Dead Dog Beach

“It’s called underdevelopment,” said a friend over coffee. He’s not only Puerto Rican, he’s an independentista, but he’s lived in the states for years now.

What did he mean? Well, let’s revisit the gentlemen who sell parking on the streets. They are indignant because the police are harassing them. The police are responding that they are merely enforcing the law. They also argue that making a statement like, “hey, gimme five bucks and I’ll make sure nothing happens to your car,” is slightly intimidating. In addition, no one “owns” the street, and these gentlemen have effectively usurped public parking and made it private. “Hey,” say the guys, “you should be glad we have a job! The government hasn’t given us a job, so we made one ourselves! Bíjhte? You see?”

You get that?

If not, you may be living in a developed country—meaning that there is a common agreement, a social contract that is understood and honored. Laws are obeyed, efficiency is the norm, the system works.

What works in Puerto Rico is the human connection. And it applies to basic things. Years ago, I had a problem with my phone. I did what any normal person would do—went to the phone company and got a work order number.

Absolutely the correct thing to do.

What did I do wrong?

I omitted step two. Because the second part of the process is to locate a pala or shovel. That’s anybody who works for—or knows somebody who works for—the telephone company. You need the work order number not to get the work done, but to tell your friend—or the daughter of the hairdresser of the assistant to the division of customer service.  

You know what happened. I waited and waited and waited some more. Then, I mentioned the situation to a student at La Fortaleza—the governor’s mansion. The words were barely out of my mouth when she was calling….

…the president of the telephone company.

I live three blocks from the mansion. And how many telephone company trucks were outside my building 45 minutes later?

Look—it shouldn’t be that way. The president of the telephone company shouldn’t be getting calls about a work order. Nobody can have a friend in every one of the hundreds of government agencies. And sending three trucks to my house that day was just a bit overkill….

A friend in Puerto Rico is like a friend nowhere else. A friend will move the firmament to help you. A friend will cheerfully pick you up at the airport at three o’clock in the morning, bringing along his entire family and all of their boyfriends / girlfriends and take you home where his wife is making an asopao (a Puerto Rican stew / soup) and everybody will crack open numerous beers and tell stories and jokes.

In short, we do people very well here.

Animals?

Err, no. Yes, there are people who are ardent in their love of animals. But at virtually every restaurant, there are stray dogs hungrily staring at you, imploring you for food. To an animal lover, it can be a shock coming to Puerto Rico.

Which is what a woman did. Christina Beckles, a former Golden Glove boxer and a major animal lover, was here on the island with her husband. A professional stunt man, he was filming a miniseries here on the island when the chauffeur of the van he was riding in deliberately ran over one of the 150,000 stray dogs that haunt the island. Shocked, he ordered the driver to stop the van, got out, and rescued a group of puppies.

They discovered that there were several known dumping places for unwanted animals. And that the island’s five shelters had a euthanasia rate of 97%. So they went to one of the most notorious of the dumping places—Dead Dog Beach—on the southeast coast.

Dead dog because the kids do a little target practice after hours, and leave their kill on the beach.

Well, Christina decided to do something about it. And so far, she has rescued 60 dogs and given them away to good homes. She started The Sato Project, sato being the Puerto Rican word for mongrel. She visits the island four or five times a year, and is in daily communication with a woman who feeds the dogs at the beach.

She is—you might have guessed—British.

Oh, and also a saint….

Reflections of a reflection

It’s a curious thing about Facebook. People post stuff that drives me nuts. “Eating mofongo at La Fondita de Mofongo!!!!!!” Usually accompanied by a photo.

(Any of you up there who have never eaten mofongo should go immediately online to get your ticket to Puerto Rico. Mmmmmm….)

Which is to say that, no, the world doesn’t need to know that somebody you friended in a weak moment is eating mofongo.

It may be, of course, that food comments are like golf and psychotherapy. Interesting only to the players….

On the other hand, comments about what people are listening to are interesting—to me, at least. And Cousin Brian did pique my interest with his comment about Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number One. Well, although I have it on the iPod (made by Apple!), it’s something I never hear. But if Brian—no slouch whatsoever in the classical music world—likes it, it’s gotta be good. I decide to check it out.

