I was standing on a pitch black area of beach with a pack of Wrigley’s chewing gum in my hand, watching the confrontation between Mark and the toothy Jamaican man and feeling increasingly nervous. The man’s face was inching closer throughout the conversation, his voice getting louder. I glimpsed at his hands in case they concealed a weapon. I looked longingly toward the part of the beach 100 yards ahead, well-lit and sure to have security guards on patrol. I wished we were standing up there.
“If I don’t get money, how am I supposed to feed my children?” The man said. He had told us earlier in the conversation, when things had seemed more friendly, that he had come down from the mountains to sell a random selection of goods on the beach. He couldn’t go home without enough tourist cash to feed his three kids. His boy was 13 he said as he gestured the boy’s height with a hand wavering around his neck line. He had been with his woman for 14 years, unmarried but happy. Mark held the cigar awkwardly. We had asked for none of this stuff, but had them pushed into our hands anyway. It had seemed like a gift.
“I want you to have this,” the man had said, pushing the cigar into Mark’s hand and the chewing gum into mine. “Oh, thank you very much,” we said. What a friendly man. What a nice thing to do, to offer us little gifts for visiting Jamaica.
“Do you need rolling papers?” he said. The terrible mistake had been to tell the guy that yes, we needed rolling papers. Now he had something on us: he was providing a service rather than being a nuisance and a charity case.
Rolling papers (which we later discovered didn’t work – the sticky edge was completely useless), a “Jamaican cigar” and a pack of chewing gum. These weren’t gifts. The man asked for 500 Jamaican dollars (about eight bucks) and Mark had paid him kindly, just to help out, when really this horde would have cost us a quarter of the price anywhere else. Plus, we hadn’t wanted any of it. The man seemed thankful at first. He knew he was getting more money out of us than was necessary or fair. We thought it was the end and continued our walk to find dinner. The plague had been brief and was over.
But on the way back, after ironically realizing that we had – in fact – given away our dinner money and only had 300 Jamaican left, the man approached us again in the dark patch. He squinted at Mark’s face and I thought he would offer a salutation of appreciation, but he was angry.
“How much did I tell you?” he asked.
“You said 500 Jamaican.”
“Do you have to lean in close when people speak?”
We didn’t understand. Mark asked him what he meant. He repeated the question, which we realised was passive-aggressively sarcastic, and then said: “I said THREE 500s. You only gave me one. So I came looking for you.”
Oh shit. This was not good. He was lying, of course, but we were in that dark patch of beach again. No use calling for help with a glance at security or walking away to safety. We wouldn’t get far, and who knows what this guy was on or how far he was willing to go. He was asking for $23 for a cigar, papers and chewing gum. It must have been a dry day.
“I saw you open your wallet with all your money down there,” he said.
Damn! We had been checking to see if there was enough money for dinner. He had obviously spotted an opportunity and thought he’d milk our stupid, tourist asses for all we had.
“We’ve only got 300 J,” Mark said.
“That’s all you got?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t you have more money in your hotel room?”
Damn, damn, damn. Now what? But Mark was thinking on his feet.
“We’re going home tomorrow, so no, this is the last of it.” He handed over three 100-dollar bills. I was getting teary with anger, but it was a smart move. The guy took it and left us to walk sullenly back to our room.
I was angry. What a failed evening! We were left hungry and pissed off, while that guy had abused us for responding in a friendly way and wanting to help him out. It was the only moment during the whole week that I wanted to go home, where there were no hustlers and we were safe.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Short Story: Guitar, Gum, Papers
Poem: Oh, That I Were a Man
Oh, that I were a man and could be
A thinker of great things, I could see
The universe in existential glory,
History in form of linear story,
Politics in terms of how to vote,
Passion and upon whom I should dote.
I could sit hours away with only Brandy
Thinking of what tool would be handy
To mend a shoe, though worn in appearance,
Allowing my toes much room for clearance.
I would smoke cigars - and enjoy the taste,
I would never think about my waist
When portioning the meat on my plate
Or whether the evening had grown too late.
When taking a stroll around the garden
I could allow my mind some pardon
And place its troubled thoughts to rest
Thinking of nothing - my, that would be best.
If only my mind could see a line
From start to finish with some time
Left over to smoke, drink and eat
Without the reminder of my feet
Itching to finish sewing,
Or aid my rose bed growing,
Or awaiting a tender touch,
To prove I am loved much.
Instead, I cannot help but feel,
And feel I must, for it is how I deal,
With matters ranging from the mundane
To thoughts on the brink of the insane,
All tangled in a web of doubt -
For I cannot pick one out
And place it on the page for solving –
The thought keeps on dissolving.
And while I ponder some new drama
The men have donned their armour
And have set to work the beast,
The reward – a midnight feast.
Poem: The Silence of a Morning
There were daffodils in the springtime,
Dewy ground, the smell of real green,
The sun reflected in wet eyes
Of a road seldom used.
Slumbering dark behind windows,
The sleepy whispers of morning,
Rousing dawn from sleep,
To Paint the watercolor of day.
No children’s noises, or
Mechanical sounds, other
Than the door hinge that Mr Brown
Will fix today.
He carries a bucket, wears Wellington
Boots, treads carefully along the stone path
That he laid, brick by brick, last summer.
Now the straight lines are caressed
By a twinkling mass of yellow,
And the sun is enticing the flowers
To dance into the cracks.
Mr Brown kneels, elbow to knee,
And takes his gloved hand to the throat
Of a straggling weed.
There is no hope for the lonely;
No matter how tirelessly he works to keep them straight,
The path was built too late.
They had already decided to wander.
