Down the avenue from Jesu was an open-air corner espresso joint filled with Cuban men who loved to argue, laugh, play card and domino games. Tomas passed it each afternoon on his way to Burdines. One day he stepped in and bought a demitasse of Bustello. A small space was made for him at the formica bar. He listened to everyone, not saying a word. He had everything to hear.
The TV showed President Kennedy speaking about Cuba, pronouncing it: Kew-ber.
"Coo-bah!" voiced Tomas. No one seemed to hear.
Some men were gathered around a copper-skin man with a barrel-chest mounted on stubby legs. Thick crow-black hair was shorn in the round-head style. The face was arrogant and cruel, with a nose like the beak of a condor. Horrendous slash scars adorned his forearms.
He was called, to no surprise, Indio.
*
Spatters of conversation. Cigar smoke. Mention of Alpha 66. Tomas knew of those clandestine patriots training in the Everglades for an assault on Fidel Castro. He felt his ears prick up like those of a donkey.
"Hey-Boy!" Roberto the coffee grinderman whistled. "When is your pretty girl coming?"
Tomas had been noticed, now a part of the gang. They were all laughing.
In about thirty minutes a diminuative ninth-grader would pass by with shy eyes cast down toward the sidewalk, on her way to Flagler Street. Like clockwork.
One day her path had been blocked by a covey of pigeons and she inadvertantly made eye-contact with Tomas. A deep blush smudged her olive face and they all saw it.
"Look at that. The ugly thing has a crush for Hey-Boy."
*
It was commonly agreed that Carmen Diaz was far from pretty. Her mousy hair always looked unwashed. Her forearms were furry. She had a faint moustache and her eyebrows met. It was too early to tell if she would develope a greater bosom. She walked without grace or confidence. Her school uniform appeared to be hand-me-down.
Roberto wickedly sniggered, "Can you imagine the bush on that girl in a few years? Hey-Boy, you better be nice to her now."
Tomas joined the chorus of cat-calls.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, November 28, 2010
libertad miami part two
Tomas discovered Lorca and he grew fond of the revered Spanish poet. He visited Burdines after school one day and bought a New Directions paperback with selected poems. He read them all a dozen times, each time with greater love and appreciation. It occurred to him to find the poems of his grandfather, gathering dust at the old library in Santiago. Oscar Reyes began as a storyteller with a flair for poetry. He sang cautionary homage to the sea. A local schoolteacher transcribed the best of them in verse form and published a very limited edition. Tomas vowed to retrieve the book. And he would introduce his fellow Americans to the Cantos de Oscar Reyes.
*
One Monday Uncle Gaspar told his sister that her son was a daydreamer.
"But don't worry. I'll keep an eye on him. He's quite bright. And the customers, especially the ladies, are crazy for him."
"How does he run the register?"
"Some mistakes. But never mind that. Santa Maria! That smile of his! It melts the hearts of all the pretty girls his age. And they drag their mothers into the shop when neither are particularly hungry."
Demurely Teresa covered her mouth and laughed. She squeezed her big brother's hand.
"Gracias."
*
Tomas' math skills remained abysmally poor, barring him from taking trig and calculus, subjects necessary for a future engineer. Teresa was furious. She stormed Jesu seeking the heads of all the goddamned fools.
She knew the routine.
While he was a teacher her husband had dealt with academic laziness and it was now clear to her that someone had told Tomas he had a mental block. That he would never understand mathematics. With that in mind Tomas evidently decided that math was hopeless and had quit trying to learn it.
"These are your most important years," she scolded him time and again. "Study hard and make good grades. In everything! Not just in subjects you find entertaining!"
During one tirade she caught sight of his beloved Classics Illustrated comic books. He had cached them in a sort of little shrine. She snatched them up, shrieking, "It's time you got your nose out of such frivolous things!"
Although he had outgrown them, they were truly sacred. Revered upon an invisible altar to his Papi.
She burned them in the backyard on the barbecue.
As smoke billowed into the hibiscus hedge he felt she was burning Hector Reyes in effigy.
*
One Monday Uncle Gaspar told his sister that her son was a daydreamer.
"But don't worry. I'll keep an eye on him. He's quite bright. And the customers, especially the ladies, are crazy for him."
"How does he run the register?"
"Some mistakes. But never mind that. Santa Maria! That smile of his! It melts the hearts of all the pretty girls his age. And they drag their mothers into the shop when neither are particularly hungry."
Demurely Teresa covered her mouth and laughed. She squeezed her big brother's hand.
"Gracias."
*
Tomas' math skills remained abysmally poor, barring him from taking trig and calculus, subjects necessary for a future engineer. Teresa was furious. She stormed Jesu seeking the heads of all the goddamned fools.
She knew the routine.
While he was a teacher her husband had dealt with academic laziness and it was now clear to her that someone had told Tomas he had a mental block. That he would never understand mathematics. With that in mind Tomas evidently decided that math was hopeless and had quit trying to learn it.
"These are your most important years," she scolded him time and again. "Study hard and make good grades. In everything! Not just in subjects you find entertaining!"
During one tirade she caught sight of his beloved Classics Illustrated comic books. He had cached them in a sort of little shrine. She snatched them up, shrieking, "It's time you got your nose out of such frivolous things!"
Although he had outgrown them, they were truly sacred. Revered upon an invisible altar to his Papi.
She burned them in the backyard on the barbecue.
As smoke billowed into the hibiscus hedge he felt she was burning Hector Reyes in effigy.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
libertad miami part one
Teresa Reyes, like Penelope, had many suitors. And like Penelope she awaited her huband.
With the cash spirited out of Cuba she financed a white stucco shoebox along the Tamiami Trail. Before long, Southwest Eighth Street became known as Calle Ocho. She was hired by Burdines and worked her way into Cosmetics. After two hard-fought battles she won two promotions, and could speak English fluently. Then she and Tomas moved to a rose-colored ranch house with a roof of red Spanish tile in Miami Springs. It was clean and spacious and Tomas could have baseball buddies over to watch American Bandstand. Whenever one of them asked about his father Tomas told the story with added flourish, and as Truth evolved into Myth he larded his tale with the stuff of dreams. Legendary deeds of an imaginary father.
His math skills were poor. So Teresa enrolled him into Jesu, downtown and not far from Burdines.
Algebra and other abstract thinking continued to be a disaster. He passed Euclidian Geometry by the skin of his teeth and went on to finish his math requirement with Business Math. He could add, subtract, divide and multiply. He could run a cash register and balance a ledger. An accountant he would never be, but he was qualified to work in Uncle Gaspar's sandwich shop.
History was a breeze. It wasn't just a matter of memorizing dates. It was a story-line. And he loved stories. English was his favorite subject. It required him to read literature. His Papi had whetted his taste for great literature by buying him Classics Illustrated in Spanish. He smuggled them out of Cuba and now Tomas horded them in his room.
Grammar came naturally to him. Two teachers at Jesu saw that he could easily diagram sentences and parse nouns. They encouraged him to write essays, and as he mastered English he soon developed a more masterful Spanish. He had a true knack for languages.Eventualy he was thinking in tongues. Something Teresa failed to notice, so obsessed she was that he become an engineer.
Every night she watched Huntley and Brinkley report on the Space Race.
With the cash spirited out of Cuba she financed a white stucco shoebox along the Tamiami Trail. Before long, Southwest Eighth Street became known as Calle Ocho. She was hired by Burdines and worked her way into Cosmetics. After two hard-fought battles she won two promotions, and could speak English fluently. Then she and Tomas moved to a rose-colored ranch house with a roof of red Spanish tile in Miami Springs. It was clean and spacious and Tomas could have baseball buddies over to watch American Bandstand. Whenever one of them asked about his father Tomas told the story with added flourish, and as Truth evolved into Myth he larded his tale with the stuff of dreams. Legendary deeds of an imaginary father.
His math skills were poor. So Teresa enrolled him into Jesu, downtown and not far from Burdines.
Algebra and other abstract thinking continued to be a disaster. He passed Euclidian Geometry by the skin of his teeth and went on to finish his math requirement with Business Math. He could add, subtract, divide and multiply. He could run a cash register and balance a ledger. An accountant he would never be, but he was qualified to work in Uncle Gaspar's sandwich shop.
History was a breeze. It wasn't just a matter of memorizing dates. It was a story-line. And he loved stories. English was his favorite subject. It required him to read literature. His Papi had whetted his taste for great literature by buying him Classics Illustrated in Spanish. He smuggled them out of Cuba and now Tomas horded them in his room.
Grammar came naturally to him. Two teachers at Jesu saw that he could easily diagram sentences and parse nouns. They encouraged him to write essays, and as he mastered English he soon developed a more masterful Spanish. He had a true knack for languages.Eventualy he was thinking in tongues. Something Teresa failed to notice, so obsessed she was that he become an engineer.
Every night she watched Huntley and Brinkley report on the Space Race.
uncle zoot: vaya con dios
Felicia Cienfuegos coughed up another scarlet gob. Its viscosity caused icey alarm to stab her brother's heart. Guillermo sat beside her bed in her only chair. The village santero had blessed her with his unique santiguo, asking for the aid of Babalu-Aye, patron of the sick. Guillermo only knew his Bible, so he prayed to Jesus.
Dim slats of sunlight, dust motes.
"Luz," he moaned, having no faith in the array of coconuts and cowry shells, candles and incense, florida water and camphor oil.
He lit a cigar. Thinking, maybe its smoke could clear her narrow room of this evil.
The Orishas made him laugh.
He bent close to his little sister and asked for the name of this man in Havana.
Pink froth escaped Felicia's lips. Barely a whisper: "Hermano Lopez."
And the Avenging Angel nodded.
*
From behind Uncle Zoot's warm eyelids came the voice, rasping like sandpaper across a windowpane. "Hermano?"
"Si. I am Hermano."
"Wake up. You son of a whore. I have something for you."
Uncle Zoot felt a profound shuddering in his soul. He complied.
Standing before him was a man pointing a greasy revolver. It was the filthy leaf raker.
"Do I know you?"
"Remember in Hell my sister Luz."
Three bullets slammed into Uncle Zoot's belly. The pain began like a cramp that precedes an explosion of diarreah.
The assassin tucked the pistol in his waistband, stooped over and hoisted the dying man to his feet. Together they staggered like drinking buddies seeking a place to piss. Arm in arm, into a thicket of pines. As soon as they were out of sight Guillermo dumped the corpse upon moist earth.
Dim slats of sunlight, dust motes.
"Luz," he moaned, having no faith in the array of coconuts and cowry shells, candles and incense, florida water and camphor oil.
He lit a cigar. Thinking, maybe its smoke could clear her narrow room of this evil.
The Orishas made him laugh.
He bent close to his little sister and asked for the name of this man in Havana.
Pink froth escaped Felicia's lips. Barely a whisper: "Hermano Lopez."
And the Avenging Angel nodded.
*
From behind Uncle Zoot's warm eyelids came the voice, rasping like sandpaper across a windowpane. "Hermano?"
"Si. I am Hermano."
"Wake up. You son of a whore. I have something for you."
Uncle Zoot felt a profound shuddering in his soul. He complied.
Standing before him was a man pointing a greasy revolver. It was the filthy leaf raker.
"Do I know you?"
"Remember in Hell my sister Luz."
Three bullets slammed into Uncle Zoot's belly. The pain began like a cramp that precedes an explosion of diarreah.
