Uncle Ron was no uncle. An elderly, single, gay guy with no living relatives, he had sold himself to the boys. It's called "rent an uncle." In return for his monthly social security check they would take care of him for life. At 91, how long could that be?
Why did they do such a thing? He was the perfect foil, a seemingly frail 91 year old with a castrati voice. He made the boys respectable -- a gay couple devoted to caring for their aged uncle. Oh, and the dogs too. Make that two gay guys with their aging uncle and two dogs. Harmless.
Uncle Ron was the biggest scammer of them all, the mastermind for the whole operation.
He looked like someone hovering near death. He didn't speak much. The boys condescended to him or they treated him roughly. But it was clear he was taking it all in, listening to the banter, sizing up people, deciding who could be scammed for what. He ate the food set in front of him, wore the clothes he was given and was dragged to every party, every event, and took it all in with his eagle eyes.
It was his eyes that gave him away, to me, at any rate. He was always quiet, sitting with a Sudoku book, or watching tv...but once I saw the flash, the intelligence, something evil flash in his eyes. It chilled me when I realized who he really was.
But to the rest of the world, he was a poor, tired uncle, packed into the stolen Mercedes along with the two dogs and driven south across the border. He was given clothes, food, a clean bed, and the promise of Super Bowl Sunday in peace and quiet.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Monday, November 25, 2013
Two Thanksgivings
We had two Thanksgivings last year.
Because Stan had just passed away, no one felt like Thanksgiving. Tommy and Dud were exhausted from the death watch, the funeral and post death details. Eva in her black fury was not easy to be around. At the last minute, Tommy invited us all to the Hyatt, which advertised a special Thanksgiving buffet for expats.
We met in the lobby waterfall bar and drank Cosmos. Small groups of gay men passed us on their way into the dining room. "Why is everyone looking at us?" Dud said. He always felt he was being studied. Why was he so suspect of gay men and so critical of them and their lifestyles.
I have never liked the Hyatt dining room, it looked like cafeteria with dark wood. And on this evening it was especially depressing with its clatter of silverware, mulling of people around the food stations and a live band playing cruise ship music. No one in the audience knew that the lead singer, a woman in sparkly gown, big hair, too much makeup, was in fact a tranny. The buffet was populated with large and small tables of gay men and redneck couples in casual wear.
I don't like buffets. Why go out and have to get up to serve yourself? I'm could care less about "all you can eat" (all you can eat is one plate anyway) and then there's the constant coming and going at the table and the, "What'd you get?" and "Ooh, I didn't see that." The cold food was warm. The hot food was cold. All, tasteless. The desserts looked fanciful but tasted of raw flour, bitter baking soda and flavorless gelatin. We ate, numbed, pretending happy and thankfulness, but felt nothing. It was a chore being at this meal in this room with this food and these people.
"I can't believe it," Dud said when he sat down with a plate of salad. "That young guy cruised me. How disgusting is that, being cruised at the salad bar at Thanksgiving." He pointed to a table of eight older gay gringos with their young Mexican boy toys. "Now that is appalling," he said. "Doesn't anyone ever say anything about that? I can't believe it is accepted."
On Saturday after Thanksgiving I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner at my house to erase the horrible meal. Tommy, Dud, Uncle Ron, Eva and me. It was the best Thanksgiving they will ever eat in their lives. My silver sparkly white formal table, flower poseys alternating with flickering votives. My Mother's Tiffany sterling and Spode plates. Elegant to make us feel special, warm to make us feel embraced. I poured Prosecco. Thanksgiving was had.
I remember I lifted my glass and said, "Where were you last year at this time?" Of course, dissembling about being with some cousin or parent in some mumbled midwestern place. I didn't know they were evil yet. I thought about Thanksgivings past and how each year brings change and new people to the table.
