Thus Spat Montalvo

Well, it was an article I had to read, as well as a video—posted below—that I had to watch. And here—doing what every good writer does, namely pissing someone off—is what the article had to say:

I think many white, suburban, and privileged folks in STL think that the only people who care about Mike Brown are uneducated criminals. They comfort themselves with that. That people who know Classical music?! That understand the word Requiem! They care?!!!? GASP!!!

If anyone needs it, here’s the info: STL stands for St. Louis, and Mike Brown was the kid slaughtered by the cops earlier this year in Ferguson, part of the St. Louis metro area. The article was about a protest against the killing Brown at a performance of the Brahms German Requiem. The protestors, stood up, sang a song, unfurled a banner, threw hundreds of pink valentine, oh hell, here’s the picture:

   

You know where this is going to, right? Because I’m white, privileged, and live in a wonderful part of town—Old San Juan—if not a suburb. And if I haven’t written a book on classical music, I’ve certainly written half a blog.

“Motha fuckah! What a Niggah!” exclaimed Montalvo, who turned up again, after a couple of weeks of not being anywhere except—we all hoped—somewhere, and after not responding to my voice mails, which were non-existent, since he has not activated his voice mail. So I get the same damn woman—does she never sleep?—saying the same damn thing—and does she never tire of it?—and refusing to respond when I say, “well, dammit, tell the customer to active ate his damn voice mail! Isn’t that your job?”

“That is so retarded,” sputtered Montalvo, after I had initiated the sputtering by telling him how annoyed I was. “Why should I initiate my voice mail if people can text me? That is SO retarded.”

“Well, I don’t text!”

Since Montalvo’s mother taught him how to text when he got his first cell phone—age three or so—Montalvo was rendered speechless. But that was quite unnecessary: the look said it all.

We were in the sister store, Mi Pequeño San Juan, where Lady had shifted from café owner to housepainter. This she does by sitting down, chatting with whoever comes by, sipping a beer, and painting little plaster houses of Old San Juan. And since Lady had had her birthday last week, Montalvo had arrived with a present, namely a book. But not just any book, but Rilke’s Book of Hours.

“Amazing,” I said, “because guess who sent you Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet? Susan!”

Susan being an a absolutely tremendous lady—as well as a  “white, suburban, privileged woman who definitely knows what “requiem” means—whom Montalvo doesn’t know, but does, since she sent him another book just a month ago. So Lady gets the  Book of Hours, and Montalvo gets the Letters, and I get nothing but that’s fine because had felt such a surge of love, love of a kind I had never known, a love that was still warming me, even…

…as he was calling me a retard.

So for these occasions did God send the selfie, and here it is:

And sorry Susan, this may be the only thank-you note you're ever get!

   

Well, what’s been the point of this long digression? Well, everybody knows or can figure out who Lady is, Montalvo is holding his book, and I’m floating above them. And Montalvo—on occasion—refers  to himself as a Niggah. Lady doesn’t, but her mother was ebony black, and her father of Scottish origin. So can someone out there peer at the picture and tell me that I’m the obvious white dude? Because I don’t see it.

Well, Lady announces that selfies are all nice and good, but that she’s also really hungry, and what is she to do about that, since can’t we all see that ball an chain around he ankle. We try, we can’t, but we get the message, and run for food.

“And how is your heart, my son,” I tell him, since Montalvo is passionately involved in a half-reciprocated love affair with a “lady” of Florida.

“Motha fuck, how do you know this shit,?” he says, and spills the tale of woe. He can neither stay nor tell her to go…I’ll leave that unsaid, since Montalvo is swearing enough for the both of us. This is, of course, an old, old story; as well, when you are stretched on this rack for the first time, it matters not that millennia of men have endured it. As Montalvo would say, “it’s a motha fucka…”

Do I know the girl? No. Do I like to see Montalvo suffering. Also, no. So, time for a fatherly chat.

“Montalvo, you know what a,,,” lowered voice here, we’re in public, “…cock tease is, right?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well, there can also be emotional cock teases….”

“What’s that?”

Well, years of teaching have taught me: students forget definitions, but everybody remembers a good story…

“Look my cousin was religious, and he was crazy enough to hook up with a really religious woman. So he’s twenty-five or something, and he’s visiting this girl for the first time in months, and then Karen—the girl—says to him, ‘Philip, let’s both undress, lie together, and just be together, only holding hands, IN THE PRESENCE OF THE LORD.’”

