A Homicidal Maniac Cab Ride

8-21-00 Tu 1:10 PM
I'm lying in a hammock on an upstairs veranda at the Hotel Aurora in Montezuma, on the southern end of the Nicoya Peninsula, drenched in sweat. We left San Jose yesterday morning and wound over the jungle-covered mountains on Highway One to Punta Arenas. We had lunch at a little hut on the bay. I had some fish and a beer, and Rochelle had a burger. A nice spot. We found the ferry dock and waited in the sweltering sun for an hour while I took turns reading La Nacion and staring at the lush green island in the the blue water of el golfo. You can get a beer, so I got one. We met a family from Malibu. Mark and Maggie Tesh, and their one-year-old son Frederick, and Maggie's brother, Daniel, who teaches English down here. I also talked with a chatty local, about half of whose Spanish I understood. The accent here is new to me. When the ferry landed, we were one of the first cars off the boar. We surged up the little road into the verdant mountains, but we stopped to take a photo of the by through the overhanging forest, and a line of several cars passed us. Well, then it was on! The Nicoya 50-K, I shall call the race that I imagined myself in. The road turned to rain-wrecked dirt, and we bumped along wild mountain hairpins, passing cars at every opportunity until we were in the lead. Oxen and chickens lined the roadways of the little villages we passed, and we had to slow for the occasional burro-driven cart. It finally began to feel like a real adventure. Two hours later, the road finally bumped out into the little seaside village where we are now. We got a nice little room with a mosquito net and a ceiling fan. It's got hot water in the shower if you want, but who'd want? Before you're done toweling off from your shower, you're already soaked in sweat. We unpacked and headed down the village road to a little cantina on the beach called Chico's. We had pizza, wings, and beer, and I won eight pool games and lost two. We met an Englishman named Paul from Birmingham. "Led Zeppelin's from there," he said proudly. I had about ten beers and won the last five games of pool. No one in the bar could beat me. Rochelle was beginning to look a bit rundown, though, so we headed back to the room, showered, and crawled under the net for a fitful and sweaty night of sleep.

 8-20-00 Su 6:15 PM San Jose, Costa Rica

It gets dark a lot earlier down here. We have not been well-received by your man-on-the-street Tico. They've pretty much told us to go to Hell when we've asked for directions; many of the calles are unmarked. It's a little hard to know which way you're going sometimes. Perhaps they still harbor some residual William Walker animosity. We found our way to the Hotel Del Rey and sat at the Blue Marlin Bar. The Angels and Yankees were on, and Bob March, from Los Altos High School was leading Tiger Woods going into the final round of the golf tournament. The place was crawling with young, good-looking hookers. One licked her lips at me. In another time...No: Rochelle and I talked to a few characters. including a defector from Cuba who believed he could play in Major Leagues if he could get to the USA and a boatbuilder who splits his time between Costa Rica and Alaska. I would have been happy to get drunk there and root for Bob March and the Angels and the hookers to win their games, but I didn't think that would have been much fun for the wife, who can't even drink a beer because she's pregnant.

So, we took a cab to el Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, or something like that, a funny a little place full of bones and bad taxidermy: halls teeming with rotting stuffed monkeys, misshapen tapirs, a two-headed goat, a piglet with one head and two bodies, an African lion that looked like Joan Rivers after a bad facelift, thousands upon thousands of pinned butterflies and beetles, fading feathered friends, and case after case of seashells and minerals. We taped the whole place with lots of disparaging narration.

From there, we took a cab to the Museo de Cultura e Historia, pocked with bullet holes from the revolution of 1948. We saw jade exhibits, indigenous culture exhibits, religious history exhibits, and a history of Costa Rica exhibit, no great shakes, any of it.

We walked back downtown and got some sandwiches, and then kept on walking back to the Hotel Bienvenido.

8-21-00 9:07 PM Mon Montezuma, C. R.