The assassin tucked the pistol in his waistband, stooped over and hoisted the dying man to his feet. Together they staggered like drinking buddies seeking a place to piss. Arm in arm, into a thicket of pines. As soon as they were out of sight Guillermo dumped the corpse upon moist earth.
libertad part seven
Havana was finished. The Mob had relocated to more lucrative venues. At the hotel Lansky had left Lewis McWillie in charge of remaining operations. The CIA had spirited Batista from the country, leaving generals and lackey politicians in the lurch. The army fled en masse as Fidel Castro and his rag-tag horde descended upon the city. Not like a plague of locusts upon Egypt nor like Visigoths sacking Rome. But like liberators. The communists were the new Puritans and Castro was their Oliver Cromwell. These reformers had come to cleans Cuba of Yankee corruption. Meanwhile, there was McWillie, trying to make the best of a bad situation. In a moment of frustration he felt like kicking a dog, so he told his jack-of-all-trades, Uncle Zoot, to hit the road. Then he went back to repair the fallen lines of communication with Jack Ruby.
Dislodged from his stooge's roost at the Tropicana, Uncle Zoot saw it all as a blessing, deciding to go into business for himself. No more the sad-sack flunky was he! Country girls would be easy to recruit and easy to herd, now that most of the thugs were out of the way, having disappeared or having joined the rebels. Uncle Zoot had his cousin Jorge to enforce the rules of commerce and crack the heads of deadbeats and penniless soldiers.
*
So with the midmorning sun warming his back Uncle Zoot was thinking about the girl he had dismissed a week ago. Luz. A slim mulatto with frizzy dark hair with henna highlights. Luminous face, always smiling. Already her regulars were asking about her. He had noticed her coughing, then her fatigue. A few months went by with no change, except that her smile seemed forced and her business had fallen off. The doctor found she had tuberculosis.
Uncle Zoot last saw her as she trudged away with a cardboard suitcase in hand and dry goods bundled in a bed sheet and balanced atop her head. They had parted without a word of farewell. The path snaked off into burnt cane fields and foggy bottomed forests and up jade green mountains toward her own private Cielo.
As he sat there on his favorite bench he watched a man raking frangipani leafs. The man wore a white prisoner's uniform and a dirty straw cowboy hat. A black kinky beard grew so profuse that Uncle Zoot had thoughts of pubic hair. Disgusted, he trained his eyes upon a bounteous croton hedge.
Dislodged from his stooge's roost at the Tropicana, Uncle Zoot saw it all as a blessing, deciding to go into business for himself. No more the sad-sack flunky was he! Country girls would be easy to recruit and easy to herd, now that most of the thugs were out of the way, having disappeared or having joined the rebels. Uncle Zoot had his cousin Jorge to enforce the rules of commerce and crack the heads of deadbeats and penniless soldiers.
*
So with the midmorning sun warming his back Uncle Zoot was thinking about the girl he had dismissed a week ago. Luz. A slim mulatto with frizzy dark hair with henna highlights. Luminous face, always smiling. Already her regulars were asking about her. He had noticed her coughing, then her fatigue. A few months went by with no change, except that her smile seemed forced and her business had fallen off. The doctor found she had tuberculosis.
Uncle Zoot last saw her as she trudged away with a cardboard suitcase in hand and dry goods bundled in a bed sheet and balanced atop her head. They had parted without a word of farewell. The path snaked off into burnt cane fields and foggy bottomed forests and up jade green mountains toward her own private Cielo.
As he sat there on his favorite bench he watched a man raking frangipani leafs. The man wore a white prisoner's uniform and a dirty straw cowboy hat. A black kinky beard grew so profuse that Uncle Zoot had thoughts of pubic hair. Disgusted, he trained his eyes upon a bounteous croton hedge.
Friday, November 26, 2010
libertad part six
The zoot-suits were long gone, donated to Saint Vincent's poor. Today Uncle Zoot wore his favorite shirt. Tropical cotton dyed cinnamon brown and emblazoned with hibiscus blooms. He loved flowers. Especially the excitable one belonging to his woman.
He sat on a park bench with a small bag of Hershey's Kisses. They were for her, but he couldn't help pinching one. He sucked the little bit of chocolate, savoring until it was gone, and his rotten molar began to hammer in protest. Pleasure and pain.
Soledad was just that. Pleasure and pain.
Physically she resembled a praying mantis. Wizened at forty years, her only aspect of beauty to him was her wavy gray hair as it cascaded down the length of her tawny back like a mountain waterfall. Each morning she rolled it into a bun and attended Mass. Novenas at night. Candles and pleas to the Blessed Virgin. A sweat-soaked scapular between her breasts.
So when she learned that her lover, sweet Hermano Lopez, had become a flesh-merchant, running a bevy of teenage girls from the sticks, Soledad ordered him to go to Holy Confession and seek penance,
Uncle Zoot loved his girls as long as they remained polite, demure and sunny-faced. Whenever one began to spoil like fallen fruit too long on the ground, he sadly dismissed her. Hardcore pimps thought he was a soft-hearted sap. Though his skin felt clammy whenever he entered a church, he stayed long enough for a prayer to Saint Dismas.
Soledad was astounded. He seemed to sleep with a clear conscience.
He sat on a park bench with a small bag of Hershey's Kisses. They were for her, but he couldn't help pinching one. He sucked the little bit of chocolate, savoring until it was gone, and his rotten molar began to hammer in protest. Pleasure and pain.
Soledad was just that. Pleasure and pain.
Physically she resembled a praying mantis. Wizened at forty years, her only aspect of beauty to him was her wavy gray hair as it cascaded down the length of her tawny back like a mountain waterfall. Each morning she rolled it into a bun and attended Mass. Novenas at night. Candles and pleas to the Blessed Virgin. A sweat-soaked scapular between her breasts.
So when she learned that her lover, sweet Hermano Lopez, had become a flesh-merchant, running a bevy of teenage girls from the sticks, Soledad ordered him to go to Holy Confession and seek penance,
Uncle Zoot loved his girls as long as they remained polite, demure and sunny-faced. Whenever one began to spoil like fallen fruit too long on the ground, he sadly dismissed her. Hardcore pimps thought he was a soft-hearted sap. Though his skin felt clammy whenever he entered a church, he stayed long enough for a prayer to Saint Dismas.
Soledad was astounded. He seemed to sleep with a clear conscience.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
a small visit
Hector Reyes admired the codependency of his bromeliads, the way they funneled rainwater into their host plants. They had become metaphor to many things. He believed that his soul had been given a purpose: to understand Nature. When coming to such fullness, presumedly late in life, he would die and ascend to one of Earth's higher aspects. Such was the vision he saw as a boy studying one day in the city library with his father Oscar Reyes, the humblest poet in Santiago.
He was laboring happily now in his potting shed out back. Its wood gone green, the old shed seemed to be resting its weary timbers upon an impenetrable forest of ancient pines. He knew of a pig trail that led deep into the wilderness. It ended in a lovers roost high in the piedmont. This rustic existence was a far cry from his life in Santiago. The Revolution had swept him up like a hurricane, snatching his property and minimal wealth, dispensing it to the winds of change. Stripped of everything, he stepped into a new world with new possibilities. He surrendered to the Revolution. It relieved him of all the old burdens, all the old responsibilities, and he was absolved of past sins.
With this peace of mind he tended his Sunday garden.
Orchids were introduced to tortoise-shaped clots of tamped peat moss. He bound these creations in a fine wire and hung them from a shady ficus tree where they could listen to wind-chimes.
Sometimes in the music of the brass tubes he could hear his son Tomas in far away Miami calling his name.
*
"Como estas, Comrade Reyes?"
"Ernesto--"
Hector had not heard the minutist footfall. The only sound his friend made was a rattling in the lungs. And to hear it you had to be close enough for his death kiss.
The man wore military fatigues and the straw sombrero of a machetero. His side-arm was the Colt 1911 semi-automatic .45. He began to wheeze.
"Please," he said. "Let's go outside. I do not know what it is about your shed, but it gets to me."
Bags of peat, sheep manure and lime were stacked in a corner. The loamy fragrance could become overpowering. Hector agreed, "Of course. Come. We will have small coffees."
They walked past the garden to the rear of a country cottage, earthy, with weathered siding. Gray shingles, green with mould. Porch railing corrupted by verdigris. Suspended from rafters were ceramic pots brimming with philodendron.
"Humble quarters, my friend."
"I am fine here. Please sit." Hector pointed toward a short table and bench affair. "I will serve you."
"Forget the coffees."
"What's wrong?"
"El Lider is most curious about your Mister Rosen in Miami."
"I no longer work for the rum company. El Lider knows this."
"What do you know about Ron Matusalem moving to Puerto Rico?"
"Nothing, compadre. Nothing at all."
"Very well." Ernesto sighed, satisfied. "Thank you."
"I thought you were here for my report to committee."
"Yes, of course."
Hector went inside and returned with a manila envelope. "The literacy campaign is going very well."
"And you?"
"It gives me a sense of purpose."
Ernesto took the envelope and shook Hector's hand. Sadly he said, "Farewell, my friend. I must leave Cuba soon. I doubt I will return. I will always remember your devotion to the people."
That was why the frail doctor paid visit. It was good-bye.
He was laboring happily now in his potting shed out back. Its wood gone green, the old shed seemed to be resting its weary timbers upon an impenetrable forest of ancient pines. He knew of a pig trail that led deep into the wilderness. It ended in a lovers roost high in the piedmont. This rustic existence was a far cry from his life in Santiago. The Revolution had swept him up like a hurricane, snatching his property and minimal wealth, dispensing it to the winds of change. Stripped of everything, he stepped into a new world with new possibilities. He surrendered to the Revolution. It relieved him of all the old burdens, all the old responsibilities, and he was absolved of past sins.
With this peace of mind he tended his Sunday garden.
Orchids were introduced to tortoise-shaped clots of tamped peat moss. He bound these creations in a fine wire and hung them from a shady ficus tree where they could listen to wind-chimes.
Sometimes in the music of the brass tubes he could hear his son Tomas in far away Miami calling his name.
*
"Como estas, Comrade Reyes?"
"Ernesto--"
Hector had not heard the minutist footfall. The only sound his friend made was a rattling in the lungs. And to hear it you had to be close enough for his death kiss.
The man wore military fatigues and the straw sombrero of a machetero. His side-arm was the Colt 1911 semi-automatic .45. He began to wheeze.
"Please," he said. "Let's go outside. I do not know what it is about your shed, but it gets to me."
Bags of peat, sheep manure and lime were stacked in a corner. The loamy fragrance could become overpowering. Hector agreed, "Of course. Come. We will have small coffees."
They walked past the garden to the rear of a country cottage, earthy, with weathered siding. Gray shingles, green with mould. Porch railing corrupted by verdigris. Suspended from rafters were ceramic pots brimming with philodendron.
"Humble quarters, my friend."
"I am fine here. Please sit." Hector pointed toward a short table and bench affair. "I will serve you."
"Forget the coffees."
"What's wrong?"
"El Lider is most curious about your Mister Rosen in Miami."
"I no longer work for the rum company. El Lider knows this."
"What do you know about Ron Matusalem moving to Puerto Rico?"
"Nothing, compadre. Nothing at all."
"Very well." Ernesto sighed, satisfied. "Thank you."
"I thought you were here for my report to committee."
"Yes, of course."
Hector went inside and returned with a manila envelope. "The literacy campaign is going very well."
"And you?"
"It gives me a sense of purpose."
Ernesto took the envelope and shook Hector's hand. Sadly he said, "Farewell, my friend. I must leave Cuba soon. I doubt I will return. I will always remember your devotion to the people."
