“Lousy Puerto Rican” - s3.amazonaws.com · “Ciuro’s book is more than an outstanding read, it’s an astounding feel. His story is funny and sweet and sad. Most of all, he

“Lousy Puerto Rican”

Juan Ciuro

Shafer Publishing Basking Ridge, New Jersey

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Lousy Puerto Rican Copyright © 2003 by Juan Ciuro. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this

book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied

in critical articles or reviews.

Shafer Publishing is registered in Somerset County, New Jersey.

For information on Shafer Publishing, as well as ordering, please contact Shafer Publishing, P. O. Box 140, Basking Ridge, New

Jersey, 07920. Phone: (908) 432-1206. E-mail: ShaferPublishing@ aol.com

This is a work of nonfiction. However, names have been changed in order to protect individual privacy. The character of “Mr.

Smith” is an amalgam of many undocumented aliens I had the privilege to meet while in the Border Patrol. I have embellished

and/or fictionalized some events for the sake of clarity and a coherent story line. Chapter 25, entitled “911” was written in July 2000 and has no connection to the events of September 11, 2001

Library of Congress Control Number: 2003098903

ISBN 0-9747720-0-3

Printed in the United States of America January 2004 First Edition

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“Never judge a book by its cover.”

Found in the last fortune cookie I ate

If you’re a book junkie who loves to laugh out loud when you read – you just found your fix!

“…Entertaining!”

New York Post

“…As soon as I started to read it, I knew (it) was going to be an extremely hysterical ride.”

Urban Latino Magazine

“The author is a keen observer of our human condition. He also has a sense of humor. … His vignettes of growing up in the Bronx are on target, and his subsequent adventures are insightful.”

Gustavo A. Mellander, Ph. D, George Mason University

“‘Lousy Puerto Rican’, takes the reader on a journey few would ordinarily experience. With humour, honesty and a no-nonsense approach to life and writing, Juan engages the reader from first word to last.”

Apt Medium

For photographs and a wealth of other information, Google:

Juan Ciuro

Barnes and Noble – Posted Readers’ Reviews

“It’s about time I found a down to earth author that expresses his heart and soul and honesty. I’m hoping this will be out on film. I will definitely go see it. Thank you so much Juan Ciuro. I can’t wait for your next novel to come out.” “Ciuro’s book is more than an outstanding read, it’s an astounding feel. His story is funny and sweet and sad. Most of all, he gives wholly and completely, what every reader wants in a book – truth.” “Fast paced and well written, Lousy Puerto Rican is a great read. I was captivated by Juan Ciuro’s story from the first page to the last. The author has that rare talent, which lets you into his head, his heart, and his life. I highly recommend this book.” “You don’t have to be Puerto Rican to enjoy this book. This is a very poignant story. I loved the book and fell in love with all the crazy people in the book. It is a quick and enjoyable read. I highly recommend it. Mr. Ciuro is a fine writer who tells a story from his heart.”

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Teachers

"I have learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers." Kahlil Gibran

One of the reasons I wrote this book was that I have spent a lifetime explaining Latino cultural differences to bigots. I wish I could be less blunt about this, but the fact is, as long as I can remember I’ve heard the word “spic” used in many conversations where the speaker didn’t have a clue that he was talking to a Puerto Rican. How does one fight that kind of intolerance and ignorance?

One answer is a good teacher. Because “the educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead,” (Aristotle) if you are a teacher, I hope you can use this book to bring those who might need it back from the dead.

This is my personal cell phone number: 908- 938-4199. Seriously.

If you dial this number you will actually get me or my recording, just in case I’m in the shower and rinsing twice. Call at reasonable hours and never during “American Idol.” I am available to readers who might want me to grace their book clubs, colleges, or even gatherings around the kitchen table with my presence. I don’t accept any calls from blocked numbers, as all’s fair in love and cell phones. Please do not call me if you are a serial killer, stalker, murderer, George “Dubya” Bush, telemarketer, pain in the ass, or that Hair Club guy. Writers are poor. The only writers making money are those people at HMO’s who deny your claim with pencils faster than the speed of light. Therefore, the cost of visiting your organization or club is on your dime, but keep in mind I’ve had gastric bypass surgery and am therefore a very cheap date. The phone lines are open! Juan Ciuro

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Chapter One

Call Me Juan

“Tell me about them.” “I have three sons that are half Irish and half Puerto Rican. I

was going to name them Tony, Riff, and Bernado like in West SideStory, but their Irish mom vetoed that idea. They’re grown now - but they can still sing you the entire score to West Side Story by rote.”

Lenore began to chuckle and then let a slow silence build. I was sure the pregnant pause was a trick learned in shrink school.

“Being half Irish and half Puerto Rican wasn’t easy on them. Like whenever we’d watch West Side Story I would always ask them, ‘Which side you guys rooting for?’ When they were little they never had an answer. But when they got older they got a great answer.”

“What?”“Well, we were watching the scene where God and everybody

sings ‘Tonight’ on their way to the big rumble.” I stopped momentarily and hummed a few bars for her. “So I asked them, ‘which side you rooting for?’” They stared at me and said, “Hey, dad,” then waited a few seconds, laughed, and said, “Fuck you.”

“Were you offended?” “Nope – I was sort of proud. They figured out there was no

answer - no side to root for. It was like the day my middle son came home from school pissed off because someone had called him a Spick Mick.”

“What did you tell him?”

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“I told him the story of Groucho Marx’s daughter. Groucho Marx and his young daughter were staying at a Miami hotel that didn’t allow Jews in their swimming pool back in the day. They actually had a sign that said ‘no Jews’ or something like that.”

“So what happened?” “Well, she goes swimming anyway, which brought out the

hotel manager. He comes running out in a huff and orders her out of the pool on account of being a Jew and all. In the middle of this mess Groucho shows up, looks the manager dead in the eye, and says, ‘I’ll have you know my daughter is half Gentile and half Jewish. Is it okay if she wades halfway in the water?’”

Lenore tried not to laugh. “Did your son get what you were trying to tell him?”

“Naw – he’s a dumb Spic Mick.” Lenore tried harder not to laugh. “You’re not big on being

politically correct are you?” “Well, they don’t like bullshit where I come from.” “You mean Puerto Rico?” “No, someplace else.”

* * * The neighborhood of Washington Heights sits at the upper end

of the Island of Manhattan just below Inwood. Simply known as the "Heights," it was named after George Washington, who was chased out by the British at the beginning of the Revolution. At the start of the 1960's there was no lower (or Martha) level to the massive George Washington Bridge that crossed the Hudson River. The British had long been replaced by an amalgam of immigrants, who had dug the subways and built the skyscrapers. The “Heights” is the highest topographical point on Manhattan, which is of interest to no one, except to those who play Jeopardy.

I lived on 179th Street, sandwiched in between a Jewish synagogue and a Greek Orthodox Church, called Saint Spiridon. I grew up in a five-story walk-up that had a different smell on every floor. The first floor always smelled like Greek olives and matzo balls; the second was boiled cabbage; the third was rice and beans; the fourth was mozzarella and garlic bread; and on the fifth - there wasn't any smell at all. That's where the Presbyterians lived.


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My family was from another island called Puerto Rico. My father had actually traveled to America on a banana boat. My mother was able to afford a plane ticket, but not much more. They liked telling us they met on the subway trying to pick each other's pockets.

In New York City during the 1960s the Chinese had their laundries, the Greeks had their diners, the Italians fixed everybody's shoes, the Irish were cops, and the Puerto Ricans had all the basements. My father was the superintendent of three tenement buildings. Each building contained four railroad flats on each of its five floors. Pop was the resident jack-of-all-trades and master of none. We lived in a basement apartment at number six twenty one - not far from the boiler room - which I was grateful for in the winter. I remember my father telling me Puerto Ricans couldn't commit suicide, because you can't commit suicide jumping out of a basement window. I was grateful for that too.

Whenever my Pop got pissed, he was fond of calling everybody, and everything, "Pendejo."

The Velazquez Spanish/English Dictionary defines Pendejo as"hair over the pubis and groin." Only the way my dad said it, it left no doubt you were the pendejo that was sure to be shit on.

My father had a peculiar way of both showing affection and making me extend my reach beyond my grasp. Like some kind of glue that would bond us as a father and son, he would simply refer to me as a "Lousy Puerto Rican." As in - "Whatsamatterforyou? - You think your sheet don't stink? - You just a lousy Puerto Reecan." When he wanted me in a hurry, he'd shorten it to "Mira, lousy Puerto Rican, venaca" (come here).

The reason for this was borne out of this job we had to do in a hurry one day when I was about twelve or thirteen. One of the 15-inch sewer mains that serviced the buildings had clogged. The sewer had backed up causing the level of water to rise to just above your knees.

The pipe we had to Rotor Rooter was located dead center of this flood in one of the basement rooms. The smell was horrendous and the stuff floating serenely atop the water scientifically proved to me that shit actually does float.

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My dad and I just stood there staring at what we had to wade into until I announced; "I ain't walking in there!" I no sooner had gotten those words out, when my father grabbed me by the collar and dragged me along saying, “Whatsamatterforyou - Lousy Puerto Rican - Just hold your breath - Pendejo." I realize that today this situation would have been declared a level five biohazard requiring a massive response with people in space suits. But this was 1962 - a time when cigarettes were good for you and children were actually expected to do chores.

We began working feverishly feeding "snake" into the sewer line. I prayed for something to give fast, as I couldn't hold my breath any longer. It did.

My father didn't have much experience with tree roots. He didn't know a tree's roots could strangle a 15-inch pipe like a cancer. He also didn't understand the concept of pounds per square inch versus a suffocating sewer line.

The first sound was a deep reverberation like the Jolly Green Giant was belching. Then the ground beneath us started to rumble like the San Andreas Fault. It was one of the few times in my life I heard my father speak perfect English.

"Run!" was all he said. I don't remember much of the actual explosion, but I do

remember feeling like the punch line of an old joke, as the only thing I actually saw was shit all over the place.

We looked like road kill. My father looked like he was wearing Vaudeville blackface from which the whites of his eyes shone like beacons. I didn’t fare any better. We just kept staring at each other like Lucy and Ricky. Time seemed to stop.

Then it started with a small grin, which became a smile – which became a chuckle - which became gales of laughter.

We haven't stopped laughing since. From that day on whenever somebody used the term “full of shit,” I knew exactly what they were talking about. And all my father has to do to this day is pick up the phone (he always calls collect) and remind me of being a lousy Puerto Rican - and all my troubles go down the drain.

My mother, on the other hand, concerned herself with encasing every piece of furniture we owned in clear plastic. Everything from the sofa to the toilet seat. The plastic went well with the pink


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Formica kitchen set and the cheap plastic-covered art deco chairs. The only problem was that you had to wear a protective layer of clothing when coming into contact with the plastic. Otherwise you would sweat like a pig and slide off the furniture.

We owned a black and white television set with rabbit ear antennas. My father had magically turned our beat-up TV into color for $1.25. He bought this piece of clear plastic that he Scotch taped over the TV screen. It was divided horizontally into three parts like three-flavored ice cream in a carton. It was blue on top, yellow in the middle, and green on the bottom. If you waited for the just the right moment on Bonanza, you could convince yourself you were watching color TV. The Ponderosa sky would be blue, Little Joe would be yellow, and Ben Cartwright's shoes would be green. Two out of three wasn't a bad deal for my dad.

My chores included climbing inside the giant boiler to clean out the soot during the summer. The buildings also had to be continuously mopped and swept, the mailboxes polished, and other repairs needed to be made. But worst of all was the garbage. The New York City Department of Sanitation had decreed that all garbage was to be jammed into galvanized steel cans with lids, and all newspapers had to be stuffed in big burlap sacks. The Department of Sanitation picked up the garbage at dawn every Wednesday. This meant I grew up loathing Tuesday nights. Me and my younger brother, Tony, fought every Tuesday night over whose turn it was to put out the 30 or 40 galvanized cans of garbage and the accompanying dozen or so burlap bags of yesterday's New York Times and Daily News. To this day I still get a bad feeling every Tuesday night. And I still hate taking out the garbage.

My household also included a sister, Cynthia, and an older brother named Paul. Cynthia's job was learning the fine art of making arroz con gandules (rice and chickpeas) from my mother. My mother was content to make the daily rice and beans with whatever meat was on sale that day, including Spam.

Paul, whose real name was Pablo Jose, didn't have chores. This was because he was gay, and my dad wanted to ignore him. And I don't mean a “little” gay. I mean Carmen Miranda, swishing like Jell-O, wearing hot pants, chicky boom-boom booming it through

Juan Ciuro

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the living room - gay. My father spent his time trying to build bigger and stronger closets to keep Paul in, but Paul could not be contained. In a time when being gay was actually considered a disease, he was happy having the plague. So my father gave up building closets and just ignored him.

There was no way I could ignore Paul. He was a neighborhood fixture. So I learned to deal with Paul much like someone walking a Yak down the street on a leash. This was because it was New York City and not Kansas. In New York, you can walk a Yak down the street, and most people won't bat an eye. Some people would view the Yak as a curiosity, some would want to pet it, some would love it, and others would fear and hate it.

I spent part of my adolescence having the same continuous argument with Paul. He felt everybody was gay, including Gilligan and the Skipper. But there was no way he could convince me Rock Hudson was gay. Paul had a penchant for laughter and the outrageous, which made up for his bad taste in clothes. This was one of the reasons I loved him. He had a lot of cojones and was absolutely fearless. I think if there were the equivalent of a gay medal for valor, Paul would have won it, for bravery above and beyond the call of duty at Woolworth's.

I had never seen a vagina up close and personal until Paul brought one home when I was about 14 years old. Paul worked at the neighborhood Woolworth's on Saint Nicholas Avenue, behind the counter, selling cheap cosmetics. One summer day, someone that obviously hated Yaks had gone to the trouble of visiting a slaughterhouse and had placed a perfectly carved bovine's genitalia inside Paul's lunch box. I guess they felt it would teach him a lesson in humility, embarrass him, and put him in his faggoty place. That was a big mistake.

Paul examined it carefully and, after determining what it was, took it out of his lunchbox and gingerly placed it on the counter right next to the display of lipstick and mascara. Then he dutifully applied as much make-up as he could, trying to "make it look pretty," as he commented later. He applied lipstick, mascara, and flesh tones. He took a pair of scissors and "gave it a haircut." When he was finished, he was quite proud of himself.


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He lit up a cigarette and calmly stuck it into the fold of that clipped piece of meat. No one who viewed the smoking bovine vulva could figure out what the hell it was. Paul spent the rest of that day giggling, smirking, and mooing at people. Somebody finally complained, and Paul was sacked along with the contents of his infamous lunchbox. Paul said that was as close to pussy as he ever wanted to get. He may have lost his job, but that was a small price to pay to become a neighborhood legend.

When Paul heard his first Barbara Streisand album he instantly declared himself a Jew from Brooklyn. He went next door to the Jewish synagogue and found a Rabbi who gave him a nice red yarmulke and a speech about what he would have to do to convert - just like Sammy Davis Jr. When the Rabbi got to the part about being circumcised, Paul's enthusiasm waned. He kept the yarmulke and called himself a Jew for the rest of his life, but never got a circumcision, explaining it was against his religion.

Paul was any bigot's delight. I was afraid for him every time he walked out the door. He was a Puerto Rican. He was a screaming queen. He was a Jew, and a bad dresser. And worst of all, he was fearless.

* * * There's something I should have mentioned before about me

and about being a Puerto Rican. Most people subscribe to the myth of what I like to call the "Ricky Ricardo Syndrome." That is, most of the time, white people imagine every Latino looks and sounds like Ricky Ricardo. That's a mistake. There are Puerto Ricans walking among you right now who look like me.

I look like the poster child for the Saint Patrick's Day Parade. I was born with this shock of bright red hair. My skin is so white I have to avoid the sun like a Vampire. I've spent most of my summers on Orchard Beach - never attempting a tan - only hoping to neutralize some of the red. My eyes are a light brown, and I can speak the King's English as well as any nobleman born in New York City.

I once got off a plane in San Juan. Walking through the terminal I looked for a cab. I spotted a cop and decided to ask him to point me in the right direction. The entire conversation between the two of us happened in Spanish. I swear to God.

Juan Ciuro

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"Perdoname Official, donde puedo encontrar un Taxi?" (Excuse me, officer, where can I find a taxi?)

The cop eyed me up and down. I could tell by his face that all he saw was just another lost tourist.

"Perdoname Senior, pero yo no hablo Ingles" (I'm sorry, sir, but I don't speak English).

"Estas diciendo que tu no puedes hablar en Ingles?" (You're saying you can’t speak English?)

"Si, yo no hablo Ingles." (Yes, I don’t speak English). "Estas seguro?" (Are you sure?) "Si.""Gracias Official, hay otra personna que me puede ayudar?"

(Thank you officer, is there another person who can help me?) The cop smiled and pointed to an information booth where I

got my directions.I was in the fourth grade at P.S. 132, when my teacher, Mrs.

Einhorn, grabbed me in the hallway one day. I had been trading “yo mama” barbs in Spanish with a fellow student. She dragged me off the line and into a corner. She bent over and put her face into mine and I instantly knew what Dorothy in the Wizard of Ozmust have felt. Mrs. Einhorn was the Wicked Witch of the West. She was fat, ugly, mean, and nasty, and she always wore those black old-lady shoes so popular with witches.

"Listen," she began. "This is America and not the jungle. Here, we speak English, not Spanish!" She kept holding my arm so I had no escape. "From now on your name is John! I don't want to hear anybody calling you Juan anymore. Do you understand? Thisis America and you'd better learn to fit in."

Mrs. Einhorn liked using the word "trash” a lot. Whenever I failed to hand in my homework she would say something like, "Well, what can you expect from Puerto Rican trash?"

She didn't expect much from me at all. "You know what your problem is, John? You're lazy. You can barely read and your writing is trash. Do you want to spend the rest of your life living in a basement?"

I couldn't do much about Mrs. Einhorn except ask God to strike her dead. God didn't strike her dead, but God did do the next best thing.


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Being the smallest in my class, I was always at the head of the line. Whenever we went to recess we walked in two single files, boys on one side and girls on the other. At the foot of every staircase landing I was instructed to stop to allow Mrs. Einhorn to catch up. She would walk down through the middle of both lines.

At the back of the line was a fellow member of my "trash clan," named Jose DeCosta.

Jose changed my life in an instant by simply sticking out his foot. As Mrs. Einhorn tumbled down the stairs, she tried grabbing onto anything. But the class had miraculously parted like the Red Sea, leaving ample room for her fall. She came to rest in front of me, moaning and yelling for help.

"Aye, Aye, John, run and get a teacher. Anybody!" "Como?""I think I broke my ankle. John, run and get a teacher." "Me llamo Juan, and I no speak English."I never did fetch a teacher; Mrs. Einhorn's wailing had brought

help.She didn't come back to school until a year later when I had

moved on to the fifth grade. Mrs. Einhorn did manage to teach me one single truth that was self-evident: the world was full of Mrs. Einhorns.

* * * I was born Juan Bautista Ciuro on Manhattan, in the West

Village, at Saint Vincent's hospital, when gasoline was eighteen cents a gallon. I was named after the patron saint of the city of San Juan. I have two birth certificates. I have the original black and white one, which was issued by the City of New York, when I was born on March 3, 1950. I like comparing it to the new, politically correct one the city just sent me. Unlike the original, the new birth certificate doesn't mention "color or race." Nor does it reflect that my father was a "bus boy" in the "catering" business.

Today, Mrs. Einhorn would have (hopefully) been fired for what she did. She stole my name. She never called me Juan, only John. She also changed it on all official school records to read "John." From then on - I lived in the two worlds of John and Juan.

At home we only spoke Spanish to my parents (except for Paul - he liked English and managed to sound like a gay Ricky Ricardo

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anytime he opened his mouth). Outside the home was the English-speaking world. The problem with my English was that it was spoken with this “New Yawk” accent. You could cut it with a knife. But it only became a problem if I opened my mouth anywhere other than New York.

Now the thing about speaking Spanish was that I didn't speak Spanish - exactly. I spoke "Spanglish." Spanglish is bastardized version of the Spanish language indigenous to “Newyoricans.”

In Spanglish, whenever you didn't know the proper name of something in Spanish, you borrowed one from English and simply stuck an "O" behind it. So, "Roof" became "El Roofo"- "Couch" became - "El Coucho." If gender were involved, you'd just add an "A" wherever appropriate. So, "the nurse" became "la nursa."This language works well with most Newyoricans.

My cousin, Junior, the car thief, once heard the word, “causation.” He loved that word so much he began sticking the suffix, "sation" onto any word in the English language that suited him. Junior thought this made him sound real snooty in English. So, he'd sound like this at the dinner table:

"Pass the saltsation, por favor.” Or, “How was schoolsation today?” And my personal favorite; “That cop really beat the shitsation outta me, just cause I was trying to robsation his car battery.”

If you think Spanglish isn't legitimate, then watch any Beisbolgame on Spanish TV. You'll hear stuff like, "El batador tiene dos Bolas y un estrike con dos outs." (The batter has two balls and a strike with two outs). My favorite was the long ball homerun. "Seva, se va, se fue, un homerrrrun!"

And while I'm at it, let me dispel another myth about the Spanish language. It's not all the same. What I mean is, if you assume a guy from Mexico speaks the same Spanish as a guy from Peru, you're dead wrong. The Spanish language is as different and as varied as English. Think about the speech difference between a Texan and a Brooklyn cab driver. Or a California Valley Girl and a Pennsylvania coal miner. Or a rich guy from Park Avenue and any poor shmuck from the Bronx.


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The point is the fact that people speak English doesn't stop them from throwing rocks at each other. It's the same within the Spanish-speaking world. We throw rocks at each other too.

To give you an example, there's a verb in Spanish "coger"which means "to catch or grab." I was traveling in Mexico one day and had stopped many a person to ask where I could catch a bus. Some would laugh and others would carefully walk away from me. Later, I discovered that to some Mexicans "coger" means, "to have sexual intercourse with.” Had I known I was asking perfect strangers where I could fuck a bus, I would have phrased it differently.

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Chapter Two

Dear Lenore

“How are you feeling, Juan?” “Hey, do you think I can get a Kewpie doll?” “A Kewpie doll?” “Sure, ever see a movie called Sleeper?”“No.”“Well, Woody Allen made this movie called, Sleeper. It’s

about a nerd who falls asleep in 1973 and wakes up 200 years later to discover a world full of robots, a Volkswagen Beetle that still runs, and where you get sex in a machine called an ‘orgasmatron.’” Lenore began smiling at my mention of an orgasmatron. “In the movie, people in the future don’t visit a shrink – they see a giant slot machine where they confess their sins. When they’re finished, the slot machine clangs a bell and pays out a Kewpie doll.” Lenore was trying not to laugh again.

“So, do you want a Kewpie doll?” “My dear Lenore, can you imagine how the world of psychiatry

would improve if you got a Kewpie doll at the end of every session?”

“That’s funny. Where did you get your sense of humor?” “From not being a Boston Red Sox fan.” Lenore laughed. She

was wearing a Boston Red Sox T-shirt. And then my mind began to drift.

“Where did you just go, Juan?” “Huh? Sorry – I zone out sometimes like that. Crazy huh?”

Lenore kept smiling and repeated the question. “Where did you go?”


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“For some reason K-Mart just popped into my head.” “K-Mart?” I began to try and figure out how long ago that had been. But

all I could remember was that there were no more blue light specials during that time. K-Mart had done away with them.

I had been sitting on a cheesy plastic bench they had for recalcitrant shoppers by the front of the store. My boys had run off with their mom into the toy department. I was reading a book when she walked in.

She was grandma incarnate, looking like something Norman Rockwell would have painted. Her hair was white and pulled back into the obligatory bun. Her face was wrinkled, weathered, and full of sagacity. She wore a thin smile through thin lips. Her cane was aluminum. Her sneakers were immaculately white. She sat right next to me and began to speak as though she had known me a lifetime.

“We have no transmission.” She spoke with a French accent so thick I thought it was a put on.

“Huh?” “My grandson went to call a lorry. We have no transmission

now – I think.” She pronounced “think” like “theeenk.” “My name is Marie.” She stuck out a smoothly wrinkled hand.

“What do you read?” “It’s a book about World War Two.” “Ah, oui, it is good for young people to remember. I can tell

you that was a time when hatred lived in this world. Yet in the midst of all that hatred - I can still remember a lone act of kindness.”

She had this haunted look in her eyes and a melodic meter in her voice that spoke to something in me I couldn’t explain. I was spellbound, quickly becoming her prisoner like “The Ancient Mariner” …She holds him with a glittering eye –the poor guy on the bench at K-Mart sat still, and listens like a three years child – the old woman hath her will.

“Did you know Paris has lovely subways?” “Like in New York?” “Oui, but cleaner I think.” She did the “theeenk” thing again. “Is that where you’re from?”

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“Oui, I was a young girl living in Paris when the Germans came,” she smiled at me. “This was during the summer, and I was riding the subway going home. In those days we all had to wear the yellow Star of David on our clothes.”

“Why didn’t you just take it off?” “We were afraid. A Jew caught without the star meant arrest

by the Gestapo. So we followed the rules, including the ones about Jews riding the subways.”

“Like?” “Jews were obligated to give up their seats to Aryans.” She

paused and said nothing for a while letting this sink in. I remained silent.

“Oui, if it became crowded in the subway any people wearing the Star of David had to give up their seats.” She paused again.

I studied her face. I could see her as a young woman and knew she had once been very beautiful.

“It was crowded that day and very hot. I had given up my seat to a nun who had demanded it.”

“A nun?” “Oui. But then he came.” “Who?”“An officer of the German Luftwaffe. Do you know how I

knew?”“How?” “The German military wore their rank on their collars and

shoulders.” She pointed to her neck. “The Luftwaffe wore gray-blue uniforms. He wore the white and gold insignia of a fighter pilot that was a captain. I remember he also wore the Iron Cross First and Second class, and the Knights Cross. Do you know what that is?”

“Is that the little red and white ribbon some of them wore in the top button hole on the front of their uniforms?”

“Oui, tres bien. The captain also wore a ‘wound badge.’” “Like an American Purple Heart?” “Oui. When this captain of the Luftwaffe saw what the nun

had done, a certain look came over his face.” “What kind of look?” There was a long silence. “Shame. I could see the shame in his


15

eyes like it was still yesterday. And then he did something unexpected.”

“What?”“He barked at the nun, ordering her up from her seat. And then

he motioned to me to sit down in her place. For the rest of that trip home he stood over me like a guardian angel making sure no one bothered me. I never forgot that captain of the Luftwaffe nor his act of chivalry.”

“That’s an interesting story.” Lenore broke into my narrative. “What do you think it means?”

“I dunno.” And that was the truth. I had no idea why Marie’s story had meant so much. “Maybe meeting Marie was just an accident.”

“There are no accidents.” “Then you haven’t met some of the people from my

neighborhood.” “There you go again. Being funny to avoid something.” “What am I avoiding?” Lenore fell silent. “Okay – I give up –

so what does Marie’s story mean?” “Why don’t you think about it for next time?” “You know what, Lenore?” “What?”“Fuck the Boston Red Sox.”

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Chapter Three

Menagerie of Mutts

The people I grew up with included characters Mark Twain would have had trouble describing. Some were sinners, some were saints, and some were both, like me. We traveled and hung around like a pack of innocuous neighborhood wolves. There was no malice in us as much as there was mischief. We were a true melting pot of mutts.

There was "Mike One Hand," the only Jewish guy in our gang. Mike was missing his right hand. Instead of a hand, he had been born with a stump. On the stump were five, sort of pimple-like growths, in place of what would have been his fingers. The thing that made Mike cool, and part of us, was his phony hand and his willingness to use it to make us convulse with laughter.

Mike's prosthetic hand served absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to look like a real hand. But the hand was about as subtle as an unmarked police car in the ghetto. It had these light blue veins painted on it in an attempt to look authentic. It didn't move, or grab anything, but Mike would sometimes stick a fork through the phony fingers when he ate. The hand was held on by suction. This meant that whenever Mike wanted to, he could flip you the bird with his entire arm, and watch his hand go flying off the stump.

The gag was this - Mike would start an argument with any cashier, cab driver, or whatever victim we could find. As the argument became heated we'd gather around and wait with baited breath until Mike got red in the face. When he got to the climax of his arguing, he would heave his entire arm up in one smooth typical


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New York - Fuck - You - Too - Pal! motion. There would always be this sucking popping sound as the hand went flying off, like a long fly ball hit out of Yankee Stadium. It was mesmerizing. You couldn't take your eyes off the flying hand as it tumbled through the air, ass over tit. No matter how many times he did it, we never tired of it. Mike got so famous for his flying hand that we had to go as far as Brooklyn to find new victims.

Then there was Willie Mau-Mau. Willie was a crazy Cuban, who, on occasion, liked wearing a black cape like Zorro and loved to poke people with a plastic sword he carried, stuck in his pants. He was a mulatto with short curly brown hair and bug eyes. What made Willie Mau-Mau another neighborhood legend was his daunting attempt to have sex with a recalcitrant German Shepherd named Delilah.

It was one of those "Gee, what are we gonna do today?" moments. We were hanging outside of Mike One Hand's apartment on Pinehurst Avenue. Mike's mom had thrown the pack of us all out into the hallway. It was one of those five-story buildings where all the front doors to the apartments were clustered into a square on every floor. Every landing also had a large window where you could look out into the courtyard.

Somebody happened to look down into the courtyard from the third floor, where we were. There was Willie with Delilah, the super's giant, female German Shepherd. She was in estrus, and Willie was stalking her with the patience of Elmer Fudd. He kept walking slowly behind Delilah with a bulge in his pants. He kept cooing at Delilah ever so softly while advancing on her in small steps. But Delilah wasn't having any of it. Every time Willie would slowly inch up on Delilah, she would quickly trot away.

They were like the Coyote and the Roadrunner. We just stared, mesmerized, mouths hanging open, looking at this dance Willie and Delilah were doing. We were so focused we didn't notice Mike was playing with his phony hand.

Mike was fond of popping his hand on and off when he got nervous and also because it made this neat popping noise. We were never destined to know what would have happened between Willie and the object of his affection, as Mike dropped his hand out the window into the courtyard. It fell with a distinct thump between

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the two would-be lovers. Delilah walked over, sniffed it, and then picked it up and went running off with it. We knew Mike's hand had cost a bundle, so we all began screaming out the window at Delilah to let go of Mike's hand. Willie disappeared and wasn't seen for a while. We never mentioned it to Willie until one day when the super was walking Delilah past us on the corner. Someone turned to Willie and said, "Hey, there goes your wife."

Then there was Romeo Rodriguez. He was a Puerto Rican with a penchant for Voodoo. Way before there were "psychic hot lines," there was Romeo’s mom.

She was the neighborhood "Foo-Foo lady" (as I liked to call them) or "Santeria" priestess. "Santeria" means "the way of the Saints" and is also known as "Regla de Ocha," "Lukumi," or "Macumba."

It's a religion that is shrouded in secrecy, ritual, tradition, wild dancing, and calls for the possession of your body by the spirits or saints. There is also the ritual sacrifice of animals, usually chickens. There isn't a book (like a Bible) about Santeria; it's handed down to you at your grandma's knee.

Santeria is a mixture of Catholicism and African Voodoo practiced by many people including Puerto Ricans, Cubans, Haitians, Dominicans, folks from all over the Caribbean - and especially my mom. Those who practice it take Santeria very seriously. It uses many spells or invocations to cure everything from a brain tumor to athlete's foot.

The Foo-Foo lady could cast spells on you, causing anything from impotence, to turning you into a Zombie. Foo-Foo ladies were available in the neighborhood for a price. The price was dependent on whether you had a brain tumor or athlete’s foot. If the spell involved sacrificing a live chicken, that was extra. For this reason, there was always an ample supply of chickens occupying Romeo’s living room. If the Foo-Foo lady had to take two buses to get to the Santeria supermarket on Webster Avenue in the Bronx, then that also cost you extra.

One of Romeo's chores was to help his mom prepare the basement they lived in for secret midnight Santeria rituals requiring elaborate ceremony, involving the wearing of costumes that are normally seen only during Mardi Gras. They would get a bunch of


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wooden faced guys to play drums, congas, and whatever else they could find to create a beat on - including Tupperware.

There were always icons and statues of different saints. The statues were many and of varying sizes, depending on what you wanted to cure and how big your wallet was. The saints came in all colors too. At that time, the Catholic Church practiced a sort of "Saint Apartheid" in that all the saints they displayed in the churches were always white. Santeria, however, offered Saints in a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes, for almost any occasion to fit your budget.

Santeria is really big on candles, too - all colors - all sizes - tons of them everywhere. The more pious a believer you were, the more candles you burned. The real devout had candles as big as the garbage cans I would haul out on Tuesday nights.

They would also display the ever-popular large, velvet tapestry of Jesus flanked by the (also very popular) 3D picture of Christ, whose eyes would eerily follow you around the room.

To finish the effect, there was the burning of incense and the leaving of various food, liquor, and tobacco offerings for the saints’ consumption, in plates or bowls. Some Santeria saints liked rum. Some liked cigars. Some liked pork rinds.

My mother didn't like saints that drank booze, so instead she would always leave a full glass of water, carefully tucked in the corner behind our heavily locked door. This ensured only sober spirits would come calling.

To appreciate the full effect of all of this, you'd have to visit Romeo’s basement during a crowded, spooky, midnight Santeria ritual. What you would see was a massive altar comprised of a million candles, statues, icons, pictures, and burning incense, in a room with walls that shimmered from candlelight that cast long deep shadows. The eyes of Christ would follow you wherever you went.

Participants would be dressed in white flowing robes and headdress. Sometimes the Foo-Foo lady would dip her hands into a bowl of alcohol. Then someone would flick a Bic and - whoosh - blue flaming hands. Drums would then drone a hypnotic beat while people chanted in booming voices to the spirits beyond the great void. People would dance wildly and become possessed by the

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spirits entering their bodies. They would speak in tongues and writhe on the floor and look at you with the eyes of the dead.

Throw in a few chickens that were having their heads cut off, and you'd have something that had the absolute effect of scaring the living shit out of you.

To this day, when it comes to Santeria or Foo-Foo ladies, I don't fool around. I give Santeria its full measure of respect, and I never ate any chicken until it started looking like McNuggets.

Then we had Alex Torres, only everybody called him “Mr. Madrid.” Mr. Madrid was a Puerto Rican who was tall, dark, and had a big nose, but was still handsome in an Erik Estrada kind of way. He was the official neighborhood heartthrob.

Mr. Madrid's claim to fame came a few years later during the early 70's. We were hanging out where we always hung out, on the corner of Pinehurst and 180th Street. We spotted a cop coming down the street toward us from a distance and instantly tried to straighten up and not look guilty. Not looking guilty was a full time occupation in my neighborhood. Hanging out was also a full time occupation. The rule was, the second you walked away, that's when everything would happen.

As the cop got closer we could see his uniform was not blue, but the Khaki color that was issued to all the new police recruits in those days. The closer he got the more familiar the nose got. It was Mr. Madrid with a .38 and a badge. It was another moment frozen in time like Willie and Delilah.

The shock of Mr. Madrid as the NYPD took us all by surprise. Mr. Madrid, in addition to his talent for rebuilding big-block

engines in his living room, was also the resident Robin Hood. In his prior civilian life, Mr. Madrid was a one-man cottage industry. He would steal cable TV from what was then a fledgling cable company called HBO and provide it to the working stiffs, at fifty bucks a pop (cash only) with no questions asked. His Sherwood Forest consisted of all the building rooftops where the cable lines converged.

The rooftops were another world unto themselves. They served as recreational areas during the summer, whose destination was simply referred to as "Tar Beach." You could get just as good a tan on Tar Beach as the French Riviera for the price of walking up five


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flights of stairs. Tar Beach was also peppered with a forest of roof antennas that made a great place to hang your 9-volt, ten transistor, tiny, tinny sounding, and cheap plastic radio from - while tanning atop the tar.

And so, for the price of a pizza, Mr. Madrid would hire whoever was available as the "broom guy." The broom guy's job was to hold a big ass broom out the window in the apartment that was getting the "free HBO". This was because looking down from Tar Beach you couldn't tell one window from another. So the preferred method of identification was to stick a broom out the window and yell, "Yo! Over here." Mr. Madrid would then lower the string of cable down to the new "subscriber". There wasn't much work to sticking a broom out the window, which is why the job paid off in pizza. Mr. Madrid made a killing in the cable business before they started to scramble the signal.

Mr. Madrid was also the guy to call if you got your house burglarized. For ten percent of what was stolen, he'd steal it back for you, also with no questions asked.

I was standing on the corner with Mr. Madrid one summer day when he turned to me and asked, "Wanna get high?"

The next instant I found myself sitting in a canary yellow "Yankee American Trainer" at Teterboro airport, with Mr. Madrid in the left seat. Teterboro was a small private airport in New Jersey, about a 15-minute drive from the George Washington Bridge on I-80 West. A Yankee American Trainer was basically a Volkswagen with wings attached to it. The wheels under it were about the size of a doughnut you dunked in coffee.

I was in a state of denial as I sat in that little cockpit with Mr. Madrid. I kept staring at the little yellow painted wings, wondering if they were big enough to sustain flight. The plane felt like an oversized Tonka toy. I kept waiting for some parent to come along and tell us to quit playing.

