The Warriors of the Third World

By Zach Mountford

“I didn’t do it and if I did I confess.” ~ Artie M.
“You got to go to that lonesome valley, cause can’t nobody go for you”
~ Old Negro Spiritual

The lost pirates still remain among us, the last of the truly free. Vinny Velvet, a young wandering thinker with a mind for danger, romantic visions of the world, and a belly for drinking finds himself submerged in the deep dark culture of the dangerously violent and volatile hot sun of the Caribbean world, where anything can happen...

Hiding from reality in Key West, the opportunity for quick cash erases the overtones of extreme personal danger in a smuggling run to Jamaica. A master sailor, Vinny scoots the craft to an uncertain fate on an uncertain island...where the Anglo world collides with the mysteries of the Caribbean. When the reality of humanity hits like a ton of bricks Vinny discovers a true friend and reliable wingman. But things are not always as they seem...

After a double-cross and a drug deal gone wrong in Aruba, Vinny must pick up the pieces and form a new identity with what recourses he has around him on the island of the Dominican Republic. Fortunately there are always plenty of drugs, beautiful women, and weapons around to fill anyone’s pocket. Along the way a colorful cast of characters help to find the truth, whatever that may be, until chance knocks right next door.

Meanwhile, a War of the centuries has been fueling in Haiti after hundreds of years as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the last remnants of slavery. The world and opportunity call on the most violent Gangs and ruthless Men from Jamaica, Aruba, Dominican Republic, and Haiti to mass together in an explosion of theological, political, meteorological, and personal forces unseen in the world. Who will survive and will they have the answers...?

Find out in: “The Warriors of the Third World”!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zach Mountford
• Release date: May 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301512911

Zach Mountford

Zach Mountford was born in Georgia, raised in Florida and North Carolina. With an early interest in books and writing, he graduation from the University of North Carolina Wilmington with a degree in Creative Writing in 2006, after which he traveled between New York, Europe, Key West and the Dominican Republic exploring and soaking up inspiration for his work. Having worked as a copy writer, film production assistant, framer, roofer, real estate agent, plumber and farmer he found that,"Fiction is the only true thing left." His first novel, Warriors of the Third World , was recently published as an eBook; he's also published works in Topsail Magazine and Atlantis as well as copy for radio, television and print for several well known companies. Lonesome Hearts is a collection of short fiction written between 2003 and 2012 and is also now available. "We're all trying to find that thing, that one unnameable thing that drives all of us that we search for, hone our skills and build for our entire lives. We look within, we look to others, we look everywhere with no real compass to go by besides our hearts and minds. Those that are lucky to find it often fare worse than those that never do." He Currently lives in Wilmington, North Carolina where he works as an Entrepreneur, Construction Consultant and a small scale farmer raising pigs, chickens and cows. He continues work on his 2nd (Port City Republic) and 3rd (The Southern Smugglers) novels.

Book preview

Warriors of the Third World

A Novel of the Caribbean

By: Zachary W. Mountford

Copyright © 2013 Zachary W. Mountford

Smashwords Edition

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or places is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Part 1: The Beginning

Part 2: Into the Caribbean

Part 3: The Island of Haiti

Part 4: A Taste of Love and a Touch of Hate

Part 5: Aruba Bound

Part 6: The Proposition

Part 7: The Massacre of the Dominican Republic

Part 8: The Enlightenment

Part 9: Perparing for War

Part 10: Vinny’s Catharsis

Part 11: Old Haiti vs. New Haiti

Part 12: Farewell Friend

Part 13: The Final Battle

Part 14: The Aftermath, The Rebirth

"I didn’t do it and if I did I confess."

~ Artie M.

"You got to go to that lonesome valley, cause can’t nobody go for you"

~ Old Negro Spiritual

The lost pirates still remain among us, the last of the truly free. Vinny Velvet, a young wandering thinker with a mind for danger, romantic visions of the world, and a belly for drinking finds himself submerged in the deep dark culture of the dangerously violent and volatile hot sun of the Caribbean world, where anything can happen…

Hiding from reality in Key West, the opportunity for quick cash erases the overtones of extreme personal danger in a smuggling run to Jamaica. A master sailor, Vinny scoots the craft to an uncertain fate on an uncertain island…where the Anglo world collides with the mysteries of the Caribbean. When the reality of humanity hits like a ton of bricks Vinny discovers a true friend and reliable wingman. But things are not always as they seem…

After a double-cross and a drug deal gone wrong in Aruba, Vinny must pick up the pieces and form a new identity with what recourses he has around him on the island of the Dominican Republic. Fortunately there are always plenty of drugs, beautiful women, and weapons around to fill anyone’s pocket. Along the way a colorful cast of characters help to find the truth, whatever that may be, until chance knocks right next door.

