The XXX Games: Lil’ D And His Magic Towel

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in It's A Gay World, XXX Games

≈ Comments Off on The XXX Games: Lil’ D And His Magic Towel

Tags

The cute hunk of hotness known as Danell Leyva.

The roster for the U.S. Men’s Gymnastics for this year’s Olympic Games will not be set until after the trials in June. But there is little doubt that Cuban born hottie Danell Leyva will make the team. The 2011 World Championship parallel bars gold medalist, who trains in Florida, is in a perfect position to land one of the spots on Team USA. But then any position the 20-year-old soulful eyed Latino hunk takes is a perfect one.

Sigh

The 5’ 7” muscular stud excels at the high bar, floor exercise, and of course parallel bars for which he was champion at the 2010 and 2011 Winter Cup Challenges. He was also the all-around silver medalist at the 2009 Winter Cup Challenge and recaptured that title in 2010. In 2009, he became the youngest member of the U.S. National Senior team at age 17, and won the gold medal on the horizontal bar and the silver medal on the parallel bars. At the London Games it is expected he will be a gold medal winner in individual events and help his team finish in a medal position.

Coming from a family of gymnasts (both his mother and step father, who are his current coaches, competed for the Cuban National team), his dedication, skill, and drive are responsible for his remarkable record of wins. But then so is his lucky towel.

Those eyes, those lips, those shoulders . . .

Many professional athletes have routines based on superstitions, and lucky totems or charms. Danell’s is a blue towel with stars on it. Asked about the significance of his lucky charm he said, “I don’t know, I just started wearing it. I always put it on after I finish, or when I’m going up to compete.”

When asked if it was similar to say, baseball, where a player might not wash their jersey when they’re in a hitting streak, Leyva replied, “Oh no, I definitely wash it. That would be a little gross.”

A little gross, yes, but worth a nice chunk of change on Ebay too no doubt.

The possibilities are endless.

Danell, or Lil D as he is affectionately known – which from photos of his muscular and bulging body encased in tight gym wear does not stem from his um, build – began his gymnastic career at the age of 4, following in the footsteps of his parents. When his mother, Maria Alvarez, stopped competing professionally, she was a coach in Havana, handpicking the island nation’s best young athletes, those with perfect gymnastics bodies. Her son she says, would never have made the cut. He had flat feet, too-long arms, and breathing problems. He could not figure out how to jump and looked funny when he ran. “I know gymnastics is so hard, and he was not coordinated and a little fat. . .,” she recalls of his early days when he declared he too wanted to be a gymnast.

There’s nothing little about Lil D’s um muscles.

As a baby, Danell suffered from a host of allergies and asthma that began when he was five months old. His breathing problems left his mother sleepless and worried. She remembers constant trips to the hospital. Maria decided to leave Cuba after determining that her son’s health depended on it. Her journey with Leyva and his older sister detoured in Nicaragua and Peru and took months. When she finally arrived in Miami, she reconnected with her old friend Yin Alvarez, Danell’s step father, whom she later married in 2001.

Yin Alvarez’s father, who had been active politically against Fidel Castro, escaped to the United States in 1968. In 1991, the younger Alvarez, Danell’s step father to be, decided to follow suit. He sneaked away from a Cuban gymnastics performing troupe during a trip to Mexico City. He put his clothes in a plastic bag and swam naked across the Rio Grande River and then caught a flight to Miami to reunite with his father.

Gratuitous Skin Shot!

Maria and Yin, who met each other through gymnastics in Cuba and became good friends, reconnected when she made it to Florida with Danell in tow. In 1995, Yin opened his own gymnastics facility in Homestead, Florida and Maria joined him, coaching young gymnasts side-by-side. The best pupil is their son, Danell.

Though Leyva is a gold medalist in the parallel bars, his work on the high bar gets most of the attention. His signature move – jam-dislocate-hop to undergrips – is a daring display of athletic prowess that leaves his competition in the dust. And spectators in awe. Danell is ecstatic about the thrill he gets performing on that apparatus saying that the speed and height involved is exhilarating. But then he is as enthusiastic about one of his favorite things to do, which is “to flip over.”

Um, just sayin’ . . .