"Hey - isn't it against the law for lousy Puerto Ricans to fly?" I asked. Mr. Madrid laughed and yelled, "Clear" out the window. He turned a key, and the engine came to life with a roar, and so did my colon.

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This may have been an inopportune moment to ask this question, but I asked it anyway. "How many flying lessons have you had?" I yelled over the noise of the engine.

"Six," he yelled back while staring at the instrument panel. "You got your pilot's license in six lessons?" "Not exactly." I couldn't decide who was the bigger idiot - Mr. Madrid, for

thinking he could fly a Volkswagen, or me, for not owning enough brain cells to bail out of that Tonka toy with Dunkin Doughnut wheels.

Mr. Madrid gunned the engine and we began to taxi. This was a two-seater with complete dual controls on both sides. I looked down at my feet and could see he was steering the plane on the ground by pushing on the tips, or ends, of the rudders. The rudders were at your feet, and looked like gas pedals. The lower halves of these pedals were the rudders. The top halves were the brakes. He would hold either brake with his foot and gun the engine to steer it down the taxiway.

"Get down!" he commanded as we passed a small office building by the side of the taxiway that said, "Fisher Aviation."

"What?""I don't want anybody seeing you until we get to the end of this

runway - I don't exactly have a license." Mr. Madrid paused, looked at me like a lunatic, smiled, and

then added, "Yet."To me, at that particular moment, there was something unholy

about a fellow Puerto Rican flying an airplane - unless he was sitting in the back of the San Juan to NY roach coach red eye.

I was beholding the first Puerto Rican pilot I ever knew. Maybe he was the first Puerto Rican pilot in the world? Well, at least I knew he was the first Puerto Rican pilot from the Heights.

We taxied to the end of the runway and waited for the tower to give us permission to take off. While we waited, my colon kept groaning as if to say, "Get the hell out, or we're both dead."

The next instant found us roaring down the runway. Mr. Madrid had shoved the throttle forward. The plane picked up speed quickly. The decibel level was deafening. We shot down the runway. The faster we went, the more I felt my testicles trying to


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climb up the back of my throat. Everything became a blur. My heart was pounding like the new guy’s in a prison shower. Then I watched the ground disappear beneath us in disbelief. The Puerto Rican Air force had just been born.

Higher and higher we climbed until I could see the George Washington Bridge clearly spanning the Hudson River. Looking south you could see the entire skyline of the island called Manhattan. It was like seeing the city of Oz for the first time.

Mr. Madrid was right. It was magic. I had never been so high in all my life. There was this sense of euphoria and exhilaration as all my senses became overwhelmed with the beauty of flight. I couldn't drink in enough of it. I tried to look everywhere all at once. I felt like Alice walking through the looking glass – Dorothy visiting Oz. I had just stepped into another world. A world of wings and clouds and magic.

Mr. Madrid banked left and headed north, directly over the Hudson River, with Yonkers on our right and the New Jersey Palisades on our left. It was a beautiful clear day. I could almost see as far as West Point up the Hudson. Soon, we were over another massive bridge spanning the Hudson called the Tappan Zee. It looked like an Erector Set from 3,000 feet.

We followed the Tappan Zee, flying directly over the New York State Thruway towards Stewart Airport in Newburgh NY. I knew it was the New York State Thruway because Mr. Madrid kept diving down low enough so he could read the road signs. Then he would pull up quickly. Every time he did that, I tried my best not to move my bowels.

Mr. Madrid knew a greasy spoon in Newburgh where we could get some Puerto Rican delicacies called cuchifritos and pasteles.Not that I could eat anything, but I didn't tell that to Mr. Madrid.

We got to Stewart Airport quickly. Mr. Madrid wanted to land at Stewart because it had one of the longest runways in the world. He said he thought it was about two miles long, and that it was where the commercial pilots practiced touch and go landings in 747's. I didn’t think we’d have any problem landing because our plane was so small we must have looked like a flea landing on an elephant’s ass.

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But Mr. Madrid wound up needing every inch of that elephant’s ass. He said he was trying to "flare" the nose, but the more he flared, the more we floated right along down the runway. He couldn't seem to get the wheels to stay on the ground, so we bounced up and down like many of my rent checks.

We kept on bouncing until I realized we were going to run out of elephant’s ass in a hurry. Mr. Madrid looked panicked as he asked me to help him stop the plane by pushing on the brakes with him. I did so in a New York second. I also looked around for an anchor to throw out but didn’t find one, so I did the next best thing – I threw out his big black flight bag.

“Pendejo coño! – Why did you throw out my fucking flight bag?!” Mr. Madrid yelled, as he struggled with the rudders.

“Isn’t that what they do in the movies?” I asked surprised. “What?”“You know in those war movies - they throw stuff outta the

plane so they can lighten the load and make it across the English Channel?”

“This isn’t the fucking English Channel – it’s fucking Newburgh New York, you asshole!”

I was about to bail out sans parachute when Mr. Madrid grabbed what looked exactly like the emergency brake on a Volkswagen and released it, which immediately brought up the flaps, and finally kept the wheels on the ground. We skidded to a stop, and then turned into the taxiway.

I was so happy to be alive I didn't realize I had kissed Mr. Madrid squarely on the mouth until it was over. After we both finished spitting, we laughed and hugged each other because of the thrill we had just gotten from having cheated death. "Not bad for a couple of lousy Puerto Ricans," Mr. Madrid said. I just smiled back at him.

We parked on the apron and shut her down. Mr. Madrid said we had to hurry. He said we had to cojer a bus into town. We walked quickly, as Mr. Madrid kept looking around. We just managed to hop on the bus outside the gate.

The bus ride into Newburgh was enough time for my stomach to calm down. My colon, however, was another matter. I had a bad


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case of sphincter lock and would be constipated for the next few days.

We found the greasy spoon of a restaurant on Broadway in the city of Newburgh. We sat down, ordering pasteles and cuchifritoswith rice. I asked for a stiff drink, but only got beer. After the meal, we began walking towards the Greyhound Bus Station, also on Broadway, and Mr. Madrid announced we had to take the bus for the return trip back to the Heights.

"Why can't we fly back?" "Well, you lost my flight bag.” “So what? I’ll getcha another.” “Well, that’s not all.” “What?”“Well, I didn't want to make you nervous." "What?""We sort of borrowed the airplane.""Borrowed? What do you mean, borrowed?” “We didn’t exactly have permission to use it.” “No permission? Are you trying to tell me we just stole a

fucking airplane?" "No, no, no. Well – yeah – sort of – maybe a little." “No? How does one ‘sort of borrow’ an airplane?” “Okay – so we technically stole an airplane, but not in our

hearts.”“Tu eres un Pendejo!” I said. We both laughed The bus ride back down the New York State Thruway took a

little over an hour. On the way back I looked out my window from where we sat in the back of the bus, and watched the passing scenery. I knew now how wonderfully different it looked from the sky, thanks to Mr. Madrid and his borrowed airplane.

The Puerto Rican Air force never flew after that day. We found out later, Mr. Madrid had bent the landing gear "just a little." I never forgot the numbers painted on that flying Volkswagen: "November 4-8-8-9 Tango."

When I first saw Mr. Madrid on that fateful day, on Pinehurst Avenue in his Khaki police uniform - I was proud of him. He was a Puerto Rican, a cop, a Robin Hood, a pilot, Commodore of the Puerto Rican Air Force, and my friend.

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His nametag proudly proclaimed to the world, he was hence and forevermore to be known as, "Officer Alex Torres" of the NYPD. His badge number, oddly enough, was 4889. I figured the odds on that were about the same as finding a Puerto Rican pilot in the Heights.

Which brings me to our Nicaraguan Mayor of Pinehurst. His name was Joseph Mayorga. Joe claimed he could trace his ancestors all the way back to a banana tree somewhere in Managua. He lived at 90 Pinehurst Avenue with his mom and sister, who was first runner up in the Miss Managua beauty pageant of 1966.

Joe started digging ditches for Manhattan Cable, along with Mr. Madrid, and wound up being its chief engineer. This was after his short-lived stint on his own public access cable show called “Eres tu un pendejo?” Joe’s show was pulled right after its debut, as soon as the producers figured out what “pendejo” meant.

Instead of arguing over Joe’s right to free speech in Spanish, they taught him to be an engineer. Once he became an engineer he became our Horacio Alger, only he didn’t go west, he went south - all the way to South America. Legend has it he went to Cuba and installed cable TV for Fidel Castro and then cut it off when Fidel stiffed him on the bill. The last I heard of him, he was somewhere in Argentina sipping Piña Coladas and walking in the rain.

Joe was also a neighborhood heartthrob. Tall and good looking, with a Barry White voice, women would give him their phone numbers as soon as he opened his mouth. But what really sent Joe over the top with girls was that he was a drummer.

Every Friday night there was a dance held at the Holy Rood church on 181st Street and Fort Washington Avenue. The dances always ended the same way – in a brawl.

But this was during a time when all disputes were settled with fists (or in my case - by a game of chess).

There were no guns, no knives, and no drive-by shootings, so the brawls were similar to attending a wrestling match, except the folding chairs that were thrown were very real. If you weren’t good at ducking, you risked going home with a nasty headache.

The only time there wasn’t a brawl at Holy Rood was when the Jades played. The Jades was Joe’s band that consisted of a lead, rhythm, and bass guitar with the Mayor of Pinehurst on drums.


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They were called the Jades because they all wore Jade East cologne.

What set the Jades apart from all other bands was the fact that they were good. I mean really good; (Las Vegas show room quality good) and they belonged to us. We were proud of them.

We had high hopes for the Jades making it big when Joey Barbosa, the rhythm guitarist, joined a disco group called “The Andrea True Connection” and cut a one-hit wonder called “More, More, More.” The end of the Jades came when the lead guitarist, Jimmy, decided to attend law school. Legend also has it Jimmy went to Cuba with Joe and is now selling real estate to German tourists in Havana.

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Chapter Four

Heart Attacks

I had my first heart attack while playing stickball when I was in the seventh grade. Stickball was a game you played in the middle of the street with time-outs for traffic. We used a sawed-off broom handle with electrical tape wrapped on the end as a bat. A pink rubber ball called a "Spalding" was what you tried to whack the distance of three sewers. The bases were drawn in chalk. Anybody who roofed a ball had to walk up to Tar Beach and get it.

I was on my second swing when I felt something like a freight train whack me in the chest. I stopped breathing. Everything started spinning. I fell on my knees while trying to suck in air.

"You don't look so good," Willie Mau-Mau said. It was the first time I had ever arrived at Columbia Presbyterian

Hospital in an ambulance. I was rushed into the emergency room and thrown up on a gurney. One nurse wired me up like a Christmas tree while another began drawing blood and a third took my blood pressure. A doctor put a cold stethoscope on my chest and began listening while looking at a screen with blips on it.

After many questions and poking me everywhere, a nurse answered a phone and yelled, "His blood work is normal." They all seem relieved. I was still scared.

The doctor walked over to a drawer and pulled out a small brown paper bag.

"Breathe into this,” he said. "Why?" “’Cause you’re not dying.” “You sure?”


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“Yep.”"What's happening to me?" "It's called a panic attack." “A panic attack?” “Yep.”“What does that mean?” “It means you literally feel like you’re dying by having a heart

attack - but you’re not.” “How do I stop having these heart attacks?” “I dunno.” “What causes them?” “I dunno.” “How long will I have them?” “I dunno.” “What do you know?” “About phony heart attacks?” “Yeah.” “Next to nothing.” I began having about one heart attack every two weeks. My

mom took me to see the Foo-Foo lady for five bucks and a chicken, but neither she nor her magic spells could help me.

I attended the “Dubs” or George Washington High School on Audubon Avenue in 1966. It was stressful place for me because it seemed somebody was always getting stabbed, shot or mugged at the “Dubs.” So I dropped out and went looking for a change.

I saw this cool poster and decided to go see the Air Force recruiter on Fordham Road in the Bronx. Just for a chat, mind you.

He wasn't in, but the Marine Corps recruiter was. He was showing a film called "The Sands of Iwo Jima," with John Wayne, to a bunch of other guys.

"Wanna watch? We got some popcorn." He was the nicest guy I'd ever met. The next thing I knew I was in a parking lot standing on yellow

painted footprints at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Paris Island, South Carolina. There were Drill Instructors swarming around like flies, and they would beat anyone who talked, coughed, or dared look at them. I could see the urine and bloodstains over the yellow footprints from the guys who had been on the previous bus.

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"What have I done?" I thought. Marine Corps Boot Camp in the winter of 1967 was a place of

terror, a place that reminded me about Feena’s lessons on the Holocaust.

She owned Feena's Candy Store on 181st Street and Fort Washington Avenue next to the IND subway entrance. You could take the "A" train there, the same "A" train Count Basie wrote the song about.

Feena was a pudgy old Jewish lady with blue hair whose boobs sagged down to her stomach. She spoke with a thick German accent. She had a rotten disposition and didn't care that you knew she talked to herself - and she talked to herself all the time. She also wore the same blue print dress with stains on it, day in and day out.

Feena's was the place where you went to get a chocolate eggcream and hang out reading comics that you never paid for. Whenever Feena would make an eggcream her arms would flap like Jell-O, and you could see the small numbers tattooed on her arm.

I never gave Feena or her tattoo much thought, until the day I checked a book out of the library. It was called The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. On the book’s cover was a large black swastika painted on a circular white background.

I left the library with it and decided to go to Feena's and get a chocolate eggcream. Feena's had a soda counter with stools that were great to spin on. I walked in with my book and razzed Feena like I always did when getting an eggcream. I placed the book on the counter. I remember Feena looking at the book and then at me.

She smacked me across my face. I fell backwards striking my head on the dirty green tile floor. Feena told me later, when she saw all the blood spilling out of the back of my head that she began to cry. I needed some small stitches to close the wound, and had to stay at Columbia Presbyterian for observation. What I had for Feena as I lay in that bed was beyond anger; it was hate.

Paul came to see me the next day with his Rabbi. His name was Shaloub. I liked Rabbi Shaloub. He was the first gay Rabbi I’d ever met. Rabbi Shaloub brought me a book to read with pictures in it about a place called Treblinka.


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Feena came to see me the next afternoon. She was wearing a clean dress. She brought me a chocolate eggcream and tried her best to smile. She said she was a young girl in Berlin when the Nazi's came. We talked mostly about what makes people hate.

“It’s when you dehumanize a person that you can hurt them.” “So that’s why you whacked me?” “Yes. I forgot about the bell tolling.” “The bell?” “’Any man’s death diminishes me because I am involved in

Mankind; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.’ Most people think Hemingway said that – but it was a poet named John Donne.” Feena said.

As I stood on those yellow footprints in Paris Island, South Carolina, I thought that boot camp was something akin to what Feena had described. It was the same process of dehumanization.

In 1967 – the process of becoming a Marine began with the threat of death from the drill instructors, and with a few savage beatings (to an unlucky few) that were thrown in just to show they meant business. The screams of the drill instructors never ceased. You didn’t know it then, but their screaming, their voices, their names, would stay with you for the rest of your life.

During that first day we were all stripped naked while being shoved and beaten randomly. We were shoved into chairs where our heads were shaved. We were then shoved into a shower, en mass. It’s where I waited for them to turn on the gas – but they never did.

We were given ill-fitting, drab uniforms to wear. Then the drill instructors repeated their threats. And I believed them. I really did.

I got through boot camp because terror was made tangible to me. I wasn’t so much a Marine as I was a robot of the many beatings it took to scare me through boot camp. That was the way the United States Marine Corps made Marines in 1967. I hope it’s not still the same.

I graduated with my class in the winter of 1968 and was shipped off to California. My heart attacks continued, unabated. So I decide to give myself a vacation from the Marine Corps. I hopped a flight back to the Heights.

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I spent the week watching Mike One Hand do a few of his hand popping routines and felt better. The laughter helped me. Laughing always seemed to make things better. Then I realized I was AWOL. I had better do something about the Marine Corps before I was hauled off to the brig and beaten some more.

I went to Columbia Presbyterian where I met a female shrink who was a certified hippie. She was dressed like someone from the cast of "Hair", in jeans and a tie-dyed shirt. She was nine months pregnant.

There was a poster in her office that said, "War is not healthy for children and other living things." She hated the military, and she hated the Viet Nam war. I told her who I was and what the Marines would do to me for being AWOL.

She listened quietly, then wrote a report attesting to the fact I had just tried to jump off the George Washington Bridge and was clinically depressed and suicidal. She had me locked up in one of the wards assuring me, “This is for your own good.” A Navy ambulance picked me up that afternoon.

I was taken to Saint Albans Military hospital in Queens, NY, to be evaluated by a Navy shrink and then await disposition via the brig or discharge. At Saint Albans, I met up with Frankie, a fellow Newyorican I knew from the neighborhood.

Frankie was in some sort of contraption I had never seen before in my life. It was a bed within a huge tubular circular wheel. It looked like the kind you get for your pet hamster to run in, only it took up most of the space in the room. The Navy corpsman said it was a "Stryker Frame." They had Frankie strapped down in it and covered up with blue blankets that said “NAVY” on them.

Frankie was a Marine who had just come back from Vietnam. He had been shot in the spine and was now a quadriplegic. He could only move his head and was lucky he didn't need a machine to breathe for him. The Stryker Frame was so that they could turn Frankie over and prevent bedsores.

One of the only two things I could do for Frankie was get him Dr Pepper sodas, which were hard to get. I didn't have any money, so I'd steal them. The second thing I did was just to sit and listen to him.


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I had just turned 18. Frankie was a year older and therefore much more sage than I. Between the Dr Peppers, we did our best to look on the bright side and while the time away.

I visited Frankie whenever I could. But visiting him would give me a deep sense of shame and guilt. Here I was walking around, while Frankie had gone to Vietnam and had come back like this. God only knew how many Frankie's the war had produced.

But if Frankie was bitter, he didn't express it to me. The only time he got angry was when you mentioned Vietnam. He said it was all bullshit. He always kept repeating that phrase, "it's all bullshit," like he was trying to burn it into my brain.

The dangerous thing about being 18 years old is that you think you know what you're doing, when you really don't know your ass from your elbow.

I once told Frankie this story my dad had once told me about this little bird. The little bird was lazy and had failed to fly south for the winter on time. He began his journey south much too late and soon found himself flying in a blinding snowstorm. Unable to continue, he set down on a cow pasture and was about to freeze to death when he came upon a cow.

He begged the cow for help. The cow responded by promptly moving its bowels atop the little bird and burying it in shit. The little bird was at first aghast at the smell, but soon realized the cow pie he was in was warm and offered protection against the bitter blizzard and certain death.

When the blizzard had passed, the little bird found himself safe and was thankful to the cow. But the little bird was also having trouble getting out of the deep cow pie that had shielded him from the winter storm.

At length, a coyote was passing by. The little bird asked the coyote if he would be so kind as to help him out of the cow pie. The coyote was very nice and pleasant and well mannered. He freed the little bird and then promptly swallowed him whole.

“That’s a nice story Juanito, what does it mean?” Frankie asked.

"Anyone who shits on you isn't necessarily your enemy. Anyone who helps you out of a pile of shit isn't necessarily your friend."

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Frankie died about a week before I was bussed over to Marine Barracks Brooklyn to find out my fate.

I remember thinking on the bus ride over that the hippie shrink at Columbia Presbyterian had shit all over me and ruined my life by getting me into this mess. Because of her report the Navy shrink had diagnosed me with being terminally immature, but I didn’t understand. I was all of eighteen years old. How could I be immature?

When it got to the end of my hearing, a lieutenant who placed some papers in front of me gave me a choice. All would be forgotten and forgiven if I just simply went back to Camp Pendelton.

Or, I could have my discharge. But only if… only if I signed a waiver releasing the military of all legal liability, only if I signed a waiver absolving the Marine Corps of all responsibility for any injuries, mental or physical, I might have sustained. I also had to sign away any claim for a Veterans Administration disability pension.

I sat there and thought for the longest time. I thought about Frankie. I thought about my dad's cow pie story. I thought about the Stryker frame. I thought about being terminally immature. And then it came to me. It was all bullshit. I told the lieutenant I didn't care about being a Marine anymore.

I was ushered into a large cage-like cell where I was kept for two days. A sergeant under arms came and got me on the second day. I was taken to a room that looked like the lobby of a cheap hotel with a long counter. There I was handed a DD-214 and an Honorable Discharge and escorted out the door.

I still think about the hippie shrink who I thought was shitting on me. I also think about Frankie. I think about visiting "The Wall" one day and thanking him personally for what he taught me about real courage.

I also wonder if I’m still terminally immature.


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Chapter Five

Judy Garland Memorial Forest

It was now 1970, and I was still living in the Heights. I did my best to forget about the Marine Corps and my occasional heart attacks. We had finally moved out of the basement and into a railroad flat on the second floor facing 179th Street – which was in reality, the “on ramp” to the George Washington Bridge.

I was happy to finally look out a window without having to stare at someone's shoes for a change. And we could actually see this yellow ball of fire in the sky that brought sunshine through our windows.

They were digging an underground highway directly across the street that would eventually connect the Martha level of the George Washington Bridge to the Cross-Bronx Expressway. They were using sticks of dynamite to blast through the bedrock. Every time before they set off a charge, they'd blow a train whistle you could hear for miles. Then the ground would shake and rumble violently from the explosion.

If you were visiting us for the first time, you might have thought us odd. The whistle had conditioned us like Pavlov's dogs. We'd be sitting on our plastic covered coucho, drinking Café Bustelo. Then the whistle would blow. Everybody would calmly get up, without a break in the conversation, and go to their assigned battle stations.

We would use all four extremities to brace everything we could, like pictures, mirrors, and mom's Santeria statues. This was necessary to prevent the furniture from winding up on the other side of the room.

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New visitors would think we were out of our minds - until the blast went off. Then they either quickly left, or helped hold down the furniture the next time the whistle blew.

I remember the blasting stopped around the time a new music revolution called Disco began. The Bee Gees, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, The Village People and Diana Ross all reigned supreme. Paul became a Disco queen and did a good Diana Ross in a blue, sequined dress in full drag, except for his moustache and the fact that he kept falling off his high heels.

I always tried to keep Paul’s lifestyle at a distance, thinking it might infect me, until a warm sunny July day when Paul asked me if I wanted to visit the Judy Garland Memorial Forest. Paul had this way of rendering my will into mashed potatoes at times.

Paul said the forest was located on Fire Island. We would have to drive out of the city and then get a ride on the pride of the gay navy, otherwise known as the Fire Island Ferry. It would be Paul, Raffy, and me. Raffy grew up in Puerto Rico with Paul and was Paul’s best friend. He was tall and rock star thin, and had a penchant for wearing hip-hugging hot pants and sandals.

My reluctance in going to Fire Island was that anytime I walked between Paul and Raffy, I was sort of like the meat in a gay sandwich. Everybody we’d meet assumed I was gay, in spite of my doing my best John Wayne macho walk. So I packed my most butch-looking clothes, which included a normal bathing suit, as opposed to Paul’s and Raffy’s Speedos that made them look like they were smuggling grapes.

I owned a muscle car in those days. A big-block Chevy that sounded like an earthquake coming down the street. It had a 4-speed Hurst shifter, racing slicks, mag wheels, and headers. Paul and Raffy loved the way the Chevy made the ground shake.

I remember when Raffy first saw my Chevy; I tried explaining to him that I was into drag racing. Raffy thought drag racing was a bunch of guys who ran the 100-yard dash in high heels.

I thought about this trip as one of those short blurbs you read in TV Guide describing a sitcom … “Paul and Raffy take Paul’s unsuspecting straight brother to the Judy Garland Memorial Forest where hijinks ensue among the bushes (repeat).”


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We got to the dock early. The ferry looked like the same one you take to Staten Island. What made it different was the passenger manifest. It was packed to the brim with guys who looked like Paul and Raffy. They were costumed instead of dressed, each one trying to out do the other in the grape smuggling department.

Disco music blared everywhere. There was laughter, smiling, grab assing, and an unencumbered

festive mood. Everywhere you turned, there were guys looking at your ass.

Fire Island looked like a beach paradise. Paul explained we were in on the gay side of Fire Island. I smiled and tied my sweatshirt around my waist, making sure it covered my ass as we walked along the beach.

By that night I had had enough Tequila shooters to make an elephant relax. We went to a disco nightclub where you could wear your bathing suit. The disco had a sound system that could wake the dead. The music pulsed enough to make your testicles vibrate.

I had several offers to dance and was surprised by the fact I was not offended but flattered. I reminded myself that I was a straight, macho, Puerto Rican guy, and macho Puerto Rican guys don’t dance with men. I explained this to Paul and Raffy over the blare of the music and drinks. They laughed like schoolgirls and brought me my eighth Tequila Shooter. Then came the Salsa.

Every human being finds God in his or her own way. Some take a pilgrimage to Mecca. Some journey to the Holy Land and find God at the Wailing Wall. For me, God lives in Salsa music -- for only God could have created something so wonderful.

I prayed at the altar of Salsa music every chance I got. There’s something so soulful and sensual about a Salsa beat played with congas, timbales and blended with horns and enough bass to kill a billion brain cells. Salsa music could cause a corpse to dance.

Add to this a sea of sweating people crowded on a dance floor, under strobe lights - throw in a bunch of Tequila Shooters, and you had something that was as close to the meaning of life as I could get. When I heard the salsa being played so wonderfully, I knew I had to pray.

The only thing I remember about the guy I was dancing with was that he was wearing a black, spiked, leather dog collar with a

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leash attached. I didn’t care, as long as I got to lead and he was house broken.

There’s this old high school joke about "Mogambo." It involves two missionaries in the heart of Africa who are captured by cannibals. The pot-bellied chief of the tribe gives the first a choice between death and Mogambo. He chooses Mogambo whereupon he’s immediately lashed over a tree stump with his pants around his ankles and his ass in the air. There, the poor missionary is sodomized to death by the entire tribe.

The second missionary seeing this is horrified. When the chief offers him his choice between death and Mogambo, he chooses death. Upon hearing his answer the chief turns to his tribe and says, “Okay, death by Mogambo.”

This is the situation I found myself in later that night. I had gone poolside to get some air. As I walked past this guy in a lawn chair he reached over and grabbed my ass. I broke his nose.

Within a few seconds I knew how the missionary felt. I was immediately surrounded by a gay lynch mob. I was about to get Mogamboed when I heard Paul’s voice demanding Que pasa aqui?

It took about 10 minutes for me to be tried and have sentence passed by the grape smuggling lynch mob. Paul had argued like a Supreme Court Justice, that whether I was straight or gay, no one had a right to put a hand on me and violate my person. He said Mr. Lawn Chair’s behavior is what gives license to homophobics to beat up on gays. Lawn chair guy admitted to grabbing me, saying he thought I was someone else.

And so in the name of gay poolside justice, I was released into Paul’s custody without suffering Mogambo. We decided to get out of Dodge and I never did get to see the Judy Garland Memorial Forest.

I had just had the time of my life. That night on the way home I told Paul that in spite of being a gay Puerto Rican uncircumcised Jew, I loved him and would always love him no matter how much of a bad dresser he was. I also told him how proud I was of him for saving my life on Fire Island.

I remember giving him the biggest hug I could muster. I remember feeling his scratchy beard as I kissed him on his cheek. I remember my arm around his shoulder as we rode the ferry


39

together. We smiled and laughed and gave each other high fives and drank straight from the bottle of tequila. I had never felt so happy, so alive, so straight, and so full of life. I’m glad I told him how much I loved him.

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Chapter Six

Yenta Rican

About two weeks after my brush with Mogambo I got lucky. I had picked up my date in midtown. It was a weekend that held promise. She was blonde, she was beautiful, her skirt was short, and her heels were high.

All I had to do was run up to my apartment on the second floor, snatch some clothes, and get out of Gotham. I was going to spend the weekend on Rockaway Beach with Miss High Heels.

My Mom’s name was Eleuteria. Everybody called her "Tina." She had a history of small strokes coupled with high blood pressure. She was from a small town in Puerto Rico called Aquadillas. My favorite thing in the world was to tease her by trying to get her to say "shocking pink" which she pronounced "chocking peenk."

My Mom stood all of five feet tall and was as round as she was funny. She was also the black hole of neighborhood gossip. She may have been Puerto Rican but she was also the biggest Yenta on our block. Nothing, no morsel of gossip escaped her scrutiny. I called her the "Yenta Rican.”

The whole neighborhood knew and loved her. She would perch herself, hanging out the second floor window with a large pillow under her elbows, and hold court with every passerby her subject. She was like a bartender or a shrink, in that people would openly confide anything to her. Many a person went home with a stiff neck, the result of having prolonged sessions with the second floor Yenta Rican.


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It was getting dark as I double-parked, looking up to see my Mom frozen at her bartender/shrink Yenta Rican post. She had this wonderful smile that always made you wonder what mischief she was up to. "Donde vas, niño?" (Where are you going?) She always wanted to know my business, as well as everybody else's.

"No hay por que, Mommie" (don't worry about it), I answered. I wasn't about to let her know I was horny and had a girl in my car.

I went into my room and threw some clothes into a bag as I hurried. She stood outside my room, smiling like the cat that had swallowed the canary. I knew she was up to something, but I dared not ask lest I become prisoner of the Yenta Rican. I bolted down the stairs two steps at a time, and was on the stoop when I yelled back at her, "Bendicion!" (To ask for blessing)

"Que Dios le Bendiga!" she shouted back.No Catholic, Puerto Rican son could ever leave his parents

without asking and receiving a blessing. I had almost gotten away clean, rushing past the stoop and

throwing my bag into the back of the Mustang, when I felt the vortex of the Yenta Rican sucking me back.

"Johnny ... venaca" (come here) Although I was 26, like all moms, to her I was still a child. So I

whined back at her. "Que quieres?"(What do you want?)"I want to tell you sometheeng."She just kept smiling at me like a cute imp. We batted this

back and forth for a while. She kept asking me to come upstairs, and I would whine back

at her, refusing to be held prisoner. I finally won the tug of war by promising her that I would be back on Sunday. I promised I would bring her a present (she'd loved anything pink and tacky). I blew her kiss and then blew out of Manhattan.

* * * Rockaway Beach had an amusement park. They had the

expected games, like those races with water guns that you squirted into a clown's mouth to blow up a balloon and win a prize. There was this booth that caught my eye. You used a small rifle to hit this tiny bull's eye. If you did, you were rewarded with the flash of a camera that would take your Polaroid picture at your moment of triumph. The flash would let all know you were a dead shot.

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I still have the Polaroid picture. It was at the exact moment that the flash went off that a friend tapped me on the shoulder. Thirty years later that moment is still fresh in my mind. His face told me it was serious. The more I looked at him, the more I was filled with dread. He finally spoke. "John ... your mom's had another stroke, a bad one."

The drive to Columbia Presbyterian Hospital was a blur for me. I found her in a room with many machines and tubes going in and out of her. She was on a respirator. The tube going into her mouth was blue and made of plastic. The sound of the respirator doing its work of breathing for her shocked me. Her eyes were closed. I stared frozen in fear, and kept staring in disbelief as I fell into a chair and began to cry softly. I held her hand and thought about what it was she had wanted to tell me. She died on the seventh day. I never did get to know what it was she wanted to tell me. I have never forgiven myself for that. But I have never let a day go by since, without making sure that I tell those people in my life that I love - that I love them.


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Chapter Seven

Pinehurst Bar & Grill

During the 1970's there were no fatal sexually transmitted diseases, and one-night stands were possible if you had a job and could pay for a room at the hot sheet motel. Hot sheet motels were located just the other side of the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey on Route 4. They offered the unique service of renting you rooms by the hour. Towels were extra, so if you were smart you brought your own.

I had done everything I could up to this point, to live a stress free life. I had conquered my heart attacks by breathing into a paper bag. If that didn’t work then I would run up and down 5 flights of stairs. If I wasn’t dead by the time I got to the fifth floor, I’d figure it was okay.

I had held every manner of job, from being a midnight milkman delivery guy, to fixing commercial kitchen equipment. I had gone back to night school and was the proud holder of a New York State High School Equivalency Diploma and was attending Bronx Community College. I thought I was hot shit.

My mind was preoccupied with what preoccupies all young men of any decade. Sex. I had long since lost my virginity to Luanna. She was the neighborhood free spirit, who no one admitted to having sex with. I thought of myself as this suave, sophisticated guy who drove a hot rod Chevy and drank a fine vintage wine called "Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill."

I had learned to play three chords on a guitar, which gave me license to make an ass out of myself in front of strangers. I had gone to see the Foo-Foo lady to get a cheap spell for getting a job.

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My last one had lasted 30 minutes at “Jack in the Box” on Gunhill Road. After having boasted of being an expert cook, I set fire to the French fryer and was thrown out on my ass, like Paul and his bovine lunchbox.

The Foo-Foo lady took a lock of my hair and some toenail clippings, put them in a brass bowl, poured lighter fluid on them, and set them ablaze. She then predicted my next job would pay well and would be stress free. One out of two wasn't a bad prediction for two bucks.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) lists some of the most dangerous jobs in America. These jobs are Timber Cutters, North Atlantic Fisherman, Bush Pilots, Coal Miners, Structural Steel Workers, Rap Singers, and anybody who works for Martha Stewart. I was about to enter a profession so dangerous that the BLS won’t keep stats on it. So dangerous that not many of us live to tell the tale. I became a driving instructor in the middle of the island of Manhattan.

The job paid well, like the Foo-Foo lady had predicted. But she was way off on the stress meter when it came to teaching people to drive. I don't think there were enough Quaaludes in the world to keep you calm while trying to show a student where the gas pedal was as the cross-town bus barreled down on your ass.

I had become a driving instructor by answering a want ad in the NY Daily News under "Seeking Adventure?" I took a test at the Department of Motor Vehicles that only required you to prove you were breathing. My training consisted of making sure the brake pedal on my side worked. You weren't allowed to wear a helmet as it made hearing car horns blaring at you difficult. Taking any kind of drugs that slowed your reflexes could prove fatal. But Tequila shooters at the end of a harrowing day seemed to help my central nervous system apologize to my colon for all the trouble it had caused it.

My students were a galaxy of whackaloons and I loved them all. Most of my students were the products of abuse and therefore very skittish. Someone in their family, like Uncle Raul, with the runny eye, or a close (former) best friend, had made the mistake of trying to teach them to drive.


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People who love you and try to teach you to drive often wind up using endearing phrases like: "What are you, fucking blind?! - What are you, fucking stupid?!" and the ever popular, "Kiss my fucking ass, you moron!" Then comes the inevitable slamming of car doors, tears, terminal silence, marriage counseling, and divorce lawyers.

I was paid for never raising my voice, never using any of the endearing phrases above, and never losing my temper. I always wore the kind of smile usually found on corpse during a wake. Only my smile always made me look like this corpse urgently needed a bowel movement - which I probably did after every lesson.

Each lesson lasted 45 minutes and cost $12.00, which was a lot of money in those days. I could book as many as twelve lessons a day, seven days a week. I was always careful about my hygiene and appearance, which is a lot more than I can say for some of my students.

Most of my students were females, which I was grateful for. Male students tended to be difficult. They would hold the steering wheel with the Vulcan Death Grip, and had no compunction about farting in the car.

Women, on the other hand, smelled a lot better and were more pliable. They also kept their intestinal gases to themselves. They too would use the Vulcan Death Grip, but I could usually pry their white knuckled hands off the steering wheel.

When it came to a new student, I took nothing for granted. I treated them all as if Scotty had just beamed them down into the driver's seat. The first lesson always consisted of showing my pupil where the brake was. I was big on braking. Then I would point to the gas pedal and ask them not to stomp down on it at anytime.

No one who ever put a car into gear for the first time can be calm about it. The first time out, men tended to gorilla the car. The only way to get them to loosen up was to use the analogy of a woman's breast. When they grabbed the wheel with the Vulcan Death Grip, I would ask them, "Is that how you would hold a woman's breast while making love to her?" If they said "yes" then I’d ask them, "How would you like someone to hold your testicles like that?" Then they'd loosen up.

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Analogies didn’t work with women. Begging did, as in, “I’m begging you, drive the car or polish your nails – but don’t do both at the same time.”

My next task would be to get my student's eyes off the hood of the car. Inevitably, some well-meaning idiot had taught them that lining up the hood ornament with the white line in the middle of the road was a good idea. I would also have to break them of the habit of looking down to search for the brake pedal - which was a big no-no in the middle of Broadway.

After their first lesson the conversation usually went like this: "How did I do?" "Wait a minute; let me get this tree branch out of my face."

Then there would be lots of fumbling as I threw the branch into the back seat. "You did great!"

"Do you think I can go for my road test tomorrow?" "Well, you can't keep running red lights and thinking you can

make up for it by stopping twice at the next one. I would take a few more lessons if I were you."

"How many lessons do you think I need?" "Do you play the piano?" "Nope."“Can you type?” “Nope.”“Well, what do you do for a living?” “I’m a car thief remember? I work with your cousin Junior.” “Oh yeah, you’re the car thief that can’t drive.” “Yeah, it’s embarrassing as hell.” “Okay, how long would it take you to teach me to steal cars?” I

asked. “It depends on how fast a learner you are.” “Well then, it’s the same thing with teaching you to drive.” “Hey, if you help me pass my road test next week I’ll get you a

great deal on a Corvette.” “Where did you get it?” “I stole it from your cousin Junior.” “There is no honor among thieves is there? “Nope.”


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Teaching people to drive in New York City taught me some little things most people don't learn about first hand. For instance, I can tell you if you ever drive a car off a pier and into the Hudson River - don't panic.

Don't let the water fill the car before trying to get out. Letting the car fill up with water is a mistake. The car will float long enough for you to climb out the window if you don't panic.

Before the car sinks, walk on the roof over to the driver's side where your student is sitting in shock, and say something encouraging like, "Gee, that was real good, but you made that turn too fast and didn't see the pier in time … and oh, your braking was delayed too."

Then help the student out of the car, wait for the harbor patrol, and make sure you get a Tetanus shot at the hospital.

The next lesson involves Miranda warnings. "Miranda Vs Arizona 1966" says you've got to be read your rights before trying to babble an explanation to the police.

"Hey, he's just my driving student, why are you cuffing me?" "He just robbed that bank." "Hey, how-did-I-know-he-was-gonna-rob-a-bank? He just

booked a double lesson and said he needed to brush up to pass his road test."

"So let me get this straight; this guy hires you for a driving lesson, then double parks outside the bank, huh?"

"Yeah, he said he needed to make a withdrawal, and could I wait a minute - hey, it's his nickel, what do I care?"

"Didn't the alarm, the screams, and the gunfire tell you something?"

“Hey, I’m from Washington Heights – those are normal sounds to me.”

All of my students had one goal in mind - to pass the road test. The fact that they couldn't drive had nothing to do with getting a driver's license.

Now, I don't know what the National Safety Council statistics are on how many deaths have been caused while parking a car. I know it’s got to be staggering, as New York State won't give you a license unless you can parallel park as part of the road test. But, backing up can get you into more trouble than going forward. For

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instance, backing up and knocking over fire hydrants and little kids on tricycles would be an automatic failure.

So, much of my time was spent teaching students how to park. One of the first lessons I learned about this was - never, ever standbehind a car while a student is parking and yell something like, "C'mon back, you got plenty of room." The aftermath of that lesson was another ambulance ride to Columbia Presbyterian.

I had a student who was a great driver and could park a car on a dime, but could never pass the road test. He had tried a dozen times before. This was because anybody in a uniform would panic him. This was in spite of me telling him the driving examiner couldn't deport him back to Bolivia on a tramp steamer.

The next time he showed up for his lesson, I was wearing Mr. Madrid's uniform that I had “borrowed.” After a short chase, I calmed him down enough to get him off the fire escape he had shimmied up.

The uniform was too much for him, so I took it off and got a cheap plastic mask of Richard Nixon instead. It was from a recent Halloween party.

"If you can drive with Tricky Dick in the car, you can do anything." I spent the next 90 minutes throttling him as he drove, while repeatedly saying, "I am not a crook." He passed his road test the next day.

There's a saying in Spanish - "No hay malo que por bueno no venga" which loosely translated in English is analogous to, "When the Lord slams a door, He usually opens a window." There was anup side to my job. I really got to like most of my students and knew I was, on some level, changing their lives.

And there were women. Lots and lots of women. But I wasn't paying attention.

I didn't realize how significant that other benefit was, until one night at the Pinehurst Bar.

The Pinehurst Bar & Grill on 181st Street was the watering hole in the neighborhood, where everybody actually knew your name. Whatever any of us did on Friday and Saturday night, we’d always show up at the Pinehurst at the end of the evening and stay until dawn.


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The Pinehurst was a dim, hole-in-the-wall of a bar. It was like a long shoebox, with a mirrored bar on one side and small Formica booths on the other. The floor always needed sweeping, and you had to keep your feet on the barstool or risk going home with sticky soles. In the corner was an old, mechanical bowling shuffleboard game that you played with a heavy metal puck that you slid down the table on sawdust.

In another corner was a neon Wurlitzer jukebox that everybody poured quarters into. It played everything from Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" to the song we all sang about 2 a.m. when we were all pretty well greased - Frank Sinatra's "New York, New York."

Behind the bar was a guy we called Benny the Roach. Benny was short, thin, affable, and always dressed like Archie Bunker in a white shirt and dark pants. He dispensed beer from the tap for 25 cents a glass. He also did a small side business selling lines of cocaine in the bathrooms.

We had permanent, nocturnal fixtures you'd always find after midnight perched on their barstools. They were people like old lady Agnes and her dog. She had this fox terrier that would sit on her lap and swill beer. And there was Charlie Bones, who weighed 90 pounds, and was 91 years old. Charlie was as harmless as he was horny. He liked taking out his teeth and setting them on the bar. While he was busy smacking his gums at the girls, we'd hide his teeth.

It was during one of our beer induced, deep philosophical discussions at the Pinehurst Bar and Grill that I had my epiphany about where to find a date.

Mike One Hand was a philosophy major at CUNY and had posed a very profound question to a group of us:

"What if a guy came in here with a million dollars in unmarked bills, in a suitcase, and offered it to you for giving him a blowjob in the bathroom, and no one would ever know? Would you blow him?” That was a heavy one. We pondered it for a while and began chuckling.

No one wanted to admit it, but we all knew that for a million bucks in unmarked bills in a suitcase, we'd give blow jobs to farm animals on the stage at Radio City Music Hall during the Christmas

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pageant. Willie Mau-Mau wanted to know if he would get any extra for swallowing. We fell over laughing. This from a guy who tried to fuck a dog.

All conversations young men have inevitably get around to women. Specifically, how to meet them. We were no different.

After dismissing Mike One Hand's profound million-dollar blowjob question, the topic came around to how difficult it was meeting "good" women. By that they meant one night stands.

Everybody had at least one horror story about spending time, trouble, and money on girls that were good prospects for a one night stand - only to find himself going home with five finger Mary (for those Presbyterians reading this, "five finger Mary" is a euphemism for masturbation).

"Become a driving instructor,” I said. For some reason I had gotten their immediate attention. So I

began to editorialize. "Most of my students are women. Most of them come to me because some man in their life has abused them behind the wheel of car. Most of them are young. Most of them are not married.” I paused for a gulp of my beer. “There's nothing as close and as intimate as sharing the front seat of a car with a woman who needs your help. After a while, they start to tell you things like you're either their shrink or bartender, and you're getting paid for it, too."

I almost sobered everybody up. I had never bothered to pay much attention to my students in

"that way". To me they were my job. But now, the more I mused about it, the clearer it came into focus. I had been sitting on the motherload of dateable women all this time and didn't know it.

What I mean is, I had this strict policy that I had never ever violated. My policy still is that I never go anywhere I’m not invited.

If I found myself in the back seat of a car steaming up the windows, and my date moaned, "Stop," I actually stopped.

She'd ask, "Why did you stop?" "Because you said so.” "Yeah, but I didn’t really want you to stop." "I don’t get it." "Sometimes when a girl says ‘stop’ she really wants you to

keep going."


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"So when can you tell the difference between a stop and a stop?"

"When she tells you to stop." “Like when you just said stop?” “Yes, but my stop was more a passion filled ‘oh please don’t

stop’ and not a real honest to goodness ‘hey knock it off’ stop.’”“So can we stop?” “Why?” “You’re making me dizzy.” Having had my fill of one-night stands I had learned something.

I was beginning to realize that there had to be more to sex than just sex. There was a missing ingredient to this equation. A missing ingredient that went beyond sex yet avoided marriage. Could that missing ingredient be love? And if this missing ingredient was love, then could love in and of itself, conquer the dreaded phase of new car smell?

I thought of all new romantic relationships as "new car smell". When you buy a new car it has that "new" smell that you wish would last forever but never does.

I always felt that when you met somebody for the first time, what you were really attracted to was their new car smell. You could test drive all the cars you wanted, but sooner or later, the new smell always wore off. And then what were you left with? An old car with squeaky brakes, a faded paint job, and a bald tire. Or maybe she could (over time) be magically transformed into a beautiful classic car (like a 1967 GTO) with squeaky brakes, a faded paint job, and a bald tire.

For instance - could new car smell withstand the sight of a pimple the size of an éclair on your lover’s ass? Could new car smell overcome your lover not closing the bathroom door and pissing loud enough so that it sounded like Niagara Falls? Or worst of all - could new car smell overcome female feminine flatulence? Is all fair in love and pheromones?

I wanted to be somewhere between the end of new car smell and female feminine flatulence. I knew that was like walking the razor's edge. But I was determined to find my classic beauty even if she did have squeaky brakes, a faded paint job, and a bald tire.

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That night while discussing the philosophy of giving a guy a blowjob for a million bucks, I thought about what I had said about my students.

Most of them were females and unattached. Then I began to see a pattern with most of them I hadn't noticed before until now.

Most would show up to their first lesson in comfortable clothes and no make up. Things like jeans, sneakers, shorts, and stuff like that. Now it dawned on me that by their third lesson they were wearing make up and skirts and would have their hair done.

The light went on over my head. How could I have been so blind? I had found uterus Utopia and didn't know it until that moment.

Trust is the only glue that binds when teaching someone to drive. From trust is born many things. One of them is enough courage to ask a pretty girl politely out for a cup of coffee.

I got to go out on many dates. And from there, I found myself the student and not the teacher.

Vera's eyes were as black as her skin. She held a doctorate from Columbia University in Philosophy. I traded her lessons in driving for lessons in Spinoza. She taught me Plato's parable of the cave, and I taught her parallel parking. She also taught me about marshmallow kisses and foreplay. I learned about patience and timing, and how important the spoken word is when making love. Vera was always fond of saying, "The mind is like a parachute; it has to open to function properly.” Because of Vera I can take almost every book ever written about love, romance, and sex, and reduce it to one simple fact. Cherish what you have – even if it has squeaky brakes, a faded paint job and a bald tire.

Be careful of things you ask for. In every ordinary guy’s life "she" exists. No matter how much they deny it, "she" is always there. "She" is the one girl who lives on a pedestal in the sanctum sanctorum of his mind. She's the "it" girl, as real to him as the ticket he buys, hoping to win the Lottery.

Her name was Mae, like Mae West. And she was so out of my league I couldn’t afford the bus fare to get anywhere near her ballpark.

The school where I taught was a storefront on Broadway, sandwiched in between a pizza parlor and an RKO movie theatre on


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83rd Street. The second she walked into the store front, I heard the angels sing.

What struck me about her were her eyes. I had never seen a color blue like that. They were the same color of blue you see in a Windex bottle. She was a professional model who commanded as much attention as she did money for her modeling.

"I have a shoot that involves driving. I have a license but need to brush up a bit," she announced.

I walked up to her much the same way a little leaguer would walk up to Babe Ruth to ask for an autograph.

"How can I help you?" "I just told you, I need a few lessons, especially on the

highway." "Would you like a driver's manual so you can read up and

maybe save on the lessons?" "I graduated from Harvard; I don't need a driver’s manual." Her

tone was like ice. "Okay, let’s go." "Now?""Yep."We got into the blue Chevy Nova that was equipped with a

brake on my side. It was just a long iron rod that ran under the dashboard and was bolted to the driver's brake, allowing me to stop the car anytime I wanted.

She started the car, dropped it into gear, and swung out without looking. I had to jam both my feet on my brake to keep us from being crushed by the city bus that was passing. She glared at me.

"Look over your shoulder when you're pulling out - okay?" She harrumphed and jammed her foot on the accelerator, and

we took off on Broadway, burning rubber. I spent the next 90 minutes trying to stay alive. She was the

worst driver, having no control of the car whatsoever. She didn’t listen to a word I said during the lesson. I conjectured this was because her looks had given her license to treat people like shit for most of her life. She was a bully – beautiful, but still a bully. And I hated bullies.

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We pulled up in front of the school, and I was pitched forward, hitting my head slightly on the dashboard as she jammed on the brakes for the umpteenth time.

"How did I do, Mr. Teacher?” I had had it with her snotty demeaning attitude. “Were you

born a bitch, or do you work at it?” I asked very calmly. "Excuse me?" "You heard me." "How dare you talk to me like that." "Lady, you may have five pounds of education, but you haven’t

got an ounce of common sense.” “What the hell are you talking about?” “You know that cab driver you cut off?” “What about that idiot?” “Do you remember what you called him?” “No, I was angry at the time.” “You called him a spic.” “Oh, I’m sorry. Are you Spanish?” “Yes, and on behalf all the spics in New York City, I accept

your apology.” “Are you really Spanish?” “I’m Puerto Rican.” “Some of my best friends are Spanish.” “Like your maid?” “Okay, I deserve that.” “Now, do me a favor and get your ass outta my car.” “You can’t order me around like that. I’ll have your job.” “Bite me!” “What?”“You heard me – bite me!” “Weasel.”“Weasel? That’s your best shot? That’s what they taught you

at Harvard?” “What would a spic like you know about Harvard?” I knew I had grown up watching too many cartoons on TV,

because of the way I immediately reacted to Mae’s insult. I grabbed her face in both my hands, drew her into me, and planted a big, wet, noisy, Bugs Bunny-Elmer Fudd, cartoon kiss on her lips.


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She immediately slapped my face. I looked at her and said, “Now you can tell people you’ve been

kissed by a spic.” Her eyebrows shot up and her lips became a perfect circle. She

quickly stuck up the middle finger on her right hand and waved it in front of my nose. I felt the car door slam, then watched her as she walked away.

I was feeling pretty smug, until I realized she hadn't paid me. Weeks passed and I had put her out of my mind. I was

therefore shocked to see her when she walked into the school one afternoon. She had this look of determination on her face like she'd better say what she needed to say before she changed her mind. She stuck out a hand with money in it.

"Here. I forgot to pay you." "Wanna receipt?" "No, but I would like to talk to you." "Don't worry about it, Harvard." The truth is, if Mae had been a man, I probably would have

punched him out, but she was so damn beautiful that it was next to impossible to stay angry with her. I attribute this to my belief that when any man is confronted with a beautiful, penitent woman staring him in the face, he loses all manner of judgment.

"Look." Her head was down and all arrogance had left her voice. “I wanted to apologize for the way I treated you.” I could see the beginning of a tears forming in her eyes. “I swear to you, I’m not a bigot, and I am ashamed of myself.”

"No shit?" I said. "Is that all they teach you at Bronx Community College?” We both burst out laughing, which served to break the tension. "So, how's your shoot going? Did you get to drive?" "No, that's why I came to you with an olive branch to ask if you

could help me." "Are you gonna be good and try not to kill us both?" She laughed. It was melodic. I gave myself a reality check. She was a beautiful brainiac

from Harvard. I was still struggling to find a way to pay for my books at Bronx Community College. I stood all of five foot, six. She looked about five feet, ten and towered over me with those

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heels she had on. She was a model, and I was … well … wait a minute here. I mean I wasn't Clark Gable, but I was cute in this Puerto Rican, Richard Dryfuss kind of way.

We became friends after that. I spent the next month teaching Mae the finer points of driving. She got so good I was able to study while she drove. The day finally came when she no longer needed my services. It had been fun.

I didn't see her for several more weeks until she showed up at the school early one evening.

"Where's your Corvette?" I asked with a smile. "Huh?" "Don't girls like you always drive a red Corvette with the top

down?" Her answer took me by surprise. "Bite me!" she said with a dazzling smile. "Where?"We laughed at each other. She said, “I wanted to ask you a personal question.” “Okay, go ahead – shoot.” “If you’re a Puerto Rican, how come you have such red hair?” I thought about her question for a moment and said, “Well, in

my family, we’ve come up with three distinct possibilities. The first one is that my real father was the milk man. The second one is that my father really is Bob Barker, and the third one is that Puerto Ricans come in all colors and flavors, including those of us with red hair.”

She appeared to think about my answer for a minute, and then said, "I came here to ask if you wanted to have dinner with me?"

I felt like Babe Ruth had just invited me into the dugout. "Mae, forgive me, but I don't understand. What would you

want with a guy like me?” "Would you believe me if I told you the only men that pay

attention to me are construction workers?" "No.""Well, it's true, and besides, handsome men bore me." "Gee, thanks for the compliment." "No, I didn't mean it that way. You're cute. A lot of girls

prefer cute to handsome."


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I feigned a look that told her I was about to cry. It made her giggle.

"Okay, tell you what, you take off those heels, and I'll buy you some pizza."

“I don’t need to take off the heels.” “How come?” “Do you know what the Irish say about tall women?” “No, what?” “It’s hard to climb a fallen tree.” The new car smell was overwhelming. And yes, I’m here to

testify; sometimes-ordinary guys do get to shag a few fly balls with the great Bambino.

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Chapter Eight

Dear Lenore

“Got any Kewpie dolls today, Lenore?” “I couldn’t find any. I think you have to be a baby boomer to

even know what a Kewpie doll is.” “Did you try E-Bay?” She didn’t answer. Instead she let the

silence hang in the air. “Besides, my mind is mush today.” “Why?” “My house looks like a bomb went off in it. I got these two

guys in my house, tearing up the floors to install new ones. These guys are from Bubba land.”

“Bubba land?” “They both got Mullet haircuts and wear baseball caps. One

wears a T-shirt that says, ‘I’d rather have my sister work in a whore house than ride a rice rocket,’ and the other wears a T –shirt that says, ‘Pull My Finger.’”

“And they bother you?” “Nope – they’re okay guys. It’s their boom box. They need

ass-thumping bass to help them work, which I understand. So they play party hits all day long.”

“And?” “They keep playing, ‘It’s Raining Men - Hallelujah.’” “And?” “And I can’t get that fucking tune outta of my head.” “What about another tune?” “Like what?” “It’s Small World After All.” We laughed and then let the

silence hang in the air again.


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“My son got a tattoo.” I blurted out. “Which one?” “My middle son – the one who would have been Riff.” “What kind of tattoo did he get?” “It’s a big ass tattoo on his arm.” I grabbed my right shoulder

to indicate where his tattoo was. “It’s two proudly waving flags crossed over each other.” I crossed two fingers like scissors. “He’s got the Puerto Rican and the Irish flag. In the background he’s got a rising sun with clouds and rays of sunshine shooting through the horizon.” Another pause while we looked at each other. “Hey, he’s eighteen, and that’s the kind of shit you do when you’re eighteen.”

“Sounds like you’re defending him.” “I’m not. I just thought the tattoo was his way of solving an

identity crisis.” “You ever have trouble with your identity?” “Me? No – well – yeah – maybe. Yeah, I do.” “Like?” “When I tell people I’m Puerto Rican, I’m never believed.

They stare at me and always say the same thing.” “What?”“They always comment on the whiteness of my skin, and they

always ask me to say something in Spanish. They never get how racially insulting that is.”

“Why?” “Why what?” “Why is that insulting?” “Because it tells me they suffer from a form of racial ignorance

that I call the Ricky Ricardo Syndrome.” “The what?” “Ricky Ricardo syndrome. That’s when a person you meet for

the first time has a preconceived notion that all Latinos look and sound like Ricky Ricardo. Look, Lenore, a Latino with white skin and red hair is something they’ve never seen, like a two-headed cow at a freak show. They almost always make the same comment.”

“What’s that?” “They’ll say, ‘but you don’t look Puerto Rican.’”

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“How do you respond to that?” “I always ask, ‘Really? What’s a Puerto Rican look like?’

Then I watch as they struggle for an answer that won’t sound racially offensive. The bright ones realize they’ve just made a comment analogous to saying all black people like fried chicken and watermelon.”

“So it’s all about being stereotyped?” “Abso-fuckin-lutely. Put Ricky Ricardo in a hospital setting

and they’ll automatically hand him a mop instead of a stethoscope. Put me in that same hospital …”

“And they’ll hand you a stethoscope?” “Naw, they probably hand me a mop too.” “Why?” “I’m not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer.” “You sound confused, Juan?” “I am. Maybe I should get a tattoo of the Puerto Rican flag on

my forehead?” “Would that solve anything?” “No wait - I should get a giant tattoo of the Puerto Rican flag

on my ass?” “Why?” “This way when they say ‘you don’t look Puerto Rican’ I can

drop my pants and show them my pride and my ass at the same time.”

Lenore tied not to laugh again and let one of those long silences I hated build. I knew Lenore wouldn’t speak until I said something – so I did.

“Look, fugetaboutit. I can’t think about that right now. I gotta go and pass some change.”

“Change?” “Yeah – I got this coffee can that I use for spare change.

Whenever I get home I put the spare change I have in my pockets into it. It’s kind of like a piggy bank.”

“Yeah, so?” “Well, yesterday I was standing over the sink with my usual

handful of pills - aspirin, and vitamins and that fucking Prozac. But I also had some spare change in my hand.”

“Don’t tell me.”


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“Yeah, I swallowed the change and stuck the pills in the coffee can. Christ, Talk about a brain fart.”

“Oh dear.” “Yeah – no shit – or should I say no change? Anyway, I called

my Doc who told me not to worry. He said that my twenty two cents would eventually pass.”

“Is that what you swallowed? “Yeah, two dimes and two pennies.” “So what are you gonna do? Just wait?” “Yeah, I’m waiting ‘til I drive home. I’ll need exact change for

the toll. Only this time I know exactly where I’m going to get it.” “And where is that?” “From my red headed Puerto Rican ass.”

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Chapter Nine

The Federal Bureau of Prisons

A year after I met Mae, I found myself standing in the lobby of the Federal Building at 26 Federal Plaza. I was still shagging fly balls with her. She was picking up some forms for a friend from the Immigration and Naturalization Service at the Federal Building. She would be standing on line for a while. I told her I'd meet her in the lobby and went for walk.

Out of boredom I wandered into the Federal Job Information Center on the second floor. It was nothing more than a big room with bulletin boards for walls. Every wall had a different job announcement. I spied one that asked, "Seeking Adventure?"

"Hmmm." It was a job announcement urgently looking for anybody who

could speak Spanish and could "work well with others." When I read the fine print I noted it was for the "United States

Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons.""Prison?" I said aloud to no one. "Yes." I hadn't noticed there was a guy standing behind me.

He was tall and had a Snidely Whiplash handlebar moustache. "Hi, my name is Lieutenant Miller. I'm with the United States

Bureau of Prisons; we just call it ‘BOP’ for short. Do you speak Spanish?"

I noticed Lieutenant Miller wasn't wearing a uniform of any description. He was wearing gray pants, black spit-shined shoes, white shirt, black tie, and a blue blazer, with what looked like two long-neck geese having sex on his jacket pocket.

"Si yo puedo hablar Espanol, soy Puerto Ricaño."


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Miller put his arm around me and smiled. “How are you at getting along with people?” "I'm a driving instructor in Manhattan, and I'm still alive." Miller smiled more broadly, showing me his pearly whites.

"How do you feel about a little adventure?" He was one of the nicest guys I'd ever met.

* * * Being young allowed my automatic reflexes enough time to

duck the cup of urine that had just been flung at me from a cell in the segregation unit at the Federal Correctional Institution, in Danbury, Connecticut.

It was now the summer of 1977. I was handed a position description and a form "SF-50" my first day at FCI Danbury, which said I was a GS 6 Correctional Officer with the BOP.

Correctional Officers were called “CO’s” or “Hacks”. New Hacks were not sent to the Correctional Academy for at least six months. This was because it costs money to send you to the Academy. To be sent meant they were making an investment in you. Those first six months were for "on the job training." On the job training was a euphemism for "If you can handle this shit for six months - the job is yours."

Correctional Officers don't like being called or referred to as "guards" much the same way Flight Attendants don't like to be called "Stewardesses."

FCI Danbury had once been a 300-acre pig farm. Its grounds were extensive and included some nice lakefront property equipped with an old Navy generator that the staff could use to plug radios and lights into when picnicking.

The prison itself looked like something out of a James Cagney movie - massive and rectangular in shape, with a large courtyard in the middle that included a running track. The prison was painted a drab, pale yellow that made it look jaundiced. Most of the units were like military barracks, having bunk beds stacked around in a neat fashion. There could be as many as 100 inmates per unit. The prison was encased behind walls and had the cliché gun towers, giving a sharpshooter firing range over everything. Tall light poles gave it an ethereal effect at night. There was a dirt road

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surrounding the prison that was patrolled by an armed Correctional Officer, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

A long driveway snaked up a hill until it came to a set of parking lots. From the parking lots, we had to walk to the front entrance that looked like a steel and glass bunker. As soon as I stepped through the front door, I remembered the sign that led into Dante’s inferno: "Abandon hope, all ye who enter here."

The first thing seen upon entering the lobby was the control room and what was called a "Sallyport." A Sallyport was a set of bulletproof, Plexiglass doors that led into the prison proper. It was not possible to open both doors at the same time. This was to prevent anyone from rushing through two simultaneously opened doors and escaping.

The control room officer would check everyone's identification before opening any door. There was a standing order that allowed the control room officer to refuse anyone (including God) entrance into the Sallyport, if she felt they were under any kind of duress whatsoever. So I always tried to smile and look happy after finishing a shift.

After checking ID, the control room officer would open one door and allow the Sallyport to fill with people. Then she closed that door and carefully examined everyone in the Sallyport like fish in a tank. When she was satisfied, she'd open the second door.

The control room is the nerve center of any prison. Like a missile silo, two officers always manned it. The control room was also encased in bulletproof Plexiglass. There were slots and drawers through the glass where an officer could pick up anything from tear gas to post orders. It contained all the switches and electronic equipment that opened doors and kept the prison running. It also contained the prison armory, where everything - from machine guns to body bags - was kept.

On my first day of orientation, they took a Polaroid picture of me before entering.

"What's that for?" I asked. "So you can get out," said the officer in the control room. "What happens if you lose it?" "You'll never leave here." “Well that sucks.”


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There were two other new guys with me as we walked through the Sallyport. Jimmy Bono and Louie Vega. Jimmy was a former used car salesman, so I figured he'd fit right in and do well in prison. Louie was another Puerto Rican from NYC who had about thirty kids in over twelve marriages. He needed to work at this prison so a judge wouldn't throw him in another one for not paying child support. We spent that morning watching video-training films on three-quarter inch tape.

One of the first things we learned about prison was that all staff members, regardless of their job assignments, were, first, part of the correctional staff, in case of riot. From the prison chaplain to the ward secretary - if the shit hit the fan, everybody was expected to pick up a gun and stand a watch.

We were told that the purpose of our jobs was to prevent inmate escapes, and to maintain "order" in the prison.

The next thing we had to do was sign legal forms covering everything from tax deductions to who was our next of kin.

"Jimmy, what's this paper for?” I whispered. "It's the ‘fuck you' form." "What?"“It says that you understand if you're taken hostage, the Bureau

of Prisons will not negotiate for your life in exchange for opening the doors.”

“Oh.”All inmates at Danbury FCI wore khaki uniforms much like the

one I had first seen on Mr. Madrid. The staff members who worked in maintenance wore gray uniforms. Correctional Officers wore a "civilian" uniform that made us look like we were working at a private boarding school. Blue blazers, and gray pants.

We called the inmates "crooks.” After a week of orientation, we had to go see the warden so he could officially welcome us into the fold. Going to see the warden evoked the same feelings as going to see the principal after throwing a cherry bomb into a toilet in the boy’s room.

"Remember, men," we stood at attention as the warden spoke, "people go to jail as punishment, not for punishment. You got that?"

"Yes sir."

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"Good. Dismissed and good luck." "Walking the yard" meant patrolling the yard when it was thick

with crooks, like you were Daniel in the lions’ den. New officers were the same as new inmates. We were all

considered "new fish." There’s no easy way to walk the yard for the first time. The best advice I got was from a lifer who told me to "pucker up your ass and walk a straight line." I was so puckered up it would have taken a tractor to pull a needle out of my ass.

The other thing we had to learn fast was the “count.” Every swinging dick in prison is physically counted at least once during the day, and three times each on the two remaining tours.

In the larger units, the count could be taken in two ways, by having the inmates freeze in place wherever they are standing, or by having them line up by their bunks. In cellblock units, all we had to do was count each inmate in his individual cell. The only thing we could not do when it came to the count - was come up with the wrong number.

The officer in “Receiving and Discharge” (called R&D) was responsible for keeping a census of every inmate on every unit at all times, called a “running count.” That number could change from hour to hour depending on who went where. If the running count did not match our count, then somebody was in deep shit.

Any inmate who interfered with the count (in any way) was subject to being placed in “the bucket”.

The bucket’s official name was a "segregation unit" or "seg" for short. It was called the bucket because in the days before plumbing a bucket was actually left in the cell to use as a bathroom.

Any seg unit is a lockdown within a lockdown. These are the cells that are used to separate dangerous inmates from the rest of the population. Going to a seg unit meant the crooks were kept in a cell for twenty-three hours a day, seven days a week.

By court order, inmates in seg were allowed to be let out one hour out of every twenty-four, for a shower and exercise. Seg was further subdivided into two categories. The first was called "disciplinary seg," which was where any crook was placed if he was violent, caused any problems, or interfered with the count.

The second was "administrative seg." This was where inmates who were in protective custody were kept. This included inmates


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who were so meek they would surely be raped and preyed upon if let out into the general population.

Sometimes, a crook could get thrown into the bucket due to an extenuating circumstance.

“Some guy just tried to grab my ass! What do I do?” He was short and thin, and a fellow Puerto Rican. Raul was

doing a five-year sentence for smuggling a metric ton of marijuana. “You got two choices.” “What?”“The first one is I can place you in protective custody.” “What does that mean? “That means you’d go to the bucket.” “Will I be safe there?” “Yeah, but, you’re going to have to spend the next five years

locked down for 23 hours a day, seven days a week.” “Are you kidding?” “Nope.”“What’s the other choice?” “Look, it’s not the dog in the fight; it’s the fight in the dog.” “What do you mean?” “In this place, size can only take you so far. What really counts

is how much heart you have.” “So, what can I do?” I glanced around and noticed there was a mop and pail the in

the corner of the gym we were in. Attached to the pail was a metal mop wringer with a large handle that was used to squeeze the water. “Go over there,” I said, pointing to the mop and pail. “Take the handle off that mop wringer, and take care of business.”

“What happens to me afterwards?” “You’ll probably get thirty days in the bucket.” “So, what’s the point?”“Would you rather do thirty days in the bucket—or five years?” “Oh.”I began looking out the window at nothing in particular. About

two minutes later, I could hear the distinctive sound of someone’s skull being cracked open. I ran over to see Raul standing over a body. He was still holding the handle; only he had the entire mop

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wringer attached to it. The guy on the ground was bleeding like a stuck pig.

“Jeezsus Christ! I didn’t tell you to hit him with the whole fucking wringer! I told you just to use the handle.”

“Oh?” I grabbed the whole assembly from his hand. “You need to

disappear – Now.” He vanished. I put the wringer assembly back into the bucket.

“What happened?” asked the duty lieutenant. “He fell.” I knew there would be no witnesses. In prison there

never are. He was taken to the hospital unit. It took 60 stitches to sew up his head. I made a mental note to tell my supervisor that we needed a “Slippery When Wet” sign.

Raul got to do the rest of his time in peace. And I received a grudging measure of respect for being a Hack who could handle “accidents” discretely.


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Chapter Ten

"One Tin Soldier"

During those first six months, I was assigned to an old timer I called "Sam Breakstone." He would be one of the several training officers I had during that time. Sam was a sour kind of guy who had a penchant for understanding rules better than for understanding people. He was a former Catholic High School principal, who had doubled his salary by becoming a Hack.

I didn't care for Sam's style at all. What Sam didn't understand was the rule of respect. That was the one real rules a person needed to comprehend in prison – respect. Sam, with his love of minutiae, couldn't see the forest for the trees. So I stayed away from him whenever I could.

I felt that the only way I could survive and learn was by finding someone who could give me the nickel tour of the forest while not letting the trees get in the way.

In those first weeks I was assigned to supervise the yard crew. The yard crew was a cushy job that was sought after by inmates. It was a detail of a dozen or so inmates who tended a garden of flowers that was right by the entrance as you walked into the yard.

I didn't know who he was at first, so I just called him "One Tin Soldier." I called him this because of his immaculate appearance and military bearing. You could tell that, although he walked quietly, he carried a big stick.

He reminded me of the character in a movie, Billy Jack made in 1971 starring Tom Laughlin that became a cult favorite in the “hero kicks ass with karate” genre. Whenever I saw him, I'd begin to whistle “One Tin Soldier”, which was the theme song to that

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movie. “One Tin Soldier” became a one hit wonder by a group called Coven.

One Tin Soldier never walked as much as he strutted. His demeanor was more one of confidence than of arrogance. More importantly, I noticed none of the other inmates screwed around with him - a sure sign of respect. Not an easy thing to accomplish for a skinny white guy in prison.

He had a big dark moustache that he kept as well trimmed as his hair. His eyes were bright and had the look of a predator.

He looked like the kind of guy who could stab you in the eye with an ice pick and then calmly eat a ham sandwich. His guard was never down; his radar was always spinning.

As I stood milling around with the yard crew, a couple of crooks walked past me. One of them spit a little too close to my shoes. I was being "tried" and turned to call them on it, but was interrupted.

"Relax, kid, pick your own time and place to do battle. Don't let someone else pick it for you," One Tin Soldier said.

"Who are you?" "Liddy." "Liddy who?" "G. Gordon Liddy." "The Watergate guy?" One Tin Soldier smiled and went back to tending his flowers. G. Gordon Liddy was the real-life version of a Hollywood

action hero. He was a lawyer, an ex FBI Agent, a spy, a reputed hit man for the CIA, presidential advisor to Nixon, an expert in the martial arts and weaponry, and a guy who's balls clanged whenever he walked.

Watergate was the event that caused the downfall of an American President. Many of the players who were the high rollers in Watergate copped pleas and did "soft time" in a federal prison camp. All save one - One Tin Soldier.

One Tin Soldier had gotten into a pissing contest with a Federal Judge named Sirica, who gave him a 20-year sentence. One Tin Soldier never batted an eye at that sentence. He didn't get 20 years for being Darth Vader. He wasn't in prison because he was a thief. He got 20 years because he wouldn't snitch, and was in prison


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because his honor dictated he had to put his ass on the line for what he believed.

What made One Tin Soldier dangerous wasn't his skill as a Soldier of Fortune but his sense of personal honor. To put it simply, he was a better man than most. I liked him immediately. I wondered what I would have to do to get my balls to clang like his.

One of the first things I learned from One Tin Soldier was to carry a dictionary. He had a vocabulary that was the size of the national deficit.

I once saw a new fish bump into him in the yard. One Tin Soldier shoved him back and stood his ground. He listened patiently to the epithets hurled at him by the new fish. Everybody who was standing near did their best to pretend they weren't listening. After new fish expended himself, One Tin Soldier looked him square in the eye and said, "Yes, but did you know you’re nothing but a Homosapien."

"Hey! Who you calling a homo?!" new fish yelled back. Everybody within earshot fell down laughing. New fish

walked away defeated. One Tin Soldier had won using only the power of words.

"Why are you so lugubrious today?" he once asked me. "Quit using ten-dollar words on me, will ya?" "Listen, kid, did you ever stop to think that words are just like

weapons? If you want to really hurt somebody, don't use a gun, use words."

That's when I started keeping a dictionary the size of a small suitcase in my locker. I also carried another one in my back pocket. I wanted to be prepared next time that One Tin Soldier sprang a ten-dollar word on me.

I studied the dictionary for two weeks trying to come up with a great sentence to ambush One Tin Soldier with. After committing this sentence to memory and double-checking every word, I pounced on One Tin Soldier as he tended his flowers one sunny morning.

"I see you understand the arcana of the recalcitrant inmate population with all its incipient entropy and its dross waste and fractious factions."

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One Tin Soldier turned slowly. He looked at me with a sly grin, and, not missing a beat, said, "In order to address your musings, you'd have to obviate the anathema of the nefarious factions of inmates who become ossified by the prosaic undergrid of bureaucratic assholes who like to flout their authority."

My speedy retort was, "Oh yeah – well, my father can beat up your father."

One Tin Soldier laughed. "Nice try kid, now go fornicate thyself."

You find teachers in the strangest of places. For instance, it was an inmate who taught me the skills of fingerprinting, photographing, and how to use "belly chains" to properly handcuff busloads of prisoners together.

In all prisons it's the inmates who run almost everything. Without them nothing would get done. It's the inmates who process new arrivals through receiving and discharge. They cook the food, make repairs, tend to the landscaping, and are used liberally as clerical support.

There was a standard axiom used about weapons inside of prison - only the inmates had them. A bar of soap in a sock could split your head open easily. A razor blade melted on the end of toothbrush was a favorite as it could be carried and concealed easily. A knife could be made from almost anything, including the legs from the chairs you sat in. The only weapons the Hacks carried were their wits and a cheap radio to call for help.

One Tin Soldier could see Sam Breakstone was in for problems. Sam had no respect.

An inmate's cell or bunk area was called his "House". It was considered and treated much the same way as your own home or dwelling. To violate the sanctity of an inmate's house called for immediate and severe retribution on the part of the tenant.

Part of what a CO did was periodically and randomly search an inmate's house looking for contraband. During his searches, Sam would toss everything an inmate owned around in disarray.

One Tin Soldier had cautioned me against this: "If you give respect, you get respect.” Simple enough. So from that moment on, whenever I searched, I first spoke to the inmate letting him know this was "strictly business" and "nothing personal".


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I would also let them watch as I searched. I was careful to put everything back the way I found it and would treat personal items, like family photos, with care and respect. Sam Breakstone never heeded these lessons. "Somebody's gonna shank your ass if you don't lighten up," I told him.

Some of the best food I ever tasted was cooked at Danbury FCI. The mess hall was cavernous and well run by inmate cooks and chefs.