That was why the frail doctor paid visit. It was good-bye.
libertad part five
Waiting in the nave of the concourse, Hector Reyes barked, "Tomas!"
Tomas snapped out of it and ran to rejoin his parents. They by-passed luggage-claim and went straight to the nearest cabstand. Once they had loaded their gear into the cab, Reyes handed a Par Avion envelope to the the driver. He pointed to the address and said, "Take my family to this place. Por favor."
"You're not coming?" Tomas asked.
Reyes shook his head sadly. He raked fingers through his son's pompadour. "Don't muss my hair, Papi!" would have been the retort, but the moment hung heavily. No one spoke. Reyes kissed his wife. Teresa nodded somberly.
Finally the seperation. A quiet airless tearing away.
Reyes watched the big yellow sedan drone toward Le Jeune Road until he could no longer see it. Then he walked back to his airplane, baking on the tarmac, being refueled for his return to Jose Marti Airport in Havana.
'
Tomas snapped out of it and ran to rejoin his parents. They by-passed luggage-claim and went straight to the nearest cabstand. Once they had loaded their gear into the cab, Reyes handed a Par Avion envelope to the the driver. He pointed to the address and said, "Take my family to this place. Por favor."
"You're not coming?" Tomas asked.
Reyes shook his head sadly. He raked fingers through his son's pompadour. "Don't muss my hair, Papi!" would have been the retort, but the moment hung heavily. No one spoke. Reyes kissed his wife. Teresa nodded somberly.
Finally the seperation. A quiet airless tearing away.
Reyes watched the big yellow sedan drone toward Le Jeune Road until he could no longer see it. Then he walked back to his airplane, baking on the tarmac, being refueled for his return to Jose Marti Airport in Havana.
'
Monday, November 22, 2010
libertad part four
Uncle Zoot's hair began low on his forehead and climbed in rolling combers up over his crown and down to his nape, which was criss-crossed with wrinkles as deep as the arroyos in California. Mister Lansky asked him one day at the hotel, "You ever mix it up with the Zoots in the Los Ang'les riots?"
"I'll have to take the Fifth on that, Boss."
"Hah, you're a real card, Zoot!"
Vain at age sixty-one he dyed his wavy hair the color of volcanic obsidian and glued it to his pate with pomade. His nose drooped down like a large red chili pepper, an accessory to his lantern jaw. Reyes kept a distance, as he would from any hoodlum. Especially one so adept with a shiv. For Tomas' sake Uncle Zoot was always welcome at the dinner table.
It was hard to believe this lumpen man once played dazzling guitar in clubs back in the 40s. He told endless tales that no one doubted. All the wild nights in Old Havana. Oh, how he loved to drop the names of musicians he had met. Like, pianist Bebo Valdes. And never to be forgotten: that gusty summer night with stars swaying among mimosa boughs, when Presidente Grau San Martin, with one gigantic bodyguard, paid visit. Salud! Bienvenidos! How down-to-earth and trustworthy the unpopular Presidente seemed, especially with that bastardo Batista whirring in the wings.
Tomas hung upon every word.
Now arthritis crippled Uncle Zoot's enormous hands.
Once a month he traveled the length of the island to Santiago for Sunday dinner. Teresa Reyes served chicken and squid with saffron rice jazzed with her Mami's blend of herbs and spices. She joked about Hermano's hollow leg. The cadaverous man could put away enormous meals and not gain a single pound. Reyes would smirk, "Uncle Zoot doesn't need a fork. He needs a shovel!"
Tomas worshipped this family oddball. Salicious tattoos and all. Before the feast he would visit the boy's room and grandly attempt one of his old sets. Chords were played with buzzing frets. The once nimble plectrum hand was a petrified claw attacking elusive strings. Even so, to Tomas his uncle was Django himself sitting on the edge of the bed.
Then came time for Tomas to show off. And he would launch into power chords and blues riffs he learned from Papi's Victrola. Uncle Zoot swayed and tapped his feet to the rhythm and together they laughed like cartoon magpies.
"I'll have to take the Fifth on that, Boss."
"Hah, you're a real card, Zoot!"
Vain at age sixty-one he dyed his wavy hair the color of volcanic obsidian and glued it to his pate with pomade. His nose drooped down like a large red chili pepper, an accessory to his lantern jaw. Reyes kept a distance, as he would from any hoodlum. Especially one so adept with a shiv. For Tomas' sake Uncle Zoot was always welcome at the dinner table.
It was hard to believe this lumpen man once played dazzling guitar in clubs back in the 40s. He told endless tales that no one doubted. All the wild nights in Old Havana. Oh, how he loved to drop the names of musicians he had met. Like, pianist Bebo Valdes. And never to be forgotten: that gusty summer night with stars swaying among mimosa boughs, when Presidente Grau San Martin, with one gigantic bodyguard, paid visit. Salud! Bienvenidos! How down-to-earth and trustworthy the unpopular Presidente seemed, especially with that bastardo Batista whirring in the wings.
Tomas hung upon every word.
Now arthritis crippled Uncle Zoot's enormous hands.
Once a month he traveled the length of the island to Santiago for Sunday dinner. Teresa Reyes served chicken and squid with saffron rice jazzed with her Mami's blend of herbs and spices. She joked about Hermano's hollow leg. The cadaverous man could put away enormous meals and not gain a single pound. Reyes would smirk, "Uncle Zoot doesn't need a fork. He needs a shovel!"
Tomas worshipped this family oddball. Salicious tattoos and all. Before the feast he would visit the boy's room and grandly attempt one of his old sets. Chords were played with buzzing frets. The once nimble plectrum hand was a petrified claw attacking elusive strings. Even so, to Tomas his uncle was Django himself sitting on the edge of the bed.
Then came time for Tomas to show off. And he would launch into power chords and blues riffs he learned from Papi's Victrola. Uncle Zoot swayed and tapped his feet to the rhythm and together they laughed like cartoon magpies.
libertad part three
Reyes arranged through Rosen to have his family flown out of Cuba in 1958, along with a small, tense syndicate of educated people.A pirate's ransome in cash was paid to charter a DC-3 to Miami. Tomas was thrilled from the moment he climbed aboard the commercialised Douglas C-47. Formerly a troop carrier, the refitted Skytrain rattled and roared. Yet aloft it flew as steadily as a pelican. Pressed against the window, Tomas could see the ancient Morro pass below. Far away and obscured by clouds were the Escambray Mountains where the Holy Spirit moved upon the earth. Further along this verdant vertebrae the Sierra Maestre climbed the heights of solitude. When they landed at Miami International there was a grand TWA Constellation taxiing down a runway. Sleek and feminine in the sun. Once inside the concourse they hurried along in a herd laden with cloth tote bags, canvas flight bags and pieces of light luggage. Reyes wore his blue blue stripe seersucker suit and Teresa wore a blue floral print blouse and a pleated tan skirt. They walked confidently with Tomas.
He strolled insolently, with the collar of his black poplin jacket turned up and his hands jammed into his pockets. Hoodsville. Elvis. Cookie Cookie Lend Me Your Comb. He flicked the Ace pocket comb through raven hair slick with Wildroot Cream Oil. Feeling independent, cool, and slightly dangerous, he began to lag behind. Daydreaming. American Bandstand. He had only watched Dick Clark once, at the big hotel where his Uncle Zoot worked. The hotel was owned by the mobster Meyer Lansky, who insisted that his television could pull in WTVJ Miami.
Uncle Zoot was Teresa's older brother Hermano Lopez. He was nicknamed Zoot because he wore garish purple Angelino zoot suits during World War Two. Spiffy, he thought. Then some tourist brat brayed, "Hey, lookit the schmo dressed up like da Jokah in Batman!"
He strolled insolently, with the collar of his black poplin jacket turned up and his hands jammed into his pockets. Hoodsville. Elvis. Cookie Cookie Lend Me Your Comb. He flicked the Ace pocket comb through raven hair slick with Wildroot Cream Oil. Feeling independent, cool, and slightly dangerous, he began to lag behind. Daydreaming. American Bandstand. He had only watched Dick Clark once, at the big hotel where his Uncle Zoot worked. The hotel was owned by the mobster Meyer Lansky, who insisted that his television could pull in WTVJ Miami.
Uncle Zoot was Teresa's older brother Hermano Lopez. He was nicknamed Zoot because he wore garish purple Angelino zoot suits during World War Two. Spiffy, he thought. Then some tourist brat brayed, "Hey, lookit the schmo dressed up like da Jokah in Batman!"
Sunday, November 21, 2010
libertad part two
In Santiago Reyes worked for the distillery made famous for Ron Matusalem. The salary was good, much better than his earnings as a teacher. He managed labor relations, and was very influential with the harvesters and millers. They trusted him. The bigshots saw an opportunity in this. They felt he was the perfect man, able to staunch any revolt. Most important, he could do so without getting into politics.
Reyes had a business friend named Fred Rosen, a powerfully built lumbering man with broad shoulders. In a suit he looked big as a highway billboard. While in Cuba he shucked the busines wardrobe and settled into cotton shirts and worsted shorts. He had pink skin and brassy hair. Worry-lines
tracked across his forehead.
Meeting Tomas for the first time, he asked, "Well, how's my Cracker Jack boy?"
Not having worn the sailor suit for a long while, Tomas had no idea what that meant.
*
On his thirteenth birthday he received a gift from "Uncle" Fred, a portable record-player with a spindle fixed for the modern 45 RPM platters.
"Well, young man, you are officially a teenager, and this is the music American kids are listening to."
He spoke in a strange melodic Spanish.
Tomas opened the wrapped package with the skill of a surgeon. There he found recordings by Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Bill Haley and The Comets.
"Many thanks, Uncle Fred."
"You're very welcome. Say, could you find something Senora Teresa's kitchen for us to nibble on?"
"Si!"
On the way out he heard Uncle Fred chuckle to Papi. "My wife thinks kids his age listen to Perry Como and Tony Bennett."
His warm face gleaming, Reyes replied, "I understand. Thank you so much, Amigo."
*
Setting down the bowl of plantain frito, Tomas overheard them talking, speaking of "the coming troubles." Papi's face was dark and grim, yet he invited his son to sit and be a part of things. Tomas was
dumbstruck following his initiation in Man Talk.
Fred Rosen said to Reyes, "I know your sentiments, hombre. You're a soft-boiled socialist."
"That may be, but I am no revolutionary."
Rosen nodded, then added, "All right. I do remember you saying not long ago that the illiteracy among your macheteros is deplorable, Same goes for the millworkers. They are all getting the raw deal."
"The bosses screw them right and left."
"So how far are you from shouting, Workers Unite?"
"A long way. I am not for getting shot at the barricades just so some Bolshevic can usurp all the gains we make."
"Cynical, but wise."
Rosen looked upon the son while addressing the father. "What do propose we do about your family?"
*
"Papi, where does Uncle Fred live?"
"He lives in Miami. He represents our distributor in the United States. A good friend."
"His Spanish is foreign."
"Yes. He first learned what he could pick up from country folk in Spain. As a young man he fought with partisans against the fascists. His accent is from Andalusia."
"He fought in a country not his own?"
"Yes. He was an idealist."
Reyes had a business friend named Fred Rosen, a powerfully built lumbering man with broad shoulders. In a suit he looked big as a highway billboard. While in Cuba he shucked the busines wardrobe and settled into cotton shirts and worsted shorts. He had pink skin and brassy hair. Worry-lines
tracked across his forehead.
Meeting Tomas for the first time, he asked, "Well, how's my Cracker Jack boy?"
Not having worn the sailor suit for a long while, Tomas had no idea what that meant.