And that may be why Google’s predictive search results tacks on gay to Danell’s name on searches before it does his chosen sport or the events he excels at. Perhaps that rumor stems from his ugly crash on the high bar at the gymnastics world championships in Tokyo, eereely reminiscent of openly gay diver Greg Louganis’ crash and burn dive at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul. Or it could just be because he’s so damn cute. And a gymnast. Then again it could also have something to do with his cryptic bio note where he lists under ‘Other Sports Involvement’ the single word: Don. Huh. Methinks that’s an event I’d enjoy watching!

Outside of the gym, Lil D is artistically inclined and really likes painting and drawing. “I want to be a comic book artist,” he says. “I have a storyline and a whole bunch of characters. I don’t really have the names yet for them, but I do have a pretty good storyline. It has to do with werewolves, demons, and angels.”

Awwwww. A definite future Stay In Bed Sunday candidate.

But artistic flair and being a male gymnast are stereotypes, not proof positive that Danell plays for the pink team as well as the U.S. national team. And, even at the age of twenty, having your bedroom walls plastered with photos of partially naked, hot bodied sweaty men whose faces are contorted by equal parts of exertion and ecstasy does not necessarily mean anything more than that your life is devoted to gymnastics. But we can dream. And hope this gorgeous young hunk’s dream of winning the gold comes true for him in London.

Danell Leyva and his magic towel

[‘The XXX Games’ are a series of posts about hot Olympians, gay competitors – both present and past – and general articles about the 2012 London Olympics of interest to gay men. So, yeah, lots of hot male eye candy. Click the XXX Games graphic below for additional news, stories, and pictures.]

Tighty Whitey Tuesday #5

31 Tuesday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in It's A Gay World, Tighty Whitey Tuesday

≈ Comments Off on Tighty Whitey Tuesday #5

Tags

Nude Dudes

Some guys should not be allowed in public in anything other than their underwear.

25 Uses For A Dead Elephant

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in Thailand Travel Tips and Tales, Tips

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Phuket, Stupid Tourist Tricks

Oh stop. I really wasn’t gonna go there.
Okay one, but don’t ask for more:
#1. As a menswear mannequin in Pattaya.

A story about Thailand came over my news feed last week, which doesn’t happen often. America’s media doesn’t cover events in small SE Asian countries much. Not unless a high body count is involved. It’s not that we are not interested, don’t care, or are xenophobic, but rather we just got used to that reporting paradigm during the Vietnam War. It’s how we kept score.

But elephants are a different story. Elephants are an endangered species. People there are tons of. When there’s an elephant news story that involves a body count it tugs at everyone’s heart strings. Because elephants are cute. At least that’s what everyone says. I don’t think people who consider elephants cute have ever actually seen one up close and personal. They smell, have bad dental hygiene, and are covered in a sparse pelt of pubic hair. But then I can’t explain Ron Jeremy’s career either, so what do I know.

Stupid Touri Trick #526: Allowing a 7 ton wild animal to ‘hug’ you.

Elephants are not cute and cuddly like puppies are. Nor, like puppies, are elephants all about unconditional love. In fact, according to Time Magazine in partnership with CNN, world-wide it’s estimated that elephants kill over 500 people a year. Great white sharks only score 4. Elephants do not make good household pets. Elephants do however make good beasts of burden. But they move slowly. Which fits well with the Thai work ethic: so thumbs up, good match.

When there were more elephants in the world, they used them as mounts in war in India. Put a calvary riding horses up against one of elephants and you know who is gonna win. But not just any old elephants were chosen for battle. Indians used bull elephants for war, selecting those that were in musth, a state of violent, destructive frenzy occurring during the rutting season in male elephants accompanied by the exudation of an oily substance from glands between the eyes and mouth. (So there’s your word for the day: musth. Feel free to use it next time you are in Pattaya.) The only problem with using enraged and engorged bull elephants for the calvary was that the beasts tended to kill just as many Indians as they did whomever it was the Indians were fighting. But then that’s that body count thingy again. And so was this news story from the Associated Press that popped onto my computer screen:

BANGKOK (AP) — A new taste for eating elephant meat — everything from trunks to sex organs — has emerged in Thailand and could pose a new threat to the survival of the species.

Wildlife officials told The Associated Press that they were alerted to the practice after finding two elephants slaughtered last month in a national park in western Thailand.

“The poachers took away the elephants’ sex organs and trunks … for human consumption,” Damrong Phidet, director-general of Thailand’s wildlife agency, said in a telephone interview. Some meat was to be consumed without cooking, like “elephant sashimi,” he said.

