Coqui Prose

Writers are flakes! There, I’ve said it! And I said it out loud, no less! In fact, the more talented the writer, the more potential there is for flakeitis to creep in.

Hanne and I have this discussion frequently. She works with a lot of writers, um me among them, and she’s gone through many, as have I.

I am a writer, yes, please don’t remind me. And, as it happens, so is Hanne. Why else does it bother us so much? The more you hire writers, the more you open yourself up to BS.

So, I hire writers regularly. I have a team of them working for me. This is the most functional my team has ever been. I am extremely happy with my team and it’s probably because I am so happy that I can take the time to reflect on the flakes. When you’re in the quagmire of BS spewing from the flake’s mouth, it’s difficult to reflect because you’re too busy deflecting.

So I was talking with Paul at dinner tonight and he asked me which stories writers have dreamed up have been the most memorable. Boy, do I now wish I had written them all down.

Here are some highlights. Enjoy!

18 months ago while I was co-authoring a book on witchcraft, I was working with a woman named Cassy. She’s number one because it was the first elaborate lie I had heard coming from a writer.

She had apparently been bitten by a brown recluse spider. What made her story so unbelievable were two things:

- She couldn’t recall getting bitten
- Unable to live without her iPhone, which of course has email, when the spider bit her, which she doesn’t remember, she dropped her phone and couldn’t find it for three days.

She no longer works for me.

Vanessa tortured me for nearly a year. One obvious question is why did I allow this? I had nobody to write Disney and although she is the biggest flake of all time, she had something that my Disney client loved!

Among her gems:

- the humidity affected my Internet for three days.
- my grandmother died, not once, not even twice, but three times! There’s a thing about threes with flaky writers!
- I broke my back over the weekend. Huh, so why is your Facebook profile photo showing off three inch heels that you wore to go to the Harry Potter premiere?
- and my favorite… My computer caught a virus, which jumped to my boyfriend’s computer, our roommate’s computer and every mobile device. That’s why I couldn’t even email you.

She forgot that I am married to an ex-IT dude. Even if I fell off the turnip truck yesterday, I would have surely verified this hunk of BS with Paul. And when I did, he laughed one of the haughtiest laughs I have ever heard come from him!

I own the stupid button on that one.

Casey didn’t work for me for very long because my ability to smell BS a mile away had gotten pretty fine tuned, but after Vanessa, my tolerance was next to nothing.

When she was three days late with articles, she said her 6-year old son hit some key and all the articles she had saved were deleted. What color is my turnip truck?

And the best one from her? My brother in law has leukemia. I know my articles are due today but he had an episode and I learned about this while I was out grocery shopping. I left all the groceries on the counter and immediately got on the highway to be by his side.

Hadn’t you just finished telling me that he lives 175 miles away and you have a 6-year old at home?

“but I have all the articles on my laptop, and I can ask my husband to send them to you.”

Wait, why isn’t your husband with his brother?

I must have paused too long because when I asked for the articles she claimed to have sold them to someone else.

What, you mean in the seven hours it took for me to respond because I was sleeping, you sold them to someone else?

Well, for every BS story I have gotten, it makes me all the more grateful for the incredible team I have right now. No BS stories; deadlines are met, dispositions are cheery and writing is exactly what I asked for.

Thank you,
Nathan
Mary Ellen
Christi
Elizabeth
Heather
Nicole
Chelsea
Marisa

You make me life so stress free!

Posted in FP, Not so Ghost Writing of Mine, Puerto Rico Stories | 2 Comments

Cabrón is a very, very bad word in Spanish and one I don’t recommend using, ever. There really isn’t a literal translation in English. My ultralingua dictionary gives these meanings for cabrón:

- bastard
- complaisant husband
- nasty person
- cuckold
- billy goat
- male goat

I can see all of them applying. The word for goat in Spanish is cabra, and so that makes sense. Bastard, yep, I can see that, too. The other three, well, honestly I’d never heard of cuckold until just now. I understand that when a husband cheats, his wife is allowed and encouraged to call him a cabrón.

Nasty person, ah yes! I like this one. That aptly describes who this blog is about.

In the 3.5 years since we have lived in Utuado, we have made many friends. I have made one enemy. He’s the only person here who I actively dislike. I am nauseated by his presence. He is a nasty man!

