The Same Banana
The Same Banana
I took a pill in Costa Rica. Not to show Avicii I was cool but, more pathetically, because I had been felled by some bad tilapia.
I.
My mother and I had landed in the capital of San José the day prior and, after bartering with a local outside Juan Santamaría International for the use of his cellphone, had made contact with our pre-arranged pickup van and made our way into the heart of the city. Our itinerary, as provided by Puerta Uno Escapes, had left the afternoon and evening open, asking only that we be ready in the lobby of our DoubleTree at six a.m. the following morning to depart for the first stop on our four province tour.
We’d booked the trip in the late fall of 2017, neither of us knowing that it would land exactly one month into my fresh unemployment the following spring. Costa Rica hadn’t occurred to us, previously, as a dream destination. Mom tended to visit her family in Italy whenever she could and, when not joining her, I opted for solo trips to obscure wintry locales. This, coupled with a mutual distaste for over-regimented schedules and disproportionate amounts of time spent busbound with strangers, demystified our indifference. But the rate had been compelling and Mom had spun it off as a Christmas gift and, faced with the reality of ten days spent waging war against resumé-parsing software, any residual disdain for bus bondage had given way to fond anticipation. I imagined myself clambering to the front of the motor coach and leading my fellow travelers in a chorus of “The Trolley Song.”
Clang clang! A duo of salt and pepper gentlemen in matching blue oxford shirts, known by their placard as La Guanacasteca and dwarfed by a massive xylophone, tapped out the heartbeat of the Barrio Escalante neighborhood as we made our way down Central Avenue in search of food. United Airlines, having decided that a five-hour international flight didn’t warrant more than a Fig Newton and ice water, left us desperate for something hot and wrapperless. Tourists and locals flew across our path, in and out of shops and storefronts adorned with colorful murals of parrots and more parrots. Past the Parque Central and the Jade Museum, the main drag was littered with cozy restaurants and cafeterias, all met with the same nose wrinkle from Mom (“Well, that doesn’t look sanitary.” “I mean, good grief, there are pictures on the menu. Pictures!” “I see people eating but no one behind the counter. Is this some sort of self-serve?”)
Outside the Teatro Nacional, built in the 19th century off the back of a coffee tax, people queued up for tickets to that night’s performance of Tosca. Meanwhile, they could have saved a few Colóns had they swung their heads toward the production happening right in front of them. Place after place, nose wrinkle after nose wrinkle, the list of acceptable food options was shaved to a membrane. It came to a point, as the street narrowed, that so, finally, did my mother’s resolve.
“Let’s just eat at the next place we see,” she said, defeated.
“The next place is a stray cat hostel.”
“What about that?” I followed the direction of her extended arm to a Taco Bell across the street.
“I’d rather eat at the stray cat hostel.”
To be fair, I love a $5 Big Box as much as the next red-blooded American. I’ve demolished more Crunchwrap Supremes in my life than I’d care to admit. But, I’d been up since dawn and traveled 2,200 miles to stand in another country and I could not, in good conscience, have done all of that just to be the kind of tourist who seeks comfort and safety in the glow of the golden arches. And, operating under the assumption that most of our included meals over the next several days would take place in restaurants that cater to gabachos, I felt all the more reason to put my foot down. So, instead of living más, we chose to live menos at the nearly identical taco place next door: Taco Knell.
The next morning we gathered at the hotel restaurant, where recent arrivals from the States rested their intercontinental apprehensions upon pillows of scrambled eggs. The age spread of the brood represented about what I’d expected. Save for one college-age girl who scanned the crowd with headlight eyes and sidled ever closer to her mother with each swipe, I was the youngest of the group by some three decades. This disparity made me the subject of some curiosity. As I scanned the breakfast spread for anything that hadn’t been shipped by the Kraft Heinz company, a small crowd encircled my mother. And, over the gurgle of the coffee machine, a woman, Selene, her hair a testament to her name, offered polite interrogation.
