.”

It was the day after the Black Heart party, and everyone was hungover, but in that lazy, giggly way that is quite pleasant. We hadn’t left the grounds of the hostel all day, and, in fact, we wouldn’t the next day either.

People talked about getting sucked into particular places while traveling, about staying for far longer than they intended, about being vortexed . I was weary of this warning, seeing as I was vortexed hard to New Paltz for so long. For me, New Paltz was a joyful, comfortable place (with the necessary plunges & peaks) that sung its honeyed siren-song to me for eight summers. Part of the reason (perhaps THE reason) I left was I became aware that my much preened-over philosophies were too geographically, and therefore culturally, limited---lashed to my vortex, my home.

But there are good vortexes and there are bad vortexes, and a vortex isn’t much of a vortex if you’re only there for a few weeks. So, after a little consideration (mostly financial), I decided to come back to Poste Rojo in a week to volunteer.

The Short Ballad of Hassan the Terrorist

I met Hassan in Castle Tam, the San Juan, Costa Rica hostel that was called "John's House of Wayward Misfits," by a disgruntled former employee that had bailed to other employment. John was the owner; Hassan was a tenet who was trying to find employment there, having partied his way down to his last hundred dollars. Even though John was a surly bitch who had no business being in the customer-service business, Hassan was able to charm himself into the job. He just had that sort of intelligence and charisma.

One night, while drinking boxed Chilean Merlot and ripping on a plastic bong, Hassan let lose with the following tale.

~

Hassan’s parents were influenced by the Black Muslim movement in LA during the 70’s. They dropped their politics and faiths while Hassan was in utero, but his first, middle and fabricated last names were already chosen, all from the Holy Quran. Besides, his parents loved the name, its history, its sound…ha…SAHN.

“They told me it was the late 70’s, so the Muslim name wasn’t a thing…yeah, come the early 80’s, it was.”

Shortly after 9/11, Hassan was at the LAX airport on his way to Seattle, occupied by his friend and drug-dealer Mike, who had frosted hair and an Italian-American surname. Mike strode through security, whistling, and then Hassan was up. The TSA agent scanned his passport, then immediately shot her eyes up with a look of fear.

“You’re…you’re going to have to step to the side, um, sir…right over there…just stand right there and don’t move from that area.”

Keeping her eyes glued nervously to Hassan, the TSA agent reached behind her to a red, unmarked phone plastered to the wall. The phone dialed automatically, and, in less then a minute, three TSA agents rushed over, barely restraining themselves from sprinting.

One of the TSA agents stood between Hassan and the ramp to the plane, while another blocked the escape-route to the rest of the airport. They both had their arms folded tight over their chests, angry looks in their eyes and nervous movements twitching through the rest of their bodies.

Hassan thought it had something to do with Mike’s position as a mid-level ecstasy dealer in LA. Mike, fidgeting nervously between the checkpoint and the boarding ramp, shot a look at Hassan while silently mouthing “what the fuck is going on?” Hassan threw his hands up in confusion.

“Who are you talking to? Who are you trying to communicate with?” the head TSA agent demanded. He swiveled his head over to Mike, who looked terrified. The agent saw Mike was white and turned back to whatever he was doing on the computer.

“Hassan?”---one of the agents with folded arms---”Hassan, you’re going to have to calm down immediately.”

“What? I AM calm.”

“Hassan”---the TSA agent to Hassan’s back---“calm down and stop moving around now.”

“WHAT is going on?”

“Sir, stop talking and just stay put.”

“I JUST want to know WHAT’S going on.”

The TSA agent behind Hassan pressed a button on his radio and, a few seconds later, two National Guardsman ran over with their fingers cocked around the triggers of their M-16s.

One of them spoke:

“Sir, you’re going to have to come with us immediately.”

Hassan nearly lost it. His voice was strained with anger and fear. He threw his hands up, palms defensively turned outwards.

“I’m not going ANYWHERE with you people until you tell me WHAT is GOING ON!”