One day I was driving into town. Between our farm and town we pass three bars. As I passed one, I heard loud cheers coming from inside. It was only 11:00 in the morning and so how drunk could people be at this hour? My first assumption was that the guys were playing dominoes (they get really passionate about their dominoes on most of the islands) or they were watching some sport on TV.

As I got closer I heard Edwin, aka Crazy Indian, yell out, “Adiós Cabrón! Don’t let the door hit you in the ass!”

Well, shoot! I had to slow down and see what was happening.

Crazy Indian is the nickname of a guy who has lived equal amounts of time in the US and PR. Although he speaks English with an accent, it’s not exactly safe to assume Spanish is his first language. I can’t decide which one he speaks better. He appears to butcher both.

I am now in front of the bar. “Yo, Sarita! The Cabrón is going back to Congnetticutt where he beelongs! Come and have una cerveza cong mío to celebratt!”

I am a super friendly person. Paul is as well. We know a lot, no make that A LOT of people in our town. We, on occasion, go to one of the bars in the area, and we are well liked.

I am not like most women here. For all the efforts I go to assimilate with everyone, I draw the line when it comes to going into a bar without Paul. In that regard, I think it would be a very quick way to alienate the women whom we call friends.

“Sorry! I gotta go shopping. I’ll come back with Paul, later. What happened?”

Edwin comes to my car and leans into the passenger side window.

“The *+•~€£ Cabrón is finally going back to Congnetticutt! Ees about f•+*kin’ timee!”

“Oh! This is good news for all of us!” I reply.

The Cabrón in question is a man named Mario. A regular on the bar scene, he is frequently seen waiting for them to open. He has made a number of enemies; Paul and I are among them.

Mario is Portuguese, born and raised. His wife, Maria, is Puerto Rican. They met in the US, where he was an engineer and she was a school teacher.

Her dream was to move to her home town after they retired.

They tried it for a while. They bought a small farm and within a year he was doing what some men get sucked into in any country: drinking and women. She became depressed. She is of the generation that says she must stay with her husband. Older and catholic, she’s stuck with him.

The first person to call him a Cabrón was Maria. They are very opposite.

He clearly has a drinking problem. She abstains as she attends church regularly. She works her butt off in the farm. He divides his exercise between two types of sport: raising his shot glass to his mouth and bedding who he can. He disgusts me so I have a difficult time imagining any woman finding him attractive.

He loathes Puerto Rico, Puerto Ricans and in particular Utuadadaños. The drunker he gets, the more his disdain for us comes out.

So when he announced he was successful in selling his farm, and they were moving back to the US, the other patrons applauded and cheered, so loudly, I could hear it from halfway up the block.

I have only talked with him once, and for all of five minutes. That was all it took for me to dislike him and add his name to the list of people I do not like in this town. At the moment his is the only name on there.

My one encounter with the Cabrón occurred when we were looking to buy a farm. Leo heard he was selling his. Leo was gracious enough to make an appointment for us to see it.

We arrived at the appointed day and time. His wife was there, Mario was not. Paul and I were brand new in town and hadn’t known a tenth of the crap we know about people today, 3.5 years later.

We waited and waited and waited. He never showed.

Maria showed us the farm on her own. We talked for a while. I loved the house! I loved (and still recall) the kitchen.

I credit them with giving us the idea to break tradition and make our counters and cabinets not from wood but from concrete and cement with reinforced steel. What is the obsession with wood cabinets where mold and termites do such costly damage? Atop the concrete can be any number of beautiful tiles. Their counters and cabinets reminded me of Italy and France.

Paul loved the farm. Maria kept it in immaculate shape.

Two hours later we were getting ready to leave. Mario shows up; the stench of stale alcohol and cigarettes is nauseating.

After very brief hellos, he decides to get right down to business. He quotes us a price. $350,000! Oh pulease! Did you think we fell off the turnip truck yesterday?

I look at Paul who went to the Henry Kissinger school of diplomacy, who says, “thank you for your time. We have your phone number.”

That’s it? I think to myself. I can’t let this guy waltz in here two hours later, stinking to high heaven, and begin negotiating. “If you considered coming down about $250,000 we would consider it.”

