Crazy From the Heat

By Matt Casseday My given name is Matthew, but for better than 20 years I have also been known as Mateo, the Spanish equivalent of Matthew. In my early years here, like many wishing to reinvent themselves in one way or another, I sought to be called only by my

I recently received an afternoon visit from a squat, unsmiling man who arrived at my house on a small motorcycle and without a word of warning cut off my electricity. His bright yellow shirt easily identified him as one of the seemingly tens of thousands of people employed by ICE (which for the uninitiated, is our national electric and telecommunications company). A visitor to my house saw him removing the cap to the meter and came inside to alert me. By an amazing coincidence, I was at that moment attempting to pay my electric bill via internet. It was not easy, as I only have one option for internet where I live (controlled by ICE) and the speed with which I receive the service puts me in mind of those old time room-sized univacs that probably took a couple days to warm up once they were turned on.

So there I was, strapped to a gurney in the Quepos hospital. My bata was askew, private parts exposed, and a self-assured man in a green surgical suit was fitting a breathing apparatus over my nose and mouth. “Respire profundo”, he ordered, and I took one, two, three deep breaths. As consciousness slipped away, brutally and rapidly, my last thought was: `This must be what its like to die.´

One day last week, I had to pay visits to three different government offices. I spent a lot of the day seated, waiting and waiting for my number to be called. Each office was similar: A casher seated behind a plexiglas window; an armed guard seemingly ill-prepared should he – God help us all — ever have to actually use his gun; a number of sober-faced Ticos behind desks; and a much larger number of patient citizens awaiting their numbers to be called. I had forgotten to bring something I had recently purchased to avoid long waits: My own roll of numbers just like the ones you pull off from the dispenser in order to receive attention. Mine were the real thing, courtesy of the ´´Take-A-Tab´´ company. The trick is to wait until they call a ´dead´ number, that is, a number no one responds to. Then quickly and surreptitiously leaf through your Take-A-Tabs until you get the number you need. Much time can be saved employing this method; all you need is your own personal roll of numbers, but I had forgotten mine.

When last seen, my old friend Dedson was leaving the area in a battered Range Rover, bound for a ‘tour’ of Latin America. This was years back and the ‘tour’ he had planned revolved around the dented left rear hubcap that he swore bore an image of the Virgin Mary when the angle and lighting was right. “People will pay good money to see an apparition of the Virgin Mary on a dented hubcap,” he assured me. “Especially humble God-fearing Latinos always on the lookout for the latest Our Lady of Fatima.”

On the other side of the globe suicide bombers are blowing themselves up more than ever, and although it may sound politically incorrect, even appalling, I must admit I typically feel a bit of sympathy for these desperate young men. I can not imagine what it must be like growing up in that part of the world, living an existence so cloistered, so bleak, so futureless, that the notion of blowing ones self up to kill other people because you have been promised 72 virgins in the afterlife seems a good option. Any time I read or hear about yet another of these acts of terror committed by relatively innocent kids, I consider what, in a perfect world, could be done to dissuade them.