Don't Give In To The Munchies

Girl-woman lays on her bed with her laptop on her belly typing on blogger a story about herself. She is pale skinned, with smatterings of brown freckles covering her skin, wild originally brown hair, now dirty red-brown, green yellow eyes of differing intensities and rose red lips, small but plump. She has MSn running on the laptop, a couple of chat windows open speaking to would be suitors and friends. She also has a video of herself running in the background. In it she is stoned and raving on and on about palo santo and drawing signs and lines on herself with the burnt charcoal ends of the palo santo (Holy Stick? Hollystick? Hollywood? Holy Holly?).

The story is this: this girl of pleasant curves is on a motherfucking diet. Although it's not a diet per se, she is controlling what she places in her rosebud mouth. She's passed from being pleasantly plump to being overweight and a pretty fat. God, everything, anything but a pretty fat. You know, the girl who has a pretty face "if only she weren't so fat". Gorda bonita. Gorda con ritmo. Pero gorda igual! So this girl is on a mission to lose some weight, gain some muscle and tone, and return to her original size 7/8 jean size (Sir Mix Alot made that song for her). She wants to look bangin' and she just doesn´t feel it when all her jeans don´t fit her ass and she has double chins and C cups for heaven´s sake! Ever has she ever been a size C, so the weight gain is a blessing and a curse. Still though, that ass has to be dealt with.

She gets up from the bed to slither out of the jeans and change into her pj´s, but not before she checks herself out in the mirror, looking at her flaws, looking at the results that working out have brought forth, picturing what she could look like if she sticks this diet and exercising out (image: HOT). In that moment when she is putting on her t-shirt that serves as her pijama she realizes that if she stands up again she will have no control over herself and amble straight towards the white cheddar popcorn in the closet (anybody say Smartfood?) like a hummingbird to a papo. The munchies were eating away at her will, like vultures fighting over the last remnants of a carcass, like mosquitoes swarming a tourist. They had to be stopped. Immediately.

She lays down on the bed with the heavy realization on her shoulders that her munchies were strong, but her will charged into action and refused that shit. There is a goal, a meta, a reason why she is controlling her maw and that reason is stronger than any horde of munchies could ever be. This bitch had water and she was willing to feel a bit hungry in order to look good. Pass the water, girl on a mission.

Friday Naitafon

Naitafon = Night of fun. Comes from the days when a neighbor would throw a party and charge an entrance fee and where bands played music and people danced and partied all night. Comes from the Atlantic side of Panama.

Friday night was gearing up to be a dud. I had called on everyone to go out, have a beer, smoke a bud, or whatever and pretty much everyone bailed out on me. I was left alone with my urge to go out into the night. I took a shower, logged on to facebook and up popped a message from G. wanting to know what I was doing on this fateful Friday night. I told him how I had been abandoned and was now in pj's without a plan. He was in the same boat, but we were both lazy and had no specific place to go so we left it at that. Ten minutes later M. pops on to the chat and asks me what are my plans for the night. By then it was midnight. I mentioned that I had wanted to go out, but no plans were made. She said, "I have weed but no car" and I said "I have a car, where are you?" and that is how I skipped out of my house at midnight on a Friday night.

I picked up M. and she pulled out a lovely little baggie with wonderfully pungent sticky fresh bud, packed it into a bowl and off we went to pick up G. We drove to La Casona, but were informed that they were charging 5 dollars which we weren't in the mood for paying so we walked around aimlessly and decided to skip on out to the next block when the sound of congos started reverbrating in the nearby buildings. We followed the sounds to a small shack with the name of the Baños Publicos. We walked in tentatively and were greeted by a five man band who were playing old Puerto Rican salsa. We sat down and watched in awe as the congo players hands flew over the drum in repetetive hits and taps; hypnotized by the sounds, the movements, the words I spoke very little. A couple of drunk gringos swayed with the sound, tapping their sandaled feet and dancing lazily.

We stayed entranced for a bit until the salsa group ended their set and then walked out in a daze into the lit plaza. From that surreal experience we went to Casablanca down a couple of beers and gossip about this and that. We ended the night at 3 a.m. and I drove back home in a happy sleepy daze. Flopped on to my made bed where the images and sounds of the salsa vieja invaded my head and lulled me to sleep.