Poachers typically just remove tusks, which are most commonly found on Asian male elephants and fetch thousands of dollars on the black market. A market for elephant meat, however, could lead to killing of the wider elephant population, Damrong said.

I’ve never understood what black guys see in this.

I’ve watched locals in Thailand eat some pretty disgusting things. And they are not in the least bit shy about telling you what that gross stuff they are chewing on is. Elephant for a snack, however, was a new idea for me. And even though the story came from the AP and not Fox News, I had my doubts. Sounded like some gullible reporter getting his leg pulled by a Thai with a sense of humor. Who undoubtedly made a few baht off of the ‘scoop.’

A day later, the Phuket Gazette responded to the article which got picked up world-wide and even made it into Time magazine. Part of the AP report centered the problem in Phuket, a popular beachside resort destination, where according to their source elephant meat was being ordered by restaurants. Phuket Governor Tri Augkaradacha said he had never heard of elephant being eaten on Phuket and that an investigation failed to substantiate the claim.

I was ready to call bullshit on the original AP article, but then since the same official has denied the existence of jet ski scams, the world of Mafia controlled fixed-price tuk tuks, and airport transpo vans that take you to day-trip concessionaires instead of your hotel, it seems there may in fact be some truth to the story.

The AP named a Phuket-based brother and sister as suspects in the elephant meat caper. They run a law consulting firm in Phuket and own a rubber plantation near a national park in the next province. Both were shocked to find they’d been identified as the masterminds behind the elephant meat scandal. Local authorities were as surprised even though they had been investigating the dead elephant problem – that does not exist – and had stopped the brother and searched his car for traces of elephant meat – which does not exist. The suspect, who hasn’t a clue as to how this rumor started, reported the police had found no evidence of nonexistent dead elephants in his Suzuki Vitari during a search of the vehicle on January 7th. One has to wonder how much it cost the alleged poacher to have the police not find anything in his car.

So lesson learned: do not believe everything you read in the newspaper. Or everything you are told by the authorities in Thailand.

Roadkill in Africa only lasts as long as it takes to bring a pot of water to boil.

As in the human world, it’s much better being an Asian elephant than an African elephant. In Africa, elephant roadkill means the entire village will be fed. I know. Shocking. Horrifying. A dead elephant being cut up for dinner incites rage in all of ~~you~~ us. A village full of malnourished children with extended bellies, not so much. But then elephants are cute. Starving children don’t bring on the same warm fuzzies. If it helps, don’t think of it as elephants being killed for food, but rather the locals’ dedication to going green.

The idea of chowing down on some Dumbo gumbo however is repulsive to most Thais. The elephant is their nation’s symbol and Thais love elephants. So much so that the Bangkok Post reported last week that 2012 is stacking up to be a banner year for elephants in Thailand. Custom officials report large-scale tusk smuggling has reached a record high already this year, with at least 2,500 dead elephants used for ivory.

Like prostitution in Thailand, poaching elephants is banned, and trafficking or possessing poached animal parts also is illegal. But elephant tusks are sought in the illegal ivory trade and the quest for ivory remains the top reason poachers kill elephants in Thailand. And of course, you will never ever see ivory for sale everywhere you look in Thailand.

The absence of a too small swimsuit should tell you it’s an elephant, not an expat walking down the road in front of you.

Soraida Salwala, the founder of Friends of the Asian Elephant foundation, said a full grown pair of tusks could be sold from 1 million to 2 million baht, while the estimated value of an elephant’s penis is more than 30,000 baht. In Pattaya, it’s under-age elephant penis that is the draw and according to rumors can be found in Sunee Plaza for as little as 10,000 baht. Regardless of age, size, or end-use, a dead elephant is worth more than a live elephant in Thailand.

Thailand has fewer than 3,000 wild elephants and about 4,000 domesticated elephants, according to the National Parks Wildlife and Plant Conservation Department. Domesticated elephants are considered to be commercial animals under the Beast of Burden Act 1939. The owner has the right to trade and use the animal at will. Owners of elephants register them and are issued a license, much like a drivers license since the Act was established in the time elephants were still a means of transportation in Thailand. Elephant rights activists claim this outdated form of ownership fails to protect the animals and allows elephants to be sold to those who will abuse and mistreat them.