Everything they made was fresh, plentiful, and delicious. Every dawn I could smell the fragrance of fresh bread being baked. Eggs and bacon were cooked right in front of you on a portable grill as you waited on the chow line. You could have them any way you liked. If you weren't careful, you could put on a ton of weight in a short amount of time.

The Correctional Officers had their own small private dining room that was tended by inmate waiters who played the part of obsequious gofers.

Sam Breakstone loved to eat. The food was not only good - it was cheap. So Sam indulged his gluttony whenever he could.

Four of us were sitting at a table in the mess hall marveling at how Sam could eat food without chewing. The lunch special that day included grilled cheese sandwiches, which Sam loved.

After his fourth grilled cheese sandwich he announced he was thirsty. He said he also had this terrible heartburn.

At first he started drinking from a glass of ice water. But that could not quench his thirst. His eyes began to bulge and this look of horror came over his face. He snatched the entire pitcher of water trying to pour the contents down his throat in one motion.

Then he started to vomit like the girl in The Exorcist.We all jumped back and watched Sam hit the floor convulsing

and foaming at the mouth. I hit the panic alarm on my radio that brought a gaggle of Hacks known as the "goon squad".

The goon squad was the equivalent of a police SWAT team. They picked Sam up and took him away in an ambulance. I never saw Sam after that day.

If One Tin Soldier was willing to spend 20 years in prison for telling a federal judge to go fuck himself, I knew there was no

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chance of his telling me who had served Sam grilled cheese sandwiches laced with rat poison. So I never bothered to ask.

I did find out later that Sam had survived his ordeal, suffering from a perforated stomach.

When I mentioned this to One Tin Soldier, he replied, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

"Hey, did you just make that up?" "No, it's a quote from a guy named Friedrich Wilhelm

Nietzsche." "Who's he?" I could tell One Tin Soldier had come to a crossroads with me.

Either he would invest the time to tell me, or walk away. "He was a German philosopher who lived during the mid-

1800s. Nietzsche rejected Christianity for a new moral order of Ubermensch or Supermen, who had the willpower to conquer themselves."

"You mean like Superman in the comic books?" "No, let me explain it this way. How easy is it for a person to

tell another what to do?" "I guess it's pretty easy.” "Okay, how hard is it to tell yourself what to do?" "I don't get it." I could see I had become a challenge to One Tin Soldier

because of the determined look on his face. There was no condescension in his voice, just a sincere attempt to teach a hapless soul.

"What I'm saying is that real power comes from conquering yourself first. For instance, what scares you the most?"

"Flying in a little airplane with another crazy Puerto Rican." One Tin Soldier smiled. "So how would you conquer that

fear?""By learning to fly myself?" "Now you're getting it kid. Think of all the things that we

know we should do, but never do, because we lack the will and the courage. It's like watching a morbidly obese person stuff their face and then complain about being fat."

After that conversation I found myself eating less. I became a frequent visitor to the public library. I found Nietzsche's Thus


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Spake Zarathustra and Beyond Good and Evil. I read both even though I didn’t understand a word of either.

Then I found myself standing at the counter of Fisher Aviation at Teterboro airport asking, "How much are flying lessons?"

I won't say One Tin Soldier became my mentor, but I will say he became the person in my life who taught me that the power to change and choose one's own destiny comes solely from within.

And for that I will always be grateful to One Tin Soldier.

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Chapter Eleven

Strip-Searching 101

I don’t know exactly how it is we acquire our hygiene habits. What I mean is - hygiene quirks that are indigenous only to you like fingerprints at a crime scene.

Do you shampoo twice and then rinse? Do you squeeze the toothpaste from the middle? Do you know someone whose idea of oral hygiene is only found at the end of a toothpick?

My father had a way of lumping all hygiene into one basic question. “Did you wash your ass today?” he would loudly ask, without so much as an “excuse me”. To my dad, there wasn’t any illness so bad that it couldn’t be cured by thoroughly washing your ass.

You may have grown up with your parents telling you to wash behind your ears - but if your parents ever had to strip-search somebody, they’d be joining the likes of my father in telling you to wash your ass.

It’s not that I’m trying to be scatological because I’m not. It’s what I know to be true. What I learned first hand from conducting about a million strip-searches is this sad fact: most people aren’t as clean as they think they are “down there”.

There’s this corny old Star Trek joke about “Klingons circling Uranus”. I thought this was funny until my first strip-search. If you think Klingons don’t exist, think again. Captain Kirk would’ve had to use a ton of photon torpedoes to deal with “Klingons” if he had been a Correctional Officer.

I lost my strip-search virginity to “Fat Tony”. Fat Tony was the most feared inmate at Danbury, not because he was tough, but


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because he was so fat that he could’ve been his own planet. So strong was his gravitational pull that he had smaller people orbiting him.

Fat Tony had these enormous folds of blubber that could conceal anything from a missile launcher to a Mack truck. The only way Fat Tony bathed was when the Volunteer Fire Department hosed him down once a week. Anybody who ever got a whiff of Fat Tony would consider the career of septic tank cleaning as a romp through the roses.

Nietzsche and One Tin Soldier had been right. What does not kill you - does make you stronger. After strip-searching Fat Tony, I knew I could do anything, like find a cure for cancer, climb Mount Everest, or build an Egyptian Pyramid in my back yard.

I’m about to use a word that most people claim is offensive but use liberally nonetheless. Mind you, I could use some snooty medical terminology like, “anus” or “rectum”, but the truth is, they’re assholes. Not only does everybody have one – some people are one.

If somebody asked me what I did for a living back then, I’d say, “I look at more assholes than my gay drag-queen brother does on Fire Island.”

Strip-searching involves looking at assholes just as carefully as proctologists do. This is because in prison you can stuff a lot of stuff up your ass. Things like an aluminum cigar tube filled with cocaine. A small hack saw blade. Any caliber of bullet. A Bic cigarette lighter. Any denomination of money with rolls of quarters being the most daunting. A pill bottle filled with Quaaludes. The list goes on and on. You’re only limited by your imagination and how big an asshole you have (or are).

The problem with conducting a strip-search is how it affects your psychological well being, especially if you have a touch of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder with regards to your hygiene, like I do. Paul discovered this first hand one morning.

“Hay Dios mio, have you lost your mind?” Paul asked. He had surprised me by walking into my room without

knocking, as was his habit. I had just showered and was bent down far enough to put my head between my legs in front of my full-length mirror.

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“Why are you looking up your ass with the flashlight in that mirror?

I didn’t answer him. “Hay Dios mio. He crossed himself. “Is it a tumor? A lump?

Are you bleeding?” Paul’s concern was genuine. “No.”“What is it then?” “I’m looking for something." “Is it a tumor? You can tell me, I’m your brother, and I love

you. We’ll fight this thing together.” “No, it’s not a tumor.” “You don’t have to cover up for me, is it cancer?” “No, I don’t have cancer.” “What is it then?” Paul had lost all patience. “It’s Klingons.” “What!” “Klingons, Goddamnit!” “What are Klingons?” “It’s little pieces of toilet paper that cling onto your ass after

you wipe it.” I braced myself for Paul’s laughter, knowing I was about to

become another neighborhood legend, when Paul shocked me by saying, “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

“What do you mean, you know what I mean?” “Listen honey, I know all about Klingons – I just never heard

them called that before - and they are disgusting. You don’t know what it’s like to meet a cute guy and then…”

“That’s enough, Paul. That’s too much information.” “Listen, honey, I treat my ass just like any good girl treats her

pussy, I keep it clean.” “Jeezsus, Paul, I don’t wanna know that.” I pondered what

Paul had said and asked, “So how do you do it?” “How do I do what?” “You know, keep yourself clean … down there?” “Oh, my pussy?” “Jeezsus, Paul, will you please stop being so graphic?” “I use baby wipes.” “Baby wipes?”


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“Yes, honey, anytime I take a sheet I use baby wipes.” “What if you don’t have any?” “Then you wet up a wad of toilet paper.” “Oh.”“Do you want to spend the rest of your life looking at your ass

with a flashlight?” “No.”“Then get some baby wipes, pendejo.”The problem with strip-searching is that it truly is a necessary

evil. However, if you think that inserting something into a body cavity is the only way to smuggle something, then think again.

“Hey, Johnny. Come here. Look-at-dis!” Louie Vega had called me over, as he had spied something that

just didn’t quite fit. His name was Harry Rumble. He was being processed through R&D. Harry was doing a five-year stretch for smuggling dope. His jacket said that he was a member of Mensa and quite clever when it came to smuggling anything. Harry was tall, thin, and hairy.

“Look-at-dis-guy.” “What?”“What skinny, white guy ever has a pinga that long? I don’t

think it’s real.” Louie said. “I don’t think so either. Sorta looks like a sponge, doesn’t it?” “Yeah, it does.” I knew what was coming next, and I dreaded it with the same

trepidation as having a root canal. “Somebody has to honk him,” I said. Honking was the term

used to describe walking up to somebody and squeezing his member.

“I ain’t honking him.” “Well, I ain’t honking him, either.” “Let’s get Mikey, he’ll honk anybody.” Mikey was a Hack

who reminded us of the kid in the Life Cereal commercial. No matter what you dared Mikey to do, he’d do it. We both gave each other high fives and called Mikey on the radio. When Mikey arrived, we quickly explained the situation.

Without missing a beat, Mikey walked over to Harry and pulled off his dick. It was made out of some kind of latex foam. As we

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examined it, we were fascinated. In place of what would have been a urethra was a six-inch

barrel fashioned from a small pipe that held a 22-caliber bullet snuggly at one end. A rubber band was attached to it like a sling shot. Pulling on the rubber band that had the head of a nail on it, fired the bullet. Releasing the rubber band would cause the nail head to strike the primer of the cartridge – and boom! All of us marveled at how simple, and ingenious, this lethal weapon was.

“Jeezsus, this gives new meaning to shooting a load!” I said. “How many more strip-searches do you think we gotta do

before we retire?” Louie asked. “I don’t know, but I sure am sick of looking at Klingons.”


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Chapter Twelve

The Center of the Universe

New York City is the center of the universe. And the center within that universe is known as the island of Manhattan. In 1978 the center of the island of Manhattan was a place on 54th Street.

However, I wasn't on 54th Street. I was within walking distance of Chinatown, Little Italy, Foley Square, and the Brooklyn Bridge. I was at 150 Park Row, also known as the Metropolitan Correctional Center, or simply, "MCC."

I had traded the prison at Danbury for the jail of MCC. Most people don't realize there's a difference between a prison and a jail. Prison is where you go to do time after you've had your day in court. Jail is the place you stay while you're having your day in court. You can't bail out of prison, but you can bail out of jail.

The first thing that struck me was the bank of elevators. MCC had elevators that serviced eleven floors. This jail, like the Civil War, had been divided into a north and a south.

From the eleventh floor a staircase took you to an enclosed roof, which also served as an "outdoor" gym. Wire mesh was used to cover the roof as an afterthought, to prevent escape or suicide.

The lesson of using stronger material was learned the hard way when a nice looking couple hired a helicopter for a sight seeing trip around Manhattan. Once airborne from Long Island they put a gun to the pilot's head and told him to fly to MCC. Their plan was simple and something out of bad B movie. Lower a ladder to the roof and make good an escape.

The wire mesh enclosure was their only obstacle. The pilot was forced, with a gun stuck in his ear, to bounce the skids of the

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helicopter on the wire mesh in an attempt to punch a hole through it.

The wire mesh proved to be as stubborn as it was cheap. It foiled the escape. It was praised and quickly replaced with a steel one.

MCC was the place prisoners were brought immediately after being arrested on federal charges. Newcomers were processed through Receiving and Discharge (R&D) then placed on Nine North.

R&D was also the first stop where the newly arrested were subjected to their first full strip-search. R&D was interesting, as you never knew what the cat was about to drag in the door.

The FBI had brought in a thin male one afternoon when I was working R&D. He was a well-dressed, white-collar criminal, who had been charged with embezzling a ton of money from the Wall Street firm where he worked. He looked the part, in his $2,000 suit, tasseled black loafers, and expensive haircut.

The uniform for all the involuntary inhabitants of MCC was a brightly colored, one-piece jump suit. This is what I was hurrying to get him into, so I could run and take a quick piss.

I had instructed him to strip naked and was busy writing, when I caught a glimpse of his naked body out of the corner of my eye. I turned to confirm that what I was seeing was correct. Then I forgot about taking a piss.

He was stroking the tuft of his pubic hairs, over what appeared to be female genitalia, much the same way you petted a purring cat.

"Jeezsus, are you a girl?" "I am now." He said without looking up. "Isn't my new pussy

beautiful? I bet it looks just like your wife's.” He kept stroking himself. “I love my new pussy. I call her 'Babs' after you-know-who."

I yelled for my R&D partner, Big Black Alice. Big Black Alice was as big as she was black, and as black as

she was tough. Anytime there was a prison riot, I walked in behind Big Black Alice. She looked like the proverbial person you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley.

Big Black Alice was fond of reminding me I wasn't white. "Youse just a Puerto Rican high yeller is all. Youse just is passin',


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honey. But that's okay, baby … ya know Big Black Alice loves you. I'll look out for that cute, red headed, Puerto Rican ass of yours baby, ah huh, yes suh."

I had been on one date with Big Black Alice at her insistence. "Baby, did you know I can suck the chrome off a trailer hitch?"

This is how she asked me out on a date. Luckily, Big Black Alice was fonder of food than she was of sucking the chrome off a trailer hitch.

"Big Black Alice, look at this." "Oh, Lordy … Where we gonna put this one?" "I dunno. Far as I can figure, his paperwork says he's a guy." "His name isn't Lack-a-dick, is it, honey?" Big Black Alice had

made a funny. Whenever Big Black Alice made a funny, you laughed whether it was funny or not.

"It seems to me … that he is now a she," Big Black Alice observed. This brought about the great debate of 1978 that focused on the Federal Bureau of Prisons officially recognizing "its" sex.

"I thinks Babs is cute," Big Black Alice said. The question of where to put Babs dragged in lawyers on both

sides. That evening, it was officially recognized that Babs was indeed, a female. It was decided to put Babs on Five North, with the rest of the ladies of MCC.

I took Babs up to Five North and dreaded it. Nothing scared me more than a cellblock full of incarcerated women who were all PMS-ing at the same time.

Two hours passed before Babs was brought back to R&D. The ladies of Five North were not as tolerant as we thought. They had beaten the crap out of Babs and had tried stuffing a bottle of shampoo into the newly created orifice. We decided to put Babs in the hospital unit for the remainder of her stay.

A week later I found myself working a graveyard shift at R&D. The DEA had made a big drug bust, and I watched as about fifteen scruffy looking guys came out of the elevators and into R&D. It got to be so confusing that I yelled for everybody to shut up and listen.

"All right, listen up … those of you who are cops … stand on this side of the room. Those of you that are crooks … stand on the

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other." I pointed to each wall as if I was a referee giving instructions in a boxing ring.

They milled about for a few seconds and finally went to their assigned walls. I began to pat down the dozen or so crooks on my side of the room, while Big Black Alice began checking the DEA agents’ identification. When I got to the last guy on the line I was patting down, I noticed something familiar about him.

"Hey, do I know you from somewhere?" I kept staring at him. He was a longhaired hippie, with a dark moustache and soft eyes.

"Nah, you don't know me." "What's your name?" "John." "John what, asshole?" "John Phillips." I knew that name rang a bell but couldn't place it until Big

Black Alice started humming "California Dreaming.""You John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas?" "Yeah.""Holy shit, what happened to you, guy?" "Cocaine.""That sucks," I said, as I continued to pat him down. "This is a bullshit bust, man. I'll bail outta here by tomorrow,

man," Papa John said for the benefit of the DEA agents on the other wall.

Big Black Alice started it. She had a beautiful voice that she used for singing Gospel at her Baptist church in Harlem every Sunday.

"All the leaves …” I immediately jumped in with the chorus, singing and smiling at

Papa John. Big Black Alice's rendition of California Dreamin’ continued to

enthrall us. She started the second verse. Papa John, having a sense of humor, smiled and began to sing

along with Big Black Alice in what became a surrealistic moment at the MCC.

Some of the crooks started humming background in three-part harmony.


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Then the DEA agents joined in, sensing this was a once in a lifetime moment. It was like singing the national anthem at Yankee Stadium; if you didn't know the words, you just fudged along.

The classic song built to a great crescendo. No one who was in that room could contain themselves any longer - everybody now began singing at the top of their lungs:

"California Dreamin' … on such a winter's day.” When we got to the big finish everybody was smiling and

chuckling, knowing we had just shared a moment in time that, if told, would not be believed.

Papa John bailed out a few days later, and I never saw him again.

I was then transferred to cover for the rest of the units throughout MCC. My first stop was Nine South, MCC’s segregation unit.

Eleven North was a general population unit and called "Eleven Alive" by the inmates. Eleven North housed the most inmates, in multi level tiers or pods. Eleven South had "one per customer" cells. All the units at MCC had nice, full-sized, regulation pool tables complete with balls that could be thrown at you and pool cues that could be wielded like clubs.

On the third floor not far from R&D were private visiting rooms, used solely by attorneys and their clients. High-powered lawyers would sometimes hire demure-looking, high-priced hookers and credential them as paralegals to service their clients. Since the confidentiality of attorney-client privilege applied, we never knew who was screwing who in those rooms. Big Black Alice said it best: “Whore or lawyer? Ain’t that the same thing?”

All staff rotated their shifts and job assignments every 90 days. Only senior officers were allowed to work the hated "Rat House," the Witness Protection Unit. It was under the jurisdiction of the US Marshals.

The Rat House consisted only of inmates who were certified government snitches. No other staff, except the assigned officers, could enter the Rat House. Food was imported from local delicatessens to preclude poisoning. Inmates were listed only by their initials, and were supposed to be called only by their initials. This was a joke, as the snitches would not only tell you their

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names, they'd love to tell all about who they ratted on and the deals they had cut as snitches.

I didn’t like working the Rat House. Snitches had a way of making you feel as dirty as they were. I wanted out – but stayed long enough to have a life-altering experience that began with Paul and his penchant for Disco, and ended at the Rat House.


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Chapter Thirteen Puta Mala

Paul was driving me crazy with Disco. It was one of the first weekends I had off in along time, and Paul was hell bent on dragging me downtown.

"C'mon, Johnny, let’s go." "Paul, if you're gonna wear a dress, can't you at least shave

your moustache?" "Dressing in drag is my ticket to getting in. You'll never get in

looking so straight, pendejo.""Okay, but I not riding the subway with you in drag." We

pooled our money and treated ourselves to the luxury of a Gypsy cab ride downtown. Paul knew the exact address. "Take us to 254 West 54th Street," he told the cab driver. "The place is called Studio 54."

"Pablo Jose, tu eres loco? We can't get into Studio 54 pendejo!I don't care if you are a fucking drag queen. We're two lousy Puerto Ricans who aren't rich and aren't famous."

"Si, we can." He smiled at me like a child. "Hay, Pablo, why are you wasting our time?" "I'm telling you, we can get in." "And why would that be?" "I blew the owner." "What!?" You never knew when Paul was telling the truth. He had a

penchant for exaggerating everything. "He owned this club in Queens called the Enchanted Garden …

and he's a sweet little guy."

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"Who?""Steve." "Steve who?" "Steve Rubell, the owner of Studio 54. I gave him a quickie in

the bathroom of his first nightclub the Enchanted Garden." The truth was I never knew if Paul was telling the truth.

According to Paul, he had given blowjobs to everybody from the Pope to the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

"Fuck you, Paul, you never blew Steve Rubell." "Did so." "Bite me," I said through laughter. The cab dropped us off about a block away, as there was this

massive line in front of Studio 54. Paul grabbed my hand, as if he was Dorothy and I was the Tin Man, and we ran into the sea of people standing on line.

Paul was a puta mala, and a sin vergüenza, which loosely translated meant he was a shameless, cheeky, little whore. It was because Paul was such a cheeky puta mala, that he shoved and elbowed his way (with me in tow) to the head of the line.

I knew we were in trouble when I saw what looked like a fifteen-year-old kid standing guard behind this velvet rope. I understood the tenets of power. I could tell from his posture, demeanor, and body language that he had power. He was the gatekeeper to whatever dreams lay beyond the velvet rope. Those who were privileged enough to know him called him by his first name, Marc.

We stood there a good while before I saw Paul's eyes light up with recognition. He elbowed me, and said, "There he is!"

"There who is?" "Steve Rubell." I looked up and saw a skinny, short fellow standing on either a

box or a standpipe, above the crowd. He was scanning the crowd the same way a secret service agent scans crowds for would-be assassins. There was nothing of significance in the way he dressed. But I did get the feeling that he was playing the part of Caesar, while we were playing the part of slaves at the Coliseum.

Caesar had hair that was long enough just to touch his shoulders, and I could tell he had a bit of a "defiant comb-over"


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trying to cover up a bald spot. Mostly, I remember his eyes. He had these large, half-moon eyes that looked soulful. He kept biting his lower lip as he scanned the crowd.

He turned to his gatekeeper and said, "Are we getting a good salad tonight? We need a good mix." The guy named Marc just laughed.

Paul had his panties in a bunch. He was like a teacher’s pet raising his hand trying to get attention.

Caesar's eyes fell upon Paul and stopped. I could see that Paul had stopped breathing. We were motioned to come ahead. Paul stood there, looking up at Caesar as if he were looking at God. Caesar pronounced, "You can go in."

I couldn't believe it, but I figured, "Hey, why not!" I was walking behind Paul when the gatekeeper rudely stuck out his hand across my chest, stopping me dead in my tracks. Caesar looked at me and said, "You can't go in."

"Why not?" “I don't like your shoes. They're cheap.” I knew we were playing out a scene. Caesar might have spared

Paul, but I knew I was about to be fed to the lions. There would be no pardon from Caesar. I could tell from his face that no amount of begging would change his mind.

“Yeah, Paul, go ahead, have a good time.” Paul kissed me on the cheek with his scratchy beard and quickly disappeared behind the velvet rope. I could see the line of his silk stockings were crooked as he walked away.

I took the A train home feeling sorry for myself while swearing revenge on Caesar. I thought about Kirk Douglas in Spartacus.

“I bet Spartacus wore cheap shoes too.” I basked in a revenge fantasy worthy of Cecil B. Demille. Wouldn’t it be nice to kick Caesar’s ass while proclaiming, “I am Spartacus!”

“Boy, how I’d like to take my sword and shove it up his skinny little ass and …” I found myself ranting out loud on the A train. Passengers were scurrying away from me. I had become a New York cliché.

What did my Walter Mitty Spartacus revenge fantasy have to do with anything? That’s all it was – just a fantasy. I knew God would never permit such a thing.

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* * * "Officer Ciuro, this is Warden Dale Thomas. We have two

new inmates that are famous and going to be housed on Three South. I don't want you to treat them any different than any other inmates, understand?"

"Yes sir. So who are they, Batman and Robin?" "No. They’re Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager, the owners of

Studio 54." I looked down at my cheap shoes. They were the same ones I

was wearing on that fateful night I rode the A train home. "I AM SPARTACUS!” I began yelling.

“What?” I had forgotten the warden was still on the phone. “Nothing, sir.” They walked into the unit, heads down, wearing belly chains

and escorted by Federal Marshals. They were carrying large folders full of legal briefs. I immediately recognized Caesar.

I smiled. “Hi, I’m Spartacus.” “Who are you?” “Never mind.” I thought about every cliché I had ever heard about revenge.

"Payback, getting even, settling a score, leveling the playing field, what goes around comes around, and … I am Spartacus!"

On and on my revenge fantasies rattled in my head like many marbles in a glass jar. Then I remembered my father's warning about revenge: "If you want revenge, first dig two graves. One for your victim, and the other for you." My father had watched way too many episodes of “Kung Fu.”

I assigned them each a "one per customer" cell. They would have a partial view of the sidewalk.

The unit had brightly colored walls. The cell doors were painted a dull orange. There were no bars on any cell doors. They looked like normal doors, with the exception of a rectangular pane of glass that was used to look inside. There were no large, brass, "Folger Adams" skeleton keys used to lockdown the cells. They looked like ordinary house keys.

Steve and Ian were wearing the uniform of federal prisoners at the MCC, bright orange jump suits.


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I showed them their cells, gave them bedding, and went back to a closet that also doubled as my office. I logged them into my "daily journal" and "count sheet." There were no personal computers back then - the inmate census or, "running count" was kept with pencil and paper in a neatly written ledger. I slid their initials onto the count board. I now had 47 inmates to watch over.

It didn't take long before Steve found himself in trouble. I had to visit the combination recreation/television/gym/dining room to literally get Steve off a hook.

A couple of members of a prison gang known as the "Mexican Mafia" had hung Steve up on a hook because he had flipped the TV channels while they were watching reruns of "I Love Lucy". That was a big no-no.

"Listen, you, maybe out there in the real world you're somebody, but if you wanna stay alive in here - understand this - your shit stinks just like everybody else's."

"I'm sorry, I didn't know." "Look, don't do anything without asking me first. I'll try and

keep you alive, but you gotta listen to me for the next few days." He nodded his head and said, "Okay." Having Paul for a brother gave me some insight into Steve and

Ian. I could tell almost immediately that Steve was gay and Ian was straight. Steve was the flamboyant one while Ian kept to himself. They were both quick studies on prison culture and didn't make the same mistakes twice.

It took Steve two seconds to figure out that one of the most valued things on the unit was the lone payphone. It took him another two seconds to figure out the cell next to the phone was empty and ask could he have it. I gave it to him.

I could have been the prick and made Steve’s and Ian’s lives a living hell, but I didn't. I figured by not being a prick I was (in some way) casting bread upon the waters.

Steve and Ian quickly settled down into the monotonous routine of doing time. They stood for the count without being asked. If I forgot to take the count in a timely manner, it would be Steve who reminded me it was getting close to count time. Ian never said much, but when he did, it always gave me cause to think.

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"Did you ever realize you're doing time on the installment plan?" Ian once asked me.

"Huh?" "I'm doing three and a half years; you're doing twenty on the

installment plan." "Gee, thanks for the pleasant thought, Ian. What-are-you-

some-kind-of-fucking-lawyer-or-something?" Ian laughed as he said, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am a lawyer." "Oh."I think if you looked up the word "loquacious" (a ten dollar

word One Tin Soldier had taught me) in the dictionary, you'd find a picture of Steve Rubell next to it. He loved talking, especially on the phone.

I never did know how he managed it, but he got to spend much of his time on the phone. The other inmates never complained about Steve's hogging the phone, which was unusual. When Steve was on the phone, he was fond of asking anybody passing by if they wanted to say "hello" to the likes of Bianca and Mick Jagger or whatever celebrity he had on the phone at that moment.

The one thing Steve needed to sustain him was dimes. You needed lots of dimes to chuck into the pay phone. No dimes--no phone. The rule was that no inmate could have in his possession any more than two dollars in dimes at any one time. Dimes to Steve were like the air. I knew one day we were going to have a heart to heart but didn't know when or how the opportunity would present itself. It happened over dimes.

The unit was connected to the inmate visiting room through a closed Sallyport. The visiting room was large and afforded inmates "contact" visits. The Sallyport was where strip-searches were conducted. All inmates after a visit had to be strip-searched before being allowed back into the unit.

It had been a long day, and I was tired. Steve had his usual entourage of celebrity visitors, which (strangely enough) did not interest me.

I rarely bothered to ask either Steve or Ian to actually strip, preferring instead to give them a thorough pat down. Neither one of them was stupid. Visiting hours were over, and Steve was the last guy to leave. He came into the Sallyport and stood there like Jack


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Benny. It was just him and me. In his hand was about twenty dollars in rolls of dimes.

"Can I bring this in?" "I can't let you bring in a ton of dimes." "Why not? C'mon, John, you know I need them." "No, the crooks are gonna think I'm a softy." "You are a softy." "Am not." "Are too." "Fuck you." Steve feigned this look of terror then smiled at me. "You're

really scaring the shit outta me.” "You don't remember me do you Steve?" "Don't tell me, I wouldn't let you past the velvet rope." "Yep. But you did let my drag queen of a brother in." We both

laughed. "Remember that old joke?” Steve asked. “I think Groucho

Marks said it." "What?""He said, 'I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would

have me as member.' Well, that's how I feel about Studio 54. You and I are strictly BBQ."

"Huh?" "Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens." "Where you from, Steve?” "Brooklyn, all my life, so is Ian." Steve went on, "Listen, I'm

telling you the truth, I wouldn't let my own self into Studio 54." "Never?" "Look, a good party is like a salad. You have to have a little bit

of everything in it to make it work. That's the secret to my success. I know how to make a good salad."

"So what does that make you?" "I'd like to think of myself as radish." We laughed. "How come you speak Spanish, officer See-You-Row?""I'm Puerto Rican." "With all that red hair and beard? No shit, Mazel Tov! Any

other secrets I should know?"

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"Yeah, my brother Paul said he blew you when you owned a club in Queens." I broke down laughing.

"Are you kidding?" "No.""Well, I don't think so." Steve was now laughing. "Yeah, like you'd tell me if it did happen." "How would you like a job?" Steve asked. "I'm not big enough to be a bouncer." Steve looked at me like I had just insulted him. "Bouncers are

one cell amebas with no brains." "Sorry Steve, I know you mean well, but no can do." "We're thinking of opening up a Studio 54 in Paris, France. I

could use a good head of Security." "Sorry, not interested." "What can I do for you officer See-You-Row - name it and it's

yours. Would you and Paul like to go to Studio 54 tonight or any night from now on? You won't have to spend a dime." I was glad Paul wasn't around to hear this. Paul would have sold me into Mogambo for such an offer.

"That's all I need, to be seen at your place. Next thing you know I'll be sharing a cell with you. I know your heart's in the right place, but no thanks."

I let him have his dimes.


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Chapter Fourteen

Elvis Was a Puerto Rican

Ring Ring. “Hello … Officer Ciuro, MCC Three South.” “Hi, is this the Metropolitan Correctional Center? You know -

the federal jail?” “Yes it is.” “Okay, my name is Liza Minnelli.” “Yeah, and I’m the Queen of Sheba.” Click.Ring Ring.“Hello?” “Three South, MCC, Officer Ciuro speaking.” “Hello again, this is Liza Minnelli.” “Hey lady, quit jerking me off, will ya.” Click.Ring Ring. “Hello, this is Liza Minnelli again.” “Look lady, be a nice whackaloon and leave me the fuck alone,

will ya.” Click.Ring Ring. “Hi, can you please not hang up on me?’ “Who is this?’ “Liza Minnelli.” Click.Ring Ring. “Hi, it’s me.”

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“Me who?” “Liza Minnelli.” Click.Ring Ring. “Okay lady, I’m warning you, it’s a federal offense to screw

around with me. Mira pendeja - you keep busting my cojones andso help me God - I’ll arrest you myself!”

Click.Ring Ring. “Three South, Officer Ciuro, what do you want pendeja?”“John?” “Ah, yeah?” “This is Warden Dale Thomas.” “Yes sir.” “Liza Minnelli has been calling … would you mind taking her

call?”“Oh … okay.” Ring Ring. “Hello? … This is Liza Minnelli.” “Really?’ “Honest, it’s Liza Minnelli.” “Why didn’t you say so?” “Are Steve and Ian okay? How are they doing?” “They’re fine.” “Can I talk to them?” “Nope, it’s count time. They’re locked down.” “Oh that sounds so terrible.” “It’s okay, they’re sleeping.” “Can I call back later?’ “Sure.”“Is there anything I can do for you, Officer?” “Can you get me in touch with Elvis?” “I think he’s dead.” “Oh yeah, that’s right. Well … can you tell me if Elvis was a

Puerto Rican?” “What? I don’t understand.” “My mom, she’s Puerto Rican – anyway, she went to

Graceland. When she got a load of Elvis’s living room she swore


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he was a Puerto Rican. ” “I’m sorry, I don’t know if Elvis was a Puerto Rican?” “Well, that’s okay, thanks anyway.” “Well if you ever need anything, Steve will give you my

number.” “Okay, thanks.” “Bye, Officer … How do you say your name again?” “Ciuro … like in … See-You-Row.”“Bye Officer Queero.” Click.

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Chapter Fifteen

Eunuchs

About a month after Steve and Ian arrived, I found myself at war with the Bureau of Prisons and with its Director in Washington DC, Norman Carlson. I had been elected MCC's Union President without running. I became David fighting Goliath in a fight over off-duty guns.

The way scheduling worked was if your relief called in sick you got stuck working their shift. You weren't given a choice. You were locked in with the inmates and had no physical way of getting out. The lieutenant would usually call you and say, "Your relief just banged in sick, you gotta stay."

I was working Nine North when I was told my relief had banged in. I remembered Ian’s comments about doing time on the installment plan and became angry enough to do something about it.

"I ain't taking the count." Refusing to take the count was tantamount to mutiny aboard the

HMS Bounty. It could get you thrown in a cell for obstructing the orderly running of a prison. It most certainly could get you fired.

"Whaddaya-mean-you-ain't-taking-the-count?" "You heard me.” I slammed down the phone, and wondered

how long it would take before the lieutenant came rushing in. It took about two minutes.

He got right into my face like a baseball umpire. "See-You-Row - you take the fucking count or else!"

"I ain't taking any count and number two - get your fucking face outta mine."


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The lieutenant was foaming at the mouth. He didn't like having his authority questioned, especially in front of the inmates, who I had already locked down in their units.

"I've been here for twenty-four hours, and you have no right to keep me here another eight.” I sat on the pool table and crossed my arms like a petulant child. "I swear if you don't lemme outta here, I'm dialing 911 and saying I'm being held illegally against my will."

"What?""I didn't commit a crime,” I said, pointing to multi-layers of

tiers where the crooks were peering out. "They did! You can keep them here, but not me. I want outta here, and I mean this fucking second!" I threw the unit keys at him.

“You quitting?” “No. I’m just telling you – you have no right to keep me here

after working 24 straight hours. I’m not taking no count, and I want out – right now.”

“I don’t have nobody to relieve you.” “That’s not my problem – it’s yours.” It was no longer a question of overtime. It was now a question

of saving face. Therefore, I would not back down. I would not take the count.

News travels fast in jail. The unit phone on the wall rang. It was Captain Homer Holland, the lieutenant's immediate supervisor. "What's this about you won't take the count?"

"The Union contract says you can only hold me for sixteen hours, but I’ve already been here for twenty-four hours straight. I haven't had a meal, taken a crap, or been given a break because people are banging in. Well, guess what? That ain't my problem - it's yours. I want outta here right now, Cap."

"Lemme talk to the lieutenant.” I handed him the phone and tried my best to eavesdrop.

"Uh-huh, yes sir," he kept repeating as he held the phone. "Yes sir, he's been on for twenty-four, but I ain't got nobody to

cover. Uh-huh, yes sir." He hung up the phone. He picked up the keys. "You can go. I have to work this unit

tonight." I went over to the wall phone and called the control room. All

the massive sliding doors that led into the units were opened and

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closed by the officer in the control room on the first floor. "Crack Nine South, send the elevator - I'm going home."

As I started to leave, I heard the muffled sound of applause. When I looked up, most of the Latino inmates were smiling and clapping their hands. Others whistled and raised a clenched fist.

I called out sick for the next two days just to piss them off. When I returned, word had gotten around about my defiance. Because of that I discovered I had been elected the local Union President while I was home practicing to be a couch potato.

One of the perks of being a Union President was a steady Monday through Friday day tour with every weekend off. As weekends off were something foreign to me, I gladly accepted the job.

Steve Rubell congratulated me when I came in for my tour on Three South. Nothing went on in that prison that Steve didn't know about. "The grapevine says you got chutzpa." He seemed genuinely happy for me.

All Unions within the federal government are toothless tigers. They are nothing more than eunuchs. This is because of two fundamental reasons that could score you points on a trivia test.

First - it's against the law for any federal worker to strike. President Reagan proved this a few years later when he summarily fired all of the nation’s Air Traffic Controllers when they tried to strike.

Second - federal workers are not allowed to negotiate for their own salaries. Once a year the government dictates what your salary increase (if any) will be.

"The truth is, politicians are always fucking federal workers in the ass without so much as the bother of using a little Vaseline. But they don't mind giving themselves raises." I was pontificating at Steve.

I went on with my diatribe. "Listen, Steve, working for the federal government is like being a slave on a Plantation about a hundred years ago. Blacks and Latinos hold most of the lowest paid jobs in the federal government and it’s only going to get worse.” Little did I know.

Correctional officers in New York City and State were allowed (by law) to carry a concealed gun while off duty. This was because


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New York State law recognized correctional officers as “peace officers.” There was an understanding that this privilege also extended to the federal correctional officers as well. Therefore, most of the staff at MCC NY carried guns to and from work while off duty. When you reported for work you simply handed over your weapon to the control room officer who stored it for you. But that came to an end over a pissing contest.

An officer working at Danbury FCI who lived in New York City had a penchant for drinking and partying at illegal after-hours clubs in the South Bronx. It was at one of these clubs that he got into a pissing contest with a New York City cop.

The cop ended the argument by arresting the CO, charging he was not authorized to carry a gun while off duty. The BOP had an official written policy that precluded CO’s from carrying a gun while off duty.

This case wound up before the New York State Supreme Court. They decided the correctional officer had no right to carry his gun while off duty because BOP policy did not allow it. This rendered him convicted of a felony. We were given two weeks notice to get rid of our off duty guns or be subject to arrest by the NYPD.

