Spring Break 2015 - Day 3 - "Gaston"

4/6/15 (Easter Monday)

St. George’s, Grenada

There were two ways that I could have done this trip: the right way and the wrong way.  The right way involved me flying home from Barbados on Sunday, spending two nights on each island (three on Barbados), allowing time to relax and allowing for unplanned circumstances.  The wrong way involved me flying home on Wednesday, spending just one night on each island and hoping that everything went right.

The upside of doing it the “wrong way” was fewer vacation, but I had an idea.  What if I worked remotely three days?  It would mean fewer vacation days than the shorter trip, since I would have the second weekend to add to my sightseeing time.  I really only needed an hour or so to do my stuff in town on each island, so I could use my lunch break and the travel days to that purpose.  Remember, three countries, three flag pins, three Parliaments, that’s it.  I was more than willing to pay for the hotel room for the extra nights to work out on this balcony instead of the office and to allow for contingencies.

One such contingency came into effect.  If I had done the trip the “wrong way,” I would be on my way to the airport right now, on the verge of tears, considering praying to a deity whose existence I doubt that the airport would have a flag pin for me.  What went wrong?  See those two words after the date of today’s entry?  Well, when I have done this trip previously, I always ended on Easter.  My Easter celebrations have been remarkable, listening to Church music in Castries, having dinner with the locals in Port of Spain, walking around the town of Sal Salvador.

These countries have some of the highest percentage of Roman Catholics in the world.  Easter here is unlike Easter anywhere else in the world, save perhaps Italy or Spain.  However, this year, I began on Easter, and I did not realize that Easter Monday was also a national holiday.  Without a ship in port, everything would be closed.  There was no ship.  Everything was closed.  The only places that were opened were the restaurant in my hotel and the grocery shop across the street.  I will have to take the evening flight tomorrow.  That would not have been an option if I did the trip the wrong way.

Okay, so Grenada uses a different plug than the rest of North America.  There was one adapter in the room, which I needed for my sleep machine.  What about my phone?  Well, there was a North American style outlet in the bathroom, one of those “shavers only” gizmos.  Reader, ever since college, I have maintained an “open door, open phone policy.”  When I was at NYU, I left my door unlocked and my friends were welcome to “pop in” any time day or night.  They were also welcomed to call me or text at any time for any reason, so I never muted my phone overnight.  That is still true.  One of my friends has a key to my apartment, and he is welcome to crash on my floor whenever he wants.

I am never going to get annoyed at someone for waking me in the middle of the night.  Sometimes when my brother gets toasted, he texts me annoying messages at 3 AM my time, to which I merely reply that I’m sleeping and go back to sleep.  I have never regretted that policy.  While I knew that, even if one of my friends was in the most dire of needs, there was absolutely nothing that I could do for him or her at 4 AM from Grenada, but it felt weird keeping my phone so far away.

I woke up early and was rearing to go.  It seemed too quiet, and I couldn’t see a ship from the balcony.  Fuck.  I headed out towards the port.  Nope, no ship.  The mall was closed, and the shops would not be opened until 9 AM tomorrow morning.  Well, that bit the big one.  I went to get breakfast, and the woman at the restaurant was very friendly.  It was just like the place I went to in Nevis (what was the capital there?  Charleston?  Charlestown), but, since I had the complimentary breakfast, I could get as much as I wanted.  I got two servings of great food, all sorts of fish and pork and plantains and fry jacks.  It was so good.  The coffee was awful, though, definitely not local, but coffee is coffee.

As I mentioned, I have taken this Travelogue in a new direction each time I do this trip.  What is the one question that people always ask me when I tell them about my travels?  “Did you ever meet any interesting people?”  What do I always answer?  “Not if I can help it.”  What is the single thing with which I have the most trouble?  Starting a conversation with an attractive stranger.  Well, she was not attractive by my definition, but she certainly was interesting, and I knew that she would be thrilled to talk about her country.  I had the perfect question.

