“Fuck that guy,” Bernard fumes, “he is a dirty snake.”
For the umpteenth time I knock on the door of the little shack belonging to Ramon and Estoban in Little Havana. It has become routine for me to show up here several times a week trying to establish contact. I did speak to Estoban a few times. He is an emaciated Cuban with a long unkempt beard and hands where the dirt seems to be tattooed. With his narrow eyes squeezed half-closed, he looks like Ho Chi Minh. It is difficult to talk with the shy Estoban. He hardly speaks English, and speaks Spanish in a heavy Cuban accent.
He’s also cagey about giving information. He arrived in the States fifteen years ago and found work as a carpenter. The company went broke and Estoban found himself unemployed and on the street. Since his English was so bad, it was hard to get a new job. On top of that, all his documents were stolen. He started to sleep in Riverside Park and eventually Bernard, who had seen him working around when he still had his job, invited him into the tunnel.
Bernard told me that the guy to talk to is Ramon. He speaks English well and is open to journalists. But I never catch him at home. This time, I see light burning from his wooden shack and his door is ajar. I peep inside and see a figure under the blankets. “Excuse me, Ramon?” I call softly. From under the blankets a man with a woolen cap appears. “I heard you came a couple of times to see me,” Ramon says. “Take a seat.”
I sit down on a milk crate in the corner of his place. Ramon has a frugally decorated home. Besides the bed, there is a little table with some candles and a statue of the Madonna. In the corner are a couple of old radios that he’s repairing to sell on the streets. A bare bulb on the ceiling lights the room. Cardboard boxes nailed to the inside walls provide an extra layer of insulation against the cold.
Ramon doesn’t like interviews. “What are we getting out of it? The only one getting better is Bernard. He makes thousands of dollars.” I manage to convince Ramon to talk with me and we make a deal. Next time, I will bring him half a carton of cigarettes and a tasty sandwich.
“Everybody here in Little Havana is a Marielito,” Ramon explains and gives me a small lesson in contemporary history. It was 1980. A group of people who wanted asylum had fled to the Peruvian embassy in Havana. The world was surprised that Castro let the group leave and announced that everybody who wished was free to leave the country and come to the U.S.
The smart Castro then gave criminals and other antisocial elements the choice between leaving or staying to rot in jail. The enormous stream out of the port of Mariel became known as the Mariel boatlift.
“Latinos say all Marielitos were criminals,” Ramon continues. “But they are just envious because Cubans are very successful in the U.S. When I hit bottom, I didn’t get any support from the Latino community. They were snickering with schadenfreude.”
In Cuba, Ramon taught philosophy. “I didn’t want to teach Marxism-Leninism the rest of my life for nearly nothing,” he says. “So I grabbed the chance to start all over in the U.S.” Ramon wound up in Union City, a city just across the Hudson, the biggest community of Cuban expats after Miami. He started a business in car parts, and soon had a few men working for him.
“But then the problems began. I started doing coke. And lost everything I had.” Ramon says it without regret, as though he has accepted his fate. “I don’t blame society. I had all the chances I could ever dream of. I could have been a millionaire, but now I live in a tunnel between rats.”
He lights up a cigarette and pulls the blanket over himself. “Every homeless person only has himself to blame,” he says as if he were a New Republican. “I tell everybody: Don’t do drugs. You wind up in the street.”
Ramon says he wants to write poetry. “I am waiting for inspiration. But I will never get that here. Watch my lips: Before the winter I want to be out of here.”
When I return some time later to bring him the promised cigarettes, I see him outside in the park, taking a stroll with Estoban. “I don’t live no more in the tunnel,” Ramon says proudly. He went to a temporary shelter and is undergoing rehab.
At the end of the day, Bernard is smoking crack at his place and he invites me in. “I just made you a thermos of coffee,” he says hospitably. His bad temper has disappeared and he is a friendly as can be. He gives me a big bottle of white wine he has found near the high school, maybe a left over from a party. “Saves you a couple of bucks when you want to have your nightcap.” Bernard is getting his pipe ready for another hit of crack. I want to take a photo, but Bernard protests.
“You journalists always focus on our crack abuse. So vicious… Without mentioning the context in which it happens. The media are spreading the idea that crack and coke are the keys to the homeless problem.”
It is difficult to tell just how addicted Bernard is to crack. He denies he is an addict, but every day he smokes at least a bit, most of the time before going to bed. He calls it euphemistically “my nightcap.” He prefers to refer to himself as a recreational crack user, who lights up a pipe after a hard day’s work.
There were times it was different. Bernard started to neglect his primary needs, “but down here you notice pretty quickly when you have gone too far. When you wake up without money, water and you know it’s time to slow down.”
Because he is relatively in control of his crack habit, he’s a harsh judge of the heavy users. “Not the stem, but greed and gluttony brought her down,” he says about the suck monster we always see hanging around on Broadway. “Evil comes from all abuse.”
“Do you want to try it?” Bernard asks amicably. He sees me doubting.
“No, you don’t get hooked after the first time,” he laughs. My curiosity takes the upper hand.
After breathing a few times in and out, I take a hit from the glass pipe that Bernard has prepared for me. I suck the sharp smoke deep inside my lungs and hold my breath as long as possible. After a few seconds I already feel the effect: a strange lucidity that lasts a very short time before it transforms into a laconic melancholy, mixed with a very pleasant dizziness. A few minutes later, these effects are gone, changed into a strong desire for another hit. This is what crack smokers call thirst.
With greedy eyes, I see Bernard pulling another vial out of his pocket. We smoke a few more pipes. Later, when all of it is gone, we start the pathetic part of the crack ritual. With metal sticks, we scrape the residue from the glass stems and wriggle the last crumbs out of the vials with a tooth pick to make a last hit. I keep the lighter so long at the stem it burns red. I nearly burn my lungs with the hot smoke.
It is a very modest high, caused more by a lack of oxygen to the brain because I have held my breath for nearly ninety seconds. It is time for a decision. Are we going to get a few extra hits up top or are we going to sleep? “Bedtime,” says Bernard.
7. THE SECRET LIFE OF PLANTS
After a long journey that started in the Netherlands city of Leiden, the Mayflower hit shore in 1620 on what is currently a popular gay holiday destination, Cape Cod. On board were religious refugees, the Pilgrim Fathers. It was a tough winter for the boat people. Hunger and disease killed half of the new asylum seekers. It would have been worse, were it not for friendly Indians who brought food to the Pilgrims and introduced them to new agricultural techniques in the unknown land. For instance, the Indians taught the newcomers to wrap a herring around corn seeds before planting. The rotting fish would provide the corn with all the necessary nutrients. Thus it happened; the next autumn, the Pilgrims had an incredibly rich harvest.
To give thanks for their help, the Pilgrims threw a big harvest party, the first Thanksgiving dinner. The Indians were royally treated to turkeys, corn bread, fried fish, and freshly fermented wine.