It was my job as union president to get our off-duty guns back. Only, I didn’t know where to begin.

“Read the First Amendment,” Steve quipped at me. “What about the First Amendment?” I asked. “It says you have the right to free speech.” “So?”“Exercise your right to free speech.” “How?” I asked, not knowing where he was going with this. “What corporations fear most aren’t guns, its words –no

corporate concern wants any hint of bad publicly. Haven’t you ever watched 60 Minutes?”

“So you’re suggesting we have a public demonstration?” “Yes.” “And who’s gonna organize and lead this demonstration?” “You are.” Holding a union-organized public demonstration was

something that was never done within the federal government at

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that time. No one knew why. Airing dirty law enforcement laundry in public was simply not done.

* * * “Hung Fats” is a hole-in-the-wall storefront restaurant in

Chinatown not far from MCC. Hung Fats has surly waiters who make you sit at one of six Formica tables on orange crates while they tell you what you should order. They are the Asian version of Seinfeld’s “Soup Nazi.” The food is to-die-for delicious and always plentiful and cheap. Any New Yorker, whether native born or transplanted, has eaten (at least once) at Hung Fats in addition to another New York icon called “Katz’s Delicatessen” on Houston (pronounced “House-ton”) Street.

I was on my lunch break sitting on my orange crate, eating General Tso’s Chicken when a small thin man in an expensive suit sat down opposite me. He smiled and stuck out his hand. “Hello, my name is Roy Cohn.” He said.

“Who?”“Roy Cohn. I’m a lawyer.” “I don’t know any lawyers, and by the looks of you I couldn’t

afford you if I did.” He smiled at me, staring at my eyes as if he were trying to see something I wanted to hide.

I wasn’t impressed with him until one of the Asian Soup Nazi waiters came over and asked him politely what he wanted to order.

“You must be somebody important.” I said. “Why do you say that?” Roy Cohn asked. “Because you got your Lo Mein in two seconds and the waiter

didn’t stick his thumb in it.” “You ever hear of me?” “Nah.” I lied. “Ever hear of a guy named Senator Joe McCarthy?” Ever since meeting One Tin Soldier I had become an ardent

student of words and trivia. I felt like I had just won the daily double on Jeopardy under the category of “obscure nicknames” when I answered, “Who is Tail Gunner Joe?” I knew I had just moved up a notch from “you’re a peon” to “you’re a lucky guessing peon.”

“I worked with him.” “Really?”


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“What are you, Jewish?” Roy asked. “Nope, Puerto Rican, but my brother’s a Jew – well, a part-time

Jew anyway.” Roy kept a frozen smile on his face. “Tell you what, I can put a Yarmulke on you and call you

Rabbi, no one would question it.” I shrugged my shoulders and kept eating my General Tso’s Chicken.

“So you’re the president of the union at MCC, eh?” “Yep.”“How did that happen?” “What do you want with me, Mr. Cohn?” “I’m your new lawyer.” I had this great Social Studies teacher in the ninth grade, Mr.

Rosenberg, who said if anybody could ever remember everything, every scrap of information, they ever learned from grades one through nine, that he would consider them as having had “a good education”.

Part of Mr. Rosenberg’s imparted “good education” was that he taught us about another set of Rosenbergs named, Julius and Ethel. I remembered (for extra points on a pop quiz) that Roy Cohn was the lawyer who sent the Rosenbergs to the electric chair. Roy Cohn didn’t look scary, but at that moment, I began to fear him nonetheless.

“I can’t afford you.” “My services are Pro Bono Publico.” “What-does-that-mean?” “Free in the public interest.” “Why?” “Why what?” “Why would a name like you help a bunch of Hacks at the

MCC?” “Two of my friends said you needed my help. They said you

were a hard worker with chutzpah.” “Mr. Cohn…”“Please call me Roy.” “Gee, Roy, I wonder which two those might be?” “They prefer to remain anonymous. So what do you say?” “Is this legal?” I asked.

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“Yes. Besides, anything we discuss is privileged under attorney-client.”

“Lemme think about it.” “You’re a good looking kid,” He said. “Did anybody ever tell

you, you look like Richard Dryfuss?” “Nope, you’re the first.” At that moment my “gay radar

detector” or “Gaydar” that Paul had installed in my psyche went off. Roy Cohn smiled at me as he paid the tab for lunch.

* * * “He’s the devil incarnate.” Rabbi Shaloub said. “He’ll burn in

hell for the pain he’s caused and all the lives he’s destroyed.” “What are you going to do?” Paul asked. “Is he gay?” I asked Paul. “Of course he’s gay, he’s a screaming queen. Him and J. Edgar

Hoover liked playing hide the salami together.” Paul said. “Yeah right. And I suppose you blew Roy Cohn, too?” I said. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, would you?” “Paul, do you realize you’ve claimed to have given head to just

about every guy in the greater five boroughs of New York and SanJuan, Puerto Rico?

“No - I’ve never given head on Staten Island.” * * *

“Where are you going to hold your demonstration?” Roy Cohn asked.

“Foley Square, where all the courthouses are, at high noon in two weeks,” I said.

“I’ll be there. I’ll stand by you.” Roy Cohen wasn’t being noble – he was a media whore.

The BOP was like any major American corporation. They only cared about the bottom line. The BOP’s bean counters had figured out that arming COs while off duty (under the guise of protecting them) might cause a few shootouts, which would cause lawsuits and - more importantly - bad press.

With the limited union funds I had I sued in federal court, asking a judge for an injunction to stop the BOP from stripping us of our off duty guns.

The problem of understanding between the white-collar world of jurisprudence and the blue-collar world of being a Hack was that


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I couldn’t recall any instance in which a federal judge, or prosecutor, ever left a golf game to come and help put down a prison riot. This is why I was not surprised when a judge from the Southern District of New York threw out our case. He said it wasn’t the Court’s business to tell the BOP how to run its shop.

My next step was to write an Emile Zola “I accuse” letter against the BOP and personally stick it in all the mailboxes of every member of the House and Senate. I remember it was the first time I took the Amtrak to Washington.

The letter writing campaign only succeeded in pissing off the BOP some more, which was okay by me. It also placed me on a first name basis with Norm Carlson, as he had to answer many a letter from curious congressmen about who I was and why I was pissing the BOP off.

“What if nobody shows to the demonstration?” I asked Steve Rubell.

“Don’t worry about that. The press will be there. Here’s the number to the Associated Press. Call them and tell them who you are, why you’re protesting, and that you expect several hundred people to show up. Trust me - they’ll come.”

The day of the demonstration was a beautiful, sunny, and warm one. The time scheduled for our fifteen minutes of fame was lunch. This was to allow some of the guys working to come out and protest with us. About fifteen CO’s arrived.

I had instructed them to wear their gun belts. As they arrived I gave them each a Chiquita banana, which I had gotten at a fruit stand in Little Italy. They promptly began peeling and eating them.

“The bananas aren’t for eating.” I announced. “They’re for sticking in your holsters.”

“Why?” “They are to symbolize that we might as well have bananas to

defend ourselves with.” “Hey fuck that, we’re hungry, we ain’t had no lunch.” “Well, do you have to eat them all, for Christ’s sake?” I was

miffed at how fast they were disappearing into their mouths. I gave up on the bananas and went on to plan “B”, which was

water pistols. I had gone to great lengths to buy a bunch of brightly

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colored, plastic “ray gun” type water pistols that I had filled with fresh Tropicana Orange Juice.

“What’s this?” “It’s water pistols filled with orange juice.” “Why?” “It’s to symbolize the fact that we’re being pissed on.” I said. “Fuck that, we’re hungry, we ain’t had no lunch.” They promptly began squirting the orange juice into their

mouths, and then at any passerby they thought looked like a lawyer. It was while I was extolling my membership not to squirt

lawyers with orange juice that Roy Cohn showed up with a camera crew in tow.

“What station are they from?” I asked Roy. “Channel 47, the Spanish station.” “Why them?” “They’re the only ones who would come.” I then noticed a guy with a professional looking camera who

asked me and Roy to pose for a picture - which we did like two civil war generals. He snapped the picture.

“You from the New York Times?” I asked. “Nope.”“The Daily News?” “Nope” “El Diario?” “Nope.”“What paper are you with?” “The Manhattan Penny Saver.” I turned to Roy and said, “I guess we’re in the big leagues

now.”My demonstration had all the impact of that proverbial flea on

an elephant’s ass.“What-are-you-gonna-do-now?” Steve asked. It was then that I glanced down at this newspaper put out for

the civil servant community called the Civil Service Leader. The Leader was a paper that advertised all the civil service jobs

in the government in the greater New York area. On the back was this small ad that said “Seeking Adventure?”


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Chapter Sixteen

Dear Lenore

“It’s been a while, Juan. Where you been?” “Remember that twenty-two cents I swallowed?” “Yeah.” “Did you ever hear of something called diverticulosis?” “Oh dear.” “Yep, I got back the change but lost about two feet of colon.” “Jeez. How do you feel?” “Like I’ve had a C-Section. Only I gave birth to twenty-two

cents.”“Does it hurt?” “Only when I drive through a toll booth.” I could tell Lenore

was trying not to laugh again. “So other than your toll booth trauma, what have you been up

to lately?” “Well, I found the answer to all of life’s riddles.” “Where?”“In the movies.” “And where did you get that from?” “A movie. Did you ever see Grand Canyon with Kevin Kline

and Danny Glover?” “No.”“You need to get out and see more movies Lenore.” “How have you been sleeping, Juan?” I had to think about this one, as I didn’t know how much I

wanted to tell her.

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“The truth is I don’t sleep much. I get jumpy at night sometimes. Sometimes I have thoughts that are like flashbulbs in my head.”

“Like what?” “They’re sort of moments frozen in time like …” I paused to

gather my thoughts. “I was once in this prison riot. The crooks at MCC on Eleven South refused to lock down. So we took four squads up there. We were armed with tear gas and pick axe handles.”

“Pick axe handles?” “Yep – do you believe that shit? That was the weapon of

choice for the BOP back then.” “What happened?” “We had a lot of training to deal with riots. But it turned out to

be bullshit. When we got up there, all discipline broke down. It was a knock down, drag out, bite ‘em in the balls fight.”

“What happened?” “I somehow got cut off from my squad. I was cuffing this

crook at the end of this tier when I turned around and saw them.” “Who?”“Crooks. Must have been about eight of them. I remember

seeing their bright jumpsuits.” “And?” “Time seemed to stop for me at that moment. I think scientists

call it cognition. Alcoholics call it a, ‘moment of clarity.’ Because I knew. I just knew.”

“What did you know?” “I knew I was about to take a beating. A bad one, and there

wasn’t a fucking thing I could do about it.” I paused. “I was so scared. I got this physical sensation in the pit of my stomach like being tossed into an elevator shaft - and here’s the weird part - I knew I had to make a choice.”

“A choice about what?’ “What to cover up. What to protect. I knew they were going to

stomp and kick me. So I had to choose between protecting my head or my balls.”

“Which did you pick?”


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I gathered my thoughts once more. “Well, I thought about the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz.”

“Why?” “Because he was wrong. You can probably muddle through

life without a brain. But a guy can’t live without his balls.” “What happened?” “I got off one good swing with the pick axe. Don’t remember if

I hit anybody.” “What then?” “I went down like the Titanic, and they started beating me like

a Salvation Army drum. I curled up in this fetal position. I had almost lost consciousness when my squad finally got to me. Christ, I pissed blood for about a week after that.”

“Did you see a doctor?” “No.”“Why not?” “I didn’t want to be thought of as weak.” Lenore paused and

looked like she was thinking. Then she asked, “What about your dreams at night?”

“Sometimes I have weird dreams.” “Tell me.” “Sometimes I dream I’m on the subway with Marie. We’re

both wearing the Star of David. But it’s not the subway in Paris. It’s the A train on the IND line in Manhattan. It’s an old subway car like when I was kid. The seats were wicker then and the cars had these old overhead fans. We’re heading down to West Fourth Street.”

“What happens in your dream?” “I keep telling Marie I don’t belong with her. I tell her I want

to go back to K-Mart. But she just smiles at me and says something in French I don’t understand.”

“What happens when you get to West Fourth Street?” I was pondering that question when someone turned on a loud

vacuum cleaner outside the door. It made enough noise so we could no longer talk. Lenore excused herself and went outside to fight with the felony vacuum cleaner operator. She came back with a painted smile on her face, sat down, and cleared her throat.

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“Juan, I want to be as diplomatic as I can, but the truth is, you seem to be gaining a little weight. How is your eating?”

“I never met a Big Mac I didn’t like.” Lenore got up and fetched a small green book with gold

lettering from a shelf. It said “DSM III” on the cover. She began to read aloud, “’Existence of recognizable stressor that evokes significant symptoms of distress in almost anyone. Reexperiencing of trauma as evidenced by recurrent and intrusive recollections of event. Sudden acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were reoccurring, because of an association with environmental or ideational stimulus. Hyperalertness, sleep disturbance, memory impairment, trouble concentrating, constricted affect.’ Does any of this mean anything to you, Juan?”

“You know something? I don’t go out much anymore.” “You didn’t answer my question.” “That’s because I don’t want to Lenore. I don’t want to talk

about shit like that anymore. Let it go.” An uncomfortable silence grew between us.

“Why don’t we call it a day, Juan? I know a person who owns a vacuum cleaner I need to kill.”

“No Kewpie doll today?” “Maybe next time.”


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Chapter Seventeen

The United States Border Patrol

The United States Border Patrol was looking for people who could speak Spanish. But what the hell was the Border Patrol? I never heard of them, but was determined to get out of the BOP. Anything was better than spending my life in prison on the installment plan.

“Ever hear of the Border Patrol?” I began asking everyone. The response was always the same, “What? Huh? The Board of Control?” I might as well have been asking a lost tourist for directions to Carnegie Hall. There was no Border Patrol in New York City.

“US Border Patrol, El Paso, Texas, how can we help you?” “Hi, listen, I’m taking the Border Patrol exam tomorrow.

What’s it like down there?” “It’s a vacation; you’ll love it.” “What about the academy?” “Piece of cake.” “Do you have subways in Texas?” “Yep, tons of ‘em.” “What’s that popping noise in the background?” Click“What did they say?” Steve Rubell asked me. “I heard a car back-firing, then he hung up. Hey, Steve, do they

have subways in Texas?” “I dunno.” I was in the Federal Building in Newark, New Jersey. Two tall

guys in Smokey the Bear hats walked into a cheesy looking room

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where they had us wait after taking the exam. They looked immaculate in their forest green uniforms. One was wearing a gun belt with a leather strap that ran diagonally across his chest like a toga that I thought looked cool.

“Okay, listen up. You people have passed the written exam. But before we go on, all of you need to hear this, so pay close attention.” He hit the play button on a tape recorder. This is not a verbatim quote, but it’s certainly what I heard.

“Welcome applicants. The Border Patrol is a thankless job that will take you to the asshole of the world. Once there, you will be shot at, spit on, and have rocks thrown at you.

You’ll have a slim chance of passing the academy, as we require that you must learn to speak, read, and write the Spanish language in eighteen weeks.

You must also run a mile in under eight minutes - run the 220-yard dash in under 45 seconds - and finish a bitch of an obstacle course in two minutes without puking.

In addition, you will have to absorb and regurgitate enough immigration and criminal law to make you an attorney.

You’ll also be required to shoot like a ‘Pistolero’. Any failure on your part to pass everything will mean immediate dismissal from the academy.

Upon completion of the academy you will be required to pick up a burning pot of coals, just like the guy in ‘Kung Fu.’

After completion of your first year, you will be given a big red “S” to wear on your chest, which will match your nice red cape. This is because you’ll be arresting more people in a day, than most cops arrest in a lifetime - and in two languages. Any takers?”

Half the people in the room quietly got up and left. The other half were too brain dead to leave. I sat there, wondering, “Am I on Candid Camera?”

“Those of you that have chosen to remain will wait here until we call you for the oral interview panel.”

The panel consisted of the two tall agents, a psychologist, and a guy that was in charge of teaching Spanish at the academy. They sat behind a lone table while I sat in a gray metal folding chair facing them.

“What do you know about the Border Patrol?”


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“Nothin.’ I did call the station in El Paso, and they said you guys have subways in Texas.” I had to wait for them to stop laughing before they asked me the next question.

“So, why do you want to join the Border Patrol?” “I need outta jail.” “You’re a federal correctional officer, huh?” “Yes, sir.” “What’s that like?” “It sucks.” “Puedes hablar Español?” the Spanish instructor asked me. “Si, Señor.” That seemed to please them as they all nodded to

each other. They handed me a position description for Border Patrol Agent

GS-5/7. It was written in “federal-speak”. The translation, other than, “being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound,” boileddown to this:

“When you’re up to your ass in alligators, will you have enough brains to know it’s time to drain the swamp?”

“Sir, I literally know all about what it’s like to be knee deep in shit,” I said.

“What makes you think you have what it takes?” “I was a driving instructor in New York City and have lived to

talk about it.” It took me four days to drive my little yellow Honda Civic to

my new duty station in Temecula, California. “Hi, I’m a new agent.” “You ain’t shit, kid. Call yourself an agent again, and I’ll put

my foot up your ass.” “You must be from Brooklyn.” “Get out of here, and report to the Chula Vista sector in San

Ysidro for swearing in. And get a haircut, and get that shit off your face. No beards allowed.”

“Where’s San Ysidro?” “Just drive south on I-15 until you hear shooting.” I drove

south past San Diego and into the Chula Vista part of San Ysidro. I knew I was on the border because I saw a large, crudely painted black and white sign that read:

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“Welcome to the Tijuana River Valley Where Birds Fly and People Don’t.” “This must be their South Bronx,” I thought to myself. The only motel I could afford was the same one the hookers

used. I called Paul after the first night. “Paul, I need something.” “What’s the matter, you homesick?” “I can’t sleep.” “Why?” “It’s too fucking quiet.” Paul owned lots of toys, so I knew he could do this for me.

“You know that stereo tape system of yours? Well, stick a microphone out the window and record the traffic for me, will ya?”

“With or without sirens?” “No, I need the sirens. Thanks. Paul, you’re my favorite gay

brother in the whole world.” As soon as I got Paul’s tape a few days later, I was finally able

to get some good sleep. “You’ll be spending two weeks here in Chula Vista. Then

you’ll be flown as a class to Glynco, Georgia. You will be attending the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, also known as FLETC. You,” he pointed to me, “what’s your name?”

“Ciuro, sir.” “Where you from?” “New York City, sir.” “Well, you look like a New York whore.” “Thank you, sir.” The Marine Corps had prepared me for

moments like these. I also thought the hot sheet hooker motel I was staying at was rubbing off on me.

“Next week this class will be buying a rough duty uniform. Purchase only one uniform, as a third to a half of you won’t be making it through the academy - especially Mr. New York whore over here.”

I took a bow and said, “My whore of a mother thanks you. My whore of a father thanks you, and I, the New York whore, thank you - sir.”

“I don’t like you, mister, you got that?” He pronounced the “S” like the onomatopoeia sound a snake would make.


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“Yes, Mrs. Einhorn.”“What did you call me?” “I didn’t say anything, sir,” then quietly added under my breath,

“Mas que joder, pendejo maricon.” His name was Andrew Hemming. He was the training officer

and also a “Senior Agent”, as evidenced by the set of captain bars he wore on his collar. First line supervisors in the patrol were called “Seniors”. We hated each other immediately. Hemming had a subtle effeminate affectation that accompanied his mannerisms. A week later Agent Hemming drove the busload of us to the uniform store in San Diego.

“Why are you buying a dress uniform and hat? Didn’t I tell you not to do that?” Hemming demanded in a petulant voice.

“I’ll need them when I graduate.” “No you won’t. You aren’t going to make it.” “Yes I am.” I had been fighting bullies all my life. This was

because I was a little guy. And little guys always know about bullies.

I reached into my wallet and counted out over eight hundred dollars for two sets of uniforms, including a black Bianchi gun belt. I knew I’d be eating one meal a day but figured beer and salted peanuts could supply all the nutrients my body needed.

“I’ll see you after graduation,” I said. Agent Hemming also told us not to bring our “POV’s”

(privately own vehicles) to the academy. “You won’t need them where you’re going,” he strongly advised, using his effeminate body language for emphasis.

That Saturday I went to “AAA U-Drive” in downtown San Diego and made arrangements to have my little yellow Honda Civic driven back east to me at FLETC.

* * * Attending the Border Patrol Academy was very much like

attending Marine Corps boot camp, except that they didn’t beat you, and the food was good.

“Welcome to the class number 16PI-103/142, or the one-forty-second. You will be sharing this 1,500 acre campus with approximately 70 other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies.” We were in a large, modern, amphitheater classroom.

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The instructor was an ex-Marine and now Border Patrol Agent. “Take a look to your left or right.” We looked and grinned at

each other. “Chances are that person sitting next to you will not be here come graduation day. There are no second chances in a gunfight; there are no second chances here. Either you get it right - or you get dead.” His words hung heavy in the air like the molecular density on Jupiter.

At that moment I attempted what we called in the neighborhood “a one cheek sneak,” but my colon wasn’t cooperating, which was just as well because it certainly broke the tension.

“Who farted?!” the ex-marine demanded. I already knew the “fessing up drill”, and so I raised my hand.

“Sorry, sir, it was an accident.” “What’s your name, maggot?” “Ciuro, sir.” “Oh, the New York whore?” He got a laugh. My reputation

had preceded me. “Yeah, but I don’t swallow.” I got a laugh. “Sit down, asshole, and try not to shit on yourself.” He went

on. “Those two desks piled with books,” he pointed, “are all the academic material you will learn by rote. This is in addition to your studies in the Spanish language.” We all murmured.

“For the next two hours you people will be taking a Spanish placement test that will let us know where you stand.”

The Spanish classes were divided into four hierarchical groups of proficiency. Flying first class would be the “native speakers.” These were guys whose Spanish was on the same level as Fidel Castro. They wouldn’t be having any problems with Spanish.

Flying second class were guys like me, Newyoricans who committed homicide on the Spanish language every time we opened our mouths. We were the illegitimate children - the bastard sons and daughters of the Spanish language.

Then came third class, the “gringos”. There were two types of gringos. Those who had a knack or ear for languages. Odds were, if theses Gringos studied hard, they would make it.

Then came those who flew in the cargo hold. They were known as “Sweathogs.” The Sweathogs had come directly from Mr. Kotter’s class in Brooklyn. They wouldn’t make it. But that


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didn’t stop us from rooting for them. * * *

It was a dive called “Pam’s”. Pam’s is the best-known cop bar in the world that you never heard of, a decompression chamber where all were afflicted with the bends of becoming a federal cop. Pam’s was the laboratory near the academy where every Friday and Saturday night the same experiment was conducted. The purpose of this scientific endeavor was to show a direct correlation between the number of Tequila shooters consumed and how good-looking a girl could get at closing time. The cliché “I never went to bed with an ugly girl, but woke up with a few” was probably coined at Pam’s.

Pam’s was owned by a husband and wife who were looked upon as surrogate parents. They always looked out for their charges. Pam’s had this long stretch Checker cab that would shuttle you back and forth from FLETC, sober or drunk. Experience had taught them to have plenty of airline barf bags within arm’s reach in the back seat.

Pam’s understood the pressures of trying to make it through the academy, which is why nothing was ever said when, one night, a confused student “borrowed” their Checker so he could “get back in time to get some sleep and go to church the next day.” I never did thank them properly for not ratting me out.

Pam’s is adorned with all kinds of cop memorabilia, including a real harpoon that still hangs over the bar to this day. It belonged to the 141st that used it to spear the occasional leviathans in mini skirts that attended ladies’ nights at Pam’s.

Pam’s also had a great juke box which played our class’s national anthem, Willie Nelson’s “On the Road Again.” This was in honor of those who every week would hit the road home after flunking out.

“How do they expect us to learn all this shit in 18 weeks?” my roommate Ski asked after another all-nighter trying to memorize Spanish verb conjugations for the weekly cumulative tests we endured every Friday afternoon.

“Well, at least you’re getting an idea.” “Of what?” “Of what it’s like to struggle with a foreign language just so

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you can fit in.” “What do you mean?” “Ski, can you imagine what it had to be like for our parents

when they first came to America?” “Yeah, my old man only spoke Polish. He had a hard time.” “Hey, my old man got off a banana boat somewhere in the

Carolinas right after World War Two. He said they made the group of them get on a bus and wait for the local sheriff.”

“Why did they have to wait for the sheriff?” “The sheriff was the official welcoming committee in charge of

determining who was a ‘real Negro’ and who wasn’t. You see, nobody gives a shit what color your skin is in Puerto Rico, but my old man found out how different it was here.”

“What happened?” Ski asked. “The pot bellied sheriff went down the length of the bus feeling

everybody’s hair.” “Why?” “Anybody who had kinky hair was told by the sheriff to sit in

the back of the bus.” “You’re shitting me.” “Nope.”“Welcome to America,” Ski said. After a while, those of us who could speak Spanish began

tutoring those that weren’t as fortunate. We took to writing down (in magic marker) Spanish nouns on index cards and Scotch taping them on everything we could. Every noun that could be labeled - was. The tables and chairs became, “mesas” and “sillas,”respectively. “Baño,” was pasted on the bathroom door. “Libro,”was on every book. And we had a translated list of every curse word or phrase you could think of.

Fuck – JoderFuck you – JodeteAss – Culo.Kiss my ass – Beseme el culo. Almost every country has its own words to describe genitalia in

the vernacular. Penis – Pinga or Beecho (to a Puerto Rican), Verga (to a

Mexican).


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Vagina – Chocha.Masturbating – Puñeta.And then there was, Coño, pronounced, Cone – Yo. The best

way to describe coño is to say - if you’ve ever had occasion to slam a car door on your fingers - then coño, is what you’d yell.

What destroyed most students were the verbs. We were expected to conjugate all the 15 tenses of Spanish verbs on command, like trained seals. Most verbs fell into the “ar,” “er,” or “ir” suffix categories, with irregular verbs being the most lethal to conjugate.

“Mr. McCourt, please conjugate the verb venir for us. Do you know what it means?” Our Spanish instructor had caught Frankie sleeping on his desk. Now he would have to pay.

“It means ‘to come,’ sir.” Frankie wiped the sleep from his eyes.

“Use it in a sentence, Mr. McCourt.”Like all cops, Frankie was a wiseass “Like in,” there was a

pregnant pause, “I got laid last night and came.” Frankie had sealed his fate.

“Yes, if you please, Mr. McCourt, give me the tense and the conjugation. If you get one wrong I’ll fail you for the week.”

Frankie cleared his throat, looked up at God for some help, and began. “Infinitive - Venir. Present Indicative – vengo. ImperfectIndicative – venía. Preterit – vine. Future Indicative – vendré.Conditional Perfect – vendrí. Present Subjunctive – venga.Imperfect Subjunctive – viniera. Present Perfect – he venido. Pluperfect – había venido. Past Anterior – hube venido. Future Perfect – habré venido. Conditional Perfect – habría venido. Present Perfect Subjunctive – haya venido. Pluperfect Subjunctive – haya venido. Imperative – venga. Present Indicative – veo.Imperfect Indicative – veía. Present Indicative – vi. That’s all I know, sir.”

“Well you left out veria - he visto - hubía visto – hube visto – habré visto – habría visto – huberia visto – and hubiese visto.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have a text book in front of me like you do,” Frankie protested.

“You won’t have one in the field either, Mr. McCourt. I hope your ‘coming’ was worth your failing grade this week.”

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* * * “Real men use revolvers. You can have your choice of three

manufacturers. They are Smith & Wesson, Colt, and Ruger. Your weapon is issued to you for the length of your employment with the Border Patrol. You cannot - I repeat, you cannot - sell it, pawn it, or loan it to a friend. You are responsible for its whereabouts and safe keeping at all times. Do you ladies understand?”

“Yes, sir!” we said in unison. “One other thing. If any of you ever point a weapon at me, or

at anything you don’t intend to shoot, then I will personally stick my hand up your ass and yank your tonsils out - Got that?”

“Yes, sir!” “How come I can’t hit shit?” David Farrington the third asked

me. “Maybe it’s because you’re an ex Chicago cop.” I answered. Everybody liked David because he didn’t care and he wasn’t

afraid of anybody. He was from the inner city of Chicago and had seen his share of gunplay. David had figured out that, even if you washed out of the academy, they couldn’t make you actually leave until graduation day when all wash outs were officially fired.

“When this is over, I got a job waiting for me in Georgia with my Uncle, the sheriff.”

“Where’s that, Mayberry? Think Andy will let you keep a bullet in your gun?” I teased him. “Dave, you are the worst shot I’ve ever seen. Didn’t they teach you anything in the Chicago PD?”

“Yeah, how to use a shotgun. In the mean time, Johnny my boy, take my rounds and plunk a few on my target will ya? I wanna make the Chicago pole lease proud.”

David would not graduate, and neither would the “fat bodies” otherwise known as the overweight candidates in our class. They would have made great agents except they couldn’t stop eating long enough to lose the weight that would’ve allowed them to pass the mandated physical endurance tests. Part of the physical endurance was to run a mile in less than eight minutes.

“That video camera will be taping you while you perform the mandatory mile run. You have eight minutes to run one mile. Anyone who finishes so much as a split second over will lose their jobs. You have one chance and one chance only. Good luck and


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God speed.” My problem was that I was born with these short, Puerto Rican

legs. It takes me two steps for every one a “normal” person takes. Taking longer strides while trying to beat the clock introduced me to another house of pain called shin splints. The only cure for shin splints was plenty of ice – with Tequila, down at Pam’s. The only problem was, Tequila kills pain as well as brain cells, which I desperately needed to study with. I made the run, but murdered many brain cells in the process.

By the time graduation day rolled around, we noticed we weren’t a class anymore. We had become sort of a family. We had shared a camaraderie that can only come from suffering together - overcoming together – and prevailing together.

The day before graduation we were issued our badges. They were gold and had an eagle on top with the crest of the Department of Justice in the middle. Flanking the crest were the initials “US.” The top banner spelled out “Border Patrol.” The bottom panel spelled out “Patrol Agent.” I can’t tell you how others felt, but to me my badge was a mother of a beauty.

“Badges? Badges? We don need no steenking badges,” is what we joked in an attempt to conceal the immense pride we all shared.

“You still have a year to go,” our instructors warned us. “You still have to pass the five and a half and the ten month exams. Fail either one of those, and you’ll be out on your ass again.”

“Maybe, but not today.” I thought. * * *

Graduation day fell on February 12th 1981. I was determined to make the best of that day. We were now the proud sons and daughters of the United States Border Patrol. I was a high school drop out, so graduation from FLETC was for me, the graduation I never had. My equivalency diploma, issued to me by the State of New York, had come unceremoniously in the mail with coffee stains on it in 1970. I never did get to go to the prom.

I was in good company, as most in my class were either college graduates or just plain smart. One thing I knew for sure – nobody who was stupid could ever get this far.

I wished Mrs. Einhorn could have seen me. I would have

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arrested her fat ass and deported her back to Oz. I had come a long way from her trash clan.

* * * It all came down to my hat. It was a green, felt, Smokey the

Bear hat that was size seven and one eighth and had a shiny leather band around it with a small brass buckle. The price I paid for it was to put my ass on the line against another Mrs. Einhorn who was determined to see me fail. But I wasn’t going to give any more Mrs. Einhorns the satisfaction.

It symbolized the world to me on that day. And the sweetest thing of all was that I was the only graduate in my class who owned such a prize. I had been teased mercilessly about my hat from day one at the academy. The rule was no trainee could ever wear a dress uniform hat outside the barracks until graduation day. So I wore mine everywhere else but. I wore it while studying. I wore it to the bathroom. I wore it to bed. I spent hours polishing the leather band around it.

Graduation was to be held in the auditorium on campus in the afternoon. God had granted a beautiful day. It was sunny, and the wind had carried off the terrible smell from a nearby industrial paper plant that spewed the odor of sulfur from its smokestack daily.

There was a cheesy engraved program with the seal of the Department of Justice on the cover, tied together with a blue velvet ribbon, and with every graduate’s name listed. My name was the seventh one from the top, “Ciuro, John – Temecula, Ca.” I wondered if this was what a high school graduation program looked like.

There are times in life when you have to fight with all your might to maintain your emotional composure. Whenever I think I’m going to lose it, I bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to cause pain so as to distract me. I also pinch my nose as another distraction.

I was late getting up that morning. I missed breakfast, but that didn’t matter, as it was close to lunch. I showered and dressed.

The Border Patrol has several variations of uniforms. The rough duty uniform was worn when working in the desert where uniforms didn’t last long due to wear and tear. Some agents took


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to wearing green Levi’s, as they held up better than anything else. There were also two different kinds of gun belts worn in the Border Patrol. A “River Belt” was what you wore with a rough duty uniform. Then there was a Dress Uniform that you wore a “Sam Brown” gun belt with.

A Dress Uniform was analogous to your Sunday best church clothes. The pants had a deep, dark blue stripe that contrasted well with the forest green of the rest of the uniform. I had forgone many meals just so I could have a complete dress uniform including my hat, just for this one day.

I shined up like a new penny. My hat looked great. I felt proud. I decided to walk over to mess hall, just so I could prolong the moment.

The mess hall was a huge, cavernous place set up much like any military mess hall. Miles of tables with benches were spread out over what looked like a couple of acres of mess hall. There were thousands of conversations going on at once. People eating and drinking, talking with their mouths full and spilling coffee. The noise and clatter of mealtime was familiar to me, so I paid it no mind as I walked in, wearing my dress uniform. I had finally won the right to wear my hat, and I wasn’t about to take it off, no matter what Emily Post might have said. I walked towards the chow line but was stopped dead by the sudden silence.

Everybody had stopped eating. Spoons were frozen in mid air - no one was chewing or drinking. I stood there as if on stage, wondering what had happened. It started with David Farrington the third, my favorite ex-Chicago cop.

David began clapping, wearing a huge smile on his face. Then the rest of my class quickly joined in. And then came the swelling of thunderous applause that reverberated through the mess hall. I felt like I was standing on stage at Carnegie Hall having just played the world’s greatest violin concerto.

I was so proud on many levels. But mostly as Latino. I was a proud Puerto Rican from a basement in Washington Heights who had made it into the major leagues of federal law enforcement. How often in life do moments like these come? Maybe never. The emotion in me kept building. As I listened to the thunder of applause, my tears began to well.

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I had nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide. There was not enough cheek to bite, nor enough nose to pinch. So I stood there and cried, and nobody ever said a word about it.

I would not have traded that day for all the graduations in the world.


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Chapter Eighteen

Toledo, Ohio

Temecula is a small town in California that lies on Interstate 15, about halfway between Los Angeles and San Diego. It was once a stop along the Butterfield Stage Line when California was still a place called Mexico.

The name "Temecula" was Indian for, "No New Yorkers allowed."

In 1981 it actually was a one-horse town. Main Street was about a mile long. There was only one saloon called the Red Dog where every Saturday night real cowboys and real Indians would get drunk and beat the shit out of each other. There was a restaurant called The Hitching Post where people rode up on their horses and tied them up to a hitching post some kid made in wood shop.

There was another restaurant across the street called The Vault. It was once a bank, but patrons now paid for the privilege of sitting in the bank's vault to eat enchiladas.

The Border Patrol station was a small building that sat at the south end of Main Street.

Smells have a way of tattooing themselves on your brain forever. The station was once used as a chicken coop. It smelled like a mixture of sage, sweat, peeling paint, and chicken shit.

The Border Patrol maintained a checkpoint a few miles up on the northbound side of Interstate 15. This was because there was no profit in smuggling illegal aliens on the southbound side.

The checkpoint consisted of a long trailer on wheels. The same kind of trailer used by people who had names like Bubba and

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sported mullet haircuts. Only our white trash trailer housed a mini police station. Inside the trailer was a set of dull gray metal desks that I recognized as being manufactured by the inmates of the Federal Prison System. All the desks had eyelets screwed on the side so you could handcuff your prisoner to them.

Someone had put up a large poster of the Statue of Liberty with a caption that read, "Will the last American to leave California please remember to turn out the lights."

In the back was an interrogation room with a Xerox copier sitting atop a table. The copier had two bright red wires coming out of its belly with bright blue alligator clips attached to the ends.

The wires, held in place by Scotch tape, were attached to nothing in particular inside the copier. On the side of the copier was a big black and white bilingual sign that read:

"LIE DETECTOR - MACHINA DE MENTIRAS."Every Border Patrol agent had to be skillful in “breaking"

illegal aliens. Almost all of the illegal aliens caught on the border were the proud sons of Mexico.

"Breaking" was the term we used when we got the proud sons of Mexico to confess or admit, either verbally or in writing, that they were in this country illegally. From that point on, we quickly wrote out a "Form I-213," gave them a bologna sandwich, and put them on the bus back to Tijuana where they would promptly cross again the next day.

Everybody on both sides understood the unspoken rules. Once you were caught, you were caught. If you didn't give us a hard time, we wouldn't give you a hard time. But sometimes we’d get a guy who didn't like bologna sandwiches. Him you'd have to break.

Getting the proud sons of Mexico to admit they were actually from Mexico was like playing poker. You had to be good at bluffing and outright bullshitting. The stakes were high - whoever was the better bullshitter always won. I always felt I had an edge because – let’s face it – when it comes to bullshit, who can beat a New Yorker?

