Gay Cruising in Downtown San José Costa Rica
Axel. Plaza Central. Halloween
I had been seeing Axel each night that I cruised Parque Central in San José, Costa Rica, and now, on Halloween night, he sat across from me, naked, on a bed inside of a simple hotel room two blocks away, where men like us came to do this to each other.
Before, tonight, Axel had never looked at me, even though he must have felt me looking at him. I had been warned about him. They told me that “este muchacho no se apunta,” meaning he doesn’t do sex for money. They told me that if he did go off with me it would be to rob me, and that I would regret it.
But it was the end of October, and the veil between this world we live in and whatever other unknown worlds exist, is the thinnest. Some believe we can communicate with dead ancestors but how this happens is never explained.
I heard once that attraction = desire + obstacle.
My attraction for what was behind Axel’s eyes and his skinny bruised up body was surely something from another one of these worlds because it made absolutely no sense in the one we shared here on planet earth, in 2024, in Downtown San José Costa Rica.
The obstacle was what Axel and I had been told about one another by people inside of this world. The warnings we had both received about what happened here in Parque Central, and why we shouldn’t do what we were doing.
When I first saw him this evening, he was below me. I was leaning on one of the 6 columns that held up an eclectic gazebo, or el kiosko, which sat in the middle of the plaza.
By this time of night it was quiet, the birds in the trees had stopped screeching , less cars were passing by, the only music was from a nearby cantina. Below the gazebo, there were concrete benches and small trees where the regular sketchy characters checked in with one another about whatever it was they were trying to accomplish here at this hour.
Axel was talking to another young guy. I stared closely at them assuming they wouldn’t look back, because guys like them never did.
Axel’s friend gave him a cigarette, he placed it above his ear, and then, for the first time, he turned around in my direction, and stared straight up at me.
It was at this moment when I realized that the veil between us, that had kept each of us in our respective corners, wasn’t present tonight. At first it made me so nervous that I forgot how pretty he was.
He began to walk up the stairs of el kiosko. I moved behind the column I was standing in front of. I told myself it was to be discreet, but really I was hiding. I hid behind the column, waiting for him to find me.
I could already feel consent being exchanged and I hoped for the courage to change course if I decided to back out.
He emerged from the other side of the column and spoke first.
“Hola,” he said, “I saw you with my friend Joshua last night.”
Read about Joshua at Squirt.org
“Sí, te recuerdo. Buenas noches.”
“Buenas noches.”
Suddenly a local man, muy age joined us staring straight at Axel. The three of us stood in a standstill not knowing how to proceed. Axel invited me to the other side of elkiosko to sit down, and we left the third guy standing where he was.
We took a seat on a pedestal on the side of el kiosko. A gargoyle, painted black, stood between us and we awkwardly adjusted ourselves so we could remain seated while we scoured one another for signs we could use to decide if we trusted each other enough to go to a hotel room and devour each other.
Neither of us was familiar with the script for our own reasons. We slowly led one another from a hard masculine indifference, to reveal that yes, both of us andamos apuntado.
“What do you want to do?” he asked me.
“I want you to get naked and suck me off.”
“And how much will you pay me?”
“5 frijoles.” 1 frijol = 1 bean = 1,000 colones = $2USD
“Vamos.” Lets go.
We bravely walked down the stairs of el kiosko. We felt the stares of all the characters in the plaza looking at us. What we were doing was changing the energy of the plaza. Both of us were untrusted elements, and yet we had decided to trust one another in this one intimate manner that not everybody in the plaza dared to do.
I was an unknown foreign newcomer. Axel had been around a while but for some reason, that I hadn’t learned yet, nobody trusted him.
There was a roughness to Axel’s face. He had light brown skin, like most guys from Costa Rica. His also had a red undertone to it, maybe from spending the day in the sun but probably from drinking beer, which I could smell on his breath along with cigarettes.
Drugs usually go hand in hand with these kids. Sorry . . . these men. I try my best not to use the word kid because these are men who I am talking about. But my obsession with them has been with me since my childhood. That I’m sure of. I’ve always wanted something from these guys. Something I never could pursue in my adolescence but something that I’ve found in men, young men, in my adult gay life.
Sex has emerged as the natural expression of this magnetism between me and guys like this. Guys with these eyes. Skinny rough guys unaware of their beauty and the advantages it gives them. They seem to prefer to fight for it or scare people off of what they are defending.
On our way to the hotel we passed by Luis, another guy from the plaza whom I had tricked with last week. Luis had permission from somebody to sell lollipops outside of a corner store.
I approached him to buy a lollipop and Axel stood back. I saw concern on Luis’ face. I asked him about Axel and he told me, in broken English;
“I don’t like. No is good man.”