*
On his thirteenth birthday he received a gift from "Uncle" Fred, a portable record-player with a spindle fixed for the modern 45 RPM platters.
"Well, young man, you are officially a teenager, and this is the music American kids are listening to."
He spoke in a strange melodic Spanish.
Tomas opened the wrapped package with the skill of a surgeon. There he found recordings by Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent, Bill Haley and The Comets.
"Many thanks, Uncle Fred."
"You're very welcome. Say, could you find something Senora Teresa's kitchen for us to nibble on?"
"Si!"
On the way out he heard Uncle Fred chuckle to Papi. "My wife thinks kids his age listen to Perry Como and Tony Bennett."
His warm face gleaming, Reyes replied, "I understand. Thank you so much, Amigo."
*
Setting down the bowl of plantain frito, Tomas overheard them talking, speaking of "the coming troubles." Papi's face was dark and grim, yet he invited his son to sit and be a part of things. Tomas was
dumbstruck following his initiation in Man Talk.
Fred Rosen said to Reyes, "I know your sentiments, hombre. You're a soft-boiled socialist."
"That may be, but I am no revolutionary."
Rosen nodded, then added, "All right. I do remember you saying not long ago that the illiteracy among your macheteros is deplorable, Same goes for the millworkers. They are all getting the raw deal."
"The bosses screw them right and left."
"So how far are you from shouting, Workers Unite?"
"A long way. I am not for getting shot at the barricades just so some Bolshevic can usurp all the gains we make."
"Cynical, but wise."
Rosen looked upon the son while addressing the father. "What do propose we do about your family?"
*
"Papi, where does Uncle Fred live?"
"He lives in Miami. He represents our distributor in the United States. A good friend."
"His Spanish is foreign."
"Yes. He first learned what he could pick up from country folk in Spain. As a young man he fought with partisans against the fascists. His accent is from Andalusia."
"He fought in a country not his own?"
"Yes. He was an idealist."
Saturday, November 20, 2010
libertad part one
The strand at Mirror Beach reflected the sunset's crimson glow. Kit and Kat strolled arm in arm barefoot through the sighing foam. Each receding wave laid bare fresh traces of burrowing sand fleas. Those minute creatures fed upon micro-organisms washed in from Mother Provider. This subtle repast, ongoing, everlasting. Kit sloshed ashore, thinking: we know nothing beyond what appears to be.
Dressed like beachcombers they appeared ageless at any distance. Kat wore a floppy straw hat from Banana Republic and Kit wore a baseball cap from Sloppy Joe's. He confessed, "The day before you came home I was trudging here like an old tired man. Reciting T.S. Eliot to myself. 'I will wear my trousers rolled' and such. What a tonic you are!"
"Lady Geritol, that's me."
"Let's go get some mango ice cream."
"You are spunky today!"
Kit found himself trotting easily beside her, digging little heel-divots in the sand.
Between breaths Kat said, "Maybe you can tell me about Cassandra. Something sexy."
"That may be difficult."
*
It was an early Polaroid print, the kind you had to coat with a developer as soon as you pulled it from the camera. The once silver brilliance had aged to dull sepia. Kit handed it to Kat. "There she is before she bleached her hair."
"Did she always wear her hair like a boy?"
"Yes, but don't make too much of it."
"That sculpture there, was she fondling its balls?"
"The dude didn't have any."
Cassandra was posing with a life-sized and very life-like stone Triton blowing a spiral mollusk shell. She could not resist caressing those slabs of muscle.
Kit explained, "You can't see it, but below the waist he's all fish."
"Men get that way after a fashion."
*
After the ice cream they had cafe con leche. Kit smiled and said, "This little taste of Cuba reminds me of a friend from long ago. Went to college with him. Tomas Reyes, great guy. Later we hooked up in Canada. Part of the Venceramos Brigade. We went to Cuba to help bring in Fidel's ten million ton sugar harvest."
"Oh, your first play in New York. 'The Zafra.'"
"I wish you could have seen it. The man playing Tomas was incendiary!"
*
Tomas wore pink guayabera shirts because Papi did. The pastel enhanced Papi's cafe con leche mulatto skin. At forty Senor Reyes was lean and packed solid. He wore his shirts loose so that he could feel a breeze through his armpits. He had no paunch to hide. The family lived in a green house surrounded by huge caladium elephant ears and a brace of banana trees. Tomas' clearest memory of those days: he was dressed in a toddler's sailor suit and playing with a balsa wood glider that soared aloft, stalled and fell. Sometimes it was snatched by the great banyan that shaded the driveway. A macaw resided there and spotted the red DeSoto that Papi religiously washed and waxed on the Lord's Day of Rest. Papi forbade Tomas to climb the tree for the glider. He was, however, allowed to swing like Tarzan on the roots that descended like vines from the massive limbs.
"Wait until I come home," Papi warned. "I don't want you to crack your head open."
As far back as he could remember, Papi was cautioning him about something.
Dressed like beachcombers they appeared ageless at any distance. Kat wore a floppy straw hat from Banana Republic and Kit wore a baseball cap from Sloppy Joe's. He confessed, "The day before you came home I was trudging here like an old tired man. Reciting T.S. Eliot to myself. 'I will wear my trousers rolled' and such. What a tonic you are!"
"Lady Geritol, that's me."
"Let's go get some mango ice cream."
"You are spunky today!"
Kit found himself trotting easily beside her, digging little heel-divots in the sand.
Between breaths Kat said, "Maybe you can tell me about Cassandra. Something sexy."
"That may be difficult."
*
It was an early Polaroid print, the kind you had to coat with a developer as soon as you pulled it from the camera. The once silver brilliance had aged to dull sepia. Kit handed it to Kat. "There she is before she bleached her hair."
"Did she always wear her hair like a boy?"
"Yes, but don't make too much of it."
"That sculpture there, was she fondling its balls?"
"The dude didn't have any."
Cassandra was posing with a life-sized and very life-like stone Triton blowing a spiral mollusk shell. She could not resist caressing those slabs of muscle.
Kit explained, "You can't see it, but below the waist he's all fish."
"Men get that way after a fashion."
*
After the ice cream they had cafe con leche. Kit smiled and said, "This little taste of Cuba reminds me of a friend from long ago. Went to college with him. Tomas Reyes, great guy. Later we hooked up in Canada. Part of the Venceramos Brigade. We went to Cuba to help bring in Fidel's ten million ton sugar harvest."
"Oh, your first play in New York. 'The Zafra.'"
"I wish you could have seen it. The man playing Tomas was incendiary!"
*
Tomas wore pink guayabera shirts because Papi did. The pastel enhanced Papi's cafe con leche mulatto skin. At forty Senor Reyes was lean and packed solid. He wore his shirts loose so that he could feel a breeze through his armpits. He had no paunch to hide. The family lived in a green house surrounded by huge caladium elephant ears and a brace of banana trees. Tomas' clearest memory of those days: he was dressed in a toddler's sailor suit and playing with a balsa wood glider that soared aloft, stalled and fell. Sometimes it was snatched by the great banyan that shaded the driveway. A macaw resided there and spotted the red DeSoto that Papi religiously washed and waxed on the Lord's Day of Rest. Papi forbade Tomas to climb the tree for the glider. He was, however, allowed to swing like Tarzan on the roots that descended like vines from the massive limbs.
"Wait until I come home," Papi warned. "I don't want you to crack your head open."
As far back as he could remember, Papi was cautioning him about something.
a mango bitten part two
A breeze would curl up from the arbor and worm through the saffron curtains, billowing like great gauze mizzen sails. Kit detected the sweet scent of rotted fruit, fallen mango bursting forth in perfumed waste.
Once when he was a golden boy with elbows and knees barked from roller-skating down the long macadam driveway he swiped a mango from the gardener's tree and bit into it as if it were an apple. Juice from the deceptive skin poised his lips and caused them to blister. Next day he met the gardener at the curb of the estate. The wool of his head blazed red and so did his wild highland beard. He winked and spoke to Kit.
"Ask b'fore ye take, laddy."
*
The conch-blower knew whalesongs. Plaintive and mournful by human interpretation, the music rotated around, boxing the compass. Like Taps. Melody lingered far after the raggedy avatar had dissolved into the indigo night.
Kit dreamed then of this spectral woman climbing wantonly upon his bed. The maw of her cunt was a bloody portal wherein the moon resided. Her heavy locks, dark as anthrocite, tumbled down. A hungry Medusa, with gales of warm spiced breath. Transfixed, his only dream-thought was of a pagan whore he had met eons ago on Ibiza, who drew down the moon and fucked him in a bed of molten sand.
*
He woke becalmed. Looked across the room to a framed lithograph of the vampire by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and chuckled. Happy that Kat had come home. More than wife, she was the Goddess Mother he had always desired. This morning the clock in his chest pumped placidly, one moment at a time. Beside him he found a note: "Your play reminds me of 'The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore.' More so of Joseph Losey's take on it. 'Boom!' Who can forget Noel Coward as the Wailing Witch? Seriously, though, all your stuff needs pruning!"
*
"What was the name of that film version of 'Milk Train' ?"
Kat had scorched her scrambled eggs, so she smothered them con queso with picante sauce. She took a taste and smiled. "Said it was 'Boom!'. The sound each moment makes in passing."
"Ridiculous."
*
The heft and gloss of Semio-Stage surprised Kit. The cover art reminded him of Basquiat's pricey doodles. Too much money spent to look overly nice. She'll go broke within the year.
He examined the mug-shot of Cassandra next to her by-line. Gray crew cut. Getting jowls. Her expression: Fuck You. Something slipped from the open pages. Not a subscription card.
A personal note.
Out of the past. His little blond butch. What happened to you on Ibiza?
*
He showered and shaved, trimmed the goatee. It had acquired the feel of Spanish Moss. Then with a dab of queer gel his tumultuous mane danced once again. Positively leonine.
Now where did Kat get that Howard Hughes notion?
He slipped into some soft clogs and went to his Toshiba laptop.
The Semio-Stage webpage looked like a decal transfer sliding from its paper backing. And there was the younger face of the Sorbonne brat from long ago.
"Hello, old friend."
*
Her personal note was a gas: "Remember when you played 'Om' by Coltrane and Inez fled and hid in the loo? She must have soaked her pussy in that bidet until it wrinkled like a California raisin. She was gone such a long time. You pud of shit. You put that record on again just so it was playing when she returned. I swear she went mad. Coltrane's cacophony. Bleating moaning shrieking howling screaming chanting. Conjuring caterwauls. Yage hallucinations of buggering shackled lambs, goats, while grunting fealty to an amphetamine deity. Stainless alloy teeth dripping like hypodermic needles. Ah ah ah, wheek wheek wheek! Then the amphetamine deity shouts to the analfucker, hey man, move over and let me have a whack! The sax cries out satanic jubilation as the two of them bludgeon the creature with tire-irons."
*
Inez was such a trippy cunt, Kit recalled. She and Cassandra had gone to a Pola Negri revival at the cinematheque. When they returned Inez was in a dither, shouting to him, face to face, that men were all misogynists and lunkheads.
"What's biting her?" he asked Cassandra.
"We saw 'The Woman He Scorned.' Mizz Negri plays a reformed prostitute who cannot escape her past. In the end she surrenders herself to the sea and drowns."
"I'll go out for a while."
"You're sweet."
One sleety afternoon he walked in on the two of them as they perfected Yab-Yum on the Persian rug using a sex toy. Their climax was a real hootenanny.
