Mortal Jigsaw Puzzle

By Grieving Patriot

The Mortal Jigsaw puzzle follows the struggles of a heroic urban vice principal, as he attempts to control a large high school teetering on the verge of chaos. During the course of an infamous day known as Fat Lip Friday, the ghetto principal tries valiantly to keep control of his school in the midst of a full blown gang war. Immersed in an environment replete with urban music, violence, verbiage, and dress, the reader is bombarded with shocking images of life in the modern hood.

As the visceral educational conflagration unfolds, the protagonist, Jose Perez, unexpectedly catches glimpses of a diabolical conspiracy of which street gangs are just a small part. Thanks to his keen senses, Mr. Perez slowly collects the pieces to a profoundly disturbing global puzzle comprised of codes, lyrics, art, and symbols of Egyptian, Masonic, and satanic origin. While attempting to place the gratuitous carnage and depravity of the inner city into perspective, Mr. Perez accidentally stumbles upon an interdisciplinary mind control plan which draws upon religion, politics, economics, psychology, marketing, history, and the occult.

Alarmed by his findings, Mr. Perez warns his community of their pending doom, only to be hunted down by the very debt cattle whom he tries to save from oblivion. In the end, both his community and his nation are condemned to fall under this nefarious plot, as this educators quixotic mission abruptly ends with an ominous knock on his front door.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465395818

Grieving Patriot

The Grieving Patriot is an urban educator in the New Jersey public schools system. He has nearly twenty years of experience in the industry and has worked in some of the most violent schools in the state. Throughout his career, he has attained success in the face of daunting challenges and has been able to rise through the ranks from teacher to administrator. Despite his apparent success, the Grieving Patriot is deeply troubled by the societal trends and current events of recent history, especially as relate to the physical, mental, and spiritual poisoning of his students. Like many of his countrymen, he senses that there is something profoundly wrong with his nation. This book represents one man’s struggle to make sense of the American demise from both the inner city and global perspectives.

Book preview

The Breakfast of Champions

D essspierrrrta Aaaameeeeriiiicaaaaa, resonated through my cramped two-bedroom apartment in Spanish City, New Jersey. The catchy jingle from the number 1 Latino TV morning show Wake Up, America was the standard accompaniment to the morning breakfast routine for millions of Latino households across the United States. As the bright yellow logo of the ever-present sun sat in the lower right-hand corner of my plasma TV screen, I reflected momentarily that my nation desperately needed to wake up.

We had been collectively entranced for decades under the television wizardry of a solar deity turned marketing genius, seemingly unaware of his nefarious inclinations. Like millions of my fellow Americans, I had lived my life in contented insignificance, unaware that he manipulated human affairs. His occulted dominance of humanity was best summed up by the expression In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Indeed, the all-seeing of Amon-Ra was the only fully functional eye left in the world, as the human race had been reduced to an indentured brood of blinded albino lab rats.

I tuned out the visual lobotomy box and hit the snooze button on my alarm clock. I drifted in and out of sleep as I staged a tiny rebellion against the oppressive daily ritual known as work. Eventually, my fledgling rebellion was put down by my vintage black and wood-trimmed alarm clock. The boxy electronic apparatus immersed my bedroom with volleys of loud banter from our local Spanish broadcast station, La Mierda 103.9 FM. Sexual innuendo, sarcasm, and stereotypical ethnic humor roared from the notorious Manolo in the Morning Show as the slumbering city awoke to his outrageous antics.

It was now 5:10 a.m. The flea-bitten domestic mice began to percolate behind the gypsum walls like a pot full of Café Bustelo. Their tiny claws popped intermittently against the lead-painted sheetrock, like coffee grinds bursting upon the surface of superheated filter paper. Aside from their obvious hygienic drawbacks, the mice served as my backup alarm clock, ensuring that I never missed a day at work.

Why is life so unfair? I asked God as I stared at my ceiling while lying flat on my back. Inundated with the sounds of stereotypical Hispanic nonsense, I hit the snooze button once more and turned on my side in order to get another ten minutes of sleep.

It wouldn’t be long before Divine Providence responded to my probing universal question. The Lord’s response came in the form of a cockroach, or la cucaracha. The little creature apparently lost its grip on the wall behind my headboard and plummeted through the air, somersaulting like an Olympic diver as it performed an inverted pike before landing squarely into my ear canal. The sound of its greasy pattering feet was greatly amplified in this confined space, as it produced a skin-curdling sensation that rocketed through my nervous system like heroin pumping through an addict’s veins.

I was immediately jolted out of bed. In my morning stupor, I visualized the other roaches lining up along the baseboard heater as they scored the audacious dive while holding up signs of 9.9 and 10.0. They seemed to energetically applaud the efforts of their compatriot.