The proud sons of Mexico knew that the worst they were going to get was a free bus ride back to Tijuana and a stale bologna sandwich. So why not bluff by saying they were born in Toledo,


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Ohio, and had been kidnapped as a baby back to Tijuana by their evil Stepmother? All they had to do was keep a straight face.

The payoff was big. This was because, under US immigration law, two doctrines dictated American Citizenship. One was called Jus Soli, Latin for "Born on American ground means you’re American crowned.”

The other was Jus Sanguinus, Latin for "Born of American Mom or Dad means you’re an American lass or lad.”

Therefore, if you followed the legal doctrine of BullshittusAmericanus, Latin for "That's my story and I'm sticking to it," and never admitted to being born anywhere but Toledo, Ohio, you just might have a shot at getting a Denny’s Grand Slam breakfast in LA. All you had to do was hold on to Bullshittus Americanus.

The conversation (always in Spanish) would go something like this in the interrogation room:

"What's your full and correct name?" "Jose Guadalupe O'Hara Smith." "Smith, huh?" "Si, Senior." "Where were you born?" "Toledo, Ohio." "No you weren't." "Yes I was." "That’s impossible." "Why?" "Because Toledo, Ohio, has been closed since 1968." "Really?" Score one for me. I upped the ante. "Do you speak any English?" "Si." "What does the word, 'choose' mean in Spanish?" Mr. Smith thought about it for a minute and said, “Zapatos!"

(Shoes).Score one for Mr. Smith, as he made me stifle a laugh that

almost caused me to lose my poker face. "How come your English sucks?" "Well, I was actually born in Puerto Rico and raised in Toledo,

Ohio." Score one for Mr. Smith. Puerto Rico is a commonwealth of the United States; therefore, anyone born in Puerto Rico is born

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an American citizen, and that would explain why he couldn't speak English.

“Your parents are from Puerto Rico?” “Yes.” "When was the last time you were in Puerto Rico?' "Last year." "How much is the toll for the tunnel that runs between San

Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Bronx?" “The tunnel?” “Don’t you know about the tunnel?” “Yes I do.” “So what’s the toll?” "Ten Pesos." "Ha! The toll isn't ten Pesos - it's twenty." "Really?” Score one for me. It was time for me to play my trump card.

Maintaining my, “Well, little Johnny, did you bring enough gum for the entire class” poker face, I pointed over to the Xerox machine and asked Mr. Smith, "Know what this is?"

“A microwave oven?” Score one for Mr. Smith. “This is a lie detector.” “Really?” “Yes.” I took the two wires coming from the Xerox machine that had

alligator clips on each end. I quickly pinched each of the clips to both his pinky fingers.

"If you’re lying, this machine will tell me,” I said in a my best serious bass voice. “Now for the last time, were you born in Puerto Rico?”

“Maybe not.” “So, where were you born?” “Toledo, Ohio.” “Bullshit.” “I was; I swear it before God! I swear it before the Virgin

Mary!” “It that your final answer?” “Yes, Toledo, Ohio.”


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I hit the "copy" button on the Xerox and watched smugly as a white piece of paper came out of the machine that read in huge black letters:

"YOU'RE A FUCKING LIAR! PINCHE MIENTEROSO!"

“You want mustard on your bologna sandwich Mr. Smith?” “That machine is lying. I was born in Toledo, Ohio.” “Bullshit.” “No, I’m telling the truth.” Mr. Smith was a lousy liar, but I had to give him credit for

sticking to Bullshittus Americanus. He wasn’t showing his cards to anyone. So, on to “plan B.”

Plan B called for me to write down every minute physical detail of Mr. Guadalupe O'Hara Smith, from the top of his blue New York Yankees baseball cap right down to his blue socks, white sneakers, and red shoelaces. As I walked him outside, I passed his physical description to my partner, who was standing by the police radio.

I put Mr. Smith in the back of the patrol car which was encased in wire mesh and let him stew for a while. Getting behind the driver’s wheel I acted bored, as I made a show of fumbling with the dials on the police radio, like I was trying to find some Oldies but Goodies FM station.

The radio dutifully went through several frequencies while spitting static, until I got to the frequency my partner in the trailer was on. I cranked up the volume loud enough so anyone in Toledo, Ohio could hear it.

"ATTENCION! -- ATTENCION! From the Mexican Federales: Be on the lookout for a rapist name of Jose Guadalupe O'Hara Smith! He is wanted in connection with raping nuns at the convent of Our Lady of Agony in Chihuahua. He was last seen in the vicinity of Temecula, California, wearing a blue New York Yankees baseball cap and white sneakers. He is armed and dangerous and should be shot on sight. That is all."

Without missing a beat I slammed the car in gear, stomped down on the gas, and burned rubber while making a U-turn heading south towards Mexico.

"Where are we going?" "I’m taking you to the Federales, you nun raping SOB.

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"NO!" “Are you a good Catholic?” Mr. Smith kept crossing himself as he answered, “Yes I am.” “Then how could you rape those innocent nuns? I hope they

cut your balls off.” "Por Favor! I didn't rape anybody!" He kept crossing himself.Now came the screen test. It was used as a friendly reminder to

dissuade Mr. Smith from playing poker with the Border Patrol again.

I slammed on my brakes with enough force to stop a freight train. Mr. Smith traveled at the speed of light into the wire mesh screen that partitioned the patrol car.

As the car screeched to a halt I jumped out like Batman and flung the back door open yelling, “Still wanna tell me you’re from Toledo, Ohio?”

"No.""Okay then, where were you born?" "Toronto, Canada." We both broke down laughing. After that, it was a simple task to give Mr. Smith his stale

Bologna sandwich with mustard and mayonnaise and shake his hand as he got on the bus, saying "See ya tomorrow." And I did. I think I must have arrested Mr. Smith about a dozen times over the course of the next year.

We got to be pals in an odd sort of way. He got into the habit of having only me arrest him whenever he wanted a free ride back to Mexico. This was because I always ensured he got a fresh bologna sandwich when I put him on the bus.

I lived about six miles east of Temecula at a place called Murrieta Hot Springs. I remember working a long midnight shift and being so tired that I all I craved was sleep. My slumber was short-lived early that morning. Some nut was right outside my window with a turbo charged leaf blower making a racket. I got up, went out into my porch in my underwear to complain. I yelled to get his attention. When he turned around, I saw it was Mr. Smith.

He smiled at me, and I smiled back shaking my head. We spoke in Spanish.

“Hola, Pinche Migra! Is this where you live?" he asked.


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I knew that Migra was short for the Spanish word, Inmagración, or immigration. But when I looked up Pinche, in my Spanish dictionary it said, “Prick.” I didn’t know if he was using it as a noun or a verb.

"Yeah - and quit calling me Pinche will ya.” "Do you have any coffee, Migra?” He smiled widely at me. "Yeah, c'mon in." He took off his leaf blower, and we settled into my kitchen and

talked over coffee. Almost all of the proud sons of Mexico who crossed the border

were no more criminals than our parents were when they came to America. The proud sons of Mexico came here and did the backbreaking work that no American would do.

Mr. Smith was no different than my father, who came here on a banana boat. Nor was he any different than any of our fathers, who had come to these shores before.

We in the Border Patrol understood this. We knew that, for the people we arrested, it was a matter of food. Without the work they did here, their families might well starve.

They knew our job was to catch them. But almost no one ever went to jail. They just went back. This is the way it was. This was the way it had been and would probably continue.

The paradox was that there was more danger for them than there was for us. The working stiffs who crossed the border had the same enemies we did. These were the smugglers, who turned them into slaves and indentured servants; the banditos that robbed and raped them; and the dope smugglers that used them as human mules. We carried guns to protect ourselves. They carried nothing but their courage. I respected all of them for that.

This was why I could sit and have coffee with Mr. Smith in my kitchen. There was no animosity between us. We were two just guys trying to put food on the table.

"You don't speak Spanish like a Gringo, how come?" "Spanish was my first language." "From where?" "Puerto Rico." "I should have known. You know what name we use to call

Puerto Ricans?"

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"No what?" "Porr - Toros." When he said it, he really trilled his “Rs” I

didn't know if being a "Porr - Toro" was something I should be upset about. "Are you insulting me? Should I get my gun and shoot you?"

"No. Are you going to be on duty tonight?" "Yeah, I gotta work a midnight shift. Want me to arrest you

tonight? I don't know if we'll have any sandwiches though." "No, I have a ride back tonight. But next week I'll look for you.

I'm going to my sister’s wedding in Chihuahua." "Mazel Tov." "Hey -- can you deport me all the way to Chihuahua?" "No. Only just across the border." "I need a bus ride to Chihuahua." I sighed, as I knew where he was going with this. "All I got is

five bucks." "You're a good man.” He snatched the bill. “My sister thanks

you for this." "Yeah, bite me." "I'll see you in a couple of weeks then. You get some sleep." "Adios, Mr. Smith." "Adios, Migra," he said as he left through the porch gate. I knew I would be chasing him in a couple of weeks - but not

today. Today he was a friend – a working stiff I had given a cup of coffee and five bucks for blowing the leaves off my patio.


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Chapter Nineteen

Tango 655

“You’re Tango 655 as of today,” my partner, George Carberry, said.

“Why Tango? I mean, I’m really more of a Mambo kind of guy.”

“Temecula starts with the letter ‘T’, and ‘T’ in the phonetic alphabet is ‘Tango.’ And besides, nobody Mambos in Temecula.”

“What’s the radio call sign for central dispatch?” “811 – and don’t say ‘eight eleven.’ If you need central, say

eight–one–one.” “Why?” “The dispatch guy is superstitious about the number eleven.

He’s a Newyorican like you and is into Santeria. Are you into Santeria?”

“Well, let’s just say I don’t eat chicken,” I answered George. The Border Patrol maintained traffic checkpoints on Interstate

15, where we were, and west of us, at San Clemente, on Interstate 5. Both checkpoints were about 60 miles north of the border.

The checkpoints were meant as a second line of defense. A final chance to play a game of cat and mouse. Once people got across the border proper, they would travel in any manner of vehicle or conveyance, with the sole purpose of getting by us. Once they did that, they were home free and on their way to that Denny’s grand slam breakfast in LA.

We always set up the checkpoint in the same fashion: bright orange cones along with flashing yellow lights placed about a half-mile before the checkpoint to slow traffic down.

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Then we would place a big STOP sign in between the two northbound lanes of traffic. Underneath the stop sign was a smaller sign that said "Federal Officers". On the bottom of the stand, somebody had gotten a heavy piece of steel to weigh the sign down so it wouldn't blow away in a stiff breeze.

Agents rotated every 30 minutes "on point". Being on point meant standing behind the stop sign like a potted plant, conducting cursory looks into every vehicle that passed. There were always at least three agents on duty when the point was up.

As the traffic approached and slowed to a crawl, an agent would wave the cars through like a traffic cop, but again, only after having a good look-see at the occupants.

If the agent on point saw something suspicious, or anything that aroused his curiosity, he would wave the vehicle over to an area that was called "secondary".

If the agent on point yelled, "Stop short," we knew that a car had just screeched to a halt and made a fast, illegal U-turn by the flashing yellow lights. Whoever had the keys to the patrol car would give chase.

If the agent yelled, "Run through," we knew someone had just blown the stop sign at warp speed. Again, whoever had the keys for the patrol car would give chase.

I preferred making orthodox vehicle stops; much the same way any cop pulls you over, with flashing lights and a touch of siren. But we only did that during bad weather or when we were short of people.

When I was kid I loved doing these picture puzzles on the back page of comic books. It was a drawing of what appeared to be a normal, everyday scene, like a little kid riding a bike with his dog. But you had to look closer. The caption read, "What's wrong with this picture?" Under the caption it said, "There are 20 things wrong in this picture. Can you find them all?"

You'd see the obvious ones, like the dog would have only three legs, or the bike was missing handlebars, or the kid was missing his mouth. It was finding the last detail that was always hard.

To me, the gradients of mere suspicion, reasonable suspicion, and probable cause, was nothing more than looking for what was wrong with any given picture. This is what you had to keep in


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mind when you were "on point." Looking at any situation and asking yourself, "What's wrong with this picture?" We were looking for human cargo that smugglers hid anywhere they could, on any part of any kind of vehicle.

Smugglers were ingenious when it came to hiding their human cargo.

I once popped opened the glove box on an old Ford LTD. Peering inside with a flashlight I looked for a false bottom. I found two glowing eyes in the glove box staring back at me in disbelief. The smuggler had hollowed out the fender right through the dashboard, making it just big enough to stuff a person into.

Creating false bottoms on the beds of pick-up trucks and vans was a popular way of smuggling.

My favorite though, was the Greyhound bus routine. Every time the San Diego to Los Angeles Greyhound bus showed up at the checkpoint, I knew we were about to play out the famous "Stateroom Scene" from the Marx Brothers movie "A Night at the Opera".

The door of the bus would open with that whooshing sound and I would climb up, whereupon the driver would hand me the microphone. I would give the same rehearsed speech every time I did this routine.

"Good afternoon, my name is Agent John Ciuro. This is the checkpoint of the United States Immigration Service -- United States Border Patrol. Will all those passengers who are not, I repeat again, are NOT -- citizens of the United States, please have your passports, visas, and other identification papers ready for inspection." I would then repeat it in Spanish.

The driver already knew what was coming, so he'd automatically hand me the keys to the bathroom located in back of the bus.

In order to avoid "profiling" anybody based on appearance, I would begin to walk down the aisle asking each and every passenger in Spanish and in English, "What is your place of birth or citizenship?"

The bathroom in the back a Greyhound bus is about the size of a broom closet. I knocked on the door, already knowing it was locked, and I wouldn't be getting an answer any time soon.

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The best way I can describe it is by recalling those old black and white pictures in Life Magazine of college kids stuffing themselves into phone booths.

When you're a rookie doing this for the first time, senior agents never tell you to stand away from the door. This is because they thought seeing a rookie getting crushed under a human avalanche of the proud sons of Mexico was funny. The bodies burst out like an explosion, burying you as if you had just recovered the game-winning fumble at the Superbowl.

"Fool me once,” I said, as I turned the key on the bathroom door and ran for my life.

Once you got all the proud sons of Mexico that tumbled out of the bathroom off the bus, you always had to go back with a big can of WD-40 and get the guy that had managed to wedge his foot in the toilet.

Being on point made me feel vulnerable, as the next car might be the one to run me over. I wasn't afraid of smugglers as much as I was afraid that I might encounter one of my former driving students.

Standing a watch on point during a good day was like opening up a box of Cracker Jack and fishing around for the prize. You knew it was in there somewhere.

If you lived in New York and wanted to be entertained, all you had to do was ride the subway. There was always a good chance a funny whackaloon would be getting on at the next stop.

But the whackaloons riding the New York subways were nothing compared to the whackaloons riding on California's freeways. I was in the land where whackaloons were manufactured.

"Yo, Phil," I called to one of my partners, as I stood on point one Saturday afternoon.

"Yeah, whadayawant?" Phil was a former tow truck driver who spoke the King's English from Queens, New York.

"There's an airplane coming at me." "Quit jerking me off, will ya." "Oh yeah, well, what the fuck is that?" We both gazed at what

was quickly approaching the point.


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"Looks like a World War Two bomber." Phil was a World War Two buff and knew his bombers.

"What kind?" "I think it's a B-25." The silver-colored fuselage pulled up next to me with the driver

looking down at me from high on up in the cockpit. He had on a "Snoopy" helmet and was grinning. The fuselage was on a bed of oversized Goodyear tires. In place of where the nose gear had been was now a steering mechanism from a 1961 Ford Falcon. The wings had been removed except for the tail wings and rudder.

I waved him over to “secondary” and watched him pop out the bomb bay door.

"Pilot's license and registration,” I said. He was an old, skinny, gray-haired hippie who, I will swear to

this day, was Willie Nelson – pigtails, beard, and all. “Hey, Willie Nelson. I’m your biggest fan!” “I’m not Willie Nelson, but I get that a lot.” “You are too Willie Nelson.” “No, I’m not.” “Are too!” “Am not.” His driver’s license said he was Fred Metaxus of

Orange County California. But I still refused to believe he wasn’t Willie Nelson. I let it go, believing Willie wanted to travel incognito.

"Where's the license plate on this thing?” I asked. Willie hooked his thumb, pointing to the back where the tail gunner would've sat.

"What is this thing?" I put it together from parts of a B-25 a DC-3 and a Ford

Falcon."“Where are you going?" “LAX.” "The airport in LA?" "Yep.""Why?" "I like seeing the look on people’s faces when I drive around

looking for parking spots at airports. Besides, I also haul stuff for shipment every now and then."

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"You hauling any shit now?" "Coffins.""Let me get this straight. You're driving a B-25 hauling coffins

to LA, with a stop off at the airport so you can freak people out?" "Yep."I didn't think anyone on the subway could top this one. “And you still want me to believe you’re not Willie Nelson?” I

was trying to break him. "You wanna search it?" Willie asked. "Naw." There was no way this guy was lying, except about

being Willie Nelson. Like a proud father, Willie gave me the nickel tour of his baby bomber. He pointed out where he had "Rube Goldberged" everything, including the front end off that 1961 Ford Falcon. He even had an old eight-track stereo. Willie gave me his business card, and I gave him back his paper work and watched him drive off.

"What was that?" Phil asked. "Willie Nelson driving a B-25 on I-15 hauling coffins to LA." I

answered. "What for?" "I think he's gonna bomb the living shit outta LA." Phil went

back to eating his sandwich. The next Saturday found me standing the point again. I saw a

woman coming at me at warp nine. "Phil, we got a live one coming!"

I frantically waved my arms motioning her to slow down. But she seemed to be preoccupied looking down at something in her car.

I've always seen how Hollywood stunt men miraculously jump out of the way in the nick of time, as a speeding car barrels down on them. But never thought I'd be living the part.

I dived to my right, tucking and rolling, winding up with a mouthful of grass that was growing on the highway divider.

When I looked up, I knew we were going to need a tow truck to rescue our STOP sign that was now wedged under her Buick.

Phil gave me this "So what else is new?" look while shrugging his shoulders.


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I walked up to the driver's window of the Buick while still spitting out grass.

The only way I could describe her was by saying she was a cute nerd on wheels.

She was wearing Coke bottles for glasses, her lipstick was smeared, and her dress didn't quite fit her. But there was something about her. She was one of those women who weren’t aware of her own beauty. The kind of women who would never wear a short skirt with high heels because of what she might find out about herself.

"I'm so, so, sorry, I didn't see you. My name is Doctor Margarita Velasquez and I am -- very, very, sorry."

"What kind of doctor are you? "I'm a Psychiatrist." "Can I ask you something, doc?" "Yes, of course." She was fumbling in her purse as she spoke. "Why are your pantyhose pulled down around your ankles?" She had one foot tucked into each leg of her pantyhose. "Oh … well, you see … I was late for an appointment and was

trying to put my pantyhose on when I almost ran over you. I guess I shouldn’t have done that while driving, huh?"

"What kind of Psychiatry do you practice, doc?" "Oh, I help people with multiple personality disorders." "Is that contagious?" She smiled at me. I remember thinking I wouldn’t throw her out

of bed for eating crackers. She reminded me of a lost child who needed protecting.

The tow truck finally came. Her car was none the worse for wear - but our stop sign had been dealt a deathblow.

I was handing her back her license when she asked, "I'm sorry again, is there anything I can do to make this up to you?"

"Are you married?" I asked. "Oh … no … no … I'm not." She always seemed to start her

sentences with "oh." "Wanna have dinner?" "Oh … with you?" "Well, I can bring along one of my alter egos if you'd like.” She smiled at me.

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"Oh, you mean dinner … like in a date?" "Well, you do owe me a stop sign." "Oh, goodness," she looked me up and down. I could tell I had

caught her by surprise. "Oh … okay." She said giving me her business card. I watched her drive away hoping she could find a way to put

her pantyhose on without getting killed. Of all the greatest philosophers who have ever lived - Plato,

Aristotle, Nietzsche, - the greatest philosopher of them all is Yogi Berra. When it came to vehicle stops, I applied the great thinking of Yogi by realizing that "You don't know what you got, until you know what you got."

Bean counters had figured out that cops making vehicle stops were more likely to be shot within fifteen feet of their patrol car. This was because "Yogism" was not taught as part of the curriculum in most police academies.

When I was at the Border Patrol Academy they always posted a daily "thought for the day" sign in the mess hall. I read one thought for the day that stayed with me.

"When making a vehicle stop alone at night, use every light on your unit to blind the vehicle's occupants. Open and slam your door -- then quietly exit through the passenger door. Walk up on the passenger side. This is where they will not expect you."

I got stuck working alone one midnight when the point was down because too many guys had called in sick. I spotted a wreck of an old Chevy with two occupants that made me ask, "What's wrong with this picture?"

Two skeevy looking white guys in a black Chevy with a rear bumper dragging so low, it looked like the Titanic sinking. "How many Mr. Smiths are riding in the trunk?" I wondered.

As soon as I fell in behind them I could see the passenger ducking down like he was trying to hide something. Both males were wearing T-shirts, had long hair and looked like they needed baths and a shave. "You don't know what you got until you know what you got," I said to no one.

“Tango 655 – eight-one-one.” “Eight one-one - Tango 655 go with your traffic,” dispatch

responded immediately.


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“Tango 655 – eight-one-one, I need a rolling 10-28 – 10-29 – on California license number Bravo, X-ray, four, seven, seven, seven, Whiskey.”

“Eight-one-one – Tango 655 – stand by one.” I had just told the dispatcher that I was following a suspect car

and wanted to know who it was registered to and if it was stolen. In the movies, the cop always gets an immediate response. But in 1981 it was different story.

“Tango 655 –eight-one-one – howzabout it!” “Eight one- one – Tango 655 – NCIC is down right now.” NCIC was the acronym for National Crime Information

Computer, which is the database of information run by the FBI. But as powerful as it is, it’s not immune from crashing, like all computers.

“Tango 655 – eight-one-one – I can’t wait anymore, this guy’s almost out to Oak Grove.”

“Eight one-one – Tango 655 – are you alone?” “You bet your ass I am.” By dispensing with radio protocol I

was letting dispatch know my urgency. “Tango 655 – give me one more minute, NCIC is up now.” “Roger that, eight one-one.” “Tango 655 – I have two hits on your vehicle. The plate comes

back reported stolen. Same description as your vehicle used in an armed robbery in LA two days ago. You’ve got a ‘hot stop’ – we’re spread thin tonight - I can’t get you back up right away. What’s your call?” The sector I worked covered over 3,000 square miles of desert – from Temecula to Oak Grove.

Oak Grove is a hamlet in the desert where two Border Patrol Agents named George Azrak and Theodore Newton had been shot to death in June of 1967. They had stopped two guys in an old military ambulance containing 880 pounds of marijuana. They never heard the second vehicle that came up behind them. They were taken by surprise and disarmed. The bad guys took both of them to a remote cabin in the desert and handcuffed them to each other around a pot-bellied stove. There, they were both shot to death execution style with a bullet in each of their brains.

The lesson of Azrak and Newton had not been forgotten. This is why there was silence. All radio traffic had ceased. There’s

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nothing worse for a cop than to know one of their own is in harm’s way – without being able to get to them in time.

I picked a spot that was to my advantage to pull them over. I thought about the "thought for the day" and did exactly what it had counseled.

There are some sounds you hear in life that get your immediate attention, like a car screeching to a halt, or someone screaming. There are other sounds that are barely audible, but still command the same respect and attention.

The sound of a hammer being cocked on a .357 pressed in your ear is something that will cause you to pay attention. At the exact moment you hear it - all movement stops, followed by a silence that is deafening.

I spoke slowly and deliberately in a calm whisper saying only two words, "Don't move!"

I kept my Colt pressed in his ear as I slowly reached in with my right hand taking a .45 automatic from his. It was nickel-plated, and had Chinese dragons etched in black on its pearl handles. It was loaded with a full magazine and one in the "pipe". In the vernacular, it was locked, cocked, and ready to rock.

"Passenger, when I open this door, slide out and onto your belly. Driver, you so much as fucking twitch, and I'll leave your brains on the windshield."

A few minutes later, I could hear the cavalry coming, with lights and sirens. It was music to my ears.

After we had them cuffed, I found two-dime bags of heroin under the front seat. In the trunk we found human cargo that had been packed literally like sardines in a can.

At the station while processing them, I asked the bad guy with the gun, "What were you going to do with the .45?"

"If I tell you, will you promise not to say nothing?" "Okay." He leaned over the table with his hands still cuffed behind him.

Now it was his turn to whisper. He smiled politely as he spoke. "I was gonna shoot you in both eyes."

I bumped into Mr. Smith that night at the end of my tour. He had been washing cars behind the Red Dog Saloon for three bucks a car.


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"Tired?" he asked. I stared at him for a moment, and then said, "Wanna get a

beer?""You buying?" "Yeah.""Okay then, you can arrest me tomorrow, no?" It was the first

time I had laughed that day.

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Chapter Twenty

Mad Dog

The Border Patrol was always short of agents. Part of the problem was a significant number of trainees that never made it through the academy or completed a year of field training. The other problem was burnout due to the workload.

Three years in the Border patrol was like 30 years in a “normal” police department. Think about it - how many people does the average cop actually arrest in a day? In the Border Patrol the numbers were staggering. One agent (on a good night) could lock up and deport as many as 100 people. It was not unusual for any line station to arrest hundreds of people during a twenty-four hour period.

You needed to appreciate that every arrest was the actual physical taking of a person into custody. Once they were in custody, their well-being was your responsibility to include feeding and providing medical treatment if necessary. This meant never arresting anyone that might need medical treatment. As an example – let’s say you came upon an accident where one car had rear-ended another. Lo and behold, you looked in the trunk of the car that got rear-ended – and there you found a bleeding banged up Mariachi band playing La Cucaracha. Well, as far as the Border Patrol was concerned, they were the Beach Boys. That is until they got released from the hospital.

And there was the danger. Anything from being sucked under a slow moving freight train to being pelted with rocks, with an occasional bullet whizzing by your head. Plus, the threat of catching everything from tuberculosis, to hepatitis, to scabies, to


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snakebite was real. You could find yourself lost in the Anzo Borrego Badlands if you weren't careful. The hours worked on any given shift were (at times) the same ones kept by any first year med student.

There was so much overtime that a deal was cut providing for "uncontrollable overtime". Uncle Sam gave you a straight twenty-five percent increase in your salary rather than go broke by paying you the actual rate of overtime you might have otherwise been entitled too.

If you flew in the helicopter or "STOL" (short take off and landing) fixed wing aircraft as an "observer" you were given ten-percent hazardous duty pay and the promise of a nice funeral.

The chopper in our sector was flown by a guy known as "Mad Dog". No one knew his real name. He was an honest to goodness good ole boy from Mississippi. We also knew he had been a chopper pilot in Vietnam who had spent time in a VA Psychiatric ward for (it was rumored) being a homicidal maniac. He also had a metal plate in his head, which allowed him to stick refrigerator magnets to his head while he flew.

Mad Dog had a penchant for collecting fully automatic machine guns and baseball cards. He was fond of flying underneath the string of wires between telephone poles with his eyes closed. His favorite trick was to take the tail rotor of the chopper and attempt to give “haircuts” (as he’d say with his gapped toothed smile) to the sons of Mexico if they were stupid enough to flee from him.

When Mad Dog flew he wasn't allowed to carry a gun. This was because it took all four extremities to fly a helicopter – plus the fact that he really was insane. To me, Mad Dog was a cross between Chuck Yeager and Beavis and Butt Head.

"Dusting" was the term that meant using the prop wash from the chopper blades to create a mass vortex of wind to blow illegals from their hiding place or force them to lie down or risk decapitation. Mad Dog was fond of this. He loved dusting everybody, with nuns being one of his favorite targets.

Mad Dog had a young cousin named Hummer. Hummer worked at a Triple A minor league baseball park in San Diego. During the seventh inning stretch Hummer would man a giant

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rubber sling shot which he would use to catapult everything from bags of peanuts to free bundled-up T-shirts into the bleachers as promotional gags. One day, Hummer thought it would be funny to slingshot cans of frozen Diet Pepsi into the bleachers like a bazooka. Hummer sent several fans to the emergency room and so was fired. But when Hummer got fired, they forgot to relive him of the giant slingshot. Hummer brought it to his new job working at the drive-through window at Taco Bell in Chula Vista.

This is how Hummer became famous for sling shooting tacos from his drive-through window to Mad Dog in his chopper. Mad Dog loved hovering a few feet from the drive-through window during lunchtime. It was a hell of sight to see. Everybody thought the chopper, with all its wind and deafening noise, was there for some big time capture of escaping desperados until they caught a glimpse of Hummer and his slingshot.

If they stayed long enough, they got a treat. Sometimes Hummer would take the leftover bean burritos and fire them into Mad Dog’s tail rotor just to see how much bean burrito he could splatter on the unsuspecting windshields of fast food freaks.

Some doctor walking through the parking lot in his nice white lab coat caught the business end of a nasty burrito as it ricocheted off of Mad Dog’s tail rotor one afternoon. Soon after that Mad Dog got called on the carpet by the FAA who suspended his license for a month and gave him a stern warning to stay away from fast food places lest he lose his license permanently.

I thought this would be the end of Mad Dog and his shenanigans until I was partnered up with him for that month while he was grounded. During that time I discovered the horror of nuclear winter in the form of Mad Dog’s flatulence. There was no place to hide in the front seat of that patrol car. Every time he’d cut one I felt like Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness, as all I could say while choking was, “The horror, the horror.”

Mad Dog had another disgusting habit in the form of his vocabulary. His favorite word in the English language was “Smegma.” He used it liberally and tried to work it into any conversation he could.

“Do you know why we lost the war in Viet Nam?” “No why?”


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“Because of smegma.” “Huh? What the fuck is smegma?” Mad Dog reached into his locker and pulled out a dictionary.

He read from it like a preacher at the pulpit: “Smegma: a thick cheese-like white sebaceous secretion that collects beneath the foreskin of the penis.” Mad Dog sounded quite pedantic. “In the bush Charlie could smell our big American smegma cheese dicks a mile away. But your typical Charlie had a little dick, and therefore no smegma scent.”

“Fuck you, Mad Dog.” “That’s your smegma talking boy. It’s backed up to your

brain.”I was once thick in the bush with Mad Dog along Sandia Creek.

This was a beautiful valley outside of Temecula where avocados grew as far as the eye could see. There, we came upon a campsite that had been hastily evacuated by the proud sons of Mexico. The smell of their cooking lingered in the air. They had left their dinner over a campfire and run as soon as they heard us coming through the underbrush of stinging nettles - which caused us to curse loudly.

“Smell that boy?” “What, Mad dog? The food?” “No, boy. Can’t you smell that Mexican smegma?” “Fuck you, Mad Dog.” Then nature called Mad Dog. “I gotta shit, boy.” “So?”“Did ya ever take a tortilla shit?” Mad Dog went over to a cooked stack of flour tortillas so tall

they looked like the leaning tower of Pisa. He grabbed a small stack, gave them a big whiff, and began chuckling. “You ain’t lived till you wiped your ass wit these.” He began laughing and ran into the brush to take care of his business. I just sat down right there and began thinking of Kurtz again. I held my head in my hands and began chanting. “The horror, the horror.”

Elvis Presley once sang, “You don’t know what you got until you lose it.” When my month was up with Mad Dog he transferred out. I never saw him after that and came to miss his redneck ass. He eventually transferred to the Drug Enforcement Administration as an agent. I know this because the FBI came around asking

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questions about Mad Dog while conducting a background investigation on him. They wanted to know if I thought he was a suitable candidate for being a Drug Enforcement Special Agent.

“Absolutely,” I said. “The guy’s got impeccable hygiene.”


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Chapter Twenty-One

The Day of Machismo

My dad once told me about this Puerto Rican myth. He called it "El dia de machismo" or the "Day of Machismo." He said it was the one and only day in a man's life when he would know that he had reached the absolute pinnacle of being a man.

But it could only happen when all the planets were lined up precisely. When the gods in heaven were appeased. When the smell of fear was absent from every pore of a man's skin. It would be a day when you would become faster than a locomotive - could bend steel in your bare hands - leap tall buildings in a single bound - and wouldn't worry if the screws holding your chair together were made out of kryptonite.

My day of machismo came in Temecula one sunny day. I got up on that day feeling wonderful. I jumped into the shower humming the tune to "2001 - A Space Odyssey."

I could hear the whole orchestra playing in my head. I could hear the trumpets holding that sustained note and building it to a crescendo. It was beautiful. It was inspiring. It was musical adrenaline to go with this beautiful day.

The orchestra played on as I toweled off. I then caught a reflection of myself in the full-length mirror. "Que Machismo," I said smiling. I loved it! I was the mean, green, fighting machine of the US Border Patrol. And this was my Day of Machismo.

Slowly, I gathered my uniform. I put on my shirt and pants, then carefully laced up my spit-shined shoes. I looked at myself again. My gig line was straight as a razor. You could have sliced a

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Texas steak with the creases in my trousers. My brass was polished and shiny. I gleamed and beamed everywhere.

Then I reached for my black Bianchi Leather gun belt, smelling it like a glutton smells a meal. I sucked its leathery scent deep down into my lungs. It reeked of testosterone. A blue steel Colt .357 with 138-grain hollow points drove me deeper into machismo madness.

The leather creaked as I shoved my keepers through the gun belt. I took another look in the mirror. “Que machismo!”

I had polished 12 hollow point bullets that were in my belt loop followed by two pairs of Smith & Wesson handcuffs, a Motorola radio holder, and a "kell light".

Then came another commodity of Machismo – my $75 dress uniform “Smokey the Bear” hat. I slowly put it on and shoved it down over my eyes. As a final touch, I whipped out a pair of Ray Bans and put them on.

I stood in front of my mirror - admiring myself in all my testosterone-induced machismo glory. I kept hearing the music play in my head. It brought a tear to my eye. "God, I wanna have sex with me," I said to no one. When I started to walk out, I actually heard my balls clanging.

I left the house fearing no one and nothing that day. When I got to the station house, I began speaking in cowboy drawl like John Wayne did in Hondo. I walked like John Wayne as I stepped into the armory and picked up a shotgun. I turned and looked at my partner, George. He looked at me and spoke in one big vowel movement. "Whatareyounutsorsomething?"

I replied by racking a round into the shotgun. The deadly sound it made had the effect of freezing everyone where they stood. I looked George in the eye and said in John Wayne speak, "Lets go catch us some bad guys." I spit on the floor just for effect. George rolled his eyes at me as we walked out to the patrol car.

We drove up to the checkpoint. As I got out of the car I took a deep breath. I was glad to be alive, to look resplendent in my uniform, to feel like a man’s man - to finally have my Puerto Rican day of machismo. And then nature called.


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At the checkpoint sat a gas chamber green Porta Potty to go with the gas chamber green patrol cars. I excused myself and went inside to take a leak.

I stood in the dark with only streaks of sunlight streaming through the cracks. It smelled in there, so I wanted to pee fast and get out. But my underwear wasn’t cooperating. I couldn’t seem to reach through my Fruit of the Looms, and it was too dark to see what the problem was. My bladder was losing patience with me.

I took off my gun belt, but I still couldn’t see what the trouble was. I opened the door a bit so I could let some sunlight in.

As the light streamed in, my eyes slowly focused. The absolute horror of what I saw swept over me like a Tsunami of terror.

They were white. They were silky. They had feminine frilly lace stitching all around them. They were so smooth I couldn't imagine you ever getting a wedgie in them. They were Margarita’s panties.

I should have known. Even though she was a shrink, she was still a woman. She had been slowly encroaching into my apartment doing what all women do - marking her territory and taking over.

It began innocently enough with a toothbrush, then some shampoo and crème rinse. Then came a hair dryer and electric rollers. Now she had violated the sanctity of my underwear drawer. I only wore “tightie whities” and who the hell did she think she was to stick her panties in my “tightie whitie” drawer? This time, she had gone too far.

I was in a state of terror. All cops fear being shot. Being shot is one of the inherent risks of being a cop. But being shot while wearing panties?

Being shot meant they'd take me to the hospital or the morgue, and eventually get around to taking my pants off. And when they did - I would just die of shame. I tried ripping them off but only succeeded in injuring my testicles.

“What’s going on in there?” It was George Carberry. That’s when I realized I had just let out a scream after injuring

my nuts.“Nothing.” I had run out of time. George was getting

suspicious. I had spent too much time in the porta potty. A line was forming outside of agents with full bladders.

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I began praying. “Please Lord, make the panties go away.” There wasn’t a trace amount of testosterone left in my entire body. My Day of Machismo was a bust.

I walked out dejected, looking down, holding myself. I tried to speak, but the words that came out had me sounding like I was auditioning for the Vienna Boys Choir.

“I wanna go home,” I squeaked. “Whatsamatter wit you? George said. “I got diarrhea.” “Bullshit, what’s really wrong?” “Nothing, I swear.” “What are you hiding?” “Nothing, I just got the runs is all.” “What did you do? Shit on yourself?” “Yep.”“Somethin’ going on with you. I’ll find out. You ain’t fooling

me.” The best cops in the world are also the nosiest bastards God put on this earth.

“Nothing is going on, I just got the runs.” I would have taken this to my grave except George caught me

pouring lighter fluid on Margarita’s panties in my barbecue the next day. I tried telling him I was burning her panties because she had a nasty yeast infection. He gave me one of those salty looks all cops acquire after too many years of listening to bullshit and drinking too many beers.

