There I was walking down the beach to prove I was in it again...fucking love...and the worst thing about it was that Ramona was gone, I hadn’t even been able to consummate the ribaldic joy we had felt with some good Latin in and out... It was the only time this had happened to me in a situation that mattered, so this meant traffic unknown for the mind and Doubt would have its way, I mean imagine you’ve just somehow made the most beautiful siren in the Carribean and you can’t even MAKE her...
There was one night in Fido’s I failed to mention watching Ramona and I in love and handcuffs, was a man named Steve Cohen, who thought of himself as something of a cockhorse, as did many of the overweight white men of vacation Belize, mostly because of the contents of their wallets and Steve’s was thick with contents green and American...but Steve was pulled in really by nothing other than his stupid belief that his tinsel-town connections could look good to a young model like miss R, so that he would stay on the sideline, arranging one or two initial and mythical contacts, getting her back to the states on promises, all the while waiting for the slim chance that she would feel so grateful that she would go to bed with him, but in the meantime an opportunity to have a beautiful woman on his side to feed, clothe, and blaxploytate...fucking Hollywood types with money same as the old tired and true stereotypes,...and Steve is buying us beers and Ramona is right on top of his motives and will not talk to him, playing like she doesn’t understand English, which I saw her use more than once when a honkey was hovering too close and firing off tired pickup lyrics, but Steve was nothing but persistent, a jolly-ish round mustachiooed guy with glasses, rather atypical dork in youth, now paying back for years of being bullied by making money and spending it to buy people like us who had some chutzpah...He bothered me, but mostly I could deal with hit after hit because all he wanted to do was talk about Ramona and even Ramona and me, the poet, the poet who was flowers-up-his-ass in love...and what Steve wants to say to me is be careful, for he was once young and in love with a Venezuelan beauty, one who was dedicated like no white woman ever had been, but one that was in constant need of attention and games to keep her ass on fire...this kind of talk goes on for two drunken hours and I am seamed with human kindness, Ramona rarely leaves my right side, interrupts to ask for colonials and matches then zip into my pocket with a quick twist of her hand on my jewels and Steve keeps cutting the balmy steam night air with his Jewish witticisms and me my honkey anecdotes ‘bout truth and poetry and soon enough he’s bought us enough booze to be obscene and out comes his camera, clickclick to take choquitos de tus corazones (pieces of our hearts) He wanted to show his biz pals the piece of Ecuador he talked up...but what he said to appease me was this: you got email I’ll send you the pics...great I says cause I haven’t got a camera and no one, not one of my friends will believe Ramona without stills and my conscience is all snow and pathos and speed...so you see I think of a great thing the great Beethoven said: “He was always my enemy; it is for that reason that I was as good to him as possible.” Steve. He uses money funny. Buying moments better left pure. So I’m remembering all this as I try to hold my mind movie of Ramona as I stumble past Mojo’s Diveshop and Tres Diablos bar, my glass scenes, my computer future picture from Steve, trying to get past the yellow house of Jack and Trudy, the wealthy Minnesotans who owned a golf cart rental shop...Trudy on her porch like most days when she waves down and likes to chitchat in that midwestern blahblah way but real nice, just I have to get by her place and not see a single soul because I hurt and the shuff of my sandals on sand—the sound of my agitation as golf carts and old Toyota van taxis roar by me, trying to concentrate on sublimity, constancy, and perseverance and remember “those who have not yet died first learn to die” because I would need it later on when the whole thing would break down from poetic death threats and mad fat women...
-Michael Price