“That’s your son? You’re here together? Well, what a wonderful adventure for the both of you! My son would never! What a nice boy.”
Up until that point, I’d dreaded the idea of being the group’s token aberration. But, where I might’ve before bristled at the attention and intrusion, I was shamefully warming to the perks of being the novelty. Still smarting from the insult of the company that had just introduced my ass to the curb, here was a delegation that wanted to know me. Here were retired doctors and professors and church ladies, people of repute with a bottomless barrel of questions for the youngling among them, who approached me with earnest interest in their eyes and pancake on their breath. And there I was, offering contained answers and attempting to redirect attention in a feigned humility, all the while lapping up the light they shone as if I could get a healthy tan off of it. I’d realized all too quickly that here, I had the opportunity to be selective with the truth. Here I could be not unemployed, but simply a student. I was in grad school, after all. It wasn’t a lie. It was a chance to be a better version of myself for a few days. Who wouldn’t take that?
We found our seats, past a sea of searchlight stares, toward the back of the bus just in time for our guide to fetch the microphone from the rafters and introduce himself. Gustavo, a San José local wrapped in a pink polo and greying into his mid-50s, welcomed us aboard. Pura Vida! More than an exclamation, he explained, but a mantra. “Pure life, simple life.” The Costa Rican Way of living. While the ideal was certainly simple, in practice it seemed less so. As we left the city limits, Gustavo launched into a detailed rundown of the coming days’ program, mandatory check-ins, meeting points, departure times and fielded a mix of questions he’d either already answered (“What time is dinner this evening?) or were themselves questionable (“Do y’all ever get tired of rice and beans?”) all peppered with tiny glimpses into his own life: divorced, son off at some faraway university, fluent in four languages, lightly allergic to pineapple, and clinically obsessed with a brownish condiment known simply as “salsa.” No, not like with chips. I’m not sure how he managed, but he pulled successfully from his Poppins-esque bag of topics throughout the entirety of the four-hour bus ride, two-hour boat ride, and airlift via macaw required to reach our first destination.
The Aninga Lodge, a maze of huts, planked pathways, a pool, and a main house, sat nestled within the Tortuguero National Park in the Limón Province, providing cover and accommodation to the yearly visitors seeking a more embedded tropical experience. Under a canopy of Raphia palms, the resort revealed itself to be built on pilings that lifted all structures and walkways four feet off the ground, allowing the jungle floor to remain a home for all sorts of flora and fauna. With a bit of time to spare before dinner, we dropped our belongings in our assigned hut and strolled the sprawling latticework of passages. The journey quickly became a small safari on foot as each neck swivel brought our eyes upon some gnarled barkwork, or an unassuming green smudge which, upon closer inspection, disclosed itself as a poison tree frog.
Somewhere, as I caught a turquoise land crab slinking back into its underground home, my phone latched onto the weak WiFi signal from the main house, emerging from its daylong slumber with a buzz from my pocket. I flicked open the screen and hit the red badge over the mail icon where, at the top of my inbox, a new arrival sent my fingers twitching.
INTERVIEW REQUEST: JOSEPH LEZZA
Hello, Joseph. My name is Theo and I’m a talent acquisition specialist at BGN. I’m reaching out in reference to the Senior Manager, Marketing (RC85673) position. We’ve reviewed your résumé and application and would like to set up some time to discuss the opportunity with you. If you could please let me know your availability for a call as soon as possible, I’d greatly appreciate it. Thank you!
Excited as I was to shed the job search for a spell, not only was this was the first nibble I’d gotten after casting innumerable lines into the sea, but BGN was a major media company for which I’d have stood outside and held up the sign if they were willing to pay. But, what would I do? I was out of the country for the next ten days. Was that too long? Would this kill my chance before I even got it? I left my vacation self in the dust, planks flying underneath me as I flew toward the lobby in search of a stronger connection. Upon finding a remote corner with two bars of signal strength, I tapped out a response, threading a fine line between excitement and begging.
