El Gringoqueño

I had trouble falling asleep last night, probably the late dinner and the excitement of Olaia’s sleep-over with her cousins, Mariam and Robertito. Whatever it was, I tossed and turned before falling into a shallow slumber. I began to have a disquieting nightmare.

I find myself in a hospital, with rows of patients. It’s strangely bright and open, almost as if it’s in my house. Something is happening, something big, tragic. I must get my family out, I think to myself. Out of where and from what, I can’t say, but there’s this urgency to move or run or something. There is this hurried hopeful movement all around. Something is coming, but it can be dealt with, or so everyone believes.

I snap from the dream briefly and focus on my sleeping self. I’m asleep, I halfway realize, and then as if to make sense of the disconnect, my dream seizes upon the realization and weaves it into the plot.

You are asleep. You know who comes for you in your sleep. There is some realization that there is a Freddy Crouger, nightmare type scenario playing out, and even though I’ve never seen a single slasher movie in my life, I’m now in one. He’s coming for you, and there is nowhere to hide. I choke, the realization coming over me. There is only a split second of angst for myself, as I realize that I am in control. But the rest? These people here don’t know they are safe, that they are in control. I begin to run around, making tons of noise. "I know who you are!! You can’t hurt these people. You can’t hurt me. You’ll all be okay," I shout. I’m getting mad now. I want to find this character and tear his head off.

Suddenly, I’m accompanied by a middle-aged Mia Sara, Ferris Bueller’s girlfriend in "Ferris Bueller’s Day Off." We’re walking inside a plush carpeted hotel. The hallways are wide and tall, and everything looks like it’s covered with various earth-toned crushed velvet. She is talking to me, in a sort of evil villain/philosopher tone. "You will have a choice," she says. She is communicating with me in some way beyond talking. I am filled with feelings, emotions, anxiousness at what is to come. I’m unsure why I am here or what I am to do.

"Answer me truthfully," I say to her, for some reason knowing she cannot lie, "am I in Hell?"

"Yes." And she dissappears. I follow the corridor and exit into a dark street. It still feels closed in, like a movie set of Las Vegas. I am drenched in seeminess. It’s not unpleasant, just drenched in some sort of manifestation of selfishness, lust, greed. Women proposition me on the street in their high heels, fishnets, and bustieres. Street hustlers call my name, with gay grins and bejeweled hands. "Comeon, wanna try yer luck." It’s tempting. Looks like it might be fun. Just for second, I think…. no feel, this isn’t so bad. It’s sad, but not evil as I had imagined it.

I am traveling now through the streets, flying, running, I don’t know which. I absorb the scene before me with ever increasing ownership, and I keep accelerating until it is all so much blur or images, faces, seeminess, sex, greed, gluttony, envy, aimlessness, despair, and loneliness. I boldly shout to them, "Repent!! Repent!! Jesus - God loves you! You are all loved by God." I fix on myself, and how I sound. Repent, evil doers was not my intent. I hear in my head the cries of a fire and brimstone Baptist preacher, facing his congregation wagging his finger at the unworthy. My feeling as I fly through the wasteland and all the emptiness is not that they are evil, but that they are lost, worthy of love. "Repent!" is a call to reach out their hands, and to not let their despair keep them from redemption. I am aware I am in Hell, and I know with every fiber of my being that Hell cannot exist where there is a willingness to be redeemed. If the love of the Creator is infinite, there is no possible reason for these poor creatures to live in the dark unless they choose to. And no one, I know, would willingly choose to give up being loved. I will deliver the message, "Repent, and ye shall be saved!!" I am filled with such strength, force of will, to be saying such things. I want to save them all, share with them what I know. No matter how far you have fallen, you can still be saved. I know this.

And on a dark street I come to an instant stop. In front of me are three figures ready to accost me. I take a bold step toward them to deliver my message. They immediately transform into monsters dripping blood, fingers stretched out in contorted razor sharp claws, eyes rolled back, all night of the living dead-like. They had been normal human figures a moment earlier, but suddenly turn hideously grotesque.

I shrink for a millisecond. I am startled, and fear for a brief instant, but it isn’t fear of dying or being attacked, it is a point of infinite revulsion, like all possible nausea compacted into an impossibly short period of time. Get away from me, I think.

And as quickly as it had come, the next moments fill me with ever increasing compassion and I say, "fill me" because I don’t get the sense that I was the one doing it. I become bolder and bolder. My speed picks up again, and I race toward the figure on my right at an impossible rate. I embrace his torso and speed off, my arms wrapped as tightly as I can possibly imagine around his breast, him facing away from me, my chin on his shoulder. "Don’t worry, He loves you." And my embrace strengthens like my life depends on it. I will hold onto you.

