I followed a boy to Panama. Well, when I was offered a chance to travel, I did it just to hear him say, “Oh fuck cool!” I got lost in his thick forearms and woke up in Panama, in the center of America. I was 18, sweating, and far from the comforts of the midwest.
I assumed naively that--certainly--there would be English somewhere (everywhere), only to exit the plane in a panic. 18, sweating, penniless--having lost my wallet somewhere between my seat and the humidity. Not an American in sight and the only spanish I knew was, “Hello please!”
Thankfully, a glowing, olive skinned man approached me and spoke the most beautiful string of english words: “My car broke down. I’ll have to give you money for a taxi.” Uneasy that my college would send a 19-year-old to fetch stumbling young Americans, as soon as he touched my shoulder I didn’t care (I honestly might have blacked out. Love? Heat? Fatique? Who cares).
The Florida State campus in Panama was an old, abandoned army base at the edge of the Canal. The school was English-speaking, but most of the students were Panamanians hoping to finish their education in Florida. I had three roommates: a surfer dude from Texas, a quiet Costa Rican, and a very proud Israeli who talked about bombs more than I was comfortable with. In two weeks we all stopped talking entirely. I quickly discovered Tequila and was alive and free and still very sweaty.
Panama, I would learn, was not altogether gay friendly. The tempo of the country was a bit too slow to outright hate anything, but the gay scene was certainly an underground one. And quite literally: every bar began at the bottom of some staircase. This was my first taste of gay freedom, and I’m grateful for it. The community was small and welcoming and the drag queens were feisty and fast-talking. I learned to appreciate the progress we had made in the States, and formulated one of my best friendships from college with a kid from vermont.
Justin was a junior who lived a few houses down from me. He was a tall, bear of a dude who seemed shy in his own language but loved speaking others. It was the first time I could joke freely about wanting to nap in Jake Gyllenhaal’s nipple and I put a lot of my growing up into his hands that semester. With his unabashed desire for adventure and my virginal liver, we managed to really see some fucking shit.