Hello, Theo! Such a pleasure to hear from you. And, so happy my application inspired interest. I’d absolutely love to discuss the role and my qualifications further. However, I am overseas at the moment and will be back on [date eleven days from now]. Any chance you’d be willing to take the call then? Do let me know and, if it needs to be sooner, I’m confident I can find a place to make it happen. Looking forward to hearing from you. Best, Joseph Lezza.
I wasn’t kidding about making it happen. If, for whatever reason, they couldn’t wait for me to get back, I’d have spun some string between two coconut halves and flung one of them stateside to take the call. Once I’d confirmed my response went through, I waited for my pulse to return to normal while reflexively refreshing my inbox. Realistically I knew I wouldn’t hear anything until at least the next day, yet some small part of me felt like walking away was some form of surrender. Then again, hadn’t I come there to surrender? To surrender my actual self for a bit, surrender to the elements and to this more ideal perception I could embody? If the answer was yes, then I had to relinquish some control. Understanding that, I tucked the unpleasant bits into the shadows of the Kapok trees and gave the rest to the afternoon sun.
Dinner that evening took place on the dining pavilion, an indoor/outdoor vaulted wood skeleton with a tan canvas skin. The length of the space was lined with resort staff doling out portions from tin chafing dishes arranged on long, collapsible tables. This is where we were introduced to the casado, the traditional Costa Rican meal, consisting of white rice, beans, salad, and an interchangeable protein. From my spot in the formation, I watched the Tommy Bahamas breeze to their seats with the safe choice, any entrée that had been smashed into the silhouette of a patty. Never one to shy away from a fish fillet, I opted for a double helping of tilapia. “Raised here in the mineral-rich waters of the rainforest,” Gustavo breathed over my shoulder.
The fish was bland but it went down smooth thanks to a greasing up I took back at the table. Between mouthfuls, I fielded a continuation of the inquisition that had met my mother that morning. Oh, a graduate student? Chomp. Good on ya. Chomp. And a writer? Chomp. Anything like Grisham? Choke. I read his latest on the plane. I just love him. Chomp. I’ll have to tell my Pokeno group. Send me links! In any other scenario such attention would’ve rankled, but here, I was all too happy to let my ego feed, helping itself to seconds and thirds and licking the plate clean. And, whether it was the fish or the flattery, I went to bed that night entirely full of myself.
Morning came with a howl. Somewhere around four a.m., I opened my eyes to a general unease, the source of which I had a difficult time placing in either my mind or my stomach due to the sound pouring in through the screened-in rafters. It took a moment to waggle the sleep from my ears and, in that time, I’d recalled Gustavo mentioning the howler monkeys we could expect to greet us around daybreak. Unlike any wake up call you’ve ever heard! Even that heads up couldn’t have prepared me for this sort of encounter. The racket rained down from the high darkness not at all animal but something closer to extraterrestrial ululations. Awrooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. It was an odd frequency, not displeasing, but also not something one might put on their meditation playlist. Still, as my waking brain wandered into tension territory, worrying over the waiting job interview and already drafting answers to theoretical questions, the high-pitched vibrato of my primate neighbors shook my internal monologue into alphabet soup.
In the silence, the mystery of my pre-dawn malady dissolved as my stomach gave itself away, voicing its queasy disdain. Initially, I humored the human thing, the belief that if I lay very still the intestinal turmoil would pass. When that failed to work, as it always does, I accepted my fate and sprung toward the bathroom, arriving just in time to experience dinner in reverse. Awrooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. Up came the first helping. I hugged the basin, panting, hoping that might’ve been the beginning and the end of it. It was not. Awrooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. There came the seconds, joining the party on the arm of a string of dribble from the side of my lip, engaged in a sickening waltz. Catching my breath, I moved to right myself, only to wind up back on the floor. Awrooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. I seized. Awrooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. I brought forth with such force that, for a split second, I was airborne. Awrooo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o. Beneath the net of high-pitched camouflage cast by my treetop brethren, my stomach expunged much more than I’d eaten, so much more that I had to suspect that the heaps of bullshit I’d been all too happy to shovel in my gob floated among the flecks of fillet. I may have been able to delude the others, but the toilet tank does not suffer fools.