Well, those caps imply emphasis, which it really wasn’t, since my voice was soaked with sanctimonimoniousness. (I know, computer—you want sanctimony, but it’s not the right word.)

Montalvo explodes with laughter, all heads spin, and all ears hear, “Shit, what a motha fuckin’ fucked-up chick!”

So I told him, “you get it now?” Then the food is ready, and Raf drifts up to the shop, and we drift back to Lady with the visible / invisible—but still very much felt—ball  and chain. And then we doing what we do so well in Puerto Rico: hanging out, talking, enjoying each other’s company, and letting world keep screwing itself up without our notice or worry. And I drift off with Montalvo back to the café, and quiz on that word he always doesn’t remember, to the point of wanting to get it tattooed on his forearm.

“Enjambment,” he says referring, if this were a poem,

to this, the skipping to a new line when it shouldn’t.

And there’s a lot this kid, my son, doesn’t know, though he graduated high school with an over-3.0 GPA and has two years of college. There’s the word, “exasperated…”

“OK, so I’ll tattoo that on my other arm….”

So then Raf drops the news that the Met broadcasts are starting this month, and Montalvo can use the encore ticket: the first opera will be Macbeth, about which Montalvo knows, or at least he knows Shakespeare, since he and I have been reading sonnets together.

And he knows—this Niggah about opera—because we saw Otello this summer, and he—Montalvo, ot Otello—had inquired: did Netflix have any operas?

“I’m gonna watch ‘em all….”

Now then, let’s skip a couple thousand miles north, and get down to listen to the Brahms’ Requiem, or at least to watch the video. What’s my reaction? Well, it more a dialogue:

What does the death of Michael Brown have to do with Brahms and thed Saint Louis Symphony?

Well, isn’t classical music classist? Isn’t it the music of the rich, the privileged? The people who get rather different treatment from the police when stopped? And did you see any black faces at the concert, or anyone under 60?

Did they put a sign up: Whites Only? And just as I think that slavishly trying to be a “whitey,” I also think that be able to be nothing more than “street? A Brotha? Well, that doesn’t get you very far….

 And what in hell is the conductor doing just standing there? Granted he was taken of guard, but I’d have gestured to the orchestra to stand, and then strode over and wrapped my arm around the first—and hopefully cutest—protestor there. Oh, and then dedicated the concert to…

Do I have to tell you?

My point, if any of you Devoted Readers, have stayed with me? Well, I’ve got a self-defined “Niggah,” son who knows the word “enjambment” and will learn the word “exasperated” and wants to see all the operas on Netflix, and had never read a word of Shakespeare until I sat him down and slogged through a sonnet with him.

“Everybody knows the sonnets of Shakespeare,” he said importantly, to a stranger a couple days later….

So we’ve fucked up—we who can allow a perfectly intelligent “Niggah” to go through life with no more hope of an education than the prayer of a chance that he’ll  meet a white “Niggah” willing to take him to the opera and teach him the word “enjambment?”

And one good thing about Montalvo? He welcomes everybody into the shops, tells them to ask any questions…in short, he’s a good worker, and quite polite.

Well, mostly…

Because he had made a sale of one of the little houses to a Japanese lady, explained the uniqueness of what she held in her hand, called her Ma’am, and had told her that Lady, still painting those houses, would personalize the little house, if the Japanese lady so wished. So I stood up, feeling achy and wanting my bed, and Montalvo handed the house to Lady, and sat down, to sip a bit of water from his bottle.

“I leave you,” I said to them…

“…in the presence of God!”

And then it’s BAM! And Raf and Montalvo are exploding with laughter, and I know a good exit when I see one, so I only hear Lady say, “what did I miss?”

“Montalvo spat on the floor,” Raf tells her, and it’s then—only then!—that the Japanese lady whispers apologetically and Orientally:

“…and also my leg…”    

Right, so he does have another side, my opera-loving, enjambment-knowing, lady-spitting son. A side he was willing to show, all to help his month do business at the Gay Pride Day down in Cabo Rojo!

Hey, every blog can use a bit of beefcake once in a while!