The first night I was in San Juan Del Sur, we were at the bar for Maura’s birthday party. It was getting late-ish, most of the gringos had already disappeared and now the Nicas were also starting to thin out. Ian and I were still holding down our corner of the bar, Ezra had snuck off back to the house to pass out in one of the hammocks, and Nicole had long since left us to do some god-awful “sweet shots” with the girls. These consisted of a shot of one sweet liqueur, like bailey’s, combined with a shot of another, different sweet liqueur, which in my mind meant that any person partaking in very many of these would be heading straight for hangovers-ville. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.

Ian and I were idly chatting away about his various concepts regarding how to actually make money while living here and surfing all the time, when we were joined by a very drunk boomer-age fellow by the name of David, who opened a new conversation by way of asking us both if he could ask us an embarrassing question. After we said “sure”, he seemed to lose either his confidence or his train of thought, instead explaining to us that he was “as gay as 16 balloons”, which I took, by way of his delivery, to mean “extremely gay”. He never got around specifically to this embarrassing question of his, but Ian and I had no trouble figuring out what he meant to ask us. He was wondering if we were a couple. We took the conversation in stride, the both of us somewhat used to this line of inquiry from complete strangers. I don’t think that we ever specifically told him otherwise, but I also don’t think it mattered. He didn’t seem to be trying to pick up on either or both of us, but instead it appeared that he just wanted to chat about the experience of being an older gay man living in a small fishing village on the southwestern end of Nicaragua, to company that was at the least nonjudgmental and open to hearing about such things, and at the most appreciative of the stories he had to tell. At some point in this exchange, a younger local named Nester, also very gay, came by to say hi to David and Ian. By way of introducing me, Ian described me as Ezra’s brother, and asked Nester if he’d met Ezra yet. Nester paused, rolling the name over in his brain for a moment. Finally, he remembered. “Ezra, Ezra… Oh, yes! I know Ezra.” And then, grinning broadly, said “Ezra is a place that I’d like to go!”