The Old Stinkface

QD, our older cat, periodically will smell something when he doesn't like it he will wrinkle his nose. Massiel decided to call this "The Stinkface", and it is a really apropos name. When I registered at the Human Resources office in Haiti, for my job, I asked the girl which was the nicest supermarket in Dajabon. She told me that it was called SuperMercardo Karla. Wednesday night I went there. My sense of smell is somewhat impaired, as is my sense of taste. However, when I entered this market, all I could thing of was QD. They should rename this place. It should be called Supermercado Stinkface.

My Second Bank Account

I already have one bank account at Banco Popular. It has been open for more than 3 years. Coincidentally, that is where Massiel works. I am going to be paid through direct deposit, at the same bank. When I went to the bank to open my payroll account I was told that even though I already had an account with that bank, a letter from my employer requesting that the direct deposit account be opened, and a Dominican Identity card (cedula) I was told that I didn't have enough proof of identity and would not be allowed to open it. There's a word for that.

The Best Hotel In The City

During the week I stay at a hotel, Raydan, in Dajabon. It is about 7 minutes from the Haitian Free Zone. It is the best hotel in town. There is one a couple of blocks before the Raydan. It is called The Hotel Mirash. I'm sorry, but I am not staying in a hotel called My Rash. Uh, uh, not gonna happen. So it's the Raydan for me. When I checked in on Monday I inquired as to the rate and was told that it was exactly double what I had been told it would be. They explained that it was so costly because I had requested a refridgerator, and the room had air conditioning. If I eliminated those to things the price would be cut in half. Now I can live without the fridge, but there is no way that sleeping is possible in the kind of heat they have in Haiti, even though the room has a ceiling fan. I haggled as best I could, but the full fee for the air conditioning was charged. Only one problem. The AC didn't work.

Tuesday morning I flushed the toilet after using it, and I heard something make a loud noise inside the water tank. Two seconds later, water started to spill out from all sides of the tank. I watched in awe. As the bathroom floor started to fill with water I realized that I had to do something. I lifted the top off the tank and the water started to shoot up so high that it almost was hitting the ceiling. Luckily,
I thought to shut the water off using the valve in the wall. It was really a miracle that I thought of it. What had happened was that where the float is connected to the water source had come apart. What a geiser.

The Axe Murderer

I went to Haiti for the first time in October of last year. There was a man working in the Fabrik factory who wore glasses, was always unshaven, and never looked at you directly with his beady little eyes. I never learned his name, but I started to think of, and refer to him, as "The Axe Murderer". I don't know why, he just had that look.
When I went back to Haiti on Monday, there he was again, only I couldn't remember where I knew him from. I kept bumping into him and couldn't place him, until suddenly I remembered that he was the Axe Murderer.

Who Did It?

When I got home from Haiti, last night, at one point I went to the freezer to look for the little bit of ice cream that I knew I had left. It was gone. This morning, in the car, I said to Massiel, "Who ate the rest of my ice cream?" She answered, "There was very little left." Who do you think ate it?

To My Many Fans

The boredom of not working and having nothing to do all day finally got to me. That's why I haven't written anything for a long time. I had nothing to say. Last Thursday I found out that I was being hired by Grupo M to work in a factory located on the border with Haiti. It is about a two hour drive from where I live, and commuting is out of the question, so I will be leaving Santiago every Monday morning and returning every Friday night. So, off I go.
I am not crazy about being without Massiel, but we really need the money, and I need something to save my sanity. I will miss her for many reasons. Last night she went to eat with some of her girl friends from the bank. I had nothing to do so I went to the casino. I ate and then hung out with some friends. Massiel showed up around 10:15. We went over to the bar to get some juice for me and some Cyclon (Red Bull) for her. After she finished hers I asked if she wanted to stay or go home. She said, "I really need to start farting so we have to get out of here". Most of all, I will miss our deep, meaningful conversations.