The vine curls around his finger,
And a sad smile rests gently in the mists
And shades of morning.
Short Story: Memories, Part II
Where does a story begin? This is something that all authors, writers, dreamers and poets grapple with. Does it begin with birth? Or does it begin with the present? I carried the laundry up the stairs in a big, black sack. I threw it onto the bedroom floor thinking that all the clothes inside will have creased before I take the time to fold them and put them away. I’ve spent the day reading, drinking coffee and trying to push all other worries out of my mind by convincing myself that they can all be dealt with tomorrow. But tomorrow comes so quickly when there are things to do.
A memory: mum used to make us milkshakes by filling a pint glass with ice cream, pouring on milk, and stirring it all together with a fork. The glass would steam with cold, and the milk would squelch as she tried not to spill the concoction over the sides of the glass. They were delicious. Much more ice cream would go into the milk shake than would be served in a bowl, so we often opted for the milk shake. We would always buy Neapolitan ice cream (three stripes of brown, red and white) and the chocolate would always be devoured first, which made me wonder why we didn’t just buy chocolate.
A memory: There was a certain point in the trail through the woods that always smelled really bad, like rotting bitterness. Mum told us that it was probably a dead animal, but it smelled like that for years and we never found any animal.
A memory: One time I bought a pack of “joke” stickers, which included a trail of ants and burn marks, and I put the burn marks on the kitchen counters. I completely forgot about them, but when I remembered and asked mum if she had noticed them, she told me that she had been soaking the burn marks with wet flannels in the hope that they would clean off.
A memory: I don’t remember much from the last house. I only remember darkness, the smell of unclean skin and must. Mum glued one of my paintings on the hallway wall with wallpaper paste and I was angry. I think it was her way of showing me that she approved of my art, despite criticizing it for being too “scary”. Did I ever ask her bout her life?
A memory: I ate a lot of boiled eggs (maybe 12?) at a picnic in High Wycombe with mum, dad and Katy. It’s the only picnic I remember us having. Mum told me that I would get constipated, but I don’t remember if I did or not.
A memory of my dad: I sprayed perfume on his pillow once and he got really angry because he wouldn’t be able to sleep on it. The smell would be too strong and he was allergic to all the chemicals.
A memory of my dad: Dad got really drunk and was going to become “blood brothers” with mum’s friend Don. So Katy, mum and I collaborated and stole his knife. We hid it beside the chest of drawers in our bedroom and found it there years later.
A memory of dad: He came back from America with a big suitcase of presents. He was still half asleep in bed when I asked him if I could start opening them. He said yes, and I opened a long, stick shaped package (I still remember the intrigue) which turned out to be a twirling stick with bubbles and sparkles inside and long, shiny, rainbow ribbons on either end. I loved it.
What does it mean that I remember these things instead of something else? How does my brain choose one memory over another?
Short Story: Memories
Inside the car, boarded up by metal and glass, radiator circulating like warm breath in the morning of their tiny bedroom at home, she thought the saddest thought of all. It was the thought that they would never truly be alone. No matter how small and impenetrable the space. She had so much more to fight against than opening doors and cracked windows. There was a space that she could only feel, inside his head, filled with memories that she could never see. He could leave her and go there whenever he wanted, and she would only feel alone without knowing it. This was not a space she could protect herself from, like at seven years old when she would build a fort against the comforting solidity of the bedroom wall and stay there, for hours, feeling safe in the darkness. She could not feel safe like that anymore, even though she tried by sleeping against the wall and bundling the covers up tightly beside her like a trench of cushioning warmth. Still, there he lay, entombed by his memories.
That there had been a before, a long-term love, a routine, was shocking to the very core. The more she thought about it, the more unanswered questions drove her insane. There was no way to take control or understand; she could only speculate for hours, imagining their lips together, their Sunday mornings in bed, laughing. It was the most painful daydream she could muster, and she replayed it over and over until she had to stop and remember to breathe. She recalled reading Sigmund Freud at seventeen, one passage in particular that she used now to explain herself. The baby throws his pacifier out of the crib, and cries. But when the pacifier is returned, the baby throws it out again. And again. The subconscious is teaching itself to endure pain. In order to deal with the prospect of losing something so essential, the mind prepares itself for injury by simulating heartbreak. Like a fire drill. When the real pain comes, the mind is prepared and can follow a routine course of action. Without this simulation, chaos ensues. The body can shutdown, the limbs go numb, the mouth dry; darkness encases the eyes in a faint. This is always what happens when a human being is faced with death. There is no way for the mind to prepare for death, which is why dreams about dying always stop on the brink and never lead into the abyss. The abyss is empty; there is no knowledge because there can be no experience. But for every other eventuality, the mind must prepare by testing scenarios and building a safe place to retreat to.
There is one scenario that she plays over again in her head. She has finished the work day early, and comes home, unlocking the door quietly, slipping inside to see an ajar bedroom door, hearing him moaning, hearing someone else moaning with him. She pushes the door wide and the bed frames the naked bodies, enmeshed, gleaming with sweat. His hair is ruffled, and the covers are splayed on the floor. Skin glows golden, shining, stretched across white sheets. He looks up at her, it registers on his face, wide-eyed and open-mouthed from a kiss, twisted into shock. His bottom lip is red and moist.
Here she stands, in her mind, playing the moment over ten times before she turns and leaves. She walks calmly out of the apartment, into the hallway, out of the front door, onto the steps. He calls her name, she turns and sees his face before she falls down the metal staircase, thumping into a crushing crescendo, into darkness. She stands again, staring from above at her twisted limbs and closed eyes.
Now she cannot breathe, and the space inside the car has shrivelled into a tight grip, hot and suffocating.