I quickly shook my head with desperation while digging into my ear with my index finger. At some point during this violent struggle, the roach became dislodged and dashed across my bedsheets. With my pulse pounding vigorously throughout my head and neck, I was relieved that the brief violation of my exposed orifice was now over. I contemplated the irony of the moment.

How about that? I thought to myself. A perfect dive inside of a perfect dive! Only in the hood could such a thing occur…

The roach eventually landed on the floor and darted underneath the doorway as it scampered into the bathroom. I followed the elusive offender in hot pursuit; its transgression could not go unpunished.

I turned on the light of the bathroom and several roaches began to run alongside the brash instigator. As they ran away from me, I imagined the dark grooved grout lines on the floor to be the narrowed streets of Pamplona and I the raging bull. The meek intruders scurried behind the ceramic pedestal sink. It was a dead end. Like the enraged toro, I rubbed my bare feet against the floor and began my final charge. Sure of my impending victory, I smiled as I lunged underneath the sink, just seconds away from vanquishing myself.

Kabang! went the top of my head against the underside of the ceramic sink, as the Spanish bull slipped and skidded along the narrow cobblestone streets. The brave mozos of San Fermín now changed direction and rushed underneath the baseboard heater. Soon, they located a small gap next to the hot water pipe and ducked underneath the flooring on their way to the rental apartment below. Like firemen covered in brown exoskeletons, the roaches skidded down the hot water pipe, churning up flakes of yellowing paint along the way.

Stunned and defeated, I sat helpless on the bathroom floor. How could a six-foot-two, 225-pound athlete with a college degree get outsmarted and outperformed by a one-inch insect? As I sulked in my defeat, the curtain rod gave way and fell on top of my head.

Clang! Clang! Crash! went the dainty plastic curtain as it landed upon my throbbing skull. While falling to the ground, I had inadvertently sat on the bottom of the shower curtain, causing the pressure-mounted shower rod to dislodge. My raging testosterone was soon enveloped under a delicate blanket of canary daisies woven onto a long lilac-colored sheet; my machista manhood was quickly extinguished under a sea of estrogenic motifs.

Olé, Torero! echoed the Spanish cliché with a grimace.

Dejected, I stood on the bathtub’s edge and placed the curtain and pressure rod back onto the wall. From this vantage point, I could peer out the small bathroom window of my three-family row home. Like a ghetto pit bull trapped in a trainer’s cage, I struggled to fit my large head through the tiny window in order to glimpse at my surroundings.

Up ahead, the increasing darkness of my dreaded urban sunrise made its sinister, deliberate approach. As I rested my head on the dusty windowpane, my lonely insignificance in this vast and uncaring metropolis was soon evident. I gazed across the face of the Kingswood Bluff as the sun waged its morning battle against the brazen metallic upstarts from Manhattan. The ancient stone giant, indignant at the sequestering of the morning rays to the east, looked on helplessly as the sun caressed tons of vertically inclined glass and steel.

The sinewy shadows of the towering financial titans sprawled across the great river like ivy vines growing on a brick facade. The sun continued its laborious ascent up their imposing brawny backs, spawning the growth of more outstretched limbs across the calm waters of the Hudson. Unable to shed its light on the Spanish City landscape below, the sun seemed frustrated, hanging indefinitely behind the New York City skyline, as if to catch its breath. Slowly, my humble home on the bank of the great river became smothered under the rising darkness… an ominous sign of what was later to come. And so the daily sunrise ritual began as Spanish City was transformed into a desolate island of shadows cast asunder in a broad ocean of radiant sunlight. The financial gods of Wall Street absorbed the sun’s warmth just long enough to remind the citizens of Spanish City that we were undeserving of our star’s radiant bliss.

I thought to myself: Could it be that our financial oligarchs were in cahoots with the Egyptian sun god, Amon-Ra? Were the ultrawealthy the only ones worthy to be bathed in his true radiance, as ‘we, the people,’ were condemned to live amongst the shadows of his media-induced, usury laden stupor?

Trapped in the dark tower of my urban existence, I, Jose Cheíto Perez, yearned to live in a different place. Since childhood, my life had been a nonstop parade of urban gloom and doom. The constant stress of living in the inner city wore on my fragile psyche, making me more cynical and belligerent as I aged. I could never let my guard down in the hood, not even for a second, as I was forced to exert a constant vigilance that bordered on paranoia. Awareness of one’s surroundings, or street smarts, was a basic survival skill required to get by in America’s ruthless inner city jungles.

And so my morning routine began, replete with the usual frustrations and lamentations. This recurring operetta Il Lamento de Perezito was soon interrupted by an unexpected yet familiar sound in the kitchen.

Crackle, crackle, crack! went the cholesterol-laden cooking oil droplets as they sang and danced on top of the hot black frying pan. I was quite familiar with the sounds of this greasy morning concerto, also known to Latinos as the desayuno.