*
Kat was toned to perfection. She had less fat than a pint of cottage cheese. Even her ass had muscle definition. Watching her towel off, Kit remarked, "Nice glutes."
"Glutes to the max, I hope. Spent hours in the gym."
"A set of ab-crunches would kill me."
"Start with five reps a day. You'll be fine. Do you walk any?"
"Yeah. To the postbox."
She wrinkled her nose. "What a lazy skunk!"
"I'm glad you're home. Really mean that."
She popped the towel at him. "Come with me. Let's stroll the beach."
Once when he was a golden boy with elbows and knees barked from roller-skating down the long macadam driveway he swiped a mango from the gardener's tree and bit into it as if it were an apple. Juice from the deceptive skin poised his lips and caused them to blister. Next day he met the gardener at the curb of the estate. The wool of his head blazed red and so did his wild highland beard. He winked and spoke to Kit.
"Ask b'fore ye take, laddy."
*
The conch-blower knew whalesongs. Plaintive and mournful by human interpretation, the music rotated around, boxing the compass. Like Taps. Melody lingered far after the raggedy avatar had dissolved into the indigo night.
Kit dreamed then of this spectral woman climbing wantonly upon his bed. The maw of her cunt was a bloody portal wherein the moon resided. Her heavy locks, dark as anthrocite, tumbled down. A hungry Medusa, with gales of warm spiced breath. Transfixed, his only dream-thought was of a pagan whore he had met eons ago on Ibiza, who drew down the moon and fucked him in a bed of molten sand.
*
He woke becalmed. Looked across the room to a framed lithograph of the vampire by Sir Edward Burne-Jones and chuckled. Happy that Kat had come home. More than wife, she was the Goddess Mother he had always desired. This morning the clock in his chest pumped placidly, one moment at a time. Beside him he found a note: "Your play reminds me of 'The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore.' More so of Joseph Losey's take on it. 'Boom!' Who can forget Noel Coward as the Wailing Witch? Seriously, though, all your stuff needs pruning!"
*
"What was the name of that film version of 'Milk Train' ?"
Kat had scorched her scrambled eggs, so she smothered them con queso with picante sauce. She took a taste and smiled. "Said it was 'Boom!'. The sound each moment makes in passing."
"Ridiculous."
*
The heft and gloss of Semio-Stage surprised Kit. The cover art reminded him of Basquiat's pricey doodles. Too much money spent to look overly nice. She'll go broke within the year.
He examined the mug-shot of Cassandra next to her by-line. Gray crew cut. Getting jowls. Her expression: Fuck You. Something slipped from the open pages. Not a subscription card.
A personal note.
Out of the past. His little blond butch. What happened to you on Ibiza?
*
He showered and shaved, trimmed the goatee. It had acquired the feel of Spanish Moss. Then with a dab of queer gel his tumultuous mane danced once again. Positively leonine.
Now where did Kat get that Howard Hughes notion?
He slipped into some soft clogs and went to his Toshiba laptop.
The Semio-Stage webpage looked like a decal transfer sliding from its paper backing. And there was the younger face of the Sorbonne brat from long ago.
"Hello, old friend."
*
Her personal note was a gas: "Remember when you played 'Om' by Coltrane and Inez fled and hid in the loo? She must have soaked her pussy in that bidet until it wrinkled like a California raisin. She was gone such a long time. You pud of shit. You put that record on again just so it was playing when she returned. I swear she went mad. Coltrane's cacophony. Bleating moaning shrieking howling screaming chanting. Conjuring caterwauls. Yage hallucinations of buggering shackled lambs, goats, while grunting fealty to an amphetamine deity. Stainless alloy teeth dripping like hypodermic needles. Ah ah ah, wheek wheek wheek! Then the amphetamine deity shouts to the analfucker, hey man, move over and let me have a whack! The sax cries out satanic jubilation as the two of them bludgeon the creature with tire-irons."
*
Inez was such a trippy cunt, Kit recalled. She and Cassandra had gone to a Pola Negri revival at the cinematheque. When they returned Inez was in a dither, shouting to him, face to face, that men were all misogynists and lunkheads.
"What's biting her?" he asked Cassandra.
"We saw 'The Woman He Scorned.' Mizz Negri plays a reformed prostitute who cannot escape her past. In the end she surrenders herself to the sea and drowns."
"I'll go out for a while."
"You're sweet."
One sleety afternoon he walked in on the two of them as they perfected Yab-Yum on the Persian rug using a sex toy. Their climax was a real hootenanny.
*
Kat was toned to perfection. She had less fat than a pint of cottage cheese. Even her ass had muscle definition. Watching her towel off, Kit remarked, "Nice glutes."
"Glutes to the max, I hope. Spent hours in the gym."
"A set of ab-crunches would kill me."
"Start with five reps a day. You'll be fine. Do you walk any?"
"Yeah. To the postbox."
She wrinkled her nose. "What a lazy skunk!"
"I'm glad you're home. Really mean that."
She popped the towel at him. "Come with me. Let's stroll the beach."
Thursday, November 18, 2010
a mango bitten part one
At sunset a peculiar fellow stood upon the purple promontory beneath a lone datura tree and blew a soulful wind through a conch shell. He looked like an ebony egret in silhouette. Kit watched him, studied him. Scarcely breathing.
"What is it?" Kat asked, mindful of Kit's silence. She had been slogging through his rejected play.
"That man out there. What do you know of him?"
The view from the veranda swept across a crazy quilt of native grasses. An earthen path led into a brief wilderness of coconut palms. The hill beyond climbed through a chaotic growth of hibiscus, gardenia and orchid. Looming above all was the conch-blower's podium.
Holding her hand as sunvisor, Kat replied, "I don't see anyone."
Yet Kit saw the man.
Oversized army fatigues furled like dour bunting about his brambled frame. Bright ribbons, red and orange and green, festooned his graying dreadlocks. Kit could almost smell the salt-caked armpits.
"He's right out there!"
The sticklike creature reminded Kit of an Ethiopian "fuzzy-wuzzy." He had seen one as a lad in his Compton's Encyclopedia. Straight in the saddle with a long carbine in the crook of his arm, a desert tribesman sat poised as sentry. Up against Mussolini's war machine. Prepared to fight to the death for his Ras Tafari, the emperor Haile Selassie. Raw-boned with a shock of hair detonated into a huge dust-mop.
*
At school the nuns loved to give out holy cards. Those showing the Sacred Heart repulsed him. Girded by thorns, it glowed eerily within Jesus' chest. He imagined it beating, pulsing.
On his first day as altar boy evil Terry OMalley explained about the relic.
"Oh yeah. There's a piece of dead guy in there. All consecrated altars have a relic."
Wide-eyed Kit gurgled, "R-r-really?"
"Wha-sa-matta? That bother you? Hey maybe we gotta whole body in there!"
"That's quite enough out of you, O'Malley!" Dominican firebrand Father Javier Gomez thundered.
The priest stepped up to Kit and placed a warm good hand on the boy's shoulder. He said, "A relic is a small thing. A piece of the saint's clothing, a bit of the saint's body. Bone, perhaps."
"Someone dead for a hundred years?"
"Yes, young man. Someone who is close to God. Someone you may pray to."
*
The dream placed him naked upon the cold stone altar. He heard a muffled plea, quite near. How could he hear? He had no ears. His head was but a skull containing thoughts. His tongue wagged in abstentia without language.
An obese priest wearing vestments for Low Mass waddled forth. Into Kit's exposed bowels the priest set down a chalice brimming with wine. Kit's young spirit drifted up and away. He looked down to watch the gruesome proceedings. The gut cavity swarmed with blue-bottle flies. The neck blubber of the priest was sunburned lobster pink.
Again the muffled plea: mama mama mama.
*
For the first time in fifty-odd years he had peed his bed.
There was a divan with plumpy cushions. He moved there and lay there allowing the gentle air to cool his genitals. A snail and two oysters. Then sleeping again he roved among the stars, meeting celestial women and sirens of unspeakable beauty.
The new dream had him shuffling downstairs. A ghastly horde of harridans pursued him. Underfoot each warped board squawked like a plucked mandrake. In the kichen he sat at the table. They grouped around him, a Greek chorus with ugly mouths baying. He looked at his folded hands. To see better he yanked the draw-chain suspended from a ceiling eight miles high. The bulb shown with the instensity of a klieg light. And one by one, most of the women in his life appeared, each citing his failures in love and sex, condemning him to an eternity of disgrace.
Two girls from Saint Patrick's, skirted in green plaid, laughed cruely. One was pubescent sixth-grader Rita Constanza, who had showed him something amazing one afternoon in a deserted handball court. The other was slatternly gorgeous Brigit Casey whose colossal jugs were so full they had begun to sag. She had singled him out from all the hep-cats at the parish sock-hop and whispered she would suck him off for a clandestine beer.
Laughter most unfair.
*
Each day sunset rewarded the earth with a burst of color. A flight of green macaws shot like shuttlecocks into the darkling forrest. In the blink of an eye the drama was over and the indigo curtain fell. Meanwhile, the conch-blower stood atop Spyglass Hill in full Rastafarian regalia. His glory heralded the Flame of Jah, God of Moses' burning bush.
"What is it?" Kat asked, mindful of Kit's silence. She had been slogging through his rejected play.
"That man out there. What do you know of him?"
The view from the veranda swept across a crazy quilt of native grasses. An earthen path led into a brief wilderness of coconut palms. The hill beyond climbed through a chaotic growth of hibiscus, gardenia and orchid. Looming above all was the conch-blower's podium.
Holding her hand as sunvisor, Kat replied, "I don't see anyone."
Yet Kit saw the man.
Oversized army fatigues furled like dour bunting about his brambled frame. Bright ribbons, red and orange and green, festooned his graying dreadlocks. Kit could almost smell the salt-caked armpits.
"He's right out there!"
The sticklike creature reminded Kit of an Ethiopian "fuzzy-wuzzy." He had seen one as a lad in his Compton's Encyclopedia. Straight in the saddle with a long carbine in the crook of his arm, a desert tribesman sat poised as sentry. Up against Mussolini's war machine. Prepared to fight to the death for his Ras Tafari, the emperor Haile Selassie. Raw-boned with a shock of hair detonated into a huge dust-mop.
*
At school the nuns loved to give out holy cards. Those showing the Sacred Heart repulsed him. Girded by thorns, it glowed eerily within Jesus' chest. He imagined it beating, pulsing.
On his first day as altar boy evil Terry OMalley explained about the relic.
"Oh yeah. There's a piece of dead guy in there. All consecrated altars have a relic."
Wide-eyed Kit gurgled, "R-r-really?"
"Wha-sa-matta? That bother you? Hey maybe we gotta whole body in there!"
"That's quite enough out of you, O'Malley!" Dominican firebrand Father Javier Gomez thundered.
The priest stepped up to Kit and placed a warm good hand on the boy's shoulder. He said, "A relic is a small thing. A piece of the saint's clothing, a bit of the saint's body. Bone, perhaps."
"Someone dead for a hundred years?"
"Yes, young man. Someone who is close to God. Someone you may pray to."
*
The dream placed him naked upon the cold stone altar. He heard a muffled plea, quite near. How could he hear? He had no ears. His head was but a skull containing thoughts. His tongue wagged in abstentia without language.
An obese priest wearing vestments for Low Mass waddled forth. Into Kit's exposed bowels the priest set down a chalice brimming with wine. Kit's young spirit drifted up and away. He looked down to watch the gruesome proceedings. The gut cavity swarmed with blue-bottle flies. The neck blubber of the priest was sunburned lobster pink.
Again the muffled plea: mama mama mama.
