Love Costa Rica Style

I was in Joe B and Karen’s bar during the Halloween weekend festivities along with a good friend who also happens to be a working girl. The place was jumping, packed, with some nice costumes, most of them pretty sexy, I’d have to say.

When we got there, there was no place to sit, at first, so we mingled, chatted with friends and acquaintances. After a while a couple of seats at the bar in the corner became available, so we grabbed our opportunity and sat down to enjoy our beers. I don’t know how long we sat there, but at one point I noticed a couple of young ladies walk in the door, somewhat hesitantly, it seemed. One of them really caught my attention. It wasn’t that she was in some outrageous costume that bared a lot of skin, or that she was amazingly sexy, she was simply very pretty and unassuming in a way that you don’t often see in the gringo bars. She had a friend with her, but I didn’t pay her much attention. My guess was that they were there to meet up with boyfriends or something.

In any case, they ended up sitting just a seat or two away from my lady friend. My lady friend is very much the extrovert and also bisexual, so she, like me, found the girls interesting and struck up a bit of a conversation with them. Well, wonder of wonders, they were not there to meet boyfriends, but were taking a tentative step toward joining the ranks of the working girls of Costa Rica. My lady friend, unlike the two newcomers, looks and dresses the part, so they asked her a few questions about the biz and how to get started, what to do, things like that. They didn’t talk all that long, but when my friend came back she told me why they were there. Well, one of them definitely interested me, so I asked my lady friend to get a phone number for me and she, being the open minded pro and good friend that she is, did that for me.

For assorted reasons I didn’t call for a few weeks, but one afternoon I decided to give it a try. The call went direct to voice mail, so I left a message that essentially explained who I was, how I got the number and leaving my number if she (whichever of the two I was calling) wanted to get together. Well a day passed with no call back, so I had pretty much forgotten the whole thing when I got a phone call from one of the girls, and yes, she was interested in meeting me. A few innocent sounding questions from me determined that she wasn’t the really pretty one, but what I remembered of the other one was that she wasn’t bad, and was worth checking out. Fast forward a little and we have arranged a date for a week night. She lives about an hour away from San Jose and is taking the bus into town. After a few delays, she finally calls me from the bus station and we figure out a place to meet up. She asks me if I have a friend for her friend, because her friend (the pretty one) was with her. I made a couple of quick phone calls and an email but none of my friends whom I considered suitable was available, so I decided we’d just do a little bar crawling and probably find somebody for the pretty one.

Our first stop was Harry’s Poás. The place was about half full, with a handful of working girls and one gringo I know who I thought would be interested in the pretty one. I would have rather snagged her myself but I had already sort-of committed myself to the other one since she was the one I set the date up with. We sat at the center bar/table and the prettier one, whom we’ll call ‘K’ sat next to him, then my girl, ‘J,’ then me. My gringo friend speaks good Spanish and he chatted with K while I sat next to K, running through the usual small talk. We spent about two beers worth there and the girls were ready to try another place. At the request of ‘J’ I asked my gringo friend if he wanted the ‘company’ of J, and he said he was interested, but he’d had too much to drink and would prefer to just get her telephone number and see her when he was in better shape. Okay fine, she gave him her # and we went to Papi’s for another trago.

This time I was a bit more clever about the seating arrangements, and I was able to put K between myself and J. By this time J had asked me if I was going to partake of her company, and I told her yes, since I had set it up and she was reasonably appealing, although not nearly as much as K. The conversation turned to the business of ‘pay for play’ and as they were both new to it, there was a lot they didn’t know. The first question that came up, naturally, was how much should they charge. Not surprisingly, they had heard the standard bit about $100, which I explained was NOT the going rate except for the top tier girls at the Del Rey and a few other places.

I explained about how the gringos who frequented the ‘B’ level bars such as the Poás and Papi’s weren’t going to pay $100 barring a miracle of some sort. There was one drunk chica there, working, and I used her for an example. She, unlike my two companions, knew the drill. She spotted the obvious (potential) ‘client’ and was over flirting with him before you could say ‘gallo pinto.’ I told them that the girl would probably get between $20 to $40, more likely $40 but I knew she would go for less if the gringo was cheap, which is a common trait among the patrons of the less posh gringo bars.

They knew about the Del Rey, but not really about the Key Largo. I tried to explain why the girls there asked (and usually got) more money, and why every working girl didn’t try to work there and earn $100 a pop. I suggested we go over and take a look, just to do a recon mission. They were a little hesitant at first but my power of persuasion did the trick and we went over and sat at a table for maybe 15 minutes, observing and me commenting on the way the girls there dressed, all the silicon, the attitudes, and on and on.

We left and headed back to my apartment. I had already committed to J, but was still interested in K, so despite the fact that I generally don’t much care for the 2 on one bit, I suggested that if K wanted to join J and I, she could if she wanted to (and get paid, naturally). Well, since she hadn’t had any luck finding an able gringo on that Tuesday night, and maybe because we had gotten to know each other a little, she agreed.

What happened next is beyond the limits of what I’m allowed to discuss on my blog because due to restrictions placed by advertisers, but if you aren’t the kind of person to BLUSH (get it?) I will post a more explicit account of what happened in the next hour or so. I will simply say that the experience seemed to be satisfying for all concerned.

I’m used to giving tours to gringo men explaining the scene, but it was a bit of a novelty explaining the biz to a couple of newbie girls. I had a pretty good time and time will tell if I see more of either or both of them. But whether I do or not, adventure is always just around the corner in San Jose. It may be funky in a lot of ways, but no question it can be fun.

And fun is always… well.. fun, right?