Last night we went to a place on the outskirts of San Jose called El Pueblo, a compound of bars, shops, and restaurants, upscale by Central American standards. We wandered around, and I was drooling at all the bars in the place. We went to the Cocina de Lena and had some comida Costariqunse autentica.. Had a couple glasses of wine. Pregnant mama had some tea. They served us some tortillas and bread and different sauces to dip ‘em in. Roch had salad, and I had corn and pork soup, so they said. Rochelle had chilaquiles, and I had gallo pinto. We weren’t sure the mesero brought us the right stuff, but he said he did. It was going okay, and then we got talking about whether or not I am an alcoholic. That might be an interesting writing topic, that conversation, but fuck it. It’s actually pretty boring. After coffee, we had recovered enough to wander el Pueblo. We stopped in a joint called flubber where a couple of sensitive, romantic, Latin-lover guys sang guitar ballads that the crowd sang along with. I didn’t understand, but Rochelle translated for me. From there, we taxied to Cuartel en la Boca del Monte and paid a cover to watch some Jimmy Buffett wannabe have fun stroking his guitar and singing. I didn’t think much of him, but the crowd was pleased. We took a cab back to the Hotel Bienvenido and went to sleep pretty quick. I woke up this morning at about eight. I walked up La Avenida Central to la Gran Hotel and had a coffee and wrote a third-person page. I bought the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and La Nacional. I walked back at nine twenty and Roch and I showered and packed and went down to the lobby. Our ride never showed, and we were stuck talking to the sweet natured receptionist until we gave up waiting and she called us a cab. We took a homicidal maniac cab ride along Paseo Colon to the car rental agency where a guy named Julian rented us a Daihatsue Terio 4WD with AC. More later and elsewhere.

Stupid American

A dog slept on its side right in the middle of the Plaza de Cultura. J wondered if he wasn't dead, but then his ears twitched. Like a novelty, the sun shone for the first time after three days in San Jose. People walked around the dog. People walked around the dog, and he lifted his head to see if anything was worth getting up for, but it was Monday morning, and it looked like he was just going to sleep in and show up late for work. 

J awoke to the bangs and pows of the ciudad's creaking joints as it stretched itself awake and its inhabitants threw open van doors and pulled out ramps to unload the day's commerce. He went to the sink and brushed his teeth, put on some shorts, grabbed his pen and notebook, some change for a periodico. He descended the stairs and strode into the street.

The change from Saturday and Sunday was dramatic: the formerly deserted street was very picture of bustle: cars and trucks spewing fumes jockeyed for position in the honking, beeping, putt-putting gridlock; a man maneuvered an oxcart full of coconuts through the madness; another, un viejo, bent under a hundred-kilo sack of onions, humped his way slowly up the street; suicidal scooter drivers wove through the chaos; vendors heaped tropical fruit on stands at every corner, joyerias rolled up their metal doors, electronics shops, opened their cages, pedestrians jammed the sidewalks in both directions, and heads turned to follow every pretty Tika that scampered past so that no one was looking where they were going, and you figured something was going to have to give, something was going to have crash, wham, slam, but when it didn't, j thought, it ran like an intricate seventeenth century Swiss watch.

He regretted not bringing his camera, but he assured himself with a touch of pride that he could capture it with ink, paper, and words.

 8-20-00 Su 12:45 (I still don't know what time zone this is)

We're in the Blue Marlin bar in the Hotel Del Rey, San Jose, C. R. Last night we went to the college bars around the University of Costa Rica. It reminded me of being in Ensenada, except the exhaust fumes in this city will kill you. We ate in some little place, some chezas or something--chicken, beef, and pork on a stick with French fries, and a couple of beers. It wasn't that great. We walked back along the crumbling streets across from the university to our shit-hole room. Ants were crawling all over our stuff so we wouldn't get homesick. We talked about going to El Pueblo, which is supposed to be a bunch of clubs, but decided to turn in instead. We woke up around seven. I walked around until I found an AM/PM donde se vende periodicos. I got the San Jose Times. Breakfast was served a little later than usual because it was Sunday. The tile floors were slick because of a little plumbing problem. They gave us coffee, juice, scrambled eggs, toast, rice, and beans. The portions in the country are not exactly overwhelming. I didn't realize it wasn't an all-you-can-eat affair until a Danish tourist informed me in an unmistakably bitchy tone that the senora was doing me a favor. Stupid American. We packed up and overpaid for our midget quarters and decided to try out luck at the Hotel Bienvenido. Eighteen dollars. The gal working the desk was very nice. She arranged for us to get a 4-wheel drive Hyundai with AC for the week for three hundred. They're going to bring it to us tomorrow at ten AM. We told her we were going to walk to the Plaza Cultural. She gave us a stern warning to take a cab back or risk being assaulted. We put our cash in safe. We walked the gray streets with a healthy dose of paranoia and stumbled into a decrepit slum, with whores calling out from doorways their prices for services at ten in the morning. "I think we could get a cheaper room here," I said. Ha ha. We finally found the plaza and the Teatro Nacional. The theater ain't much considering it's the country's national monument. We sat at on outdoor cafe at the Gran Hotel Costa Rica. I finally felt like I was on vacation in an exotic locale. I had a couple beers and Rochelle had a hot chocolate and watched pigeons dodge pedestrians. I vendor walked over playing a tune on a ceramic toucan, and I bought it. The nearby casino didn't tempt me at all. After about an hour we set out to find the fames/notorious Hotel Del Rey, a fisherman and whore hangout, with a casino and sports bar.