When my stomach finally put a period at the end of its sentence, I gasped my way down the porcelain and rested the side of my face on the cold concrete. If only the orthodontists could see you now, big shot. Humbled beyond recognition, my right eye peered toward the ceiling, taking notice, for the first time, of the two types of toilet paper dangling side-by-side from the holder on the wall. One white, the other a pale brown. I considered the two for an unreported amount of time, coming to the conclusion, just before passing out, that one of them must be whole wheat.
I awoke some time later to my mother scooping me up off the floor.
“So that was you last night. I knew I heard something.”
“It was the fucking fiiiiiiishhhhh.” Every decibel of my groan reverberated inside a skull that felt as if the Costa Rican soccer team had used it to run penalty drills.
“I thought it was the monkeys.” She dropped me onto the bed, where I’d have gladly died. Headache aside, my stomach seemed to have settled itself and, refusing to be sidelined on the second day of our trip, I sucked a few quarts of water straight from the faucet, splashed my face, threw on a sweatshirt and limped off to breakfast.
The spread was set up near the dock where we were to later depart on a canal boat tour. As one of the first to arrive, I was privy to a bounty that was largely wasted on my sour constitution. I grabbed some dry cereal and a banana and meandered to the table. Thumbing the label on the peel, I was reminded of our drive past the processing plant on our way to Tortuguero. From behind the bus glass, we had watched as bunches were pitchforked from a golden hill onto a conveyor belt where they were doused, tagged, and packed onto pallets. Are those Chiquita? Gustavo spun and addressed the faceless inquisitor. So you think! He tapped his temple. Many people, they buy their brand, Dole, Chiquita, Del Monte, thinking one is better, of better quality. Little do they know it all comes from here. No matter the label, it’s all the same banana.
I placed my meager selection on the nearest table and grabbed a front row seat as the trippers filed by, one by one, their faces falling at the sight of the once-golden boy, now hunched, hooded, and licking a cornflake pinched between two fingers.
“You oughta take this.” A pastel blur fished through his pocket, offering me an oblong tablet. “Praziquantel. It’s an anti-parasitic. My gastro friend wrote out a scrip when I told him we were comin’ here.”
“Thank you,” I croaked and downed it with a thimble’s worth of orange juice, never thinking to question the blur as to who he was or why he happened to be carrying around loose pills as if they were car keys.
Determined to not be vanquished by the folly of the previous night, I assessed my innards were in a sound enough place to press on with the day’s activities. My judgment would fail me thirty minutes onto the water where my guts began to twist once again. However, with nothing to bring up, I sat there souring, using every bit of energy to keep my teeth clenched into a grin. Even when the skies opened up on us, withdrawing, then unleashing once again. Even when Gustavo, scamp that he was, decided to extend the trip and innocently drift us all into Nicaraguan waters before turning right around. We’re all criminals now, he laughed while I wondered if I might qualify for lethal injection. Back on land, I rested, rallied, relapsed, and chugged the ginger ales Mom ported back from the pool bar. By afternoon I’d felt right enough to partake in the beginner’s zip line course, where some residual gastric mistrust saw me spending most of my airtime with sphincter clenched.
Thankfully, by that evening, I’d found my way back to myself. Lost, however, for the time being, were the big britches I’d so proudly worn the day prior. For dinner that night, I had chicken.
II.
Back in San José, my market value dropped precipitously when we picked up a family joining the cohort for the latter leg of our journey. On the heels of their parents, two brothers, Salt & Pepper, both around the same high school age, slunk in their socks and flip flops. The light from their phone screens illuminated faces washed with the same disinterest I would’ve found on myself at that age. So much life laid out ahead, but all of it parked at such a distance that none of it seemed remarkable. I hated them immediately. I envied their promise, the floppy hair that fell just so and almost certainly on its own. I envied how beautiful they were, in the way where all one needs is hope and an absence of dark circles to be beautiful. Most of all, I envied the fact that I would soon be assessed with the same bored disinterest, and without any thought or care as to how they might fare in my own evaluation.
