The humid and hot tropical air assaulted me as I stepped out of the air-conditioned airport in high noon of August. The heat caused me to perspire and the humidity made the perspiration a pesky and persistent nuisance. I had no choice but to force myself to smile and to be patient as I was waiting for a shuttle bus to take me to a cruise terminal. Humidity and heat should not have bothered me because I was born and grew up in a poor, war-torn country not far from the equator. But they did. I was amazed at my own body's quick acclimation to dry heat and cool temperatures after spending only a few years in a desert oasis in American Southwest. Finally---that meant after a "mere" wait of twenty minutes in the heat and high humidity, with the shirt clinging to my torso---a bus arrived.
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I met her in one of those "classic", "serendipitous" moments that "only" happened in the movies. I was eating a sandwich in the 24-hour establishment called Lee's Sandwiches (where the food quality is okay but rather high-priced due to the clean, well-lighted, well-conditioned ambience where one stays as long as one likes using its wifi services provided that one orders something from the restaurant) in Vegas when a middle-aged woman tourist approached me and made some inquiries about how best to spend the time in the Sin City. She was not an ugly woman. Her figure was fine at her age. Her face and voice indicated that she was not a mean, calculating woman. I suppose she was attracted to me because she kept talking to me and then later asked me for my phone number. The next day she asked me out for dinner at one of the inexpensive but very good restaurants off the Strip that I recommended. She told me about her life and made it quite clear that she liked me a lot on account of my looks, education, wit, and pleasant, good-natured character. She lived in Miami. She was a war bride. Her husband was fifteen years her senior, of old money, and ailing. She was looking for a boyfriend and she decided that I was the man! She never once asked about my financial conditions. I didn't volunteer to divulge mine. However, I made it clear to her that I was not well-off and that I liked a quiet, non-party life among books and barbells, and not of constant world traveling and fine dining to which she was accustomed. Apparently my kind of lifestyle didn't faze her. She told me so after we spent the night together. She was a tigress in bed due to pent-up demand unmet from an old, ailing white gentleman husband. I asked her if she felt bad cheating on her husband. She gravely shook her head. She did love him, but it was about time she lived her own life, she said. She didn't want to die unfulfilled, lonely, and unloved. She picked me because I was good-looking, fit, yet looking sad, lonely, lost, but prideful, even arrogant. I deserved her, she said. I was lucky, she kept telling me.
We had talked and emailed to each other for about three months after the Vegas encounter when she called me one evening and interrupted my poker game. She broke the news that she had just buried her husband a week before and she was looking for a break, so how about my flying to Fit. Lauderdale and meeting her at the ship. She would be waiting for me at the bus drop-off and we would check in together. She would pay for the entire trip, including airfare. We would have a whole week dining, dancing, drinking, seeing shows, frolicking among the waves of the sea on the beach, and talking. "Please don't say no. That would be an unwise thing to do", she emphasized.
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"Roberto, you're too soft and sentimental for your own good. You must learn to take care of yourself first. Humans are mostly evil and selfish. They would take advantage of nice but weak-willed folks like you. Honey, please commit to memory what I am going to say. You don't really know people until you watch them how they spend money, especially on you. Forget about the saying, "you can't buy love". Yes, you can. If people are generous with you, that doesn't necessarily mean they love you, but if they are not willing to spend money on you, they certainly don't love you. Money is a very reliable measure of humans, trust me. Thanks to my husband, I have known a lot about money and how it exposes people's true feelings and nature. I know you are not a gold digger. Five minutes after talking to you at Lee's Sandwiches, I knew that right away. But that didn't mean you were not flattered and touched by my feelings for you, right? I think I like you a lot, but I'm not sure about you. You have too much excess baggage and you're indecisive and you're too much affected by the past.
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"Well, Rosita, I've been on this planet for 65 years. With luck, I may have another ten. Tops. I'd like to be happy and serene in the waning years of my life. I want no drama, no heartaches, no tears. I don't have as much money as you do, but I have enough to live comfortably until I die. I could have 5-6 million of dollars in the bank if I didn't take too many chances. But I don't really regret of my past follies. Because of my follies, I learned who really cared for me. Words are cheap. Money talks. You know who your friends are when you ask for help.
I am an ordinary man except for two things: I read, eat, sleep, drink, and think of philosophy; and I pay attention to certain languages. You already know that sex is not a big deal for me, but knowledge is. I have a very big ego. I fancy that I know about certain realities much more deeply than most people. I guess what I want to say is that I am a thinker. And I certainly don't view myself as a "stupid loser" as a stupid little kike characterized me. You see, ever since I was on the receiving end of that ridiculous, facts-challenged insult, I've been much more sensitive to word usage.
Of course, I was pleased and flattered by your attention, but please do realize that you're not the only one woman who was struck by my magnetic personality. I'm not a womanizer. I'm just a dreamer. I dream that there must be a woman out there who understands and appreciates and cares about me. She does not have to be rich, but she had better be nice and pleasant. I cannot stand bitches. Not anymore. I don't have delusions about you or about myself. Time will tell whether or not your feelings for me are a flash in the pan. Meanwhile I want you to know that I do love and care about my wife. Love is very mysterious. Everybody talks about love, but only a very few know what love really is. I'm glad you have not told me you love me. Honesty is very important in a relationship. The other indispensable element is respect. We don't talk thrash when we love a person because we respect that person and care for that person's feelings. Words spoken in anger tell the world who we really are. I'm not perfect. So I'm not demanding that people be perfect with me. You see, nothing of value is free in this world. You've got to work for them. Love is hard to get because to receive love you must have a lot of love inside. You must learn to give first if you want to receive. That's the way things are and operate. Maybe I'm disclosing too much of myself, baring too much of my soul. I really don't wish to be as naked and confiding as a recent columnist for a national newspaper. He talked openly and beautifully about his bisexuality. But I wondered as I was reading his self-disclosure that whether the volunteering of one's interior sexuality to the whole world necessary. I understood the cathartic value of the confession, but the grace and the dignity of the confession and the confessor were missing. Something is better left unsaid. I am well aware that perhaps I should practice what I preach because I am a confessional "writer", and unnecessarily so. However, not everything I have written is autobiographical. There are indeed elements of "surrealism" and imagination in my writings. That makes reading them a bit more "interesting" and "challenging". There should be a "lingering" question in the reader's mind that whether Roberto was telling the "truths" or he was letting his imagination get "the better" of him. I don't usually lie in real life, but I love to embellish and sometimes downright bullshit when I whip out my iPad and let my fingers do the talking. But Rosita, mi pequeña flor linda, I'm digressing. I'm talking too much, as usual. That's why hardly anybody takes me seriously. But I don't really give a fuck. Right now, for me, what counts is if you understand what I'm trying to say. The world I'm navigating is full of surprises and disappointments maybe because I'm stupid and naive. Just when I thought I finally wised up, I learned that my judgement and understanding was flawed. But I'm telling you one thing. Since I've met you, I sleep better, I exercise more regularly, I dress better, and I'm feeling less lonely. For that I thank you. You've been good to me, much better than I expected, much better than my kinsfolks. For that I appreciate. What I really want to see is that we are friends for life. Friendship lasts longer than love between a man and a woman. I do have a lot of female friends, some are more dearer than others."
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-"Roberto, my dear, I certainly don't read much. I do not give myself a headache by thinking about philosophy as you do, but I am good at reading people. I had to. Before I was a war bride, I was a bar girl. Things got really bad after my father died from the war. He was an officer. A lieutenant. I was the oldest in the family. I had four younger brothers. I dropped out of high school to help my mother raise my brothers. A bar girl in Saigon in those days was just a step above a common prostitute. I was lucky. Because of my looks and youth and some education and an ability to speak English, I was popular with American GIs. I met my husband there. He was a much older man. An officer like my Dad. He was an important man. A colonel in military intelligence. He went through hoops to marry me. He must have approval from his bosses. They wanted to be sure I was no VC. I brought my Mom and brothers with me over here just before Saigon fell to the VC. My mother died ten years ago. All my brothers are okay. They went to college, got married, and have children. I have no children. My husband didn't want any. One of these days I would like you to meet my brothers. I didn't go to college. I wish I did. I was busy to make my husband happy. Maybe one of these days, I will go, like one of those people graduating when they were in their 80's."
-What would you like to study?
-Psychology.
-Good choice. But you don't have to go to college nowadays to acquire knowledge. All you really need is a desire to know, to get to the bottom of things. Information is now freely available on the Internet and at the library. A college degree is just an expensive way to get into a disciplined habit of thinking. Even so, most college graduates are not educated in the proper meaning of the word. I have talked to many of them. They are not well-read. They can't reason logically. They have no respect for facts and logic. They can't express themselves coherently in writing. What comes out of their pens are replete with platitudes and grammatical errors and misspellings. More importantly, deep down they have no respect for themselves. They lie effortlessly to themselves. They believe in the bullshits and lies fed to them by their religious and political leaders. They are pathetically stupid and ignorant and yet vain. They attribute and accuse others of traits they hate about themselves. They engage in self-projections. I despise them and I sometimes openly show them my contempt. They unwittingly make me feel good about myself. If I had the power and the means, these stupid scumbags would have a memorable experience. Anyway, they remind me that life is not all roses.
-But Roberto, don't carry too much hate in your heart. You will not live long.
-I know.