8/18-8/19/00 Volcanoes Risin' on the Horizon

8-19-00 2:45 PM Costa Rica Time Sa

I'm in a bar called Friday's, a facsimile of the chain back home. I been thinking all these things and start off with a dead sentence like that. For one thing, I'm trying to figure out how to think: in English or Spanish? If I were here in Costa Rica alone, I would become Costa Rican. I would think in Spanish, and I would be fearless. But with the wife here, pregnant no less, for her sake, I need to think in English, remain American, and be cautious. Odd. She's back in the room resting. The trip wore her out. I was tired, too, but now that we're here, I'm wired. I couldn't just jail myself in our room so soon after touching down so for the first time so far below the Tropic of Cancer. We took off from LA at 1:30 this morning, flew three hours to Houston and arrived 6:40 East Texas time. Then we had to wait around IAH three hours until nine thirty when we took off over the Gulf. A kid squawked behind us most of the trip, and his momma sang him songs, neither of which made for sleepy time in the stocks of a seat to which I was confined. I tried to content myself with looking out the window and writing in my notebook. Poor Rochelle was like a rag doll with her head lolling onto my shoulders and into my lap. I tried not to move around so as not to disturb her. I think she has reached a very emotional stage of pregnancy. She's quite clingy and affectionate. I feel distant, though. I want us to have a good time, but I'm not sure we share the same conception of what a good time is. We'll figure it out. I'm so not emotional except for in sudden intense bursts.

They had a slight hang-up with a malfunctioning Central American carousel in baggage claim, but they breezed through customs and were escorted to a waiting taxi by a pretty Tika with a clipboard. He had expected a vibrant place of florid colors, but the leaden sky grayed everything, even the obscenely orange cab. The hills did not seem green at all, but rather suffocated by the fumes on the road to San Jose. The driver made a few breathtaking, tailgating, lane-splitting passing maneuvers that burned the throat when the passengers gasped. J had at first asked to be taken to the Hotel Bienvenida, but when he asked for a recommendation between that and the D’Gaya, the driver said the D’Gaya was in a safer neighborhood, so j had him drop him and the wife there instead. They were not impressed with the accommodations nor the price. So far, Costa Rica was not living up to its “affordable paradise” billing.

 8-18?-00 11:15 AM Sa

I'm in the lavatory of Continental flight 1530 from Houston to San Jose, Costa Rica. We have just passed from the blue, cloud-dappled Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan Peninsula. I thought I better shove out a shit before we land. The steaming jungle seems to make its own clouds: the covered the land to the beach. The near opposite of a SoCal marine layer. I had trouble getting the paper liner to stay on the toilet seat long enough to undo my pants. There isn't a lot of room to maneuver. Plue, I had this journal and the Frommer's Costa Rica travel book in my hand. When the liner fell in, I just gave up and sat bare-assed on the seat. I will probably be dead soon because of it. My balls are itching already. I wiped well. We don't want any unnecessary discomfort walking around in the tropical humidity. We should be landing in another hour. We'll have to go through baggage claim and customs and exchange some money at the airport. I guess we better get a cab to San Jose. I think we'll try to stay at the Hotel Bienvenida. It's a converted movie palace. Or the Hotel Del Rey, where we can get a room with a balcony and where is located the "lively Blue Marlin Bar, popular with sports fans and prostitutes." Or maybe we'll stay at the D'galah across from the University of Costa Rica and which has a pool. Or the Toruma Youth Hostel? Touch choice. Once we have a room, I think we'll nap for a while before heading out in the late afternoon to explore, eat, and drink. I guess maybe we'll stay tomorrow night in San Jose, too. Monday, we'll either rent a car or take a bus to the beach. I guess we'll start on the Pacific side. This trip is going to be expensive. I need some Chapstick. Muddy rivers slither below. I should have given myself some clear objectives. Having a seven-months-pregnant woman for a travel partner is a sobers things a bit. She's already acting weird. Volcanic peaks rise on the horizon. I'm tired. I got maybe two hours of restless sleep last night. I hope everything goes well, and we don't spend too much. Fuck a duck, Chuck. Chingues un pato, Carlos. I need some sleep.

