Dancing On My Own

“Travis, you shouldn’t have walked here,” Mateo tells me with a worried look on his face. “San Jose is very dangerous at night and you look very foreign.”

We’re walking in San Jose at night while he tells me this, and I’m wondering if I’m understanding his Spanish correctly.

”Here? Unsafe? Now?” I sputter back in my elementary school Spanish, which hasn’t gotten much better despite traveling to mostly Spanish speaking countries over the last two and a half years. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering I haven’t studied or exerted any effort beyond simply existing in these countries, yet I’m continually disappointed each morning I’ve woken up in Costa Rica somehow still not fluent.

Mateo just nods and we continue walking towards the park he wants to show me, ignoring the unspecified dangers I now assume are lurking around every corner. He’s shorter than I am with clipped brown hair and the build and confidence of a boxer. I feel like he’ll defend my honor if we’re confronted, although having only met him earlier in the night I can’t be entirely sure.

“Travis,” he says, “what are you thinking about?” His brown eyes look at me with a mixture of concern and delight, not unlike the way I look at a carton of ice cream I’m certain I’ll eat in one sitting.

I’m thinking maybe I shouldn’t have strolled out of a bar with a man I don’t really know in a city I didn’t realize was dangerous in a country I’ve never been to. I’m also thinking I like the sound of my name spoken with his Spanish accent, his deep voice rolling the “r” and spiking the “i” - a pronunciation I remind myself I should mimic the next time I introduce myself in Spanish.

Trrraveese. Me llamo Trrraveeese.

I read once the sound of our own name is among the most pleasing sounds to our brain. This makes perfect sense because starting from birth, it’s probably the single combination of sounds we hear the most. Whatever your name is, you literally love to hear it. This is why sales people and politicians repeat your name when they’re trying to convince you your life is lacking whatever they’re offering.

A technique also used, it seems, by cute men in Costa Rica.

We arrive at the park and Mateo lights up as we make our way to a statue situated in its center. He waves his arms as he explains how the man cast in stone is a hero to Costa Ricans, at least that’s what I think he’s trying to convey. He could also be telling me how fun it was to storm the Capitol on January 6th.

Something something independence, something something fight?

Mateo works in finance but told me at the bar that he’s also a rapper, which could explain his fast-paced, staccato delivery and while he’s animatedly describing Costa Rican history, I am wondering if he will rap for me tonight. Not that I will understand much of it, unless of course he throws my name into a rhyme scheme.

Then I’m certain I’ll hear my favorite sounds.

---

Diego is my height, with round glasses and a mop of floppy hair which makes him look a bit like Harry Potter, if Harry Potter was Brazilian. He’s lived in Lisbon for two years and when he texts me the night after we first met to ask what I am doing, I tell him I’m sitting on a comfortable couch at a furniture store in an upscale mall, about to go see the new Beyonce movie.

“What theater?” he writes back in English, because while I’ve been in Portugal for almost two weeks, I’ve yet to pick up much Portuguese beyond obrigado.

We determine I’m only a couple blocks from his place and when he asks if I’d like company I say sure, even though I was perfectly happy to bask in the glory of the Renaissance tour alone. A few minutes later we meet in the theater’s lobby and as we wait in line to buy popcorn, he tells me he actually went to Beyonce’s concert in London.

“It was everything,” he says. “A dream.”

We find our seats and while commercials blare on the screen above us, I grill him for details on the show. Was Blue Ivy there? How close was he? Did it change his life?

He swipes through photos and videos from the night on his phone, most of which include him scream-singing along behind the camera, drowning out the actual concert. He confirms he got to see Blue join her mom on stage, he was feet from Beyonce and of course it changed his life. There are no words, in either English or Portuguese.

He sighs and I sigh with him and we look up at the screen, where a woman is discovering the magic of ordering dog food using an app on her phone.

---

A few days after meeting Mateo, I’m on a nature walking tour through San Jose with a group of fellow travelers. Other than the guide and myself, the average age in our group seems to be about 70, and everyone is dressed like they’re going on month-long jungle safari rather than an afternoon stroll through a couple of the city’s parks.

There are three pairs of binoculars between two British men who arrived separately but connected early over their shared passion for bird watching. Every time someone spots a feathered friend, they engage in a friendly competition to see who can identify it first using the “Birds of Costa Rica” book they have both brought. Not only are they not discouraged when neither of them correctly names a single bird over the three hour tour, they are genuinely delighted when one of them finds the species in their books.

”A red-winged spackled Wanger Banger,” they shout to no one in particular. “Brilliant!”

I came on this tour to see sloths, which were prominently featured on the website. This desire isn’t entirely mine; almost everyone I tell I’m traveling through Costa Rica demands to know if I’ll be seeing these slow-motion animals and I found myself feeling guilty if I leave here without at least attempting a sloth sighting.

At the start of the tour, the guide let us know the sloths might appear at the very end, if at all.

“I can’t guarantee they’ll be in the trees,” she explained, “because sloths don’t like people.”

