Tourist

It's different when you're a tourist. When you're a tourist the place welcomes you with open arms. "Hola, bienviendos chica, ah linda". When you are a tourist the young men beckon with abandon, there are no consequences or responsibilities. The warm wind blowing off the land leads you to the ocean, to the swaying of the palms, planted just for your pleasure. The tourists gather at the beach stripped of their clothing and inhibitions covered in sun-block and sand. The sea promises to hold them in it's gentle embrace to wash away their worries. The touristas are beautiful, admired, happy. Sun burns away their worries, browns their skins and covers the ashes of their former lives with it's brown stain, behind their sunglasses they are superstars.

Or so it should be. Or so it appears. And for many it is true. They've left their former selves behind, they are going to have fun damn it, they paid for it, and if the sun and sand can't create joy there is always alcohol or drugs. But when they go home they will have had a good time. And whatever they did it doesn't matter because they did it on vacation, it was separate from their real lives, no one will know if they fucked the short but cute bartender on the beach in front of the hotel, or took some free coke from the taxi driver on the way to the hotel and can't remember the details of the next day or so.

Perhaps Costa Rican think that all gringos are essentially sex maniac drug fiends because they only judge from the tourists and from the surfers who moved here because they can stay stoned between catching waves.

It's different when you live here. It's different when you have kids here, when everywhere you go you see someone you know. Any action you do can and will be known by everyone minutes after it happens, and your kids will hear. And maybe if you really admitted it, if I really admitted it, it's different for me because I just can't let go. I don't want to lose control, the idea of being out of control scares me - consequences if only those I inflict upon myself haunt me.

My ex is outside my office singing in the restaurant. Dock of the Bay "Sittin' here resting my bones And this loneliness won't leave me alone, It's two thousand miles I roamed Just to make this dock my home" I understand. The loneliness of being so far from my friends and so close to so many other people I don't care about doesn't leave me. Ah he's finally stopped singing that one. Now it's Margaritaville "some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I think perhaps it's my own damn fault." It could have been, it should have been better than this. I have the perfect temperament for fidelity and loyalty. I would have stayed with him no matter what. I didn't realise that the crashing of the waves doesn't just seduce the tourists. It seduced him too, he went into vacation mode, he was going to do better than me, one of the beautiful bikinis would be his. And they were.

In the lush green light I don't feel more beautiful. I feel inadequate and unworthy. And in the practised compliments of the young men I feel only the shallow emptiness of my own longing.

My ex made me cry again. Shit I swore he would never make me do that again. I walked to the bar. I wanted a drink. I wanted to drink until I was smiling like an idiot. I don't have to drive home, my mom is going to pick me up. I stand at the bar. Donald says "Quiere tomar?" Do you want a drink? I want to drink. I want to be drunk. I want to be alone in a room crying. I want to laugh, smile. I want to block out the sound of my ex singing sad songs in a sad voice. I had some tequila 2 weeks ago, two shots at the hotel. The first free by the owner who wanted to see me drunk, everyone wants to see me drunk as if I will become some other person a happy tourist instead of the sad frustrated owner of a business which I care about less than I've ever cared about a business I've owned. A business that is run not by me but by my manager who won't quit, even when I fired her. She just pretended I'd said nothing. And thus I had.

I start to order, start to point at a drink and then I stop. I stop because I know. Because tomorrow my kids will be told their mom is drinking at work now,because I'm not a tourist, because I'm me. Because when it comes down to it I want my privacy more than I want fun. I want to maintain my dignity more than I want to make a fool out of myself.

I want to go somewhere else, somewhere as a tourist. I want to be serenaded by the sound of the waves, I want to listen to a lounge singer I wasn't married to sing songs about love and longing. I want to order a drink from the bar without starting a reputation as an alcoholic.