*
For the first time in fifty-odd years he had peed his bed.
There was a divan with plumpy cushions. He moved there and lay there allowing the gentle air to cool his genitals. A snail and two oysters. Then sleeping again he roved among the stars, meeting celestial women and sirens of unspeakable beauty.
The new dream had him shuffling downstairs. A ghastly horde of harridans pursued him. Underfoot each warped board squawked like a plucked mandrake. In the kichen he sat at the table. They grouped around him, a Greek chorus with ugly mouths baying. He looked at his folded hands. To see better he yanked the draw-chain suspended from a ceiling eight miles high. The bulb shown with the instensity of a klieg light. And one by one, most of the women in his life appeared, each citing his failures in love and sex, condemning him to an eternity of disgrace.
Two girls from Saint Patrick's, skirted in green plaid, laughed cruely. One was pubescent sixth-grader Rita Constanza, who had showed him something amazing one afternoon in a deserted handball court. The other was slatternly gorgeous Brigit Casey whose colossal jugs were so full they had begun to sag. She had singled him out from all the hep-cats at the parish sock-hop and whispered she would suck him off for a clandestine beer.
Laughter most unfair.
*
Each day sunset rewarded the earth with a burst of color. A flight of green macaws shot like shuttlecocks into the darkling forrest. In the blink of an eye the drama was over and the indigo curtain fell. Meanwhile, the conch-blower stood atop Spyglass Hill in full Rastafarian regalia. His glory heralded the Flame of Jah, God of Moses' burning bush.
ibiza part four
A red eye glowed in the far darkness. The road bent toward the spectral surf. Kit could make out a bonfire with a half dozen bacchanalians orbiting it in silhouette, dancing like werewolves.
"How is your Spanish, Senor Kit?"
"You should ask, amigo. Evidently I can order a drink from the bar. In New World argot."
"El Norte does not lisp."
"Try not to."
Suddenly Ramon ground the Morris Minor to a halt. A naked woman with jet black hair streaming like corkscrew eels slapped the front fender.
"Hola, Ramon!" She shouted, waving. Her coppertone boobs and bread-basket bobbled and quaked.
A tall gangly gypsy with shoulder-length hair joined her. His long penis hung like a radiator hose with a foreskin. He reached through the driver's window and clasped Ramon's hand with some kind of secret grip.
Speaking in English like a BBC sportscaster, the gypsy said, "Ah, you brought a new friend."
"Senor Kit, allow me to introduce Cochise."
"Howdy, Cochise."
Yessir, Kit thought. This is gonna be all right.
*
Great clouds of cannabis roared up like smoke signals.
Ramon picked up Cochise's guitar and handed it to him. "Come, Gitano. Play something with passion."
The gypsy tied a scarf around his head. In the firelight he looked just like a Mescalero Apache.
Men and women cavorted in leapfrog, barking with glee. Kit noted men coupling in the lee. He shucked his togs and, striding forth, he felt the expanding bubble of his mind burst.
"Senor?" The woman was daubing her body with greasy ash. Her moonbelly moved closer.
"How are you called?" He asked in Calle Ocho.
"Veronica."
She offered a toke.
"Gracias."
"Esta nada."
As her warm hand closed gently around his cock he thought: truly, this is the mother of all nada.
*
Initiates in animal skins formed the inner ring around the bonfire. Disguised in a horned mask the hierophant began his shamanic dance, and soon worked himself into a frenzy. Crosslegged, Kit sat with acolytes in the outer ring. Somewhere in time he had been plied with a local poison called Yerba. The moon shrieked like a falcon, and, looking up, Kit saw that it had grown magnificent pinions and was now swooping toward earth.
In a different timezone he found himself counting foreskins.
"What kind of beast are you?" Cochise asked.
"Call me Schroedinger's Cat."
The hierophant ascended into ecstasy and began to chant. Adoni. Or Adonis. Or maybe both.
Kit tingled all over, body hair electric. He was certain that behind the horned mask he would find Ramon, son of goatherds. Pan was raving now. Mad as a hatter.
*
At sundown the following day the prodigal returned to the bungalow, only to find it deserted. A chilly unseasonable wind blew from the Levant. Shutters clapped and foliage thrashed. Well enough. He expected Cassandra to come pedaling up soon, her rucksack clinking with wine.
Hours passed.
The cupboard was bare, save for a sack of musli and a Valencia orange.
On his desk he found a note of farewell and enough money to get him to Paris.
His red painted Roman auger had spoken, and, for the first time in his wayward life, Kit Pico was lonely.
"How is your Spanish, Senor Kit?"
"You should ask, amigo. Evidently I can order a drink from the bar. In New World argot."
"El Norte does not lisp."
"Try not to."
Suddenly Ramon ground the Morris Minor to a halt. A naked woman with jet black hair streaming like corkscrew eels slapped the front fender.
"Hola, Ramon!" She shouted, waving. Her coppertone boobs and bread-basket bobbled and quaked.
A tall gangly gypsy with shoulder-length hair joined her. His long penis hung like a radiator hose with a foreskin. He reached through the driver's window and clasped Ramon's hand with some kind of secret grip.
Speaking in English like a BBC sportscaster, the gypsy said, "Ah, you brought a new friend."
"Senor Kit, allow me to introduce Cochise."
"Howdy, Cochise."
Yessir, Kit thought. This is gonna be all right.
*
Great clouds of cannabis roared up like smoke signals.
Ramon picked up Cochise's guitar and handed it to him. "Come, Gitano. Play something with passion."
The gypsy tied a scarf around his head. In the firelight he looked just like a Mescalero Apache.
Men and women cavorted in leapfrog, barking with glee. Kit noted men coupling in the lee. He shucked his togs and, striding forth, he felt the expanding bubble of his mind burst.
"Senor?" The woman was daubing her body with greasy ash. Her moonbelly moved closer.
"How are you called?" He asked in Calle Ocho.
"Veronica."
She offered a toke.
"Gracias."
"Esta nada."
As her warm hand closed gently around his cock he thought: truly, this is the mother of all nada.
*
Initiates in animal skins formed the inner ring around the bonfire. Disguised in a horned mask the hierophant began his shamanic dance, and soon worked himself into a frenzy. Crosslegged, Kit sat with acolytes in the outer ring. Somewhere in time he had been plied with a local poison called Yerba. The moon shrieked like a falcon, and, looking up, Kit saw that it had grown magnificent pinions and was now swooping toward earth.
In a different timezone he found himself counting foreskins.
"What kind of beast are you?" Cochise asked.
"Call me Schroedinger's Cat."
The hierophant ascended into ecstasy and began to chant. Adoni. Or Adonis. Or maybe both.
Kit tingled all over, body hair electric. He was certain that behind the horned mask he would find Ramon, son of goatherds. Pan was raving now. Mad as a hatter.
*
At sundown the following day the prodigal returned to the bungalow, only to find it deserted. A chilly unseasonable wind blew from the Levant. Shutters clapped and foliage thrashed. Well enough. He expected Cassandra to come pedaling up soon, her rucksack clinking with wine.
Hours passed.
The cupboard was bare, save for a sack of musli and a Valencia orange.
On his desk he found a note of farewell and enough money to get him to Paris.
His red painted Roman auger had spoken, and, for the first time in his wayward life, Kit Pico was lonely.
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
ibiza part three
As if strewing firecrackers the midget automobile blew windy explosions from the corroded tailpipe.It hurtled through a magical moonlit landscape. Sierra conifers stood like centurians powdered with lunar snow.
"Wow." Sotto voce.
"My humble island is impressive, no?"
*
They stopped by Ramon's farmhouse to change clothes. The islander tossed Kit cut-off jeans and a soccer jersey. And Water Buffalos, sandals from India.
"OK, Pard. Let's vamoose."
"OK, Cowboy. Let's vamoose."
On the way out Ramon explained that his family had been goatherds for many generations. His parents broke tradition, moving to Barcelona and becoming civil servants. As soon as he was old enough Ramon returned to the homestead.
"I don't keep goats." His grin was infectious.
*
Windows down, air pummeled them with the scent of brine and oranges.
Kit noted the lean hardness of Ramon's whipcord body and its unblemished dusky Mediterranean skin. A musky aphrodisiac armpit oil dilated Kit's sensitive nostrils. Ramon was pure Catalan. His blunt wedge of nose reminded Kit of ancient Phoenician art. Ramon's triceps poked out like a baby apple as he steered the car. Thighs showed like slabs of quarry stone.
Ramon broke silence. "Have you studied the Punic Wars?"
Carthage and Rome. Rome won in the end."
"You Americans. Always the bottom line."
"You're aiming to tell me something."
"The Iberian port of Cartagena is named for Carthaginians who settled there in the Fifth or Sixth Century. Scenes in ancient Ibiza were much like those Flaubert wrote for "Salambo."
"Favorite of mine. Love the erotic cruelty."
"You don't say?"
"Try this, Goat Boy. 'Now, Dido, with these relics burn thyself and make Aeneas famous throughout the world for perjury and slaughter of a queen.' Marlowe's twist on Virgil."
For a nanosecond Kit saw Ramon's ears grow elfin and panpipes cooed high in the sibilent hills.
"Wow." Sotto voce.
"My humble island is impressive, no?"
*
They stopped by Ramon's farmhouse to change clothes. The islander tossed Kit cut-off jeans and a soccer jersey. And Water Buffalos, sandals from India.
"OK, Pard. Let's vamoose."
"OK, Cowboy. Let's vamoose."
On the way out Ramon explained that his family had been goatherds for many generations. His parents broke tradition, moving to Barcelona and becoming civil servants. As soon as he was old enough Ramon returned to the homestead.
"I don't keep goats." His grin was infectious.
*
Windows down, air pummeled them with the scent of brine and oranges.
Kit noted the lean hardness of Ramon's whipcord body and its unblemished dusky Mediterranean skin. A musky aphrodisiac armpit oil dilated Kit's sensitive nostrils. Ramon was pure Catalan. His blunt wedge of nose reminded Kit of ancient Phoenician art. Ramon's triceps poked out like a baby apple as he steered the car. Thighs showed like slabs of quarry stone.
Ramon broke silence. "Have you studied the Punic Wars?"
Carthage and Rome. Rome won in the end."
"You Americans. Always the bottom line."
"You're aiming to tell me something."
"The Iberian port of Cartagena is named for Carthaginians who settled there in the Fifth or Sixth Century. Scenes in ancient Ibiza were much like those Flaubert wrote for "Salambo."
"Favorite of mine. Love the erotic cruelty."
"You don't say?"
"Try this, Goat Boy. 'Now, Dido, with these relics burn thyself and make Aeneas famous throughout the world for perjury and slaughter of a queen.' Marlowe's twist on Virgil."
For a nanosecond Kit saw Ramon's ears grow elfin and panpipes cooed high in the sibilent hills.
ibiza part two
Someone had stored a bottle of Dry Sack in the pantry. Kit wondered if it was customary to leave a gift behind. What a delight! He felt as if he had found Captain Kidd's lost treasure. O merry man was he!
Sitting with his trusty Olivetti portable at the desk, he scrunched his bare toes like snails, and each time he set down his glass he added a new water-ring to the etched surface. Wasn't long before he he'd fashioned interlocking rings. The Olympic Games: a chuckle.
Cassandra crept in, silent as a fairy. Tinkerbell stalking Peter Pan.
"Hope you saved me some." Evidently she had been eating dates.
"Wow! Your hair."
The spiky raven bob was history. She sported a crewcut stiff with Butch Wax. White as Alpine snow.