I called Eva in Miami this morning and reminded her about our Thanksgiving last year. She refuses to feel an ounce of anything. She has willed herself to forget, to not give the scum anymore soul space. In one year, she closed everything up and moved back to Miami to start a new life as a single woman. But I'm still here, in my empty house on Thanksgiving. I didn't get invited anywhere, and I don't want to cook for anyone. And although I shouldn't care a rat's ass about you anymore, I do wonder, where you are this year? Is some expat in some forgotten Central American town cooking for you? A year, a year and the pain is still fresh.
Because Stan had just passed away, no one felt like Thanksgiving. Tommy and Dud were exhausted from the death watch, the funeral and post death details. Eva in her black fury was not easy to be around. At the last minute, Tommy invited us all to the Hyatt, which advertised a special Thanksgiving buffet for expats.
We met in the lobby waterfall bar and drank Cosmos. Small groups of gay men passed us on their way into the dining room. "Why is everyone looking at us?" Dud said. He always felt he was being studied. Why was he so suspect of gay men and so critical of them and their lifestyles.
I have never liked the Hyatt dining room, it looked like cafeteria with dark wood. And on this evening it was especially depressing with its clatter of silverware, mulling of people around the food stations and a live band playing cruise ship music. No one in the audience knew that the lead singer, a woman in sparkly gown, big hair, too much makeup, was in fact a tranny. The buffet was populated with large and small tables of gay men and redneck couples in casual wear.
I don't like buffets. Why go out and have to get up to serve yourself? I'm could care less about "all you can eat" (all you can eat is one plate anyway) and then there's the constant coming and going at the table and the, "What'd you get?" and "Ooh, I didn't see that." The cold food was warm. The hot food was cold. All, tasteless. The desserts looked fanciful but tasted of raw flour, bitter baking soda and flavorless gelatin. We ate, numbed, pretending happy and thankfulness, but felt nothing. It was a chore being at this meal in this room with this food and these people.
"I can't believe it," Dud said when he sat down with a plate of salad. "That young guy cruised me. How disgusting is that, being cruised at the salad bar at Thanksgiving." He pointed to a table of eight older gay gringos with their young Mexican boy toys. "Now that is appalling," he said. "Doesn't anyone ever say anything about that? I can't believe it is accepted."
On Saturday after Thanksgiving I cooked a Thanksgiving dinner at my house to erase the horrible meal. Tommy, Dud, Uncle Ron, Eva and me. It was the best Thanksgiving they will ever eat in their lives. My silver sparkly white formal table, flower poseys alternating with flickering votives. My Mother's Tiffany sterling and Spode plates. Elegant to make us feel special, warm to make us feel embraced. I poured Prosecco. Thanksgiving was had.
I remember I lifted my glass and said, "Where were you last year at this time?" Of course, dissembling about being with some cousin or parent in some mumbled midwestern place. I didn't know they were evil yet. I thought about Thanksgivings past and how each year brings change and new people to the table.
I called Eva in Miami this morning and reminded her about our Thanksgiving last year. She refuses to feel an ounce of anything. She has willed herself to forget, to not give the scum anymore soul space. In one year, she closed everything up and moved back to Miami to start a new life as a single woman. But I'm still here, in my empty house on Thanksgiving. I didn't get invited anywhere, and I don't want to cook for anyone. And although I shouldn't care a rat's ass about you anymore, I do wonder, where you are this year? Is some expat in some forgotten Central American town cooking for you? A year, a year and the pain is still fresh.
Sunday, November 24, 2013
The scamming begins
Eva moved into the boys' house right after Stan's death.
Everyone tiptoed around her. Instead of grief, she was a spectre of undefined fury, strung too tight to bear for more than a few minutes. I could not go near her.
Every morning, before anyone woke up, Tommy went online and into Stan's email to erase and rearrange things. He enjoyed the dirty emails from the expensive Chinese hooker demanding money. There were emails from his nieces who wanted hush money for the sexual abuse. Solicitation emails from online sex sites that Stan frequented. Kinky bills to pay. Credit card bills to pay and erase. Emails from Goodyear seeking retribution for all the money he stole and accounts he rearranged. Tommy discovered Stan's life of sexual depravity and lies.