Not before dealing with a very snarky Mr. Fernández, who is busy peering at the cutting board in the kitchen. He holds up a little white part of a hand mixer.

“There used to be a little plastic bag with tiny little screws around here, and I DON’T SEE IT NOW!”

“Good morning, dear,” I say. I’ve been told about emotional hijacking.

“WELL, WHERE IS IT!”

“Slept well, I trust?”

“Well, it better turn up,” he says, and stomps off to the bathroom.

And this is before coffee.

So the opening of the piano concerto pretty well matched my internal emotional landscape. Think New Jersey on Monday….

And Brian also had said that Chopin had written the concerto at age eighteen.

Well, there is some music that only the young can write, I thought today, on the trot. It’s sort of like love—you may experience it many times in your life, but not like the first time.

And this is definitely a young man’s work. And—trademark Chopin—it has a theme that just squeezes your heart.

I was listening to it today since I had decided that the piece was sort of like all of people you really like, whom you kiss (when appropriate / possible), and say “hey, we really gotta get together” and then never do.

Until the next time.

There’s music like that, too. You hear a piece, think ‘wow, that’s great’ and make a promise to yourself. You’re gonna listen to it often.

The next time being when NPR decides to play it.

All right, so what’s the story of the piece? Well, Chopin wrote it in 1830, and performed it in one of his “farewell” concerts.

Where was he going?

Off to Paris. In fact, he never returned to Poland, but became part of the “Great Emigration.”

Hunh?

Ah, the joys of the hyperlink! One click and I know, or rather remember. Poland got sliced up between Austria, Russia and Prussia in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. Most of the elite packed up and left, so that Polish political and intellectual activity was really mostly French.

Well, something to know! Now then, what’s the skinny on Chopin?

Well, here I commend you to Wikipedia, which has an excellent article on him. But to make it short, it doesn’t seem to have been a very happy life. And it’s definitely not a healthful (in the sense of full of health) life. Sickful, in fact.

His death certificate says tuberculosis, though I prefer the term “consumption” of the 19^th century.

And what of his love life? Also not much fun. Yeah, the affair with George Sand that we all know about, but she became more of a nurse than lover, at the end. And they quarreled and separated at the end—she didn’t even attend his funeral.

Any money? Well, he dies poor, though at least not alone.

And there must have been some comforts. A raging intellect, for example, and good friends. One of them the painter Eugène Delacroix, who plays in this little episode, sent by Sand through Wikipedia:

Chopin is at the piano, quite oblivious of the fact that anyone is listening. He embarks on a sort of casual improvisation, then stops. 'Go on, go on,' exclaims Delacroix, 'That's not the end!' 'It's not even a beginning. Nothing will come ... nothing but reflections, shadows, shapes that won't stay fixed. I'm trying to find the right colour, but I can't even get the form ...' 'You won't find the one without the other,' says Delacroix, 'and both will come together.' 'What if I find nothing but moonlight?' 'Then you will have found the reflection of a reflection.' The idea seems to please the divine artist. He begins again, without seeming to, so uncertain is the shape. Gradually quiet colours begin to show, corresponding to the suave modulations sounding in our ears. Suddenly the note of blue sings out, and the night is all around us, azure and transparent. Light clouds take on fantastic shapes and fill the sky. They gather about the moon which casts upon them great opalescent discs, and wakes the sleeping colours. We dream of a summer night, and sit there waiting for the song of the nightingale ..

Hey, that girl can write!

OK—that’s a consolation, having company like that, and an interesting woman, as Sand certainly was. But was it enough?

Here’s a photo of him in the year of his death:

I'm voting no.

Wonderful wonderful people

Confession—I spent seven years hectoring my students on rule number one of writing….

Consider the reader.

What does he know? What does he need or want to know? It’s not about you, the writer. It’s all about the reader.

Yup, banged that drum for seven years as loudly as I could!

And then?

Was completely deaf to it.