"Like it? Can't wait for Inez to see it."
Inez again.
It chafed him to think of her. Dark, firm muscles, buttocks most desirable. She was sprawled langourously across Cassandra's creamy sheets.
To change the direction Cassandra was going in, Kit said, "It took balls to change your hair that way."
"Why, thank you, sir."
"I mean it. It's boss."
"I'm blond all over."
"Show me."
She pirouetted naked. Then postured like a burlesque queen.
He cupped her knobby breasts with lazy hands. Then he snaked an arm around her doll-like waist and guided her back to his chair. Tilting her so that she would be fully illuminated, he commanded hoarsely, "Spread for me."
"You're creeping me out."
"From Solomon. My beloved thrust his hand through the hole in the door. I trembled to the core of my being."
Cassandra withdrew. "No!"
Scalded, Kit stormed from the room.
*
Ibiza swarmed with sexual mayflies. Trysts lasted only for a day.
Late that evening Kit went alone to a dance hall. The sherry had given him a headache. Inside a smoke-filled room with indolent ceiling fans he found a Mod crowd clapping praise to a jazzy flamenco artist. The bartender asked what he wanted to drink. Kit replied he didn't know.
"I've been drinking jerez and I have a headache. What do you suggest?"
The man poured him a yellow liquid that soon clamped a vise upon his brain.
"Hola, El Norte," came the greeting. Kit turned to encounter a young man in a floral-print shirt and khaki chinos. The open collar revealed a full shag of chest hair and a gold medallion showing the minotaur. Capped teeth glowed in black-light florescence. He purred, "I saw you come in and waited for that drink to work on you. My name is Ramon."
Kit grinned. "You look like a Ramon."
"Where is your lady?"
"Excuse me?"
"The little pageboy who pedals around with a camera."
"Ah," Kit smirked. "I'm getting the size of you."
"Hah.Not so fast, amigo."
*
Ramon told him of a nude beach a few miles south. Playa Cavallet, where the Children of Ba'al frolicked. Kit envisioned voluptuous women, tawny as Tunisian dunes, holding their breasts in milky supplication.
Fertility rites beneath the crescent moon.
To which the sons of Barca bayed like horndog jackles.
Already the row with Cassandra had slipped from his mind.
They sauntered down a lane of shuttered bodegas. Kit wore a green avocado paisley stuffed into western jeans.Wheatstraw hair tumbled lionlike about his shoulders. Ever self-conscious, perpetually posing to his imaginary camera, he gloried in this freewheeling psychedelic cowboy persona.
"I have a car," Ramon said. "We can ride now."
Parked behind a sleek one-passenger Messerscmidt was a dented primercoated Morris Minor. Kit stood fascinated with the Kraut car. It looked like a cockpit and canopy of an aircraft fuselage on wheels. It sported a vanity tag. VALKERIE.
"She's one of Nico's friends," Ramon explained.
"Nico? As in Velvet Undergrounnd?"
"Si. Come get in. The wreck is mine."
The British automobile cranked up like an old man with emphysema coughing to death. Then it farted black smoke. Ramon revved it and then allowed it to idle.
"So, Senor Kit. Do we pick up your little pageboy?"
Sitting with his trusty Olivetti portable at the desk, he scrunched his bare toes like snails, and each time he set down his glass he added a new water-ring to the etched surface. Wasn't long before he he'd fashioned interlocking rings. The Olympic Games: a chuckle.
Cassandra crept in, silent as a fairy. Tinkerbell stalking Peter Pan.
"Hope you saved me some." Evidently she had been eating dates.
"Wow! Your hair."
The spiky raven bob was history. She sported a crewcut stiff with Butch Wax. White as Alpine snow.
"Like it? Can't wait for Inez to see it."
Inez again.
It chafed him to think of her. Dark, firm muscles, buttocks most desirable. She was sprawled langourously across Cassandra's creamy sheets.
To change the direction Cassandra was going in, Kit said, "It took balls to change your hair that way."
"Why, thank you, sir."
"I mean it. It's boss."
"I'm blond all over."
"Show me."
She pirouetted naked. Then postured like a burlesque queen.
He cupped her knobby breasts with lazy hands. Then he snaked an arm around her doll-like waist and guided her back to his chair. Tilting her so that she would be fully illuminated, he commanded hoarsely, "Spread for me."
"You're creeping me out."
"From Solomon. My beloved thrust his hand through the hole in the door. I trembled to the core of my being."
Cassandra withdrew. "No!"
Scalded, Kit stormed from the room.
*
Ibiza swarmed with sexual mayflies. Trysts lasted only for a day.
Late that evening Kit went alone to a dance hall. The sherry had given him a headache. Inside a smoke-filled room with indolent ceiling fans he found a Mod crowd clapping praise to a jazzy flamenco artist. The bartender asked what he wanted to drink. Kit replied he didn't know.
"I've been drinking jerez and I have a headache. What do you suggest?"
The man poured him a yellow liquid that soon clamped a vise upon his brain.
"Hola, El Norte," came the greeting. Kit turned to encounter a young man in a floral-print shirt and khaki chinos. The open collar revealed a full shag of chest hair and a gold medallion showing the minotaur. Capped teeth glowed in black-light florescence. He purred, "I saw you come in and waited for that drink to work on you. My name is Ramon."
Kit grinned. "You look like a Ramon."
"Where is your lady?"
"Excuse me?"
"The little pageboy who pedals around with a camera."
"Ah," Kit smirked. "I'm getting the size of you."
"Hah.Not so fast, amigo."
*
Ramon told him of a nude beach a few miles south. Playa Cavallet, where the Children of Ba'al frolicked. Kit envisioned voluptuous women, tawny as Tunisian dunes, holding their breasts in milky supplication.
Fertility rites beneath the crescent moon.
To which the sons of Barca bayed like horndog jackles.
Already the row with Cassandra had slipped from his mind.
They sauntered down a lane of shuttered bodegas. Kit wore a green avocado paisley stuffed into western jeans.Wheatstraw hair tumbled lionlike about his shoulders. Ever self-conscious, perpetually posing to his imaginary camera, he gloried in this freewheeling psychedelic cowboy persona.
"I have a car," Ramon said. "We can ride now."
Parked behind a sleek one-passenger Messerscmidt was a dented primercoated Morris Minor. Kit stood fascinated with the Kraut car. It looked like a cockpit and canopy of an aircraft fuselage on wheels. It sported a vanity tag. VALKERIE.
"She's one of Nico's friends," Ramon explained.
"Nico? As in Velvet Undergrounnd?"
"Si. Come get in. The wreck is mine."
The British automobile cranked up like an old man with emphysema coughing to death. Then it farted black smoke. Ramon revved it and then allowed it to idle.
"So, Senor Kit. Do we pick up your little pageboy?"
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
ibiza part one
They left Barcelona on a tub crammed with Spanish tourists, nary a one speaking Catalan Ibicento. Kit recognized them as city-dwelling slugs, already sunburned and dazed by the sea. He wore an aqua-marine paisely shirt, blue denim bells and white Keds. His windbreaker bore an advertisement for Cinzano.
"You look like a patio umbrella," Cassandra teased.
She was reading a book on diet and longevity among the hunza. Subsisting on millet and yogurt, these men and women of the Himalayas could live a healthy span of a hundred years. They were not lamas with powers of mind over matter or yogins dwelling in bliss. They were peasants, harvesters of grain and herders of dairy animals, living day to day upon a harsh land. Cassandra opted for the diet over the new sensation from a Doctor Atkins.
The Hunza diet was exotic and most definitely not American.
*
They rented a lovers aerie above a village of cubic bungalows chisled in tiers from a stone summit overlooking the most azure bay Kit had ever seen. He wondered if he could live on the figs and olives that grew up and down the slopes. Probably not, but they would be supplement to what he could buy from local fishermen and bakers.
Ibiza would be Eden.
*
Bicycles were sold and resold. Kit obtained two. He and Cassandra explored the countryside around Ciudad de Ibiza, discovering white sandy beaches to the north of Playa Talamanca and to the south of Playa d'en Bossa. As they pedaled along, the hilly terrain revealed secluded cliff sites and secret bays.
Cassandra pontificated upon the merits of her Hunza diet, claiming she had lost several pounds almost overnight, filling her gut with plain yogurt and Moroccan nano-pasta in lieu of Himalayan millet. Kit suggested that she may have shed fat through starvation. Toning her muscles by pedalling uphill.
On the third day he offered her roast lamb kabob, and she devoured it, smearing grease across her face. That night as tides and menses moved she burned her black clothes, and from then on her blouses were white and her trousers matched the hues of the Sahara. The midnight blackness of her hair seemed irksome, somehow, so she bleached it platinum.
True at noon she was the essence of transfiguration.
*
Kit's room was Spartan, and Zen blank. A sea-captain's chair and desk sat before a wide white-framed window. The white wall was of Mediterranean plaster and the desk bore cryptic inscriptions etched into its ancient wood, using a penknife. Previous visitors, he gathered, had been literary folk.
Perhaps I'll find a QED equation carved somewhere in this room.
He felt a warm breeze. Anise and mint.
From how far had it come? From where? Majorca? Corfu?
The view through the window expanded like CinemaScope, pulling him into a realm of imagination. The gnarled tempest-slain fig tree on the lawn became the centerpiece upon an empty stage. (Again without realizing it he was being derivative. This time from Beckett, before that from Lagerkvist.) His tree had been blasted by lightning, its sap boiled away, its limbs shriveled into claws, desperately clutching for another go at life. He remained focused upon his imaginary plastic tree until an absurd little man in a tattered coal suit shuffled like Chaplin in from stage left.
Oh, no! Not another Everyman!
*
While Kit grappled with the efficacy of Deus ex Machina as dramatic device, Cassandra pedaled down to snoop around the Lilliputian bodegas and boutiques. She wrapped her Nikon and specialty lenses with care and stuffed them into a rucksack.
Franco's Spain, with its facist-inquisition mindset, was far behind. Ibiza, cosmopolitan, hedonistic, buzzed with Vespa scooters. Blonds everywhere! Couples with matching colors of hair, accenting their androgyny, sauntered in loose clothing. She saw scarves and caftans, white duck pants and straw fedoras.
Antic Ibiza intoxicated her soul.
Pagan as the Visigoths of ancient rhyme.
She pedaled hard, feeling her calves burn.
"You look like a patio umbrella," Cassandra teased.
She was reading a book on diet and longevity among the hunza. Subsisting on millet and yogurt, these men and women of the Himalayas could live a healthy span of a hundred years. They were not lamas with powers of mind over matter or yogins dwelling in bliss. They were peasants, harvesters of grain and herders of dairy animals, living day to day upon a harsh land. Cassandra opted for the diet over the new sensation from a Doctor Atkins.
The Hunza diet was exotic and most definitely not American.
*
They rented a lovers aerie above a village of cubic bungalows chisled in tiers from a stone summit overlooking the most azure bay Kit had ever seen. He wondered if he could live on the figs and olives that grew up and down the slopes. Probably not, but they would be supplement to what he could buy from local fishermen and bakers.
Ibiza would be Eden.
*
Bicycles were sold and resold. Kit obtained two. He and Cassandra explored the countryside around Ciudad de Ibiza, discovering white sandy beaches to the north of Playa Talamanca and to the south of Playa d'en Bossa. As they pedaled along, the hilly terrain revealed secluded cliff sites and secret bays.
Cassandra pontificated upon the merits of her Hunza diet, claiming she had lost several pounds almost overnight, filling her gut with plain yogurt and Moroccan nano-pasta in lieu of Himalayan millet. Kit suggested that she may have shed fat through starvation. Toning her muscles by pedalling uphill.