writers used to lead interesting lives but not anymore

 

8-15-00 Tu 10:55 AM

I’m at Wilshire Hill, in my room. I haven’t taught a lick today. The kids have just been writing definitions of their vocabulary words while I’ve read the newspaper. The cops assaulted innocent bystanders as they’re wont to do. I hope the LAPD gets the shit sued out of them. It ought to come out of the chief’s salary and the mayor’s pocketbook, motherfuckers. I don’t know why it matters to me.

I typed fifteen minutes this morning. Ho-hum. I’ve got to think about this tow truck encounter. I could use a shave. No me gusta ser Casado. Whatever. I can read some Pulp when I’m done here. What else? I wonder if we can leave Thursday night. Pbbt. I think I should be more influential. More of a mover and shaker. What’s Al Gore got that I haven’t got? A senator father. A non-shitty attitude. Whatever. I’m a writer with a bad attitude. My writing will only draw negative attention to myself. I’ve got to work on a third-person page when I get home. Tow truck troubles. Read some Pulp and do some ab exercises. Maybe go for a bike ride. Have some microwave lunch. Teach my night school class. Work on Jim. Watch “Magnolia.” Start all over again tomorrow. It’s sunny and humid. What else? What in the heck else? What on Earth else? I was reading or I heard some pundit saying that writers used to lead interesting lives but not anymore. Ain’t that the truth. Maybe it was Ferlinghetti. [color photo]. Here’s a photo from February, 2000, when my stepmother met her new daughter-in-law for the first time with a pillow stuffed under her shirt for a gag.

Sexual Freedom Made Them Uncomfortable

 

8-14-00 M 8:45 AM

Friday, I started drinking around two. I drank a bottle of merlot and typed. Then, I mopped the kitchen floor. I rewarded myself with a smoke of my fine, hand-rolled green and brown. Whatever. I made drinks with rum. I set up the War Room: put on a ballgame, put on Coltrane, turned on my computer. I finished Mailer on Miller. I might have written. Getoff came over. We sat in the backyard. I opened up the bottle of Jack that was in the cabinet over the stove. We smoked. I don’t know what we talked about. Thing came over. I think I talked about sexual freedom. I think I made them uncomfortable. Carlin came over. Rochelle came home. Eric came over. We sat around the backyard. I made margaritas. I got out the camcorder. Robin came over. Esther came over. Pretty soon Getoff left with Esther. Then Tom and Carlin left. Rochelle went to bed. On the couch. Then Robin and Eric left, and I went to bed. The next morning, I saw how drunk I was on the tape. Mostly my speech was slurred, but I said some lame stuff, and I think I was making people uncomfortable. Whatever. Rochelle and I went to the marina and splurged on brunch. When we got home, I noticed the floor I had mopped was filthy again. I think we slept a little. She did, anyway. I read the newspaper. Her mom called and said she was at Pico and Crenshaw. I didn’t know she was coming over. I did the dishes. Made the bed. Then Mary and Stew came over. All my in-laws were there. Almost. We made them tacos and margaritas. After dinner, Caroline went home. Rochelle, Mary, Steve and I played an excruciating game of Trivial Pursuit. The girls took forever to answer the questions, and they tipped each other off to the answers and fished for easy questions for themselves and hard ones for me. I acted like I didn’t care, and soon their attention spans were depleted, and the game deteriorated into nothing. Mary and Steve left for Vegas the next morning. I read the Sunday paper. Then we went to Yosemite Park in Eagle Rock for my baseball game, but the opposition didn’t have enough guys to field a team, and the game was forfeited to us.

