Now Then

Well, having dispatched our puppet—La Comay—to wherever it is he went off to, what’s next? We have, as we used to say corporationally (OK, computer, businessly? Companally? Does ANYTHING make you happy?), many opportunities down here. One person in seven is using drugs. Murder rate is over a thousand a year. Forty eight percent of the population is living below poverty level.

‘Well, at least we have absolutely no problems with snow removal,’ I thought on the morning trot, after having glanced at the New Day’s front page. Gobierno irá contra los padres, announced the headline. The Government Is Going After the Parents?

Hunh? Why? What have they done?

It started when our new governor visited a school two days ago, and discovered that very few of the parents had bothered to pick up their children’s report card, much less attend parent / teacher conferences.

How few?

A Department of Education spokesperson says only 30% of parents pick up the grades.

So the government gave the parents un halón de orejas or an ear pulling. It’s a common Puerto Rican chastisement. And now, they’re hitting where it hurts.

It seems that parents get all kinds of benefits from the state—plan 8, that’s the apartment. Tarjeta de salud—free medical care. Departamento de la Familia—money and food. You’ve pretty much got your life taken care of, right there.

But to get all this, the agencies require documents verifying that you do have a kid, and that she or he is in school. So the teachers spend time filling out these documents.

Hunh?

Let me put this car in reverse and tell you that I’m not at my best today. Yes, I did the trot, but it was more instinct / habit than Marc out there. I spent most of yesterday on the only throne I’ll ever own, and when I wasn’t there, I was in bed. I am, to speak frankly, metaphorically and literally flushing out the holidays.

Which may be why this situation, even on an island with a zest for absurdity, seems crazy.

OK—let’s do a list:

1. Teachers teach. They don’t fill out documents, or teach values, or police the school grounds. They just teach, for which they should be paid as much as the governor, easily.
2. Parents parent. Part of which is to say to the kid that the teacher is to be respected, and part of which is to make sure that the teacher is…respectable (OK, but you know what I mean.) Another part of which is to make sure that their kids know—school is work, your education is the most important thing in your life right now, and will be for the rest of your life.
3. Governments govern. Which means that I can drink the water (no), drive the roads without breaking an axle (no), go out on the street at night (what, are you crazy?), or send my kid to a public school (unthinkable).

Right, so now we have all the roles defined. Let’s talk about those public schools.

“Lock your kid in the marquesina!” I was once busily saying—actually repeating—to a student. She had just told me that she had announced to the director of the private school her kids were in, “the only reason I’m paying you ten grand a year is that gate over there!”

(A break for anyone who doesn’t know what a marquesina is. It’s a garage, but much more. It’s also a place where you sit, where you entertain neighbors, where you drink beer and watch fights. Importantly, it’s enclosed and has a gate that can be locked. So it’s safe.)

In the public schools, there are no substitute teachers. So what happens when missis (common nickname for a teacher—a little hangover from the Americans) is missing? The school dumps the kids on the street.

OK—so maybe your child has a cell phone and you’re at home, eating bonbons and reading French novels. You hop in the car and get your kid.

Oh, sorry—forgot. That was the fifties.

If you really would prefer that your child not become a street urchin, then you pay for a private school. The education—with some exceptions, of course—is just as dreadful. But they’ve got a gate and a lock and you know where you kid is gonna be when you drop him or her off at seven in the morning. Now all you gotta do is deal with the boss.

Well, my solution was to lock the kid up in the marquesina every day—with, of course, the 500$ of textbooks you shelled out for him. No, it’s not abuse. You’ll give him food and drink, safety, bathroom, etc. You could, of course, put a closed-circuit monitoring system in the marquesina, and follow him periodically throughout the day. Tremendous idea, if I do say so myself: thinking outside the caja as usual!

Well, I thought it was a good idea.

Predictably, it was shot down.

What I am telling you at obscene length is that the public schools are terrible, for the most part.

It now must be said.

You don’t have a right to have a kid. Not if you’re so damned stupid and lazy and uncaring that you can’t hustle your fat Departamento-de-la-Familia-fed ASS down to the school to pick up a report card. I can’t prevent you from having a kid, but I sure as hell won’t support you, you lazy fat cow who stands in front of me in the supermarket while your kids play tag between my knees, and you’re eating chips and drinking Coca-Cola—too damn busy to fish out your tarjeta de la familia card to pay for all the junk you’re slopping into your kids!

