The Eye-Opening Adventures of Sexpat Sam

I held up the picture of Sam and his girlfriend and I. I was fresh back in the States at my parents’ place and just days before starting a new job.  It should’ve been of those nightlife vacation photos that make you happy. My eyes lingered on it for a minute more before I tossed it into the trash.

Nope. Don’t want to remember those adventures with “Sexpat Sam.”

But I couldn’t forget that last night together. We were at our usual hangout, at a dive beach bar in Cartagena, Colombia. Surrounded almost entirely by vacationing gringos past their prime yet trying to look ten to twenty years younger. My latest girlfriend had dumped me. The Christmas holidays were fast approaching and I felt more alone than ever.

“You just need a break. Let me buy you another,” Sam said as he motioned to the bartender. Sam was almost 50 but had the look I’d like to have in my approaching middle years, his mussed hair grayed but in a youthful cut. He took every day in stride and wore his tropical beach clothes like a uniform. Unlike the other sexpats surrounding us he didn’t carry the bowling ball paunch and sunburn that goes with overindulging on a permanent vacation. I first met him here when a mutual friend, Anna, introduced us. Never hurts to know someone from your own country when you’re abroad, she said.

Sam did check one of those sexpat boxes – to have a girlfriend half your age. Isabel always hovered over him, her temper on par with her curves and beautiful skin. She fit too snugly into a crop top and cutoff jeans and the stud in her navel shined like a lusty Latin sun. I had to make a conscious effort to look away or else be hypnotized. Despite my depression, I smiled inwardly when I remembered Sam complaining about her wearing those skimpy outfits. They reminded him too much of his age.

I shook my head and turned back to my drink. I wanted dive in and drown in it. My girlfriend had a good reason to dump me. After nearly a year I still hadn’t be able to find a stable living down here.  She was sweet and might have been sincerely interested in me, but sincere or not, no one wants to be with a broke gringo drifting in the wind.

“I’ve got to have a plan if I’m going to stay here,” I shrugged. “Maybe, maybe I could go back to teaching English again.”

I had no intention of doing this. I got my English teaching certificate from some shady correspondence course and after two months abroad in the classroom I learned I had little patience for teaching others. The horde of shrieking, cursing teens at that jungle village school made me quickly realize that.

              Sam chuckled. “No, don’t do that. That lead I gave you – did you call the guy?”

              I did call the manager at the outsourcing company. Back in the U.S., I bitched about companies outsourcing American jobs overseas. But now I was wanting to work at a tech firm, overseas. Had to make ends meet.

              “We talked and he asked for references. I didn’t hear back,” I said with a sigh. “What am I going to do? I can only afford a couple more months’ rent.”

              Until now, I hadn’t felt too homesick. I didn’t have much waiting for me in the States, other than of course two loving parents who worried and wondered why their son deserted a good career in technology to run off to a strange land. They thought I had gone absolutely crazy.

              “You can go back for the holidays, maybe you need it,” Sam said. “I’ll still be here when you get back. Hey, we can do a trip together. I want to go to the Amazon next! Isabel has family there we can stay with.”

              “They have a nice thatched house, plenty of room for all of us, right?” He looked at her and gave her a squeeze and she nodded. “With mosquito netting. We can watch the sun come up over the canopy. And they know a guide. We can do jungle tours on the cheap.”

              I had learned my lesson. I wasn’t going to travel with them.  They had very turbulent relationship.  Isabel and her crazy temper.

I recalled that one night they had a fight in their apartment in Bogota. She thought he was talking to another woman. She grabbed the cell phone out of his hands and chucked it down the stairs. They argued and fought and she slapped him a bunch of times. When he grabbed her hand, she reached over and bit him like a wild animal. And that was one of their tamer fights.

And although they had been together for a while now, I knew it wouldn’t last.

             I was in denial about Sam’s free loving lifestyle. I thought maybe he just wanted to live the good life, maybe a bit too much on the kinky side. One day Isabel confided in me that he wanted another woman to move in with them. She angrily told him she wasn’t bisexual and wasn’t interested in anything like that. She told me she felt lied to, that he didn’t really want to settle down. She asked me if I knew. I said I didn’t know. OK, maybe he did talk about sex way too much.

 Isabel was going to stay with him, for now. He could help put her through business school. Sam hadn’t worked in years, retiring early after selling his Microsoft stock earned in his years working there 15 years ago. After getting a woman pregnant and marrying too young, he got a second chance to live the good life abroad.

But in spite of his wealth, he lived very frugally. Sometimes dangerously cheap. When thieves demanded his girlfriend’s new camera at a bus stop, he refused and grabbed it and ran. They chased him for a mile with machetes before giving up. Just give them the damn camera!

I can’t deny that I was envious of Sam having so many opportunities in life. He could be a good friend and had a kind heart at times. He donated goods after an earthquake struck a nearby village. But I saw these other sides of him and there was no way I could turn out like that.  No, I won’t get all cynical and take things for granted. I’d find my dream and hold onto to it.

              We talked some more and took a couple of pictures. I thanked Sam for the drinks and called it a night and returned to my apartment. I couldn’t decide what to do. I stared at the walls for an hour. Finally, I called Anna for advice.

“Richard, go home,” she said. “You’re running! You’re jumping from relationship to relationship. You have a life back there. If you can’t make it here, maybe that’s telling you something.”

“But I need to make it here,” I said, knowing she was right. “This place feels so magical. Every day is different! Maybe if I get better with my Spanish, I can…”

“No, you need to wake up. You are a corazón de pollo,” she said. “You are unhappy but you keep telling yourself you’re not.”

              I didn’t want to admit defeat. I had to gain something from this. Something beyond cheap trinkets and phony lifestyles. No, I wasn’t like Sam. Maybe it was a good thing that I couldn’t lay on beaches the rest of my life - young women slathering me with affection with a side of sun tan oil.  And I didn’t have his drama. Or his riches. But if I kept trying, I’d find an opportunity here, maybe for once I could have both money and happiness.

              But I woke up the next morning and knew what I had to do. I bought a plane ticket home and left days after that. I never saw Sam again.

              I noise outside snapped me out of my thoughts. I glared at the trash can like everything was its fault. The photo had done its job. Damn it all! I was more like Sam than I wanted to admit. I was yet another man-child who had a midlife crisis abroad. Maybe I didn’t do all the partying and kinky crap, but I had turned into a skirt-chaser too and every day was another kneejerk decision. I thought an exciting destination would fill a hole in my life and maybe a little reckless behavior would make me forget the dry, vanilla life I thought I had left behind.

              Both Sam and I came to Colombia seeking new lives, but we would never outrun our problems. They will follow you to the end of the world until the moment you wake up to face them.