I wrote a book, you see, all about life and death and iguanas and some other stuff. Then, I concluded it with my getting laid off at Wal-Mart. I mentioned throwing pencils at the students, about not going back to say farewell to my room, about not getting to say farewell to my students.

Well, I sent off drafts to people, and people mostly liked it. Not surprising; is a friend gonna write and say, “Jeez Marc, you’ve written a dog! Couldn’t get past the first chapter!”?

OK—the book is coming out on Saturday. We set up—my partner in literature and I—a little page on Facebook. There was a sample chapter. And then I realized. I talked about the building. I talked about the iguanas behind the building. I certainly mentioned that Wal-Mart cheer!

What didn’t I do?

Mention what in the world I was doing at Wal-Mart in the first place….

Marc? Duh…..

Didn’t bother my friendly readers—they know the story. But wouldn’t a stranger be a little confused?

So here’s what I should have written.

Nothing was more improbable in my life as the fact that, every day between 6:30 and 7AM, I walked up concrete steps, ducked the dive-bombing grackles, passed the alarming cars, and entered the Wal-Mart Home Office.

I knew how it had happened, of course. Ofelia, my old boss and a cherished friend, had sent me off to teach in a trailer in a parking lot in Bayamón.

“No, Ofelia, this is too crazy. I mean, I’ve done the rum factory. That was fun. I’ve done the executives and their wives of the third largest bank on the island. And what is Wal-Mart, anyway….”

She sighed and explained.

Well, needed the dough, and a gig is a gig.

“So how did it go,” she asked, after that first day.

“Ummm, I think I blew it.”

“Oh, dear,” she said.

“Look, you know I’ve been teaching ESL for ten plus years, right?”

“Of course.”

“Well, what you don’t know is that I become a completely different person when I’m in a classroom….”

“Of course, it’s called the teacher’s persona…  So what happened?”

“Well, I get there and introduce myself to this lady, Elizabeth, and she’s completely unimpressed. I go into this little trailer straight from Arkansas, and begin the class. And then, I hear this clapping from next door and someone shouts ‘Gimme a W!’”

“Oh, the company cheer,” she said brightly.

“Well, I was dumbfounded,” I said. “Didn’t know what to do. So then I said ‘What the hell was that?’ And they said what you said. So then I lost it and said, ‘well, do we have an English class cheer?’”

“Oh no,” breathed Ofelia. “Marc, you didn’t. Marc, tell me you didn’t….”

“Yeah, I got ‘em all on their feet and clapping, and I shouted ‘GIMME AN E, GIMME AN N. GIMME A G’ all the way through the word English, and then I shouted ‘WHAT DOES IT SPELL’ and then ‘I CAN’T HEAR YOU’ and then ‘WHAT DO WE SPEAK!’ and then….”

Here I noted that Ofelia had her head in her hands.  

Curious that the company hadn’t called, demanding a change of teacher, I went off to do more damage the next day. And met the president of the company, coming out the trailer door.

“Great cheer,” he said, introducing himself. “Loved it! You’re really part of the Wal-Mart family now!”

Completely sincere!

Well, the disasters multiplied. Tired of teaching, I turned to presentations. Get the kids to talk! (All students of any age are my kids…)

Great—first presentation was about the Florida Keys. I noted confused faces. And did something that I should never do.

Try to be a teacher….

So I jumped up, grabbed the magic marker, went to the flip chart, and started to draw.

I drew Florida, I drew the keys, I created what looked for all the world like an obscene graffitum on a men’s room wall.

Worse, I saw myself do it!

It was like a train wreck—I saw it coming on, I saw my hands creating it.

Couldn’t stop!

Never confessed that to Ofelia.

Well, I started off my Wal-Mart days as a contractor—Ofelia is the head of a very good little language school.

Then Elizabeth, apparently more impressed, phoned me, offered me a job. They had created a position for me, and wanted me to be the fulltime English teacher.

“Great,” I told her.

“Wonderful,” I said to her.

“SHIT!” I said, after hanging up the phone.

Didn’t want it, but knew I had to take it. The benefits? Great!! Salary? Excellent!

Marc in the corporate world?

Nahhhhh!   