 

8-11-00 5:40 PM F

I don’t care who has sex with who as long as the participants in question are all partaking of their own free will. ~~ What did the Buddha do about ants and flies? Let the crawl all over him and his food? He probably just moved. Thirteen pages to go in that R. L. Stevenson pablum. I think I’ll look up pablum. No, it’s definitely not pablum. I don’t know what I was thinking. I want to go to Naples. Where will the office go when we convert this room to a nursery? The dog romps in withered fig leaves. I think you have to wait until figs are dried to eat them. What’ll I read next? A Lardner short? Pulp? Proust? Hammett? Holbein? Big Sur? El Coronel tiene nadie que le escribe? That’s it. I’ll read that to Costa Rica and back. An excellent choice, sir, I must say. I haven’t been drawing much lately. Merlo doesn’t taste so good after you brush your teeth. Whatever happened to my trophies and scrap book? Butt-hole probably tossed them. [Color photograph, Shirelle Butler, Atlantis Paradise Resort and Casino Aquarium, Nassau, Bahamas, August, 1999] Here is a picture of Butthole. I almost didn’t bother with it. The vacuity. The shark coming up behind her. The subsurfaceness lack. The bikini. Yet the expression is guileless. Who can blame her? I thought of trying to draw it. That expression. It would have hurt me to try. I don’t fear the pain; I fear the healing. I dread the energy drain. Rochelle has a friend named Aweek who called. We’re supposed to go to some bar with them. I want to save my money to stalk game fish in Costa Rica. [ blue ink line sketch self-portrait with stepmother and wife]

 

Chemical Fumes

 8-10-00 Th 12:07 PM

It's almost time to go. My classroom reeks of chemical fumes. It's swelling my sinuses and giving me a headache. Plus, it's hot and sticky today. I read the newspaper. Amy said they were giving away free pizza in the cafeteria, so I ate a couple slices. I'll read the rest of Genius and Lust when I get home, and I'll lift weights. Then I'll write another thank-you note. I'll read more Stevenson. I'll do a third-person page. I'll read Cheever. Linens. All the same shit as yesterday. Ugh. I want some adventure. I want to live. I want to be the life of the party. Whatever. 1:17 PM Home now. In bed in my underwear spooning with the pup. The pup. The pup is channel surfing. Should I craft a libation? A little spirit?    I made cranberry and rum. We'll call it a Provincetown punch. The housework is mounting. I haven't even brushed my teeth yet today. Nor showered. The dog is chewing my toes. I have the attention span of a puppy.  Feels like limbo. Feel blind. I see trees and birds and sky, but I don't know what any of it means. It's the same as not seeing anything. I have no fever. I'm not going to slide anymore unless I hear someone yelling "Down!" My room needs a lot of work. I don't feel like a member in good standing. I feel apart from God's good grace. I'm unsure of my sin, though. The sin of caprice? He put on a chef show. He wondered if the finches and sparrows mistrusted each other. [color photo, teachers dancing for crowd of students, playground Pierce Avenue Elementary, Pacoima] I worked there from 93-97. I was a good teacher, but I vanished without a trace and some computer programs in my care vanished along with me. I stayed in touch with no one. I see Gordon Stan, Jackie what's-her-name, Greg Bennington, Gabriela Ramirez looks like she's farting.

8-9-00 Walking As I Write, the Palms Do a Hula

 8-9-00 W 1:07 PM

I'm walking home from school as I write. I'm on Olympic Blvd. I don't know what time it is because I haven't been able to find my watch the past two days, and the painter broke the clock in my room The bell rang at twelve twenty, and I figure I stayed after school about fifty minutes or so finishing the paper. It's sunny today with a florid breeze. I say florid because it's a little humid, and the breeze feels oceanic, and the palms are doing a little hula. When I get home, I'll make some chicken parmesan and some pasta and salad. I'll read Miller and do some bench presses. I'll write a third-person page and read some more RLS. I'll play guitar and work on Jim. I'll read a little Cheever and call my sister. I'll write a thank-you to Carlos and Kristie. I still haven't put the new brakes on my bike. Still need to mop the floor and change the linens. Need to launder the couch cover. I'm walking because I was too late leaving for work to ride my bike and had to ask Rochelle to take me in the car. I walked past the house that burned on the corner. Some people were out front. I asked if everyone was okay, and a man said yes. I asked if they knew how the fire started. The man [black and white photo, barren hill, Death Valley] said he didn't know, but he heard on the news that it was arson. I'm home now. This is a picture of some otherwordly barren bulge in Death Valley, March 1995, first day of spring.

No Soul to Search

 8-8-00 Tu 11:15 AM

I'm at Wilshire Hill. Back in room 33. They painted the walls and thrashed everything to do so. I'll be days getting everything back in order. I golfed nine holes at the three par with Ralph yesterday. We had three beers each at Noonan's. I typed fifteen minutes. Went to work. Broiled some filet mignon when I got home. Ate it with salad and apple sauce. Watched "Boys Don't Cry." A tense film. Well-acted. The lead, Swank, does a phenomenal job of making her transvestite character believable and sympathetic. I got up at seven. Took the dog out for a crap. Showered. Put on shorts and a pullover. Sneakers. Coffee. A little guitar. Biked it here. Got a paper. Gore had chosen, a Jewish gent, Lieberman for a running mate, I had some raw carrots for breakfast. When I get home, I'll finish the paper. Do a third-person page. Call GM. Call the credit union. Work out. Read Miller. Put brake shoes on my bike. Play with the dog. Work on Jim. Mop the kitchen floor. Change the bed sheets. Call Florelle. Call Kendoll. Go to work Return the videos. I'd like to get "The Hurricane" and "Magnolia." I need to mail Bern a check for one hundred fifty dollars. I saw a dead raccoon on Olympic. A house on the corner of my street caught on fire last night. I haven't read any Koran lately. I'm always so tired after our games on Sunday. Sirens and copters. What else? I have no soul to search. I sent out a search party for my soul, and it never came back. Wish I could find some as-yet undiscovered universal truth. I'll have a wee smoke when I get home. Maybe a wee drink, too. Maybe not. Have to find a dog sitter. [photograph of musician Josh Haden, Balboa Island party] A house sitter, too. Maybe Gabi would do it. Who knows? That's Josh Hayden, son of famed jazz bassist Charlie Hayden. I had a class on Joyce's Ulysses with him at UCI. It must have been 1988 or 1989. This is at Flor and Fanny's on Balboa Island.

Gay Sailors and Bitches Absconding with the Toilet Brush

 8-5-00 Sa 10:10 AM 

Got some seriously negative feelings today. Whatever. My writing is clogged. Fuck. I went to the batting cages with Gallos and Elmer yesterday. Then we went to Brennan's and shot some pool. When I came home, I made Rochelle dinner, fried catfish with tater tots and vegetables. Then I cleaned the kitchen. I'm the bitch in this relationship. I'm the bitch and she's the slob. God, am I stupid. It's funny how a life can become thoroughly fucked up because of a single instance of bad judgement. I don't remember if I wrote yesterday. I didn't go to the Bounty on Thursday. I taught my class. The coordinator of the program came in while I was looking at the newspaper and the kids were in groups. It didn't look good. She gave me a little constructive criticism, let's say. I got the students seated and began [color phote, wooded, alpine, Olympic valley, snow-topped peaks in background] a lesson. She said I was a good teacher before she left. I rode my bike home after class and read the rest of the paper. I made a run with orange, strawberry, and banana juice. I thought it should be called a Gay Sailor. View from Mt. Angeles, WA, looking south, June 1995. We watched "High Noon" this morning. You try to respect it even though it has become hackneyed and self-righteous. When I'm done here, I'll make some breakfast. Then I'll get a paper. I have to do down to Orange with Rochelle to take the pup to meet the cats to see if they'll get along so we can leave her there while we're in Costa Rica. She just now tried to abscond with the toilet brush to the backyard. Tonight is Florelle's party. We should get her a gift. I still have thankyous to send and ought to buy birthday cards for my sisters. Our game is at 12:30 tomorrow. I need to get a new journal.