I ask him how his life had been in this place. Had it been tough. He tells me at first it wasn’t so hard, but then there were those that beat him. He had been kicked down and bloodied, living on the street, in the cold for so long. "It’s not so bad." I ask him what it was like before, in life. "The same," he says.

The night fades, replaced by a brightly lit plaza of intricate stone work. I come to a stop and release this person to whom I had clung to tightly.

"Sorry, about that," I say wiping spittle off his shoulder.

And I awake in a sweat, hot as hell, my pillow wet from drool. Yeech. I adjust my covers and sigh. "Hon, I just had the weirdest dream. I don’t even know if I can call it a dream."

With technology has come a multitude of conveniences, time savers, and capabilities of which our primitive ancestors could never have conceived. Take for example, the instant message. It is instantaneous, travels at the speed of light to its intended recipient, delivering important potentially critical information at the click of a button. It can be sent across the world, around the block, or to the next room.

Laura at 15:01:18: Jaimito is poopie

Jim at 15:01:43: Roger, I’ll change him.

Toxic waste disposal emergencies such as the one above could have not been addressed with such efficiency before the days of IM. Thank the Lord!

This morning I did my two mile walk with Jaimito in his jogger stroller. He usually sings to me, babbling and carrying on with a musical tune. He likes music. He’s always dancing and singing. The Wiggles, an Australian kids troupe, on the Disney channel are his favorite characters. or the "-ggles" as he says. Today, though he didn’t sing, just happily sucked his bottle of juice, pulling it from his mouth to point out sights of interest along the way. We saw trees, palm trees, a cement truck and an airplane. Jaimito loves airplanes, or "a-bi" as he says. I think it’s a cross between airplane and avión, in spanish. "A-bo, a-bo," he says turning his head up to me, pointing to a tree. I assume "a-bo" is arbol or "tree" in spanish. Wow, kids sure are good on the economy of language. Such clever creatures. Yeah, Daddy, why do you have all these distinct words. All I need to do is make a sound and point. See? Easy as pie.

Jaimito and I got back from our little walk, and had some breakfast. He loves fruit Kixs cereal. I don’t complain, because he can’t make a mess with it, and after all, it is "Kid tested, Mother approved." He loves to share with me, digging into the little cup of cereal with his dexterous deditos and feeding me the purple ones. Why purple? I have asked him the same question myself - perhaps when he can talk, he will reveal to me his hidden agenda.

Yogurt is his other favorite. Cereal and yogurt… ah, the stuff of which dreams are made, ahh, but, Daddy, I need some of your cereal too, or actually just the milk.

Daddy likes to eat Honey Bunches of Oats, with chocolate chips sprinkled on top. I’m bad, I know, but little Mr. So-and-so likes to mooch the milk from me. He makes his dramatic "mmmmmmp" sounds and smiles at me after each successful raid into my zone, pushing his pushy wiggle-puss into my bowl. I call him my "Moochie" or "Cachetero" (cheeky-one) on account of his bulging cheeks.

This has become our morning ritual.

After coffee, I checked my email, morning geek news (slashdot.org), world news (www.msnbc.com), and settled into work on Altabox 4.0.

This afternoon, we had a lunch date with a local state senator to build a strategy to communicate our vision for the tech sector with what will be, most assuredly the next governor of Puerto Rico. The rest of the morning was uneventful, and we headed out for our lunch.

I usually drive, because although Laura is a good and competent driver, she’s got a lead foot. The new and improved phlegmatic Jim, has become a passive slowpoke, as it is the only way I can feel sane. Thanks Dad. I was pulling out of our sub-division when the car in front of me just stopped. A woman got out and ran across the street. Huh? I honked, what the hell is she doing? And just as I honked, I saw a crumpled shape lying in a ditch on the other side of the street. I pulled to the side, and leaped from the car to screams and clamor.

Apparently there was a slight accident, two cars had hit each other, but caught up in it was an old woman, a pedestrian who was walking along the side of the road. As the two idiots drivers fought and fretted about their situation, the poor woman lay bleeding in a drainage ditch, water flowing freely around her.

I raced over to her, fixated on this poor figure laying in the blood. Is she dead? I didn’t see the accident, so I didn’t know how severe it was. It wasn’t clear exactly what had happened. Did she fall? Was she hit? I reached her limp form, and checked immediately to see if she was alive, breathing. I felt awkward. This stuff only happens in the movies, doesn’t it? I was shaking, the adrenaline had kicked in. I couldn’t help it. I was mentally calm and in control, but my body had other ideas as it decided to go into crisis mode. The people standing around me are all offered "helpful" suggestions. Don’t move her, was pretty much all they could say, I guess they were content to just stand there and gawk while this bleeding woman lay in a ditch.