For two years, it drove me nuts. Then, I relaxed. I began roaming the halls with my ruler, pretending to be a traditional teacher. I put a ridiculous yellow duck on the door of my room, and called it my VPI—the volume producing item so beloved of Sam Walton. I instituted the ‘cultura de la clase de inglés’ one tired day after hearing the “Wal-Mart Culture” invoked for the umpteenth time.

Among other items, students had to breathe audibly in and gaze upwards when I pronounced the name of Sam Walton.

Someone wasn’t taking it seriously.

Oh, except for one thing.

The students. Those wonderful, resilient, amazing people who told me their stories, shared the joy and pain in their lives, showed me the pictures of their kids or pets. The kids who put up with my nonsense and dodged the pencils I threw at them, and said “333 jewelry thieves” and hid under their desks when they heard me approach, smartly tapping the ruler against my thigh.

Wonderful, wonderful people!

Puerto Rico lo hace mejor

It’s one of those times when—very happily—advertising stumbles across reality.

Puerto Rico does it better.

It’s so easy to become the ugly American, the gringo who complains about the traffic, the government, the crime, the corruption. But yesterday, I saw my very good friend Karen, and spent a wonderful time with her, her husband, and her “little sister.”

Part of the Mormon youth group!

Yes, Karen is a Mormon. And yes, once a year I routinely walked into her office, told her I was married, presented her my wedding certificate, and then requested officially that she enroll Raf in the health plan. 

“So what do you want me to do?” she would ask.

“Oh, send me the same letter as last year,” I’d say. “Unless, of course, I’ve worn down Bentonville and they’ll put Raf in the plan…”

I had written a letter to the Senior Vice President for Human Resources in Bentonville, and waited a year for a response. I wrote a second time—by certified mail.

That got a response!

So it was a sort of game between us. For two or three years, I put Raf down for coverage, and Karen sent me an updated letter.

The relationship between the gay community and Mormon Church has on occasion—you do sense irony, don’t you?—been strained. Did it make any difference in our case?

Absolutely not.

“No llores, Marc, no llores…” she kept saying to me, and patting my arm. It was the day I came to sign the severance agreement, and turn in my discount card.

Wasn’t my best day.

No llores—don’t cry. And honestly, if I had been able to, I would have stopped. Karen was as affected as I.

And what hadn’t she done for me? Unfailingly, she rescued me from getting stranded when the bus broke down or didn’t come. She defended me on the—I hope rare—occasions when I needed it. She made sure that I never had a problem getting the—paid!—time off to take care of Franny. Sure—it’s required by law, but kindness isn’t.

And she was the one person in the office I called on the day Franny died.

“Karen,” I explained, “I know it’s traditional in the office to mention Jesucristo or the todopoderoso in the little email that HR sends out when an associate’s parent dies. But you know, my mother didn’t believe. So, could you…”

No problem.

I think it’s one thing that Puerto Rico does superlatively well—human relationships. The quality of friendship here is like nothing else. Yes, it may be that the government doesn’t work. The potholes in the road could swallow an elephant. God or the devil knows where all the money goes.

“We don’t throw away people like the white man does,” wrote a Native American about people of the double spirit, the term for gay among the Indians. And the same could be true about friendship in Puerto Rico.

What—let religion come before friendship?

No way!

OK—Brothers

“OK, let’s get together and end the friendship,” said Harry.

What?

Had I heard correctly? These words, from a man with a skill for friendship parallel to Yo Yo Ma’s skills on the cello?

What had this man never done for me? 

The hours he had driven to see me, talk with me, console me.

My definition of a friend?

A cold night in January in Wisconsin. Raf had left from Chicago the day before. He was leaving for Puerto Rico, a place I had decided I could not live.

Nor could he live anywhere else.

It was over between us.

We had two wonderful weeks together—we who had been together for five or six years.  But Puerto Ricans—many of them—can live in the States but…

…not flower there.

He needed to come back. I couldn’t live there. Over Christmas in 1989 he came to Puerto Rico, found a job, and then came back. He packed up the apartment—we looked at the empty rooms together. The taxi was on its way.

“It’s going to be hard to find someone as wonderful as you,” he whispered.

