Hey, that´s The Tico Times!

Moving on...


Is it true that I ate lunch in a brothel yesterday?

True.

I had heard that this place (which I will not name to protect, whoever) catered to prostitution, but I was asked to at least take a look at it for my story on popular American hangouts for the July 4 supplement I've been working tirelessly on.

(This commentary flips from past to present tense a lot, but I`m afraid you`ll have to bear with me)
The front of the restaurant/hotel looks like one of those mansions in well, you know, those kinds of movies. The security guard out front meets me with a wide grin and a handshake. This is not how I have ever been greeted at a sportsbar. The big, polished wood doors open, and there´s two young ladies in short skirts, hair done up and breasts popping out of their shirts, just standing in the hallway. I try to move past them ¨Con permiso...disculpame...¨ and they just stand there and smile at me, slowly moving to the side to let me through, and even as I´m passing, through the corner of my eye I see them sizing me up.

There is a big, bright main living area with a fountain, and down several smaller hallways are all these rooms with the same polished doors, each with a gold plate on it saying ¨PRESIDENTIAL SUITE¨ or ¨AMBASSADOR SUITE¨, the exact kind of name you´d give a room for a businessman with that kind of ego complex.

Past the big resting area (ooo, and whats that in the corner? Free internet! Thank God! The old man using it is getting to shop for...lingerie?) is the bar, which looks exactly like any dive bar in your crummy old hometown, with hats from all these football teams and universities on the wall (I did not see a UA cap; did see 2 Florida Gators caps), and it´s just a strange, dark add-on to the otherwise grandiose and bright hotel. There are maybe 6 men in the bar area. They are all old. They are all white. They all have briefcases, and are wearing a Hawaiian shirt or T-shirt with fish on it. Each one of them (and they know no Spanish at all) is flanked by a Costa Rican girl more or less just like the two I saw at the entrance. And they were melting on these guys for just...anything that would make them feel like some brilliant stallion from their good old days. And of course, ANYTHING works. One giggly, tubby fellow I took a distinct disliking to kept repeating little Spanish words as they came up. One girl was laughing and rubbing his arm while he said something like ¨See I´s learnin baby¨ oh eat it you bastard... Sorry. Anyway

The untaken girls sat at one end of the bar in a line, like the taxis in Parque Central waiting to pick someone up, talking in Spanish about their DAUGHTERS and then turning occassionally to smile and wink at one of the old men playing pool behind them. I sat at the opposite end of the bar eating my meal, already positive that I was not including this place in my story, and had to keep looking down because there wasn´t one second when those girls weren´t looking at me either, with this look like ¨Is that guy here for the chicken or...¨ and they brushed my shoulder when they walked past me and waved...and I ate my chicken like a good sonny boy.

I paid my bill, stood up as the change was coming and glanced over at the line one more time. They were frowning at me. Of course, I was frowning from the moment I arrived. Then I caught a cab offered by the restaurant to the main courthouse, which is near my office. The best thing about a place like that is no questions (though I struck up a funny conversation with the cabby about older gringos), so no one had to know why a gringo was leaving lunch to go to the court, and thus not know that I may or may not have been writing about them for a newspaper. Fortunately, I am only writing about them for you people.