“the room looked like the site of some disastrous zoological experiment involving whiskey and gorillas.” hunter thompson.

new years eve - by midnight every flat surface in my apartment is covered with green cans and empty plates. the floor is a sticky sancocho of spilled beer, rum, and pineapple cake. smoke fills the air making it hard to breath.

i’m still vaguely haunted by a reader’s suggestion that it’s better to get anal from a gay escort than spend new years with my Panamanian family. here’s this dutch wretch watching flights depart everyday for tropical panama, yet he’s never dared hop aboard.

i want to be his hero again. i want to give him hope. i want to run naked through the Cristal Moon with nothing but a gold card stapled to my penis. but any concern i have quickly fades as alberto passes me a fresh heineken.

“no, como asi - asi,” Alberto says.

he takes the churuca from my sweaty hands and demonstrates the rayando coco for the fifth time tonight. he’s swinging his hips to the salsa beat. the girls, his sisters and their girl friends, all dance in the middle of the room, save yamileth who sits on the balcony laughing like an insane hyena.

i take the churuca back. tonight’s going to be different. tonight i will show everyone that the white man can handle the tropical beat. not for that desperate monkey in Holland, but for rhythmically challenged gringos all over the world.

some of the guests are having their way with the ham. they hack at it with machetes, and spear the meat with the tips. over the gran combo’s “piruli,” mama starts telling me about the bejuco de tula tree. that’s where the gourd for my churuca comes from.

“no puede comer.” she says.

you can’t eat it. so these devils dry it out, then use it to create instruments. it’s the dried seeds inside that make the satisfying churuca sound. mama tells me back in the day they also used these gourds as canteens to carry water.

times are more civilized now. tonight we have cold beer. Alberto snaps the tab off a can, then another. he tells me the little tab is worth more than the can itself. its made from a different kind of metal. the kind used in dentistry. and the poorer natives collect and sell them by the pound.

i finish the rest of my can, trying to blot out the horrible image of a campesino with Heineken tabs for front teeth. just then our neighbor shuffles out wearing only a white towel. he drops a long string of fireworks into the parking lot below.

we all watch as they explode, more smoke fills the room, then el gordo ducks inside as all the car alarms go off. further up the street a couple of natives are torching a muneco. it’s packed with explosives and quickly becomes a fiery ghoul.

it’s almost 3am. i am standing on the balcony feeling vaugely amused when i get a sense that something bad’s about to happen. i just make it to the bathroom when my mouth opens up like a boa.

it unhinges, like you see on the discovery channel, and something erupts from deep within. alex comes in. she looks worried. down here when caciques die the family must ingest poison. if they decline their souls are sold to the devil.

alex is afraid of the devil. so she helps me to the bed. and that’s how i begin the new year in panama, drunk, listening to the chusma, and watching the room swirl.

Please Bookmark: