TravelBlogs

Soccer in Your Underwear

I might warn you that this post will be of most interest to my gay male audience. As I have said before, I find it hard to write this blog and be as honest as possible when I know that I have many friends and family that are not gay reading this blog and there are certain parts of my life and thoughts I don't share with them.

If there ever was a time I wanted to have a camera to take pictures of something I saw down here, this would be it.

Now for those of you who don't know, soccer is REALLY BIG in Costa Rica. In fact, if a game with the Costa Rican team is playing on TV, you can not even drive through town as there are so many people in the street that do not have TV's that are trying to watch the game from the street because the bar is full.

I was riding my bike back from town at dusk along the beach and noticed a group of about 20 young men playing soccer on the beach. Soccer on the beach is quite common but never very organized and it is usually the younger native Bri Bri's kids as they don't feel equal or welcome to play on community field.

As I got closer, looking through the darkness, it looked like all these guys were naked. I could not believe what I was seeing. But as I got closer, I noticed that they were all wearing their underwear and no one was wearing anything else (not even shoes). I could not believe what I was seeing. It was highly erotic. I was fascinated. Here were all these physically fit young men & late teens with tanned dark skinned sweaty bodies playing almost naked on the beach.

Now the purpose for this semi-nude attire is because it is very hard for the native people to keep clothes clean. Almost none of them have any running water and will do all bathing and clothes washing in closest creek. So it would make perfect sense when playing a game like soccer, in sand to not do it in your clothes and then bath in stream after game was over. Hell, I thought "why even get the underwear dirty?"

So, I stopped my bike for a bit too watch but I did not stay long as I did not want to appear like the real letch I was leering at them. Also many of them know Roberto and I and I did not want them to feel uncomfortable around us.

But the whole experience got me to thinking. These young men are always looking for work but have such a hard time because they are very unskilled and uneducated. But they all LOVE soccer. So, they could play soccer game once a week in their underwear on the beach and we could sell tickets to busloads of gay tourists to come and watch the game. Then we could give all the money to the players.

Funny usually just the thought for many gay men (especially me) of having to endure sports on the news or a sports game on TV makes me them want to throw up, but I can assure you that this would be one game that would have many on the edge of my seat till it was over. Hell, I would even buy a seasons ticket.

Posted by Colin Brownlee on November 18th, 2005 in Articles.