From that point on, I became embroiled in a battle against my own sense of inadequacy. At every turn, I seized on an opportunity to prove something, anything. At the foot of the Arenal Volcano, I proudly peed inside a ramshackle outhouse after a glimpse at the dimly lit interior had sent a terrified twenty-something running for her mother. When, later, Selene aired her grievances about the quality of the spaghetti Bolognese she’d chosen to order in the middle of Central America, I opted for the more exotic choice on the menu of Ristorante Adventurosa: curried milkfish. Over breakfast, I made sure to diversify my buffet selection, nestling some fresh rambutan next to my waffles. A coded message to the hotel staff: I’m not one of them. Never mind the fact that there was nothing inherently Costa Rican about any of my decisions, or the fact that they all occurred at the end of a set of tongs. Never mind, also, that no matter the perceived advantage I attained during the day, nighttime would still find us all at the same gated resort in the same pool fed by the same hot spring, sucking down the same piña coladas. All of us, the same banana.
Somewhere outside Sonafluca, a colegio of young girls exploded into a field of orchids, their pastel skirts spinning outward, reaching higher than their shrieks. After the performance, the group set out in search of a McLunch while I settled nicely at the Soda Lorena where my phone rattled the silverware the moment it hit the table. What I’d hoped would be a response from the BGN recruiter turned out to be a push notification. During our various returns through San José, I’d done what any gay man with an internet connection and a wandering mind tends to do: plumbed my way through Tinder in search of the superficial validation a local might provide with the swipe of a thumb. And there, next to a bowl of sopa Azteca, I’d caught not only attention but a salutation.
Hiiiii.
The sender, Joaquin, was a dark-haired boy in San José whose photos betrayed a litheness and an angularity so striking that part of me wondered if he hadn’t been birthed so much as molded and baked in an oven.
Hello! I responded. Como estas?
Ignoring my feeble attempts at Spanish, he inquired as to where I was visiting from and what all I’d done so far. He shared a bit about himself, revealing that he was not, in fact, a local but from Peru, here on a yearlong work program. I exchanged in questions and answers, chomping on wet tortilla, flipping back and forth between our message thread and his photos over spoonfuls of soup, growing fuller and hungrier all at once. He was flirty and sincere and not at all appalled when I chose to overshare and recount my run-in with the tainted tilapia.
Omigahhh, he replied, tossing in a skull and crossbones for good measure.
As I shoveled my way toward the bottom of the bowl, our conversation was abbreviated by my need to return to the bus, but not before he could ask when I would be back in town. Tonight, I told him, adding quickly that I’d had dinner already arranged with the gaggle.
Well, you must come to say hi before you leave.
I told him I’d be sure to let him know and shut my screen, licking a spoon that, now, tasted only of hard metal. Here was a chance to do something real, something wild, to prove something. But, to stomach the risk meant somehow getting it past the heart lodged in my throat.
The problem with attempting to outrun your own cowardice is that you’re too busy looking over your shoulder to pay attention to where you’re going. So, it was little surprise to find myself, later that evening, lost in some dark corner of the city.
Free, for once, to seek out our own nighttime eats, I’d hoped to lean on my history of solo travel to point the way toward authenticity. When Mom showed reluctance to explore and let the city “reveal her culinary wonders,” Google surfaced a nearby boîte with a 4.7 rating. However, once outside the reach of service, the bars on my phone were quickly replaced with ones affixed to windows. What was promised as a simple right, then left, then right had left us, indeed, right in the middle of a neighborhood that only seemed to grow darker with each turn until we reached streets where even the streetlights dared not go. While I was determined to press on and, perhaps, find my dignity in the void, Mom was unmoved, her steps growing shorter until they were strides in the opposite direction and I was forced to give up my search over a lukewarm plate of hotel food with a side of admonition.