By that stage in our quest to find a farm, we had had a pretty good idea what farms with a house are worth. We had no intention of paying el precio americano.

Well, apparently I am supposed to only speak after my husband gives me permission. He says, “oh, I can see you’re one of those women.” I was about to open my mouth and you know all types of stuff was going to fly from it, and Alba, Leo’s wife, says, “Vamos,” which means let’s go.

As we leave, I hear Mario’s wife call him a cabrón.

I am guessing they didn’t kiss and make up.

“Who bought their farm?” I ask him.

“Song gringos. They want to build a animal sanktwary for stray dogs y gatos.” He pauses, “I’m so glad to see that mother f*+€•ker leave our beautiful congtry.”

As I spy Mario leaving the bar, I was going to do what my mother raised me to do, which would be to wish him the best. Instead, as can happen on occasion, my decision to be diplomatic was overridden; my father, who was brash, uncouth, and frequently found himself apologizing, came out instead.

“Hey Mario?”

He started to walk to my car.

“Adiós Cabrón!”

Posted in FP, Not so Ghost Writing of Mine, Puerto Rico Stories | 4 Comments

I spend many hours a day chained to my desk researching and then writing articles. After several hours of staring at the computer, with a pair of glasses to protect my eyes, wrist braces to prevent repetitive stress injuries, and repeated breaks to stretch my tired hands, back and hips (um and butt), I walk outside. I look for Paul who is somewhere on the farm. Sometimes I sit at the “dinner” table on the patio and allow my mind to drift. I think about how lovely it is to feel the sun on my face, the breeze on my back, and imagine the dirt between my fingers. I fantasize about what it must be like to be a farmer.

By contrast, Paul, who is the actual farmer in the family, spends his days out on the farm. He goes sun up to sun down doing what farmers do. He varies his routine each day. Some days it’s planting fruit trees that he started as seeds in containers and that are finally strong enough to fend for themselves. Other days he is pulling weeds and vines. And no, we don’t use some chemical to do this. He does this entirely by hand. Sometimes he’s trimming the grass, which grows at an alarming rate thanks to days that split themselves between endless sun and rain without ceasing. Some days he’s tending to the compost pile and picking up manure left by wayward cows. He loves those days because he gets to add them to the plants and he knows they love it! I can only imagine that during those times he fantasizes about having his own goats or a few horses. We are working on getting goats, so he’ll have that dream come true.

It’s hard work and by the time he comes home for the evening, he is tired. He frequently takes a nap at lunchtime and another one as I prepare dinner. There’s no glamour in his job but there is pride in seeing the fruits of his labor and boy is it laborious.

On the weekends I do get to indulge my fantasy and join him. I find the clothes that I wore the week before, although dirty from sitting, not sweaty or a hint of smell that suggests I have been working for a living. He gives me a task. Dig several holes and transplant the plant that he started as seeds into the ground. He always over estimates how many he thinks I can accomplish in one day. If he were doing it, he would work five times as fast. Little more than a weekend warrior, with music accompany to me, I spend equal amounts of time day dreaming and playing in the dirt. I sift it through my fingers and pretend I am a farmer and not a writer. Once something is in the ground, I don’t move swiftly, as he does. I make sure the mound is perfect and that whatever I have planted is perfectly straight. I don’t pour liberal amounts of water on the plant. Instead, I pour, and pat the earth. I pour, and pat the earth. I repeat this until the mound is sufficiently saturated and I am comfortable this little guy stands a chance. I stare at it and am so proud of myself. I actually feel myself beaming with pride!

After some time Paul will walk over to where he left me and break my concentration long enough to say, “Oh Sarah, nice job! You managed to get one plant into the ground.” Before me lay at least 15 more small somethings – spinach, lettuce, some kind of bean or some tropical fruit that he started from seeds – with only one thing in the ground. I check and two hours have passed. In that time Paul has managed to chop down 50 coffee trees that if left to themselves come autumn would be too tall to harvest more than five beans apiece. He’s sweating; he’s thirsty and my bet is that he’s unsure if he needs a shower or a nap more.

“Did you have fun sifting the dirt through your fingers?” He asks me.

“Oh, I did! It sure beats sitting on my ass and writing.” I reply.