The national guardsman shot each other wide-eyed looks. The one to the right raised his weapon slightly while the other stepped up to Hassan while reaching for something tucked in his heavy belt…

The red phone rang. Everyone who had gathered---the two National Guardsman, the four TSA agents, Hassan, Mike and the numerous horrified-looking onlookers, turned their heads to the noise. The original TSA lady snatched it up and paused to clear her throat before whispering into the mouthpiece. She paused again for the response. When she hung up, she looked relaxed and smiled and nodded at the other security officials. The main TSA agent turned to Hassan, handing him back his passport.

“Sir, you are free to board the plane. Have a nice flight.”

~

The Terrorist Watch List is not available to the public. Even if Hassan, who was an apolitical atheist whose ancestors had arrived on a slave-ship and who had never left the country at this point in this life, had any reason to believe he was marked for suspicion and fear, he would have had no way to figure it out. In fact, it took him a few days in Seattle to unearth the reason for his humiliation.

“It’s just my name, that’s all it is.” Hassan’s sister, who shared his politically-fabricated surname but whose first name was Hana (the Muslim spelling of the Biblical name, but the US Department of Homeland Security isn‘t known for doing its homework), had never been received more than a passive glance at an airport checkpoint.

I said Hassan was apolitical. When I met him 12 years after this event, he was heavily involved in politics, a big debater who distrusted Obama as much as he had hated Bush II.

…and this was the reaction of a man who was only mildly fucked with by the US government. Extrapolate a couple degrees and a couple countries, where it’s extra-judicial drone executions and random midnight raids, and you see how the US creates his own enemies.

When Hassan on his way to Costa Rica, the young, black TSA girl who scanned his passport shot her eyes up at him in fear. Hassan, with his double-minority status, knew how to appear non-threatening. He emphasized his Cali accent and responded with a sad smile.

“It’s my name, isn’t it?”

The TSA girl’s eyes softened with regret as she reached behind her for the red phone.

Abuse & Douchebaggery in San Juan Del Sur---Pt. I

When I dismounted the stale-aired San Juan-Penas Blancas bus a few hundred meters from Costa Rica’s Northern edge, a wail of Nicaraguan hustle hit me hard. There were about 20 guys waving huge wads of Cords and calling out through the rusted diamonds of a chain-link fence. The other side of the fence was not Nicaragua. It was a mile-wide strip of fenced-in non-country between the boarder-sharers, a land without jurisdiction, a land where there was no citizenship to be. The Nicaraguan money-exchangers had some sort of deal with the boarder guards, or the guards just didn’t give a shit (or this was not thing to give a shit about), and haggled to the various nationalities stepping off the buses.

After the mostly Costa Rican riders got their things, the bus pulled a loop and revved its engines back to the central valley. I stepped across into non-country through a loosely-guarded checkpoint. I had expected sniffer dogs inside. Instead, there was a little strip of corrugated metal shacks selling food and water stuffed inside the corner of the Costa Rican boarder-wall. A couple of large Duty-Free Stores thumbed up across the trampled & sun-scalded grass. The Nicaraguan customs office was smaller, and I was stamped through with barely a glance. Entrance was 12 bucks. Most of the Costa Ricans paid in American---both countries accepted greenbacks sooner than the each others’ bills.

The bus ride had been a hot & dehydrated 6 hours. Add an hour tramping, confused through the Coca-Cola bus station at my starting point in San Jose (that shit is not a station), and an hour tramping through & waiting in line in non-country, and I was ready to bypass the two buses necessary to get to San Juan Del Sur. I was glad when the Taxi hustlers rushed me as soon as I crossed into Nicaraguan territory. One wanted 20 US for the 40 kilometer ride. Another Taxi hustler offered 15 as I was shoving my giant backpack in the first hustler’s car, but he didn’t have Taxi ID and his car looked like it should’ve been euthanized years ago, so I said “too late,” and slammed the trunk.

~

The Taxi hustler tried to tell me the Naked Tiger Hostel was at the top of a massive hill and it would be 10 more for him to drive me up it. I refused four times before he gave up. We smoked a cigarette together and he named the various volcanoes jutting high across Lake Nicaragua. We lazily swerved around cyclists, pedestrians, bulls and pigs as the sun disappeared behind Volcano Conception.   