I spend most of the time talking to two women from Illinois who came to Costa Rica to learn Spanish. They’ve been in an immersion program on the outskirts of San Jose for the week, and when they got out of their taxi at our meeting spot earlier, they greeted everyone with hearty holas!

I want to tell them I admire their bravery for traveling and learning a new language at their age, before I realize how condescending that would sound. I also remind myself I’m closer to their reality than our college-aged guide.

“Congrats on making it all the way here!” I imagine myself saying. “And at your age!”

After gathering for ten minutes to examine a bush containing a bird’s nest I most certainly would have walked past had the tour guide not pointed it out, we head to the next spot to gawk at another series of nests dangling from trees that will send the two bird watchers into a frenzy. On the way there, a man from Norway asks how long I’ll be traveling, a question for which I don’t really have an answer.

I ramble about being a digital nomad and filming a YouTube channel, tell him about my propensity to shed all my earthly belongings every two to three years and that I’m hopeful I’ll find a place to live soon.

“I meant how long are you staying in Costa Rica,” he says with the deadpan expression only natives from Nordic countries can truly master.

“Oh,” I mumble into the sidewalk in front of us, “just two weeks.”

We walk on in silence for a beat and I remind myself that while I might remain my favorite main character, most people could care less.

“Does it get lonely?” he asks in a way that sounds like my mother sent him across the Atlantic to pose this very question.

His words land somewhere between my heart and stomach and I want to make a joke or deflect, or perhaps go find my lady friends from the Midwest, where I’m certain I’ll be safe from having to talk about genuine feelings.

I consider telling him I like being alone, that I actually prefer it most days, or at least most hours of most days. But his stern gaze seems set on the truth, and I hear myself saying something I might not have admitted to my therapist.

“Yes,” I tell him. “It definitely gets lonely.”

“I thought so,” he responds. “Well, you always have the birds to keep you company.”

---

“I’m almost there,” Juan messages me. “I’ll share my location.”

A few seconds later, I see his blue dot appear on a map inside WhatsApp, the messaging platform the rest of the world outside the US uses to communicate. I watch as his dot moves farther and farther away from the restaurant in Buenos Aires we agreed we’d meet at ten minutes ago.

Juan is Venezuelan who has arrived in Argentina by way of Peru, where he lived for the last five years. He’s full of apologies when he finally makes it to the restaurant thirty minutes late; he’s still figuring out the busses and accidentally took a collectivo heading the wrong direction. I tell him not to worry, I’ve passed the time talking to my brother back in the States.

Over pizza, Juan tells me the story of how he left Venezuela, how his country’s crisis scattered him and most of his friends around the Americas. His Spanish is fast but to my surprise, I’m gathering most of what he’s saying, even if I have to ask him to repeat himself a couple of times. Maybe merely existing in Spanish speaking countries is starting to work, I think. My high school Spanish teacher would be so proud! I wonder if she’s on Facebook. I wonder if she’s still alive?

When my attention eventually drifts back to the conversation, Juan is explaining how his father recently passed away in Venezuela, and how he had to choose between going home for the funeral or making the move to Argentina. He ultimately chose Argentina, a decision he thinks his Dad would have approved of.

I tell him I’m sorry he had to make any of those decisions while silently congratulating myself on my comprehension, before realizing how profoundly self-absorbed I can be in multiple languages. Ok, my Spanish teacher might not be so proud of this.

---

It’s one in the morning and the club has just opened. I’m there by myself, having left a cocktail crawl whose organizer recommend I check out the gay spot around the corner, tastefully named Club 69.

The crowd waiting outside spills onto the street and you can tell every man there is gay because there’s not a sleeve in sight. Drag queens are milling around and I’m reminded again how much I enjoy the company of my people, especially in large numbers. When we feel safe, we can’t help being our ridiculously joyful selves; we shine so brightly the body glitter seems almost redundant, although there will always be glitter.

I make my way inside and find a huge warehouse packed to the rafters despite having opened less than ten minutes prior. There’s a DJ on the stage, flanked by a rotating cast of shiny go-go boys and towering drag queens who appear from behind the curtain to dance until they get bored or want to say hi to a friend they see in the crowd. When they wander off, they’re quickly replaced by another equally beautiful and entertaining body, happy to be the center of attention.

I get a drink and head to the dance floor, carried along by the crowd like I’m on one of those moving walkways at the airport, only this airport has a drag queen dressed up like Ariel dancing with an inflatable raft in the shape of a seashell while a go-go boy with wings gyrates on the other end.

Planted in the middle of the room and surrounded by a sea of bare arms waving in the neon lights, I find myself dancing like no one is watching, because they’re not. It seems everyone is here to sway and shake along to the beat, to see a piece of themselves reflected in the light bouncing off the queen spinning around on a pole above us, resplendent and relaxed.

I might have felt lonely recently but in this moment I’m reminded I’m not alone, that none of us are.

I stay until the Under the Sea themed drag show is over and then look for the exit, tired and sweaty but filled with a new sense of calm. I deposit my empty glass on the bar and head out the door, finding my way home through the crowded streets.