Spring Break 2015 - Day 8 - "Tale as Old as Time"

4/11/15

Holetown, Barbados

Reader, if you have been paying attention, you know what today’s entry will be called.  It truly is “a tale as old as time.”  Ever since I drove up to Quebec for 26 hours, leaving the country for the first time in almost a decade, I have been making it a point to stop at the local Casa del Habano.  Here I am in Holetown, where the British first landed over 400 years ago, their conquest of the Caribbean a tale practically as old as time, certainly older than the tale I have been referencing all trip (“Beauty and the Beast”).  This is how I travel, and, here at the Casa, I quite literally feel at home.

I have a driver waiting for me downstairs, and as soon as I finish this entry, he will take me on a loop of the island.  Afterwards, I will be meeting the daughter of my first babysitter for dinner, another tale as old as time.  So much about this trip has been familiar, but, here in the “Jewel of the Caribbean,” smoking a Churchill, just as I have smoked ever since I started smoking Cubans, I finally feel at home.  Having time to relax, having nothing planned, not knowing how to spend my time, that’s all new.  Fuck.  I just got a notification that my computer is restarting in 5 minutes, so I might close abruptly.  I will continue the reflections tonight.

After I closed, I crashed outside, and I was woken up at 9 AM by the housekeeping staff from next door who reminded me that breakfast was on its way.  Actually, I was woken up slightly earlier in my favorite way, by a text from my favorite person to receive a text from, but I had tried to fall back asleep.  I went to breakfast, and I was delighted that included a simple plate of bacon and eggs.  After breakfast, I fell back asleep for a few hours, then I lit up a Davidoff as I cleaned my pipes.

I packed for the day and headed into town, where I went to lunch at the local fast food place, Chefette’s, getting the local specialty.  It was packed, and I could see Parliament, but, when I looked around, I did not see a single white face. 

I lit up a Partagas after lunch, and my next stop was the synagogue, established in 1654, it is the oldest synagogue in the Americas.  I walked around some more, took some more pictures, and bought some more souvenirs.

I then hired a taxi and driver for the next three hours, and our first stop was Holetown, the site where the British landed.  We went to the mall, where I found the Casa del Habana, bought a bunch of cigars, lit up a Churchill, took a ceremonial picture, and proceeded to write this entry, which I will now close, as the computer is about to restart.

Bridgetown, Barbados

Well, the sun has set for the last time in my time in the Lesser Antilles.  It will be sunset in New York just as I am landing tomorrow.  After I closed at the cigar shop, the computer restarted before the save could complete.  Anticipating this, I had been saving constantly, so I had lost one or two sentences, tops.  The restart was so that my computer could install Windows 8.1, though I was perfectly happy with Windows 8, but there did not appear to be any way around it.  It took two hours to install this update, and I had to constantly fidget with the computer as we drove.

While I was enjoying the Churchill, along with the views of the island, I knew that I would find no peace until the computer was up and running again.  For a while it didn’t look like it was going to work, and I got an error message saying to choose the proper boot sequence.  What the fuck?  In my inebriated state (having been constantly sipping my small bottle of rum), I had no idea what I was doing, but I somehow managed to press the correct buttons to change the boot sequence and get it running.  I’m not entirely sure that I could have done it sober.  I had all sorts of visions of having to try to find a computer repair shop open tonight or tomorrow morning or writing my entries on my phone.  Nothing about getting my computer up and running again.  Finally, after two hours, and back here, I was able to log in and open up this document.  I got caught up on the news of the day and chatted with the couple next door a bit.  Once the sun set, I proceeded to write this entry.

Now, as for these reflections.  In about an hour I will be meeting with the daughter (and son-in-law) of my first babysitter.  I do not know these people, though they know of me.  Any two people on this island could fool me into thinking they were them, provided they knew enough about my first babysitter and somehow managed to throw in a few stories about me and my brother growing up, yet we have an unspoken bond through the babysitter, the daughter’s mother.  Apparently, she saw my brother and me as sons.  Once my dad remarried, there was no need for a live-in babysitter, nor was there a place for a mother and a governess (think Sound of Music), and it was time for her to retire.  I went through a long string of babysitters and housekeepers.  I have no doubt that I wore them out.  One didn’t even last a whole day.  To me, this tale is as old as time.  I have brief, fleeting memories of each of them, but they all blur together.

Returning to one of my earlier entries (“Belle”), while taking care of a rich (by their standards) family’s children and cleaning their house hardly seems like a dream job, perhaps, to them, it was.  How many people just want to leave this British Caribbean Island?  To them, isn’t getting a good job in New York, a steady job where you are treated properly, the dream?  Isn’t that the “adventure in the great wide somewhere?”  I think it is, and I think so even more based on the email I received from her other daughter.