“What would you say is the biggest part of Grenadine culture that sets it apart from the other islands?”  I knew she would be thrilled to answer that question.  I was right.  The first thing she said was “service.”  What did that mean?  She spoke how friendly the islanders are, how respectful they are, that they are more genuine than other islands.  She spoke how they hold to their values, how they believe in family.  Then, she hesitated.  It was coming, the answer I wanted.  She said that families are overindulgent of their kids, that they encourage them to pursue higher education when they should be joining the workforce right of high school.  In her mind, a kid who went for a Master’s Degree instead of working was lazy.

Reader, think about that for a moment.  In such contrast to almost every other country I visited, she is saying higher education is a bad thing.  Maybe it’s just her view, but it was a view I had never heard expressed before.  Wasn’t this Gaston telling Belle to stop reading and find a husband?  Wasn’t this Pocahontas’s father telling her to stop dreaming and get married?  Wasn’t this Mulan’s family telling her to give up her other pursuits and become a bride?  It is the male version of a mindset that should have died centuries ago.  Imagine walking up to someone in Delhi or Tel Aviv or Tehran and asking the parents of a child who is getting his Master’s Degree, “Isn’t it time he joins the workforce already?”  It’s just not a question you commonly hear.

Well, on that note, I went upstairs, lit up an H. Upmann, and started working.  Over the course of the day, I got a lot of work done, far more productive than I could have been in Manhattan.  There were some issues with the Wi-Fi, but I worked around it.  For lunch, I walked around a bit, first heading towards Fort George, nothing opened there, then up to Parliament, again, nothing opened.  I was informed that there were only two places opened, the restaurant where I had breakfast, and the restaurant in the grocery store.  I got some groceries, which were unbelievably cheap, and went back to the same place I went for breakfast, bringing my lunch up to the balcony, which I had with a beer.  I then lit up a Winston Churchill, later an Ardor, as I did my work for the day.

At 6 PM, I finished up, and thought about how to plan my evening.  Parliament was right up the hill, or so I was told, and the sun was setting across the bay.  I could run up to Parliament, take a quick picture, and be back in time for sunset, but I had a better idea.  I would write my entry on the rocks while I watched the sunset.  Well, the sun then proceeded to disappear behind some clouds.  Thwarted!  Okay, I had already lit up a Padron (the Anniversario, the good one) and walked up to Parliament.

I found the old building that could only be Parliament.  There were three security guards and parking signs for various officials.  I asked them if this was Parliament?  It’s the old one.  Damnit.  Well, where’s the new one?  It was by the Trade Center.  Okay, where’s that?  Three miles away, back towards the airport.  Thwarted again!  I took some pictures here, along with the old cathedral and puppy pictures for Em (yes, I’m still doing that, let’s see how many times in this Travelogue I’ve mentioned doing that, at least 8 times), and headed back to my hotel.

The only place that was now opened for dinner was the restaurant in the grocery store.  I headed out to the balcony to finish my cigar, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can take a nap before dinner.  In tonight’s entry, I will explain why I have been using the hashtag #Gaston in all of my photos today.

There is a difference between an antagonist and a villain.  An immigration officer or an airline agent or a security guard might be seen as an antagonist, but they are not villains.  They are simply doing their jobs, and their jobs requirements are at odds with my desires.  That does not make them a villain.  Likewise, the hunter in Bambi or the old man in The Fox and the Hound, they are not villains.  They are merely antagonists.  Maleficent, Cruella de Vil, Scar, Frollo, Hades, Sun Tzu, and Clayton, they are all villains.  Clayton is an interesting example.  While we are meant to dislike him for hunting the gorillas, that is not what makes him a villain.  Once he locks up Jane and her father, then he becomes a villain.  Until then, he was merely an antagonist.