Meanwhile, a War of the centuries has been fueling in Haiti after hundreds of years as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere and the last remnants of slavery. The world and opportunity call on the most violent Gangs and ruthless Men from Jamaica, Aruba, Dominican Republic, and Haiti to mass together in an explosion of theological, political, meteorological, and personal forces unseen in the world. Who will survive and will they have the answers…?

Find out in: The Warriors of the Third World!

Part 1

The Beginning

A marvelous sun was rising over the green tree cluttered hills of the Dominican Republic—illuminating the sleepy island mansion with bright rays of sunshine like a gentle nudge from a peaceful slumber. Vinny woke from a beautiful dream of clouds and sun, moon and stars beyond the realm of consciousness and—upon opening his blood crusted eyes—slammed back into a world of pain and reality trying to catch his breath…there was blood everywhere. Dripping and splattered masses of red stuck out disgustingly in contrast to the white stucco walls and shiny marble floors of the mansion like a hog had been slaughtered and ran amok for a day before dying. It looked like a beautiful painting of a warm tropical paradise morbidly desecrated by crimson oils by a careless artist.

He lay alone in the far right corner near a table assessing his wounds and thinking. The smell of burnt flesh and gunpowder still loomed in the air like a bad memory the mind refused to retrieve. Smells of shit and intestines attracted small bugs that crawled over the copious pools of blood and landed on the still wet wounds of the dead. As he glanced to his left it was clear Ramala was dead, or at least he should be after taking loads of shots to the chest and two solid pops to the face. The dark dead man was not breathing or moving. He continued to survey the room from his numb back and saw that there were bodies scattered about the area like lost pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. He could tell the identity of a few bodies, but the others were far too mangled to recognize. Why were there so many guns, dead people, and sharp weapons in one room? He wondered.

Still, he was lucky. There were only two shots in him that he could feel. He felt terrible pains in his chest and jaw, and his breathing was steady but difficult. The smells of rotten death polluted his nostrils and he tried to breath through his mouth to avoid throwing up and adding yet another putrid odor to the room. He wasn’t dying and certainly wasn’t ready to die. He looked down and noticed that Blanco’s knife was stuck in his leg for reasons that he could not clearly explain or recall as the mixture of rum and remnants of cocaine made his head spin and did little to numb the pain adding more to the confusion. Shouldn’t pull the knife out, he thought, might bleed to death. As he looked around Nesto Azuela was not in sight, either he was gone or one of the mutilated pieces of flesh on the floor near by. What now? He couldn’t remember who let off the first shot but it was a very symbolic noise when it popped. Like the start of a race to see who could draw the most blood and end the most lives.

The sight was sickening. Soulless human shells flanked him with dead eyes and gaping mouths in an uncomfortable silence like a funeral home. There were two dead children with their mouths taped and hands tied looking with vacant eyes as if pleading for another breath. Others were crumpled in corners with weapons still in their lifeless arms with common red wounds were their souls must have escaped. His heart began pounding and feelings of survivor guilt began to crop up in his head conflicted with the unmistakable joy of being alive. Where was the money and more importantly, where was Angela? He hoped against hope she was not among the brutalized bodies.

Soon he could feel the searing lead burning in his left shoulder and right arm like a stab from a hot ice pick and it felt as if someone had smashed his jaw with a spiked hammer from a possible face shot. Oddly he still had a tight grip on his .44 magnum as if it were the last artifact of a forgotten world… his world. He began to painfully crawl over toward Ramala and as soon as he made his way closer he could smell the marijuana scent that leaked from the dead man’s newly punctured lungs and the postmortem fecal matter and piss expulsion that all the dead had in common. Soon, his wide, white, and slightly bloodshot eyes came into view with a locked sense of determination and shocked surprised eternally burned into them. Blood dripped from his tragic open mouth and from the two holes in his head. His natty dreadlocks lay scattered around him like a black medusa frozen by its own deathly reflection in eternal stone.

Vinny’s stomach was in no shape to turn. He could vividly recall his and Ramala’s strange meeting and odd tribulations that brought them to this very spot of his untimely, but certainly fated death.

He rolled over and reached in his pocket for a crushed pack of Marlboro Lights. The cigarette he retrieved from his crushed pack was bent like a cold French fry. He lit it and inhaled deeply as the smoke trailed from the broken side and exhaled with great pleasure. What little blood left in his body was pleased with its nicotine fix and he lay back looking at the ceiling and began to run the events that lead up to this horrible bloodbath in his head. Luis Blanco, Ramala, Nesto Azuela, and he, Vinny Velvet were a solid team. How could something so good, so calculated and certain end up so bad?

* * *

Vinny was born on the small island of Key West in the year nineteen hundred and eighty-two from his mother, a beautiful artist from Detroit who had always been drawn to darker men, and a pot-smuggling Portuguese bartender from Brooklyn who migrated to the islands like many other Vietnam veterans of his generation. They were a rugged adventurous family and lived on a 40-foot sailboat for the first fourteen years of young Vincent’s life. Since they had no television aboard, he was forced, rather easily, into the literary world at a very young age. He was introduced to Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, Hemingway, Jules Vern, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, Faulkner, and many others before he ever set foot inside a classroom allowing for uninterrupted mental cultivation not common in his day and age. He also took great pleasure in writing as a pass time and a way to keep record.

His cohabitation with the sea blossomed into a love and fascination with maritime books and adventures of pirates and early European explorers who sailed the seas of uncertainly for good or evil. These concepts of good and evil were often confusing upon many nights of thinking and reading. It was all about perception, he told himself as a young man. He would often ask his father for guidance in his torn thinking on evnenings when his paternal guide wasn’t drinking and asked him.

Father what is the difference between good and evil? Vincent would ask.

Those who believe in their cause will always see it as right and those that oppose them as wrong. No matter the atrocities they commit or are commissioned to commit, the purpose driven mind can never be told to believe anything else but what it is certain of. Vincent Sr. would always smile at his son’s curiosity of such interesting, deep, yet very basic human compulsions.

Is taking a life wrong father?

Only in the heat of passion and hate, never in the wake of an order. Vincent sat with his father at the helm of the sailboat and watched the sun set over the beautiful western sea. Vincent’s mother would always accuse him of thinking too much, but she also became proud at the mind of her young boy, who would no doubt become a man very soon. His father’s answers always had a philosophical tone to them, but he often became short and irritated when he had been drinking.

Dad, where do we go when we die? Vince might ask.

Hell, he’d answer. Drink up, boy, .Other times he simply wouldn’t speak to his son, deciding to spend his day at the helm alone with his drink.

Fishing, diving, the backbreaking repetition of boat maintenance, and cooking were his responsibilities in the early years of sailing and he slowly began to master the arts of the sea. By age nine he was navigating the north Caribbean waters better than any sailor his age. Sailing kept the Velveto family on the move and in constant interaction with new cultures and customs from Central America, Cuba, down to South America, and east towards the Lesser Antilles. These contacts with other cultures refined him and allowed young Vincent to develop a worldly perspective in his most impressionable years. He had seen the cane fields of the Dominican Republic and marveled at the ruins of the Aztecs in Central America. He had been to carnival twice in Trinidad and drank palm wine with pretty black girls that loved to giggle and let him fondle their little brown bodies in Antigua. The bright lights of fires and Voodoo ceremonies had taken place right before his amazed eyes in Haiti under the fearful grip his mother and her assuring whispers of it’s alright.

These early years were marked by many significant memories but he could most vividly remember a bright morning off the North coast of Cuba about thirty miles out when he and his father were fishing.

Papa, when will I be big enough to catch the really big fish? he asked.

Sooner than you are ready son, he said squinting from the sun. But remember one thing, have no fear once you have him hooked and never quit…ever.

But what if I hurt him papa?

Pain is one of the only sure things in life son, he won’t hesitate to hurt you if he can so you must fight hard, he replied. Just then Young Vincent got a bite on his hook and became excited beyond belief.

I got one! I got one! he yelled.

Easy, don’t be jerky or you’ll lose him. You have to show patience and superiority when you have him or he’ll know he has you beat, his father told him in that same calm majestic way he had about him when he was sober.

He continued to jerk the line, unable to suspend gratification, and pulled frantically with his first big fish. His imagination drew dozens of images of what it might look like.

How big do you think he is?

Don’t even concern yourself with that now, just concentrate on getting him in. He continued to pull excitedly and the line broke with a final snap. He began to cry and asked what happened.

You must be patient son, his father patted him on the head tussling his dark hair. They’ll be other fish. He fixed the line with a hook, rig, and weight for another attempt. Remember son, never quit…ever.

Though they were a happy family, living on a small boat can often feel like a jail cell and problems always arise. The split was tough on Young Vincent as a child since his family had worked as a team his whole life. The disagreements started small over nothing more than a differing opinion and soon developed into drunken slap fights just outside of the cabin where Vincent slept. His father began drinking too much and had impregnated several other women in obscure islands over his years of infidelity to his wife. Vincent saw his father become disillusioned and sad as the years passed always rushing off to another adventure and putting his family in danger more than once from shady trades with black revolutionaries from the southern coast of Cuba. His father had moved bricks of curious white powder under his mother’s distressful pleas for him to consider his family. Young Vincent soon began wishing that there was something he could do to make everything the way it had once been. Time changes everything, his mother would say and it soon became a lesson well learned for Vincent.

After two years of moody silence, his father’s odd disappearances, vicious fights and various affairs on both sides, Vincent’s mother decided to get away for the sake of Vince’s future. She didn’t want to raise another bandit. When he kissed his father goodbye on a warm summer morning, he knew it was the last time he would ever see him. The feeling was so terrifying that he held it in and forced a smile. His father’s eyes were sad and dark and as Vincent looked back from the taxi he saw his father look up at the sky and shake his head, perhaps wondering what he had done. All he could remember was crying uncontrollably on the ride to Ohio. His father, Vinchenzo Sr, died some years later in a run in with Columbian gun smugglers and the United States Coast Guard, the news report did not specify details and neither did his mother. Your father had to make a living was all she said when he questioned her about it. Still, Young Vincent went into his later teens with his father’s spirit, lessons and presence within him.

He and his mother, Mary, took up residence in Cleveland, Ohio with his grandmother—a quiet happy woman content with puzzles and knitting—in the city. The weather was cold and confusing in its relentless icy months of misery. Ohio was the exact opposite of the Caribbean like black to white. Nothing in the place excited him and the big buildings and masses of blank faced people churning through their lives like drugged rats were depressing. He would often turn to his mother for assurance that this was not a permanent home. Vincent always saw his mother as an amazingly strong figure and her ability to persevere always inspired him.

Now that we are starting anew, you must never forget who you are or where you come from. Be strong. Or else… She said kissing him on the cheek and lovingly patting his backside. He could never understand her ability to endure life in all of its harshness but he tried to incorporate it in his own life as best he could. It is indeed tough for a woman to raise a man and his mother made it seem like a breeze. In keeping her sense of humor she taught him that life could be fun under any circumstances. She always made sure food was on the table and hummed songs happily to herself all the while. She was strict but fair and only irrational when she tried to quit smoking. Their weirdness helped them adapt to life on land.

After a year of getting established Young Vincent became Vince and began attending high school as a freshman. He often felt like an outcast having never before experienced organized education in the traditional sense or worn so many miserable layers of clothing. He missed the sun. English came easy, as did history and science but math was a stumbling block. Charm seemed to be his best subject and he was saddened when there was no academic recognition for such a gift. Since he stood a slim six feet and some change young ladies had no difficulty noticing him. His hair was dark black and his skin was a deep olive and clear thanks to his parent’s Portuguese blood that would never let him bubble in the white option on formal exams.

Much of the assigned literature was not new to Vince and it often bored him. This allowed him time to observe his odd surroundings and pursue female love. It seemed that the other guys in school were on a lower level of understanding life than he was, shortsighted and insecure. They called women bitches, sluts, and bragged about how easy they were to get into bed, when he was certain they had not bedded them at all. His heightened senses and keenly developed ability to read people told him that they were lying and covering their self-doubting, inexperienced sexuality under a facade of hard masculinity that they lacked. He, on the other hand, took a woman to the side and told her exactly how he felt about her; her beautiful eyes, a genuine smile that she carried, and a body that drove a man like him to spend all of his money and time on whatever she deemed fit. It wasn’t hard and he didn’t even have to say much.

His poetic ability and hardened heart lead him to rapping and writing lyrics with the local black kids downtown in the lonely streets at night learning to love marijuana and steeling cars. He only did it for the thrill and the adventure. There was something about the loneliness of his fellow thieves and their hilarious yet oppressive life-loving observations of the world that Vince felt kin to, even if only by spirit and not origin. He soon became Vinny Velvet from the mouths of his new friends. College didn’t interest him and his lack of direction and unfulfilled spirit for adventure and danger had him making dirty money boosting cars, smoking weed, and selling parts. Here he found comfort with handguns and knives. These implements of murder and intimidation thrilled him to no end. The money wasn’t bad and he brought home enough to where his mother could quit her second job at the coffee shop. Nonetheless, her face was always sad and troubled when she saw his cuts and bruises when he returned home in the night.

What happened baby?

Nothing Ma, just slipped, he’d say. Go back to bed.

Slipped my ass, go in the bathroom and wash your face, I’ll get some peroxide and maybe a cupcake, she said. If you’re lucky.

Ma I don’t need a cup cake, he said. Is there any beer?

No beer Mister, she said. I won’t support that, I love you too much.

I’ll be fine.

Just go in there and wash your face and eat the goddamn cupcake! She smiled but Vinny could tell it hurt her to see him hurt.

Such a life of crime and drugs can never last and Vinny was arrested at 20 on charges of Assault and possession of an unlicensed firearm and sentenced to 60 days in jail and two years probation. Time in county prison was very reflective for Vinny, but it did not reform him or pull him away from his romantic idea of crime. If anything his time inside made it more appealing. He heard con stories and listened with amazed attention to the odd, disgusting, unfortunate, and sad explanations for their incarceration. He read a lot in jail dwelling in Marxism and Kant, Descartes and Freud’s philosophical and psychological writings along with a slew of corny adventure novels and Steven Crane’s works. Upon his release his mother decided it would be best for him to leave Cleveland and his surroundings and turn him loose to become his own man away from the watchful eye of his mother. It took her only a short time to realize the apron strings had to be cut. She sent him to his aunt, her sister’s house in Key West on the grounds that he would write her every month and call at every opportunity along with reporting to his probation officer. He kissed his mother sadly and told her he would be all right and that he would write and keep her in his thoughts as he somberly wiped her tears away.

You made me the man I am, Ma, Vinny said trying to be strong.

Make me proud baby, just make me proud, Mary cried and covered her mouth. Vinny thought it was not just sadness for his leaving that made her cry. It was the fact that he had become a man, made some mistakes, and now decided to change for the better in the vastness of the world and its endless opportunities. Vinny kissed her on the lips and hopped on the dirty greyhound bus.

He packed up and shipped out and begin his new life back were he started. On the bus ride down he watched as the world slowly as it went from high and cold to low and hot. Besides a creepy old man next to him who kept feeling his bicep and slurping his drool through claims that his sons had never grown so strong, the ride was very nice. Vinny’s excitement was undeniable.

Key West

Key West was and still is a strange and interesting place to see. Cayo Hueso, they called it, Bone Island. Wreckers and thieves founded the island, which didn’t have a steady source of fresh water until after World War II, yet people wander down in search of something astounding and life affirming. No one is sure what that something is but they are certain that it can be found at the last stop in the continental United States.

People of every creed, color, and walk of life mingle peacefully together or at least under the façade of peace. Cubans from generations ago continue to set their roots deep in the island, Haitians work along with Conchs at every City occupation among, blacks, whites, Asians, Czechoslovakians…while tourists from cruise ships around the world snap pictures. Middle class citizens work hard at family businesses, some of which are renowned and others that are obscure and drug dealers of every race push their product in an inherited attempt to pay the high price of living in an ageless cycle of distorted hope. Gays decorate the expensive houses of rich folks who retire after long lives of progress and financial stability to live out their final years on this two by five mile island with bad beaches. The streets and parks formerly littered with passive and aggressive bums babbling their solutions to the human condition which usually involve booze, slowly begin to dwindle under new city laws; junkies mope around sniffing for a fix, and prostitutes subtly sell their body and dignity to the highest bidder. All this as passersby enjoy the tropical weather and locals complain. But most of all people try to get by. Downtown Duval Street is always alive with music and people drinking merrily or violently depending on the mood.

Strangely, all of these groups remain tolerant of each other and a sense of general human oneness can be felt in the air and on every skinny street. Even the dogs and cats of the island are certainly islanders themselves with mischievous apathy for the world. Though much of the original magic and exclusivity has gone from Key West it still held a strong history in Vinny’s life as well as countless others. Perhaps it is the excess of drink, drugs, and odd lifestyles that hold the island together making people indifferent, while ironically, at the same time attributes to its destruction. There is something in the air that makes people feel like they are always on vacation and chickens run wild and protected in the streets.

Aunt Cindy was a free spirit type aloof to the troubles of the world. She and her husband Don gave him guidance and a place to stay. They knew his father before Vinny was born and he loved hearing the stories of his antics as a young man, allowing him to develop a better idea of who he was. Don would get a few Budweiser’s and whiskeys in him and drift into deep retrospective stories about Vinchenzo Sr. and the times they had in their youth.

I can remember way back when me and your old man were in the service in Vietnam. We were young, younger than you even Vinny. Oh we saw some terrible things in those jungles that made me wonder why God even lets the world go on like it does. He took a sip of his drink and Vinny watched his old sad eyes drift back into the past, to a different time.

I can remember this one time a little kid came running up to us naked and screaming, covered in blood and holding a grenade. Your old man and me didn’t know what to do, but your pop shot that boy before he got closer. Saved our lives. It broke him up real good for a while after that. He just looked empty for a long time and I don’t know if it ever left him. None of those terrible things left any of us kids. People aren’t supposed to see such horror and killing, ever. I never even saw the same light in his eyes until the day you were born. There was something special and terrible about that place. Luckily, they took us off patrol and put us behind a bar in Dnang, where me and your old man made a fortune in quarters by selling cups of orange juice with vodka wiped around the rim of the glass with a bar rag to marines who acted drunk anyways. Times got a little better after that. I miss your old man, Vinny. Don was a good guy and had lost a leg in the war that was never far from his mind.

But I tell you, nobody was as magnanimous as he was. He could get people on his side no problem. People flocked to him and he had a presence that always made you feel comfortable, wanted and welcome. I remember when you were born we would sit at the Half shell raw bar and feed you shrimp and play cards while we passed you around. You only shit on Oggy. I’m serious; you shit on him three times in one day. I got the joke and left on account you were bad luck! Don laughed at the recollection and turned on the television with a smile.

Vinny, as he now like to be called, found a steady job working at the fish docks behind the Half-shell Raw Bar making $100 a day. Not bad for a young man just starting out. It was easy work and mostly consisted of building traps, hauling lobster crates to the bar, smoking cigarettes, and bullshitting with his Haitian co-workers that always sang songs and smiled. He rode out his two-year probation at the dock and stayed out of trouble as he saved money for his foggy but optimistic future. He hadn’t written anything besides a few letters to his mother since he left Cleveland.

Two years went quickly and uneventfully and soon he had enough money saved at the end that he was able to move out of his aunt’s place—with great thanks and praise for their hospitality— and into a nice pad off of Duval Street.

It was a one-room flat with clean running water and a view of the street from the second floor. The room had a bed, a kitchen with a gas stove, and a small closet for his few cloths, nothing fancy. He stacked his library of acquired books anywhere he could and he usually kept the place pretty clean since he was used to the maintenance of his living quarters. There were a few exotic plants that Vinny had on his small porch and some days he would just sit out there and watch the people go by and smoke a bunch of cigarettes or read, wondering where they were going, what they were thinking. Some days he would write short stories in blue ink in his spiral notebook that he never completed. He liked the privacy of having his own place and he cooked more often than going out since he enjoyed the luxury of discount seafood. The smell of sautéed yellowtail with butter and garlic with steamed asparagus on the side always drifted out to the street producing shouts from the curious.

Once in a while he would mingle with the crowd on Duval Street and have a few drinks in the bars and mingle with the characters there. He always had his eye out for a special lady that sparked his interest for the night. Sense of humor, a pretty face, and a nice round bottom always seemed to be a winning formula, but not always. Once a successful find was made they would walk the short distance back to his place and talk, smoke a little weed, and gently rub each other down with lotion or oil before making love or sometimes just sleep. He soon came to the conclusion that sex was the only tangible form of love and purity that a man and a woman can share (or a man and two women!). Now don’t be mistaken, he didn’t take home just any drunken female who thought she was ready for such a blessing since his tastes in women had changed from blind quantity to a need for mental stimulation and quality.

The bars were often full of lustfully curious women but they were also home to some remarkable people. He met and befriended Pete, who was a Vietnam veteran with no home and nothing but two mean skinny dogs to his name: ebony and ivory. He still brandished his USMC tattoo and told similar stories as Don’s from the jungles of South East Asia that could have been fiction, but it didn’t