Music and poetry, parallel

Hey, wanna be 16, have a perfect body, and be drunk on young love for the first time again?

Well, I only did one-third of the above equation, so I can’t be sure. But I’m imagining that that’s the feeling that the second movement of the Barber violin concerto replicates.

If the authorities knew about it, they would illegalize (dammit, of COURSE that’s a verb!) it—music so lush, so lovely, it could almost be movie music.

Being Barber, it has a dark side. Hearing it for the first time in my life today, I almost felt that another composer had entered the movement at the end, hijacked it, and destroyed it. But after repeated listening—I may cancel my classes this afternoon just so I can continue listening to it, that’s how good it is—the answer is no.

It hangs together, and is emotionally true. What Barber was working through, I don’t know. But it has all the grief of the Adagio for Strings, and is considerably more complicated.

It may be the time—the piece was composed, or at least conceived, in Switzerland in 1939. Within months, Americans were advised to leave: the war was coming. So Barber sailed home in September of that year, only to find that his father was seriously ill.

Barber wrote the piece on commission—apparently, he got 600 bucks for this masterpiece. But there was a problem. The guy with the money wanted the piece for a violinist named Iso Briselli, (neither my computer nor I have heard of the guy, it appears) who was his ward. And Briselli’s violin teacher thought that the first two movements were ”unviolinistic.” So it got to be a sort of composition by committee, with everyone writing letters to the money-bag to argue their point.

Then Barber said to hell with it—take it or leave it.

Good for him.

Or maybe not. The third movement—which was one of the bones of the contention—is, yes, a little strange. I’m not sure it goes well with the previous two movements. I’m not even sure what it’s about.

But listening to the first two movements, I begin to think that only an outsider—someone intrinsically, inchoately different—could have written this. And I begin to think that Barber’s nature was essentially conservative.

He was always derided by all the camps for, well, not belonging to a camp. He was attacked as being a “neo-classicist.”

I think he’s first and foremost a lyricist. Remember, he was the nephew—and apparently quite close to—of a famous contralto in her day, Louise Homer. And is it a coincidence that yesterday, I spent the afternoon singing one gorgeous melody from the cello sonata, which I had just heard?

Nope.

Take away the lyric stuff and there’s not much left to Barber, says one critic.

But hearing the second movement, I’m not so sure. 

Whatever was going on with Barber may have afflicted others as well. Something troubled me about the date—September, 1939. Then I realized.

Here it is:

September 1, 1939

By W.H Auden

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Waves of anger and fear

Circulate over the bright

And darkened lands of the earth,

Obsessing our private lives;

The unmentionable odour of death

Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can

Unearth the whole offence

From Luther until now

That has driven a culture mad,

Find what occurred at Linz,

What huge imago made

A psychopathic god:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew

All that a speech can say

About Democracy,

And what dictators do,

The elderly rubbish they talk

To an apathetic grave;

Analysed all in his book,

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air

Where blind skyscrapers use

Their full height to proclaim

The strength of Collective Man,

Each language pours its vain

Competitive excuse:

But who can live for long

In an euphoric dream;

Out of the mirror they stare,

Imperialism's face

And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar

Cling to their average day:

The lights must never go out,

The music must always play,

All the conventions conspire

To make this fort assume

The furniture of home;

Lest we should see where we are,

Lost in a haunted wood,

Children afraid of the night

Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark

Into the ethical life

The dense commuters come,

Repeating their morning vow;

"I will be true to the wife,

I'll concentrate more on my work,"

And helpless governors wake

To resume their compulsory game:

Who can release them now,

Who can reach the deaf,

Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice

To undo the folded lie,

The romantic lie in the brain

Of the sensual man-in-the-street

And the lie of Authority

Whose buildings grope the sky:

There is no such thing as the State

And no one exists alone;

Hunger allows no choice

To the citizen or the police;

We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

Paid too much

Samuel Barber,1910 to 1981. Well, those are the official dates. But Barber poses a question. What happened to him from the fiasco of his opera Antony and Cleopatra in 1967 and his death in 1981?

