What I Did on my Summer Vacation

I am not good at being bad at things. I whine and cry and quickly deem myself a failure at life in general simply because I cannot sew a straight seam or ace a tennis opponent or convince some nice boy to fall in love with me. Awful though these failures may feel I am sometimes able to turn one or two into enjoyable blog fodder, which on a good day serve as a comforting salve for my many emotional bruises. This tragedy to tall tale factory I've built is occasionally so successful as to inspire friends to wish disaster upon me "for the good of the blog." And so, I am sad to report that learning to surf in Costa Rica was not a tragedy (many scrapes and physical bruises notwithstanding). I stood on day one (nay HOUR 1) and got up twice on day two. Don’t get be wrong – I sucked (and days 3 and 4 brought nothing but pain as each wave picked me up and slammed me into the sand as if to say, “silly, pale, unathletic girl go back to your crafts and bloging and leave the xgames to the professionals.” ) but I didn’t end up beaten against the jagged rocks until I passed out and drown. It turns out that with surfing, as with so many other things, the key to success is setting a low bar. I did, however, make very good friends with one very special (and sharp) rock who will be featured in an upcoming winner parade post – he loved me so much that he chased me all over the ocean begging me to never leave him again, it was sweet for a while but eventually I felt smothered and had to end things and surfing was the unfortunate casualty of this doomed relationship – it’s so sad when the kids have to suffer.

But this is all drivel. You don’t come here for stories about surfing do you? So, while we’re on the topic of things that I am not good at let’s talk about boys. During week one in Costa Rica due to the pleasantly impermanent state of all decisions made while on vacation I was able to fully regress back to the teenagerhood I never had (it was not pretty, but was, of course, totally rad). There were many tequila shots and a bilingual game of “I Never” (“I never thought I’d be getting drunk with college boys at 29.”) and there was a hot Colombian boy named David (and here I must pause to mention that Colombia also brings us the awesome yumminess of arapeas, that plus hot boys makes it my new favorite country). The boy was very concerned with getting out the word that not all Colombians are drug mules. So here it is, The Word: Not all Colombians are coke pushers or warlords. Not even all of the 25 year old boys. Especially not the hot ones. Of course, cocaine isn’t my drug of choice anyway. I choose kissing to be hopelessly addicted to and the hot 25 year old Colombian boys seem to be pushing that commodity all over Latin America. The mere suggestion of kissing transforms me into a pathetic junkie willing to sink to the basest acts in pursuit of some sweet lip locking action. My friends, these are my sins:

• I did willingly pretend to enjoy cheap watery Costa Rica beer.

• Of my own volition I let slide more than one comment about how women need to be taken care of.

• Without coercion I went to reggae bars TWO NIGHTS IN A ROW.

I am very sorry, but in my defense, have I mentioned the hotness? What about the K-I-S-S-I-N-G ? In the end, though I am embarrassed, it was all so very very worth it.

By the end of our first evening together (or early the next morning) David was charmed enough by my bad Spanish (and perhaps a little bit by the tequila) to be all “Hi, I’m a former Olympic level swimming with an insanely hot body and a very cute smile, shall we make out?” Of course I responded, “Yes! Please! Preferably for the next 3 days straight!” Sadly, this is where we differed. For despite a blissful morning of relatively innocent drunken kissing when I saw Mr. David the next night I was forced to endure FOUR games of Rummikub with his boring stoner friends rather than get on with the awesome making out. Desperate, I even stooped so low as to suggest “going on a walk” which, EVERYONE knows is international code for “Let’s go make out!” Having this obvious bait summarily rejected (“Nah, let’s hang out and play some more Rummyikub, it’s like 5 million times better than kissing.”) I tried not to sulk – a difficult task when stoner boys are kicking your ass at a children’s game. Thankfully, even half drunk boys with poor prioritization skills eventually get bored making runs and sets of plastic tiles so off to the bar we went (“What? Oh Yeah, Reggae is great. CAN’T GET ENOUGH!!!”). Perhaps I should be kinder to Reggae, since once ensconced in its loud garbled embrace David ditched his friend and devoted all of his attention to the hot blonde girl (hi, me, overHERE) but for some reason rather than kissing we were discussing Colombian politics. At length. Ok, I like politics, and I like learning new things and David had tons of interesting things to say about the war and how much it sucks that he pretty much can’t travel to any other country since everyone from Colombia is obviously a drug lord but umm… don’t we have kissing to do?!?! It took at least another 30mins of Reggae soundtracked chit chat for the boy to work up to revealing the reason why we were still free of the lip lock: A crisis of conscious in the form of a girlfriend. Ok, I know I should care about his poor girlfriend and be suitably impressed with his (albeit slightly late) guilt but… REALLY? I’m only around for 3 days, we can’t just IGNORE the girlfriend? Come on, this is vacation, have a heart! Actually, as it turns out, we could ignore her; my offer to “not kiss you or anything” was quickly met with a big smooch – boys are weird, the world over.

Sadly, the weirdness didn’t go away on day 3. We spent the entire day together (with stoner friends in tow) on a mini tour of Toruga Island where there was hand holding and flirting and a lot of secret hidden touching (which sounds much more exciting then it actually was) but for reasons I have no ability to discern there was NO KISSING. That evening I endured yet another Reggae bar at the demands of my addiction but it was all to no avail. I don’t know what was wrong with the boy – this was no strings kissing I was offering, one night only, free, complication free – YOU ARE MISSING OUT ON THE DEAL OF A LIFETIME! Alas. I figured the story was over but when 3am rolled around and I drove the boy and his posse home God revealed his latest great joke at Brianna’s expense. As I got half way to their home the term “rainy season” was fully defined for me as a deluge poured from the sky onto the few miles of dirt road separating me from my mountain home. I waited and waited for the rain to end and in the meantime David passed out in his bed, eventually his cousin said that he didn’t think I should drive home in the downpour. The hilarity began anew when I asked where I should sleep, “With David.” Oh, right, with the guy who hasn’t kissed me all day because he’s having girlfriend guilt, I bet he’d LOVE it if I crawled into his bed. “Well, you can sleep with me I guess but you really should sleep with David.” And so I was forced to sleep (sleep only, who ever said chivalry was dead (or a good thing…))? with the hot swimmer – nice work if you can trick a boy into it.

Despite the boy weirdness week one in Costa Rica was not a tragedy. In my opinion there is no better way to spend a vacation than kissing a cute boy even if the boy in question refuses to get with the “all kissing all the time” program, even the promise of no strings kissing is enough for me to declare success (at one point on vacation I mused that fancy resorts should offer guests the chance to hook up with cute locals… then I realized we have that already, and it’s illegal.). And really, who can complain about a vacation in this house (which my travel companion’s friend at playacarmen.net hooked us up with for a song)? My regression to teenagerhood was all the things that my actual past was not (fun, not at all angsty, completely devoid of homework) and I can’t imagine that 10 years from now I’ll be on a therapist’s couch obsessing over any of any of it. However, it is comical to note that even while on vacation (even when in the throws of an ugly addiction) I am laughably predictable. I pick the boy who wants to talk politics and help with dinner. The boy who seems slightly lost among his stoner friends. The boy who can spend a whole night in bed with my hot ass and not once touch me (the boy who might be gay?). And, despite my bravado here regarding no strings vacation hook ups a little piece of my teenage heart (perhaps the last piece left in this wizened old 29 year old) crumpled when I said goodbye to David and he grinned and said, “It was a pleasure to sleep with you… in the other way.”