The taxi driver’s claim wasn’t TOTAL bullshit. He dropped me off at the fortified front gate of The Naked Tiger, and a steep hill passed past my range of vision in the falling dusk. There was a Nico guard at the gate wearing a shirt emblazoned with the Naked Tiger logo. Some sort of shuttle was to come past in ten minutes which could give me a lift to the hostel proper. Before it could, an Ozzie in his 50’s swung up to the gate and offered to give me a lift.

~

“Nah, not the tIgah. I work at the next hostel ova. People in town call it ‘the tIgah rehab hostel.’ Loads of people come ova aftah they’ve been run down by tha partying and drinking and…everythIng else that goes on ova there, sleep it off for a couple days.”

I had heard of rehab hostels before. Marion, from “Hardcore Travelers,” had stayed at one after he had partied himself out at a raving coke hostel in the depths of Thailand.

The pick-up crawled past another guard with a Naked Tiger t-shirt. He was sitting on a stump and cradling a shotgun.

“What’s your name?” I inquired.

“fRed.” he stuck his hand out for a shake while handling the wheel with the other. We passed through a second security gate and the Naked Tiger opened up in front of us. It looked like the villa of a Columbian Coke Kingpin.

“If ya lOOking for a quitah place, we’re just up tha hill.” Fred pointed, we parted ways, and I stepped into the Naked Tiger.

Abuse & Douchebaggery in San Juan Del Sur, Pt. II

Ugly American

Watching the Superbowl is a near-necessity for American citizenship. Instead of having immigrants memorize factoids about the founding fathers and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to gain permanent access to our salt-saturated culture, we should simply ask them for the scores of the last dozen Super Bowls: that’s what REAL Americans care about, anyway.

I personally couldn’t give two shits (let alone a holla) about this ritual of gluttony (commercial-based, violence-based, buffalo wing-based), but I was hanging out with the owners of Brewha Hostel, who did. And I wanted a ride towards San Pedro, anyway.

It turns out that the Brewha dudes (Zach, Taylor & Pete) didn’t actually have a car---what I saw parked in their driveway upon my arrival was rented and not owned, so I had to take the series of cab-bus-cab to a point that was only half-way to San Pedro anyway.

They had decided to view the Superbowl in the most American venue possible: the Hooters Costa Rica, located in the brandspankinnew Mall in Cartaga, the largest interior shopping space in Central America.

The Mall was pure, polished shit: Americana. The exterior was shiny and edgeless as a Tonka truck for the retarded, and Ticos in fake-cop uniforms waved pedestrians across the white bars of crosswalks with white-gloved hands.

The game started at 5:30 local time, but we arrived at four for fear of not getting seats. Good thinking: we got one of the last tables, one of those useless high ones that are surrounded by bar stools and are really only designed for drinks & peanuts.

Hooters is a very disconcerting place. It’s like a strip club where the dancers make minimum wage (tipping is not a thing in Costa Rica). The women (girls?) are dressed about as scandalously as their better-paid counterparts; where else are you supposed to look? Are you expected to look anywhere else?

We were seated by a Amazonian Tica with oversized juggs. She whipped out four plasstik fold-out menus that were worded mostly in English, despite the fact that we were the only Americans in the place other then an African-American family seated in the distance (At Hooters, Kids ALWAYS Eat For Free, a sign near the bar read). The Amazonian asked us what we wanted in halting Spanglish. Zach had a question about the menu, and the Amazonian unsubtly leaned over him, mashing her left jugg into his forearm.

We all ordered wings, which were a dollar a piece for some goddamn reason (they were probably shipped all the way from the US, Pete later pointed out), as well as a pitcher of beer. The Amazonian brought the pitcher and, with great concentration and incompetence, poured pure foam into the pint glasses like some sort of geisha on her probationary period. Pete told her to keep the pitchers coming, and we all managed to house two of them before the preservative-stiff wings arrived.

(Keep ‘em comin)

I faced five pints of watery swill within a half hour, and for the first time since the summer, I was fucking lit---day-drunk, swiveling on one heel to a tipsy universe. I bummed a stoag from Pete, and we stepped outside to the blinding-black tartop to smoke.