“His last years were beset with depression and alcoholism,” says WikiPedia.

Right, the last fifteen years of his life—and what should have been the culmination of his creative life.

My impression was that he had created most of his work early, and then burned out. But in fact, it’s not true. Up until the early 60’s, Barber composes steadily, slowly, and richly.

Richly being the operative word in at least two senses. The guy didn’t seem to need money. Yeah, he taught for a couple of years at Curtis, where he had studied. But he hated it, so he quit!

Why doesn’t that sound familiar?

He was what used to be called comfortable—an amorphous term that might mean anything from loaded to able to slide by to the end without having to worry. Parents were from West Chester, and Gian Carlo Menotti, with Latin volubility, described it as a cesspool covered with a thin but unbreakable layer of gentility. Drinking, incest—the old story.

At age 9 or so, he writes a letter to his parents, saying “don’t tell me to go play football.” He’s already sure that he’s a composer.

Or was he? At Curtis, where his parents sent him as a high school student (guess they got that message…), he also excelled as a pianist AND a baritone. But composition won out.

He also was good with languages, which is why Curtis asked him to befriend Menotti, who knew Italian and French, but no English. So they spoke French together.

Well, I wonder about all of this because Eric, a Facebook friend, posted a clip of Leonard Slatkin conducting the famous Adagio for Strings. If you have a quarter of a century to spare, I recommend it; it’s about as slow as evolution.

Still, it was a thing to hear, this morning at four AM, when I arose with the violent urge to eat…yes, coffee ice cream. 

Later in the day, I began to worry myself about Barber. The Adagio is the most famous by a light year of his work. It’s the only piece most people will ever know. Yet it’s comparatively early. What would it be, to be known for this single piece, and have the rest of your work ignored?

Well, I was forgetting Vanessa, his first opera, which was a spectacular hit. Right—not on the order of Les Miz, but the operatic equivalent. The piano concerto was well received, the violin concerto as well.

And then came the fiasco of Antony and Cleopatra. The production was terrible; parts of the score were written almost hours before the performance; the orchestra and chorus was unprepared. Apparently, the performance, which was to celebrate the opening of the Metropolitan Opera’s new home, was filled with hotshots (Imelda Marcos was there!) who couldn’t have cared less. It was broadcast on radio live, and you could hear stage hands shouting “go” or “move it.”.

Here’s Rudolf Bing, the Met’s general manager, on the ordeal:

“Not one of the stronger plays” (!) he wrote. The production was staged to gaudy excess by Franco Zeffirelli, who had also adapted Shakespeare’s play into a libretto. The opera’s huge sets broke the stage turntable in the new theater during the rehearsals-the weight of the pyramids and the sphinxes literally crushed the new stage, and in all this chazerei, Barber’s luscious music got lost (Leontyne Price was trapped inside a pyramid and her displeasure is evident in a TV film made during rehearsals).

Savvy readers of this blog will pick up a little fact more important—sorry, Leontyne!—than Price being trapped in a pyramid. Go back, and check that little fact thrown away in a relative clause.

Zeffirelli wrote the libretto.

What?!

Franco Zeffirelli?

Why did Barber permit it? His reputation was secure, and his finances as well. Why did he accept this commission when he knew that Vanessa had taken him five years to write, and he needed to produce Antony in two? What was he thinking of—the sharp, gifted man who was, by the way, acutely sensitive to text?

It almost seems a death wish, in fact, it all but literally was. He ended his decade-long relationship with Menotti, he drank heavily, he fell into depression. A friend who was in musical circles in the 70’s in New York told me that his parties were, well, both famous and infamous.

As I read about the Adagio, I came across a perceptive article entitled “The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.” The author disputes the common theory that Barber’s homosexuality had anything to do with his deep melancholy. Menotti was welcomed by Barber’s parents, friends, associates. They lived together for many years. Why should it matter, then?