“Think you can manage five more plants after lunch and before dinner?”

“Oh, I will do my very best, I promise!” I do really have wonderful intentions!

We go inside and I prepare lunch whilst he lay himself in the hammock and nap for 15 minutes. We eat and as we’re eating I tell him about the glorious day that I have had. I describe the songs the many beautiful birds sang, the warmth of the sun, how many times Héctor, Gigi and Yum Yum came to visit me and how dirty my nails got as I dug my one perfect hole. I also tell him about a beautiful falcon, with an incredible wingspan, who averted my attention momentarily as he, mid flight, must have seen some animal he could eat. I spared no detail as I shared about how quickly I jumped to my feet to watch as he swooped down, surely approaching Mach 10, and caught whatever he spied and then went on his merry way.

“Man, we have a beautiful farm!” I tell Paul.

“Yes, we do!” Paul replies.

“We have such a wonderful life, don’t we?” I ask him.

“Yes, we do!” Paul replies.

“I want to be a farmer like you, full time. Maybe I could write only on the weekends.” I declare.

“Probably not a good idea. We’d starve at the rate you do things.” Paul replies. “I am glad you had a fun day out there.”

Posted in FP, Not so Ghost Writing of Mine, Puerto Rico Stories | 4 Comments

I am a little bit in shock and am pretty upset. So this won’t be my best writing by any means.

A little background. I have a friend whom we will call Sadie. She has been married for I think 18 years. She and Ed had problems conceiving for many years. They tried everything! IVF, and just as they were getting ready to set the wheels in motion to adopt, she found out she was pregnant.

I remember when she broke the news to me. I didn’t feel joy coming from her. She is a pretty introverted person and this clearly meant she was going to give up a lot of her independence.

There’s so much about her that I could say but the more I share about who she is, the more obvious who it will be that I am talking about. So I’ll stop there.

The more pregnant she became, the more of an asshole Ed became. At least these are her descriptions of him. My friendship is with her, and not him. I don’t know his version of events.

Their baby was born 18 months ago and big shock! Zelda wasn’t and still isn’t the glue that was/is supposed to hold them together. Only Sadie and Ed can do this.

About three months ago Sadie starts talking about some guy. It’s not clear to me how they met. I am still not clear. But he is friends with both Ed and Sadie.

Sadie and Dude start spending time together doing stuff that doesn’t include Ed. I tell her this is dangerous. She poo poos it.

The point at which it was obvious she was emotionally involved with the guy (he doesn’t deserve a name) is when she tells me she had an argument with him over text. He didn’t respond to one of her texts immediately and she was pissed! I asked her if she gets pissed when girlfriends don’t respond to texts immediately? She said no.

I told her flat out what her options were.

- Cut this dude off!
- Get couples counseling
- Or leave Ed

Having an affair is not the answer! For all of my supposedly extroverted and liberal ways, I am extremely conservative when it comes to marriage. I don’t believe in affairs, period.

Although I have a wonderful marriage and cannot imagine life without Paul, I am not naïve. I am not deaf, dumb and blind. We are human and find others besides our spouses attractive. But for a hundred and one reasons we don’t act on it. With the baby, that’s a hundred and two!

So two weeks ago she announces that Ed has to go out of town for a week. Sadie is not happy about staying home with Zelda alone for a whole week. Sadie works full time, Zelda is in preschool, and so we are only talking mornings and at night.

Ed, in his brilliance or blindness, asks three people to come stay in his home whilst he is gone to help Sadie out.

Melissa is straight and married, she is Tuesday night. Roberto is gay and living with a man. He was Wednesday night and dude is Monday and Thursday night.

Is Ed stupid, blind or brilliant?

I don’t hear from Sadie for seven full days. I hear from her today.

She says she barely survived the week and she and dude spent the entire week together. No mention of the other two.

“Girl, I don’t know what to do. I am having an emotional affair.” she tells me.

This is what I said to her in email.

So, Sadie! I’m just so unsure what to say! It’s not about me but I am like wow! You know what you have to do and this is not the way to go about things. Dude is just a symptom of a larger problem, which is that your marriage no longer works. When I first suggested that this was imminent, you said that divorce wasn’t an option because you didn’t want Zelda to grow up like that. I respect that, but not if the alternative is running around behind Ed’s back to see your man. you know that. Dude should know that. Do you two talk about this?

