by Jos
The blinds closed and the projectors came on. We were in total darkness and everything in the room glowed a spotless white. The projections we were treated to resembled a holographic show. The background of the room changed every minute. One minute we’d be in a gallery room in Le Louvre, the next we’d be in the Pink Panther’s house. Plus, the weed going around was of a quality I hadn’t seen since my summer in Amsterdam. I was used to such a low quality in Korea that outdoor Mexican brick weed with stems, seeds, and all would probably have felt like heaven.
Right when pipe came to me, the background changed to a snowy mountain in Siberia with running wolves and matching sounds. Fog drifted out from the corner of the room. The room was airtight, I was told. It was my first time in a Jamaican hotbox. After only one hit of the weed that was going around, I fell into my own world. The steam became heavy with THC and with every breath I took, I felt my muscles relax and the blood flow to my brain. I knew then that I’d be spending a lot of my time inside of Dillon’s holoroom.
Holoroom
One of Dillon’s friends grew the stuff so we were basically getting high on a daily basis for free. Granting access to the holoroom was how Dillon made a living. He would make it private for a fee to any freak who wanted to get it on. He made quite a good amount of money. Didn’t even need to dip into his trust fund. He was always financially a smart guy.
He purchased two huge vacuum devices and placed one on the ceiling and the other on the floor. Then he bought a big box of glow-in-the-dark balls. When all the lights went off, the vacuums would suck and glowing balls hovered all around us. I could best describe it as a swarm of large bioluminescent insects hovering eerily and hypnotizingly. I had to tell my brain not to run, but rather to enjoy the experience.
I spent two months in the holoroom before I even decided to venture out into the bars of Kingston and other foreigner hangout spots. I was too distracted by the brilliant light show and the amazing high I always enjoyed there in the holoroom. Not only that, Dillon was always the kind to tell interesting stories, and thus I naturally found it difficult to pry myself away from the holoroom.
I hadn’t completely forgotten about my friends from Seoul. One day I found myself quite drunk and high after a long session in the holoroom. Dillon was passed out on one of the couches, the smoke and lights from the session not perturbing him at all. I left in search of a taxi, wandering aimlessly through the streets.
I asked a tall Rasta for directions, but I surely mumbled my words. He simply told me to listen to more good reggae: “Cocaine would blow my brain; heroin would snatch my veins; leave me in misery and pain.” I continued stumbling drunkenly through the dark streets. My recollection is hazy after that.
Surprisingly, I woke up in my apartment. The realization hit me that I had spent two months in a dark room getting high day in and day out.
I promised myself a much needed respite. I asked Vinnie, a friend I met in Korea who was visiting me from Canada, to take me out drinking, because I couldn’t expect Dillon to ever step out of his cave. After all, he was the kind of guy who took vitamin D with a shot of whiskey.
Hitting the Bars of Kingston
Some part of me hoped I would find them right away. I wandered from bar to bar in a stupor. Eventually, I found an Irish bar called Ian’s that reminded me of the Wolfdog. I made it my base of operations, partly because of the nostalgia I felt but also because I hoped that something in the bar would call to them, too. Some power from beyond would lead them to a place that resembled one they knew long before. In the same way that immigrants try to find a slice of home wherever they go, I hoped that they would make their way here.
Ian’s was always cold (the A/C remained on full blast at all times). The blinds were thick and always down. The place didn’t feel at all like Jamaica. I was living in a cave of pleasure designed for rich Jamaicans to avoid the sun. After all, skin-whitening creams were all the rage. What better way to make those creams work than to spend days in a cold cave of drunken revelry? After about two months I eventually lost all hope of reuniting with my Seoul people.
I would spend days between Ian’s and my house. In many ways, the only difference between Ian’s and Dillon’s was that Dillon’s was free. After a few months I decided to go back to Dillon’s and spend the rest of my year there. I had saved enough in Korea to pay for 3 years of rent and food. If a good time was freely available at Dillon’s, I saw no need to go anywhere else.
Two Years Later
My wedding with Dillon was rather spontaneous. In a moment of passion, we made love and I was impregnated. We suddenly realized that we loved each other madly. Bubba became nothing more than a distant memory. He had left me. Clearly I wasn’t the one for him, though I still harbor feelings for him in my moments of weakness. However, I’d rather be with someone who loves me as much as I love him.
I still go into the holoroom from time to time. Of course, I now always vaporize my weed. I’m a lot more health-conscious these days. I’ve even started an exercise regimen to get rid of my love handles. I no longer find myself hospitalized for reasons that baffle the doctors. My life has changed for the better. Perhaps the Chill Out sessions were supposed to dissipate into the yellow dust that permeated Seoul. I may be a rational skeptic most of the time, but their disappearance feels almost divine; if they hadn’t vanished, I would still be drinking my life away in some dark bar in Asia. They left for a reason.
I still miss the days-long binges in Seoul sometimes, but the Chill Out sessions taught me the value of just sitting back and enjoying life. Not everything has to move at the speed of the KTX. Sometimes just enjoying the little things is all I need to have a good day. I’ve tanned from going out, and I’m looking forward to having my baby.