The Thai Animal Guardians Association (AGA) reports sales of domesticated elephants cause these smart and sentimental animals considerable stress and difficulty in adjusting from one new owner to the next. Many trainers who walk elephant through the streets of Bangkok – which is also illegal so you certainly will never see elephants on every other corner in Patpong – are neither the original or real owners – just keepers. These keepers have no emotional ties to the elephants, tend to mistreat the animals and cannot control them during an emergency. Unfortunately the AGA also claims, in an attempt to further pull heart strings, that many elephants in Thailand are fed beer and amphetamines for the entertainment of tourists. Right. Over stating your point is never a good idea; we all know a Thai is not gonna waste his yaba supply on an elephant.

But it’s the interaction and bonding between the giant pachyderms and humans that is responsible for the world’s love affair with elephants. Elephants share many human traits, are known for their intelligence, societal customs and behavior, and long memories. Like humans, who are typically right or left handed, elephants are usually right or left tusked. And they display varied personality traits like humans too. Elephants, through testing, have been proven to possess self-awareness (one of Beachlover’s goals for 2012).

Like humans, elephants possess self awareness. Like humans, elephants form communities. They also kill over 500 people each year, much like humans’ inner city youth.

Before they became valuable for jewelry making, household decorations, food, and aphrodisiacs, tradition in Thailand was for a boy to be assigned to a baby elephant at birth to act as its trainer and companion for life; an obvious and close bond developed between the two. It’s not unusual for elephants to have this type of relationship with humans. The following story I found on the internet perfectly exemplifies the elephant/human dynamic:

In 1986, Dan Harrison was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University. On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Dan approached it very carefully. He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant’s foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Dan worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot.

The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Dan stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Dan never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Dan was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenaged son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Dan and his son Dan Jr. were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Dan, lifted its front foot off the ground, and then put it down.
The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Dan couldn’t help wondering if this was the same elephant. Dan summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Dan’s legs and slammed him against the railing, killing him instantly.

It probably wasn’t the same elephant.

[No elephants were harmed in the making of this post. Oh, wait. That one in Zimbabwe didn’t fare too well. Never mind.]

Monday Muscle #5

30 Monday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in It's A Gay World, Monday Muscle

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Nude Dudes

I seem to be on a mirror kick this week. Not that multiple views of a muscle stud like this are a bad thing.

Monk Shot! #41

29 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in Monk Shot!, Travel Photography

≈ Comments Off on Monk Shot! #41

Tags

Chiang Mai, Monks, Photography

Buddha Ears

This shot is from Wat Phan Tao in Chiang Mai, one of my favorite monk hunting spots in the city. I spent several minutes taking fake shots of Buddhas waiting for this novice monk to quit paying attention to me so I could grab my shot of him. No such luck. I think he knew what I was up to. As much as I hate to do so, I finally had to ask him if I could take his picture. No problem. Except then he ‘posed’ for me. That usually kills the shot. In this case though it highlighted his enormous, Buddha-like ears, and it ended up being a keeper.

Gadgets For The Gay Guy

29 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in It's A Gay World

≈ Comments Off on Gadgets For The Gay Guy

Tags

Markets & Shopping, That's Gay

A rainbow of high-tech gadgets continues to be part of the Apple legacy.

Ever since the first iPod hit store shelves, after market manufacturers have been busy coming up with new gadgets for you to personalize your latest digital toy. Two new add-on products soon to be released may be of special interest to gay guys.

Those pervy guys over at Fleshlight – with their one track minds – fortunately only think about ways for you to get off when you are alone. Plans are underway to add a new product to their never ending line of masturbatory devices for which they have gone to great lengths to produce lifelike orifices that purportedly come damn near close to the real thing. Their latest offering of a toy for you to stick your favorite gadget into is an add-on for the iPad.

Still a conceptual design at this point, the device is a rubber housing that allows you to attach your favorite Fleshlight product directly to your tablet allowing “cumsumer to interactively reach self-gratification with various prerecorded multimedia (photograph, video or animation) designed specifically for the tablet-penis interface.”

Somebody deserves to win a Clio just for coming up with the phrase ‘tablet-penis interface.’

The Fleshlipad holder allows you to insert your favorite toy into your iPad.

Fleshlight COO Brian Shubin says about his company’s latest offering, “It’s another exciting product we have in development at the moment. We are always looking to improve our user experience and this will be a way to take it to another level.”

