  We study the effect of a strongly fluctuating gauge field on a degenerate
Bose liquid, relevant to the charge degrees of freedom in doped Mott
insulators. We find that the superfluidity is destroyed. The resulting metallic
phase is studied using quantum Monte Carlo methods. Gauge fluctuations cause
the boson world lines to retrace themselves. We examine how this world-line
geometry affects the physical properties of the system. In particular, we find
a transport relaxation rate of the order of 2kT, consistent with the normal
state of the cuprate superconductors. We also find that the density excitations
of this model resemble that of the full tJ model.
