my parents owned a tenanted farm along the coast, about 2 kilometers from the beach. when i was 18 or 19, i would often hop on the bus for a 3-hour trip to the farm, and stay there by my lonesome during weekends or schoolbreaks.

the main farm house was empty, but i got my mama's permission to use it as my hideaway. i occupied a small room overlooking the green-brown fields that stretched all the way to the beach. i stacked the room with rows of books, and set up a typewriter on a desk.

prison life had somehow regimented my habits -- waking up at dawn, doing the army dozen, and jogging along the beach, before sitting down to read and write -- and i felt obliged to keep it that way. it was there, by the sea, that i kept my dreams alive. at school, i was merely plodding along like a zombie, especially after kelsey and i broke up. finishing college was the least of my priorities.

the whole stretch was empty, except for three indigenous tenant families who lived in small cottages lined up along the road to the beach. i had made friends with them. hungry for company and chat, i would occasionally cook and eat my meals in their dilapidated kitchens, together with their children, their dogs and cats and chicken on the lookout for crumbs. i had somehow gained their respect as "the landlord's son who wants to live in poverty."

often, i would take a book or sketchbook down to the beach, watch fishermen and their womenfolk bring down and sort out the night's catch, maybe play tag with their children. sometimes i went swimming alone. i'm not a very strong swimmer, but i'm confident enough to swim out to maybe 500 meters offshore, float and tread for a while, and then return to shore.

one morning, after a stormy night, i noticed huge globs of jellyfish stranded on the deserted beach, just sitting there immobile like deflated beach balls, whitish and translucent on the sand. the seawater was murky with algae. that should have been warning enough.

but this bullheaded boy just didn't know the meaning of danger with a capital D. so i waded into waist-deep water, and dived in to start my relaxed crawl.

it was on my way back, doing breast strokes maybe 200 meters from the shore, when my entire front torso, arms and legs felt like a hundred razorwhips had plowed through my skin. i knew right off: the sharp stinging pain had come from jellyfish tentacles, perhaps a large man o'war that crossed my path.

it wasn't hard to sprint and wade through the water until i reached shore. the initial pain of the sting was tolerable. but as i began my slow walk across the beach to the road, i realized that my leg muscles were becoming numb and harder to move. at that point, i felt panic starting to grip me.

i plodded on. one kilometer to go. i was practically dragging my legs now along the road, from one excruciating step to the next. i looked around for help, but the entire stretch was empty. my mind was struggling to focus on the road, fighting off panic.

200 meters to go. the toxic stings were now clearly visible as ugly red welts across my chest, stomach and limbs. more and more, i found it difficult to breathe. panic had set in. the nearest peasant hut was just visible behind the rise. i tried to scream for help. but only a puny voice came out. i saw death stalking among the tall reeds.

100 meters to go. i was crawling now on all fours on the gravelly road. my breaths were coming in irregular gasps. just as i was about to collapse, a peasant housewife (whom i'll call soledad) who was carrying firewood nearby, heard my faint groans. she rushed to my side, screamed for help, and soon, others bodily carried me and laid me down inside the hut.

i was barely conscious now. soledad and her husband paquito quickly sized up the problem. paquito soaked a towel in vinegar and wiped it repeated across my body, arms and legs. meanwhile, soledad spoon-fed me with globs of molasses. when all the vinegar was used up, paquito's daughter ran to a convenience store down the highway to buy -- get this -- several bottles of mountain dew. paquito resumed soaking my body welts in the carbonic acid of the soda pop drink.

i must have consumed a whole jar of molasses. i threw up some, but soledad continued her spoon-feeding. my entire body was heaving now, struggling for every intake of breath like the victim of an extreme asthma attack. (one of the reasons, btw, why i could deeply relate with the film motorcycle diaries about the young che guevara.)

it went on like that, for i don't know how long. i never lost consciousness, but i noticed it was late afternoon when i found my voice back, my breathing having returned to normal. that night, after the peasant couple spoonfed me again with thin chayote gruel and more molasses, i slept a fitful sleep while their daughter watched over me with a tiny kerosene lamp.

the next morning, i woke up early, felt my strength return, and begged paquito and soledad to allow me to return to the beach with a machete. "what for?" they asked. so i could decimate all the fuckin' jellyfish shitheads in a beach-wide massacre. and maybe cut them up into bite-size cubes to marinate in mountain dew for tonight's barbeque. i was only joking, of course. they laughed at my antics, greatly relieved that i was ok.

it took about a month for the welts to completely heal. i had wanted to show my "red badge of courage" to kelsey, my ex-girlfriend. but she was always "out for practice" with the varsity team. thus, i never got the chance to regale her with my outrageously tall tale -- about the great beach sex i had with my new, stunningly beautiful girlfriend, who took my breath away and lacerated me to pieces with her fingernails, while our orgasms roiled forth like frothy waves, smashing one after the other onto our bodies as we made love on the sand in the stormy night.

without mentioning the fact, of course, that my newfound beach beauty was a cnidarian -- armed with a dozen tentacles, studded with a thousand nematocysts. a real kick-ass dominatrix.