It is a tale as old as time that people travel to live among the less fortunate while the people in those destinations just dream of living in the big city where the travelers live.  I do not need to give examples of this, but I’m sure my reader can supply his or her own.  There is deep irony to this that someone from England would spend untold amounts of money to go on safari in Africa while the people there would want nothing more than to be a member of the staff in that British family’s home back in England.

Not everyone gets to meet her Prince Charming and live happily ever after in a castle, but happily ever after does not have to be about marrying a wealthy prince.  For every Belle or Cinderella who winds up in the castle, there are dozens, nay thousands of Tianas who find out that having what you need is different from getting what you want.  Sorry, not explaining that reference.  Watch The Princess and the Frog if you haven’t.  It’s too good of a movie not to watch.  While set in more of a modern time than the other Princess stories, the lessons it teaches are still as old as time.

In 24 hours, I will be returning to the familiar, to my normal life.  If my boss offered to let me stay here another week (and paid for my hotel) and let me work remotely while I was here, I’m not entirely sure I’d take him up on it.  There is nothing left here for me to see, and the heat is getting to me.  I’ll be glad to be back in New York.  Alright, my ride will be here in 15 minutes, and I need to get ready.  Well, I need to put on pants, which doesn’t take 15 minutes, but I’ll close.

The past four hours have taken a most interesting turn of events.  My entries this trip have been filled with Disney references, so there is no reason not to continue this trend.  There is a scene (well it occurs multiple times) in The Princess and the Frog where Tiana (or Charlotte in a different scene) wishes upon the evening star.  The same thing happens in Pinocchio, of course, but the manner in which it occurred was very specific in this movie.  Well, last night I saw what I thought was the evening star, so, for fun, I made a wish in the same way that Tiana did.  Reader, you should recall from my previous trip what those wishes were.

I did not expect it to work.  I did not expect that 24 hours later I would realize that not only was Robin Williams on my side but that there’s merit to the phrase “Be careful what you wish for.”  I will go into more details in my personal journal, but I will pull another quote from PatF.  I got what I wanted but maybe not what I needed.  Alright, enough of that.  Once again I find myself dead tired, but the events of this evening need to be recorded while they’re still fresh.

I have developed a policy of no longer including names in this Travelogue, not even first names.  My former babysitter was E---.  Her daughter is P---, and her husband is C---.  That is how I will refer to them for this entry.  At 7:30 PM, I called C--- on his cell.  He was right outside, so I hurried to get ready and meet him there.  When I got to the car, P--- got out and greeted me like I was a member of her extended family, a nephew or something.  She insisted that she had met me when I was a little boy, when my father brought me here.  No, that was my brother.  We went back and forth on that for a minute or two.  Eventually, she believed me that this was indeed my first time in Barbados.

She had actually met me, though, in 2012 at E---‘s funeral.  I did not recognize her, and she did not remember me.  I remember the funeral, though.  My father and I were treated like royalty, E---‘s family so touched that her former employer and his son would make the trek out to Brooklyn to come to the funeral.  E--- practically raised my brother.  There was np question of us not going.  I think there was even talk of my brother flying back from Seattle to come to the funeral.

They first took me to Saint Lawrence’s Gap, the main tourist hotspot.  It was the first time since I left the States that I saw white faces far outnumbering black faces, and C--- was quick to comment on it.  “This is where all the white people go.”  I joked to myself that maybe this was where my neighbors went.  I was right.  As we were driving, I saw two very familiar people smoking cigarettes on the sidewalk.  Yes, it was them.

We continued up to Oistin’s, another popular tourist area with blaring music.  We found a place to sit and order fish.  However, between their accents and the loud music, I found it impossible to understand them.  I did my best.  C--- looked like he’d rather be anywhere but here, but P--- and I made conversation.  She asked about my dating life.  I told her that my girlfriend and I had broken up three months ago.  Meanwhile, my phone was chirping, and kept responding.  When she saw the screen, I pointed to it and said, “New girl.”  She seemed pleased with the idea.  I ordered the flying fish, while P--- got the dolphin.  Somehow the portion for P--- and C--- were much larger, like three times as much fish.  I had a feeling that I was going to be offered extra fish.  I was not wrong.  P--- gave me half of her fish and had trouble finishing the other half.

Meanwhile, they started playing karaoke, and, after dinner we went over to join them.  I wanted to do “Blank Space,” but they only had a few Taylor Swift songs.  I chose “Love Story,” which I rightly butchered.  After I did my rendition, we listened a little more before we decided to call it a night.  They took me back to my hotel, where I continued to text the new girl.  We exchanged a total of 92 messages over the course of the evening.

Thanks, Robin Williams. I got my three flag pins, my three Parliaments, and a girl who won’t stop texting me.  You’ve really been on my team this trip.  If I can get a fourth wish, just fix everything at work, though I guess that’s actually in my power to achieve.  When I got back, I realized that I had forgotten to charge my computer, so I lounged around a bit while I charged it up some.  I lit up a VSG and headed out to the porch, where I proceeded to write this entry, which I’ll now close so that I can sleep outside for the last time.