Spanish cooking was the antithesis of healthy eating. With triglyceride levels higher than the ozone layer and glycemic index values that required conversion into scientific notation, it is a miracle that any Latino has ever lived to collect a social security check! Soon, the smells of the arroz con queso, patacones, and bistec a caballo beckoned me into the kitchen. The decadent odors sent a paralyzing electric shock into my cerebrum, thus annulling all sense of reason. Although I knew this diet was unhealthy, I would nevertheless soon be eating like a Christmas chancho.

Is Mom cooking? I briefly thought.

Hold the presses: I’m single and live alone. My mom retired a long time ago and moved to her condo on the beach in Miami.

I began mumbling, Well then, who turned on the TV? And who the hell is cooking in my kitchen?

I peeked past the doorway into the kitchen. My headache and temporary amnesia gave way to the calm reassurance that I had gotten laid, and laid well for that matter. It turns out that there was a second throbbing head on my body. After having sex, my genitals felt like they had been filled with iron as they became swollen and hung much lower than usual. I don’t know if this is a typical male trait, but it was typical of me.

I soon feasted my eyes upon Belinda and visually confirmed what my privates had whispered to me just a moment earlier. The five-foot-nine Cuban blonde stood in front of my stove as she loosened the fried eggs from the bottom of the aluminum pan with the faded plastic spatula. Her thick, wavy hair cascaded down the back of my green dress shirt, like the sun’s rays hugging a lush green countryside. As I walked up behind her, I admired her Latin legs and rump, which were, to say the least, astonishingly firm, thick, and well shaped. Her in-your-face Latin voluptuousness reminded me of an old-school Latin sex symbol, Iris Chacón.

I kissed Belinda softly along her neck as I wrapped my hands around her tapered waist. The little man downstairs applauded as he was enveloped by layers upon layers of premium gluteal tissue. I could feel nirvana fast approaching.

Buenos días, guapa, I whispered to her as I rubbed my cheek on hers and nibbled lightly on her earlobe.

Buenos días, papi, she responded as she turned her head around and kissed me on the forehead.

I continued to kiss her around the neck. As I often did at Yankee Stadium, I placed a wiener between two buns and did so with great relish.

You need to eat these eggs here and give those other eggs a rest, she admonished me for my boylike genuflection before her curvaceous coochi. If you don’t hurry up, you’re going to be late for work.

There’s plenty of time, I stated as the clock read 5:15 a.m. Just a quick one, I insisted.

She became coy and elusive. After several rounds of begging, she finally caved in and said, OK, just this once.

I coaxed her into putting her hands on the kitchen table and both knees onto one of my dining chairs. I slowly pulled up the dress shirt to reveal the finest round bubble butt I had ever seen. To make matters worse, she had on a pink thong. I momentarily paused to take in the brilliant scenery as time seemed to stand still. Nirvana had just arrived in Spanish City.

Unlike the Dalai Lama, I didn’t have to sit on a Buddhist temple high in the Himalayas in a half-starved trance in order to attain nirvana. Nirvana for a young urban male was simply knowing that sex with an attractive woman would soon arrive. All young men on the enlightened path knew this to be true; expectation was the best part of sex, as the rest was simply a mechanical reoccurrence.

Sadly, I didn’t love Belinda. I was, however, madly infatuated with her ghetto booty. I never told her this, of course. She was a great person, but I was only twenty-nine years old. As a greenhorn high school administrator, I was not interested in serious relationships or long-term commitments. Nevertheless, I was one lucky bastard and did not lose sight of this fact for a minute. I always treated Belinda like a lady and provided her with plenty of love and affection. Even though my intentions were less than honorable, I afforded her the highest level of affection and tact possible. The better I treated her, I reasoned, the longer I would have access to that ultrafine ass.

I gotta lay off that red wine, I thought to myself as I watched Belinda’s breasts bounce back and forth over the reflection of the Chinese variety store’s shiny plastic tabletop cover. As we rhythmically indulged in this early-morning sexual espresso, I could only help but recall a dream I had experienced earlier that evening with the Dalai Lama.

While at his mountain fortress, I had asked him, Master, I seek to tame the anger monster than lives inside me. Since my adolescence, I had struggled with an unexplained anger management problem.

He told me that I needed to visualize a calming, soothing image in my mind’s eye and transport my spirit to that place.

I then asked, Do you mean that I can leave my body in order to enter a vagina elsewhere in the world?

He responded, Your obsession with vaginas stems from a deep-seated urge to return to the maternal vaginal canal, as if to reverse your birth and thus end your suffering in this wretched place. You must aspire to join with something beyond the material vibration, my son.

Wow… that was so deep and detailed for a dream. I often wondered if the message in this recurring dream was really a message from the other side. Unbeknownst to me at the time, under the mental programming of the divine solar media wizard, I had evolved into a hedonist and a materialist, like countless millions of adults across the world.

After satisfying my carnal desires, I took a shower, got dressed, and sat at the kitchen table in order to enjoy fried eggs, steak, plantain, rice and cheese, and coffee with the hottest Cuban waitress north of Havana. After a night of partying, this hearty breakfast became a veritable levanta muertos, or raising of the dead. My girlfriend was no stranger to good eating. She was a waitress at a city landmark restaurant, El Campesino. As I ate this home-cooked meal, I looked into Belinda’s eyes and remembered the time we first met at the Peasant Restaurant.

El Campesino was a located on Forty-second Street and Pantyline Avenue. This retro 1960s-style diner was a city landmark and a magnet for Cuban senior citizens (a.k.a. Cubanazos) who basically stood on the street corner and catcalled the ladies all day while arguing politics and smoking their hand-rolled cigars. I recalled the many times that I chatted with these old-timers as I stood in the street. I initially spoke with Belinda via a small window at the restaurant through which the Cubanazos ordered their espressos and churros as they stood on Spanish City’s main drag, Pantyline Avenue.

It took three months for me to gather up the nerve to actually go inside and have a sit-down meal so I could flirt up close with Belinda. Upon entering El Campesino for the first time, I remember hearing the loud salsa music interspersed by screaming waitresses, cooks, and customers who packed this urban hole in the wall to capacity. The long rows of terra-cotta tiles were broken up by numerous pictures of Havana, the crowned jewel of the Caribbean, as the malecón and capitol building were displayed ad nauseam from a multitude of angles.

Across from the sit-down bar appeared a framed map of the Cuban island constructed of seashells glued to black velvet matting. High above the bar’s counters, I could see the laminated breakfast specials hanging in tidy rows. I marveled at the relative affordability of this plethora of cholesterol-and sugar-laden foods, as many breakfast items cost less than $5. Below the specials was a cheesy sectional mirror that formed the outline of la barra, or the bar. La barra was decorated by rows of Spanish brandy bottles that were adorned with numerous pictures of dead Spanish royalty from the Renaissance period.

As I sat at la barra, these seminal figures of the Spanish counterreformation seemed to stare at me, visibly ashamed that I carried one of their surnames. The eyes of Phillip II and Cardinal Mendoza followed me along the counter, regardless of the stool selected. Their disdain for my existence was transmitted via their intense gaze, as they seemed to plot the covert poisoning of this antiestablishment ghetto heretic.

Bellow la barra’s liquor license hung the ID cards of the workers and the restaurant’s passing sanitation report. Caked in yellowish cooking grease, I observed the workers’ pictures… frozen in time, their profound misery was transmitted through the laminated backing as if to remind customers of their unserviceable plight. They were doomed by the forces of ghetto predeterminism to walk the path nearest to the bottom of America’s social caste system.

When I took Belinda on our romantic dates, I wanted to provide her with an escape from this robotic breakfast assembly line existence. Our relationship for her was an escape from her preordained slavery inside El Campesino. We had been dating for the past three years since my first nerve-racking moment in front of Phillip II’s royal court. Looking back on things, the relationship had been well worth surviving the Spanish Inquisition under Cardinal Mendoza.

Having reminisced briefly on our personal history, I caught myself gazing blankly into Belinda’s emerald green eyes. She must have thought that I was falling in love with her… and perhaps I was. Regardless, the odd moment of silence was interrupted as I finished inhaling my breakfast. I asked Belinda to lock up the apartment on the way out as she reported to her job later in the day. I kissed her good-bye and gave her a pat on the bottom.

As I hurried outside and onto the street, the empty parking space in my driveway spurred the recollection that my car was in the shop. Recently, some thugs on my block had broken the hatch window on my vintage Toyota Supra and stolen the massive subwoofer that was hidden in the trunk. The subwoofer had been the crowning jewel on a ghetto sound system that rocked the house, or tumba la casa. Although I was initially angry when the incident happened, I eventually blamed myself upon further reflection. I had broken one of the basic rules from the hood: you never crank your system near your home, or the shit will walk.

The Commute

I   soon walked onto Pantyline Avenue, Spanish City’s main drag and the largest concentration of retail space in all of New Jersey. Spanish City, a Latino mosaic few have ever heard of, just happened to be the most densely populated city in the United States. This noisy amalgam of restaurants, dollar stores, liquor stores, travel agencies, electronic stores, and call centers was a sensory overload even for the loudest of Latinos. The main drag, Pantyline Avenue, was a series of interconnected businesses and brick apartment buildings that went on for several miles. Loud colors, loud music, and loud merchants lured passersby to leave tokens of their monetary esteem at their doorsteps.

As I stood on the corner of Forty-second Street and Pantyline Avenue, I waited for the official mode of Hispanic transportation, the pirate van. A huge white pirate van soon pulled up to the curb. Actually, the front end of the van was that of a Ford Series truck and the passenger compartment looked like the converted back end of a box truck. The name of the company was Tenonchitlan, in honor of the former Aztec capital. Had Montezuma possessed a fleet of these pirate vans and crazed Aztec drivers, I surmised, he surely would have trampled the Spaniards easily, thus repulsing the unwanted conquistadores back into the sea.

Seconds after standing at the stop, a pirata van driver pulled over and honked at me twice.

He yelled, New Jork?

I stuck my hand up and waved no to him. He immediately sped away and stopped in the middle of the next intersection as he picked up a petite Peruvian yuppie and whisked her away into the inner bowels of midtown Manhattan.

Within two minutes of his departure, the Infernal Square van pulled up curbside. The driver honked twice and yelled perfectly on cue, Joonkie Seetee! A valiant attempt at Junky City, it was certainly more intelligible than any attempt that could have been made on Infernal Square.

I got on board and laughed to myself. Now I know there’s no way in hell that little Mexican guy could have pronounced Infernal Square.

Infernal Square was a phrase that lay beyond the realm of immigrant English 101 classes offered on Pantyline Avenue. The phrase was too complex even for the famous and overadvertised Baloney Language Center.

Oh, fuck, what a bunch of cheap-ass bastards, I mumbled to myself in typical Hudson County speak moments after handing the driver my one-dollar bill.

A wall of oppressive heat and humidity, laced with nodes of sweat and imitation designer perfumes, now hung itself around my neck, like an ox’s collar during planting season. The sliding door slammed abruptly behind me as a concentrated cloud of hot air blew past the sides of my neck. Trapped and confused, I knew it was too late… I had just entered a pirate van with broken air-conditioning, a scenario loathed by every resident in the area. I gazed upon the miserable sea of sweaty Latino foreheads as they bobbed up and down in unison with every dull thud emanating from the vehicle’s broken suspension.

Unfortunately for me, I had just lost a round of Spanish City roulette. In Spanish City, people are too poor to visit Atlantic City and spend their hard-earned money at the casinos. Instead, during the summer months, we play Spanish City roulette on the main drag. The way Spanish City roulette works is simple: If you hop on a pirate van with air-conditioning and a nice interior, you hit the jackpot. If, however, you step onto a pirate van with broken AC, decrepit seats, loud music, and a semipsychotic driver with no immigration papers, then you lose. The latter outcome, just like the odds on a roulette table, seemed to happen thirty-seven out of thirty-eight times.

A teenage boy in urban camouflage looked at me. His street-smart expression conveyed, Too late, sucker, the van’s already moving, and you paid your money. Chump!

A middle-aged Guatemalan woman dressed in traditional Mayan clothing stared at me, her face weathered from years of living in a fishing village. Her passive expression transmitted, Son, you’re Latino. You’re forever condemned to suffer and agonize. Accept your destiny with humility and dignity.

Accept my destiny as a rice-and beans-eating prisoner of the Latin hood? I refused to accept my destiny! I repudiated this Latino predetermination doctrine with great disdain. Throughout my childhood, I received this regurgitated message from our elders, our church, and our media. Accept and conform! was drilled into our heads incessantly since birth. And as good Latino soldiers, parishioners, and children, that’s exactly what we did.

I would not accept my predestined fate. I would not conform and condemn myself to a lifetime of telenovelas, ten-cent church sermons, and unfettered supplies of the three LSDs: Latin street drama, Latin street diet, and Latin street danger. Like Neo in The Matrix, I would somehow manage to subvert this sophisticated system of mind control and break out of this artificially imposed alternative reality.

As lofty as the goal may have seemed, for anyone who has lived the ghetto experience, it was almost impossible to achieve. The hood is like a gigantic dark planet, a ghetto death star, so strong, so irresistible, that it always pulls you back to its malevolent core. I reasoned that if I burned brightly enough and moved about quickly like a comet, that I may one day come to escape the gravitational pull of this ghetto death star I dubbed Necrosis Hispanosis and arrive at the distant and heralded planet of Suburbia Centuri.

In the midst of my fleeting lofty dreams, reality abruptly terminated my ill-advised somnambulism. The pirate van mercilessly sped up as I promptly fell into my seat, hitting the backrest with my left shoulder and the corresponding side of my face. Images of suburban bliss were soon shoved back through my nasal cavity as the imitation burgundy leather rubbed its Halloween costume scent across the overgrown hairs of my distorted Mediterranean nose.

A Mexican day laborer pointed his finger down at me and started laughing. Surprised, he looked at me and exclaimed, Hijole la chingada! (Son of a fuck!) His inverted face was that of a fastidious simp—laughing wildly, seemingly possessed.

Our driver immediately slammed down the accelerator, nearly missing an old Bay of Pigs veteran as he slowly hobbled across the street aided only by a rusting silver walker. Drivers in Spanish City were notorious for having a lead foot. The second you handed that dollar bill over, you’d better have a goddamn life preserver and a parachute! If you didn’t make a dash for your seat, you were instantly thrust into an embarrassing position on to the lap of an unsuspecting passenger. I’ve seen little old ladies do cartwheels down the aisles of these vans like professional stunt doubles… it’s like abuelita got crossed with Jackie Chan.

At the next stop, an old Cuban lady, or vieja chismosa or chusma (gossip monger), boarded our van. She was one of these churchgoing Cuban ladies in her sixties with the New Orleans Superdome hairdo placed on top of her head. In our local beauty salons, the superdome was a popular hairstyle choice that shaped the hair of senior women into a large round protective ball of a red, blonde, or purple color variant, which was fortified with excessive amounts of hair spray. This hairdo was wildly popular among the chusmas, as it increased their hair volume while adding youthful hair color to their aging, tired faces. This was especially true for the darker-skinned seniors, who displayed an irrational penchant for blonde superdomes. We lovingly referred to them as cheeseburgers, as their dark skin resembled beef patties that contrasted vividly with yellow slices of American cheese. I would often tease them by asking if they got their dos to go with pickles, ketchup, and a side of fries.

The chusma in my presence was not a cheeseburger, however… her kind of do was referred to as the turkey cheese puff. The chusma’s white skin was as pale as a Family’s First turkey cold cut, while her fake blonde hair resembled a big yellow cheese puff. As she walked down the aisle, the chusma stretched out her massive diabetic forearms while grabbing at the headrests. Each arm was adorned with gold bracelets and bright, shiny rocks that shone like the crown of Spain’s Queen Sofía.

The indigenous riders stared angrily upon this queen of European descent; after all, her peninsular ancestors stole tons of gold and silver from the Indian civilations of Latin America. On her right wrist, a radiant silver harmony bracelet stood out as the crowning jewel of her ghetto jewelry collection. The indíos in the van looked at her with suspicious distrust as if she had just raided the Incan mines of Potosí.

I found it ironic how Latinos bought hundreds of thousands of these harmony bracelets, which purportedly balanced the magnetic field in their bodies and produced feelings of health and vitality. After spending millions of dollars on these metallic money magnets, Latinos then proceeded to cook millions of fiberless, hypercaloric meals that could conceivably wipe out the entire cardiac ward at Weill Cornell Medical Center over the course of just a few days! Instead of harmonizing our diets, we chose instead to harmonize someone else’s bank account.

This was one of the striking ghetto ironies that would linger throughout the ages: Latinos seem to do two things on a daily basis—eat unhealthy meals and search for elusive cures to our myriad health problems. The mystical panacea always seemed to elude us; yet we searched tirelessly for it, unearthing mountains of salty tortillas, refried beans, and arroz con leche along the way. As the chusma’s harmony bracelet nestled into the folds of cracked, flaccid skin, I was inspired to create a poem at that moment that encapsulated this ironic dietary behavioral neurosis:

Where is our metabolic El Dorado?

Perhaps it lurks in aisle 6

Perhaps it’s behind the YeYa’s crackers,

No, it’s behind the fried yuca chips!

Promises abound on TV

Showing us happier days

The devil’s box sells endless cures

So you and your money part ways.

And so our search continues

As our waist just grows and grows

It’s so hard to find happiness…

It’s so hard to see my toes!

Why don’t I feel any better?

With all this harmony and respite

Bliss is what I thought I’d feel

But instead I feel like shit.

This fraud has made me angry

So angry, I’m gonna eat…

Two big steaks with rice and beans

And a delicious croqueta treat.

I tried my best to eat healthy

Ten days my quest did last

But the cat’s claw did not my belly shrink

As the carbs blew up my ass.

As my poem came to life, the product of our fine gourmet tradition, our morbidly obese church matriarch, surveyed the clientele of the van with an aura of superiority. Her tightly woven gray woolen blazer, her starched and ruffled white blouse, and her golden Vatican broche together seemed to repel the undesired stares of the unholy heathen masses. I guessed that we were not worthy to receive her, for only say a word, and she would have squealed…

She fancied herself to be a Cuban aristocrat, one of many in Spanish City who hailed from the old of immigration wave that escaped Cuba shortly after Fidel’s revolution of 1959. She was entitled to a privileged status as a Latino pioneer into what used to be a predominantly German/Italian/Polish neighborhood. This afforded her certain privileges over the newer and not-so-fair-skinned waves of immigrants to Spanish City. In her mind, colonial rule still held weight, as white Latinos subjugated the oppressed natives while advancing their business interests at their expense. With a surprisingly clear conscience, these Batista lovers dropped their token donations into the woven baskets of their beloved church at the end of the one thirty Sunday mass, otherwise known as the Fashion Show.

Our driver equalized this perverse sense of social distortion by slamming on the accelerator. Our Lady of Surreal Arrogance soon became our equal, as she lost her balance and valiantly lunged for the top of a seat, secretly hoping during those moments of vulnerability to receive the humanistic touch that she so desperately lacked.

She missed! The Cuban Colossus now staggered forward as she rumbled through the aisle.

¡Coñññoooooooooo! echoed off the sound-insulating headliner.

I reached out and stopped the fall of the biblical behemoth with my outstretched arms. I clasped her blubber-encased trunk and firmly wrapped my hands around her waist.

Ay gracias, hijo, said the portly parishioner as she caught her breath.

I looked closely at the chusma’s face and recognized who she was… It was Antonia, one of the senior citizen groupies from our local parish of St. Ignatius Loyola, or St. Loca, as I referred to it. My mother, the crowned queen of the religious roost and resident martyr par excellence, was also good friends with her.

Seeing Antonia up close reminded me of my summers growing up as a child. My mother would often drag me into the empty nave of St. Loca for obligatory eight o’clock rosary marathons. The pocket size Virgin Mary, along with other self-flagellating chusmas, partook in this daily ritual of coordinated cackling. Together, this ragtag group of superdome-strutting and bronze-cross-carrying chismosas comprised the devotees of Our Lady of Charity. I recalled how my mother, the most pious member of the group, was venerated by the others as a ghetto beata, or saint in waiting. I sometimes wondered if they were secretly venerating her in lieu of Our Lady. That’s why I dubbed my mom with the nickname Our Lady of Suspicious Miracles.

As the chusmas projected their Isis cult chants onto my mother, Antonia, the loudest member of the group, often took the lead in the recitation of the Hail Marys. The rosary marathon went on for what seemed to be an eternity, as Antonia’s high-pitched nasal voice reverberated off the lofty pillars and throughout the cavernous stone nave of the cathedral of St. Loca. Her recitation of the inciting prompt received quick replies from the old bats, as they dutifully performed the choral response to the prayer, Santa María, Madre de Dios, ruega por nosotros pecadores, ahora y en la hora de nuestra muerte, amén.

Now that I was an adult, I wondered if the resonating amens were actually secret references to Amen-Ra or Amon-Ra, the sun god of the Egyptians. Who had my mom been worshipping all those years? Did she worship Jesus, the son of God; or had the Freemasonry infested church unwittingly forced its parishioners to worship Amen-Ra, the sun of Osiris? Had the chusmas prayed to the Virgin Mary all of those years, or had they been tricked into worshipping Isis, the mother of Horus?

I engaged Antonia in small talk regarding my mother and her church exploits as she continued to stand in the aisle. Antonia was a heavy woman of conservative dress who espoused the virtues of rrrrrepeto (respect), the social mantra of the Cuban diaspora of 1959. She was from a bygone era of neurotic neoconservatism, where anyone deviating from the espoused views of the Republican Party or the rigid dogmas of the Catholic Church was quickly dubbed as a comunista. She was also a profound devotee of Our Lady of Lourdes, St. Barbara, and Our Lady of Charity, the patron saint of Cuba.

In addition to the standard Roman Catholic devotions, Antonia, along with countless hordes of holy cows from St. Loca, also adored our resident gigolo priest Jorge Roche, or Monsignor Macho Man, as I called him. A tall, thin, handsome, and distinguished man with a receding gray hairline and chiseled face, M&M was the most desired bachelor over the age of fifty in Spanish City. Antonia always carried a wallet-sized picture of him in her purse. This was because M&M had been her secret lover for the past fifteen years. This fact, a veritable escándalo (scandal), was, ironically enough, a major lack of rrrrrepeto. It was also the worst-kept secret in Spanish City…

The van accelerated briskly and I was forced to catch Antonia once more. Antonia promptly whipped her head around and, in a fine gesture of Christian brotherhood, began to verbally accost the driver.

¿Oye chico, tu eres un comemierda o que? (Hey man, are you a shit eater or what?) she exclaimed. Shit eater was a common expression in Spanish City; it was the Cuban equivalent of idiot.

Just then, a teenage mother unexpectedly stuck her stroller into the street without warning, causing the driver to slam on his brakes. This traffic-stopping stroller intrusion was a common occurrence in Spanish City. Young mothers purposely shoved their strollers into oncoming traffic as a terror tactic to get drivers to stop their vehicles on demand. This tactic was similar to the human-shield tactic used by Saddam Hussein during the first Gulf War. Saddam’s human-shield tactic, however, was actually less offensive than this vile stroller-shield tactic. Whereas Saddam used hostages in a futile attempt to win a war, our local Lolitas used their children as hostages for the sake of their own convenience. The safety of their own children was a secondary consideration to the diverse whims of their profoundly lazy, cellulite-riddled asses.