I touched her shoulder and gave her upper torso a little tug. First thing you do in a crisis is talk to the patient. Find out if they are okay, if they can tell you where it hurts or where they are hurt. First aid is trained frequently in the Army, repetitively, so that in the moment you don’t have to think.

Say there’s an explosion, your buddy goes down, and you immediately start first aid, checking limbs, tearing open clothes, thinking about tourniquets. "Hey dumbass, I’m fine. Just stunned, check out the rest of the guys." If the patient can talk, they can help you out. Basic stuff, but you’d be amazed how often people forget.

So this woman, was stunned, a little groggy. I recognized her from the first. She’s who, growing up in N. Country, St. Louis, we all knew as the "Walking Lady," a woman seen at all hours of the day, in all seasons walking around, going shopping, running all her errands on foot. Here, lying in a drainage ditch was our very own, "Walking Lady," Paquita as she is called. Laura and I wondered if she was homeless, her weathered and somewhat tattered appearance fit the bill. She lives in our neighborhood, however. I see her most mornings as I head out on my morning bike rides. We usually exchange smiles.

I checked her head. Looks okay, she’s got a cut across her eyebrow. That’s where ALL the blood was coming from. Yeah, I remember those injuries all too well. Cut above the eye bleeds like crazy. You look like Carrie. I check around her head, talking to her. "Does it hurt any where else?" She’s still groggy, I can’t hear her. "You know me," I say to her, "It’s me, from the bicycle. We meet each other every morning when I go out on my bicycle."

She smiled. I smiled back, and imagined myself, this huge gringo covered in blood crouched in a ditch holding this ninety pound little old lady, stroking her head.

I enlisted the aid of a by-stander to move her from the ditch into the shade. I was amazed at how hard it was to lift her small frame out of the ditch. I stumbled and stepped on her hand. I felt terrible about that. Poor thing. A limp weight is hard to lift. Jeez. A worker from the Energy Authority, trained in first aid arrived at the scene. He had his complete first aid kit, oxygen, bandages, blood pressure device, etc. He went to work, while I told her jokes and held her hand. I made her smile as her blood pressure and pulse came back normal. "Ah, as healthy as a twenty year old," I said.

It was super hot in the noon day, equatorial sun. I was dressed for a business lunch, and not only was I drenched in blood, I was pouring sweat like a thoroughbred. A man began to fan me with a piece of cardboard he found on the road. Ah, that felt good.

The ambulance arrived finally, and I got out of the way. They rolled her onto the stretcher and hoisted her up. I stayed with her to see her off. "Paquita, may you get better soon. We’ll see each other next week, you walking, me on my bicycle." She smiled and we parted ways.

In the end, I didn’t do anything really. I would have been more prepared to do CPR or mouth to mouth, but I felt good for having reacted so quickly and taking charge while everybody else fretted and stood idle, especially the two idiots in the cars that caused the accident in the first place. Like I said, though, I didn’t really do anything, but today, the 25th of November 2003, I eased someone’s pain and made a new friend.

Laura and I woke up early, 0530, to get to the polling place and begin what was to become a very long day. We had volunteered to be observers for our particular candidate, Carlos Pesquera, in the gubernatorial primary for Puerto Rico. It is customary to have observers from your campaign to "assure" the election officials do their jobs and don’t try to pull any funny business.

The funny business began right away for us. Agustín, our polling place "head dog," tried to put us to work right away counting and initialling ballots. I refused. "Hey we’re not election officials," I said. "Our campaign bosses were very clear we were not to be doing your jobs."

It turned out that they had not done, nor planned to do their jobs, and since our candidate stood to be hurt more, we acquiesced and did what we needed to do to have the polling place open on time at 0800.

Things continued to bump along herky jerky. Agustín flashed his rural rotten toothed smile at me. "See that wasn’t so bad."

They hadn’t enough secret booths for people to vote in private, so hoards started taking seats in the 2nd grade classroom to fill out their ballots, twenty at a time, huddled close together. I was already shaking my head. This was out of control. It was obvious Agustín was this little barrio’s don. I caught him "suggesting" candidates for the little old ladies that trusted his judgement. "Agustín, you can’t do that. That’s fraud, you know. Do it again and I will file an infraction."

"You know, you’re not so innocent yourself. By helping people put their ballots in the boxes you are violating the rules as well."

This is a well worn and tired tactic in Puerto Rico. So lawless and disorderly is the conduct, so liberal are the gentry with rules and regulations, that there is more than sufficient culpability to go around. No one ever enforces these laws, for fear of themselves being caught in something. Everybody is dirty here. Everybody’s got something in their closet. So accustomed are the people to playing ball, negotiating everything, they are beholden to no ideals, only necessities in the constant flux of the moment. Do what you have to do to get by. And a common game they play is whenever accused of wrongdoing, quick turn it around on someone else or your attacker, no matter how small. Put them on the immediate defensive.