No one in my new life knows about the Knife Fighters. It’s possible that Noah, Helena, Arian or someone may have heard from them, but spending most of my time in this cave of wonders has helped me forget people in my past. I rarely even speak with my parents. With them all the way over in New Zealand it is difficult even to arrange Skype sessions. I speak with them maybe two or three times a year. I miss them as much as I do Bubba: not much.
Part 3: News Report
Documentary
I was casually half-watching a documentary on crime one night with my six-year-old son while crocheting him a Rasta beanie. Dillon was entranced in the holoroom, as usual. I would have liked to accompany him, but I had to take care of Dillon, Jr. Junior was a pretty slick kid and was paying more attention than me.
My boy was a member of the Facebook generation and had already single-handedly learned to operate the website. Little man opened a Facebook account when he was only four. After a year of farming and playing mafia games, he found me and friended me. I was going to make my pictures private, but I figured that I might as well not shelter him. After all, he wondered what Daddy did in the holoroom all the time. I phrased it in the most harmless way possible: “He’s doing something only grown-ups can do.” But the little man learned too quickly. By his third month of pre-K he had already become a self-professed Rasta after listening to Nas and Damian Marley’s “Africa Must Wake Up.”
I’m a relatively cool parent, so I let him believe as he wishes. I’m sure he’ll end up a full-blown atheist when the time comes. Little man had already shuffled through my pictures and was familiar with all of my friends. Sometimes we’d surf together and I’d tell him the background of each photo. I’ve probably spent hundreds of hours Facebooking with him. It’s a cheap way to have fun and bond doing something we both like. His favorite album of mine was the one when I went through my hipster phase. He doesn’t understand why someone would wear glasses without frames. “It does not make sense. How can you have fun in the playground when your jeans are that skinny?”
That’s how he immediately identified one of my friends on the documentary, after having seen him in one of my Facebook pictures. I was spacing out, almost missed the entire report.
The Report
“The suspect was believed to be a black American with a Southern accent. None of his accomplices were Jamaican. One had a full-jacket tattoo on his right arm with a Maori design.” Little man asked me what reckless endangerment meant. That’s when I looked up and saw a dreaded mane. I knew who it belonged to. It was Bubba. The camera zoomed in on his face. His dreads showed several years of growth, and he was sporting a goatee.
Next to Bubba, with his face half-turned away from the security camera that shot the grainy footage, was none other than Joaquín del Monte himself. Dillon Jr. made one of his silly jokes: “It’s shopped! I can tell by the pixels.”
He had put on at least 70 pounds. They all went to his arms, though. The dude was a skinny vegetarian when I knew him, but in the security footage he looked imposing. The muscle accentuated his height. He looked not 6’3” but closer to 6’7”. You could almost smell the rancid creatine sweating from his pores.
The reporter indicated that Joaquín was wearing shorts. The reporter also mentioned that he had what appeared to be a bullet hole about six inches below his knee. He had long, curly hair and walked with a slight limp à la Ricardo Montalbán in Wrath of Khan. He brandished a 9-mm pistol and busted a cap in the bar’s fish tank. Only Bubba and Joaquín were visible in the altercation. There was no specific mention of any other Itaewon Knife Fighter causing an incident at the establishment.
Contenido
I was right all along. He had been in Jamaica. I can’t imagine that Bubba and Joaquín would have doppelgängers holding down a bar after an altercation over a pool game. It was them, I have no doubt. I called my babysitter and went out to find them. I knew it would be difficult because they were fugitives, and they could have already taken flight years earlier, when the altercation took place.
I knew only what had been mentioned in the news report. “They arrived at the bar in a rented limo. The limo driver claims they never spoke to him. He assumed they were having an important conversation and did not want to put down the tinted window that separated the cabin from the front seat. The limo was paid for in cash.” Since the limo was not booked in advance, no credit card information was acquired. No one bothered to ask for the names of the individuals who rented the limo. If they had, I’m sure they would have used fake names, anyway. No one identified them for fear of reprisal. The police had no leads. I probably knew more than them.
The Search
Dillon Jr. was already asleep by the time the babysitter came. I managed to pry Dillon out of the holo room. All it took was one of my physically abusive, emotional outburst and he got the message that this was important to me. He was already walking a tight rope after talking to me in a baby voice the previous night. He certainly knew how to blow my fuse, but I needed him to drive me to the bar and help me talk to (read: bribe) the bartender.
He swerved slightly and wore his silent lips as he drove quietly down Marley Boulevard and passed King Selassie Avenue before arriving at a chic café in front of the bar where Bubba and the Crew were seen. I wanted to learn more about the bartender, and given the friendly nature of Jamaicans, I was sure someone in one of the businesses around the bar would know who he was. Even if he had already quit years earlier, someone might still know if he was around.
Dillon double-parked and we stepped out of the car and into the brightly lit café across the street from the bar that had gotten pumped with lead. I sat down and slipped the dude behind the counter a twenty. The café attendant immediately started talking. He told me about the bartender: he was still working in the same bar, but I would have to wait a couple of hours until he came in for his shift.
I sat down with Dillon and he began to regale me with one of his stories about his college days: “By my second semester of sophomore year, I had already been banned from all of the bars within a 50-mile radius of my dorm room. So I partied in the Cosmobucks and other coffee shops by the bar strip. I had no more opportunities to get banned from bars, so I had to try and get banned from places that were not bars. Eventually it just got to the point that I had to stand outside of the bars in the rain shouting at everyone that walked into a bar on the strip or other bar area to which I made my way. I would be like, ‘Look at those little bitches going into their warm bars; you think you’re so cool ‘cause you get to go be inside a bar, don’t you? Screw you, I’ll do whatever the fuck I please!’”
After a while, Dillon got tired of talking, looked at his watch, and realized that the bartender was due to arrive. I spotted him outside when the café attendant pointed him out. Before he entered the bar, I approached him and made him an irresistible offer. “I’m not a cop. I’m a friend of the guys who shot the fish tank here some years earlier.” He immediately threw his hands in the air and waved his palms, seemingly as if to overemphasize how little he knew and wanted to talk about the subject.
At first all he did was grab the hair on the side of his head, almost as if ripping it off seemed a better option than talking to us, but Benjamin Franklin loosened him up. He let go of his hair and suddenly remembered what had happened. “I knew them. They came here every Sunday. They and a group of others would keep the bar running from morning to morning.” They had revived the Sunday Funday tradition. The bartender didn’t know their names or where they were staying. “If I had ratted them out to the cops, I probably would have lost my job. They were the main customers.”
“Do you know where they’ve gone?” I asked him. “No, but they have a way of still finding out everything that goes down in Kingston. That’s about as much as I can really say.” I was confused by the bartender’s enigmatic statements. I tried to get him to clarify his words with more money, but he wouldn’t budge. Was he somehow telling me that they knew I had managed to track them down and were now coming to reunite with me?
The Last Sunday Funday
The following Sunday I put on my finest dress, a slim, low-cut, shimmering navy blue number, and hopped in the Aston Marvin that Dillon had gotten me for my birthday. It was a 2018 model and came with a BAC sensor. It wouldn’t let me drive if I got drunk above the limit; not that it mattered much, because I could probably bribe my way out of getting detained.
The Tropicana Lounge was packed. I would have to keep my eyes open in case they were in the crowd. I still held out hope that they might show up again. A pair of newlyweds taking respite from their honeymoon at Montego Bay approached me and made small talk. I bought them a round to congratulate them for their wedding. I found it rather odd that about two hours into small talk, the bride mentioned how surprised she was that the bar was so packed, given the incident that had taken place there just a few years earlier. I asked her to clarify and she said, “We met a guy in Montego who told us about how fun this place was. In fact, he paid for our flight down. I’ve never met a man more generous. He gave us a picture of... you.”
From the description of the tattoo they gave me, I knew it could have only been one man: Bubba! The newlyweds had been sent by Bubba to deliver a message. He handed me a little piece of paper, folded up, and sealed.
The Message
“It’s safer for you and your family this way.”
– B
That was all the brief message read. I had lost hope of ever seeing them again before I saw them on TV. For a moment I felt I would again be able to relive some of our Old City adventures. Dismayed, I left my beer half-drunk and hopped into my Aston Marvin.
The car refused to let me drive. “Blood alcohol content is 0.22. Car cannot start.” I sat in the car and pondered the night’s events. I have a family now. A son to look after. I can’t raise a family on the run. I resigned myself to the fact that my Korean-style adventures needed to come to a close. I looked in the rearview mirror and acknowledged the wrinkles around my once smooth lips and bright eyes. “Time has ravaged my once youthful looks,” I thought in a Simpsonian manner. I snoozed for a bit until woken by the car auto-starting. “You are now allowed to drive.” I drove down a dimly lit boulevard, back to my pred
ictable suburban life.
___________________
Someone who engages in loutish antisocial behavior.
Chapter IV: Helena’s View
Part I: Mondays
The Mastermind
His college roommate would tell stories about him, but no one believed them. The stories Joaquín told were often fictitious. He’d claim he pulled a job in the Ukraine the previous summer, yet all his Facebook photos clearly indicated he had spent the whole time in Portugal. The way he told stories – with a constant smirk on his face – made it even more difficult to believe him. He was the biggest jabladorazo I knew. He and his best friend growing up, his neighbor Guayabón, would spend their days under a tamarind tree in Dajabón telling each other how they had spent the previous weekend helping Jack Veneno kick the shit out of Ric Flair. I guess it was their way of forgetting about the snakes and frogs that lived in the giant, open sewer behind their wooden shacks. You’d take him seriously at your own risk. In Seoul he would flash a badge that read “IPA.” He would scare the fuck out of random people and then scream, “International Party Animal, drink!” At the same time, many of the outlandish stories he told were backed by reliable sources and documents.
In high school he legally changed his name to Juan Velázquez. I know it was true ‘cause I saw his old passport. Why he did it I’m not sure, but I heard through Radio Patio that it was over guilt after ajusticiar with baseball bats to the cranium one of the Trujillistas who stole his grandparents’ land. Perhaps he thought a new name would grant him a fresh conscience as well, but it was not the case.