About a year ago, the Costa Rican government instituted a strict law that prohibited smoking inside public buildings---the signs were everywhere, but the rule was rarely enforced. I had smoked inside bars with bartenders, inside cabs with cabbies. Pete and I tried to light up as soon as we exited the plasstik Mall, but one of the fake cops yelled at us, and we had to walk all the way across the epic parking lot to the side of the adjacent highway to before we flicked our lighters. I flicked mine, but then immediately thought better of it and tucked it back in my jeans; I had to piss like a sonofabitch, and a nicotine-dose would probably push me over the edge. There wasn’t a dirty corner anywhere around the mall, so I had to drunkenly sprint across eight lanes of traffic to a wide, trash-strewn field ringed with tin shacks. I let go into a concrete wall: pure relief, until I heard a yell from behind me. I zipped up and turned to see an entire Tico family staring at me from their slantdown porch, the little boy pointing.

~

We finished our butts and re-entered Hooters Costa Rica. As I was weaving towards our table, I noticed a sign posted on the wall, made up to look like an American ‘Yield’ sign, that read:

WARNING:

Blondes Thinking!

…among the more obvious problems with this sign laid the fact that none of the Ticas working the joint were lighter than a deep brunette.

I chugged some more drunk-water. All the girls working the joint were wearing dark tights: their legs were ash. They were wearing low-cut tops with push-up bras: their tits were molded plasstik. Someone rang a cowbell and the girls rushed to the front and started dancing nervously, glancing at each other with tight smiles for reassurance. I whirled around to a hoard of leering, middle-aged men. I don’t know what the fuck the black family was doing.

I needed another cig. I was out, the pack of rip-off Lucky Strikes crumbled in my jeans. I swerved out the joint and started boosting around the mall, searching.

I passed GNCs, McDonald Dessert Stands, Apple Stores, ect. GAP Kids, Taco Bells, ect, ect, ect.

All of a sudden, I felt an empty lust in the hole of my stomach: the drunk munchies. I didn’t wanna bust my wallet on more dollar-wings, so I turned back to the food court and stepped up to a Burger King.

With grand incompetence & drunkenness, I completely fucked up the simple order. Even with the help of an English-speaking manager, I accidentally ordered the Whopper Jr. meal instead of the sandwich alone. I received the miniature burger and the equivalent of a small fry and small coke for almost 8 dollars.

In general, products originating in Costa Rica are a bunch cheaper then their American equivalents, whereas stuff that needs to be imported is about as expensive. Local food for instance, is quite cheap. You can get a fresh-baked two-and-a-half foot Baguette con queso for a little over a dollar almost anywhere. Produce is even cheaper. You can get a pound of bananas or carrots for about 40 cents.

But here was Burger King, selling toxic shit for twice the price it would be in the states. And that placed was fucking packed. And those weren’t Westerners on line---every single one was a Tico. The only place in the food court that had more adherents was a Mac-Donald’s (they had more billboards).

Maybe the ugliest Americans are the new ones.

But On To The Next One---I still had nicotine to cop. I finally found a Supermercado on the second floor (who goes food-shopping in a mall?). Being an addictive drug, the cigarettes were housed behind lockdup glass, and I had to find assistance to purchase them.

Still ripped, I tripped my way to one of the checkout lines. When it was my turn, I attempted to ask the employee if I could get a pack of Lucky Strike rojos. I received the blank, slightly irate look I had become used to when talking to Ticos.

Why do I have to know YOUR language? I live here. You’re just a fucking tourist.

Who but an Ugly American would travel to a foreign country with no functional knowledge of the language?

Dullard. A drunken stare and a couple intermediaries got me my American-style stoags.

Orosi Valley/Jehovah's Witnesses

The Brewha Hostel squats on a cliff-edge virile with rainforest. The view is soul-warming---the cliff cascades down 1000 feet to the Orosi Valley floor, a straight of grassy fields fissured by the azure Rio Macho, a river that saturates the grassland to swamp during the rainy season.  In the morning, if the morning is right, the sun peaks over the acme of the mountain chain flanking the opposite side of the valley, striking the low, flat clouds that skim over the river hundreds of feet below where I'd smoke my morning stoag and drank fine Costa Rican coffee.

The hostel was run by four hard-core travelers, Pete, Jackie, Zach and Taylor. A couple of them had been former Castle Tam employees, but decided to split off to create a joint that wasn't a hospice for the socially-retarded. They were all around my age and had been connected in some way, from country to traveled country, for years. I thought they were siblings at first (well, two of them are); it wasn't due to any physical similarities, but instead their repartee, which oscillated between humorous riffing and whiny kvetching, all with love.

Two BK girls I met at Castle Tam bused it to Brewha with me via Cartaga. LES and Glitter both lived in Bushwick, where LES ran an unlicensed bar and show-space. Hipster kids raged at the speak-easy every weekend, LES working the bar and matching the custies shot-for-shot. She had grown up in Spanish Harlem in the 90's; her parents had gone with the local flavor of the era and were heroin addicts. At the end of a hike down to the valley floor, the 22-year old LES told me she was never exposed to nature as a child. This was her first-ever hike.

Or so she told me. After the two had left, Zach and Jackie informed me that she might have made this up, seeing as she was obviously a compulsive liar. I somehow dodged the telling tales that would have revealed this (perhaps she had avoided telling the more bodacious whoppers around me; I was supposed to travel to Panama with her; now I am not).

I had observed the propensity travelers have for serial lying from New Paltz, my post-up for the prior eight years. New Paltz used to be a big traveler town, the main drag scattered with clots of camouflage-adorned characters before the University cops, who were technically state troopers, gained authority over the town and started arresting them for whatever bullshit they could think up with on the spot.

Traveler-lying makes sense (according to logic): no one knows your past, no one knows if what you're saying is true (create yourself anew); repulsive.

~

The sun was shining for once, for Washington State, for the rainy season. I was in a rare good mood, even though sober (lies, alcohol was nothing but misery and foul-tasting mornings out there). I boosted along a side-street of Olympia, hair unintentionally down to my shoulders, beard out to my chest, clothes rank. On the side of the road I passed a Planned Parenthood. In front of it, manning the sidewalk, were a series of Christian protests hefting well-lettered signs. Always interested in both protesters and extreme views, I read the signs as I passed. The holders, who, both in clothing and hygiene, were diametrically opposed to me, stared.

"How ya doin today?" One of them inquired.

"Oh, good, good."

"Can't be that good, with your whole life on your back." He pointed at my rucksack.

I smiled. "Naw...got most of my stuff at home back in New York at my parents house....I graduated college a few months back, and just decided to travel around the US for the next six months...always wanted to, and this just seemed like the best time to do it. After six months, I have a job waiting for me in the city...y'know, New York City."

The Christians looked incredulous.

"Havin fun so far?"

"Oh yeah, havin a blast."

We chatted for a few more minutes, about my traveling, about my past and future. I walked away wondering if they believed my bullshit.

~

Brewha was a grand time. Each night I quaffed fine, hostel-brewed stouts with the Hostel owners and then did stupid shit, ranging from sloppily playing Bananagram to building complex forts in the main room to waterboarding each other (yeah, in like Iraq!) (JUST like Iraq!). I've been to hostels across Europe, the US and Central America, and this is by FAR the best I’ve been to.

~

Two of the folks at the hostel were Jehovah's Witnesses, on vacation from their missionary work in Guyana. I did not know this until someone told me, even though I had conversed with them in-depth several times. They were attractive, late 40's, with soft, semi-southern Maryland accents: a married couple.

For whatever reason, there were oodles of Jehovah's witnesses around New Paltz. My limited experience with them involved them trying their darnedest to proselytize me. In a particularly manipulative instance, I crookedly looked outside my apartment early one morning to find a stunning, well-dressed girl in her early twenties myopically looking around my trash-strewn parking lot as though lost. Being the gentleman I am, I sprinted outside and attempted to aid her. We chatted for a while, flirting lightly. She said she was "canvassing" (probably for NYPIRG or Obama '08, I thought) and that she wanted to get me some material from her car, which was parking just around the corner. She passed out of view, and I heard her foot-falls decreasing in volume, a pause, then the steps becoming more audible again. And...

     (BAIT AND SWITCH)

...out stepped a rock-faced crone who talked my ear off for the next half hour while I tried to subtly figure out her minion's name.

Sneaky.

The couple at the hostel were solid, though. They actually had senses of humor, and good ones at that. Neither of them had what I like to call Krazy Khristian Eyes (wide, blank, and far too bright). They drank a little wine with us one night.

~

COMING from an extremely liberal part of the country, I see a lot of religion-bashing. Kinda like beating a dead horse (in our bubble, anyway) I've always thought. But people still do it.

Still, my New Paltz-bred biases must’ve still been in affect, because I tried to…make them question their faith?…trick them?…make them appear ignorant? Allow me to explain.

According to my limited research, much of the Jehovah’s Witness’ perception of metaphysics is based on a verse in Revelations, which is interpreted as meaning that only 144,000 true believers will be admitted into heaven. The main way to GET into heaven, however, is to convert others to the Witnesses’ faith, to make them true believers, part of the 144,000.

The logical corollary to this is: IF!...the only way to get a limited-edition ticket to heaven is to convert others, to get them their own tickets, doesn’t each conversion dilute the chances of the converter to enter into God’s glory? Isn’t it a paradox that you must dilute your own chances at glory to get into glory?

So I asked them. I’m not sure what response I expected to get, but it was my feeling that JW’s would kinda FAKE try to convert people, since they couldn’t be morons, and had to realize the paradox. Or maybe they didn’t.

“Mmmmmmmmmmmm……….that’s not really how it werks,” responded the Hubby JW. “Y’see, I KNOW I’m not goin to heaven, that I’m not one of the chosen.”

“Same here. I know,” wifey JW chirped in.

“Y’see,” he continued,  “the 144,000...which is actually mentioned three times in Revelations…are kind of the governing body of the earth. They’re up in heaven, looking over the rest of us….y’know, this place is beautiful, with the rainforest and the river (he nodded to the view), but there’s a lot of the earth that’s a toxic dump by this point, because we’ve abused it. But after the new age comes, it will all be natural and beautiful, like it was in the beginning, and everyone will be happy. The 144,000 will just be like the…caretakers, looking over us.

~

“I was raised in a very religious household,” I continued, forking some Be Bim Bop, “at least for the part of the country I was in. But I lost my faith in an instant when I was like…11? Since then, I feel there’s been a certain part of my life that’s been lacking. I wished that it wasn’t, to an ever-increasing degree, because without spirituality, I feel humans are nothing but complicated machines.”

The Witnesses, Amy and Mark, nodded.

“A few weeks ago, though, a few days before I left the states, I had a bit of a revelation. It’s still something I have to work on, but I really want to.”

…

      the depression was deep enough that I had trouble leaving my car once it was parked and it was   worse inside anyway because my bed was a gurney with straps and the two men with surgical masks  always ran by me in formation with needles drawn it was StabStabStabStabStabStab six times until I whispered it everywhere too.

      and it was raining a winter rain like stinging ice wasps and I didn’t give a shit and stuck my arm out to the wasps and there was noone in the lot and

-Your arm is your own.

-There is no one else to feel this rain

-Therefore, the only reason the rain exists is because you are feeling it.

-You create your own universe; the universe is your own. The rain only feels horrid because you are making it that way

      …and the rain turned warm, like puddles being plashed by joyous children in the summer.

…

I paused. To explain.

“I mean, it wasn’t really a….traditionally-religious revelation.”

“Well, it’s really not about being religious,” Amy said with kind eyes. “It’s about being spiritual.”

~

“We used to not be happy people,“ Amy admitted.

“Yeah, we were, we were, real party animals” grinned Mark without regret. (They were sipping on Clos at the time, so I suspected they meant hard drugs).

“…but we’re happy now…and isn’t that what everyone wants?”


Know I do.