- I know you have suffered a lot. I could see that in your eyes when I first met you. You glanced at me when I fist walked into the restaurant. You gave me a quick-over but came back to your book. Then to make sure I caught your attention, I walked past you one more time with a smile on my face. When I saw you smile back, I knew then I got your attention. As we talked I knew my impressions about you were correct. I didn't expect we hit it off so well. Believe it or not, you would think I routinely picked up strangers from my previous life in Saigon, but the truth was that you were the second man after my husband. The first man was an American, a long-time friend of my husband, and a widower. He took a romantic interest in me after my husband came down with cancer two years ago. He said he would like to take care of me as my husband did. He was a retired colonel, like my husband, but five years younger. I told my husband about Darrell's interest in me. Peter, that was my husband's name, strangely didn't get upset. Instead, he encouraged me to go out with Darrell. I did for about six months and then I called it quits. I didn't feel right about the whole thing. It smelled too much of commercialism and calculation. My husband was good to me. It was the first time I knew a man after I married my husband. I knew that my husband loved me very much. He wanted me not to worry and to be lonely after he was gone. I loved my husband. He was very smart and very good to me. He was more like a father than a husband to me. I told him about my family circumstances and of my first love, a fellow tenth grade classmate. I broke his heart after I became a bar girl. My heart was broken, too. But compared to others, my family didn't pay too much of a price to survive the war. Others suffered much, much more. What about your family, how did they do?
-We were very lucky. We lived in dire straits after my father died of liver and lung cancer. But none of my six sisters had to become prostitutes or mistresses of wealthy men in order to survive. My mother was a remarkable woman. She became a businesswoman after my father died. It was she who supported the whole family. All of her daughters relied on her for livelihood. We struggled and we suffered, but we managed to keep our dignity and honor intact. As for myself, my sufferings were largely self-induced and brought on by my stupidity and naïveté. I didn't really know what inner peace was really like until you came along. But I'm running my mouth too long already. I'm probably exhausting your patience.
-No, darling. Go on talking. Don't you know that your words are music to my ears? The more you talk, the more peaceful I feel. I haven't met such an interesting, compellingly talkative and honest man like you before. All you want to do is talk. You have such a strong need to be understood.
-But not necessarily accepted. You're right. I need to be understood but I don't give a fuck if nobody agrees with what I have to say. Assholes and scumbags and bitches have voiced a false complaint that the reasons I have used to buttress my points of view and arguments are half-assed, but they are the ones who cannot read or write or reason for they maintain that there is a "God" who "takes good care of them". To that staggeringly stupid view of theirs, I have rhetorically rebutted that if their God is indeed so omniscient and omnipresent and omnipotent, why the dude has not "punished" me? More importantly, I have sarcastically asked them what the fuck so special about them that their "God" feels compelled to protect them, and not the victims of all the genocides all over the world. Of course, they have been tongue-tied to my simple question involving logic. You see, assholes and bitches like those have made me feel good about myself. They have twisted themselves into a pretzel trying to prove their worth to me, to no avail. Once they were born both stupid and lazy, they cannot improve yourself. So the only course of action left for them is to moan and groan and complain and ask for "help and protection" from their "God". What a fucked-up and miserable kind of life!
--Roberto, honey, please pay them no mind. Just hold me tight and sing for me your favorite song, "Tuý Ca" (Song of Inebriation) or the one you wrote, "Drink Until She's Pretty".
-One more thing, then I'll sing both songs. In fact, what I've been saying is a kind of song. I can't help myself since I feel I must speak about the all-too-common syndromes of rigid self-righteousness and unwitting defensiveness fueled by a deep-seated sense of inadequacy held by many assholes and scumbags and motherfuckers that have crossed my path. Instead of reflecting on the values and merits of my observations and commentaries, they have turned the table around and accused me of possessing all the flaws that I've seen in them. Once they convinced themselves that they are okay while I'm full of irritating and offensive hot air, they see that there's no need for them to change. As I said before, to change requires both wisdom and courage. And they have none of these two qualities.
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I have to say I had a pleasant time during the cruise with Rosita. We dined leisurely while drinking copious wine; we soaked in the open-air hot tub on the 15th deck as the ship was making its way to the islands of choice: Bahamas, St. Thomas, and St. Martin; we talked into the wee hours by the pool as cool ocean breezes swirled around us. I even crooned a few songs during a Karaoke evening. She taught me how to do bebop and pasa doble. The last night on the ship, she asked me what I felt about her and whether we would have a future together. I told her:
-Let's play it by ear. You already know I've complications. True love will have a way to manifest itself. Sooner or later, we'll find out our feelings for each other are either real or just Memorex. Actually, love, as I mentioned before, is often bandied around, but is really understood only by a few. We've been moving along the corridors of affection and love at supersonic speed. Maybe we should slow down and see if separation makes the hearts grow fonder or out of sight, out of mind.
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Her response to my rather cold and super-rational analysis was silence and materialization of tears in her eyes. We said goodbye to each other at the airport with an embrace and a kiss. I slept soundly on the plane on the flight back to Vegas with hardly a dream that I could recall later. When I shared this latest romantic adventure of mine with a friend, she looked at me strangely, "Roberto, es importante que visite a un médico, tal vez a un psicoterapeuta. Tu tienes los síntomas de Walter Mitty."
September 27, 2014
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