That’s when Margarita showed up. I excused myself and dragged her inside.

“Why did you leave your panties in my drawer? I wore them to work. If Freud were alive he’d have you shot.”

“You didn’t give me a drawer for my stuff, so I used yours. And besides, you’re over reacting. Just because you wore them doesn’t make you perverted or mentally unbalanced. It was an accident, so quit over reacting.”

“Jeezsus, Margarita, you should’ve killed me the first time, when you tried running me over while putting on your pantyhose. Remember? First pantyhose - now panties. What’s next? Using your bra as a jock strap?”


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“No chance of that, the only thing you know about bras is how to take them off.”

“Do you know what would happen if George found out?” “How does that make you feel?” “Hey, don’t try any of that shrink shit with me, I’m pissed at

you.”“If it makes you feel any better, I can explain what happened.” “Listen to me. I have a gun. If you say anything about this, I’ll

shoot you in the kneecaps.” “Don’t you think George would understand?” “You just don’t get it, do you?” “No I don’t. What makes you think cops are different than

anybody else?” “Cops are different, Margarita. They’re not like other people.

They’re born with different DNA, a twisted chromosome that makes them want to play with guns and rescue people.”

“So you think cops wouldn’t understand?” “Maybe in San Francisco. Look, do you know what they’d do

to me if this ever got out?” “No, what?” “They’ll probably send me to LA with Willie Nelson on his B-

25.”“You really are losing your mind.” “Let’s not talk about this anymore, okay?” “All right.” “I have to go and pick up the pizza I ordered. Promise you

won’t say anything to George?” “Okay.” A month had passed. I got dressed and left Margarita sleeping

in bed. I quietly stepped out and got into my little yellow Honda and drove to work. I felt safe. Nobody had said anything. I started to relax and let my guard down. George had quit bugging me and that was a good sign. The Chief Patrol Agent had called for a dress inspection. Some big shot from Washington was coming in to see our checkpoint.

I can’t remember how many agents were assigned to Temecula. But I do remember walking in for roll call and seeing every last one of them, standing at attention in a straight military line - wearing

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white panties over their dress uniforms. That afternoon I put in for a transfer. George still sends me a pair of panties on my birthday every year.


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Chapter Twenty Two

El Toro

“Can you help me, Migra?”“How?” I asked. “I don’t know, but you have to help me,” Mr. Smith said. “He

is a big man…” “Yes, but I’m not.” “Si, Migra, but you have gun.” “A gun can be no part of this. I can’t go around shooting

people.”“Will you help me, Migra?”“Si, I will help you.” “God will thank you in his own way one day.” I waited on I-15 southbound in my patrol car. Mr. Smith was in

the back seat acting as my prisoner. I saw the bus in my rear view mirror and dropped my car into gear.

“Why are you stopping me?” the IDO, or Immigration Detention Officer, asked. He was driving a busload of Mr. Smiths back to Tijuana that night. “It’s two o’clock in the morning, I gotta get rolling.” His name was Edington and he was one of the washouts in my academy class.

Sometimes when a trainee washed out of the academy, they would be offered jobs as IDOs. The IDOs were our correctional officers. They housed, fed, and transported prisoners to the border on a routine basis.

“Hey, just give me a few minutes, will you? I’m working a case, okay?”

“Yeah, well hurry up.” I took off my gun belt and handed it to Edington. “Hold this

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for me, will you?” I did not want a gun involved in what I was about to do.

I found him in the back of bus just like Mr. Smith had said. And he was big and mean looking. We spoke in Spanish.

“Are you the person they call ‘El Toro’?” “What do you want?” “Come with me. I want to talk to you outside a minute.” “Is that him?” I asked Mr. Smith. “Si, he is the one.” Toro means “bull” in Spanish, and this guy looked the part.

From his reputation, he was a brutal man who enjoyed beating, robbing, and raping the daughters of Mexico as they tried to make their way across the wilderness of the border.

I could tell that there would be no reasoning with him. The only thing a guy like Toro understood was a foot up his ass. Toro did not care about getting in touch with his inner child. I sighed as I looked at him.

He had lifeless eyes. I had seen it many times before in prison. This guy only understood the language of power.

Toro was a one-man reign of terror who had beaten and raped Mr. Smith’s twelve-year-old daughter a month ago. After beating and raping her, he had dragged her back into Mexico, where penniless women were of no consequence to the authorities.

“Why do you hurt your own people?” I asked as we stood in the shadow of the bus along the roadside.

“Fuck you, Migra!” I knew that there is no such thing as a fair fight. A fight is a

fight, period. Your task is simple – to win. Fair has shit to do with it. When you grow up as the smallest kid in your class, you understand that you got to do what you got to do.

There was an advantage to being a little guy. He would underestimate me. The Bureau of Prisons had taught me well.

The best moment to strike is when your opponent is talking. When you talk your mind is occupied, leaving only involuntary reflexes for defense.

“Who the fuck do you think you…” was all he got out. I could actually feel his testicles through my boot as I rammed

it with the force of a freight train between his legs. Toro’s central


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nervous system immediately took over. He fell on his knees, in shock, and his hands were occupied with holding his balls. He was mine.

I had always been a long ball hitter, and so drew back in a wide arc with my baton looking for a home run.

“Hey, Edington, this guy’s puking.” “What happened?” Edington asked as I slipped my gun belt

back on. “He fell.” “I don’t want him back on my bus, I ain’t cleaning puke

tonight. Here – you catch ‘em, you clean ‘em.” He handed me El Toro’s I-213.

“Okay, I’ll take him to the gate.” There was an actual turnstile gate on the border proper. It looked exactly like the ones you see in subway stations in New York City during the 1950’s.

“Pssst,” I called over to the Federale who was my counterpart standing on the other side of the gate.

“Si Migra, que quieres?” (What do you want?) Morder, in Spanish means, “to bite”. It was called la mordida,

or “little bite.” It was a euphemism for a bribe. It’s how you got things done in Mexico. Nothing gets done in Mexico without lamordida. Of course the etiquette of bribing is a language all its own.

“Hola, Officiale – Tell me do you have children?” “Yes, I have many mouths to feed.” “I also have mouths to feed - and it is a shame.” “What is a shame?” “That what they pay us is not enough to feed a pig.” “Ah yes, Migra, you are so right. Here we are, you and me,

protecting our countries’ borders, and for what? They are all bastards, those that employ us, may they rot in hell.”

“Will you allow me to help you?” “No, I cannot.” “Then - not for you, but for your children. Why should they

suffer because of your pride?” “Okay, Migra, how can I help?” “I have this poor unfortunate soul who has met with an

accident.”

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“What happened to him?” “He fell on the bus. I do not want to do the paper work. Can

you take him from me?” “Si, Migra. No problemo.” “One more thing. This man has insulted my family; he called

my wife a whore.” By telling this to the Federale I had now played the trump card of Machismo. In the Latino culture machismo is a very real thing. To insult another man by calling his wife a whore - to his face - meant you had to stab him at least once.

“You see my problem, Señor Federale? I cannot kill this man. I will go to jail.”

“I will kill him for you.” “No, I do not want that.” “What then?” “Can you give him some soda?” “Coke or Pepsi?” The Federale smiled. “Either one Migra, it

will cost you the same.” “Si, Señor Official. How much?” “Two hundred American dollars.” “I only have twenty dollars.” “That will barely pay for the Pepsi, Migra.”In Mexico, they don’t need juries to dispense justice. Toro had

robbed and raped. He had probably also murdered. I grabbed him by his hair and lifted his bloodied face. “Listen to me. If I ever see you again, or hear you have returned to my sector, I will kill you myself! Understand, Maricon?”

“Si.” He was meek. Another self-evident truth – all bullies arecowards.

I handed him over along with a twenty-dollar bill to SeñorFederale. They disappeared across the border and into the fog like Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains in Casablanca.

If I was going to get my twenty dollars worth, I knew Toro would be tied to a chair in a room and whacked a few times with a phone book. A phone book doesn’t leave nasty marks.

Then an ordinary bottle of Coca-Cola would be opened in front of his face. Señor Federale would shake the bottle creating lots of fizz. He would contain the fizz with his thumb atop the Coke bottle like a cork.


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When enough pressure built up he would shoot it up Toro’s nose. If you’ve ever had occasion to cough or laugh while drinking a Coke - and had some of the fizz come up through your nose - you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

I’ll never know if I got what I paid for. All I know is, I never saw or heard about El Toro ever again.

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Chapter Twenty-Three

Dear Lenore

“Hi, Juan. Been another long time.” “Hey, I just come in for tune ups now.” “How are Tony, Riff, and Bernado?” “Okay. Bernado just started at Orange County Community

College in NY.” “How are things at home?” “Trouble with the second wife.” “Why?” “She’s a true foreigner so I’m having difficulty with some of

her language, religion, and culture.” “Where’s she from?” “Dallas, Texas.” Lenore tried not to laugh again. “What religion is she?” “She’s Presbyterian football. Did you know that football’s a

religion in Texas?” “Are you still working at that domestic violence shelter?” “Not for long. I’m the only male employed there. Know what

that’s like?” “What?” “Like I’m the only black guy at a Ku Klux Klan summer camp

rally.” Lenore began laughing out loud. It felt good to kid around with her again.

“Anything interesting going on lately?” “I had a run in with Viagra.” “Viagra?”


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“Yeah, it all started with that damn Bob Dole commercial. God curses all Republicans. You know, for a guy, sex after 50 is like opening a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”

“I know that movie. So what happened?” “I got a prescription which I was going to surprise my

Presbyterian wife with. You’ve got to take it an hour before lift off – pardon my pun.”

“And?” “I figured if one blue pill is rock hard, then two must be cold

steel.”“You didn’t?” “Yep, four hours later I was standing in the emergency room

with Julie - holding my crotch. Jeez, did it hurt. The clerk at the ER looked liked aunt Bee, so I was having a hard time telling her I had a hard-on the size of a Buick, that wouldn’t go away.”

“Where was Julie?” “She became occupied with counting all the holes in the ceiling

tiles. Did I tell you she sings in the church choir? I don’t think Presbyterians do well with these kinds of emergencies.”

“What happened next?” “I was taken behind curtain number three where things got

worse.”“How?” “The doctor that came in looked like a Victoria’s Secret

underwear model. She was beautiful, smelled like a cheap whore, and had more cleavage than the Grand Canyon, which didn’t help me at all. Plus this was a teaching hospital.”

“Really?” “Yeah, every medical student and his brother got a shot at

examining me, including the lady who ran the gift shop.” I waited so Lenore could stop laughing then continued. “They said I had a pry-o something and the only way to fix it

was to puncture the Buick’s tires. They pulled out this needle the size of a fucking Boa Constrictor.”

“What happened?” “Soon as the nurse started walking towards me with that

needle, my Buick turned into a Volkswagen.”

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“That’s a funny story.” “Julie swore me to secrecy. I don’t think her pals in the choir

would approve.” “Can we talk about something more serious now?” “Why do you always want to be so serious?” “How’s your sleep?” “Not good.” “Still get flashbacks?” “Yeah.” “You just did it again, Juan.” “What?”“You just went off somewhere. Where did you go?” “I was thinking about this little girl I met on the border.” “What about her?” “She was being smuggled in the trunk of this load car. She

must have been 10 years old. Jeez, they were packed in there like sardines. I had stopped this car just North of Temecula on I-15. The driver bolted. So I opened the trunk and started to help the people out. When I got to this little girl, I remember I thought she was sleeping. I tried to wake her. She was cuddling a Malibu Barbie doll in her arms. She was dead. And I still can’t get the screams of her mother out of my mind. I’m still angry about that.”

“Why?” “I dunno.” Lenore handed me some tissues. She didn’t speak a word. “So, where did you go from California, Juan?” “I got a transferred to a new Duty Station.” “Where?”“Havana, Cuba.” “Really?”


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Chapter Twenty-Four

Jaws

One Police Plaza is a short walk from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Manhattan. The pistol-licensing bureau is located on the first floor of One Police Plaza. If any citizen wants to obtain a permit to carry a handgun, this is where they would apply.

However, what the ordinary person applying for a gun permit in NYC doesn’t know is that, in reality, it is the department of - NO. That is to say, the purpose of the pistol-licensing bureau is not to issue gun permits; it’s to deny them. You see they want a reason as to - why? Why do you want to carry a gun? The fact that you live in a neighborhood that makes the OK Corral look like a picnic isn’t reason enough. It’s a Catch 22.

But – what if? What if the NYPD issued permits to any citizen without asking why? If that were true, then you would live in a place called Miami, Florida. And you would know all about “fender bender shootouts”.

Think not? Ask yourself this question: What would you do, if you had a gun in your car and suffered from a bad case of road rage? Would you (at least) be tempted to shoot at the next guy that tailgated you? What about that cabby who cut you off? How about the guy that flips you the bird as he steals your parking spot?

This was one of the reasons that made my new duty station interesting -- people with road rage who didn’t know one end of a gun from another having shootouts over parking spaces.

I had traded the sands of the Anza Borrego Badlands for the sands of Miami Beach. I didn’t suffer from road rage but would

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have gladly shot anyone who mentioned for the umpteenth time that “it isn’t the heat, it’s the humidity.”

On the Mexican border you did a kind of patrolling called “line watch”. In Miami, it was all “city patrol” and something else I dreaded as much as a root canal.

“You know what a boat is?” my new boss, Robert Adams Jr., the Chief Patrol Agent of Miami sector, asked me.

“No, sir, what?” “It’s a hole in the ocean that you throw your money into.” “By the way, can I be excused from boat patrol, sir?” Miami

sector owned two forty-foot speedboats with twin screws. They were powerful and sleek and referred to as “cigarettes”. They had been confiscated from dope dealers. I wasn’t comfortable using nautical terms like “twin screws”. I don’t like being on any boat, including the Staten Island ferry.

“Don’t you want to go out and catch pirates?” “Pirates?”“Yeah, we have pirates in Florida.” “You mean, like in Disney Land?” “No, I mean modern pirates.” “Oh, like at Disney World?” “No, like in boarding the victim’s boat, shooting everyone

dead, throwing them overboard, and then using the boat to smuggle drugs in.”

“Really?” So what if there were modern day pirates? I wasn’t afraid of

them. I was afraid of something else lurking in the water. “I can’t swim sir.” I was lying. I could swim enough to float

and not drown. But I had developed this phobia about the ocean. Seeing the movie Jaws had almost caused me to drown when my elbow hit a Dixie cup off Orchard Beach in the Bronx. There might not be Jaws in the Bronx, but there were damn sure Jaws in Miami.

“What-do-you-mean-you-you-can’t-swim?” “There’s not much call for it in the subways, sir. Besides, I

have red hair. And look at my skin; can you imagine what the sharks, I mean, the sun, would do to me?”

“Afraid of sharks, huh?” “No, sir. Melanoma.”


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“What are you, Irish?” “No, sir, Puerto Rican.” “Really?” “Yes, sir.” “Well, don’t worry about the sharks. They don’t eat Puerto

Ricans. Worry about me. You’re going on boat patrol as soon as you finish your training with the Coast Guard.”

“Coast Guard?” There are all kinds of courage in this world. But to me, the

kind of courage you needed in the United States Coast Guard bordered somewhere between a death wish and insanity. These were men and women who would sail and fly into hurricanes to rescue people that were too stupid to live.

“So what would you do if you got a distress signal from a floundering boat in a hurricane?” my instructor asked. I was in a classroom at the Coast Guard Station in Fort Lauderdale.

“I would tell them to put their heads between their legs and kiss their ass good-bye ‘cause I ain’t going out in no hurricane to rescue nobody.”

“What have you got against the sea?” “It’s wet. Besides, didn’t you see, Jaws?”“Well, you better study, or you won’t pass the test,” the

instructor warned. “Test?” “After your class finishes training we give you a written exam.” “Really? What happens if you fail?” “Then you won’t be able to go out on boat patrol.” “Really?” I scored a perfect zero on the test. Robert Adams Jr. was on the

phone the next day to my instructors. He was a pissed off chief. He hung up the phone and yelled for me.

“Ciuro!” “Yes, sir.” “Report back Monday morning to the Coast Guard for

retraining.” Two weeks later I was standing before a smiling Chief of the

Miami Border Patrol. He was holding my newly framed certification as a boat handler from the United States Coast Guard.

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“You got a perfect score.” “Really?” I had turned in a blank test except for writing,

“Beats the shit outta me” on the final question asking what part of a boat is a gunwale? (Pronounced “gunnel” and not “gun-whale’.)

* * * “Quit throwing up. You’re scaring the fish.” We were out so far I couldn’t see the Miami skyline. They had

brought along their Pocket Fisherman and were trying to catch Marlin. I thought about what happened to the guys in Jaws andbegged, “Can’t we go back and get a bigger boat?”

Boat patrol required a three-man crew. One guy drove the boat and pretended he was captain and barked orders. The next guy would man a small, fully automatic machine gun, while the third guy would board other boats suspected of drug smuggling.

I wasn’t allowed to man the machine gun after shooting the poop deck during a slip and fall on the Inter Coastal Waterway. This left me with boarding, which I was afraid to do. Boarding boats on the high seas is much like dancing the Mashed Potato while high on Crack. I never mastered the Mashed Potato and never mastered boarding boats. But I did become proficient at swimming while wearing a gun belt.

By the end of my tenure on boats I had literally become a Puerto Rican redneck, thanks to the Miami sun. My score was one mutilated dock, one bullet-riddled poop deck, one bent rudder, and one dead traffic light.

I knew as much about towing a boat as I did about boats. I felt it a bargain to have been kicked off boat patrol at the mere cost of a traffic light.

“Don’t you guys carry your driver’s license when you’re on duty?”

“Yeah, but what does it matter? I mean the federal government indemnifies itself against accidents. Can’t we keep my boss outta this?”

“Sorry, guy, but I gotta explain to my boss how you dropped that traffic light. By the way, didn’t it occur to you to take the mast off before you went towing this boat around?”

“But the deck broke its fall.” “It went right through your poop deck.”


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“Poop deck? Is that what that little house is?” The last thing I did as a mariner was to go to federal court and

observe a smuggling case involving the Coast Guard. They had captured the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. It was because of the good ship Bolero that Florida potheads wore T-shirts that said “Save the Bales”.

The Bolero was carrying several tons of marijuana packed in bales when the Coast Guard gave chase. The crew of Bolero quickly came to the conclusion that the only way to avoid being caught was to dump the evidence overboard.

What they didn’t understand was that pot, like shit, floats. By the time they finished dumping their cargo, they found themselves in a sea of bales that were bobbing up and down like a hooker’s head in the back seat of a car.

The crew stood in a line facing the judge while the bailiff read the indictment in open court. An urban legend was born at that moment along with the creation of the “Save The Bales Society”.

When the bailiff read the part about the bales bobbing up and down in the water people in court started chuckling. The judge banged his gavel and pointed at the crew standing in front of him. He asked, “Who is the captain?” No one spoke. The judge waited a moment then asked, “Who’s the first mate?” Again, silence. More waiting. “Okay, who’s the engineer?” More silence. The crew of the good ship Bolero looked lost. They kept hunching their shoulders and mumbling “no comprendo” to each other.

The Bolero had no captain, no first mate, no engineer, and no navigator. But when the judge asked, “Who’s the cook?” Eight hands immediately shot up like they all were contestants on “The Price Is Right.”

The entire court burst out laughing which the judge did not like. He banged his gavel like a madman and threatened to clear the court, but it was too late. We only stopped laughing after he seriously threatened us with the fear of jail. Such is the way urban myths are born.

This brings me to other fears. Some people acquire their fears at birth. They’re born with phobias embedded in their DNA. Some acquire them as events unfold in their lives by virtue of their environment.

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It is this argument of “nature versus nurture” that leads me to the scientific conclusion that all native-born New Yorkers come into the world with an inherent fear of farm animals. I offer as scientific evidence my personal observation that most children born in New York City are afraid to go anywhere near a petting zoo.

I blame being born and raised in New York City for the fact that I’m terrified of horses. Even the kind that are made out of wood and attached to a merry-go-round.

They say that horses can smell fear. I believe horses can smell New Yorkers. Horses can not only tell I'm terrified of them, they can also sense what borough of New York City I was born in.

I’ve had two occasions in my life when I could have shot a horse in self defense - but didn’t. Both were while I was in the Border Patrol.

The first time, I spotted this horse that had been tied up to a hitching post at a roadside taco stand somewhere in the Anza Borrego Badlands. I thought a picture of me on a horse would make a great souvenir that I could lie about later in life, when I claimed to have been one of the great horsemen of the Border Patrol.

My partner, George, thought a better picture would be of me with a terrified look on my face. This horse had a humongous butt which George smacked as soon as I got on it. It reared and bolted. And for that moment, I was back in the land of Lucy and Ricky.

My first instinct was to grab the horse around the neck and hold on for dear life. My second instinct was to actually look for a brake, of which there was none. My third instinct was to think of every movie I had ever seen, asking myself, “How did Zorro stop his horse?” That’s when I began to yell, “STOP!” But the horse would not stop. The more I yelled, the faster the horse galloped into the desert.

I reasoned through my terror, if the horse were to suddenly hear a loud noise maybe I could distract it and get its attention. I managed to get my gun out and place it by the horse’s right ear while continuously yelling in its left for it to stop. But it would not stop.

With the barrel pointed down - I managed to apply steady


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backward pressure on the gun’s trigger and get one shot off. The bullet went into the ground. But the resulting report of the gun caused the horse to slam on its brakes, much the same way a car screeches to a halt. The horse stopped on a dime, but lacking a seat belt, I did not. I sailed through the air like Mike One Hand’s prosthetic digits.

This is when I was formally introduced to cactus. And this is what I learned about cactus: cactus doesn’t have straight needles. It has barbed needles like fishing hooks, only they’re really small. This means they go into your ass easily but don’t come out like that. You can’t just pluck them out. You gotta sort of dig them out by their roots. It takes lots and lots of morphine in an IV drip to do this.

When George and my would-be rescuers got to me, they wound up needing more medical help than I did. They were stricken with immediate convulsions and seizures. Most of them needed oxygen to stop laughing.

My second encounter with a horse came later, in Miami. My partner was a guy named Larry Wall, a Texan who was born on a horse and had been riding one since he was a fetus. Larry was a real cowboy, from the tip of his pointy boots to the “Red Man” chewing tobacco he was always spitting out.

Larry loved his horse so much that he brought it to Florida in one of those trailers where the horse's ass sticks out.

One day we got called for an assignment. We (along with every border patrol agent in Florida) were to conduct a dawn raid on Calder racetrack and round up all the suspected illegal proud sons of Mexico working there. It was sort of like a Pearl Harbor sneak attack.

Since horses would be involved, I wanted to call in sick that day. I still had cactus scars permanently tattooed on my ass from the Anza Borrego Badlands. But Larry wouldn’t let me call in sick. He came over and got me out of bed, explaining that racehorses were well behaved and that I had nothing to fear.

The raid went off like I expected. As soon as we arrived, with lights flashing and sirens, it was pandemonium. It’s what the Marine Corps called “a giant cluster fuck.” The proud sons of Mexico immediately began running in every direction like

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Frenchmen caught in the rain. Having lost the element of surprise, I decided to take it easy. I

found myself walking in the back of the racetrack, pretending to be busy, when I saw a stack of hay moving in a stable that was occupied by what looked like the original Trojan Horse.

It was what they called a "thoroughbred". He was eight stories tall, chestnut brown with black eyes like a shark, and teeth as big as Carly Simon’s.

Horses and sharks are the same thing to me, so it was no surprise when I started humming the theme from Jaws as I watched the hay move. I should have listened to my instincts as something told me not to go in there. But I knew there were many sons of Mexico under the hay, and I was a predator that didn’t want to go home empty handed. I got down on all fours, maneuvering myself past the Carly Simon Trojan Horse with black shark eyes. The bundle of hay was moving and heading for the back of the stall.

I pounced on the traveling hay and dug through it. I found four proud sons of Mexico under it. I looked at them, and they looked at me. We just looked at each other. Then I noticed a flash of fear in their eyes that was not directed at me. I began to turn to see what was causing their fear - but it was too late.

There are some physical pains in life that can be described as dull, like a headache or a stomachache. There are some pains that you don’t feel at all, like getting hit by a Mack Truck on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Then there’s the kind of acute pain like being cut with a scalpel. It’s the kind of flash point pain that is so clearly transmitted to your brain that it can only be described as “white pain”.

I never knew that horses could bite so efficiently until that moment. It picked me up by my ass like a rag doll, played with me for a few seconds, and then dropped me.

The next life lesson I learned was about where the cliché “pisses like a race horse” comes from. The Trojan Horse with the black shark eyes and Carly Simon teeth emptied a good part of its bladder on me before I could muster enough courage to move. I can attest to this scientific fact: it really is better to be pissed off than pissed on.

The proud sons of Mexico were soon afflicted with the same


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convulsions and seizures I had witnessed in the Anza Borrego Badlands. They all needed oxygen later to help them recover.

I thought about shooting that horse but didn't because Larry said he would shoot me if I shot the horse. I did think about it, though.

I went home that day with my ass bandaged and smelling like horse piss. I had left behind a smart-ass horse and four proud son of Mexico that would be telling this story for the rest of their lives.

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Chapter Twenty Five

§ 911

If you find yourself alone one night hearing strange noises, you always have the option of dialing 911. For me in Florida, 911 took on a new meaning.

Ever since dropping a traffic light through the poop deck, I had been assigned to “O/A” and “snitch” calls. O/A meant “other agencies”. That is, you would handle and investigate calls from other law enforcement agencies that wanted to hold a bad guy based on the fact that they may be deportable under the “INA” or Immigration and Nationality Act.

For instance, I once handled a call about a shooter in a homicide. Metro Dade PD could not prove their guy was the shooter, but they could prove he was in possession of the gun. Since the bad guy was also a citizen of Colombia, he was arrestable under the INA for possessing a firearm while being in this country illegally. By arresting him I could buy the homicide cops enough time to investigate their case.

“Snitch” calls were from pissed off people who wanted to turn somebody in. Like this woman whose Guatemalan husband mysteriously disappeared right after their wedding.

“We had one dance after the wedding, and then he disappeared with the cello player.” She paused while I handed her Kleenex. “He lied to me, that Guatemalan shit-head. He used me. I want him deported!”

“Did you marry him for love or money?” “I loved him.” “Then I can’t touch him. His application for resident alien


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status is based on the fact that he legitimately married you, an American citizen. He’s simply not deportable now.”

“But he lied to me. Isn’t there anything you can do? Isn’t there anything you can help me with?”

“All’s fair in love and Green Cards. Have you thought about putting a ‘stop payment’ on the check to the cello player?”

“If I ever see him again, I’m going to shove her, and her cello, up his Guatemalan ass.”

“Hell hath no fury,” I mused to myself. One of the things that I discovered quickly about illegal aliens

in Florida was that a majority of them would claim they were American citizens by virtue of their birth in Puerto Rico. Once they did that, the burden of proof shifted to me to prove otherwise. A daunting task.

Imagine yourself being stopped by an immigration agent on the street and questioned as to your place of birth. Could you prove your citizenship? Do Americans normally carry their birth certificates on them like a driver’s license? No, they don’t. (And NO! – a driver’s license is not proof of citizenship.) Anybody who produced a birth certificate on demand during a field interview was highly suspect.

Your first indication of “what’s wrong with this picture” came from playing “twenty questions”.

Now then, imagine you’re an immigration agent conducting a field interview. The person you’re interviewing states he was born and educated in the Bronx all his life. Yet they don’t speak a word of English. And so it begins –

“The Bronx you say?” “Yes, I was born, and raised in the Bronx all my life.” “Okay, so tell me, where’s Yankee Stadium?” “Yankee Stadium?” “Yeah, where’s Yankee Stadium.” “Los Angeles.” “What’s in Los Angeles?” “Yankee Stadium.” “Really? And what team plays in Yankee Stadium?” “The Red Sox.” “That’s correct. By the way - what kind of noise does the Long

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Island Sound make?” “A big noise.” “What kind of big noise?” “Boom?” She said her name was Anna Garcia-Gonzalez, born on

11/12/55. I met her on an O/A call. She was in police custody in a holding pen at the Miami International Airport. My first clue was that she kept asking for a licenciado (lawyer). A Puerto Rican would have asked for an abogado. She was the third phony Puerto Rican that week. I had let the other two go.

I ran her in the computer and came up with ten different aliases and ten different dates of birth.

She was part of a large family of professional pickpockets and thieves - sort of like Congress. She was from Bogotá, Colombia. Her ring had been working the major airports. They were well organized, articulate, and ruthlessly good at their craft. We spoke in Spanish.

“Look, we both know you’re not from Puerto Rico.” She just looked at me blankly. “Know where I’m from?” I asked.

“From your Spanish I’d say you were a Newyorican. So don’t tell me. You’re from Puerto Rico.”

“Newyoricans aren’t born in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico is born in them.” I corrected her.

“Fuck you! I was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and you’ll never be able to prove otherwise. Now go and fuck yourself and leave me alone.”

Most people are surprised to find out that falsely claiming to be an American citizen is a federal offense – a felony actually.

Crimes under the United States Codes (USC) can be found under “Title 18.”

§ 911. Citizen of the United States Whoever falsely and willfully represents himself to be a citizen

of the United States shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

I also found another 18 USC statue that addressed lying. 18 USC § 1001 – Fraud and False Statements Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of any

department or agency of the United States, knowingly and willfully


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falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device, a material fact, or makes any false, fictitious, or fraudulent, statement or entry, shall be fined not more than $10,000 or imprisoned not more than five years or both.

* * * A gunfight is a strange thing. It happens so fast there’s no time

to be afraid. There’s no time to think. You just, “take your time in a hurry”. And time actually seems to stop - then moves in slow motion frame by frame. Your first reaction is disbelief as you watch the ball of fire come out the barrel of the gun pointing at you. Then your defense mechanisms take over as you automatically regress back to what you were taught. But you don’t realize this until the shooting stops.

I stopped after a “double tap”, or two shots fired in rapid succession. That’s what I had been taught. The double tap had been enough to make them jump off the second floor balcony of the hot sheet motel room we were in, on Collins Blvd. I made an almost fatal mistake in letting one of the bad guy’s reach up to a closet shelf to retrieve a suitcase. What he retrieved was a gun instead.

I lost the cocaine and the two Colombians I had arrested at the Greyhound bus station in downtown Miami. They were still handcuffed to each other. I was staring down at the dented roof of a 1977 white Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham they had jumped on. Then a noise coming from the closet spun me around, gun in hand.

I kept looking at his badge and ID. He was an agent of the El Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad, otherwise known as “DAS,” or the much-feared secret police in Colombia.

“What were you doing in the closet?” “Hiding.” He didn’t appear phased by the fact I kept my gun

stuck in his face. “Who are your friends?” “I don’t know them. I was supposed to meet them here when

you came in with them.” “What’s in the suitcase?” I pointed to the suitcase he had been

sitting on in the closet. “Money. You can have it.” We were back at the station. I was counting out the money

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from the suitcase – about $20,000 in cash, as in small bills of tens and twenties.

“Why don’t you take it?” He was Special Agent Leon Gonzalez, de Jesus, of the Colombian Secret Police.

“I told you, I ain’t for sale.” “What are you going to do with me?” “I don’t know yet.” “What are all those pictures of?” He was looking at the

bulletin board of pictures I kept in my office of Colombian pickpockets and “mules”.

“They’re Colombian mules I’m trying to catch.” “I can help you. I can get you their cedula de ciudadania.”“What’s a cedula?”“It’s a citizenship identification card issued to all Colombians.

It contains a picture and a right thumb print of the owner.” As soon as the words came out of his mouth, we both smiled at each other. He now had a currency we could barter with.

One phone call from him got me all the Colombian cedulas I needed.

I got him a Tampa airline ticket on flight 704 departing Miami at five that morning. We had packed all his belongings including two television sets and a large stereo with four Bose speakers. I remember how the ticket agent balked at all his luggage and demanded two hundred extra American dollars for the added weight. But as soon as he produced his DAS credentials, everything became free. His ticket, baggage, and belongings were gratis including a first class seat for the trip home.

Federal court was always crowded in Miami, but finally, her case was called before the Federal Magistrate. The indictment read as follows:

United States of America V. Anna Garcia-Gonzalez. The grand jury charges that: Count I – On or about January 6, 1983, at Miami, Dade

County, in the Southern District of Florida, the defendant, Anna Garcia-Gonzalez, an alien, did falsely and willfully represent herself to be a citizen of the United States, in that she stated so orally stated to Agents of the United States Department of Justice, Border Patrol, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section


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911.Count II – On or about January 6, 1983, at Miami, Dade

County, in the Southern District of Florida, the defendant, Anna Garcia-Gonzalez, in a matter within the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, Border Patrol, knowingly and willfully did make a materially false, fraudulent and fictitious statement and representation in that the defendant, Anna Garcia-Gonzalez, stated she was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when in truth and in fact, and as the defendant then and there well knew, she was born in Bogotá, Columbia, in violation of title 18, United States Code, section 1001.

A TRUE BILL. Signed - Stanley Marcus - United States Attorney Paul A. Dipaolo – Assistant United States Attorney.I had slipped in behind Paul Dipaolo and tapped him on the

shoulder. Paul had gone to bat for me. The only thing we had up that point was Anna’s failure to pass her game of twenty questions. I had just come from Metro Dade PD fingerprint bureau. The tech had made a perfect match from Anna’s right thumbprint on her Colombian cedula I had obtained through my new friends at DAS.

I also remembered this judge had embarrassed me in open court by calling me “derelict” during the arraignment proceedings. She didn’t like holding anybody on the mere say so of a Puerto Rican Border Patrol agent who liked playing twenty questions. She had given me 48 hours to come up with proof.

I wanted to savor the moment. So we let her address the judge through a court appointed interpreter.

She looked every bit the part of an innocent victim in her plain dress and penitent, sorrowful voice. She cried on cue explaining how I had falsely arrested her and had taken her away from her children making them suffer in the process. I wondered why dope dealers always talked about their innocent children when caught.

It was an Academy Award performance, worthy of applause, which I did. I stopped when the judge’s gavel came down hard with her warning she was about to have me arrested for falsely imprisoning the defendant. I spoke to the interpreter.

“Please ask the defendant if she knows what a cedula is?” Anna’s face blanched. She grabbed her forehead like Scarlet

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O’Hara and fainted. Judges don’t like to be lied to, nor do they like being made fools of. Anna was the beginning of many arrests I would be making in the name of the people of the United States. Especially those Americans known as Puerto Ricans.


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Chapter Twenty-Six

Dear Lenore

“In for your tune-up?” Lenore smiled. “C’mon, you know you missed me.” “How are your sons?” “The Army keeps sending recruiters to the house looking for

them. They wanna sign them up.” “How do you handle that?” “I tell them my sons are gay. Then I swish around, speak with

a lisp, and hit on the recruiter.” “Does that work?” “Yep, they run out faster than you can say, ‘don’t ask, don’t

tell’.” Lenore tried not laughing again. “Where are you living now, Juan?” I thought about the irony

of the question and began to laugh. “I live in an old farmhouse that wheezes like a three pack a day

smoker when the wind blows. I used to think Jimmy Hoffa was buried in our basement until I discovered what a sump pump was.”

“Learning new stuff huh?” “I used to pet the outdoor cat regularly until I discovered it was

a possum.” We let the laughing die down. “How are you sleeping?” “Jeez Lenore, we’re not going to do the flashback de jour again

are we?” “I need to know how you’re doing. So tell me, how are you

sleeping?” “I use over the counter stuff to help me sleep sometimes.” “Like what?”

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“Benadryl, and a shot of Nyquil.” “And the rest of time?” “I still don’t sleep so good.” “Still having flashbacks?” “Yeah, but the memory that bugs me is the one that never

happened.”“I don’t follow.” “I once fell into this stream chasing this guy. I was soaked

from head to toe.” “And?” “I remember changing and cleaning my gun carefully. It had

gotten soaked. It was a revolver. Do you know the difference between an automatic and a revolver?”

“No.”“Didn’t you see Thelma and Louise?” “No.”“Christsake, Lenore, what kind of therapist are you?” “Tell me what happened.” “I will, but only if you promise to go to the movies.” “You’re changing the subject. What happened?” There was a

ring of impatience in Lenore’s voice, so I went on. “About a week later I found myself pointing my gun at this

crazy guy. It was a bullshit bust that went bad. He kept coming at me so I kept backing up until I hit a wall. I had no place to go. He kept reaching in his pocket for something.”

“What happened?” “See, Lenore, if this were a movie, this would be the part where

dramatic music would begin playing in the background.” “What happened?” “I knew I was going to have to shoot him.” “Did you?” “That’s the weird part. I tried. I pulled the trigger but it

wouldn’t budge. I tried cocking the hammer back, but it wouldn’t budge either. I tried pulling the trigger with both hands, and nothing. He just kept coming.”

“Did he hurt you?” “No. He was just drunk. He was reaching for his cigarettes in

his pocket. He fell and puked on my shoes.” There was another


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long silence. “Rust saved us.” “Rust?” “The cylinder of my gun had rusted shut from the water under

the star extractor I failed to clean. The barrel wouldn’t spin. The gun was just a paper weight.”

