My Knife

by Jos

  These new immigrants basically exist between two worlds. They’re American but at the same time hold on to their heritage for many generations. I know a third generation Dominican in Spanish Harlem who speaks like a tíguere from El Capotillo. They used to call him Machetiko; the dude would go down every summer just like many new immigrants.

  Many have an attachment to both lands, but some lose any attachment for all the lands and eventually just become international nomads. I saw Joaquín as a technomad. He was happy as long as he had an internet connection. He couldn’t physically see his family back home, but he’d be just as happy to have a Skype chat with them. Skype and Facebook let him know which of his childhood friends had gotten knocked up and who had gotten fat. It’s almost as if he realized that high school reunions were somewhat senseless. It was then possible to just keep track of friends and meet up with them if Facebook told us that we were going to be in the same city.

  Five hundred years ago, Ana Maria and Joaquín would have been burned at the stake for heresy. I, and I’m sure all my close friends, would congratulate him for his bravery in pursuing true love. Maybe we’re not escapist, maybe we’re the first generation of technomads. Our lives consisted of two suitcases and enough money to put down the deposit on a fully furnished apartment at our next destination.

  Over time I came to learn what it was that satisfied me. I didn’t need beauty or money. I needed a perpetual internet connection and good friends. Some can travel alone, but I wanted to share the experience with people who knew me well. We were adventurers setting a trend that we wanted to perpetuate throughout the ages. It was at that moment that I knew what would make me happy: picking up my bags and meeting a new city, a new culture.

  I saw no desire for a white-picket-fenced house, 1.8 kids, a mortgage, grad school loans, car loans, and middle-class conformity that would lead to a mid-life crisis followed by retirement and death in a shitty nursing home. I had already experienced a quarter-life crisis after being overwhelmed by the difference between Fordham U and Washington Heights. It’s as if I was plucked from one world and thrown into another, one which didn’t satisfy me. Four years in the same trite place was devastating to my mental well-being. Trite places make us feel like trapped animals. We didn’t have the patience. We wanted everything and we wanted it yesterday.

  Maybe that’s why they jacked a bank. They had grown used to taking what they wanted. I can’t see our current monetary and social system lasting long when more individuals like us are being churned out. He confessed to me that he would rather lose all the money he had than lose all his music. This was when he had a good amount stashed up. Some would be impossible to find, lost to time like Kazaa. In a way I now agree with him. We have the freedom to define our personalities in ways that no one before us could.

  Joaquín was an aficionado of music. All music. A thousand years ago he would have never even heard the genres he loved because they came from lands too distant or would have been lost to the passage of time. He himself had recorded music. Bad music, but music nonetheless. It shocked his grandparents that they could hear his song from such a long distance away. The farthest voices they could hear in their youth came from Fidel’s radio stations in Cuba. “Who gives us the bread, Fidel gives us the bread,” is what they told Joaquín they heard. Perhaps that’s what they remember in the static, or maybe that’s what they were told was being said. Times were simpler. Joaquín lived with his grandparents and even his great-grandfather for a few years. He always saw the world through antiquated eyes. He’d grown up around people who did nothing but tell him stories about how things were different in the past. It was something that constantly occupied his thoughts.

  The part I most enjoyed about him was when he would tell stories about the way a certain neighborhood looked in the past. He was friends with Nolan, who lived on the floor below us, and would sometimes visit him to hear stories about how the very street he was looking at was a farm only 20 years earlier. When he looked, he would almost see in his head how things were in the past. He would try to imagine how people saw the world at the time. I guess that’s why he was the kind of guy that gave off a grandfatherly vibe. He lived in a time that was not our own. He was a time traveler doing a tour of the world.

  Customs

  The plane landed and I made my way through customs. I was ready to pick up a taxi and head to any hotel the cab driver took me to. As I walked out, a tall man in a brown suit called to me by name. He was sent by Bubba to take me to him.

  In the Lincoln town car, the driver made no small talk. I asked him a few questions about himself, but he was evasive. “Not many,” is what said when I asked how many kids he had. He had the cut of a man who had served many years in the army. His appearance was swarthy yet he commanded an air of authority that led me not to seek specific answers. If he were a martinet it would not be a surprise to me.

  “Get off here!” he said. We had taken a confusing series of dirt roads for over an hour. There were no signs; he knew the way by memory. I got the distinct impression that this was a place he had wandered through many times as a child..

  He left me standing alone in front of a gated, secluded beige mansion and sped off. I just naturally trusted him when he told me he was sent by Bubba. If he were a kidnapper sent to get me, he would have gotten a promotion for doing such a good job.

  ___________________

  Women wink when they see you.

  Wait, you actually thought a Dominican guy was gonna change that much?

  The dude was ahead of his time; was sagging back in the ’50s.

  Involuntarily released fecal matter.

  Had to say that instead of garbage men, now that we live in politically correct times.

  Chapter VI: Chez Bubba

  Salutations

  I expected Bubba to have a different look after years of living in a tropical climate. However, I was shocked at just how much he had changed. His face was drastically altered from plastic surgery. His surgeons had created a mask he couldn’t take off. He welcomed me into what could only be described as a southern mansion. It had that fancy Greek façade that many old American houses try to imitate. The house commanded an air of authority. I felt as if a Kentucky colonel lived inside. However, the house was non-ostentatious in many ways. Although it had sixteen rooms, it was easy to tell that the man who lived inside was simple when it came to his opulence.

  “Mi casa is your casa,” he said as he opened the door to his mansion. Time has treated you well, I told him. He laughed. I had too many questions and didn’t know where to start.

  We drank and smoked our night away. He told me of the classic American cars he had in his garage and of the wonderful designs his landscaper had carved out for him. We talked about everything but the one thing I came for. We eventually passed out on the couches. We were woken by a limo driver at around 8 a.m. Bubba had scheduled a Monday morning absinthe party.

  Party

  Bubba was a smart guy. He had apparently invested his money well and had increased his wealth by several factors in just a few years. He was running several high-class clubs and bars in Kingston and was known to be an elusive millionaire who only partied with select individuals. I was greeted by none other than F1 Formula racer Mariano Polair and his entourage. Mariano had been partying since Friday and knew that the Monday Morning Absinthe Party at Bubba’s was where everyone who was anybody went to top off a long weekend of partying.

  By 9, Bubba’s living room was packed with heavy hitters of the Kingston scene. His topless waitress was a former Playboy bunny who flirted with everyone, including the women. I assume Bubba paid for his open bar with the exorbitant fees he charged in his clubs. By 9:30, I had already done two shots of the Flaming Fairy on an empty stomach and zoned out watching the bunny throw sugar cubes one by one into absinthe shot glasses and ignite a massive fire.

  At that exact minute, Paulie – a crazed maniac who spoke with a foot in his mouth – walked behind the bar and slapped th
e bunny on the ass. He then walked into Bubba’s living room and loaded pornography onto his Facebook wall. Bubba was alerted by text message of Paulie’s drunken spree and had one of his guards escort him from the premises and cast him to the desert. Bubba’s success depended on his secrecy and ability to keep things under the radar. In fact, he requested that I not refer to him as Bubba. He asked me to call him Ishmael.

  The Facebook Generation

  His ability to attract famous personalities to Mandatory Monday was testament to how much people trusted his discretion. Photographs were strictly prohibited, and the guards kept an eye for any recording activity. It used to be that living in a different country meant that it was possible to keep personal activities private. But facebook and Internet-enabled phones with high-quality cameras had made it such that family members, co-workers, past acquaintances and many others were capable of seeing very intimate images shortly after they were snapped. Within five minutes of Paulie posting a picture of the gay bestiality he so much enjoyed (he had a particular fondness for Mr. Hands, an individual who died of a perforated colon after being oversexed by a charmin’ stallion), 42 people had commented on the photo. The flash it took for the image to be beamed into cyberspace was all the time needed for the photo to be disseminated around the world.

  I didn’t really care if people got to see the real side of me, but there were bankers at the absinthe fest who depended on their public image for their wealth. Some worked in conservative institutions and preferred that no pictures be shown of them. Of course, the bankers were but a few. The rest were socialites who like Paris Hilton regaled in the notoriety that came with being party animals. I recognized at least four people in the room from pornos I had seen on Redtube over the years. One of the celebutantes in the room confessed to me that she was planning to “leak” a tape of herself with Ishmael.

  He would have been very displeased by being more recognized and famous. With fame generally comes more wealth, but I suspect that Ishmael had learned from Gatsby and wanted no one asking questions about how he had gained it. His success was earned through his clubs, he claimed. After Ishmael finished instructing his guards to kick out Paulie, he approached me and, for the first time, I thought I would learn from him what had happened to my friends.

  Answers

  I told him that I knew what had happened, and in a single nod I learned that they had indeed jacked . Ishmael was reluctant to speak of it in public, even though we were in a corner of a very loud party where I’m sure no one could hear us. He took me down to his hydroroom.

  The marble floor slowly sank into the ground and a pool progressively appeared from underneath. We got naked and jumped into the warm water. I suspect he wanted me undressed not to admire my body, but rather to make sure I wasn’t bugged. The dude was a professional and he was slick about it. “Joaquín lives here, somewhere outside of Kingston. I seen him maybe once or twice. I don’t really know where he lives. His place is more isolated than mine. All I know is that he has a big farm, an ex-navy SEAL for a farmhand, and his lovely ladies to keep him company. There are probably like twenty people on his compound. They come from all over the world. They say they ain’t a cult but I know a cult when I seen it. I ain’t seen him in six months. He spends his days writing, smoking, making vegan cupcakes, prophesying, and training. All at the same time. The SEAL has trained him to the point where he can cut a man’s neck before even reaching for the knife. That stunt he pulled when he shot up that bar was his graduation from boot camp. He had to bribe almost everyone to keep it under wraps. No one would be willing to press charges given the money and power he commands. He can summon a team of mercenaries, those nasty dark Jedi types, to his place in just an hour. Whenever he gets paranoid and suspects a Waco-style invasion by the Jamaican federales, his place swarms with SIG-552s. He only allows Swiss weapons on his farm. He says he admires their tendency to keep to themselves.”

  His words were in no way shocking. I already knew that he would tell me something along those lines. Ishmael’s description of Joaquín’s ranch was only an extension of his unique life experiences, love of philandering, and admiration for the Kalakuta Republic. The only thing I learned was that Joaquín hired the services of a SEAL to protect his premises. Sometimes he liked to isolate himself, retreat into a cave. He’d disappear for months into his room and do nothing but read philosophy and study herbs. I would jokingly call him The Yerbero Moderno. He always offered me albahaca ‘cause I was flaca. “He’s growing herbs up to the wazoo in that place of his. He’s got the women there convinced that he can help them stay alive forever,” Ishmael said.

  “What gave you the impression that it was a cult,” I asked. After all, a vegan diet should help them live a longer life.

  “Well, the only way I can see him keeping that many women around is if he’s got them convinced that he has ambrosia. He already had seven kids running around with two more on the way when I last seen him. All by different women. Besides, some of the stuff he told me when we were on the boat ride from the Philippines to Jamaica made it seem like he was planning on raising a future army or some weird shit like that.” I asked him when they had been to the Philippines. “We went after Muirne flew us out of Seoul.”

  The rest of the conversation was fluff. He said he didn’t know much else about Joaquín. The dude was a mystery to everyone outside of his ranch, and perhaps even to those inside it as well. He was even more mysterious than Rocky. Rocky, the biggest, drunkest motherfucker in Itaewon, was a former soldier who stayed in Korea after finishing his contract ‘cause he was hooked on the Itae juice and couldn’t get off it. What no one knows is how he paid for everything without a job and could be found shitfaced in a corner of Old City or Iguana’s any day of the week. The only one that told me about his background was Joaquín; no one else seemed to know the details of his private life. We stopped reminiscing and I blacked out in an absinthe-induced state of confusion and wonder.

  Part Twee: The Second Hit

  The Naked Party

  I was woken up early Tuesday by the noise coming from the hydroroom. Over 50 people were wading around in the pool naked, drunk, and smoking. The naked parties were something that Ishmael had inherited from Joaquín. Joaquín was a frequent attendant of the naked parties which were common at Yale during his time there. He enjoyed the freedom it gave him, how everyone felt natural and accepted their imperfections. It was the ultimate way to get away from the rigidness of everyday life. Ishmael took the parties to the next level. The people who went there were wealthy enough to fund an extravagant life devoted exclusively to hedonism. Ishmael was the master of hedonism in the isolated little world he had built for himself. As the day progressed, the naked party somehow turned into a mass orgy, as was always the case at his place. No one can ever really remember how it all starts. It’s usually two people who can no longer resist the drunken horniness and start pounding in some corner of the room. Other people naturally join in and in a matter of minutes, the room overflows in wild sexual energy.

  I was standing next to Ishmael and before I knew it, I found myself pushing him to the ground and forcing my way onto his hard, black cock. Suddenly, one of the celebutantes in the room stuck her lubed finger in my anus. She had a double-headed dildo which she forced into my tight culo. She was notorious for getting off on the pain of women she penetrated with her dildo. I found myself screaming in pain from my anus, but unable to pry myself away from Ishmael’s throbbing cock. I could hear the celebutante moaning as she got off on my pain and the motion of the 16-inch dildo she forced in and out of us. I heard her cum wildly and pull out of me. At that point, I screamed savagely at the pure joy I felt from having the pain from my anus removed. The best thing about painful anal was how relieved I felt afterwards. Ishmael and I came at the same time, his semen thrusting deep into me and my moistness dripping all over him.

  I truly admired the life he led. He was a hedonist to the max, not a worry in the world. Ishmael had found the life he wa
nted to live, and no one was going to take it from him. He was never going to let anyone medicate him; he managed to do just fine in his own way.

  A Ripe Plantain Cannot Be Unripened

  Ishmael was satisfied with his life. He wasn’t willing to join for the second hit. After all, he saw himself going from living in a mud shack in Alabama to extreme wealth. How much more could he want? He was also financially smart and had increased his wealth his first year in Kingston. Besides the shootout with Joaquín before he carved himself up a new face, the dude had gone totally legit.

  The party had finished, but we were still in the hydroroom when Ishmael started crying. “They was retarded to try that shit a second time around. They didn’t know the layout, the language, didn’t have access to a base. It was stupid and I told them. But Smith, O’Connor, Muirne, they pissed away all their dough on a year-long coke and heroin binge. Giving each of those fucks five million bucks was like moving Barney to the Duff factory. You could see it in their faces. They didn’t have the energy to keep going the way they did. They got skinny as hell; you could even count the bones in Muirne’s face. They all had changed since our days carrying out hits for the CIA in Pakistan – they were unfocused and untrained. There was no way they were in the necessary physical condition to jack a bank in Japan. Even Fat Jimmy was lost and just going with the flow. He was the only one I could convince to walk away. We left him in Boracay, and he might still be there for all I know.