Don't Feed the Natives

By Frank Genao

A young man and a hitchhiker take a John Deere riding lawn mower throughout the Dominican Republic searching for his friend and the meaning of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Frank Genao
• Release date: Apr 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311661234

Frank Genao

I've been a bartender for more than thirty years in Norway, England, Dominican Republic, the U.S, and on various planets in the Milky Way galaxy. Before that, I was employed on various cruise lines, cut meat at a slaughter factory, worked as a newspaper boy, a petrol pump attendant, a waiter, a fluffer for the porn industry, and worked for several mentally insane restaurant & bar owners--some from outside our solar system. I began writing as a release valve from the insanity of bartending and watching people sit at the bar and speak to their pets in baby talk. My writings have been a source of mild amusement for family, friends, and customers too lazy to walk down the street and purchase a newspaper. I've also written for mentally challenged friends, fellow slackers, and compulsive losers seeking help in securing employment through fabricating outrageous tales of intergalactic travel on their resumes. Bartending and cutting grass is what I do for a living, but it’s not who I am.

Book preview

DON'T FEED THE NATIVES!

Fear and Loathing in the Dominican Republic

Meets

Zen and the Art of Riding Lawn Mower Maintenance

_____________________

by Frank Genao

This book is a work of fiction. Only the names of celebrities and song titles are real. All of the other people, places, stories and events in this book are completely fictional. Any similarity to any real person, place, identity, experience or event is purely coincidental.

©Copyright 2015 Frank Genao

All Rights Reserved

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Design and E-Book Formatting:

Fearless Literary Services

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1 ▪ The Caribbean

2 ▪ The Rocketman

3 ▪ Lost in Space

4 ▪ The Loco Taxi and Lady Boy

5 ▪ Federico and Family and Urban Guerrilla Farming

6 ▪ Rocketman

7 ▪ The town of Loco

8 ▪ Loco

9 ▪ Federico and the Poker Game

10 ▪ Federico and the Tooth Fairy and Coffee

11 ▪ The Kon-Tiki

12 ▪ Federico

13 ▪ Erika

14 ▪ Federico and Orchids and Coffee

15 ▪ The Dominican Republic and Federico

16 ▪ The Spider Web and John Deere

17 ▪ My 1969 John Deere Lawn Mower Road Trip

18 ▪ Navigating the Highway on a John Deere Riding Lawn Mower

19 ▪ Highway Plaza

20 ▪ Tina at 10:45 a.m.

21 ▪ Route 21 and Jesus Juice and Catnip

22 ▪ Route 21

23 ▪ Route 21 at 2:30 p.m.

24 ▪ Erika

25 ▪ Gallera and the Cock Fighting Ring

26 ▪ Highway 21 at 3:15 p.m.

27 ▪ The Rocketman

28 ▪ Route 21 and Aspirin and Jesus Juice and Catnip

29 ▪ Route 21 and Coffee

30 ▪ Highway 21 and Freedom

31 ▪ Highway 21 and Coffee at 5:45 p.m.

32 ▪ Kamilla’s Vagina

33 ▪ Cabarete Café

34 ▪ Suicide Mission

35 ▪ Tina

36 ▪ Cabarete Poem and Dogs

37 ▪ Big Frank and Dogs

38 ▪ The Cabarete and the Doors’ song, Riders on the Storm

39 ▪ Rocketman and Bob Ross

40 ▪ Cabarete and Mormons

41 ▪ Rocketman and the Church of Embrace your Insanity

42 ▪ Cabarete and Coffee

43 ▪ Tina’s Philosophy

44 ▪ More Food for the Dogs

45 ▪ Jehovah’s Witnesses

46 ▪ Dogs

47 ▪ Departure from Cabarete

48 ▪ Driving down Highway 5

49 ▪ The Rocketman

50 ▪ Rio San Juan and Jasimy and Prostitution

51 ▪ Jasimy

52 ▪ Las Terrenas (the three-legged dog)

53 ▪ More about Las Terrenas (the three legged dog)

54 ▪ Highway 133

55 ▪ The Dominican Republic

56 ▪ A Mountain Road and Federico’s House

57 ▪ Magical Mystery Tour

58 ▪ Federico’s house

59 ▪ Federico and Coffee

60 ▪ Attitude and the Garden of Eden

1 ▪ The Caribbean

I’m 10,000 feet above an island in the Caribbean and descending fast. This descent is not unlike a bird falling out of the sky after being shot with buckshot. There’s a lot of air turbulence, and the plane’s going side to side, and up and down. Beverages, vomit, and pillows fly through the cabin. There’s a large missionary group seated around me, and many of them have started to weep. Several clutch their rosaries and moan. Quite a few are holding hands and praying aloud. More than a few have gone into a trance. A young, attractive female missionary, from Ohio, who is seated next to me, has rolled her big blue eyes into the back of her head and she is speaking in tongues.