“That’s a scary memory.” “Not as scary as your lack of movie acumen. Lenore, we gotta

do something about your lack of HBO.” “Tell me about Thelma and Louise.” “If I ever get a million bucks, I’m going to open up the Thelma

and Louise domestic violence shelter.” Lenore smiled. “I take it these are tough women?” “Lemme see, they shoot a violent rapist who had it coming,

blow up a red neck’s truck that had it coming, and lock a macho asshole cop in the trunk of patrol car, who also had it coming.”

“How does it end?” “They drive off into a glorious sunset at the Grand Canyon.” “Okay, I’ll rent it.” “Where’s my Kewpie doll?” “Maybe next time.”

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Chapter Twenty Seven

Miami to Manhattan

I called him “the Sheik”. He was another lunatic in the parade of lunatics that was the United States Border Patrol. I first met him on the Mexican border when I tried to arrest him, thinking he was a proud son of Mexico. He was running around the border wearing the flowing robes and headdress of a sheik, looking like Lawrence of Arabia. He looked the part because of his dark complexion and massive black moustache. He identified himself by pulling up his robe like a flasher so I could see his uniform underneath.

“Why are you wearing that getup?” “This is what my ancestors wore in the desert.” “Where, Iraq?” “No, Brooklyn.” “What did you do in Brooklyn?” “I worked for the Transit Authority sucking farts out of subway

seats! Christ you ask a lot of questions. Where are you from?” “Washington Heights.” “You Irish?” “No, Puerto Rican.” “Well, you’re a disgrace to your race, looking like a

Leprechaun and all.” We became fast friends. I was glad when he was transferred to Miami.

The Sheik felt the Patrol was his own personal playground. He’d use any excuse to pull over hotties in the squad car for what he called “a leg shot”. To the Sheik there was nothing more sensual than watching a leggy lady in a short skirt getting out of her car. The Sheik also believed in cleanliness, which is why he was


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always volunteering to take the patrol cars to the car wash. One of my first duties was to act as his union shop steward.

“One hundred and seventy dollars to wash five patrol cars?” The chief was pissed at the Sheik. We were standing at attention.

“Chief, it’s a good car wash, and the people there are nice.” “Really? You forgot to mention it was topless!” He was

screaming loud enough for me to tell he had a cheeseburger for lunch. “Did you really think you could take marked fucking units of the United States Border Patrol to a topless car wash?! Are you insane?”

The chief was going to throw the book at him but never got the chance. He was killed the next week while riding his beloved Harley Davidson. Some guy cut the Sheik off and he went flying off his bike and hit a telephone pole with his chest. The paramedics told me when they got to him his blood pressure was one-twenty over zero.

* * * It was around this time I started getting death threats from the

Puerto Ricans I had arrested and deported back to Colombia. Arresting and deporting phony Puerto Ricans became my specialty. My contacts at DAS had given me a perfect batting average. One of the judges in magistrate’s court had declared me an expert on phony Puerto Ricans. By doing so, I was, in effect given the time I needed to put my cases together.

I was concerned about the threats, but not enough to stop what I was doing. Threats only meant I was getting to them. I took to carrying two guns while off duty, one strapped to my ankle and one in the small of my back.

I thought I was handling everything well until late one night at the Piggly Wiggly. I was looking for a box of Wheaties on aisle six. The kid who stocked the shelves decided the crate of canned corn he was carrying was too much, so he dropped it with a resounding thwack behind me.

I reacted by sticking my gun in his face in a move worthy of Bruce Lee. I began shaking when I realized I had just made some twenty-year-old kid piss on himself.

In Florida, cops are allowed to work off duty while in uniform. I was lucky. The Hollywood cop moonlighting at the store that

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night was a guy I knew. A profuse apology and a promise from the cop to help the kid with the upcoming police exam got me off the hook. I was grateful to that cop.

I tried very hard to find some way to relax. But it seemed like there was always one disaster after the other.

“Christ, you look like shit,” I said to Bruce, my immediate supervisor, or Senior. We were in the trailer behind the station that acted as a processing center.

“Yeah, I think I got the flu.” I had never seen anyone turn the color he did. It was the color

of ash. A dull gray like you see on the tip of a dying cigarette. “Are you okay? Maybe you should sit down.” I grabbed him

as he fell.I dragged Bruce into the patrol car and threw him in the back

seat. I activated the lights and siren and took off. The closest hospital was in Hollywood. It had a good emergency room.

They stripped him, handing me his gun and badge and wallet. Bruce was having a heart attack. He was 42 years old. I watched as they shocked his heart back to life.

The controlled chaos of the emergency room had become familiar to me. I stared at Bruce while they worked on him. I prayed quietly.

Then I began to remember. I thought I had buried it in the back of my mind. I began to think about the last time I had seen this dance of life and death that doctors do in emergency rooms. My mind took me back to Fallbrook Hospital, just south of Temecula.

I had dragged in another lifeless body just like Bruce’s to that emergency room. He was barely breathing. I kept saying Hail Marys as I carried him over my shoulder into the emergency room. I threw him on a gurney.

“What’s his name, officer?” the doctor asked. He began directing his people to start IV lines and attach leads to his chest.

“Smith - S-M-I-T-H - Mr. Smith – Jose - Guadalupe - O’Hara - Smith.”

“What happened to Mr. Smith?” “He was part of a smuggling load. They stuffed about eight of

them under this false plywood bottom of a pickup truck. The smuggler abandoned the truck when the transmission blew. He just


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left them there in the hot sun. I don’t know how long they were trapped. They didn’t cut any holes for air. They couldn’t breathe.”

I watched as they worked furiously on him, hitting Mr. Smith with shock after shock, but the line on the little green screen stayed flat. It seemed like an eternity.

“Okay, that’s it. I’m going to call it. Time of death is 1745 hours.” The doctor turned to me. “I’m sorry. Did you know him?”

“Yeah. He was an American born in Toledo, Ohio. And he was my friend.”

Now I watched as the steady blips on Bruce’s little green screen told me his heart was beating in a regular rhythm. He would make it, but I knew he wouldn’t ever be the same again.

* * * “I can’t help you unless you agree to stay.” It was one of the

doctors who had saved Bruce’s life. I had gone back to her a month later because I felt I could trust her. She had given me a thorough physical. Then she gave me her diagnosis.

“What did you say?” “You’re a drug addict,” she repeated pointedly. “That’s impossible. You’re out of your mind. I’m a cop. I

throw addicts in jail.” “Do you think all addicts are junkies who shoot heroin?” “Yes.” “Well, you’re wrong. Anybody can become addicted to almost

anything. Sorry for being so blunt, but you are addicted to benzodiazepines.”

“What’s that?” “Those tranquilizers you take. You’ve been taking them in

stronger and stronger doses. That fact you’ve been mixing it with tequila doesn’t help either.”

“I won’t take any more.” “Don’t do that. If you stopped right now - cold turkey - you’d

risk severe withdrawal, seizures, and God knows what else.” She was nuts. I wasn’t an addict and would never be an addict.

I went home angry and flushed all my pills down the toilet. I can’t remember how long it took before the first sensations

were upon me. It started with this warm sensation on my skin that grew more intense until it felt like my skin was on fire. I began

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pacing. Then the shaking and the vomiting began. “You’re lucky you’re not dead or brain damaged.” “Hey, Doc, is there anything else you wanna say that will make

me feel worse than I already do?” “Look, no job is worth dying over. I know you think you’re

saving the world, but you’re not. You’re slowly killing yourself.” “Doc, do you have any idea of the war that’s going on out

there?”“I work here, don’t I? But you’re not gonna fix it. You’ve paid

your dues. Find a way to bury this job before it buries you.” It took a week in a detox ward under an assumed name to rid

my central nervous system of the addiction of those little yellow pills.

“What’s this?” I was handing my gun over to my boss. “I’m going on vacation.” “Where?”“Back to New York City.” “What’s in New York you gotta see so bad?” “I got this friend. His name is Mike. You should see him flip

people the bird.” I left that day with every intention of returning. But I never

did.I was in New York about two weeks when I made a left turn

from Twenty Third Street to go up First Avenue when my tire blew. I managed to find a parking spot right in front of the VA hospital. I walked in to find a phone. But instead I sat in the lobby and began to watch people. I sat in that lobby for the longest time.

For some reason I felt at home. Like something was welcoming me. I walked past Personnel and saw a job posting for the VA Police. All it took was a form called an SF-50 and I was instantly transferred to the VA Police.

* * * The Department of Veterans Affairs is called the “VA.” Its

motto is “to care for those who have borne the battle.” I loved working there because every veteran to me was Frankie. Frankie, who I never forgot, paralyzed in that Stryker frame at Saint Albans Hospital back in 1968.

If there was ever a class of people that is owed everything, it’s


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the American veteran. The problem is that historically we’ve treated our veterans like shit. Somewhere between Viet Nam and the Gulf War we really lost our way.

The VA has about 172 hospitals nationwide. It’s staffed by hard-working people who are overworked and underpaid. It’s not like you’re going to get rich working there. The VA never gets enough funding.

The VA Police were a joke back in the day. They weren’t armed, weren’t trained, weren’t vetted, and weren’t respected. None of that troubled me. Because of my GS grade in the Border Patrol, I was given a decent salary and benefits. No one was keeping me locked in a prison. No one was shooting at me. No one was beating me up. How stressful could it be?

I had been at the VA about five hours when a patient locked himself in the bathroom on one of the wards. The ward nurse called down to complain.

I used a passkey to get in. He was a large man, well over six feet I figured. He was completely nude. He was lying on a yellow tiled floor covered in his own blood. I had never seen so much blood in all my life. It was so red and so bright and so massive an amount.

A young doctor with a stethoscope around his neck helped me drag him into the hallway by his arms. We cut a swath of blood that I can still see in my mind. The man had cut deeply into both his femoral arteries and bled out on the floor. We stood there and did nothing, for there was nothing to be done. I remembered Feena’s quote: “Every man’s death...”

I understood something about the VA police at that moment. These weren’t mall cops. This was a serious job with serious consequences.

* * * Her name was Zeeta. I met her in the lobby of the Manhattan

VA several weeks later. She was visiting her uncle. Zeeta was a hairdresser with a heart of gold. Zeeta had great legs and always wore high heels; believing looking good triumphed over the comfort sneakers might offer her. Her hair was curly, well styled, and long. She liked wearing tight sweaters that would often compel men to speak directly to her breasts. I’m sure if leg crossing in a

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short skirt were an Olympic event, Zeeta would have brought home the gold.

I had this wonderful sense of anticipation about meeting Zeeta for lunch. She was going to introduce me to "Gilda," otherwise know as Rita Hayworth. Rita Hayworth was born Margarita Carmen Cansinos in Brooklyn NY. She was a fellow Latin who had been a movie star and sex goddess during the film noir of the 1940's.

I kept driving my black Buick station wagon while imagining what it would be like to meet her. What would I say? Would I be reduced to a gushing idiot? I imagined being in the same room with Zeeta and Rita, and the thought drove me to driving faster, almost running down a gaggle of nuns.

Zeeta had called me that morning asking if I wanted to meet Rita Hayworth. Zeeta explained she often worked with celebrities and had just finished doing Rita’s hair and makeup, and would I like to meet her briefly before Rita left for the coast.

I thought about that famous tight dress Rita wore in "Gilda." I wondered what she would look like after all these years. To me, she was still a Goddess, and I was the lucky schmuck who was fighting my way through traffic to meet her.

The restaurant was called Campbell’s, as in the soup. I saw the green awning as I pulled up in front of it on Madison and Eighty-Third Streets. Some guy in a cheap, black suit took my car keys and said he would park my big wagon around back. I tried to tip him, but he declined, saying something about working stiffs needing a break.

Campbell’s looked expensive, plush, and well appointed with thick green carpets and fine antique furniture. It was “de riguer” for what you would expect for fine dining in New York City. I was impeccably dressed in my navy blue, right off the rack, double-breasted suit from Sears on Fordham Road in the Bronx.

I was desperate to make a good impression at my only shot at meeting a movie star. I checked my wallet to ensure I had enough cash on hand to pay for lunch - just in case.

I saw Zeeta in the lounge. We locked eyes and she started walking towards me. What a vision she was. Her trademark short skirt and four-inch heels were all I had eyes for. I saw nothing else.


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Her makeup was perfect. Her dark brown eyes lit up the room. She was wearing a white blouse that strained where it had been buttoned. I blindly followed Zeeta’s four-inch heels into an elevator that had an old accordion type gate that showed itself when you closed the doors.

We went to the second floor and turned down a lushly carpeted hallway. Then it occurred to me to ask about Rita’s whereabouts. “She’s over here.” Zeeta quickly ducked into an office with me right on her heels.

It was a normal enough looking office with a large gray metal desk sitting by a window with the shades drawn. It was boring, in fact - nondescript and mostly white and gray - except for the reality of what my mind was trying to tell me.

At first I thought it was a large-scale model of a Delorean. I thought this because John Delorean had made his cars entirely of shiny stainless steel. But then I noticed this Delorean had no gull wing doors.

Whatever it was, it was sitting atop the desk lengthwise, giving it the appearance of a miniature aircraft carrier with its flight deck opened.

"Is that stainless steel?” “Yes, made with the best craftsmanship,” Zeeta answered. "Zeeta, sweetheart, I have to ask you something." "Yes."“Is that a coffin?” “Yes.” “And who’s the lady in it?” “Rita Hayworth." Then I asked a truly dumb question. “Is she dead?” Zeeta was filing her nails as she sat in a corner with her legs

crossed, not paying any particular attention to me. “What did you say?” “Zeeta, I thought this was a restaurant? “This is Frankie B. Campbell’s Funeral home, Honey. This is

where the rich and famous in New York get buried," she continued to file her nails.

“Oh!”

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Zeeta pointed to a small table next to where Rita was resting in peace. On it, I could see "Dominick’s Pizza" written in red letters on the box.

“It’s still warm. I hope you like extra cheese and mushrooms.” So, with pizza by Dominick and soda by Pepsi, I sat there, having my lunch with Rita Hayworth.

I made quick work of lunch and excused myself, promising to have dinner with Zeeta that night as long as she didn’t bring any famous dead people along.

I said my respectful goodbye to Rita Hayworth, thanking her for lunch and all those wonderful movies. I found my station wagon parked in the rear of Campbell’s with the key in the ignition. I jumped in and headed back to the Bronx where I belonged.

I was just past Bedford Park Boulevard on the Grand Concourse when I saw the blinking lights of the NYPD pulling me over.

“Did you know your tailgate is down? Your coffin almost fell out."

“Coffin?” I walked around the back, stared at the coffin in amazement,

and slammed the tailgate shut. I thanked the cop. He was smiling and looked very pleased with himself as he got back in his police car and left.

I never did have that dinner with Zeeta. The fire had gone from my loins. There was no amount of pizza and Pepsi that was ever going to help me get over this. Instead, I opted for Tequila and a quick visit to the Foo-Foo lady to make sure I hadn't pissed God off. I didn’t know what to make of all this. I wondered where the lesson was. Then it came to me. I knew what I had to do. I picked up the phone. “Hello, Paul? Hey, you wanna meet Rita Hayworth?”

* * * The longer I was employed with the VA Police, the more I

realized they deserved better. Better came in the form of a guy named John Baffa, a former Secret Service Agent who took over the VA police nationwide. Baffa turned the VA Police into a modern, well-trained, well-armed police force that is second to none. But the process took the violent deaths of five on-duty,


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uniformed; unarmed VA cops before the VA woke up and decided to arm, train, and equip its police force. Talk about a day late and a dollar short.

In my years with the VA Police I worked every kind of case faced by any police department. Suicide, rape, assault, arson, domestic violence, narcotics trafficking and sale, loan sharking, drunk driving, selling/receiving stolen property, theft by deception, pedophilia, grand theft auto, reckless driving, fraud by prescription/wire/computer, identity theft, impersonating a police officer/physician/government official, threatening the life of the President of the United States, racial bias crimes, illegal possession of firearms, assault with the AIDS virus. And that’s just off the top of my head.

I worked my way up the ranks, transferring to the VA in East Orange, New Jersey before being promoted to Chief of Police at the Lyons VA in 1993. Working at the East Orange VA was like being back on the Border because it was a bit like the Wild Wild West. It was a rough neighborhood but full of colorful characters I would’ve never met by playing it safe.

Lyons, by contrast, is bucolic and located in one of the richest suburbs in Somerset County, New Jersey. It has a golf course, a nursing home, and lousy neighbors. Instead of thanking the vets, they would fill my day complaining about them.

The Lyons strip mall is about a mile from the hospital. Our homeless veterans had to hoof it there and back. Rich homeowners would sometimes take exception to the vets using the sidewalks in front of their homes to get to and from the mall. Mostly I’d tell them to go fuck themselves when they’d complain. I know that wasn’t politically correct, but to tell you the truth – they can still go fuck themselves.

The two VAs were separate entities until 1996 when they were combined to save money. That merger was the end of my career.

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Chapter Twenty-eight

A-1 Steak Sauce

Paul had moved to Brooklyn on Ocean Parkway with Mike. Mike was Paul's lover. He was also the complete opposite of Paul, in that he was quiet, reticent, and reserved. He almost never spoke, and when he did, he did so sparingly. Mike worked for the New York City Transit Authority, dispatching and tracking subway trains during the rush hour. Mike’s one aim in life was to pass a screening test and become a contestant on Jeopardy.

Paul had invited me over for dinner. He said he had been cooking all day and had made several dishes of Chinese food in his wok. Paul was an artist by trade and also fancied himself a gourmet chef, a la Julia Child. I took Paul up on his offer of free Chinese food and drove out to Brooklyn.

Paul's building had an elevator that was like taking a slow boat to China. When I finally entered Paul's apartment, I noticed his pet rabbits had (not surprisingly) multiplied.

"Why don't you cage the bunnies up before somebody steps on them?” I said.

"Just watch where you're walking, Pendejo."Paul had a kitchen the size of a broom closet, but the dining

room was a good size and contained a nice mahogany table with fancy chairs. Paul had gone all out and set the table beautifully. The Chinese food smelled great and had been carefully placed in silver serving dishes making it look like a feast.

"Jeez, Paul, it looks nice." "Thank you." "You must have worked your ass off."


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"You knew I was a gourmet cook, didn't you?" "No, but I do now." The meal was delicious. Paul had outdone himself. "I wish I had your talent," I said walking into the kitchen to

clean up.I opened the door that was under the sink and pulled out the

trashcan to scrape off leftovers. I looked down and noticed little sliver wire things. They looked like the small wire handles that were used on containers of take-out Chinese food. I dug a little deeper and found several white cartons with "Wong Lees" written on the side.

I decided to grab Paul, get him into a headlock, and give him a painful noogie.

"Gourmet cook, huh?" I chased Paul around the living room, trying not to step on the

small herd of rabbits that scurried under the coucho.I finally managed to grab Paul and wrestle him into a headlock.

I was about to administer a noogie by rubbing my knuckles back and forth quickly on his scalp, when I stopped.

There was this small purple blotch on Paul's head, hiding underneath his hairline.

"Hey what happened to you? Did Mike give you a hickey on your bald spot?"

"What?""Paul, go look in the mirror, you have a bruise. Did you bang

your head?" "No.""Well go take a look. You should have that looked at." I left Paul's house that day wondering about his bruise, but soon

put it out of my mind. * * *

There’s a funeral parlor within walking distance of Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn. It was a sunny day, and so I didn’t mind walking. You could smell summer in the air. Summer in New York City has its own pheromones. I was doing my best to enjoy it.

I never could tell the difference between a funeral director and a used car salesman. They all look and dress alike to me. Holden Caufield probably would have used the word, “phony” - phony in

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the sense that they just want to make a sale and move on to the next customer. A business transaction, plain and simple.

I was having a hard time accepting the fact this guy actually gave a rat’s ass. I thought of the funeral director as a prostitute of emotions, a person paid to pretend he felt your pain.

“What was your brother’s name?” It shook me when he used the past tense, “was.” “Pablo Jose,” my sister spoke up. “I need to get a drink of water,” I said I got up and walked out quickly, finding a water fountain just

outside in the hallway. I knew I was stalling. Funeral arrangements were something I didn’t have the strength to do. I couldn’t deal with that used car salesman asking me if I had brought Paul’s death certificate. My sister, Cynthia, and Paul’s life partner, Mike, were the strong ones.

Paul was to be cremated. The funeral director explained that the crematorium was somewhere in New Jersey and that his ashes would be brought back in an urn. I can’t remember discussing the cost. It seemed to me as such an injustice that the end of a life should come down to discussing how much you wanted to pay for a cardboard coffin. The funeral service was to be held on Friday, June 9, 1995.

Mike had placed Paul’s obituary in the New York Times. I took it from him and began to read.

Urda - Pablo Jose … Died at home June 5, 1995 after a courageous battle with cancer. Why couldn’t we say AIDS? What did it matter now? I kept reading.

Born in 1946 in Puerto Rico, he attended the University of Puerto Rico. He was an artist and a designer primarily in the fields of advertising and media. He is survived by … I couldn’tread anymore.

The moment that I was dreading was now upon me. I had to say goodbye to Paul for the last time.

We took an elevator to the basement where Paul was waiting. As the doors opened, I saw a hospital gurney with large wheels on it. I kept looking at the wheels for a few seconds to steel myself. And then my eyes came to rest upon Paul’s face.

His eyes were closed, his face had been made up, and his hair


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had been combed. He was in a white plastic body bag - the same kind used at accident scenes. His head, neck, and shoulders were exposed.

I looked at his face and became angry with God. I wondered why God couldn’t pick on somebody else. Why did God cause good people to suffer and die? I looked at my brother’s face and could not find my tears – only anger.

I noticed on the body bag someone had written “Urda” in blue ink. I thought, “Is this what it all comes down to? Some asshole scribbling your name on a body bag with a Bic pen?”

I was numb. I stood beside Paul like a potted plant, feeling helpless and angry. I stayed like that until I heard the funeral director clear his throat. It was time to go.

I bent over and kissed Paul gently on his forehead. I looked at his beautiful face and felt his scratchy beard on my cheek.

I kissed him and felt the stubble of his whiskers on my lips. The memory of riding the ferry back from the Judy Garland Memorial Forest came rushing back. I remembered the tequila, the laughter, the music, the dancing, and being saved from “Mogambo”. I was grateful for that memory. I kissed him one more time and whispered in his ear, “I love you Paul. I’ll see you in heaven.”

* * * We had come early to set up chairs and greet people as they

arrived at the funeral home for Paul’s service some days later. There was a podium. Behind the podium was a large table with

a white tablecloth on it. I watched as Mike carefully placed Paul’s urn on the table amidst all the beautiful flowers. I thought it looked nice. Then I saw Mike do a curious thing. He reached into a plain brown paper bag and pulled out a new bottle of “A-1” steak sauce, which he carefully placed next to Paul’s urn. Mike then went about his business, not giving the bottle of steak sauce any further thought.

The service was packed and looked like the class reunion of the Village People and the Rocky Horror Picture Show down at the Waverly. All manner of people were in attendance. There were drag queens dressed elegantly in black wearing demure looking high heels; there were leather clad bikers wearing matching chains

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and Harley Davidson hats; there were people dressed conservatively in nice suits and ties.

We were a blended stew of lesbians, gays, straights, blue collar, white collar, no collar, friends, and family. It didn’t matter who you were or what you wore - we were all there for Paul.

I stood behind the podium and began to speak. I told the story about the time I had invited Paul to my first-

born son’s conservative combination Puerto Rican - Irish Catholic baptism. I spoke about the phone conversation I had with Paul when I invited him to the baptism. I had given Paul a stern warning.

“Paul - if you show up in a dress I’m going to fucking kill you. No pantyhose, no dresses, no heels, and no Rocky Horror Show makeup. I want to see you in a plain ordinary suit. Got that!”

“Yes, I promise. I have a nice gray pinstripe I’ll wear. You’ll love it.”

“You promise?” “Yes, my darling brother. I promise to dress so conservatively

that Anita Bryant wouldn’t mind having me over for tea.” Paul arrived late at the church that day just as the priest was

about to baptize Johnny by pouring water on his forehead. I was glad to see Paul did look conservative, and even thought

the Humphrey Bogart fedora he was wearing made him look New York chic. He walked up the aisle and up to the baptismal font looking somber and solemn. The priest waited a few seconds for Paul and began baptizing Johnny just as Paul removed his hat.

Under his fedora Paul was wearing a bright red, velvet yarmulke that he had carefully adorned with gold sequins. Somehow he had managed to rig a watch battery to his yarmulke so that it flashed like the scoreboard at Yankee Stadium.

It took a couple of seconds before we realized Johnny was drowning. The priest had become mesmerized by the flashing yarmulke and was now pouring holy water into Johnny’s little mouth.

It was a chase worthy of the Three Stooges. There I was - a pissed off Puerto Rican waving a gun chasing a gay Jew wearing a flashing yarmulke in and out of the pews in a Catholic church while a priest turned Johnny upside down to get the holy water out of his


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lungs. That’s the way I remembered it. That’s the way I told it. We all laughed and I turned around to look at Paul’s urn. I saw

the bottle of steak sauce and could no longer contain myself. “Mike?” I said in a stage whisper. “Yes?” “Forgive my asking, but why do you have a bottle of A-1 next

to Paul’s urn?” “It was one of his last wishes.” “Steak Sauce?” “Yes.” “Why?” “He said if we were going to barbecue his ass that I should

bring the steak sauce.” * * *

It had been two weeks, and I still could not find my tears. I had to find a way to say goodbye to Paul. To stop dreaming about that body bag. To find closure.

“Can I get that Beechcraft Sundowner?” I asked the 18 year-old kid behind the counter. I was pointing to the single engine airplane parked out on the tarmack at Teterboro airport.

“You got a pilot’s license?” “Yes,” I didn’t tell him it had expired. “Here’s my log book.”

I gave him my doctored documents and then showed him my badge. “A chief of police, huh? Yeah, okay, chief, you can have it for

the next hour.”The flying conditions were “CAVU,” which meant, “Ceiling

And Visibility Unlimited.” The winds were calm. I didn’t know how long this perfect weather would last, so I hurried.

It had been a while since I had flown, but I reasoned it was like riding a bike. Once you learn, you never forget. All I needed was an hour.

Service ceiling for the aircraft I was flying was 10,000 feet. Fly above 10,000 feet, and you would risk hypoxia and possible death. I kept her at a steady rate as I climbed higher and higher in a wide circle. When I reached 11,000 feet, I cut the engine. I was now gliding. I put her into a gentle fifteen-degree bank and let the wind take me as I spiraled back down to earth.

I was doing this for a reason. I was trying to find the face of

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God, so I could say goodbye to Paul. And I did. The tears came without effort as I glided. I felt a sense of relief. I knew Paul was with me in that cockpit. And I felt better.

At 3,000 feet I started her engine and managed a straight in approach and perfect landing. I returned the keys to the kid and left without saying a word. I never flew again.


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Chapter Twenty-nine

Dear Lenore

“Why didn’t you tell me how Thelma and Louise ended?” “I told you they drove off into the sunset at the Grand Canyon

Did I lie?” Lenore smiled at me. “Okay, no jokes. For right now, I want to get a picture of …"

Lenore’s voice trailed off. I finished her sentence. “Of what got me put in a psych ward for a week? That was a

lot of years ago.” “I know but I’m still not clear on some things.” “What do you wanna know?” “Give me a short history again.” “I was the chief of police at the Lyons Veterans Hospital for

almost four years when we got a new Director, a new boss.” “And?” “Well, if airplanes were assholes, he would’ve been an airport. “Why?” “Because he had a bad case of Ricky Ricardo Syndrome.

Always giving me that ‘say something in Spanish’ bullshit – never seeing me as a Puerto Rican, which really irked me.” I paused to gather my thoughts.

“What else about him bothered you?” “He was a corporate sociopath, a bully. The kind of person that

appeared to enjoy humiliating subordinates in front of others. “How?” “He seemed to take pleasure in inflicting emotional violence.

He’d berate and threaten subordinates at meetings in front of other peers. I really thought that humiliation was his idea of leadership.”

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“So what happened?” “The Lyons VA is a Psychiatric Hospital on a sprawling 300

acre campus that includes a nine-hole golf course in Somerset County, New Jersey.”

“And?” “So, Psychiatric patients were wandering off campus and

committing suicide by throwing themselves in front of the commuter trains that zoomed by the Lyons train station. We’d pick up their bodies in buckets. It was a horrible sight. Plus, other patients would wander off and get lost in the thick brush, and we’d never find them until it was too late.”

“Really?” “Yeah, we once lost a patient that was found several months

later by hunters. His body had decomposed.” “Didn’t you look for these patients?” “Yeah, but I never had enough manpower or equipment, and

missing patients didn’t seem to be a priority with the new director. Every time we had a patient missing I’d pull out all the stops, including the New Jersey State Police helicopter, to help in the search. I paid overtime to staff and called in whatever outside help I could get.”

“And?” “He didn’t approve of my using helicopters or overtime or

outside help. He was a typical asshole bureaucrat. One day it came to a head.”

“How?” “He came to my office and became the embodiment of Mrs.

Einhorn. He ranted, threatened, bullied, and foamed at the mouth.” “And you told him off?” “No, I stood there and felt just like I did when I was back in the

fourth grade. The local homeowners were complaining to him about low flying helicopters. He wanted me to curtail the overtime in searching for patients. I had enough of him, and of picking up veterans in buckets. So I decided to take a vacation.”

“And?” “When I got back I was no longer the chief of police. I was

‘detailed’ down to the rank of patrolman. I was stripped of my command, my shield, my ID, even my keys were taken from me.”


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“Was that legal?” “As much as abusing power is. The new Director had made an

air-conditioning mechanic the new chief of police.” “You’re kidding?” “Nope, I couldn’t make this shit up. He had been the local

union president at East Orange New Jersey.” “Did he have a background in law enforcement?” “The only background this guy ever had as a cop was when he

once fixed the air conditioner in my office.” “So what happened to you?” “They began to work on me, just like they did to Paul Newman

in Cool Hand Luke” “You really like movies don’t you Juan? So what happened?” “Well lemme see - I went from chief of police to patrolman.

Then I lost my home.” “Your home?” “I lived on campus and was soon evicted.” There was another

long silence. “Then what?” “Then I went from being the police trainer to the trainee. The

air-conditioning mechanic ordered me to sit in a chair for about seventy hours watching training films I had once taught. Christ, I even had to ask permission to use the bathroom. It was like getting beat up on that tier all over again. I endured it for a long time, until they finally came up with something really cute that broke me.”

“What?”“They made me the parking lot attendant in a guard shack at the

main entrance of the East Orange NJ VA. That act brought me to my knees. I couldn’t stand the looks of pity from the many people who would walk by and stare at me, all the while `tsk tsking’. I was on display, like in a fish bowl. That’s when Mrs. Einhorn won. It hurt me so bad I wound up on a psych ward for a week after that. That was a lousy way to treat a Puerto Rican. I was a good cop anda member of an endangered species-but none of that mattered.”

“Endangered species?” “How many Latino police chiefs do you think there are in this

country?” “Oh.” Lenore smiled at me.

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“There’s this axiom in law that I love. It’s called, ‘the rule of the reasonable person.’ It asks, ‘How would a reasonable person have acted in this situation?’”

“And?” “And, I asked myself a reasonable question: ‘why was I treated

like this?’ Why would anybody go so far out of their way to hurt another person like the way I was hurt? To take away everything, your career, your home, your dignity, and respect?”

“Why do you think Juan?” “Hatred. They never called me a spic to my face but they sure

as hell treated me like one. Maybe that’s what Marie was trying to teach me on that bench at K-Mart so long ago.”

“What?” “That there’ll always be somebody who wants to take your

dignity along with your seat on the subway.” Lenore smiled knowingly at me. She was quiet for long time then said, “Maybe you just figured something out.”

“Yeah, don’t let anybody take your dignity.” “What about the captain of the Luftwaffe?” “Fuck him, he’s never coming. The only person that can save

you - is you.” There was another long silence. “Lenore thanks for all the help.” “No problemo.” Lenore was smiling from ear to ear. I got up

to leave. “Wait a minute.” Lenore reached into her handbag and pulled

something out, handing it to me. “A Kewpie doll!” Lenore kept smiling, “You deserve it.” “How can I thank you, Lenore?” “Don’t give up your seat,” she said. I smiled at her.


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Chapter Thirty

“Or Something?”

“Hi, Pop, it’s me. How are things in beautiful downtown Canovanas, Puerto Rico?”

“Hey! Lousy Puerto Rican - Como estas? I’m good. I miss you. Where are you calling me from?”

“I moved to this farm in Pennsylvania.” “Pennsylvania?” “Yeah, it’s a place called Slatington.” “What, you ain’t chasing those poor Mexicans anymore?” “I haven’t done that in years, Pop.” “Mira, lousy Puerto Rican - did I ever tell you about the time I

got arrested by the La Migra? What a bunch of pendejos.”“No, you never told me that story.” “It was when you was leetle and we lived in Hell’s Kitchen. I

was a dishwasher when they came into the kitchen. I took my friend from la Dominicana Republica, and I hide him in the dishwasher. You know one of dose big ones?”

“Yeah Pop, I know, they have big conveyer belts.” “Yeah, that’s the kind. Well anyway, I knew that they were

going to look in there, so I turn on the machine so they don’t look in there - and I almost kill my friend by drowning him.”

“Did they find him?” “No, they arrested me.” “Why? Didn’t you tell them you were a Puerto Rican?” “Yeah, I did, but this guy with a gun says, ‘one Spic is as good

as another.’ But they lemme go after a few hours, you know what I mean? They gimme a bologna sangwhich to eat for lunch. Oh, I

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hated that fooking bologna sheet sangwhich. So, donde estás ahora – where are you now?”

“I live on this old farm in the Lehigh Valley.” “Where’s that?” “I told you. It’s in Pennsylvania, near Allentown.” “They got any Puerto Ricans in Pennsylvania?” “Yeah, but they’re like you, they only come out when it’s

warm.” “So what kind of work are you doing now?” “I work for myself. I’m a licensed private investigator.” “So, what else do you do on your farm? Play with sheep?” “Hey, remember that big Chevy 1965 Impala you had when we

were kids? You know, the one the cops repossessed because Junior forgot to tell you it was stolen?”

“Coño - how can I forget that mess?” “Well, I found a 65 Chevy Impala just like it. But it’s rusted

from bumper to bumper. A real shit box. The engine is shot. I’m going to completely restore it. I’m going to paint it black and white like a police car. Get it? An old cop car. I already got the bubble gum light for the top. I figure it’ll take me a few years to get it done.”

“Yeah right. And what you gonna do when you finish that – write a book or something?”


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Chapter thirty-one

Dear Lenore

“Los Angeles?” “Yes, next month. It’s a good opportunity for me.” “Jeez, who am I gonna talk to?” “I have somebody I can recommend.” “No thanks, Lenore. No offense.” “Why don’t you think about it?” “No thanks. I pass.” There was a long silence. “I guess this is

it then. Is there a ceremony or something? Do we go out and have a beer? Do I get another Kewpie doll?”

“No.”“How about a certificate of achievement or something?” “No.”“Hey, just as well 'cause I got you something.” I handed her

the gift-wrapped box from my book bag. I watched with a smile as she unwrapped it.

“Juan, it’s beautiful.” “This was painted by a fellow named Andrew Wyeth.” “What possessed you to get this?” “Well, it really is a beautiful painting. I first saw it at the

Museum of Modern Art in New York City along time ago. I’ve been in love with it ever since.” I waited while she fingered the eleven by fourteen frame.”

“Does the young girl in the painting have a name?” “Her name is ‘Christina.’ Wyeth called this work ‘Christina’s

World.’ Kind of sucks you in, doesn’t it?” “Yes, it does.”

Juan Ciuro

206

“You know what gets me about it?” “What?”“In the beginning I thought it was the big field she was sitting

in looking up at the farm on the ridge. It’s kind of haunting and ethereal. But then I figured something out.”

“What?”“You can’t see her face because she’s facing away from you,

but you have this sense that she’s a beauty.” “I agree Juan, there’s a presence here you can feel.” I laughed. “Are we becoming pretentious art critics?” “What else do you know about her?” “Her real name was Christina Olson. She was a neighbor of

Wyeth’s in Maine. She had something called infantile paralysis which I think is polio. Wyeth saw her just like that and painted her from memory.”

“And?” “And there’s so many things that I want to know Lenore.” “Like?” “Look at the farm house in the distance. There’s two ladders.” “And?” “Why would he do that? I mean paint them in?” “I don’t know.” “And if she had polio, how did she get out in the field? Is she

trying to get up? Crawl? And what the hell was Wyeth doing there anyway?”

Lenore began to chuckle. “You’re going somewhere with this aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” “Where?”“I think it’s the not knowing.’ “Not knowing?” “Yeah. Christina is all the things we’re not meant to know.

We’ll never know her face, never know why she’s out there, never know why the ladders are up, never know anything, except that we know we’ve been touched, and in some small measure – changed.” There was another long silence.

“Does she remind you of anybody?” “Promise not to laugh?”


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“Yes.” “She’s like Marie.” Lenore smiled. “How so?” “They’re like the people who come into your life for an instant,

and you really don’t know anything about them - except that they’ve changed you forever.”

“You sound like a philosopher.” “No, I’m just full of shit.” “I’ll miss you Juan.” “Is it okay if I hug you good-bye?” “I’d like that.”

Documents

“Lousy Puerto Rican” - s3.amazonaws.com · “Ciuro’s book is more than an outstanding read, it’s an astounding feel. His story is funny and sweet and sad. Most of all, he