“I wanted to have dinner, not be someone else’s.”
The folly was only fuel for more of the same over the next two days as I tossed myself in front of the chance to do something even remotely bold. When a guide at a cacao farm cracked a pod across her knee and withdrew a fistful of white, pulpy seeds, extolling their sweet and sour taste, I chewed on enough to pass a Whitman’s sampler pack. At a roadside stop, Gustavo reached his arm into a nearby thicket to extract a green iguana that was roughly the size of a Doberman. I sidled up for a closer look as he wielded the creature toward the sun, only to find it draped around my neck soon thereafter. With no other option but to wear it, I modeled my reptilian shawl for the onlookers as it dug its talons into my bicep, expanding and contracting against the back of my neck, nipping fresh plantain slices off our guide’s blood-streaked arms. Up in the cloud forests of Monteverde, a web of hanging bridges made a park of the sky. Where most chose to promenade, I opted for the zip line canopy tour, rappelling from plataforma to plataforma, watching our altitude notch ever higher with each sign we passed. The tour included one ride on the mega Tarzan rope, where I clocked Salt & Pepper swinging out over a ravine. Not to be outdone, as soon as the landing was clear, I strapped myself in and jumped, resolute in my intent to swing out farther than either of their spindly asses could reach.
At 700 feet, the tour concluded with the longest zip line in Latin America, stretching 1.6 kilometers across treetops so far below they might as well have been a blanket of moss. Having pre-selected to take this one “Superman style,” for an extra twenty bucks I found myself hoisted and hung, arms to the side, nips to the ground, dangling from the cable, no more sound or solid than a glass ornament.
“You ready, my man?”
The question proved to be rhetorical as I was vaulted into the clearing, my open mouth welcoming a gust of frigid mountain air. I zipped across the ozone too fast for even fear to catch up, the cold knocking everything out of me, seeping beneath my goggles and teasing a pair of eyes that could do nothing but watch Eden as it slid beneath my chest. For the moment, I was nothing more than a projectile, a thing, and I came close to understanding why thrill seekers constantly seek that which is higher or steeper. All the work is in the jumping. Past that, there is a complete relinquishment of control and, in that, total freedom. Were my cable to break, there would be nothing to save me from what waited after the fall. And, in the absence of worry, I let the events play out, let the wind carry me, let the treetops reach for me, let the pulley guide my cinched frame into the hands of the guides who caught me, lowered me, stood me upright and regarded my bone-dry eyes with care and sincerity.
“You crying, my man?”
Revelations aside, a hollow at the pit of me followed us back to San José, refusing to be satisfied. Leaning against the counter of the bathroom, I pulled out my phone and drew up the message thread with Joaquin. My thumb hovering over the keys I once again regarded the toilet tissues affixed to the wall. White or brown. Choices.
You still want to meet up tonight? Joaquin’s last text called from hours prior. No or go. Still more choices. Who could live with all these choices? And where did they end? White or brown paper? How do you want to clean up the mess that you are? Wonder Bread or whole wheat? Who are you? And, more importantly, what version of yourself, in this moment, do you want to indulge? Bleached or unrefined?
I made my choice, asked for his address, and, after concocting a flimsy excuse about meeting an old college friend in town, found myself in an Uber headed toward a neighborhood known as Cuatro Reinas.
Unlike my a-ha moment in the clouds, there came no peace once the DoubleTree disappeared in the rearview. Peace only exists past a point where control is surrendered entirely. And, as the city gave way to the boroughs, it remained entirely in my power to rethink and retreat. I kept my finger on the “eject” button as the street signs passed, as reds turned to greens, as the car crunched to a stop beside the checkered flag on the driver’s LED screen. From the backseat, I could make out the apartment complex and a silhouette standing under a floodlight. My inherent need to be polite, and the fact that the glow from the dash had likely given me away, ultimately saw me out of the car and in soft-footed approach to the backlit figure.
