El Gringoqueño

or, "Hanging out in a European Café."

Laura and I had an early morning meeting at a Cyber Cafe here in Puerto Rico, in Rio Piedras. We arrived early because traffic was light due to the day of remembrance for President Ronald Reagan. What are we going to do for half an hour in Rio Piedras, we asked ourselves?

"You know it kinda feels like we’re in a small European town square," Laura remarked.

"Yeah," I said, "If you cover your eyes, your ears, your nose, and your sense of aesthetic." I chuckled at my own joke. Laura didn’t laugh. I repeated it in a lame attempt to get a smile at least. She giggled slightly.

Then, in her ever indomitable spirit of can-do, she stated, "Let’s see if there’s a coffee shop." We took a couple of steps up the block, passed a stray dog, a homeless man, a coin operated laundry mat, and abandoned our search.

"Hmmm, Europe, you say?" I chuckled again.

"Let’s check behind this street. I ambled off at Laura’s heels like the dutiful dog that I am. It was eight in the morning and already it was hot. I began to sweat as we walked across a large parking lot to an adjacent street. "Hey, this looks promising," Laura said, nodding toward a corner café.

"Yeah and as we walk in, I hope we don’t startle the grizzled old woman as she finishes her cigarette in her nightgown." It looked like that kind of place.

Once we stepped inside, the atmosphere changed. Gone were my visions of an old woman in her pajamas with a shotgun and a cigarette clenched between her teeth. No, they were replaced by the cold grim reality of a couple of college kids in a sparsely established tiny corner student hangout dump.

"Well, we’re here, I guess. What should we have?" I mused. I checked out the selection. "Let’s get quesitos and coffee. That okay with you?"

"Sure." I ordered two expresos (that’s espresso in Spanish for you snobs out there), and two cream cheese pastry rolls. We scoped out a clean table near a window with decent chairs and sat down. We were then next to the street in front of a large glass window. As the second homeless man passed, Laura remarked.

"Don’t you just have the feel of a European café nestled here against the window gazing at the street?" She started to laugh.

"You know I like hanging out with you, Laura. We should do these mini dates more often. I’m having fun in my European café."

Laura started laughing harder and a tear formed in her eye. "And you know if we put chairs out on the sidewalk we could drink in the rich aroma of urine." She started to lose it in a giggle fit, mascara streaming down here face.

With a flick of my wrist and a wistful French flourish I sighed, "Aahh," and sat back in an artful recline. Laura could not contain herself as she turned into a hapless puddle of giggles and tears. She could barely sip her coffee and eat her pastry. We commented on the buildings, how wonderfully artful they were, with their square corners covered in mold and pealing paint, and their imaginative shapes, concrete boxes stacked one on top of each other for as far as the eye could see.

"This is the life," I said. "An eternity of European cafes couldn’t replace this one moment I’ve spent with you, my dear."

We recently endured two straight weeks of rain, over 24 inches of constant precipitation from morning, through the afternoon, during the night. It has been tough. I don’t think I’ve endured being inside for so long in a good many years. You get used to being able to go out everyday and do some sort of activity. In Puerto Rico, you get sudden cloud bursts, but in a few minutes that tropical sun mops it up and life goes on.

Monday was my first morning bike ride in over two weeks, and it felt good. My chain had rusted a bit from the humidity. Annoying. You leave your keys a couple of days on the key holder and you get rusty keys. Such is life.

"I’d like a dozen eggs, " I said to Estéban.

"There are none," he replied.

I sighed, drat. No eggs. I got my milk and headed out. It started raining again. Can’t catch a break, can I?

Tuesday rolled around, and it’s a welcome relief, sunny and mild. Ooops, what’s this? Black clouds were rolling in. I headed out in a hurry, hoping to beat the inundation that was sure to come.

"Any eggs today?" I asked.

Estéban chuckled and checked with the guy behind the counter. "Yeah, looks like there’s enough. We can spare a dozen."

I thought to myself. Weird, they’re still short on eggs. Then it hit me. Chickens don’t lay when it’s raining hard. It bothers them. An unhappy chicken is a non-laying chicken. I remembered the last time we were hit with tropical storms, there was a short term egg shortage on the island.

The guy next to me, curious, asked idly how much they were. "How much is a dozen?"

Estéban, got a twinkle in his eye. He chuckled and recounted an incident where a woman asked him that same question.  "’¿Cuanto es una docena?’ she asked me, "Twelve little eggs, I told her. Doce huevitos. You know she got mad? Told me that was more than she had expected."

The whole bakery started rolling. Chuckles went all around, and the mood was genial.

"Listen, are you waiting for a flood? Man, look at those pants."

"Hey, I like them like that. I’m prepared at all times!"

"And you, look at that old guayabera, VERY stylish."

"This shirt is quality. Q-u-a-l-i-t-y. I’ve had this shirt for over 15 years. You can’t get that kind of quality today."

"Oh, sure," he laughed poking the man’s shirt.

"Man, check that out?" pointing to a sexy bombshell on the morning TV show.

"Ay Dios Mío mami."

"I’d like a slice of that!"

"What are you gonna get?" Another asked.

"Coffee and some oatmeal."

"To go?"

"Hey, let a man finish his coffee and toast. You have some hurry?"

"Well some people have things to do. We can’t sit around on our asses and pretend to be useful."

Chuckles all around.

(Overheard conversation of a group of three 60 year old+ in a local bakery in Puerto Rico).

Just got in from a wonderful party, so I’m a little buzzed. Well, actually, I can’t feel my fingers as I type this. Chuckle. My sister-in-law, who is Lebanese, had an Arab-Lebanese party. Wow, what a nice time. We drank, smoked the water pipe, laughed, told stories, ate tabbouleh, babacanush, humus, kabobs of chicken, and a bunch of things that I will never ever be able to spell.

Juan Carlos brought some fabulous Rioja red wine. That got the thing rolling as we took liberally of these fermented red grapes. Todd, an ethnic American, who became friends with Miray’s brother, Lebanon and his party crew, was an old hat with the whole thing. He knew most of the basic Arabic terms and greetings, and seemed comfortable with his assimilation into his adopted context outside of his own. He reminded me a little bit of myself with the Puerto Rican crowd. Something about them demanded my attention. They accepted me and I fell in, eventually marrying into the culture. Todd, Mikey, Lebanon and Rami were a party group extraordinaire.

Then somebody brought a couple of water pipes, one of which was new, being used in a group setting for the first time. They fiddled with it, complaining about the tightness, the newness of the fitting, poking holes in the aluminum foil to aerate the tobacco. No good, and away and away we puffed pulling the heat into the tobacco through the water and into our mouths trying to get a good draw. The cherry infused smoke was aromatic and we were even able to convince most of the women to give it a go.

A dance began with a particularly rhythmic song, as the hostess and her brother, Lebanon began to circle in a traditional form. Arm in arm they circled, laughing and dancing, winding their way through the house.

Most of the evening was spend chuckling, drinking, sharing stories and trying to get a good draw on the water pipes. I spend my fair share drawing deeply. It was truly wonderful, and eventually we began to get a good smoke. "This pipe is smoking good now," they would say, as they fiddled with the other. I came and I went, as I chased down Jaimito, checked on Olaia and Laura to see how they were and what they were up to, but I kept making my way back to that pipe. There was just something about it.

I was an extremely nice time because of how differently the experiences played out from what I’m used to. It was interesting and wonderful to enjoy good times, but in a slightly different context. The brotherhood of man, shared over tobacco, something as old as human-kind itself, takes on a perspective of closeness, seen from an angle that makes me take notice. Sharing the water pipe, puffing, and laughing and passing, gives a visceral and immediate context to our lives. Sometimes we forget about the commonality we all share, and it is a dead dried plant and some spittle that brings it back into focus. What am I talking about? What else could that be? We all come into this life the same way and we all leave it eventually. What we miss is all those wonderful details in the middle, those simple banal things upon which we rarely focus, quickly and recklessly moving onto the next thing, the next destination. The same feeling, I believe, can be found in other rituals around the world, a Japanese tea ceremony, a Basque cider house, Catholic mass, tribal or native dance, or a simple sharing of the hunt, alcohol, or smoke. Taken in moderation and shared amongst people in a certain context they can be powerful rituals of remembrance.

Bah, but I write such drivel. Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to communicate this in a better fashion. I feel like I do it such little justice with these numb fingers and this swirling "mente" of mine.

This is for you, little apple. I write these words of remembrance.

I was eating an apple while driving home from the Puerto Rico Products Association today. I was travelling through the urban setting, a decidedly un-vegetation friendly environment. I reflected that if I had been in the country, I would have tossed my apple core from the car into the tropical foliage. Drat, I am here in the city. The apple core is an eye sore. How would I like apple cores on my side walk, sitting there, collecting ants and turning brown in the hot sun? The apple that falls on the concrete of the city has no chance for life, and in the best of cases is an ugly mess.

In the country, though, it would have a chance to grow into an apple tree. Ah, but I have eaten the flesh of the apple, the flesh that would give its small seeds the nourishment for new life. I have done such violence to these poor little things. They would stand no chance to achieve life if left to their own devices. They are done whether on the side walk or the forest. They were done in by me, by my hungry apple flesh eating mouth.

The poor devils.