Fleshlights, if you’ve never, according to the company’s web site are “the #1 selling male sex toy in the world. Over 4 million men worldwide love the patented Reel Feel Superskin™ inner texture of the Fleshlight. Some say it’s even better than the real thing.”

Less immediate – and less intimate – but already on the market is a nifty little gadget that takes the world of iPhone photography into a whole new realm. As much of a visionary as Steve Jobs was, I doubt even he realized his multi-use iPhone would generate so many pictures of guys showing off their goods in self portraits taken using the world’s favorite iPhone feature.

The iPhone SLR Mount alows you to use your SLR lenses on your iPhone.

The somewhat grainy and often blurry shots have an appeal, their amateurish output melds well with amateur porn. But for those who want to see details in their details, a new gadget is now available that allows you to mount your Canon EOS or Nikon SLR lenses to your iPhone 4, giving your phone powerful depth of field and manual focus capabilities. Clarity and close-ups: ‘accidently’ leaked celebrity dick will never look the same again.

The iPhone SLR Mount will set your photos apart from everyone else’s on Grindr in an unprecedented way. Telephoto, wide angle, macro, or your fixed lenses all attach to this mount giving you a full range of lenses at your iPhone lovin’ fingertips. For just over $200 you can now turn your iPhone 4 into a DSLR camera using real SLR lenses. And your naked pictures into works of art.

Yup, in all things size matters.

And yeah, straight guys can use both of these products too. But since we all know gay guys have much more sex than their breeder brothers, there’ll be far more pink dollars being spent on these latest inventions. Too pricey? Maybe, but if you can’t drop a hundred bucks or so to get off, then what in the hell is money for?

Related Posts You Might Enjoy:

BangkokBois’ 2011 Holiday Gift Guide (Part I)

BangkokBois’ 2011 Holiday Gift Guide (Part IV)

Totally Flipped

Stay In Bed Sunday #5

29 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in It's A Gay World, Stay In Bed Sundays

≈ Comments Off on Stay In Bed Sunday #5

Tags

Nude Dudes

Mirrors on the wall are almost as good as those mounted to the ceiling.

Related Posts You Might Enjoy:

Stay In Bed Sunday #34

Stay In Bed Sunday #12

Stay In Bed Sunday #3

Bugging Out

28 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by Bangkokbois in Bali, Hawaii, Travel Tales from Beyond Thailand

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

And More!, Stupid Tourist Tricks

Stupid Touri Trick #479: Thinking it’s a cool photo op to have a head-sized poisonous spider on your face.

Nothing is more pleasant than being awoken in the middle of the night by the feeling of the guy you are sleeping with wrapping his arm or leg around you. It induces a brief state of alertness, perhaps a small smile, and then you snuggle in close to drift back off to sleep. Nothing is more disconcerting than being awoken in the middle of the night by the feeling of something brushing against your leg when you are sleeping alone. It induces an immediate a state of panic.

“Holy Shit!” I yelled, jumping out of bed. “What the fuck was that!”

It was 3:00 a.m. and I’d been deep in dreamland, wrapped up in my soft bed contentedly alone, when my subconscious mind tapped my conscious mind on the shoulder. That soft brushing against my skin should not have been. I landed on my feet before my mind came fully awake, snapped on the lights, threw back the covers, and gazed in horror at the almost foot long centipede that’d decided to snuggle up with me in bed.

Throw a grizzly bear in my path, and I’ll roar back. But when a humongous cockroach divebombs my head, I scream like a big girl. Eyeballing a centipede who’d decided to mate with me in the middle of the night brought out the frightened, blubbering little girl in me instead.

When you live in the tropics, large bugs are part of your world. Cockroaches are more pervasive in Hawaii than middle age couples visiting from the fly over states adorned in matching aloha wear. The local joke is that the cockroach is Hawaii’s State bird. Though both centipedes and roaches make you shudder, the larger and more prehistoric looking of the two brings on a special brand of terror. Centipedes out ugly cockroaches ten to one. And they are aggressive as all hell and poisonous to boot.

This is Satan.

This one didn’t live long enough to accomplish whatever vile plans it had for me. With all my senses throbbing on full alert and blood pressure skyrocketing to heights it’d never experienced before, I grabbed a shoe and pounded the fucking thing into oblivion. And then spent the night curled into a quaking ball in the living room with all of the lights on, fully awake and on guard, never catching a wink of sleep. The next morning I made a quick trip to the local garden shop and bought a gallon of Diazinon to pour as a barrier around the house, and twice the required number of bug bombs to set off, filling my home with poisonous gases. The memory was not as easy to rid myself of.