“Joseph?” He called, stepping into the halogen blush.
“Joaquin?” I called back, my voice breaking slightly on the oo.
“Yaa, come in!”
The creak of a screen door saw me in the entryway, following the shadow of my host who became realized as he reached the living room and pivoted toward me.
To my raccoon eyes, he was every bit the person who’d featured in his photos and, as the veins receded into my neck, we stood there, existing in that brief window of time where you assess the person in front of you to determine whether you believe they will be your killer. If all signs point to no, you pour drinks.
“You want a Pisco sour?” He smiled and shuffled into the kitchen and set to work before I could even answer. Tension, though somewhat abated, had me scanning the surroundings for exits or any suspicious doors with padlocks. Over a concert of pours and clinks, what I found was a respectable apartment, in better condition that most New York apartments I’d seen inside of. I completed the sweep in time to catch Joaquin reenter, now holding two rocks glasses, foaming over.
“You like Pisco? It’s from Peru.”
“Love it.” I’d never had Pisco in my life, nor did I know if it was animal or mineral. But, I took the glass and took a seat, dipping my lips into a fizz that started off tart before mellowing into a pleasant sweetness on the backend. Antifreeze is also sweet, whispered a voice from my center of reasoning that I quickly drowned in gulps. Whatever my fate, it was already sealed.
Joaquin was charming, a mixture of smiles and upturned brows as we tossed questions across the divide between the futon and the couch. He asked more about my trip, what I’d gotten up to, why Costa Rica.
“I could ask you the same thing,” The acid from the spirit warmed the back of my throat and I could feel my face flush.
He brought up his work program again, how he needed it to finish school, how he saw it as an adventure. The conversation segued into a second round wherein I stopped clutching my glass as if it were a life raft and came to appreciate how he would tap the rim against his chin after every sip. We talked about siblings, where the rest of his family was. I told him about Mom, how I’d left her in the hotel bed watching a dubbed version of The Perfect Storm on the hotel TV, about the lie I’d made up to come here.
“Omigahhh.” He had a singsongy way of hanging on to the end of his words that brought out the sweetness in my drink. In what could easily have been a swipe, his laughs proved to be just that. Laughs. And, I shared in them. I knew what sharing this information meant. I knew it exposed me as a lost, privileged fool, here on Mommy’s money. But, it was a relief to speak the truth out loud because, for the first time in a while, this didn’t feel like a job interview. Nor was I running for the title of the tour group’s Most Popular Freeloader. Neither of us were attempting to quantify the other in some unseen tally. We weren’t in competition. We were just two boys, both far from home, both in search of the sort of understanding that often demands a dark passage and irrational risk. Both of us, the same banana.
I reached the bottom of my second glass and resting heartbeat just in time for the front door to nearly swing off its hinges.
“Quiniooooo!” A racket of shushes and footfalls made its way down the hall, taking the form of a guy and girl whose voices dropped precipitously once they clocked the stranger in their midst.
Told you. This is how you die. My center of reasoning slurred, sober enough to be smug about it.
“Eyyy.” Joaquin raised his glass to the new arrivals.
“Habla pe, causa?” The twins, both fair in hair and complexion, shuffled along the edge of the room and made their way to the kitchen, both of them in oversized t-shirts, jean shorts, and carrying bags of Burger King.
“These are my roommates,” Joaquin offered, clearly noticing I’d swallowed the lower half of my face.
The guy gave a wave with a handful of fries, heading straight for the table in the back, not to be deterred while the girl served herself from the open Pisco bottle. She muttered something to Joaquin that, while unintelligible, was spoken with the cadence of What’d I say about bringing home strays? She sat on the back of the couch and joined us long enough to ask me some of the same questions Joaquin had, polite but more invested in her bacon double cheeseburger. When the conversation got around to New York, she perked up, wanting to know when best to come, where to stay, and were the lines at Shake Shack really that long? Once she’d pumped me for anything useful, she sucked in her cheek and bowed into the kitchen with her drink and half-eaten sandwich.
