Who knows what drew him? For he had been away for several
weeks now, since his mother had moved to Florida, his motorcycle was broken,
and…well, in his words, “I’ve just been dealing with some deep shit, man….”
Remember that?
So Lady weighed in—Montalvo had flown back into our lives
because it was the Fiestas de la Calle
San Sebastian, which, according to El
Nuevo Día, was a generally ordered affair this year, since there were only some
600,000 people in a seven-by-seven street village: Old San Juan. And last year?
Well, it was 600,000 minus one, since somebody got shot.
At any rate, into this mayhem Montalvo was proposing to insert
himself, since he had inherited his mother’s business, and was therefore
donning the official uniform of the enterprise: Here’s the photo.
“Lick my tight-ies,” I told him, and not for the first time, since I had seen it before, and said the same thing. So, dredged from the harbor of elementary school knowledge, I told him about long and short vowels, and the effects of single versus double consonants.
“It’s the difference between ‘moping’ and ‘mopping,’” I told
them, Lady being present. The problem? Neither one knew what moping was, so it
was a quick detour, until ‘hoping’ and ‘hopping’ came into view.
So there he was, in the Poet’s Passage, but
also—significantly—in front of the television, which had finally agreed to get
up on the wall, and—we hope—stay put. ‘It figures,’ I thought. ‘Of course we
would put up the television, and the very next thing—“one clear call for me,”
as the poet sang—Montalvo would appear.’
“Man, you guys gotta treat me like a grown-up! I be a
business-owner now—not just some kid from the hood!"
The business, apparently, involves popsicles formed in the
shape of—look, do I have to tell you?—nor is that all. Apparently, the
tities—ah, computer, for once we agree!—contain alcohol, and so his mother and
now Montalvo have adopted the business practice of walking the beach with the
dogs and a cooler, and selling refreshment and a buzz to the recumbent
tourists. Now, Montalvo was proposing to bring his tities to the fiesta, to
notch the general inebriety of it all one-step further.
“Man, I wish I hadn’t cut my hair, all so I could get some
lame-ass job. I ain’t never gonna work for the man again!”
He directed a look at Lady, who had been “the man” on
repeated occasions.
“Lick my tight-ies,” she responded.
“Hey listen, Dad,” he told me, “my mom said I should find a
place in the old city to crash at night, cause getting in and out is gonna be
murder.”
Well, sane advice, since we were dealing with an hourglass
situation: How to get 600,000 people out of the old city and into the mainland.
There is, after all, only one road in and one road out.
“So I’m looking for a place to stay this week…”
Remember “nudge nudge / wink wink?”
“I have no guilt,” said Lady, walking up the steps to my
apartment, in order to be in-serviced on the cats. “He is NOT staying in the
Poet’s Passage.”
“He’s not staying here,” I told her, “Raf and I don’t let anybody
stay here except Taí if one of us isn’t here….”
So I gave her the dope on the cats, which is pretty
simple—so simple that it occurs to me, why do we make it so hard? Because we
are not only cook—well, OK, food service provider—we’re also the lunchroom
monitor, since none of the cats want to eat from their bowl—a concept about
which they acknowledge nothing—but instead run to the other cats’ bowls. So
while I am doing Sudoku of an evening, I am also hearing Raf scream, “Loquito!
Gordito!” All this accompanied by various thuds and thwacks—almost all of which
fail to connect.
So then we drift back to the café, since a seventy-inch
television has a powerful gravitational pull, and that’s when Lady says it.
“It’s been a dream of mine for years, to have a really good
television…”
“Kick-ass,” puts into Montalvo, less for clarification than
admiration.
“…so that we can do Button Poetry.”
Here’s why you have friends, since I have no idea what
Button Poetry is. And if you don’t either, here’s a quote from their website:
Button Poetry was founded in 2011 by
Sam Cook and Sierra DeMulder, who were shortly joined by Rachele Cermak, and
Heidi Lear. They launched the first Button website and blog.
In March, Button hosted its first
recording party to produce Button Poetry: Volume One, featuring
Sierra DeMulder, Sam Cook, Dylan Garity, Hieu Nguyen, Kait Rokowski, and
Shane Hawley, along with many other Twin Cities poets.
Starting in May, Sam and Button teamed
up with Poetry Observed to film and produce a
series of high-quality poetry videos.
OK—that’s the description, but the reality?
Good news, Dear Readers! You can put aside ISIS and
the Republicans and Boko Haram. Check out the video—by a guy from, ahem,
Madison Wisconsin—below. This video which has been viewed 8, 831, 505 times on
YouTube.
8,831, 505 times—there’s hope for us all!