Tommy did this because Stan asked him to. In his moment of death, he suddenly felt aggrieved that Eva would find out about all this. He hadn't planned on dying so fast that he wouldn't be able to clean things up himself. He had felt that Tommy wouldn't judge him, that Tommy would clean it all up.
And Tommy did. He cleaned up real good. In the name of protecting Eva, he discovered Stan's secret bank accounts and, having his usernames, passwords, and security questions, he methodically transferred to himself all the money from accounts that Eva knew nothing about. Then he quietly closed the accounts. A clean job, no one would ever know.
He also discovered that Stan had set up automatic payment on the credit card. So Tommy helped himself to Stan's credit and debit cards.
Eva, meanwhile, considered the boys her Godsend. They were sheltering her, feeding her, driving her. They were listening to her, filing health insurance papers, life insurance (they were ace at this), getting death certificates at the U.S. Consulate, and, helped her rewrite her will online at legalzip.com, making themselves her executors and her witnesses. They all trooped into the consulate to sign, and Eva felt lucky to be so taken care of. How easy could this be.
In a few months she would never say their names again, calling them only, the fags, the scum, the scammers.
Everyone tiptoed around her. Instead of grief, she was a spectre of undefined fury, strung too tight to bear for more than a few minutes. I could not go near her.
Every morning, before anyone woke up, Tommy went online and into Stan's email to erase and rearrange things. He enjoyed the dirty emails from the expensive Chinese hooker demanding money. There were emails from his nieces who wanted hush money for the sexual abuse. Solicitation emails from online sex sites that Stan frequented. Kinky bills to pay. Credit card bills to pay and erase. Emails from Goodyear seeking retribution for all the money he stole and accounts he rearranged. Tommy discovered Stan's life of sexual depravity and lies.
Tommy did this because Stan asked him to. In his moment of death, he suddenly felt aggrieved that Eva would find out about all this. He hadn't planned on dying so fast that he wouldn't be able to clean things up himself. He had felt that Tommy wouldn't judge him, that Tommy would clean it all up.
And Tommy did. He cleaned up real good. In the name of protecting Eva, he discovered Stan's secret bank accounts and, having his usernames, passwords, and security questions, he methodically transferred to himself all the money from accounts that Eva knew nothing about. Then he quietly closed the accounts. A clean job, no one would ever know.
He also discovered that Stan had set up automatic payment on the credit card. So Tommy helped himself to Stan's credit and debit cards.
Eva, meanwhile, considered the boys her Godsend. They were sheltering her, feeding her, driving her. They were listening to her, filing health insurance papers, life insurance (they were ace at this), getting death certificates at the U.S. Consulate, and, helped her rewrite her will online at legalzip.com, making themselves her executors and her witnesses. They all trooped into the consulate to sign, and Eva felt lucky to be so taken care of. How easy could this be.
In a few months she would never say their names again, calling them only, the fags, the scum, the scammers.
Friday, November 22, 2013
Stan's Bus Station Funeral
That's what the funeral parlors feel like in Merida: bus station waiting rooms.
Noisy. Lots of people milling around on filthy tile floors. People slumped on benches. Off the waiting room are small, air conditioned rooms each holding someone's beloved. You go in, sit in the "chapel" (just benches around the edge of the room), commune with the open or closed casket, talk to the family, then go back out into the waiting room. You go in and out as you can take it, feel it, help yourself to Coke from a soda fountain, Yucas idea of heaven, free Coke.
A paid by the mass priest in dirty vestments wheels in an altar with a seen better days white lace cloth, communion stuff, a sad bottle of tap agua, a worn Bible that he doesn't use, just holds. He asks the name of the deceased and then rattles off a mass, sprinkling the casket with water, constantly asking again the deceased's name as he fills it into the boilerplate. He talks as fast as he can, emotionless, taking care of business, blesses all quickly and wheels out his altar onto the next lost soul. Death as not precious, nothing special. Something actually liberating about this.