When I first moved to Hawaii, discovering a humongous cockroach in my home brought on chicken skin. They’re evil looking things and more than willing to do battle with you if you don’t leave them alone. The first time I ran up against one, unprepared and not yet skilled in cockroach warfare, I trapped it under an upended empty coffee can. And then realized it’d never die on its own and I probably couldn’t live there for the next few years with a cockroach imprisoned under a tin can in the middle of my living room.

As the years past I became more skilled at dealing with the little beasts though never quite managed the nonchalant attitude locals displayed in sending the latest one to cockroach hell. I had a friend, a closeted little muscle stud who’d grown up in Hawaii, who used to kill them by squashing them with his bare feet. Whether he’d just done battle with a roach or not, I always made sure he showered before climbing into my bed.

My most humorous cockroach encounter was a night out having diner with a group of friends in Waikiki at a beachside restaurant open to the tropical breezes when a cockroach divebombed our table and landed head first into one of the girl’s small cup of sour cream. Many people like bacon bits as a topping for their baked potato, she had the opportunity of trying cockroach instead. We all grimaced, laughed, and then called the waiter over who replaced the cup of topping with a cockroachless one with compete indifference.

Hawaii’s State Bird

A daily occurrence in Hawaii, you get used to cockroaches. But your primitive senses still flare up, the fight-or-flight-or-freeze response still kicks in when one of the creepy critters makes its way into your life. The good thing about living in Hawaii is that it helps you to prepare for bug encounters when visiting other tropical paradises in the world. Or not.

On a trip to Bali, after spending a week in Kuta partying my ass off I headed up to Ubud for some rest, a chance for my brain cells to dry out, and a few days of much needed relaxation. On my first day in town I checked out the main drag, spent some time at the market, and then had a late dinner before heading back to my hotel in the nearby village of Mas where I settled down in my bungalow’s sitting room to read for a while.

The hotel was a cool little property, a dozen or so two story cabins spread along a curving path in a jungle-like setting. In each bungalow, there was a sitting room and bedroom downstairs, and then another bedroom and a spacious lanai upstairs with private views over the surrounding rice fields. There was a Bali style bathroom downstairs too, and they got it right: the shower was outdoor in a private little grotto but the toilet and sink were inside. I’d already learned the hard way that Bali-style bathrooms with the toilet outside means spending your morning trying to take a dump while mosquitoes bombard you. Not the best way to start off a day.

The property was designed to provide peace and privacy, an oasis of tranquility from the heavily populated touristy areas of the island. There were no televisions or phones in the rooms. Concrete lined trenches snaked along the property’s exterior boundaries, paths for the hotel’s staff to use that, like with servants in Victorian times, kept the hired help out of view of the noble class. The architect of the place had gone to great lengths to provide a feeling that you had the island to yourself. Even the restaurant was laid out so that regardless of how many of your fellow guests showed up at the same time as you for breakfast, you’d have a quiet little oasis to sit in while you sipped your muddy Bali coffee and contemplated the start of your day.

The only good cockroach is a dead cockroach. But tread carefully, they are known to fake it in preparation of an attack!

That night, comfortably kicked back and absorbed in what I was reading, movement on the wall separating the room I was in from the bedroom caught my eye. A little bit of aloha transplanted to Bali’s tropical paradise: one of those huge damn cockroaches that are a part of daily life in the islands. I’d lived long enough in Hawaii to no longer panic when I spotted one of the creepy crawlers, but still got chicken skin, my atavistic senses coming alive. Non of the Buddhist ‘all life is precious’ crap, your only duty upon spotting a roach is to kill it. As quickly as possible.

When you are going to put an end to a cockroach’s miserable little life, you need to commit to it fully. You need to man up and let the testosterone flow freely within your veins. A halfhearted attempt ain’t gonna cut it. You need to bring the full force of your disgust, terror, and revulsion into play. A quick snap with a rolled up newspaper like you would employ swatting a fly will only tickle the thing. A slap instead of a splat will only serve to piss it off when it recovers. And then, .38 seconds later it will pull a kamikaze act on your head.