But I wonder. A highly sensitive man, who has fought and suffered and lived a quiet, seemly life—a life worthy of West Chester, Pennsylvania—hits the 60’s and what happens? His world, for which he has paid dearly, collapses. Women are burning bras, not taking Valium washed down with vodka. Blacks are demanding jobs other than porters on the railroad.

Gay men are holding hands on the street.

He had paid too much, gotten too little.

Wouldn’t you reach for the bottle?

"Strange, but the Adagio in the string quartet version becomes both more personal and almost redemptive at the end...."

When Size is Everything

I had written a post in this blog about them, the crustiest old men in Puerto Rico. And then I got to wondering—how much of Puerto Rico could I see by público? Could I get to all 78 towns on the island? What would I learn? What would I see?

And was it safe? Puerto Rico has a murder rate three or four times that of New York City. What about robbery? Curiously, you’re probably more likely to be robbed if you’re driving a Lexus than riding a público. But still….

But Puerto Rico is perhaps the most stratified place on earth. The rich only speak to the rich, the poor to the poor. They may pass each other in Plaza las Américas, but they don’t speak.

As well, I had spent 7 years inside a cold concrete box. Time to break out, break free, see something else besides cold white walls.

Well, it seemed like the right thing to do, so I made a test. Could I get to Bayamón? Sure, used to do it all the time when I was working at Bacardi, and then later Wal-Mart.  

Unfortunately, the way to Bayamón means passing through Cataño. And passing through is exactly what you should do. It is, frankly, the ugliest town in Puerto Rico, and has, as well, some of the least friendly people on the island.

And it produced—perhaps only it could—one of the island’s most colorful mayors. Called El Amolao, he never shied away from speaking his mind. Especially after someone gave him a few palmolives—his word for Heineken beer. (Explanation—both Palmolive soap and Heineken beer left you feeling soft and fresh, one on the outside, the other…oh forget it, it’s better in Spanish….)

Thinking spectacularly outside the box, he plunged into the fine arts. And somehow got hooked up with a Russian sculptor who needed to unload a monstrosity that was bigger than the Statue of Liberty. City fathers in New York, Boston, and Miami took one look, shuddered, and said no to it. (Baltimore deemed it “From Russia with Ugh”) But guess what! It was free! Wow! Who could say no?

Well, there was a little hitch—the municipality would have to pick up the tab for getting the thing to Puerto Rico. And that, curiously, came to 2.6 million bucks—though other shippers estimated that they could do the job for about half a million. But petty minds will always find something to carp about, right?

Well, the thing—or rather its 2700 parts—came. Now then—where to put it? Well, not a problem for Amolao. There was a little park, right there next to the rum factory—Bacardi (you may have heard of it….). Lots of folks go there to tour the factory—so they could see the largest statue in the world at the same time.

Great idea, right?

Errr…no.

Seems that the statue would be right in the flight path for the planes flying in to San Juan. And the FAA balked.

There may have been another problem, as well. The park was created with fill. And this monster weighs over 600 tons, so it presented a few engineering problems. Amolao flew off to Russia to speak with the sculptor. And came back to utter one of his best lines. How did he like Russia?

Just fine! Weren’t any niggers there!

Well, the sculpture languished in the park next to the Bacardi factory. And to protect the statue from metal thieves? Close the park and have 24-hour security!

And so I would peer at it, through the chain link fence when I was teaching at Bacardi. The guard, until he learned to ignore me, would have his hand on his gun.

Well, the most recent news is that a city 30 miles away has agreed to take on the monstrosity, and is spending 92 million dollars to do so.

Oh, and one last thing. Harry swears that it’s not even Christopher Colombus. Seems the sculptor really was doing Peter the Great. Then realized that the 500 anniversary of Columbus’s maiden journey was coming up. So he changed it at the last minute.

Wish it were true. But The Telegraph, following this saga from the saner shores of Britain, says it’s not true. Though the sculptor, described as “one of Russia’s best-known sculptors who has produced a string of works reviled the world over,” did produce a Peter the Great.

That one was so ugly that protesters threatened to blow it up!