On the third day he offered her roast lamb kabob, and she devoured it, smearing grease across her face. That night as tides and menses moved she burned her black clothes, and from then on her blouses were white and her trousers matched the hues of the Sahara. The midnight blackness of her hair seemed irksome, somehow, so she bleached it platinum.
True at noon she was the essence of transfiguration.
*
Kit's room was Spartan, and Zen blank. A sea-captain's chair and desk sat before a wide white-framed window. The white wall was of Mediterranean plaster and the desk bore cryptic inscriptions etched into its ancient wood, using a penknife. Previous visitors, he gathered, had been literary folk.
Perhaps I'll find a QED equation carved somewhere in this room.
He felt a warm breeze. Anise and mint.
From how far had it come? From where? Majorca? Corfu?
The view through the window expanded like CinemaScope, pulling him into a realm of imagination. The gnarled tempest-slain fig tree on the lawn became the centerpiece upon an empty stage. (Again without realizing it he was being derivative. This time from Beckett, before that from Lagerkvist.) His tree had been blasted by lightning, its sap boiled away, its limbs shriveled into claws, desperately clutching for another go at life. He remained focused upon his imaginary plastic tree until an absurd little man in a tattered coal suit shuffled like Chaplin in from stage left.
Oh, no! Not another Everyman!
*
While Kit grappled with the efficacy of Deus ex Machina as dramatic device, Cassandra pedaled down to snoop around the Lilliputian bodegas and boutiques. She wrapped her Nikon and specialty lenses with care and stuffed them into a rucksack.
Franco's Spain, with its facist-inquisition mindset, was far behind. Ibiza, cosmopolitan, hedonistic, buzzed with Vespa scooters. Blonds everywhere! Couples with matching colors of hair, accenting their androgyny, sauntered in loose clothing. She saw scarves and caftans, white duck pants and straw fedoras.
Antic Ibiza intoxicated her soul.
Pagan as the Visigoths of ancient rhyme.
She pedaled hard, feeling her calves burn.
Monday, November 15, 2010
that first noble man
Cassandra's girlfriend was an anarchist, with a passion for all things Artaud. She lived on Rue des Haute Chats, found on no city map. The oxcart alley explored a kaleidoscopic terrain. Tall mottled houses leaned over the pavement with such yaw they nearly bumped heads. As Kit and Cassandra trekked into this Caligari-warren, doorways and windows grew vaginal. Ovoid, like the Vesica Piscis, each receding into its unique mystery. Elongated shadows slanted like the camouflaging of a somnambulist dreadnaught lost in the North Sea.
"So who's your friend?" Kit asked.
"Argentine chick named Inez Von Essen."
Cassandra had morphed into something vamp. Kit wasn't sure who inhabited her mind. Louise Brooks as Lulu? Isherwood's Sally Bowles? Something of each, he guessed. When they went out now she wore black. Her raven hair was gummed into church spires. Pale, powdered face. Looked like she'd been spooked by the Headless Horseman on the way to a Mafia funeral.
He wore something different too. Cowboy duds stuffed into a duffle bag, he was now the Laird of Paisley. Carnaby Street had captued his spirit. And his boundless insouciance was infectious. Try as hard as she could to be dark and tragic, he could always bring out a wry comment. She preferred the smirk over the smile.
Kit loved his little enfant terrible most dearly. Even when she would get drunk and prance about the flat, colliding with lava and tiffany lamps, crooning with The Doors: "I'm telling you, I'm telling you, we must die."
Her unread bible remained Kropotkin's Mutual Aid.
*
Kit carried his vinyl trove in a suitcase from Woolworth's. And she carried wine and cheese and summer sausage in a straw beach tote.
Cassandra introduced Kit to a copperskin Patagonian with cheekbones like small stones. He had expected a flaxen haired Spanish-speaking Kraut. He saw two posters on the mauve papered wall. Stills from Dreyer's "The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc." Falconetti and Artaud.
Cassandra broke the ice: "Inez has just returned from a bacchanal on Ibiza."
In a soft voice that undulated like crepe bunting in the wind, Inez told a slightly ribald tale. Half way through it, Kit and Cassandra exchanged winks and nods, agreeing to experience Ibiza for themselves.
*
The great public square in Barcelona could have contained a soccer field. Ancient Spanish brick underfoot gave Kit a profound sense of terra firma. Like strolling troubadours, street vendors sang merrily of their wares. Artisans had set up shop, displaying quaint little crafts on rickety checker tables. Perhaps because he had read so much about Big Brother Franco, Kit sensed the presence of the Civil Guard, unseen, deep in the noonday shadows, watching one and all like the Thought Police. Towering above all, the spires of Gaudi's cathedral-in-progress rose toward heaven, as if prayer to his beloved Holy Family.
Kaw! Kaw! Like so many crows. Black-robed women with gnarled driftwood for faces shrieked to high heaven. Buy the lottery! Buy the lottery!
With her Nikon Cassandra was a whirlwind. Salon photography was her ouvre. She shot in black-and-white with very fast film. Her blowups produced grainy poster-sized images. During interviews she let fly with trendy conceits. Entropy. Particle theory. Things she vaguely understood.
Early on she relied on telephoto, like a sniper unwilling to meet his prey face-to-face on the battlefield. It took a good while to summon courage to move close enough to her subjects to truly capture their life force.
*
She roamed the New York waterfront at night. Stalking those obliterated men who dwelled in whiskey bars. Hardboiled noir, she was Ida Lupino in a belted trenchcoat and a snapbrim chapeau.
The dives never closed, offering souls without manor or hearth a bare-bones shelter from the mortal storm. Dirty. Dimly lighted, they set men to deep introspection, and facile kinship with strangers. Neon beer-signs were things of timeless comfort.
Her initial port-of-call was Czarda's, a wolfden smelling violently of paprika, anise seed and rotgut tokay. After her entrance no one spoke English. A stevedore plied her with a heady red wine affectionately nicknamed Blood of the Bull. (She woke the next day with a blinding hangover and unable to meet her sister for their daily bagelnosh.)
House rule at Czarda's was that all unescorted women had to dance. Cassandra obliged them with a fearsome bellydance learned in a college game. All the men became unglued. Mata Hari in a Turkish
shakedown.
*
On the prowl. Cassandra hunted eyes. Eyes filled with loneliness and despair. She wanted to commingle with souls. Souls crushed by futile labor. People of pointless existence. Godless.
Then she saw him, that first noble man. Sitting on a curb, bogarting a Lucky down to the nub, he could have been the ghost of Albert Camus. He wore an old bomber jacket and faded army fatigues. Diamond-hard eyes challenged the world. Down and out? No way. More the slumming angel.
When he gazed into her eyes his own softened with compassion and pity.
She shot him on the quick draw.
While she capped her lens he disappeared. Drifting into the fog.
The "Portrait of Sisyphus" earned her a showing in the East Village. The gallery was a renovated chow mein palace reeking of cats.
*
Kit watched her swoop into the Spanish crowd, snapping away, isolating a subject and bottling its lifeforce.
"So who's your friend?" Kit asked.
"Argentine chick named Inez Von Essen."
Cassandra had morphed into something vamp. Kit wasn't sure who inhabited her mind. Louise Brooks as Lulu? Isherwood's Sally Bowles? Something of each, he guessed. When they went out now she wore black. Her raven hair was gummed into church spires. Pale, powdered face. Looked like she'd been spooked by the Headless Horseman on the way to a Mafia funeral.
He wore something different too. Cowboy duds stuffed into a duffle bag, he was now the Laird of Paisley. Carnaby Street had captued his spirit. And his boundless insouciance was infectious. Try as hard as she could to be dark and tragic, he could always bring out a wry comment. She preferred the smirk over the smile.
Kit loved his little enfant terrible most dearly. Even when she would get drunk and prance about the flat, colliding with lava and tiffany lamps, crooning with The Doors: "I'm telling you, I'm telling you, we must die."
Her unread bible remained Kropotkin's Mutual Aid.
*
Kit carried his vinyl trove in a suitcase from Woolworth's. And she carried wine and cheese and summer sausage in a straw beach tote.
Cassandra introduced Kit to a copperskin Patagonian with cheekbones like small stones. He had expected a flaxen haired Spanish-speaking Kraut. He saw two posters on the mauve papered wall. Stills from Dreyer's "The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc." Falconetti and Artaud.
Cassandra broke the ice: "Inez has just returned from a bacchanal on Ibiza."
In a soft voice that undulated like crepe bunting in the wind, Inez told a slightly ribald tale. Half way through it, Kit and Cassandra exchanged winks and nods, agreeing to experience Ibiza for themselves.
*
The great public square in Barcelona could have contained a soccer field. Ancient Spanish brick underfoot gave Kit a profound sense of terra firma. Like strolling troubadours, street vendors sang merrily of their wares. Artisans had set up shop, displaying quaint little crafts on rickety checker tables. Perhaps because he had read so much about Big Brother Franco, Kit sensed the presence of the Civil Guard, unseen, deep in the noonday shadows, watching one and all like the Thought Police. Towering above all, the spires of Gaudi's cathedral-in-progress rose toward heaven, as if prayer to his beloved Holy Family.
Kaw! Kaw! Like so many crows. Black-robed women with gnarled driftwood for faces shrieked to high heaven. Buy the lottery! Buy the lottery!
With her Nikon Cassandra was a whirlwind. Salon photography was her ouvre. She shot in black-and-white with very fast film. Her blowups produced grainy poster-sized images. During interviews she let fly with trendy conceits. Entropy. Particle theory. Things she vaguely understood.
Early on she relied on telephoto, like a sniper unwilling to meet his prey face-to-face on the battlefield. It took a good while to summon courage to move close enough to her subjects to truly capture their life force.
*
She roamed the New York waterfront at night. Stalking those obliterated men who dwelled in whiskey bars. Hardboiled noir, she was Ida Lupino in a belted trenchcoat and a snapbrim chapeau.
The dives never closed, offering souls without manor or hearth a bare-bones shelter from the mortal storm. Dirty. Dimly lighted, they set men to deep introspection, and facile kinship with strangers. Neon beer-signs were things of timeless comfort.
Her initial port-of-call was Czarda's, a wolfden smelling violently of paprika, anise seed and rotgut tokay. After her entrance no one spoke English. A stevedore plied her with a heady red wine affectionately nicknamed Blood of the Bull. (She woke the next day with a blinding hangover and unable to meet her sister for their daily bagelnosh.)
House rule at Czarda's was that all unescorted women had to dance. Cassandra obliged them with a fearsome bellydance learned in a college game. All the men became unglued. Mata Hari in a Turkish
shakedown.
*
On the prowl. Cassandra hunted eyes. Eyes filled with loneliness and despair. She wanted to commingle with souls. Souls crushed by futile labor. People of pointless existence. Godless.
Then she saw him, that first noble man. Sitting on a curb, bogarting a Lucky down to the nub, he could have been the ghost of Albert Camus. He wore an old bomber jacket and faded army fatigues. Diamond-hard eyes challenged the world. Down and out? No way. More the slumming angel.
When he gazed into her eyes his own softened with compassion and pity.
She shot him on the quick draw.
While she capped her lens he disappeared. Drifting into the fog.
The "Portrait of Sisyphus" earned her a showing in the East Village. The gallery was a renovated chow mein palace reeking of cats.
*
Kit watched her swoop into the Spanish crowd, snapping away, isolating a subject and bottling its lifeforce.
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