Placing a curse on someone, stealing 101 Dalmatians, killing Mufasa, locking up Quasimodo, or killing innocent civilians (as Frollo, Hades, and Sun Tzu all attempt to do), those are acts of villains, acts of pure evil.  Now, what is missing from this list?  Gaston my reader might think.  Well, he’s an interesting case.  Just like the hunters whom we like to view as villains because the animals they hunt are anthropomorphized, only Belle and the audience knows that Beast means no harm to the townsfolk.  Gaston does not know that.  As far as he knows, the Beast is just that, a beast set on murdering the townsfolk.  Granted, he goes slightly overboard, and he is in no small part motivated by his desire to make Belle his wife and his belief that killing the Beast will help him to that end.

All of that makes him an antagonist, not a villain.  They story could be rewritten so that we would still hate him even if his intentions were pure.  He is also not a villain because he’s trying to marry Belle.  He wants to marry her because she is “the most beautiful girl in town” and, according to him, “that makes her the best.”  So what?  Most guys would feel the same.  That doesn’t make him a villain, doesn’t even make him an antagonist.  What does make him an asshole is when he sings, “/Here in town there’s only she/who’s as beautiful as me./”  Again, so what?  He’s an asshole, not a villain there.  During the song “Gaston,” we see all of his “manly” qualities, and, yes, a few centuries ago in that French Provencal town, it would probably make him every girl’s dream husband.  He is over-caricaturized, but that is to be expected of the genre.

In the entire movie, there is only one thing that he does that makes him a villain, only one act of evil, when he gets Belle’s father locked up and only offers to help release him if she’ll marry him.  However, that scene could be rewritten, and people would still hate him because of the other stuff.  That is a common occurrence in these animated movies. You have a character the audience is meant to hate, often a business man whose smart business decision is at odds with the needs of the main characters, but the movie won’t work that way.  Once you are meant to hate the character, then you have the antagonist (not yet a villain) do something that is evil, like sabotage his rival or frame the main character for a crime.

Take “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Mr. Potter is meant to be hated all throughout the movie, yet he is merely an antagonist.  That doesn’t work.  They need to have him do something evil, make him a true villain.  Reader, do you remember what that is?  It’s when the uncle loses the envelope of money and Mr. Potter finds it.  Rather than returning it to the uncle, he hides it, causing the bank to go under.  It’s not his money to keep, and he knows whose it is.  That is an act of pure evil.  That is when he becomes a villain.

Alright, so now whom am I maintaining is the true villain in Beauty and the Beast?  The enchantress of course.  She goes to the castle of the young prince (10-11 years-old at the time) and asks for shelter for the night.  Ignoring the prince’s age, he had no obligation to provide her with shelter.  It would have been a nice thing to do, and I would even argue that she should have done it, but he did not have to do it.  What did she do?  Well, she put a curse on him, turning him into the Beast and cursing all the innocent servants.  If that is not evil, then I do not know what is.  That is the impetus for all the conflict.

Okay, why did I break that up?  As I was walking around town today, someone came up to me with what looked like a car part wrapped in a towel, saying that it was broken and asking if I could help him.  I looked at it and told him that I didn’t know anything about it.  No, that’s not what he meant.  He asked if I could “help” him buy a new part at the gas station.  I had no obligation to help him in that way, and I turned him down.  It looked pretty cheap, probably no more than the price of a cigar or two, but why should I help him?  He muttered something about “white people.”  Does that make me a villain?  Does that mean I should be turned into a Beast and my friends into clocks and candlesticks?  Of course not.  That is why the enchantress is the villain in Beauty and the Beast.

Alright, so, what happened after I closed?  I went to get dinner.  I got two types of chicken, side dishes, and an ice cream.  The total?  Well, there are drinks at Starbucks that cost more.  I decided to do “dinner and a movie” Caribbean style, along with a Prensado cigar.  The movie?  “The Fox and The Hound.”  It was utterly adorable, and the food was as delicious as the cigar.  After the movie, I went back inside, drank my now melted ice cream, grabbed an Ardor, and came back out here, where I lit up the pipe and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close so that I can finish my pipe, publish, and get to sleep.