I leave gentle readers of this blog with a final photo, and hope that they don’t see what I see in it….

One remembers Hugo Chávez, and his monologue of the gran papá in his pants….

Bayamón

Well, it has a reputation, does Bayamón, for two things. Officially, it’s the city of the chicharrón—the pork rind fried in lard. Sorry, but even reading about it has added twenty points to your cholesterol. 

And the unofficial reputation?

The city of tapones—that would be traffic jams.

Well, I did neither the chicharrón nor the tapón. In fact, I strolled into the ferry terminal in Old San Juan, sailed to Cataño, and then took a público to Bayamón.

Well, it was old territory. I used to do this trip for years, several times a week. The Home Office for Wal-Mart was in Bayamón, behind store 2501 in a new and awful mall—Plaza del Sol.

My students all knew that.

But I was going to a different Bayamón—Sierra Bayamón. It’s the old part of town, the original part of town.

Students don’t know that!

It’s a testament to how the automobile has changed our lives. Unless you live in Bayamón, all you’ll ever come here for are the malls—Plaza del Sol, Santa Rosa, Río Hondo. This you’ll easily do in your car. But Sierra Bayamón is best done on foot.

So here’s where I started….

Yup, the famous públicos! Walk two blocks, and you’ll get to what every town in Puerto Rico (and most of Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula) has—a plaza (town square), a Catholic Church, and the City Hall. Most of the time, of course, the City Hall and the Catholic Church are facing each other, with the plaza serving as neutral territory between.

It made sense for decades—rather, centuries. Before the movies, before television, before air conditioning, you had to go somewhere to amuse yourself, escape the heat, and meet people. 

That was the plaza.

All that’s changed, now. And, as usual, I’m behind the times. I once waited for hours at the plaza in Yauco, while Harry spent the equivalent time scouring through Yauco Plaza—the mall at the edge of town.

All this is an age before cell phones….

So here’s the plaza, or the plaza del pueblo:

All right, one small corner of it. And what are the guys doing?

Dominoes—very big in Puerto Rico….

In fact, the plaza del pueblo is quite lovely, here in Bayamón. Lots of big trees, and the shade is welcome….

Hey—shade, good friends, a pleasant game of dominos! Life’s good in Bayamón!

And here’s the church.

OK—it’s an old structure, unfortunately modernized. Sometimes it’s a bad thing, to have some money….

But all is not lost, because across the street…. 

It's the Oller Museum. Originally (I suspect) the City Hall, it’s now a museum devoted to one of Puerto Rico’s best artists, Francisco Oller. The guy’s a serious painter, studied in France and Spain, and was a friend of Pissarro and Cézanne. Have a look!

Francisco Oller, Hacienda Aurora, Oil on panel, 1898-1899 (Museo de Arte de  Ponce, Puerto Rico)

It’s a nostalgic view of, perhaps, a terrible time. One wonders—did Oller paint it on site? Or in France, far from home? One thinks of him, in the cold, dark French winters, huddled perhaps in a cold atelier, warming himself with memories of home.

The reality was different. And though few people know it, Bayamón was the site of one of the few slave revolts in Puerto Rico.

Here’s—who else?—WikiPedia:

According to his plan several slaves were to escape from various plantations in Bayamón, which included the haciendas of Angus McBean, C. Kortnight, Miguel Andino and Fernando Fernández. They were then to proceed to the sugarcane fields of Miguel Figueres, and retrieve cutlasses and swords which were hidden in those fields.[1] Xiorro, together with a slave from the McBean plantation named Mario and another slave named Narciso, would lead the slaves of Bayamón and Toa Baja and capture the city of Bayamón. They would then burn the city and kill those who were not black. After this, they would all unite with slaves from the adjoining towns of Rio Piedras [note 1], Guaynabo and Palo Seco. With this critical mass of slaves, all armed and emboldened from a series of quick victories, they would then invade the capital city of San Juan, where they would declare Xiorro as their king.[1][9]

Well, does sound like a plan! Just one hitch….

