Z: Right. Genetically modified Mongolian babies, with long silky hair growing all over them. These babies, they never grow old and they don’t really have much of a brain. They just exist to grow the hair, which is then harvested by the stereotypical “men in mint-green rubber suits and gas-masks”.

K: So you are saying that this is what Charmin toilet paper is made out of. Genetically modified mongolian baby hair.

Z: Exactly. Pure evil. That stuff is just too goddamned soft to be anything but pure evil. We are all going to hell. And I’m pretty sure there will be a special place in hell for people that buy Charmin toilet paper. Especially those new “extra gigantic rolls”. Those things freak. Me. OUT.

K: Oh, I know! What is this world coming to, when we have to use a special “toilet paper dispenser extender” thingy because the new roll is just TOO FREAKIN’ BIG to fit in there without it?

Z: I don’t know, man, but I’m seriously thinking of moving to a country where they don’t use toilet paper. It’s just getting too weird here.

Z: So did you get the oven working? Or did you burn down the house?

A: Seared the puppy. Oops.

Z: I hear BBQ sauce goes well with seared puppy.

A: I’ll save you a leg.

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!”