I paid for my lollipop and went back to Axel.
“What did he tell you?” He asked me eagerly.
We just said hi to each other, that’s all. Both of us knew what Luis had said. Both of us were watching the other to see how Luis’ warning would affect what was about to happen.
Between Louis’ corner store and the hotel, each step we took was an act of resolving the warnings we had heard about each other, that we carried in our bones, which was happening before our eyes and what we felt in our intoxicated nerves.
On my side, I saw a scrawny beautiful street kid who lacked the strength to harm anybody. Sure he had the grit and the attitude to cause problems, but there wasn’t really much at steak. All the money I had on me I had already agreed to give him in exchange for his body.
We entered the hotel and again, Axel stood back and let me talk to the woman at the front desk. Two kids sat beside her watching tv on cellphones while the woman folded towels and asked me for 3000 colones for 1 hour.
“Chupamela.” I told him softly. This is a nice way to tell another person to begin sucking your cock. It is very useful in this world and I’m not aware of a similar translation in English.
To my surprise he obediently got on all fours and lowered his mouth onto my cock and began to do what he had agreed to do when we were up on top of el kiosko.
This was the moment when I realized I could trust him. The only scam he could have run at this point in the game would have been to not suck me off and still demand money. But that wasn’t happening.
I felt his lips on me as I ran my hand over his back and over his buttocks and down his slender legs.
I fondled his asscrack and brushed my finger over his greasy hole. I smelled my finger, closed my eyes, and felt my brain changing shape like when you smell a fine wine. Tension left my shoulders. I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him close to me.
He asked me if he could watch porno on my phone. The warnings from others were a distant whisper and I reached over to my pile of clothes to find it for him. We both retreated to opposite sides of the bed and leaned on our respective walls. Our legs curiously rubbed against one another. We touched the thick soft upper thighs with our feet and tickled our hairy balls with our toes.
Before I gave him my phone I took a picture of him. He heard the noise of the camera, and didn’t object.
“These are only for you.” He told me, softly, but I received the message sternly.
I gave him the phone and let him watch his porn while he jerked off. I studied everything he was doing for some clue as to why this scrappy street rat affected me so much.
I heard sounds of men fucking coming from my phone. I was expecting a screeching woman. I asked him what he was watching and saw him blush. The beginnings of a smile formed on his face for just a second before it was replaced with the hard stoic look he wore to the world. It was the only clothing he had not removed but it concealed nothing.
Our secret desires were bouncing off the walls, like echos, and we were powerless to prevent the other from seeing them. More frightening was the idea or the possibility that the other was able to understand, with ease, secrets that would remain a mystery to us well after this night was over.
He began to pose for me in positions I never would have requested. He lay down and lifted his legs up so that I could see his hole again. He flipped around onto all fours and put his ass into my face and giggled as I breathed him into my nose and exhaled so that I’d tickle him and watch the hairs on his asshole stand stubbornly still in the breeze.
We found ourselves back in our corners and jerked ourselves off as we watched one another. We passed the phone back and forth and took pictures of each other. We ejaculated onto our own bodies and cleaned ourselves off with the 1 towel that had been provided to us. We got dressed. We both sat at the edge of the bed with no wall beside it.
We looked into each other’s eyes. I took out my wallet. I counted out the 5,000 colones I had promised him and handed it to him. There is something about the act of paying for sex that is better than the sex itself. It is a mystery, just like most of what happened between these walls under the harsh light bulb that hung from the ceiling.
I would ponder these things for weeks while looking at the pictures we took of one another.
Give me a little more, he asked me. I looked into his eyes with the same fascination I looked into his hole less than 20 minutes ago. I gave him another 1000.
“Tu salgas primero.” He told me.
“Ok.”
I left without saying goodbye. The same way these guys walked away from each other after talking on the plaza.
I passed Luis on my way back to el kiosko.
“How did it go? Did he rob you?” He asked, from across the plaza, with his shoulders and his hands.
I gave him a thumbs up.
He looked surprised.
I flashed a devilish smile. And kept walking.
I climbed up the stairs of el kiosko and took a look at the creepy scene of Downtown San José at night.
I saw Axel walking down the street, after me. He was walking up to Luis. Luis didn’t see that he was coming. He was selling the lollipops to everybody that walked by.
Axel screamed something out, to Luis’ back. Luis turned his head around directly into Axel’s fist which reached out to punch him in the nose. Luis stood winded, trying to keep his balance.
Axel said nothing else. He took the 5 lollipops out of Luis’ hands, threw them across the plaza and then kept walking.
The End.
