“The history of writing is that writers are doing something bad while they are writing. They drink, they smoke, they do something bad while they are in the process of writing. That is to punch themselves for playing God.”
-Fran Liebowitz
I’ve heard that the death of any movement is when it becomes self-conscious. We fucking killed it. To put my recent thirty-day Costa Rican drinking binge in context, anyone who knows me well understands that I’m not really a partier in the States – a happy hour here and there and an occasional big Saturday night there, but my train-wreck days are safely behind me. I talk a good game and people tell me I’m holding a beer, if not two, in every one of my pictures on Facebook, but believe me these days I’m on the boring side of the spectrum. But I drank a lot in Costa Rica. I mean a lot a lot. I blame it 100% on Pistol Pete, Reilly, Uri, Junior Gong, and even Pinta the Dog. Especially Pinta the Dog. They were horrible influences on me – urging me at all hours of the day and night to ingest alcoholic beverages at an alarming rate. No matter if I was trying to get a good work out in, hack away at my writing, or save nuns from a burning church, their level of disregard for my health and safety was quite shocking, exposing their sole agenda of having a deliciously inebriated road dog to yell inappropriate propositions at people in Spanglish, dance funny, and deliver a steady monologue of genius humorisms. For this I thank them, and call them true friends. Especially Pinta the Dog.
It started at dawn every morning. No matter what time I went to bed, which was an average of 3 am, I awoke at dawn. This wasn’t because I’m some sort of farmer, in fact I haven’t been back to the farm since the “accident”, nor that I was doing meditation or yoga or that I was taking a spiritual inventory. No, actually the window in my room was facing East and as the sky warmed from purple to orange up above the mountains it was impossible to sleep. That and Pistol Pete was always roaming about at ungodly hours. He often came in our room at exactly 4:20 am in a cloud of earthy smoke, ready to get the day started with his version of “Costa Rican coffee.” That and Pinta needed to go out.
I ignored Pete’s 5am banter about the geo-political implications of free trade with China (Pistol is a smart cat) and started to brew the real Costa Rican coffee. I love me a Cup-O-Joe in the mornings, and I must admit one of my guiltiest pleasures (and there were a lot) in Costa Rica was enjoying the coffee every morning along with a double shot of Baileys. My headphones went on with Lil Wayne or Sister Nancy serenading me, drowning out Pistol’s rant about the monetization of the Central American education system. I would sit at the big wooden table in the apartment with steaming sweet brew, a view of the hills leading out over the ocean to see the sails of boats, a slight breeze stirring the room, Pinta the Dog curled up at my feet, and write. It was perfect freedom to just let my mind spew on the page for the first time in 10 years. Fucking heaven. If my day consisted of nothing but this I would be a very happy man. For a brief moment I shared nirvana with Hemingway, Miller, Kerouac, Burroughs, the other Burroughs, Sedaris, Hesse, and the indefatigable Bukowski. If my life consists of more days like this I will consider myself lucky as hell.
This was my precious time, because once the other troops stirred it would be harder to concentrate on my writing. Everyone collected in the living room and recounted the victories and defeats from the night before. Around 9am we would all jump in Pistol’s jet black Trailblazer and roll through the dirt streets towards the Daria Hotel, looking like an armored security vehicle holding Hugo Chavez.
At the Daria we would march directly to the bar. We looked like the cast of Entourage hitting Ari’s office, only slower and fatter and balding or with gray hair. OK forget it – that just sounds pathetic. Pistol and I plugged in our laptops. Sometimes we got a few more hours of work or writing done, sometimes it was only a few minutes until we would be distracted and the productive portion of our day abruptly ended. We called it “Fighting the good fight” – seeing how long we could last every morning before the serious drinking started in earnest. If we are on the pool side of the Daria, by the condos, sitting at the poolside bar under a thatched roof, we would start with a vodka and lemonade to combat the heat. After two or three of those we might switch to Mai Thais. However if we were at the ocean front bar by the restaurant I would begin my day with a Bloody Mary or Pina Colada. Usually by 11am we were good and sauced up and going full throttle.
Pistol likes partying during the day, going strong until after dinner and then conking out for his requisite 3-4 hours of sleep a night. I realized that this was a smart move because nothing wholesome happens after 10pm in Tamarindo and the bar scene gets damn dangerous and crazy, especially when you live there.
The day had infinite possibilities – like a mathematician tracking the probabilities of the paths of broken glass shards if we smashed a disco ball. It always started in the same seats or by the pool at the Daria, but from there our universe shot like a lightning bolt into a million fragments of possibilities. Fast forward four hours and we might be opening up a strip club with a dirt floor and a hole in the ground for a urinal, the manager ushering all the half asleep and pissed off ladies in there so we can have some eye candy while drinking out .80 cent warm beers. What fucking pigs. It would be hours until they realized that we were cheap bastards and go back to sleep until the sunburnt ranchers armed with machetes, and Nicaraguans showed up later in the day. Pegeyaguas. Or we might be up in Liberia smoking bong hits across from the police station visiting the Great Fabio. Perhaps we’d end up at the super-fancy Marriot, comatose from guzzling twenty-two $17 Mai Thais, peeing in their pool and wrecking their thousand dollar topiaries and buffet tables by diving into them catching a football. Only by the grace of God and the fact that Carlos Tookie (the INVENTOR of “tookie”) was the head bartender did we not end up thrown out on our arses by a couple of ultra-Chrisitan Marriot goons in black suits on earpieces operating on direct orders from Pat Robertson. Possibly we would be hiding out at Que Tuanis off the dirt road past Villarreal, laying low from some trouble we caused in town or an angry Tica girlfriend. We shared the outdoor bar with Martin, the burly but mellow bartender, and poisonous frogs, tarantulas, langostas, and mosquitos the size of eagles, but usually no other patrons. We drank Flor de Cane with ginger ale and ate huge plates of rice with seafood. The point is that the possibilities were endless – like spinning the wheel and seeing what prize we won.