No, you need to find something heavy enough to pulverize its very existence into oblivion. And use enough force to smash its exterior skeleton so that its white maggot-like life force squishes out and leave a Jackson Pollock painting of reddish-browns and creams on the wall. Like with a good golf swing, you need to aim carefully, then allow your stroke to follow through past the ball. Your intent should not be to kill the cockroach but rather to destroy it and whatever surface it is crawling on, to send them both permanently into a whole different dimension. Preferably in a million pieces.

I carefully slid off of the couch I’d been laying on so as to not give the thing an early warning of its impending doom. Grabbing one of my hiking boots, a suitable weapon weighing a good ten pounds, I snuck up on the roach from its blind side, keeping an eye on its twitching antenna. If you are new to cockroach hunting, you need to watch those things. Sure their movement is spooky and you’d just as soon not allow those creepy antenna that seem to have a life of their own to work their magic on your psyche, but if they stop that’s a sign the critter is preparing its air assault and then you have to go feet-wet sooner than planned.

Lying in wait

I cocked back my arm, aligned my trajectory, and let fly. Thud. The walls shook. The bungalow swayed. The sound of my boot hitting the wall echoed through the property like an M80 going off in a coffee can. And I stuck the landing. Cockroach shit flew out from the heel end of the boot and a mixture of brownish-red exoskeleton and white crud oozed out from the other. Success. But the gods of Bali were not done fucking with me yet.

My award winning shot had also disturbed another guest of the bungalow. The – now dead and destroyed – cockroach had been hanging on the wall between the bedroom and sitting room, inches away from a set of drawn back curtains used to separate the two rooms. Along with roach guts, a humongous spider as big as my head came flying out when my boot hit the wall. It’d been hiding behind the drapes and my assault on the roach disturbed it. I’d never seen such a huge spider in my life. I’d seen puppies smaller than this thing. It wasn’t one of those massive bodied spiders like a tarantula, most of its size was its twig-like spindly legs. But it’s bright yellow body was longer than any local guy’s cock I’d picked up nightly back in Kuta.

It only hesitated out in the open for a quick second, just long enough for my goosebumps to get goosebumps while it decided whether or not to go on the attack. I obviously wasn’t a worthy enough adversary and it took off scurrying into the bedroom at the speed of sound. Or at least my screams of terror lasted longer than the time it took the beast to scuttle up the wall and dash across the ceiling into the next room.

Fight, flight, or freeze are the natural response options that have served humanity well over the centuries. Being in a state of hyperarousal keeps you safe and alive. The odds of winning when taking on a critter an eighth of my size were not stacked heavily enough in my favor, so ‘fight’ was out. Besides, what I really wanted to do was to dissolve into a ball of blubbering tears like a little girl. That’s your third response option that no one ever seems to mention. With no phone to call for help, and any staff members still awake in the middle of the night hidden away in their privacy trenches (no doubt giggling about the pussy-ass tourist scared of a little spider), I was on my own.

Yes, it is a popular photo op in Bali. No, even dead I wouldn’t let one get this close to me.

I could have done battle with the beast, I could have immediately checked out of my cool little bungalow and flew the town too. Instead, whimpering in fright and leaving the downstairs illuminated in case I was forced to go one-on-one with the critter, I ran upstairs, deciding that using the smaller, upstairs bedroom would be the better choice of valor. I turned on all of the lights in that room too, hopped into bed, and immediately got busy securing the mosquito netting that draped the bed – a feature I’d early assumed was for ambiance – by tucking it deep under the mattress around its entire perimeter, building a safe cocoon to protect me while I slept. Not that I did. My eyes were as wide open when the morning dawned as they had been once I had my fortress built.

I embraced the flee response option when the sun rose, heading out for what I am sure was the earliest breakfast the hotel had ever seen. Motioning the largest male employee over after being seated, I told him about the spider. His responding nod was nonchalant, news about a spider large enough to eat Tokyo a non-event in his life.

When I got to my next hotel in Sanur a few days later and had internet access again I used Google to find out just how dangerous that spider was, how quickly its murderous venom would take to kill you while you writhed in agony pleading for the gods to finish you off. No one seemed to agree on what to call it, most went with the rather non-threatening name of Wood Spider. What they were in agreement with was that its potent, neurotoxic venom, while not lethal, caused major pain and that its relatively strong jaws often left scars on its human victims. Knowing what it was doesn’t mean that I won’t freak out just as badly the next time I encounter one of those creatures, but next time I’m gonna kill the thing. And then feed it to the first cockroach I see.

Related Posts You Might Enjoy: