MIA to GYE

I am an old man. Not physically mind you, even though I do not have the best conditioning. I am talking about my spirit, I feel like my soul is old and it is very tired. I have always felt personal interactions waste it away. Relationships are even worse for my soul.  It is as if I chopped off a tiny little piece of that soul and handed it over to really someone who does not know what to do with it. Of course, I am also guilty of that too. That is why it is also difficult for me to accept those pieces. Maybe that is why rather than feeling as an outsider; I actively cut myself off from others.

Summers in Miami were a suffocating experience, with temperatures over 90 degrees and 100% humidity. I was visiting some relatives there, back in august 1993. I had lost my job the year before, and my savings were slowly dwindling away. I had manage to get along by moving around and staying with family or close acquaintances, but it was time to go back. We drove down Collins Avenue back to the airport from Bal Harbour with our windows down. Tony’s car was an old Cadillac El Dorado with fading burgundy paint job and no air conditioning system. The cream colored leather seats once might have been nice, but they were not anymore. “Fortunate Son” was playing on the radio but my head was far away. Tony kept talking something about his girlfriend but I don’t really remember what he said. He lowered the volume and looked at me intently. He was a bit younger than me, though not too far from thirty. When we met in college he had a big jet black afro that was barely a memory now. He still kept in shape though, we’d often hang out in the gym; he jogged and I ran. He kept looking at me not saying a word, but I knew he wanted to ask about my father.

The fight with my father had been a huge drain on the family. Everyone had decided not to choose sides, and just hope for a quick end to it. But my mother knew it was not going to be that easy. My father and I shared few things, but the one thing we had in common was we were both extremely stubborn and what some called independent. Now that I think about it I would call myself actively isolationist. While I was pretty short, languid, and introverted, in contrast my father was a large man, he still had the weightlifters physique he had acquired as a thirty year old, and he was loud. He had been a construction worker to pay his way through college, and he always carried himself like a man who knew the world was against him. It was two months before I had to move out of the house, after having grown sick of the environment of living with a person who actively ignored me. That was the strongest weapon of my father psychological arsenal; his silence was an enveloping wall that drowned even the most resilient of men. With his loudness quieted, I found it much easier to leave the country for a while than to keep up the charade. What had our fight been about? Honestly it was nothing important if I think about it, I guess at the time we just hated that we could not understand each other.

Before I realized it we had crossed over onto Lejune and were dropping off the car at the rental office.  We walked out to the heat and towards the airport; Tony kept talking about a woman though I was still not interested in what he said. The airport was packed on that August afternoon. And surpassing neither of us, the humidity was even more unbearable inside. It always amazed my how a city could have such a reputation for a party town, while having one of the least welcoming airports in the world. A wet box seemed a more comfortable place to stick 1,000 people. The international terminal was full of sweaty and irritated people. Large groups of people can easily mix up in the eyes of some, especially when said group has many “different” looking people. Tony and I walked through the mass with our tickets and a couple of backpacks in hand. The Saeta ticket and check in line was at the end of a long and narrow hall, and had at least 60 people already waiting and complaining. We just looked at everything and I decided I did not want to talk for a while.

 Passing through security was not a big issue back then, and so we headed for our gate to settle in for a short wait. Tony’s aunt was already there holding a couple of seats for us and waving us enthusiastically over. She was a short woman, much shorter than I expected a person being related to Tony to be. She was wearing a hat, if it could be called that after all she had put on it. Tony pulled me aside for a second before we reached her to tell me not to mention anything about the hat. “She just had chemo, the doctors removed a tumor from just above her ear 6 months ago and she is still emotional about it”, he said looking straight into my eyes. I knew he mentioned it because I always made and still make fun of things like that hat, and maybe because he wanted me to be somewhat sympathetic to her. But that hat! It just defied anything I could say now. So I tried to drown her pleasantries by looking over the area and all the strangers that moved about it. A group of three men caught my eye. They were Ecuadorian and from Quito, I could easily tell from their accents. They were drinking heavily and making no effort to hide the bottle of Johnny Walker red; the drinking made them increasingly annoy me and I guess the others in the small waiting area. Sonia, Tony’s aunt, seemed to be the most annoyed by the men; she tried to distract herself by talking about she had been up to while recovering. Tony asked her point blank why was she angry, and all she replied was, “the bastard cheated on my daughter, everyone knows back home, he made her look like a fool”. The boarding announcement started as she finished; so Sonia stood up as Tony helped her with her bags, and I picked up my backpack to board the bus that would take us to the plane.

After we boarded the plane, I sat on my chair between Sonia and Tony. Since he was such a tall guy I had agreed to take the middle seat and leave the window to his aunt. I did this in spite of having no desire to continue talking to either during the flight, but it was always easy for me to tune out people and pretend to be in conversation with them. We had the fifth row on the left side of the plane, an old six seat one aisle Airbus. Ours was the first row of seats after business class, and as it was usual back then we knew almost everyone on the flight. My ex-girlfriend’s father was sitting in business class two rows ahead of us, and next to him was another one of Tony’s relatives. This one was a doctor and his uncle. And the drunks sat on the row opposite them, still loud and obnoxious. After the plane took off the stewardesses made a terrible mistake by continuing to give the drunks empty glasses with ice to keep on drinking their Johnny Red. Yeah, back then it was very easy to smuggle liquor bottles onto airplanes. About midway to our destination, the son in law stood up and walked over to our row. He started talking with Sonia, asking about his wife, and insisting it was all a mistake. I am always amazed when people get married; I find it so hard to understand. Why even get together if you are eventually going to cheat or divorce. But Sonia refused to talk to him, so he looked at me and angrily said, “Get the fuck out, I need to talk to her.” I said no and he started to curse at me. Tony just sat there not saying a word. When it looked like he could be ready to fight me right there, the stewardess intervened and asked him to sit down. He walked back to his seat and glanced back at me while he sat down. I kept noticing his angry glances as he spoke to his fellow drunks. I started to worry, because I knew Tony would be no help if a fight started. Contrary to what his size might convey, he was a wimp and had never been in a fight. I had had to save his ass once or twice back in college. The son in law was making awkward gestures and one of his friends, a bigger man and apparently even drunker if possible, started to stare at me. He would probably be the one to make the first move. The stewardesses had started and finished the diner run, and before they asked for my tray I picked up a fork. This was a small metal fork used for desserts. So I started to clean it with a white cloth napkin and when the stewardess asked the opposite row for their trays, I stuffed it between my legs and under my crotch. I just kept looking quietly in the drunks’ direction.

He stood from his chair slowly, without making eye contact with me and walked towards the back of the plane. As he passed Tony, he tried to jump over him to hit me. I forced my seat back and his fist struck Sonia’s right temple. As this happened, I had swiftly grabbed the fork from under my crotch and stabbed the side of his neck. Sonia and the drunk screamed almost at the same time. I pulled my hand back and the fork fell to the side of my seat. He tried to jump back but was stopped by this huge man. This man grabbed him like a duffle bag and threw him to the ground. I thought it was Tony at first, but he was simply sitting next to me looking pale and confused. Then I realized someone else was crying over Sonia, it was the little girl sitting behind me. The huge man was her father. The stewardesses were going crazy and the doctor quickly stood up to check on Sonia. Everyone looked at me for one second, and the man sitting in front of us asked me, “is the lady ok? Why is he bleeding?”  All I could answer was: “I must have scratched him with my watch when I went back”. The huge man called out the head stewardess screaming, “Get the captain out here now!” She nodded and walked to the front of the plane, I followed her trying to get myself out of the mess.

She banged the captain’s door to no answer; he was hiding and wouldn’t come out. The other two drunks had been calmed down by the whole situation and were being looked over by two men, maybe a little older than me. I looked at the head stewardess and she seemed to get her shit together, because she soon started ordering people down and asking for the three men intervening for help in keeping the sobering drunks in check until we landed.  The next hour or so of the flight was all gossip, as people still wondered what exactly had happened and why was the drunk bleeding so bad from a simple scratch. The doctor asked me to move so he could sit next to Sonia and I walked to the back of the plane to find a seat. It was better if I was alone for a while and Tony understood because he did not follow me. I found an empty row, sat down and waited to land.

The plane landed but nobody inside knew what to expect. No one was allowed to disembark as the police made their way to the gate and boarded the plane. The captain issued a brief announcement thanking us for our cooperation and saying sorry for the inconvenience. The police quickly made their way to the drunks and arrested them. There was a sudden rejoicing and some stray “serves them right” could be heard all over the plane. The drunks looked at me with anger, but the police did not even glance my way. After we were allowed to leave, Tony’s uncle walked up to me and handed me a fork. He did not say anything, but his worried look was enough. As soon as we got into the terminal I walked quickly to the bathroom to dump the fork just as fast before passing through migration authorities. While the police officer checked my passport, I could see the detainment area; inside all three men seemed to be arguing at once with the policemen. I could easily see the red dot on the white bandages around one man’s neck. The officer just said welcome and let me go on my way.

Gina picked me up in her red Fiat. She had parked near the garage exit, so we had to walk a few blocks. It gave us a chance to talk, so I told her the story. She seemed sort of amused, her dark brown eyes twinkling. She combed her brown hair back and all she said was: “bro, you’re always getting into some fucked up shit”.