Empathizing with T-Pain

Maybe it was for my newly purchased, much haggled over black-on-black Puma Fuegos. Maybe for the sleek suave Gap khakis Jackson had gifted me from his overstuffed travelsack that afternoon. Or maybe it's just because we're talking about Colombian and Panamanian putas, who thought they'd found my transmission, the lever to throw me into a crazy, wallet-emptying spasm. Either way, distracted by the browned bosoms swelling near eye level, one pair at each peripheral, I didn't notice the hands gravitating toward my crotch, nor did I visibly react when the strippers' each took their tug at my inseam. I smiled goofily and apologized for not being a walking stiffy of a 15-year-old. "Son increibles bonitas," I assured them again. "Es porque he tomado demasiado," I offered, hoping to convince them I wasn't a fluttering mariposa.

They shook their heads and walked off, joining their already sidelined, grumbling vagina-vending friends across the bar, disgusted that the gringos (who actually comprised the entire crowd in the club this lively Monday evening) were actually thrifty backpackers content to simply take in the scenery -- bouncing boobs and superior ass-jiggling -- with their cold Balboas. Shit, whether it's mountains or putas, Central America provides me plenty of landscapes rife with mountains and valleys.

I think it's a sign that some decency survives behind my eyes -- performing Superman see-through inspections on every passing female -- that I, initially, took to averting my gaze whenever one of these stripping beauties of indeterminate age would take to humping the floor or acquainting tongue with tit while staring me down, wielding the force of nudity to try to pry into my wallet. Or maybe it's just that I don't want to encourage additional harrasment for pricier private-room attention to my privates, well aware that cheapskate me rolled into this stripclub with just enough crumpled Washingtons to snag a cab back to the hostel.

Actually, that's about all that restrained me from breaking a once long ago -- and certainly not at that moment sex-deprived -- promise to myself: that I'd never patronize a puta. The pancake browned Panamanian goddess whose gyrations left us gapmouthed and drooling is still, days later, jabbing at my mind with those six-inch glass heels of regret.

La ciudad de Panamà, otherwise, is this. (Drug funded?) Highrises cut an impressive skyline along the water, but corrugated rust-stained roofing and color splashed brick and block edifices, or dreary monolithic projects festooned with colorful lines of clothing strung up to dry above the floor-cluttering garbage on every balcony, are the real city. Miles away, the canal slices through, an engineering marvel that underwhelmed because my imagination feasted upon an utter lack of nautical knowledge. Around every first world corner thrives the world I've come to love: streetfood; nameless cafeterias that serve plate-bending portions for less than $2; shifty eyes searching tourists too casual with their camera or purse; stale urine the streetlong incense; loud, loud, constantly DJ-interrupted music booming from every car and household and grocery store; people dodging through traffic; the cacophony of compulsive honking, so common throughout Central America that the sound of a horn literally signifies nothing.

Into the Valley

On the way from Boquete to El Valle, two mountian-bound Panamanian retreats for big spenders from the City or imported from abroad, we spent a day dehydrating in David, charmed for the first time in Panamá by real grit and bustle and knockoff goods, cantinas and the omnipresent odor of piss and drunks hurtling invectives in flailing attempts at English. Truly cheap eats too, platters of rice and beans and that-gristly-carne-that-you-really-have-to-work-to-gnash-into-swallowable-bites for under $2. David, a transportation hub and Panamá's second largest city at some one hundred thousand and a handful inhabitants, has a beatiful, modern parque central centered around a fountain, well-lit at night and with benches aplenty for necking couples. Car dealerships and American food chains dot the city's outskirts, more evidence of the money that surrounds in the nearby highlands.

At the David bus station, Calvin decided just before the ticket counter to make his escape, heading back to Costa Rica for surf or a French girl or, in an ideal world, both. We exchanged quick hugs and professions of brotherly love and then Jackson and I disappeared, via a Panamá City bus, toward a split in the Pan-American highway where we were to be deposited roadside. After too few hours of air-conditioned bliss, we were hailed by the aisle-stalking bus attendant, "¡El Valle!" Off the bus, we ambled across the highway to the paint-peeling concrete shelter where various people awaited transport. A microbus passed but we were denied entry, large bags and all, as as many as possible of the waiting crowd jammed into the already overcrowded microbus, two men hanging entirely out of the bus, hands gripping the luggage rack bars running the length of the roof, feet jostling for position in the two foot doorway. Only twenty something kilometers of mountain road to go, sure to be driven in typical blind-corner-cutting, limits-of-engine-endurance-testing fashion. So Jackson and I stepped back to wait again, rejoining the small crowd of remaining Panamanians who hadn't even stepped toward the speeding death rocket -- a ticket to hell where severe overcrowding makes even the trip toward demise uncomfortable.

Before a microbus with empty seats materialized and, though we'd soon picked up enough people that seats were crammed with four butts each, with up to three men crouching near the exit, we were always able to shut the door. So, by Central American standards, hardly crowded. And then we arrived in El Valle, which is a town situated inside of a volcanic crater. A town surrounded, three hundred sixty degrees around, by forest-covered thousand meter mountains. At sunset, or when clouds and the bright sun casts shadows, it's especially intoxicating. Throw in a few $0.50 Balboa's sipped on any grocery store's front steps -- yes, the cashiers offer to pop the top off your bottle immediately upon purchase, though the police are liable to confront you upon sight and inform you it's illegal to drink in public...confusing, I know -- and, well, it's a slow, easy life. Gazing at gorgeous scenery, running down winding, forested lanes spotted with gated properties every few hundred meters, flowers in full bloom. Bikes are the preferred mode of transportation in town, and there's usually a traffic jam of them pitched on the ground, leaning on kickstands or against a column in front of every grocery store's front doors.

