Tute

So last night I took a girl to Hotel Del Reyⁱ, which is one of the two or threeⁱⁱ surviving local brothelsⁱⁱⁱ. Perhaps this isn't the first time such a wonder ever happened, but judging by the very confused locals (whores and punters^iv alike) I'll venture a guess it's been a while.

My girl was taller than all the girls there. She did have more tit than most, and certainly a better waistline than any other. These things matter, you know, I don't so much care your waist is seventeen-and-a-half-inches like fabled Scarlet's if your chest is eighteen and a quarter. I couldn't care less about your gallon-and-a-half boobage if your waistline looks like a Michelin advertisement. The idea is for your waist to be both over a dozen inches under and under two thirds of both your tits and ass. As for smarts, capacity to decode the foregoing sentence is sufficient, I can teach you anything else if you can do that much on your own.

Anyway, so I passed the girl my hat and umbrella^v and sat myself down to play tute.

Tute, the local name for caribbean stud, is a recently constructed game, driven by the greed of casinos. You see, owing to the fluke popularity of poker casinos got very interested at some point in the late 70s, but poker has a fundamental flaw : the rake is small. "Table games" ie casino roasters are much more popular with the casinos, because instead of a tiny rake they can get a much larger^vi chunk of the money sloshing around. Speaking of which, the fact that this silly blackjack replacement only took off once a progressive jackpot was linked speaks volumes as to the intellectual and more generally biological quality of the players involved.

Anyway, Tute is played against the dealer. There is no bluffing, and no table competition, which makes it ideally suited for wasting some time. Player can bet whatever he wants, the dust minimum bet being common. Upon betting all players and the dealer are dealt five cards face down. The dealer turns one (or two cards). The players may bet again, but only twice their original bet. If they do not, they lose that original bet. If they do, and the dealer has a hand no better than Ace-King, the house pays their original bet^vii. If they do, and the dealer has a hand better than Ace-King, and the player's hand is no better than the dealer's, the player gets nothing. Finally, if the player does bet, and the dealer hand does qualify, and the player hand beats the dealer's the player is paid on a scale based on how much better his hand is than the dealer's.^viii

So, to conclude : I played a few hands of this thing in the little over an hour my valet slavegirl expert took to evaluate the local hookers, after which I cashed in, 60% richer over the 4 Bitcents^ix I went in with.^x I suppose I can take next week off now, right ?

1. This place would be best approximated by a high energy, fundie-only frat house from the 1970s. Other than the fuck rooms (proper hotel arrangement, none of the ad-hoc lodge nonsense) there's a lobby, hosting low pressure / low stakes casino tables, a bar and a restaurant. The entire surface, an acre or so, is populated by dozens to a hundred+ girls pretty much every night, each and every one ready to go. The fee is a coupla Bitcents, they're just waiting for you to smile or wave them over or for the love of god something, anything, please. Some will even follow you away from there, within reason.

   And yes if you're coming to visit me this is where I'm booking you. [↩]

2. Other two being Sportsman and whatever. Here's one funny bit : rooms at the "three and a half" stars Del Rey hotel will set you back about 2.7 Bitcents or so. Meanwhile a room at the "four stars" Sportsman Lodge will set you back 1.8 Bitcents or thereby. It's not all in the stars, as you can see, some of it happens down on Earth. [↩]
3. The local's notion of a brothel is heavily influenced by Asian traditions, that large warehouse covered in reeds or sheet metal if luxurious, with tiny "rooms" made by hanging gray old textile matter on zinc wire.

   I am using the term in the white man's sense, proper hotel with gambling and "independent contractors". You know, like Vegas back before the bureaucrat mob took it over from the republican mob. [↩]

4. Speaking of which, one of the advantages of going to Costa Rican brothels is that it can't possibly not make you feel good about yourself. The gringo population is made up of bankrupt fellows in its virtual entirety. I don't just mean financially bankrupt, that's mendable. No, I mean biologically bankrupt. I don't just mean frail, whispy hair, expired sexagenarians (see what I did there ?!?!?!). Obviously the anatomy is an important part of male function, but not the whole. The physiology is not doing any better, when a bunch of police stormed the place around 1 am, the coupla gringos to my side huddled into each other because "why do the motorcycle guys have their helmets still on it's so intimidating". Fancy having to fuck that for a living!

