Hello friends! Who here has $40? What's that? YOU have $40? Excellent! What are you going to do with it? Buy a Playstation game, you say? Which one? MLB 2K5? Do yourself a favor and get MVP Baseball instead. Yes, I'm sure. Because it's a superior game, that's why.
Wait I have another idea. Instead of spending that $40 on a video game, maybe you should spend it on something else. What else? How about a woman? Not forever, of course, but just for one day. Or rather one night.
This would be the advice of three American cowboys whom myself and my spring break compatriots encountered in an open-air American sports bar literally two stones' throws from the sandy shores of "Playa Cofresi," just west of the Dominican city of Puerto Plata.
Grade-A American sleazebag cowboys they were, including the optional American sleazebag cowboy accessory pack: military haircut, ugly moustache and thick, macho (READ: fat) build.
As we entered the bar one night, we saw them seated at a table, their grinning faces made the color of roast pork by the Caribbean sun. The girls they were with? Something out of Nabakov. Pretty 16-year-old Dominican Lolitas, and the only word they spoke, whether English or Spanish, was "Si."
"$40. You can buy any woman in this country for $40," one cowboy said to us, his own $40 acquisition taking seeming delight in the alcohol and cigarettes he provided her. Three hours of affection and 90 seconds of passion got her dinner, drinks, and around 1,000 Dominican pesos. For a 16-year-old Dominican girl, that's not a terrible deal.
"Just go to the Cattina," the cowboy continued. "Cattina, C-A-N-T-I-N-A," referring to the brothel/bar where he found his evening's entertainment, sacrificing pronouncing the first "n" of the bar's name in all his cowboy bravado.
The Cantina. Sounds like a good place to get a sarsaparilla soda and a hooker in 1860s Carson City while awaiting your three o'clock duel with the local sheriff on account of you insulting his honor by spitting tobacc-y juice on his boots.
Personally, I couldn't take much of our pink-faced John Waynes. Instead I looked at the girls. Each was very pretty. Each was way too young to be sitting where they sat. They seemed drunk, and it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, that was a good thing. Just get too drunk to care. Wake up in the morning with 40 American dollars in your purse, and click on home in your heels and short skirt.
It was the first sobering moment of my spring break (ironically coming in a bar), breaking the intoxicating spell cast over me not only by the sweet Dominican rum, but by the beach, the sun, the warmth and the general euphoria of being somewhere that wasn't Medford, Mass. It took me far from the discos, the poolside siestas and the Presidente lager (the Dominican beer whose ice cold green bottles sweated profusely even in the 10 p.m. heat).
Sixty percent of the Dominican economy is composed of the services sector, a large chunk of that via American tourism. Every year, all sorts of gringos fill the hotel rooms on their coasts and in their resorts - old people, young people, families, college kids, and, unfortunately, even our three American cowboys.
It's the exporting of our sins, showing up on a Friday evening flight and leaving Sunday with noticeably lighter bags. The American cowboy coming in, guns blazing, saying, "F-- it, Billy, we're in the Dominican now! Let's get some hookers!" and then returning to the office Monday morning with a roast-pork face and a dubiously clear conscience.
And how much is sin worth? What's the exchange rate on indulging a perverted 35-year-old from Houston? In a country where a quarter of the people live in poverty, it can be worth quite a bit. Hey, but that's capitalism, right? Free trade even freer markets.
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, or even if I'm going anywhere. I wish only to express my outrage over an American cowboy buying a pretty 16-year-old Dominican girl for the same price as a video game.
