Lord knows, Maribel Ortiz has never asked much of this world. Yet here she is, back in La Chorrera, back where it all started. It’s all so dirty, so low, so final. So many gringos have passed through her bed. So many promises.

Every morning Mari leaves the room she shares with her sisters, takes a cold shower, makes her mom breakfast, then looks out the window to see what she will need to wear. Today the skies are dark, and fat drops are flying into rusty metal buildings, turning the street outside into a milkshake of mud and water.

Inside, Mari’s eyes are wet with tears. Her sisters say Mari has been crying a lot lately. Ever since she’s come back to her past life. Ever since her boyfriend “abandoned” her.

Mornings are the worst. These are the moments when La Chorrera, a forgettable little city on the other side of the Panama Canal, feels like it could be the end of the line.

“If this is what Dios wants for me, then … ”

She buries her smooth dark face in her hands, her voice becomes a whisper. People don’t believe Mari when she tells them she’s over 40 and never married. She’s still beautiful, and this morning she’s wearing new Reeboks, jeans and a tight black top, gifts from a lover.

“I ashamed to be alone,” she says.

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When I first started coming to Panama I’d often hear gringos lament the lack of quality music. “It’s all so primitive,” or “It all sounds the same,” they’d sniff.

Normally I despise this kind of cultural hubris. But they had a point. You can only listen to the accordion for so long before you want to hack your ears off with a rusty machete.

Good news. These days there are several excellent accordion-free musicians plying their trade in Panama. For example, Panamanian Rocker Cienfue, aka Camilo Navarro, has made the rotation at MTV. He’s also garnered several local awards for his music.

Ok, that may not be saying a whole lot. MTV’s unwatchable, and in Panama they give out awards like pedophiles hand out duros. Still, I think Cienfue’s creating some of the most interesting music coming out of Panama today. And I say this, knowing his fine song “Mi Colombiana” is a condemnation of the sex trade, something I celebrate like a 3 day erection. read more»

Peering through the locked windows of the Arizona Addiction and Recovery Center while rolling a fat blunt and waiting for a call back from one of my favorite phone sex operators, it hits me that if I’m going to start fresh there are some things for which I need to atone.

Once, while sitting in Manolos waiting for my sancocho to arrive, I got bored and began counting ants. The ants were getting stuck on the dirty table top making it easy to get an accurate count. On my way out I smugly informed my waitress there were exactly 11 ants on my table.

It wasn’t until after I got home I realized I’d added 2 flies and 1 silverfish into my calculation, thus inflating the number of ants I’d claimed were stuck to my table. I would like to apologize to my waitress and the owners of Manolos for any confusion or embarrassment my remarks may have caused.

Another time, I flippantly told my girl baked plantain looked like monkey penis. I understand now this was culturally insensitive. I would like to publicly apologize to Panama’s plantain growers, and my girlfriend’s brother, who, it turns out, needed a monkey penis transplant after he was attacked by a vengeful Colombiana.

Speaking of Colombians. read more»