Jackson and I read almost all day long, pausing every few hundred pages to walk to our adopted eatery, a cheap comida a la vista establishment (Cafe Bambú), to run, or grab a Balboa or three, sometimes a pint of Estrella Azul ice cream. We watch NCAA basketball in an out of place sports bar, where, with the exception of an exceptionally flirty and touchy gay millionaire -- he liked to slap hands and squeeze shoulders after his every agonizing attempt at karaoke -- and a motivational speaker -- who name-dropped and quoted his bank account on a by-sentence basis -- we were the only customers for two straight nights.

Yes, life is slow. So slow that this morning, while I waited for Jackson outside of the local panaderia-cum-internet cafe, ignoring the two dogs circling my legs, I suddenly felt a stream of warm liquid splashing down my calf. One of the dogs had taken position behind me, lifted his back leg, and claimed me as his bitch.

This one might offend the parents

Strolling Boquete's streets in the brisk evening chill -- hoodies up, each with one hand stuffed in a pocket, the stiff, exposed five fingers wrapped around another in a series of Ron Abuelo, ginger and Cokes -- our conversation took a sharp mountain turn toward the hypothetical: "Alright, so the first person to put it in her butt gets $20 from the other two." (Take a deep breath. Count to 10. Do you really think we're turning anal-intrusion into a competition?)

After a moment of contemplation I continued, "But no lies. You can't claim butt-breaching if it didn't happen, OK?"

Calvin, midstride, lowered his glass, "Pat, of course. I mean, we're all gentlemen."

A handful of plodding steps reverberated in the lifeless street as we considered the claim before laughter plenty raucous to scatter circling ghosts and lurking mice swallowed the calm.

There. That moment is an accurate encapsulation of how Calvin, Jackson, and I have passed the days since reuniting in San Jose: laughing to the point of tears, enjoying ridiculous circumstances or inventing nonsense -- usually in the form of streetshouted R&B or (predominantly) inappropriate catchphrases coined and then converted to website form, i.e. Justlookinforahole.com, Tryintogetmybeanon.com, etc. -- around bottles of rum.

Another source of amusement: According to a Boquete-dwelling expat who may or may not be on the lam from US law enforcement and, regardless, fulfills every requirement for "dirty old man" (On marriage: "Two twenty-year-old bitches are better than one forty-year-old"; On hobbies: "If you wanna freebase coke once a year, that's no problem. Just don't start smoking crack."), our central park-fronting hostel is a constantly surveilled front for a drug-dealing operation. That Pancho, our hyper-agitated, speedspeaking host, is a surefire crackhead, and that his wife is a listless downer of downers who townspeople call "The Zombie". All of which supports the suspicions Jackson raised immediately after our first encounter, a manic Boquete everything-you-could-possibly-ever-want-to-do-around-here session in which Pancho decimated with pen swoops and swipes and illegible writing, in the excited spazzy manner of a kindergartner fueled by Pixy Sticks (or, hell, just crack cocaine), an initially unmarked map that emerged appearing poorly executed abstract art.

And last night, when a scattered-looking Pancho burst into the kitchen crowded with dining travelers and asked me if I could go ahead and pay for the day. "Por supuesto," I replied, handing him a $10 bill. "Te voy a trear tu cambio en veinte minutos," sputtered Pancho, who summarily scurried out the door and down the street, either seeking change somewhere that didn't include any of the many open businesses within feet of our hostel or going to score $8.50 worth of straight rock.

Chronicles of the sandmen

Costa Rican and Panamanian costs have driven Calvin, JL and I into the kitchen, where surplus bags of dry (or Lizano-flavored refried) beans and white rice and whatever fresh flourishes we compile at the market meld into Lizano-heavy gallo pinto, accompanied by requisite bricks of crumbly, salty queso blanco, surfboard-cut lengths of platanos maduros, and tortillas. If you look closely, you might glimpse half a yellow-green beauty of an aguacate tucked between the plate-obscuring piles, puddles of yellowish liquid-fat pooled in the valleys between foods indicating our newfound fondness for frying and liberal interpretation of "splashes" of cooking oil. "Um, dude, how many cups are in a splash?"

For breakfast variation and vitamin-recovery; sometimes you'll catch me halving cantaloupes to hollow with a spoon, or hefting a bag of tree-ripened mangos whose peels have captured the swirl of tropical sunsets.

La Fortuna's Discoteca Volcán Look, two years later, again treated me to some dance floor tongue-twisting, this round courtesy a thirty-one-year-old Tica with a decade-erasing smile. Besides the transmission risk of herpes and mono, all harmless fun. Seeking surf and sweat, we made our way to Puerto Viejo de Talamanca on Costa Rica's Caribbean coast, where balmy beachfronts and grimy drug-runners hosted us for three nights, though our superlative hostel, Los Sueños, afforded us all the comforts of home. Palm trees and sea breezes (carrying that potent, ever-wafting Caribbean scent), tumblers sweating concoctions of local firewater and cola. All at ease.

We crossed into Panama at the quiet Caribbean border post, boating to Spring Break 2009! in Bocas del Toro. Bocas is another tourist haven, at the moment brimming with Spring Breaking universitarios from across the US. So we partied, shook off hangovers to watch the first day of NCAA Tournament action, and made our way back to the mainland, where reasonable pricing still hovers far above that of the Central American heartland (Guatemala to Nicaragua) I miss more with every hemorrhaged dollar. But Boquete's ever-cool mountain climate, the verdant coffee- and produce-rich slopes, I prefer to sand and sweating in the shade.