This was Stan's funeral. A motley handful of guests. Samantha and Dick. Bob, Tommy and Uncle Ron. Eva. Me. Eva was at this point still concerned with doing things right, -- a funeral, going to the cremation. She was a good wife.
Samantha misbehaved. I noticed her whispering to Bob. Thought she was asking how Eva was holding up. But no. Found out later she was asking him how much this funeral cost, was that a rented coffin, what was the hospital bill -- all the while imagining herself in the widow's seat a few years hence. Even Bob the scammer was disgusted.
Eva insisted on going to the crematory. She regretted it after she arrived in a desolate stretch of Merida bordering the jungle, a grey from smoke warehouse, and the shoving in of Stan's cardboard box. The rented coffin was cradling someone else.
Only a few months later, she refused to call him by name, or say "my husband." He became the bastard, the scammer, the old man. He would never be her anything, ever again. She would not make him her anything, anymore.
Noisy. Lots of people milling around on filthy tile floors. People slumped on benches. Off the waiting room are small, air conditioned rooms each holding someone's beloved. You go in, sit in the "chapel" (just benches around the edge of the room), commune with the open or closed casket, talk to the family, then go back out into the waiting room. You go in and out as you can take it, feel it, help yourself to Coke from a soda fountain, Yucas idea of heaven, free Coke.
A paid by the mass priest in dirty vestments wheels in an altar with a seen better days white lace cloth, communion stuff, a sad bottle of tap agua, a worn Bible that he doesn't use, just holds. He asks the name of the deceased and then rattles off a mass, sprinkling the casket with water, constantly asking again the deceased's name as he fills it into the boilerplate. He talks as fast as he can, emotionless, taking care of business, blesses all quickly and wheels out his altar onto the next lost soul. Death as not precious, nothing special. Something actually liberating about this.
This was Stan's funeral. A motley handful of guests. Samantha and Dick. Bob, Tommy and Uncle Ron. Eva. Me. Eva was at this point still concerned with doing things right, -- a funeral, going to the cremation. She was a good wife.
Samantha misbehaved. I noticed her whispering to Bob. Thought she was asking how Eva was holding up. But no. Found out later she was asking him how much this funeral cost, was that a rented coffin, what was the hospital bill -- all the while imagining herself in the widow's seat a few years hence. Even Bob the scammer was disgusted.
Eva insisted on going to the crematory. She regretted it after she arrived in a desolate stretch of Merida bordering the jungle, a grey from smoke warehouse, and the shoving in of Stan's cardboard box. The rented coffin was cradling someone else.
Only a few months later, she refused to call him by name, or say "my husband." He became the bastard, the scammer, the old man. He would never be her anything, ever again. She would not make him her anything, anymore.
Arage
I know. Yesterday's post was a bit of a mess.
As I try to relive the events of a year ago, all the emotions and memories are flying around, and, hard to order or present coherently. That's why I'm writing this blog, to figure it all out. In bits and pieces the story will come together. Stay with me.
I was telling you about the boys and suddenly I've entered into Stan's death. That's when the boys stepped up and started their big time scam.
When Stan died, Eva's behavior totally confounded me. She was in shock of course, having been his wife for 28 years. But it wasn't the kind of shock I had seen with my mother, when my father died. Eva was arage. I just made that word up. Her shock was laced with an anger so unfocused but piercing, so profound, so bitter, so furious, so everything that I couldn't understand it, much less be around her. Why so angry? Why? Where did this anger come from. And, why?
Even she didn't know why. There was something underlying everything that she would discover in due time.
As I try to relive the events of a year ago, all the emotions and memories are flying around, and, hard to order or present coherently. That's why I'm writing this blog, to figure it all out. In bits and pieces the story will come together. Stay with me.
I was telling you about the boys and suddenly I've entered into Stan's death. That's when the boys stepped up and started their big time scam.