Pistol’s drink of choice was “Flor de cane con gin en un vasso pequino.” Flor de Cane is a brown Nicaraguan rum, that we drunk with ginger ale in a small glass. Always a small whiskey glass instead of a thin cocktail glass because we ain’t bitches. There was a delicious ceremony to the ordering and ingestation of this drink. It would come in separate parts, like building blocks that needed to be assembled. First came the small glass, then the ice cubs hand-plucked from a bucket, then pouring Flor de Cane from the bottle into a shot glass, which is dumped into the glass, then a separate thick glass bottle of ginger ale is opened. We mix all of them together and take a sip. Inevitably the first taste, the first life-giving introduction of alcohol and bloodstream, is strong. It makes you lips curl and proclaim “Ay Dios mio,” because I am angry at myself that I only “fought the good fight” until 11am that morning and I wanted to get more writing done. After the first sip we would push our glass back towards the bartender and ask for “un poquito mas Flor de Cane mi amigo?” He would tip the bottle into a long pour in a short glass that topped off our drink with twice the normal alcohol, like he did every morning. Even if he poured us a double to begin with we’d ask for more. Three or four of those and Pete would whistle while he drove, straight as an arrow back into town.
Other than that there was a rough pattern to our partying. If you followed us through high-speed photography over the last 30 days it would look five squirrels on Meth getting ready for the winter. Mondays, and the default bar when nothing else was going on, was Pacificos in the beach. It was a little grimey and a lot dangerous; the last night I was there a local jerry-curled coke dealer got in my face and wanted to bust me apart because I was hanging out with a local gal who was an attorney, a big shot in town, and he was jealous. Pistol, Reilly, and I usually hung out right by the front door while Junior Gong fearlessly mingled with British pro surfer chics on the dance floor. Wednesday nights were at Voodoo lounge, probably my favorite spot because of the huge open courtyard and the mix of a live salsa band, fire jugglers, and reggae. Friday was at Monkey Bar, but I never went there because you had to climb a thousand steps to get to the front door and I’m too old for that shit. Sundays was football and barbecue ribs at Longboards. Breakfasts or mid-afternoon drinks were at Witch’s Rock. I was sweet on the bartender so over-tipped just to get her attention at such a furious rate that it threatened to throw the Central American monetary system out of whack. If we wanted a break from the craziness and a classier show then we’d hang out at Bar One, a beautiful Miami-style sushi bar with flowing curtains and a view looking over the town. The roadside Soda in Villarreal gave us our fix of local life sans the tourist scene, as we drank cheap beers and ate horse sausage bocas and tried not to make eye contact with the Columbians.
And then there was favorite Italian restaurant in Tamarindo, Florenza. We stumbled upon it one night three turns off the main paved road, which is so lost in a small surf town that it may as well been hidden in a bunker in the jungle. It was owned by two brothers straight from Italy, a thin womanizer in tight white pants and his fat smiling friend. These guys couldn’t have been nicer, and the meal was incredible. The fat friend seemed to have a horrible spell of allergies that night, leaving him very hyper and with a runny nose with white remnants around his nostrils. We befriended these guys, which was good for the soul but difficult for the gut. The antipasto and homemade lasagna was nothing short of amazing, but after a four course meal and a bottle of wine each they pulled out the heavy artillery that would even make Musollini envious – Lemoncello shots and a bottle of chilled Sambuka. “Senor Sambuka” as we dubbed him, forced shot after shot on us at a ridiculous pace. We choked them down again and again while managing not to power yak three pounds of undigested pasta on each other. It got so bad that we would all raise our shot glasses to toast his good health and then when he wasn’t looking throw the contents right over our shoulders into the bushes. Salud! I love those guys!
But my happy place? Caracollas by the beach in the roundabout. A cat from Connecticut owns it, a guy named Greg that went to school with Reilly, but I never got to meet him because he was out of town. Small world. I heard he has a big mouth and is quick to scrap. Yup, that sounds about right for Connecticut, my home state. Caracollas wasn’t a party spot but a great place to chill, sitting on wicker chairs under an overhang while chatting with FoFo, the shopkeeper, fans blowing to beat the afternoon heat, and drinking orange Fantas or ice cold Imperials while eating fish tacos. Their fish tacos were huge with cabbage, tons of guacamole, hot salsa, and fresh grilled fish perfectly browned. They were nothing short of majestic, and when I am served my last meal on death row I am certain to request a fish taco from Caracollas.
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