   Meanwhile the police, doing an immigration raid, proved themselves too intimidated to ask my girl anything. Notwithstanding that she was seated at the bar with the whores, chatting with them. Notwithstanding that there's not so many girls working as for the police to not be expected to remember their faces. Notwithstanding that an immigration raid is all about figuring out where the newcomers came from. Nope, none of that, under the divine protection of carrying my hat she was beyond interpelation. [↩]

5. Apparently the wonders of gentlemen being dressed still haven't percolated all the way through the Caribbean, judging by how they have no allowance whatsoever for the most basic needs.

   So she gets it, because yes she is my valet. Splendid idea, this, by the way -- slavegirl valet. Grab cunt any time you feel like because skirts and no underwear ; plus get rid of your hat any time you don't need it and get it back any time you wish because the girl's trained to make contact periodically and watch your hands on cue and so on.

   Some people regret the glories of the past. I do not. I improve upon them instead. [↩]

6. Ten times as much is common. [↩]
7. So you get one third of what you put down, this three chips in a triangle / four chips in a square pattern being perhaps the definitively descriptive structure of the game. [↩]
8. A fours-fulla-kings in my hand prevailing over the dealer's one pair saw the house line up seven chip stacks to match my two matching my one. That sorta thing.

   The amusing thing about this was that by some twist of chance the dealer had asked me before dealing whether I want the "accumulado", which is this two-dime special chip that buys you access in the progressive jackpot. I waved it away. Everyone at the table was duly horrified by how I missed out, and how I could have made bank, and the dealer told me she told me so smiling sweetly and so on.

   But the butt of the joke is that such a jackpot chip would have earned me no less than fifteen thousand colones!!! (about .6 Bitcents) whereas my actual bet was twice that, and consequently my winnings fifteen times that.

   The locals play the table minimum (about 0.04 Bitcents) with a dedication worthy of a better cause, and so they get so fixated they simply can't process the reality of progressive jackpots being for chumps. A well. I bought some of the inexpensive (about 0.004 Bitcents, we're dusting hardcore by now) tokens to humor the company. [↩]

9. Still worth a coupla pairs of tits, by the way. [↩]
10. Such richness is not common, the usual fare is dude changing 10`000 colones to chips (about .4 Bitcents). This very tensed up, mexican-looking dude showed up with one of the ugly balls of lard the locals keep marrying for some incomprehensible reason and gave away his red BAC tarjeta, apparently unaware of how the whole card showoff works in this context, or that it even exists. Why would anyone make heavy metal cards and so on ? What, really, to discreetly compete with the other castrated males in sanitized brothels like they have on the East Coast ?!?!

    Anyway, teh gangsta wanted 25`000 charged, and was very gangstery about it when they wanted to see his id. I don't mean he didn't show it or anything, but he did it with gangstery moves, okay ?

    Which reminds me, this US born lady, retired Physics teacher, living here for a coupla years warned self-same slavegirl not to go on hill hitches alone, and refused to pair up. They need at least three women to be safe, she explained, because there's bandidos that "come right out of the coffee fields". The notion that a male in this country would actually rape a woman pales in terms of ridicule at the thought that somehow somewhere a retired Physics teacher imagines that if rape were on the menu, three was somehow the magic safety number. Not two, mind you.

    Thoroughly imaginary bandidos (in probable reality, Nicaraguan farm hands trying to be friendly and I dunno, daring to say hello or whatever such near-death experience for the average dreamer) that rape one rape two just as well. But not three. No bandidos could handle three of the stupid cunts. Just one or two. Hear them roar. [↩]