When Stan died, Eva's behavior totally confounded me. She was in shock of course, having been his wife for 28 years. But it wasn't the kind of shock I had seen with my mother, when my father died. Eva was arage. I just made that word up. Her shock was laced with an anger so unfocused but piercing, so profound, so bitter, so furious, so everything that I couldn't understand it, much less be around her. Why so angry? Why? Where did this anger come from. And, why?
Even she didn't know why. There was something underlying everything that she would discover in due time.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
R.I.P. you lousy bastard
"Stan died," Bob wept into the phone at 2 a.m. one year ago tonight.
He was standing in the intensive care hell of the Clinica de Merida where Eva had just fainted and Tommy was dealing with the bureaucracy. One minute a holy soul, the next minute a lifeless carcass to be removed post haste from the premises.
Eva and I didn't know Stan was a lousy bastard at that moment. We found that out later. The boys knew it, though, and that is what prompted their year of scamming dangerously. The ultimate high for a scammer is to outscam another scammer.
Whilst Eva was being scammed by the boys, we found out that Stan was the biggest scammer of all of them, having scammed Eva for the entire 30 years of their marriage.
Stan's paper thin lungs collapsed during the panicked intubation for one last heroic measure. He had signed a DNR, but as many people do, ignored his carefully thought out plan and died violently instead of peacefully.
Two weeks earlier my phone jolted me at 1:30 a.m. It was Bob. "Call an ambulance for Stan!" he cried. "We don't speak Spanish and Eva doesn't know who to call."
Stupid gringos. And stupider still, Tommy tipped the volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver 10 pesos when they arrived at the E.R. Free mbulance service and he gave him one dollar?
"I can't believe you did that," I said, enraged. "I'll take care of it," Tommy said. "I'll go to the Red Cross and make a big donation." A lie. He always said he'd take care of it, and never did. He had no cash, remember?
Bob and Tommy's work had come to fruition. Their subtle, silent poisoning of Stan hastened his death from an already complicated case of pulmonary fibrosis. Yes, we now know that's what you did. He lunched and dined at your house and you slipped things into his beer, his food, turning him into a crazy man before he died.
At the end, Stan turned jumpy and impossible. Couldn't be in the house, wanted to be roaming the streets. He wouldn't bathe. He stank. "Take a shower old man," Eva said. "You're not getting into my bed smelling like that. What has gotten into you?"
On his last night on earth, heading towards his death, Stan only wanted to talk to Tommy, to give him all his banking information. Eva couldn't understand why her husband of 30 years wanted to talk to a man he had met only 5 months before. When he did talk to Eva, all he said was, "I've lived a selfish life."
Eva is in Miami now piecing together a new life, trying not to think about the sham of a marriage she had lived. I called her tonight to tell her it was one year ago. She did not care. "The man," she would not call him her husband, "can have all the Chinese hookers he wants in hell."
He was standing in the intensive care hell of the Clinica de Merida where Eva had just fainted and Tommy was dealing with the bureaucracy. One minute a holy soul, the next minute a lifeless carcass to be removed post haste from the premises.
Eva and I didn't know Stan was a lousy bastard at that moment. We found that out later. The boys knew it, though, and that is what prompted their year of scamming dangerously. The ultimate high for a scammer is to outscam another scammer.
Whilst Eva was being scammed by the boys, we found out that Stan was the biggest scammer of all of them, having scammed Eva for the entire 30 years of their marriage.
Stan's paper thin lungs collapsed during the panicked intubation for one last heroic measure. He had signed a DNR, but as many people do, ignored his carefully thought out plan and died violently instead of peacefully.
Two weeks earlier my phone jolted me at 1:30 a.m. It was Bob. "Call an ambulance for Stan!" he cried. "We don't speak Spanish and Eva doesn't know who to call."
Stupid gringos. And stupider still, Tommy tipped the volunteer Red Cross ambulance driver 10 pesos when they arrived at the E.R. Free mbulance service and he gave him one dollar?
"I can't believe you did that," I said, enraged. "I'll take care of it," Tommy said. "I'll go to the Red Cross and make a big donation." A lie. He always said he'd take care of it, and never did. He had no cash, remember?