I laugh and hold her arm. I sip my fifth Cuba Libre as our plane sinks into chaos and mayhem. The woman in front of me is rocking back and forth, weeping and praying. I’ve never before witnessed so many people having a nervous breakdown at the same time. The crazy thing is that, on a scale of one to ten, I would rank this air turbulence at seven… eight tops. I’ve experienced worse while driving home drunk after handling rattlesnakes in church.

I stare out my window, mesmerized by the glistening turquoise water below. I daydream about swimming naked beside an island girl with naked tan boobs. She smells of coconut.

Our sideways descent onto the sun-scorched tarmac is adventurous in a kamikaze sort of way. The runway runs east-west, but we’re coming down sideways and with our plane’s nose pointing north-west. Below us, waves shimmer with silver. I see people on the beach, but can’t make out any boobs or nudity. A shame, as I’m hoping to see some natives naked. Yeah, I’m high. In addition to the five Cuba Libres, I’ve recently smoked a bowl of catnip while listening to a smoke detector alarm go off. A stewardess demanded that I take my seat. I’m about as high as one can get without physically leaving the universe.

After we land in the DR, more formally known as the Dominican Republic, an explosion of applause erupts throughout the cabin. People in the back of the plane break into song and dance. A tall mocha-colored transvestite, who appears to be exceedingly inebriated, has taken off her top and is running up and down the isles screaming. The chief stewardess gets on the microphone and says, Everyone remain seated, fasten your seatbelts, and put your tops back on. The local islanders ignore the stewardess. This is their island. They continue to celebrate, passing a bottle of dark rum around the cabin as if they’re on a school field trip.

I love the Caribbean — it’s one of the few places in the world where you can find evangelical religious fever converging with nudity and dark rum in a spectacular fashion that borders on madness.

2 ▪ The Rocketman

I’m here today on a mission. I’m searching for my best friend, who is known as the Rocketman. He disappeared about a year ago after being suspected of robbing banks in San Francisco with a stuffed whale’s penis. Granted, it was a strange accusation to level against someone who is an ordained minister, but knowing the Rocketman and his propensity for the bizarre, those charges demanded some serious consideration.

I was with the Rocketman when he purchased the whale penis at a garage sale. The girth of the whale penis was not wide, but the shaft was long (about seven feet long), and the penis came to a very sharp point. If thrown like a javelin, it could easily impale someone or do serious damage to a hair-do. Yes, this whale’s penis was definitely capable of becoming a weapon of mass destruction.

Fortunately, the Rocketman was not much of a javelin thrower, but his size could be intimidating. His physique revealed that he was gifted in both the areas of athleticism and sloth, while his over-all appearance revealed his gifts at combining both redneck and Beverly Hillbilly attire. He often wore handmade velvet suits made from curtains.

The Rocketman stood 6’1 inches, weighed 240 pounds, and was especially fond of wearing velvet jackets. He was always barefoot; he did not own shoes. He looked as if he’d just arrived from the set of Duck Dynasty or The Beverly Hillbillies TV show. He had hillbilly written all over him, although he was also well-read and extremely artistic.

The Rocketman’s mother, Syltetoy — a Norwegian blond beauty with long strawberry blond hair, a burning red bush, and an aversion to bras and panties — had asked me to find her son. Since I was his best friend, perhaps I’d be able to penetrate whatever long, dark rabbit hole had swallowed him up.

Finding someone like the Rocketman wasn’t going to be easy, not by any stretch of the imagination. For starters, he shuffled between traveling around in a bookmobile that ran on used vegetable oil, to floating on a homemade Kon-Tiki raft made of balsa wood, bamboo, Styrofoam, and thousands of empty plastic gallon jugs that he’d spent years salvaging from people’s trash. He was a professional dumpster diver and proud of it. He was certifiably crazy and proud of this, too. He was a registered voter and proud of it. He carried with him his crazy papers at all times and wore them like a shield of armor.