The Playboy Years

I was a horrible college student. I didn't want to do anything other than go to class, and I really didn't want to do that. I didn't want to do the proscribed reading, I didn't want to study, and I certainly didn't want to take exams. The first line should actually have read,"I was a horrible student". It didn't have to wait for college. In my senior year of high school, I failed enough subjects that I didn't have enough credits to graduate. I failed Trigonometry, Physics, and safe driving (hey, they required a term paper, and I didn't do term papers. My two acceptances to college, based on my performance, were recinded. I know that one was from Rider College, I don't remember the other. I went to summer school and passed the Physics and Trig regents and was allowed to graduate. Now I had to find a college to go to. My parents,through a counseling service that my father engaged, were able to get me into Curry College, a small unacredited college in Milton, Massachusetts, right outside of Boston. I wasn't privy to the negotiations, but I imagine it was a "You got the money? We got the space" kind of negotiation. My mother cried when she saw the dorm that I was originally going to stay in when we got up there. We got that changed and I wound up in the newest building they had. I was in with a bunch of students like myself. They were there because their parents wanted them to be there. I don't remember a whole lot of that year. I do remember that the last night before classes were to begin a bunch of us played cards till about 7 in the morning and then we all went to sleep and missed the first day of school. I have no idea what courses I took there. It did have an attractive campus, and it was co-ed. I don't remember much about it. I think that mostly I partied, not that strongly but I really can't remember anything other than that my English Professor tried to get me to take peyote. That was the first place I tried drugs. There were a couple of kids from Brooklyn who were into Robitussin. They used to make a drug run through town to buy up all the Rob that they could find. Seemed kind of harsh. I never liked the way they looked so I never tried it. I did, however, learn to smoke pot. This was 1962-3 and pot was not something that you could tell your friends back home about. I remember that summer, while I was home that a friend and I had code words that we used if we wanted to find out if a friend who had gone to another university was drug hip. My next year I started going out with a girl by the name of Ellen Wagner who lived on Staten Island. It was really important to her that I be in college so I originally started to go to Hunter College, uptown. I went there for a year and then transferred to NYU downtown. I went there for two years. This time was mostly spent at the student center. I was not really interested in being a student.
When I left NYU I was about 21 and had to figure out what to do. I foolishly had no interest in getting involved with my father's business. I decided that I wanted to move. I was a big city kid and I wanted to move to a big city. The choice seemed to boil down to Boston and Philadelphia. Since I was a little familiar with Boston from my freshman year, that was where I went. Through a high school girlfriend I was able to get an apartment on Gloucester Street, which is in the downtown college area.
The superintendant of the building had a business. The business was preparing recently vacated apartments for new tenants. He would send some people in to clean out the apartment and then send in others to paint it. Many of the people he used lived in my building, and after trying to find real work, and failing, I asked him if I could work for him. Luckily he needed painters. I was honest and told him that I had never done that but I was sure I could learn. So was he. I started working as a painter for $1.50 per hour. It quickly became obvious to me that my future was not in house painting. The thing I seemed to paint best was either my hair or my body. I always left the job covered in paint. On a positive note, however, it did pay for my rent (I don't remember how much it was, but it must have been really cheap)and for my food.
One day I was checking the newspaper for jobs and I came across an ad that read (and this I remember exactly) "Playboy of Boston needs busboys and kitchen help". This was in 1966. I had been to the Playboy Club in New York several times with my father, who was a member, and I remembered that there were men working at the club as managers. I called for to inquire as to whether there were other jobs available and was told that periodically they had openings and if I would like to come in for an interview, they would keep my name on file. I made the appointment and when the day came I got dressed up in my only suit. It's 44 years ago and I can still clearly remember the suit. It was black sharkskin (shiny) with a bright red inner lining. I mean really bright red, probably Fire Engine Red. I went down to the interview. I was interviewed by the assistant general manager. One look at him and I knew I had the job. As he introduced himself, he reached to shake hands. His black sharkskin suit opened to reveal his Fire Engine Red lining, and as soon as I pointed out that we had on the same suit it became obvious that we were kindred spirits. He told me that someone had just left and there was an opening for Assistant Room Director. I got the job. I started to work shortly thereafter. I was in heaven. The prettiest girls in the city, and many from out of town, worked there. Male employees were not allowed to "fraterinize with the Bunnies, but when you get out of work at 4 in the morning, who are you going to hang out with after work, other than coworkers? I remember speaking with my parents and telling them how I would love to get a transfer to another club. After about a year, I got called into the GM's office. I was told that I was going to be fired. As a favor, if I wanted, the GM offered to call another club to see if they had a spot open for me. This was on a Thursday. He called someone in Chicago, the home of the Playboy empire, and found me a job, at a substantial raise. I had to leave immediately. There was an airline strike at the time and I was told I had to get there right away, so I packed everything up and took a bus from Boston to Chicago. I never really got the true story. When I got to Chicago, I was told that I was on the official schedule to work the following night. What I also found out was that the schedule was printed out 10 days before. How was I on the schedule? Also, I was given a "plum" assignment. I got to work as a Room Director in the Penthouse. The Penthouse was the major show room in the club and the other Room Director was the most well known of all Room Directors, Rudy Arrigoni. Rudy was the nicest, funniest guy I ever knew and we became great friends. We worked the room as a team and had some really great times. Once we took some Bunnies back to my hotel (I never got around to moving out of the hotel that I moved into my first day in Chicago.) He used my room, as the girl I was with had a room in the hotel as well. He left me a souvenir. It was the cardboard backing from a small notepad. On it he had attached the stub of a cigar, and under the cigar he had written "The Falcon".
Working at the club was cool, and very highly regarded by anyone from Chicago. I got to meet a lot of "stars" who worked at the club. Mr Myogi, Pat Morita from the Karate Kid, Gregory Hines, the singer, dancer, are a few that I remember by name. There were a lot of others, some more famous than those two, but I can't remember for sure who they were. I nice thing was getting invited to Hef's mansion for Thanksgiving. The club sent a note around before Thanksgiving inviting anyone not going home for the holiday to the Mansion for Thanksgiving Dinner. I wasn't going home so I went. It was pretty cool.
That year in the winter we had the biggest snowstorm that I have ever seen firsthand. It was on my day off. Sometimes when I had nothing to do I would go downtown to the movies and go from one movie to another. That is what I did that day. After the second movie I noticed that it was snowing pretty good and when I came out of the third movie, it had turned to a blizzard. There were neither cabs, nor buses running and I realized that I had to walk home. It was pretty far, but there were no other options. I remember walking directly into the teeth of the storm and as I walked over a bridge that spanned the Chicago River I had to turn and walk backwards because it was snowing with such force that it was almost painful. I did not have a hat on and as I walked backward the snow would him me in the hair (I still had hair)in the back and then melt. As more snow accumulated on my head it started to freeze. I had a yarmulke of ice on my head. I got home a little later. When I went out the next morning the snow was higher than the parking meters.
I wound up working at the Chicago club for almost a year and then I made the decision that I had had enough. I went home.