Joaquin and I dallied in the living room a bit longer, talking. We rested our glasses on the table and he told me about his plans to visit Miami after his program was over. Also, New Orleans. He spoke about all the places he wanted to go: New York, Los Angeles, and, more immediately, his bedroom.
The door closed with my back pressed against it, where two tongues, pickled in sour mix, took turns tracing the other’s circumference. Aside from a single crack in the blinds, it was a dance of shadows, a drunken waltz across the floor and into a bookcase, in search of the place these things tend to go. Any chance of not tipping off the roommates was lost upon a brief hit-and-run with the night table. Still, we pressed on and, by the time we’d reached the bed, Joaquin’s tank top and basketball shorts had become a memory.
We tumbled for a while, feeling our way toward a sense of the shape of things, exchanging wet breaths and snickers whenever one of us came close to rolling off the narrow twin bed. I pawed at him in the haste that the dark makes sexy but, in reality, is anything but. He pawed at me with the fury of someone caught in a rolling avalanche, roping his arm over my shoulder and hoisting himself upward where, across the nape of my neck, he scrawled a confession to every sin he’d ever committed in a series of licks and twists. I absolved every one of them.
I could feel his heartbeat rattle my ribs, building toward a hypertension that evidenced itself when his arms hinted they were about to give way. Seizing my opportunity, I slid out from underneath, letting the mattress accept him whilst I kicked off what remained slung around my ankles. Behind me, Joaquin feasted himself on the air and I surveyed him, this narrow pile of gasps. Each one called to me like a creditor, and I was only too happy to settle up. But, as I straddled his legs, taking one into each hand, the curve of his back and ascendant hindquarters made the desired form of payment all too clear. Eye-to-eye with an unexpected expectant, I had to reconcile my own timidity against the crippling need to never be an imposition. Here were the facts: I was a guest at this table, I was certainly not about to ask what else was in the fridge and, admittedly, in recent days my mouth had met far worse. So, I took to the plate, polite but curious, and, above all, praying that I wouldn’t sneeze.
Past a few warm up laps, I got into a groove; certainly no savant but I’d hoped earnestness might add a couple percentage points to my overall score. The noises that drifted from above indicated satisfaction and, while pleased, I was just glad there was no light to expose what I’d assumed, generously, resembled a kitten taking to a milk bowl. Once a respectable amount of time had elapsed, my impulse to travel brought me up and over the hill, spilling kisses onto the small of his back. I sat upright and balled my fists, pressing them gently into the upper edge of his glutes, rolling forward onto the knuckles, then back. Forth then back. That’s how I made my way to the top of him. Feeling his breaths grow deeper. Forth then back. Feeling his pulse level out. Forth then back until my hands had nowhere to go and nothing further to do than splay their fingers over the peaks of his shoulder blades. And wait. And listen. And admire the beauty of this boy who lay beneath me, the strength of him, lifting and lowering me with his lungs and his lungs alone. The strength it took to come to this place, to place himself, his whole self, everything that means anything, in the hands of an unfamiliar who could just as easily love it as lay waste to it. The quick calculations and rash rationalizations men like us have to make, and make again. Just to be held.
I did hold him for a while; I don’t know how long. I spread my arms and lowered my chest and pitched to the side, folding him into me. I kissed the back of his neck and admired his outline, traced by the strands of industrial glow that managed to break through the window. We lay there and let the minutes pass, him clasping the hand I held to his chest and me, stirring the little invisible hairs on his arm with my sighs. At some point, our breathing synced and I closed my eyes and appreciated how whole I felt. How, much as I’d sought to be distant and invincible and sovereign over my own sense of worth, some measure of power would always sit in the hands of others. How those hands had belonged not to someone who could improve my status or inflate my ego, but from someone with only himself to give, but every bit of him. And how that was enough.
Morning approached and we’d have to peel apart, to go on, keeping our own time. But, until then, we could lay there.
And we could breathe.
And we could be enough.