Forget Dude for a moment. He doesn’t count. Deal with your marriage. Go to couples counseling or call it quits. This can’t be the way to deal with this. You know that. I know you know this. When Ed and you got married you agreed to work things out and communicate. Ask yourself how devastated you’d feel if he were having an affair. How do you know he’s not having one?

Girl, I’m your friend, you know that but I have huge issues with cheating. I don’t want anything happening to our friendship because I think you need a friend. But I am going to say this as plainly as I can. Deal with your shit! This is not an alternative to avoiding divorce for the sake of Zelda. I know shit has been steadily going down hill between Ed and you since you found out you were pregnant but this is not the the way to handle it and I know you know this!

Deal with your shit! Don’t make me come over there and knock some sense into you.

Posted in FP, Not so Ghost Writing of Mine, Puerto Rico Stories | 4 Comments

Not long after Paul and I arrived in Utuado to live, we started looking for a farm to buy. We visited several, made an offer on one that fell through (not all six inheritors agreed to sell) and eventually made an offer on the farm that we now live on.

We bought it from a man named Víctor and his wife Lisandra. We learned from many people that prior to our owning the farm that it was one of the most productive coffee farms in the area. Not interested in owning 5000 coffee trees, after this year’s harvest, Paul started cutting down most of the trees to make room for what we want to plant.

Yes, that’s a lot of cutting.

So, we discovered something after we took possession of the farm, after the construction was completed on the house and we moved in, which was two years ago. Like all farms, ours has many stories to tell.

Utuado, like most of Puerto Rico, has no street names. We all live in barrios, which are neighborhoods, which are broken down further by sectors, sort of like sections. Giving directions is always fun. “drive up road number such and so, till you see the intersection. Bear left. Pass the TV antenna, pass the abandoned house on the right and keep bearing left. Go 6/10 of a mile, make the first left turn. A mile passed the mailboxes is Olga and her brother Mickey’s house. Drive past their house until the road narrows to one lane and is undulating. Take this one more mile, see another abandoned house (the one we tried to buy) and the very next house, which is another half mile or so, is ours.

Whether we had friends coming to visit or the chauffeur was delivering gas for our stove, it has always been a challenge. Everyone knows Olga. Nobody usually drives passed her house because it’s really rural and the road ceases to be cared for. Only residents come down this way.

So one day I am in the store to buy a tank of gas for our stove and I am trying to give these directions in Spanish no less. The owner, who’s of course not the chauffeur, is terribly confused. Apparently he does not provide Olga with her gas or he’d know Olga. I’m screwed.

There is a man who walks in as I am trying to describe how to get to our farm and he is listening to all this and mind you people are very patient with me. Hey, I try! I really, really do. I am not like the other Americans in my town, none of whom speak Spanish, despite being here many more years than I have.

“Oh! You own Pepin Maldanado’s farm. Your farm is just passed Lino’s.”

Lino is our 88-year old bad ass neighbor who walks everywhere and can frequently be seen carrying a resimo (stalk) of bananas. One resimo weighs between 50 and 75 pounds.

He got the direction right but we bought our farm from Víctor.

“nobody knows Victor. I do because I worked on that farm. But he bought it from Laura, who was Pepin’s woman.”

I trust this man and tell the owner that this is the right house.

Gas is delivered that afternoon.

I ask Olga who Pepin was. She, too, admits that she never met Victor.

She tells me that back in the day (between the late 40s and mid 70s, the three main farming families were the Zedas, Ocasio (Lino’s family) and the Maldanados). She tells me some wild stories about the cowboy known as Pepin.

She is a Zeda. Pepin not only owned our farm, but he was the foreman for her family’s farm. He was a nut! He had numerous enemies and yet nobody was apparently man enough to confront him. The only times his gun wasn’t aimed at someone was when it was holstered. The former was a regular occurrence; the latter was almost never.

I think for the next few blogs I will talk about this gunslinger, womanizer with 23 kids, and legend.

In the meantime, now Paul and I are forever branded, “Oh you’re the Americans who bought Pepin’s farm!” we hear this several times a month. giving directions is quite easy, now. “we bought Pepin’s farm,” is all I have to say now. It somehow gives us juice.