Whew….

Now then, back to bed…. 

Death of a Puppet

We won’t know if it’s a game changer until, well, we see the game change. But it’s looking very much like one.

Readers of this blog in the continental US will know that there is—sorry, that’s was—a character on local TV called La Comay. And La Comay—who in real life was a guy but who donned female clothing and a big foam head, atop of which was an awful wig—dished up just the kind of stew we all love: racy, gossipy, no-holds-barred and take-no-prisoners.

OK—not all of us. Neither Mr. Fernández nor I ever watched the program. My old boss Ofelia actively unwatched the program once in a doctor’s office. The show was on, the dish was flowing, the patients / viewers were sniggering. So Ofelia strode to the head of the room, stood in front of the television, announced that she was sure of the good taste and genteel sensibilities of everyone present, and knew that they must be offended by the program. Therefore she would take the liberty of turning it off. She did, and the room became one of the quietest places ever heard in Puerto Rico.

There was pretty much nowhere she didn’t go, La Comay. A student who had been a news anchor on another television channel once told me that in the middle of a painful divorce, she didn’t need La Comay commenting on her marital problems for all of Puerto Rico—and Orlando, New York, Chicago—to hear. She was having trouble enough.

Readers will also know that La Comay strolled into what was a particularly grisly murder and made insinuations. What was the victim doing on a certain street at night? Did he know his assailants? Wasn’t the street rife with male and female prostitution?

In short, she got right up to if not quite over the cliff of he-had-it-coming.

Standard stuff.

What was unusual was the reaction. Seemingly with the speed of toadstools cropping up after a rain, Ricky Martin and a host of other celebrities were holding signs saying “Todos somos Jose Enrique.” Then a boycott of the show was announced. Facebook and Twitter went onto overdrive.

Corporate sponsors left the show in droves. Here’s a little list:

Triple-S, Coca-Cola, Ford, Chevrolet, WalMart, AT&T, Sprint, Goodyear, Harris Paint, SC Johnson, Dish Puerto Rico, Claro, Kress, Lanco, Borden, Red ATH, Vanilla Gift Card, Enfamil, Ashley Furniture Store, Aqua Fresh, Carolina Herrera, Mon Cheri, Radio Isla 1320, Lenel Restaurant, Designer Shoe Warehouse, ICPR Junior College, PMC Medicare Choice, MMM, Kia, Burlington Coat Factory, MAPFRE, Goya, Corona Extra, Welch’s, Cold Stone Creamery, Plaza del Caribe, Gillette, Hellmann’s, Mayagüez Resort & Casino, Palo Viejo, Asociación de Productos de Puerto Rico y St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital.

Well, money talks, but also on occasion screams. The manager of the TV station demanded that the program stop being recorded live, but pre-recorded and—presumably—vetted. La Comay said forget it, and walked.

All of this is surprising. More surprising is that the nemesis of La Comay, who is looking very much like the victor here, is a gay activist born on the island and living currently in New York. Nor did he start the battle recently—he had declared it in 2006, when he said “su más grande castigo, como homofóbico que es, que sea un hombre abierta y orgullosamente gay el que ayude a sacarlo de la televisión”. (Roughly, “his biggest punishment, given the homophobe he is, would be for an openly and proudly gay person to help take him off television.”)

The activist is Pedro Julio Serrano, born in Ponce, raised in Isla Verde, and now the director of communications for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. We are not in Puerto Rico by any means the most macho of Latin countries. But we are a Latin country. And for a gay guy to spearhead the movement to topple an icon—however disagreeable—like La Comay?

Major.

Pedro Julio Serrano (left), with his fiancé, Steven

So maybe it's time to grow up?

That’s my first reaction, on hearing the news.

A couple kids in Australia decide to have some fun. Call up a hospital in London, imitate—apparently atrociously—the Queen and Prince Phillip and see if they can get through. Fun, hunh? Hey, cool, let’s try that.

You know how it played out. The call was transferred by a nurse—and no, I think I won’t give her name. She’s suffered enough. Why, even in a blog post that perhaps only a hundred people will read, should I drag her further down?

She’s dead, you see, and apparently by her own hand. She leaves behind a husband and two young children. She was, apparently, an excellent nurse. The court at Saint James insists they had put no pressure on the hospital, which says there was no disciplinary action taking place or planned at the time of her death. She had, as well, the complete support of her colleagues.

The radio station says that the two kids have voluntarily taken themselves off the air, and they express, of course, deep regret.

I believe that.

And when I say that it’s maybe to grow up, I don’t necessarily refer to the kids.

They’re kids—right?

What about the rest of us?

Down here in the island surrounded by mirrors, I was busy with a more grisly affair—the story of a publicist and his horrific death. And a scandalmonger in the form of a transvestite with a foam head who repeated all of the worst gossip about his death.

Today, the widow appears in the newspaper and says no. My husband was NOT on that nice-by-day-vice-in-the-night street after dark. It was a carjacking, that and nothing more—except for a vile, vicious, horrendous crime (I quote her directly, though her words were horrendo, vil y vicioso crímen).

A carjacking is a federal offense. Thus, they are being investigated by the FBI, and may be subject to the death penalty. There is therefore every reason for them to paint the picture of a man in search of illicit and paid pleasure, rather than a man standing at an ATM who feels a gun poked in his lower back.

Oh, and by the way, who might be the more credible witness—the wife-now-widow who has a job like the rest of us (well, most of us) or these four people, two of whom—I believe—are kids turned in by their parents, the other two who are low-lifes?

The widow is asking space for the family to grieve—certainly a reasonable request.

Though it may be a bit difficult on the day of the planned march, when the Todos Somos José Enrique group urges all Puerto Ricans to take to the streets and protest the tsunami of violence that has devastated the island.

Or when the boicotalacomay group continues its pressure to rip corporate sponsors from the transvestite’s show.

May I say something?

Corporations act—in general—on strictly economic principles. If there were a show on TV that everybody in Puerto Rico watched that was devoted to ornithology, guess what? Wal-Mart would sponsor it, and have an aisle full of binoculars in every store.

Jump to another island. If everybody in London / Great Britain read only The Economist, would the nurse have killed herself? There being no tabloids to play the story up?

And no, living as I am right here in my own little left field, I probably won’t march. What will it do? Will people—being generous here—who value human life at 400$ say, ‘wow, gee, maybe I should get an MBA!’

Let me propose something instead: the social contract. Let’s set up a booth along the way of the march, and get people to sign it.

Here goes….

I, a proud Puerto Rican, commit to the following:

1. I will say about people only things that I would say to their face. I will only listen to the same—no bochinche.
2. I will drive courteously and safely.
3. I will park legally.
4. I will clean up the island and keep it free of trash
5. I will behave in a way in public that draws no attention to myself—no loud music, loud voices. Oh, and I won’t be drunk in public.
6. I will greet people, even strangers, who are near me, and offer help when needed.
7. I will do my job fully, and give full value for what I am paid for.
8. I will assume that my politicians, my government, and my police are honest and hard working, and I will expect and demand courtesy and efficiency in return.
9. I will raise my children to respect authority, teachers, policemen, and adults in general, being always vigilant for the rare person who does not deserve this trust.
10. I will assume that everyone is operating on these principles, again being alert for those who are not.

I suggest these simple rules, because I have an answer to who killed José Enrique, and who killed the nurse.

We did.

We have blood on our hands, those of us who watch La Comay or read the tabloids. Or dish up a bit of chisme—that’s gossip for you guys up there—or refuse to stop when a cop flags us down. Or park on the sidewalk so that a pedestrian—his name would be Marc Newhouse—has to walk in the street. Oh, and it’s 5PM, and the sun is right in my eyes….

They’re little things, these ten things that I cooked up this Saturday afternoon. Little until the drunk gets in the car that careens out of the blazing sun and hurtles itself onto the pedestrian. Little until a nurse makes a simple mistake and cannot walk to buy milk for her children without seeing her shame screamed out at her.

Little things. But I’ll spend an afternoon under the sun, passing out the social contract, asking everybody to read and sign.

Anybody want to join me? 

No todos

Well, it’s another dog-bites-man moment—I’m left standing alone, watching the crowd race by.

I wrote yesterday about a man who—assuming the reports are correct—had a secret or two. That led him to some people who dispatched him to his death, in a particularly gory and violent way. All for 400 bucks, which he had withdrawn and given them.

Into this picture steps a well-known—if not particularly well-loved—figure in Puerto Rico, and in this blog. La Comay! Yes, the guy who dresses as a woman and says absolutely-to-the-point-of-slanderous things about anybody.

Well, Jack got after me and forced me to sit through the whole thing. Yes—10 minutes of La Comay, which will last me well into my next life.

Really, it was only seven minutes of content. The other three minutes? The phrase aparente y alegadamente—apparently and allegedly. A useful phrase indeed, for La Comay got taken to court years ago, and lost in a highly publicized case.

Besides giving a possible bit of legal protection, the phrase gives the impression of impartiality. Quite needed, because La Comay then dishes up whatever rumor has come to his ears. And since we’ve heard aparente y alegadamente 333 times already—and tuned it out—the phrase does nothing more than announce the coming of a new, more scandalous tidbit.

Right—so what’s La Comay’s version?

José Enrique Gómez—finally to give the gentleman his name—phoned his wife to say that he was leaving a work event at a San Juan hotel, was going to go eat something, and would then come home.

La Comay says no. He was twenty miles away, in the city of Caguas, on a perfectly nice street in the center of town.

Nice during the day.

But, alleges and apparents (nooooo, computer, it’s just a new word! You should be happy!) La Comay, the street is a cesspool of vice—drugs, prostitution, homosexuality! (A fact La Comay never misses an opportunity to insert….) La Comay alleges that José Enrique knew a couple, had had some connection with them, and that because of that, owed them money.  He invites them into his car. Another couple join them. There are four assailants and José Enrique. They force him to go to an automatic teller, and he withdraws 400$. They go to a gas station and buy a container of gas. They then beat him, douse him with gasoline, and set him on fire.

La Comay, taking a high-minded stance, says that all of Puerto Rico is consternated—consternado, or in turmoil! Can we use the ATHs—our version of ATM? Is anybody safe?

Yeah, says La Comay. At least if you’re not on Calle Padial in Caguas after dark inviting a shady couple into your car.

Well, others think differently. Here’s one:

The social networks exploded. A campaign to boycott the sponsors of the television program sprang up. Several companies have already pulled their ads.

In addition, a campaign Todos Somos José Enrique was created. We’re all José Enrique—even Ricky Martin!

Yeah?

I thought the most recent remaking of Ricky was the scenario of a guy raising kids with another guy.

Nor does it help that The New Day, our local rag, corroborates some of the details. The suspects—three of them are in custody—paint essentially the same picture as La Comay.

And it all leads to a moral conundrum—for me, at least.

Let me put it this way.

I don’t walk through La Perla—our famous or infamous San Juan slum. I don’t rack up huge cocaine bills.

And—assuming it’s true—I wouldn’t be on Calle Padial after dark.

Actually, I wouldn’t even know that I shouldn’t be.

I can go 95% of the way with the crowd who decry the tawdriness, the tackiness of La Comay.

Whom I don’t watch.

I’m holding back on saying that we’re all José Enrique. 

Two ladies, and one very much not....

OK—today’s post is a double feature.

Let’s get the ridiculous part over with first.

Readers of this blog will remember Ofelia, once a boss, always a friend. She operates an important language school (she bristled when I once wrote “a very good little language school”…) and has a quality that is fast disappearing.

Graciousness.

It used to be cultivated, aspired to, worked for. It now languishes with those other arts: needlework, playing the piano, writing thank-you notes.

That’s half of what you need to know about Ofelia.

She’s a whiz of a teacher.

Much better than I, actually. She’s una maestra de corazón (literally, a teacher of the heart—figuratively, a born teacher) unlike me. It’s just a thing I do.

Now then, enter the other character, La Comay. This would be the lady very much not-a-lady.

Not even a woman….

A drag queen, in fact, whose real name is “Kobbo” Santarrosa. And every day, he gets all gussied up in a dress and high heels and finally a cabezudo. That’s a big foam head.

Here the story get murky. There is something to like about La Comay. His show opens with a candle in front of little Lorenzo—the kid who saw too much, which cost him his life. La Comay isn’t gonna give up until that murderer is brought to justice.

The other hand?

Easier just to tell the story.

We were in the doctor’s office, Ofelia  and I, and the room was predictably crammed. Just as predictably, there was a television, on at the usual 900 decibels. The show came on.

This was during the hapless reign of our governor (or governess, as some called her) Sila María Calderón. She was our first and only female governor—we haven’t repeated the experiment.

And she entered into office a married lady, then became a divorcee, and then—feeling perhaps very gay (in its first meaning)—decided to date!

Well, the island was on its ears! Sila had a boyfriend! And not just any boyfriend, but one of her cabinet ministers, a guy named Ramón Cantero-Frau. (Mr. Fernández, who loathed him, immediately took to calling him Cantero Fraud….)

Well, this is an island where people have to know! This is the land of the presenta’o! (Literally, presented / figuratively, nosy) We take a generous interest in our neighbors, and look—ya gotta talk about something, right?

Cantero Frau’s car pulls up to the governor’s mansion. Instantly, swarms of journalists are waiting for hours. Will he spend the night? Are they doing it in the gubernatorial equivalent of the Oval Office? Oh, the delicious wickedness of it all. Don’t tell me!

Yes, do….

All right, so now you have all the elements. And you will have guessed that La Comay, seeing the entire island jump on this boat is not gonna be anywhere else.

And it’s the day after the First Couple goes to the movies! Yeah, there they were, Sila and Cantero Frau, right at the Fine Arts Cinema!

And La Comay that day was especially merciless. His parody of the scene—Sila was eating popcorn and spitting out the kernels; Cantero Frau, of course, was trying to get into her pants—had everybody in stitches.

But one.

She stood, that teacher, and immediately took charge of the classroom. She used a word I didn’t know but recognized immediately—vulgar. She stated that she had every confidence that NO ONE in the room was enjoying the show and so would take the liberty of turning off the television.

This she did, in a room with more silence than I’ve ever heard in Puerto Rico.

An awesome performance.

As was the performance this morning of the music the iPod chose to give me.

Marian Anderson singing the Alto Rhapsody.

It’s almost sad that the one thing people remember about her—if they know anything at all—is the famous concert at the Lincoln Memorial. It’s so compelling that it crowds out what was really a remarkable life.

Here’s how I remember her.

I know the story, but I don’t know who it was. Furtwängler? Toscanini? Von Karajan? It was, at any rate, one of the great conductors being hounded out of Germany by the nazis (no—no caps, computer! Not for them, and not in these  times…). Right, so what was his response?

He conducts his last performance for the music-loving Germans. And brings out Marian Anderson—as black as the keys on my keyboard—to sing for the Aryans. They conclude the concert with the Alto Rhaphsody, receive a standing ovation, and leave the stage, arm in arm.

This would be termed having the last word.

Oh, and one other thing about Anderson.

Two, actually…

She was a complete lady—once sweeping the stage before her concert, always gracious, always in control.

She had an amazing voice and sang with her brain.

Don’t think so?

Here’s Jessye Norman….

Marian Anderson was a woman of such quality, compassion and modesty that her humanitarian efforts alone would warrant our adulation. But she was also blessed with a matchless voice - a voice with so much warmth, richness and mobility that Arturo Toscanini was moved to call it a voice "heard once in a hundred years."

Marian Anderson, 1965.
Credit: The New York Times.

I became acquainted with this glorious sound at about age 10, through a recording of Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, and was so overwhelmed I wept, not really understanding why. When I was 16, in the early 1960's, I traveled by train from Augusta, Ga., to Philadelphia to participate in the Marian Anderson Voice Competition. I was so young and thrilled at being there that I was unaware that perhaps I should have been anxious as well. I did not win a prize, but the gentleness and warmth of that experience remain with me to this day.

It was in Constitution Hall in Washington that I first heard Miss Anderson in person, in 1965. Her voice filled the vast space easily, whether singing Schubert at full strength or "Deep River" with a profound hush. She was queenly in her every gesture. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused to permit her to perform in this hall on racial grounds. Eleanor Roosevelt broke ranks with her fellow D.A.R. members and helped arrange a concert at the Lincoln Memorial, a historic event that has been called America's first civil rights rally.

Miss Anderson and I both attended a Metropolitan Opera performance of "Les Troyens" in 1973, when I was privileged to meet her for the first time. She recalled having sung in Augusta some 20 years before, and I was happy to tell her that the city still thought of her visit not only as a watershed but also as a blessing. On the occasions when we were able to sit and talk, I found her interest in me flattering, but I preferred listening to her speak about herself. How could she show the world such poise when she was faced with touring a segregated United States? How could she not take exception to her exclusion from the Met until late in her career? How could she be so deeply spiritual without being at all sanctimonious?

She wore the glorious crown of her voice with the grace of an empress and changed the lives of many through the subtle force of her spirit and demeanor. If the planet Earth could sing, I think it would sound something like Marian Anderson.


Jessye Norman is an opera and concert singer.