Unfortunately for the slave conspirators, Miguel Figueres had a loyal slave named Ambrosio who divulged the plans of the conspiracy to him. The whistleblower also had both personal and financial interest, as slaves who reported any kind of slave conspiracy were granted their freedom and 500 pesos.[3] Figueres then informed the mayor of Bayamón who mobilized 500 soldiers. The ringleaders and followers of the conspiracy were captured immediately. A total of 61 slaves were imprisoned in Bayamón and San Juan.[1]

¿Bíjte?! There’s always one water party (aguafiestas or party pooper, in Puerto Rican Spanish).

Well, well, there’s much to see in Bayamón. Readers of Iguanas will know of the elfin Dr. Veve, who blew in one day only to find English a bit deflating. So I was pleased to find myself here, contemplating the sign….

And the landscape is indeed pleasant. Here’s a typical storefront….

Walking a bit further one comes to this….

It’s Bayamón’s tribute to one of the most amazing things in Puerto Rico—the troubadour (el trovador).

Yup, you heard me right.

Puerto Rico has had and continues to have an extraordinary history of the troubadour.

Suppose I gave you a line, say de lo frío a lo caliente, or “from being cold to being hot.” Now, all you have to do is improvise on the spot a poem sung to music of ten lines, with the first four lines ending in ABBA, the second four lines ending in ACCD, and the last two lines being DC. And the last line has to be the line I gave you, the de lo frío a lo caliente. That’s called the forced foot, or pie forzado.

My bet? I’ve lost you even in the request. And no way could you do it.

Especially since each line has to be eight syllables. And that’s only if the last word of the line doesn’t end in an accent on the final syllable, in which case the line has seven syllables.

Unbelievable, as Gunnar might exclaim.

But there are guys who do it.

Years ago, driving in the country, we came, Raf and I, on the gentle sound of the cuatro and tiple and the tenor voices singing the décimas, as they are called. Raf stopped the car by the side of the tree-lined road, and we walked, holding our breath—could it be possible?

It was. Fifty or a hundred people, all sitting and listening to people of varying ages engaging in this centuries-old tradition. (The first décima came to the island in the 16^th century.)

Best of all, it’s a tradition that is getting stronger. Check out this link….

http://www.cuatro-pr.org/front

One New Year’s Eve, I was sitting in a restaurant with Raf’s family. And there appeared a troubadour, who improvised a décima with a line or couplet based on each member of the family. And when he came to me?

Well, they explained it later.

With typical, gentle humor, it went something like this:

Welcome, good stranger, from across the seas:

If you love Puerto Rico, stay: if not, leave!

Guess he has his answer!

Gorditas and a fallen woman

Always aiming to be of service, I give you this advice, should you find yourself boarding a público: try to sit as close to the door as possible. Also, try NOT to sit next to gorditas.

Why? 

Well, gorditas are young ladies who carry some heft to them. They occupy space. And when the chofer decides to impose the four-person-per-seat rule, he’ll cut no slack. Four people is four people, no matter their size. 

It’s especially bad if you are a flaquito (the gorditas’ opposite) like me, and if the gorditas are on both sides of you. Which in fact they were. So there I sat, looking like a shirt being squeezed out of an old-fashioned wringer. 

Well, the gorditas were students at a school of aesthetics (escuela de estética) which, no, doesn’t mean what you’d think. These little chubbies were not discussing philosophical principles or the properties of beauty and proportion—they were learning to cut hair. That’s aesthetics, down here.

I know this because one of them showed me her “practice head.” Real hair, it seems, is too precious to waste on anything less than experienced aestheticians. Gotta practice first. And she told me what I had always wondered. Yes, the practice head is full of “hair.” After you’re done aestheticizing (oh, of COURSE that’s a word!) you simply snip of the excess aesthetics and start again!

Well, well, something to know….