Stuff legends are made from.

Stay tuned!

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Yesterday, Paul and I went to Sam’s Club to do our once monthly bulk shopping. First of all, before you jump on me for patronizing Sam’s, aka Walmart, remember that our options here aren’t the same as yours in the US. The closest Costco is in Bayamón, which is almost two hours each way.

So try as I do to distinguish myself from Americans and for all the preaching I do about assimilation, it is painfully obvious when I am out and about that I am not Puerto Rican.

The first obvious signs that I am not Puerto Rican:

- my hair is not long and flowing
- at the moment it does have highlights
- I do not relax my curl, either through chemical process or by use of a blow dryer and flat iron
- my nails are my own and they are pretty short and unattractive. They are clean, for the most part.
- my natural nails aren’t long and painted (or airbrushed) elaborate colors and designs
- instead of 3-4″ heels, I wear Birkenstock sandals. Don’t gasp! They’re not as hideous as they used to be, despite being the most comfortable shoes for frucked up feet.
- I have them in every color, so at least I am not wearing shoes that poorly match my shirt and shorts.
- speaking of shirts and shorts: my outside attire varies between a vintage Bruce Springsteen concert T and one of many cotton Ts, of various solid colors.
- my shorts are either army green, navy blue or black dockers. They fit and thanks to Paul, are washed regularly.
- on “cold” days, meaning when the temperature drops below 78F, I will wear army green, navy blue or black capris. On really cold days when the temp drops below 60F and it is combined with rain, I’ll wear the same pair of Levi’s I bought in California over 8 years ago. No crease down the center, just button fly 501s.
- with my cold attire jeans, I’ll either wear Merrell closed toe and heel shoes or their combo sandal and sneaker. For me, they are the next most comfortable shoe on earth next to Birkenstock.
- all this without a hint of makeup.

It would never occur to me, even when I worked outside the home and couldn’t wear my PJs or sweats to work (okay I did once, but that’s a long story), I never looked nearly as sexy at work, or for that matter at a party, as these women do shopping at Sam’s or Home Depot.

Decked to the 9s, full on makeup, spike heels, perfectly manicured nails, and tight jeans, my jaw wants to drop when I get out of the house all of twelve times a year. Clearly time was put into their appearance; it’s very important to them. And this isn’t limited to a particular age group. Women of all ages take extreme pride in their appearance.

Often on the arm of a man, equally gorgeous and slamming, I do wonder if shopping at Sam’s is their foreplay.

I am not judging nor am I comparing. We are on different planes. Mine just never really took off.

A feminist, I have long believed that the sexier a woman is, the less seriously she is taken as someone with a brain. Remember, machismo and catholicism rule the day here.

Again, I am not judging the women; hell they’re simply gorgeous to look at. There are times I wish I didn’t know about how most of this stuff plays squarely into the subtle and not so subtle subjugation of women. This is not to presume that all women in 3-4″ heels, with acrylic nails, a long main of thick hair, wearing tight as shit jeans and her breasts trying to peek out to say hello, are subjugated or treated poorly.

Women work full time jobs but still are tied to the home and their children. Women still aren’t as free to decided that they don’t want children. It’s still expected.

Anyway, despite the looks I get from women here, and it’s not disdainful or hateful or competitive, once I open my mouth, show them that I am doing my best to assimilate, I am immediately accepted.

It’s just so painfully obvious that there is but one barrier here that I will never be able to cross. You can’t unlearn what you know.

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This is a blog I wrote last Saturday but for some odd reason it didn’t post anywhere.

Last Saturday
We decided in the middle of the day that a visit to our favorite bar, El Balcón del Recuerdo, which means the balcony of dreams, was long overdue. So, after our hike with the dogs, we left.

It’s not unusual to get to bars at 6:00. In the case of the Balcón, as we affectionately call it, given that it’s run by a husband and wife who are in their 60s, they like getting home before dawn. So we go at 6:00, we are home by 9:30 or 10:00 and we’ve managed to socialize with many of our friends.

We should have called ahead. There were ten times the number of cars than usual and we discovered why. They were hosting a promesa. Read the rest of this entry »

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