My heart was breaking. The ride to the airport was agonizing. Seeing him to the gate—you could back then—was wrenching. I chose not to wait to the bitter end, kissed him, and turned my back.

The gate was at the very end of the terminal. Walking back, fighting sobs, I had the surreal sense of being in a film. The corny airport music was swelling, the credits were rolling…

…the movie was ending.

OK—so what does this have to do with Harry?

The next day—after another sleepless night—I got on the train.

To go see Harry.

It’s a weird thing. The train doesn’t stop at Madison, but at a little town thirty miles north. And though it was only seven or so in the evening—it was pitch black. The station was closed. I waited by the side of the road.

Now, of course, I’d pull out my cell phone. Gentle Readers, there were no cell phones in 1990.

I waited some more. The man I had cherished and held those final two weeks was in a land of warmth and family and sunshine. I was the one vertical thing in an intensely dark, cold, black expanse.

You can imagine the thoughts….

But the one thought I didn’t have?

That Harry wouldn’t come.

Late?

Well, yeah. Harry always knew one place that sold this great bottle of wine—wonderful! And you have to pour it into a broad dish so that it can breathe and then—WOW! The taste, the texture. Incredible!

Or hey, Marc, there’s this movie, see, and you’ve got to see this scene where the hero wakes up and he sees the same damn thing every day and then he realizes….

Right. So Harry was at the liquor store, buying me a special bottle of wine, or getting this INCREDIBLE piece of steak—aged 3 weeks—or searching for this movie I’ve gotta see. He was also on his way.

And there appeared the headlights, getting closer and closer, and then stopping.

I got in. The car was warm. His daughter Chris was in the front seat. In five minutes, all the tension cracked, and we were having yet another of what we always had.

A completely silly conversation.

“Oh, God,” I said. “I just love these moments—these incredibly nonsensical silly moments….”

“You know,” he said, turning serious, “I think life is really made up of the small, little moments. Not the big, dramatic events but the small, ordinary events. Maybe that’s what’s most important….”

He taught me this, as he has taught me so much else. And how many little moments have we shared?

Or bottles of champagne? For January had passed, and it was summer of the same year. I was making a spaghetti sauce that is still remembered. Harry was climbing the back steps.

He had gotten another promotion!

Amazing—a guy who can get a promotion, without actually having a job.

Although he did—sort of. He was a shoe salesman, my philosopher friend, on the south side of Chicago. Not a welcoming place—he more than once found himself physically kicked out of shops. Oh, and there was the time his car got burgled—and he found himself out five hundred bucks of right shoes.

(Shoe salesmen apparently only buy the right shoe—not necessary to have both shoes if you’re selling wholesale….)

So yeah, he had a job, but he was onto something bigger. The TV station—part of the largest chain of stations aimed at the Hispanic market. And they were hot for Harry—the possibilities were endless, the market booming, he had every qualification. Call next week.

First bottle of champagne.

We went to the thrift shop—Harry had the notion that he had to have a light blue shirt with a strong red tie. We shined shoes.

Next week, hey that position? Well, unfortunately there was a hitch. But not to worry, because there is another position available, a position that Harry was ABSOLUTELY made for, and incredible, because…

It paid TWICE as much!

Second bottle of champagne.

Well, it went on and on—that bibulous summer, and Harry went higher and higher, scaling unbelievable heights in a meteoric career that left us—and only us—astounded. He was at one point vice-president.

Also broke. And the rent was due. And Chris was starting university that fall.

And Harry?

He asked me to read him the cards, one night. And sure enough, I pulled Death.

“It doesn’t mean what you think,” I said. “It’s about spiritual transformation, psychic change….”

I didn’t know. Harry was out there alone, driving dark roads at night. About all he had was his life insurance. Chris could go to school on that.

Someone always pulls you back—I learned that a couple of months ago. But sometimes you get pretty far out on the edge.

And now, this good man, this great friend, is proposing to kill the friendship? After all of this? Then I got it—he’s just called to report that he’s buried three good friends in two weeks.

“Right, I understand,” I said. “It’s OK. We’ll be brothers.”