So, Agustín’s admonishment to me for helping these same old ladies get their ballots in the rickety cardboard slots was my "infraction." Agustín had met his match. I don’t know why people here are flummoxed by this sophmoric redirect, but they are.

I’m not.

"Okay, I won’t touch the ballots. You tell another person how to vote, and I will report you."

Then he went into the guilty conscience blither blather, where he wouldn’t shut up trying to justify himself. The process is damaged, he’d say, he’s just helping. Why should a "wrong" candidate get elected just because he’s better looking. If people don’t take the time to study the candidates, then the wrong person get’s elected by accident. "I’m just helping to avoid an accident." And he would go on and on, flapping his deformed, cavity ridden mouth at high velocity. I told him if the people didn’t know the candidates, they shouldn’t vote for them. Leave that box blank. He kept on, trying his best to persuade me, his guilty conscience and pride going on and on. All the while giving me more and more dirt on himself. I just listened, carefully crafting the hammer that I would bring down upon him soon enough.

I soon caught him again with a little group of people around him. He had been pretending to count blank ballots (we were running out), seated in the little desk of the second grade classroom. All were huddled around him, hunched. I stood at the front of the room, in front of the blackboard giving directions and noting irregularities. Children!! I almost said.

"Agustín," I said, "You can’t do that. I see you." And in a more formal spanish that sounds like a fine afternoon spent at a nobleman’s estate, "The gentleman shall refrain from offering advice on selecting candidates. You, sir, are damaging the electoral process."

He stopped immediately. I flagged down Laura and told her the story. Then I reported it to the electoral unit head. He was shaken and surprised, but as Agustín is clearly the "go-to-guy" at this polling place, I have my doubts about how this will be resolved. It’s kind of like when a hotel says to you, "Yes sir, we’re really sorry about that, you can be assured that he will fired immediately."

I figured I didn’t have much pull and myself being a newcomer, it would have been an uphill battle. All I had at that point were threats and pieces of paper. I started to hatch a plan.

Earlier, the director of the polling place had expressed interest in Laura and myself to help with the general elections next November. We are young and involved, contrary to the older folks that always seem to run these things. I had been cagey, expressing reservation. I didn’t want to get chummy with these people. They were after all, enemies for the day.

How do I remove Agustín from his position as chief purveyer of fraud in Barrio Tortugo? How do I get rid of this little latin dictator wannabe?

It would have to wait, as the day was only half over and there were ballots to be cast. Mostly the people coming through were extremely uneducated, lazy, borderline shouldn’t-be-allowed-to-vote. It was a pretty depressing affair. These are the people who are deciding the future representation of Puerto Rico. These same people who are complicit in fraud, who haven’t taken the time to read up on the candidates, and resort to trying to get away with cheating. Good thing the teacher was there. It was shameful. I should have punished them to write a thousand times on the chalkboard, "I will not cheat the electoral process. I do not wish to live in Haiti."

After all was said and done and all the ballots were cast, it fell upon Laura and myself to observe the counting. It is still a hand counting system here in Puerto Rico. It works pretty well. The polling places are divided up sufficiently that the results come in for over 1.5 million votes cast in just a few hours.

Agustín was getting no end of pleasure handing us stacks of ballots to count and sort. He was like a grand arch-duke waving about his servants while he dealt with important matters, such as the bloom on his roses. Laura and I didn’t protest the counting of the ballots for our gubernatorial candidate. We had a vested interest.

It soon became apparent that our candidate was losing by a landslide. 3-1. My heart sank. After so much effort, so much toil, is this how it is to end? Napoleon has returned from St. Helena… even after so much ruin, he is still a strong-man. So it is in Puerto Rico, Rosselló, like Napoleon, conquered much in his early years only to meet his Waterloo and seek the refuge of exile. Our Napoleon, however, has seen fit to come back from his exile and save us. And our candidate? Carlos Pesquera was like the honest reformer trying to put back together the country Napoleon had destroyed. All the people can remember is the glory of the past. The poor want heros, glory, not reform.

After "helping" Agustín count most of the rest of the election results too, I became increasingly frustrated by his lack of graciousness, laziness, and assumption at our servile role. I told Laura, I’d had it. We’re out of here. Look at these people. We’re just observers and we’re doing all the work. They’re just sitting there watching us like slavers. They can stay up to 3am for all I care. We’re out of here.

On the way out, I told the director of the polling station, "Here’s the deal, Marcos. You get rid of Agustín, you get both Laura and myself. That’s the deal. Two for one."

He jotted down our number and we were on our way.