Bob and Tommy's work had come to fruition. Their subtle, silent poisoning of Stan hastened his death from an already complicated case of pulmonary fibrosis. Yes, we now know that's what you did. He lunched and dined at your house and you slipped things into his beer, his food, turning him into a crazy man before he died.
At the end, Stan turned jumpy and impossible. Couldn't be in the house, wanted to be roaming the streets. He wouldn't bathe. He stank. "Take a shower old man," Eva said. "You're not getting into my bed smelling like that. What has gotten into you?"
On his last night on earth, heading towards his death, Stan only wanted to talk to Tommy, to give him all his banking information. Eva couldn't understand why her husband of 30 years wanted to talk to a man he had met only 5 months before. When he did talk to Eva, all he said was, "I've lived a selfish life."
Eva is in Miami now piecing together a new life, trying not to think about the sham of a marriage she had lived. I called her tonight to tell her it was one year ago. She did not care. "The man," she would not call him her husband, "can have all the Chinese hookers he wants in hell."
Sunday, November 17, 2013
In Chicago
The lapse in time: I've been housesitting in Chicago.
Chicago was supposedly your town, the city you had spent many years in, being young, prosperous careerists. The city where you two met each other. The city where you had a standing reservation at La Vie en Rose each bone chilling New Year's Eve. The city where you drank martinis at the Ritz Carlton, bought suits at Nordstrom's, played with your dogs on the dog beach of Lake Michigan.
Do I believe any of this? Now, everything you ever said is suspect, so skillful were you, are you, at creating fictions.
I rode the buses. I climbed up and down the El steps. I stood on the glass deck of the Sears Tower and looked down at the "city of big shoulders." I walked Michigan Ave. I saw you everywhere and nowhere.
I imagined bumping into you. You were just around every corner. Would you have been shocked? Would you ignore me? Would you be embarrassed? I'd like to think of a sheepish face, a sorrowful, apologetic face. But no, that's not the case, not possible. As close as we had become in our months of five daily conversations, your intimacy was feigned because you harbored a secret the whole time, the secret of sitting on so many lies, living so many lies.
What I say is this: your city, if it ever was, is a fine city. "Your" Chicago is now mine. It endeared itself to me in all the ways a city can, with spirit, humanity, ebullience. If I saw you today, I would tell you this. I would talk about Gibsons and the Gold Coast, Boystown and Old Town. I would revel in every word you could say about everything Chicago.
But, not. No way. No longer. No how. I am poorer for the knowing you. And that, is the saddest thing you can say about another person.
Chicago was supposedly your town, the city you had spent many years in, being young, prosperous careerists. The city where you two met each other. The city where you had a standing reservation at La Vie en Rose each bone chilling New Year's Eve. The city where you drank martinis at the Ritz Carlton, bought suits at Nordstrom's, played with your dogs on the dog beach of Lake Michigan.
Do I believe any of this? Now, everything you ever said is suspect, so skillful were you, are you, at creating fictions.
I rode the buses. I climbed up and down the El steps. I stood on the glass deck of the Sears Tower and looked down at the "city of big shoulders." I walked Michigan Ave. I saw you everywhere and nowhere.
I imagined bumping into you. You were just around every corner. Would you have been shocked? Would you ignore me? Would you be embarrassed? I'd like to think of a sheepish face, a sorrowful, apologetic face. But no, that's not the case, not possible. As close as we had become in our months of five daily conversations, your intimacy was feigned because you harbored a secret the whole time, the secret of sitting on so many lies, living so many lies.
What I say is this: your city, if it ever was, is a fine city. "Your" Chicago is now mine. It endeared itself to me in all the ways a city can, with spirit, humanity, ebullience. If I saw you today, I would tell you this. I would talk about Gibsons and the Gold Coast, Boystown and Old Town. I would revel in every word you could say about everything Chicago.
But, not. No way. No longer. No how. I am poorer for the knowing you. And that, is the saddest thing you can say about another person.
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