And happy I was to chat with the chubbies, because, really, the landscape is dreary, in this part of the island. The western edge of the city is a painful repetition of fast food outlets, strip malls, tire shops, car repair shops—all crammed next to each other, and all with monstrous signs with clashing colors. The only break comes when you lift your eyes, and see El Yunque, the tropical rainforest located on the highest mountain in the northeast part of the island.

That’s what I was looking at when the silliness started.

“¡Pare, pare! Hay una señora corriendo, y si ella se cae…” Hey, stop—there’s a lady running for the bus, and if she falls….

“Será una mujer caída….” She’ll be a fallen woman. (this, said by a young lady next to the window.)

Yes, it means just the same in Spanish.

Could it be? Would it finally happen? For my last three trips in públicos had been nothing like what I remembered from years before. Long, extended jokes and gags. Laughter. Gentle teasing and good humor.

Well, the lady catches up to the van, and it’s clear—she’s not colorless. Quite the opposite, for she is chattering the moment she enters and promises not to stop until she exits.

“Ay, mi madre, ¡es la cocina pa’mí!” Oh my lord, it’s the back of the bus (literally, the “kitchen”) for me!

She squeezes her way past, and sits—rather wedges—next to the guy I’d been talking to, those minutes-read-hours at the bus stop.

“Puej, la última vez que estuve en una pisicorre, estaba casi en la falda de otro pasajero…” The last time I was in a público, I was practically sitting in someone’s lap.

“I would be happy to provide that service,” says the guy.

Instantly she is outraged-womanhood.

“¡Señor! ¡Soy una dama casada y respetable!” Sir! I’m a respectable, married lady….

“That hasn’t been established. In fact, it was challenged even before you entered the bus!”

The lady is horrified!

“!¿QUÉ?! ¿Qué usté dice, señor? ¡¿La gente estaba hablando de mí, antes de llegar aquí a la gaugita?! !Qué cosa! ¿Y quién estaba hablando de mí??”

The guy points with his lips (a Puerto Rican thing) to the young woman.

“¡¿QUÉ?! ¡Una mujer como yo, hablando sapos y serpientes de mí! ¡Nena! ¡Qué vergüenza!” What! A fellow woman talking snakes and toads about me! Girl! No shame!

Well, now it’s a trio, as brilliantly witty as anything Haydn wrote. The lady is all outraged innocence, caught against her will between a lascivious man and a saucy young lady. And everything they say plunges her more deeply into her perilous hole. At last, she can bear it no longer!

“Usted, señor,” she says, tapping my shoulder, “make room for a poor thing seeking protection.”

She notes that I am gringo.

“Puede ser que él no entienda….” Maybe he won’t understand….

“Claro, señora. Señorita, move just a bit, to offer protection to the fallen woman….”

This is met with a horrified squeal.

“Ay, ¡mi madre! ¡Los hombres! ¡Son todos iguales!” All men are alike!

“Don’t move a muscle,” says the guy behind me, “it’s been months since I’ve been this close to a beautiful lady….”

“Ay Dioj mío! ¡Un hombre desesperado!” Oh my God! A desperate man!

Well, it goes on and on, as we pass the dreary stores and encounter a street flooded for an entire block. And it never goes over the edge, never gets vulgar, never is less than light-hearted and fun. But at last, the saucy minx gets out, the man as well, and finally, our lady of the wounded virtue.

“Santos,” she says, backing out of the van, “thanks heavens my saintly mother wasn’t here to see this spectacle!”

Confusion in Condado

It was Joan Didion who said that hotels are social constructs, and I read the sentence in my teens and nodded sagely and wondered…what did it mean?

Well, I’m still not sure. I could call up Pablo, a social anthropologist, and he could tell me—but would I understand? His last explanation, about the meaning of the Passion and Lent, left me completely confused. Then again, they weren’t my best days.

Anyway, Pablo’s busy, so here’s my guess. Hotels present a vision of themselves and of their guests that people buy into—or not—depending on the degree of the match. You feel safe in one hotel because it’s clean and people call you Sir and the ashtrays have perfectly raked white sand and the marble floors are spotless and it’s real silver, not stainless steel.