3 ▪ Lost in Space

The Rocketman has been living like a gypsy for as long as I or anyone else can remember. Jesus Christ himself would be envious of the Rocketman’s simple, Spartan lifestyle. One problem with trying to locate someone like the Rocketman, is that he’s been traveling around aimlessly his entire adult life. There’s no telling where or when he might decide to resurface. Another problem is that he doesn’t own a credit card or mobile phone, or have a fixed address; therefore, he’s completely off of the grid — which makes tracking him down nearly impossible. But the biggest problem with finding someone like the Rocketman is this: if he doesn’t want to be found, he can be more elusive than Jimmy Hoffa.

I really don’t know what to make of his disappearance. Some people think he‘s been abducted by aliens. Others think he’s been kidnapped by religious fundamentalists. I don’t believe either of these for a second. I don’t think aliens or religious fundamentalists would be capable of keeping someone like the Rocketman seated for the entire flight back home. He’s restless, hyperactive, prone to pushing buttons, and loves jumping out of moving vehicles. Anyone who knows the Rocketman knows that Aliens would kick him off their space ship at the very first bus stop.

4 ▪ The Loco Taxi and Lady Boy

It’s suspected that the Rocketman is somewhere here on this island. This is where the Rocketman feels the most comfortable and accepted. This island is his release valve, his salvation, his muse. It’s also where the Rocketman’s father, Federico, is from. The island is Federico’s homeland and first love. Federico completed his medical training on this island before immigrating to the U.S in 1959 to specialize in gorilla gardening, voodoo, and smoking neighborhood cats in his garage. To say that Federico was slightly eccentric would be putting it mildly.

Federico is a food fanatic. But coming from a third world country has led to his having an unorthodox appetite. He’ll eat anything… including people’s house pets. It’s believed that the Rocketman came down to this island to be with his father, as well as to escape the bank robbery charges. I’m here to find out the truth. Was the Rocketman robbing San Francisco banks with a stuffed whale’s penis? How did he manage to evade capture? How did he manage to evade Interpol when leaving the United States? These questions, and more, need answering.

By the way, this isn’t the first time that bank robbery charges have been leveled against the Rocketman, but these are definitely the most preposterous. I had promised his mother, Syltetoy, that I would find out the truth.

When I walk out of the airport, I’m hit by a heat wave that nearly knocks me over. Walking out of an air conditioned freeze box into a humidity index that hovers around 100% is like driving into a concrete barrier without wearing a seatbelt. People are falling down like dominoes all over the parking lot. Outside the airport is Dante’s Inferno. The asphalt is on fire. A woman’s hair has spontaneously caught fire as well, possibly as a result of her Gloria Steinman-size glasses concentrating the sun’s rays onto her eyebrows and bangs. A herd of taxi drivers sprint over to her like wildebeest, fire extinguishers in their hands. They thoroughly douse her with white chemical foam retardant while she flops around on the ground like a dying fish. After, she lays on her back, frozen, looking as if she has just been hit with liquid nitrogen. This is insane.

I walk past her smoking head on my way to the taxi stand. Before I take five steps, however, I’m flooded with a barrage of taxi drivers offering to carry my one, sole, shoulder bag. Some of them still have fire extinguishers still in their hands as they approach me and try to grab my bag from me. This is surreal. It’s complete chaos outside of the airport. It’s every man for himself.

One by one, taxi drivers try grabbing my shoulder bag and tugging it different directions. It’s now a tug-of-war contest. Everyone wants me to get into their cheapie-cheapie cab. There is a lot of pushing and shoving. This is followed by loud arguing, spitting and biting. There are loud, boisterous shouts, followed by the honking of car horns and the waving of machetes in a menacing manner. It’s Armageddon outside the airport. Everyone is pulling me this way and that. I’m not even sure my clothes are still on. I look around in desperation and chose a one-armed taxi driver who looks to be about 65 or 70 years old. He has dark leathery skin and green eyes. This taxi driver, Juanito, insists on carrying my one bag with his only arm. It’s noon, and I wonder how much more bizarre can this day possibly get?

Luckily, I’ve learned to get rid of anything that weighs too much, or is impractical to take on the road. Whenever I accumulate too much stuff to fit into my shoulder bag, I go through every single item and throw away whatever is used the least, or used so seldom that its not worth the burden of carrying it around. What I’m left with are the bare essentials. All told, I possess three changes of clothes, one pair of Keen sandals, condoms, and basic toiletries.

I negotiate with the driver for the taxi fare to the town of Loco. I don’t get into his taxi until the two of us are completely satisfied with the price and have come to a mutual agreement. Only then do I get into his taxi. The Rocketman always told me to always come to a financial agreement before rendering anyone’s services here on this island, otherwise there will be problems. Big problems. Nasty problems. Machete and biting- type problems.

We leave the airport parking lot, and come to the first traffic signal. Before we come to a complete stop, a ten year old boy has the back windshield thoroughly cleaned and is working his way up front. The driver waves the boy off, saying that the windshields have been cleaned just minutes before. The boy ignores him. The taxi driver tries to put on his windshield wipers to keep the boy from cleaning his front windshield, but they don’t work. He tries waving the boy off again by brandishing a gun. It’s to no avail. This kid’s not taking No for an answer. I sink down toward the floorboards by the back seat. Then I try to crawl underneath the driver’s seat while Juanito waves his gun around and curses in Spanish. If there is going to be a gunfight over an unsolicited window cleaning, I do not want to get caught in the middle. I peak over the front seat to see if anyone has been shot.

Before the light turns green, all of the windows have been cleaned. The driver hands the boy five pesos and drives off cursing, waving his gun, and accelerating past an overloaded cart being pulled by an old, broken mule. In the middle of rushing automobile traffic is a Haitian boy pushing an ice cream cart on a bicycle, a donkey that refuses to move, and my driver, Juanito, who is now threatening to shoot anyone who gets in his way.

I take a deep breath and try to relax. This lasts for… oh, I don’t know… ten seconds. On our way to the main highway, we pass dozens of fruit stands. Juanito offers to take me on a day tour, take me to a beach town, take me to the rainforest, to the mountains, to a big brothel, and then he interrupts himself and asks, Wait, you like women…big, beautiful women…easy women?

Sure, I answer, laughing.

You want to meet beautiful, easy women?

Beautiful, easy women do not exist, Juanito! I tell him, chuckling.

How long you on island for? he asks in his heavy Spanish accent.

I don’t know. I’m on a mission. For as long as the mission takes, I guess.

I get you big, beautiful, easy woman who will cook for you, wash your clothes, and take very good care of you while you’re here.

Hum, that sounds awfully nice, Juanito. But honestly, I’m not here on vacation; I’m here on a mission. I’ll probably be moving around a lot, all over the island. I doubt I’ll be in one place for long.

"No problem. You want chauffeur? I get you big, beautiful woman who will drive you wherever you want.

I start laughing. Apparently, big women are all the rage here on this island.

I don’t know, Juanito. Let me think about it for a few days, I answer, chuckling.

I get you whatever you want, cheapy-cheapy! Happy Hour! he says with a big smile.

About an hour into our trip, I ask Juanito to stop at one of the highway stands, where I proceed to drink two coconuts at the cost of 25 pesos each. It’s a steal when you consider the exchange rate is 43 pesos to the dollar.

While I’m standing there drinking, dozens of motor scooters fly by. One of them has two adults with three children riding on it. One of the children is standing up on the floorboards of the scooter facing straight ahead with no helmet, no eye protection, and she’s catching insects in her open mouth. Many of the scooters here are taxi-scooters, while others serve as the transportation for entire families of six. I count three of them carrying propane gas tanks horizontally across the back seat of the motorcycle. The propane tanks stick out about two feet on both sides. It’s crazy. Another motorcycle passes us pulling twelve-foot steal rebar — the kind used in construction that stands in-between concrete cylinder blocks for support. I can’t help but wonder what would happen if someone accidentally drove up on one end of it — this would be like someone stepping on your shoelace while you were running as fast as you can.

Juanito says, You would never see scooters like this in New York City. You from New York City? he asks.

Everyone here thinks every American lives in New York City.

No, I’m from the Midwest.

"A motor scooter here is used like a flat-bed truck.