Oh, and you’re paying 350$ a night so it better be clean and click your heels when you call me Sir!

And you know, of course, that the guest next to you is paying roughly the same. So, of course, you’ll watch his kids while he gets a drink from the bar. He’s one of us (or whom we’re pretending to be….)

Which is all to say that I went to Condado—one of the two tourist areas of San Juan. And confession—no, not by público. There are no públicos in such places, though there are buses that go there. But we chose, Raf and I, to take a cab, since traffic into and out of the small isleta of San Juan was murderous.

First cab driver—very obviously from Santa Domingo. Not lacking in testosterone, or unwilling to engage in zestful and creative driving practices. And completely disdainful of the police, who were actually causing the traffic jam, and the bicyclists racing on the avenue below, who were the ostensible cause. 

Many of our taxi drivers, by the way, are Dominican, and many are probably undocumented. Certainly, most of our construction workers are Dominican. And they arrive here after having saved enormous sums (thousands of dollars at least) to purchase a seat on a leaky wooden boat to travel the Mona Passage from Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico.

Two facts about the Mona Passage:

It’s the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean

It’s filled with sharks

Right. A guy once told me of the experience, which has to take place in the dead of night, and which depends on an ancient outboard motor, and the skill of the guy working it.

Am I imagining it, or did he tell me—a guy you’re not allowed to see? Turn your head and you’ll be shot.

If you’re lucky, you’ll get to a little beach in some rural area and face your next problem. What to do now?

Well, this I do remember. The guy knew that his sister lived in Santurce—a barrio in the metro San Juan area. And then the word spread through the group on the beach. There was a público waiting to take them. Yup, at 5 in the morning, a público that would take them to safety at the price of…

…100 dollars each.

What are you gonna do?

So the cab driver probably had a similar story. Or not. But the chances are better than even that he did.

Well, well—the traffic continued terrible. We got out of the cab a block away from the hotel, giving the driver a break: the last block was the worst of all.

And then strolled into the Marriot Hotel—yup, the same Marriot whose sacred undergarments had saved him from a terrible burn.

OK, in a post about classism, I’ll come clean with my own.

This is a hotel for people who have money, and perhaps shouldn’t. Lots of mirrors, marble everywhere, chrome. Loud Latin music. Rattan furniture. What won’t you find?  A quiet, unrefrigerated corner. Mahogany or gleaming, polished brass.

We were there to meet an old classmate—whom I’ll call Isabel—of Raf’s, a lady who had just finished a cruise, and was staying a day or two extra at the hotel. She was with her husband, a Texan who speaks no Spanish, and who was in the military for many years. He greeted us with his bourbon in hand, and we sat to chat.

There is, in fact, a lot to commend this guy. He treats Isabel very well, unlike her first husband, a Puerto Rican who had all of the worst habits—skirt-chasing being number one—of Puerto Rican men. But Isabel learned—Jim, her gringo husband, treats her like a queen, comes home and stays home at 5, and hands the paycheck over every two weeks. Oh, and Isabel works as well, and reasonably decreed that she wouldn’t cook or iron. So Jim does that. Or they go out to eat, and Jim pays.

Well, Jim’s drink was done, and he “danced” his way to the bar. Those quotes because, look, it was only a crude imitation of some Latin dance step. But no problem, because the barmaid imitated him exactly, and put on her best smile. They held both hands, smiling and swaying, as he placed his order.

Looking at her, I could see the tension in her jaw, she was smiling so hard.

Well, several bourbons later, Jim went to another bar. He courteously asked all around if anyone wanted anything. His wife wanted a Riesling. 

Well, it’s not a common drink on the island. And the kid at the bar didn’t have any.

Jim disputed that—there was Riesling in the house. His pal at the first bar had come up with some twenty minutes ago. What gives? Go find some.

“It’s the last time we’re staying in this hotel,” said Jim, when he returned in disgust.

And so we went on to talk about the younger generation, and their complete lack of a service mentality. Meaning perhaps that they don’t dance over and hold hands when Jim approaches?

But it gets more complicated.

“I felt ashamed of the Puerto Ricans we saw on the cruise,” says Isabel. “They were loud and vulgar, and you know what? They were justifying the worst stereotype of Puerto Ricans. And you know, there IS an educated, professional class in Puerto Rico. I’m part of it.”

In this, she is completely correct.

“Vergüenza ajena,” I say. Shame for my brethren.

Right, so I’m hungry, and I go to see if we can get some sorullos—fried corn sticks, and mighty tasty. I approach a woman and ask her, in Spanish, if there might be some. 

She replies in English.

OK look. My Spanish is neither great nor bad. It is absolutely adequate for this task. Her reply indicated that she had understood me fully. But she resolutely spoke English to me, just as I spoke Spanish to her.

Hunh?

Was it that I was trying to cross a border that I shouldn’t cross? You are a guest, and a gringo. No Spanish for you!

OK, we’re now joined by another classmate, also now living in Texas, and also, it develops, a gun collector.

Like Jim. 

“Are you packing,” I ask.

“No way, I don’t have the permits that Jim has,” returns the other guy, named (falsely) Oscar.

But Oscar shares more than a love of guns with Jim. They have ideology in common.

“I really think we’re gonna have to figure out where we’re living if Obama wins,” says Oscar, “I’m planning on Costa Rica.”

“I’m thinking Norway,” says Jim.

Who tells the story of talking to an old woman from Ohio, and how brainwashed she was by the Democrats demagoguery about oversea investments and tax breaks.

“She was a lost cause,” he said.

“You know, I really fear for this country if that guy wins…” he added.

I wanted to walk away. At the same time, I felt sad. My parents, ardent Republicans, walked to the polls with their friends, ardent Democrats. Why were they doing it, they asked. Our votes are gonna cancel each others’ out. Then they realized. They were checking up on each other. If they stayed home, well, the other couple might sneak out and vote!

They laughed.

No one was laughing last night. And I, in particular, wanted to get away from gun-lovers and Republicans. It was getting late as well. So I took another cab home.

OK, act 3. I bid farewell to my hosts and go to get a cab. I know how to do this now, though it took me a while to learn. I address the guy wearing the silly white imitation-sahib-from-India as “caballero” and he produces a driver. We walk to his car.

“I speak perfect English,” said the taxista.

“I come close,” I said, “pero tengo que practicar mi español.” I gotta practice my Spanish.

So we spoke Spanish, and I asked him about business. 

Not so easy. His van is rented, and costs him 1200 bucks a month. Gasoline is over 4 dollars, and he can’t afford to fill his tank, which would help his mileage. Bottom line—he has to clear 80 bucks a day just to cover his costs.

Right—so how many trips is that?

About four or five. And there are always five or ten cabs waiting at the hotel.

So how many hours a day?

10 hours, seven days a week.

Wait—what about buying, not leasing.

Well, Christian—I’ve learned his name—knows the numbers. He’s got an MBA.

What!  And you’re driving a cab! Look, with your degree and your English, go to Orlando, go to the States.

And leave his three-year old son on the island with his divorced wife?

OK—so what about somebody in your family who can help you get the 9,000$ for the down-payment of the 45,000$ that you need to buy, not lease, your taxi?

Whole family is poor. Welfare, subsidized housing, food stamps.

That 47% that leeches off the government.

Except that Christian is also part of that 47%. And he’s out there 10 / 7 / 365. That’s ten hours every day of the year.

I’ve checked none of this, of course. For all I know, Christian never completed high school, has a criminal record as tall as the Empire State Building, and daily shoots 200 bucks of white powder up his nose. Didn’t see any of that, though.

What did I see? A guy on his umpteenth bourbon. A barmaid doing a perfect imitation of a bad imitation of a dance step. A lady who addressed me in excellent English in return for my average Spanish and called me Sir. A cabdriver who broke the numbers down as well as the financial guys at Wal-Mart ever did.

Did I go to Condado, or Confusion?