Screeech! went the tires as the van came to an abrupt halt.

Antonia was flung into the front of the van by the forces of deceleration and performed a backward roll through the aisle. Her woolen blazer ran up her arms and halfway up her head, as she lay flat on her back. Blinded and disoriented, Antonia’s muffled screams leaked through her newly fitted woolen burka. The abrupt fall caused her dress slip and stockings to be exposed to a captive yet very unappreciative public.

As she laid helpless and spread eagle on the floor, the custard pastry she had bought moments earlier tumbled through the air as if in slow motion. The pastel de merengue ricocheted off the sliding door and landed right between her legs! I witnessed this utterly repulsive event in complete amazement and shock. The experience was so traumatizing, in fact, that I suffered postcrematic stress disorder. This condition prevented me from ordering a custard pastry on Pantyline Avenue ever again.

Muevete guey! Andate a la chingada, pues! (Move it, you ox, go to fuckin’ hell!) blurted our driver at the young mother.

The teenage mom had a long silky mane of black hair, prominent buck teeth, and a large rump, much like an ox. What choice words the driver did use! The blue Ford logo on the front of our van stood only six inches from the face of our cognitively impaired teenage mom as she stared at it blankly, seemingly mesmerized. Her baby began to cry loudly as it hurled its brown pacifier onto the front grille in contempt.

With the clang of the pacifier against the metallic grille, our teen mom awoke from her near-death experience and responded with a wild tirade of expletives. She proficiently threw up West Coast gang signs at the driver with one hand while simultaneously grabbing her crotch with the other. She then took a sip out of a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag, which had been stashed in the top of the stroller. Next she grabbed her crotch and spat a huge wad of salivated liqueur onto the street. The baby cried louder, as if in cahoots.

I briefly thought to myself, Hmmm, page 52 of the ghetto parenting textbook: how to look like a crazed bitch in the presence of your toddler while masturbating your invisible penis, all while sipping on your gin and juice.

In the meanwhile, our custard-covered church lady attempted to get up as she squirmed helplessly on her back, her extremities flailing about wildly. The passengers divided their attention between the creamy convulsing Cuban cow and the Chicana cacahead chewing chicle. Like a turtle on its back, Antonia only managed to spin herself in a circle, thus creating a bizarre senior citizen version of modern break dancing. The image of a rotating creamy spot on her nylon crotch was forever seared into my retinas. I could only imagine that, at her age, this must have been the last way she expected to get creamed in the ass!

We helped Antonia onto her feet, as the documentless driver and the pubescent pedestrian exchanged obscenities. Once Antonia got up, we all knew there was going to be hell to pay. Antonia transformed her burka back into a blazer, as she pulled down hard on the woolen garment. She then dug her fingers into the top of her hair and propped up the flattened do, thus rebuilding the New Orleans Superdome without using any FEMA funds. Finally, she set the papal broche to search-and-destroy mode.

Click, click went the golden papal broche, while Pope John Paul II was spun upside down into the six o’clock position as if to hide himself from the shameful events that were about to follow.

Antonia’s flaming red eyes contained the spirit of the evil one himself. With ninjalike quickness, she stormed up to the driver and began beating him in the head with her purse. The rhythmic strikes, though slow and deliberate, were nearly mortal to the driver. Unknown to him, Antonia was a Eucharist minister and had concealed in her purse a bronze chalice that has just been repaired in a local jewelry store. Luckily for the driver, the chalice had been diligently wrapped in paper, thus dulling its sharp edges.

¡Toma hijoe puta, para que aprendas a manejar, carajo! (Take that, you son of a bitch! Learn how to drive!) she yelled madly at the driver as he covered himself with his arms.

I thought to myself, I didn’t recall hearing that divine prayer in the Roman liturgy!

¡Pero, no fue mi culpa, señora! (But it wasn’t my fault, ma’am!) pleaded the driver as he pointed to the teenage dingbat in front of him.

What a hilarious rendition of Mea Culpa, I thought, as the comical liturgy continued, chalice and all. After two more blows, Antonia finally snapped out of her purse-swinging frenzy and realized that the teenage fertility clinic on wheels was at fault.

¡Abreme la puerta, carajo! (Open the door goddamnit!) she demanded as the driver opened the door.

We all giggled as Our Lady of Infinite Anger stormed onto Pantyline Avenue. Humiliated and soiled in a most undignified manner, this fledgling patrician was humbled in front of a group of common plebs. Indians and niggers in her eyes, though we may have been, we still helped her to the best of our ability in a Christian-like manner. I gladly blended in with these undesirables and secretly cheered for her demise, for I always longed to subvert the repressive, dogmatic, right-winged social order of Spanish City.

Our faces remained plastered onto the glass of our portable circus truck. Antonia walked in a bowlegged fury, like a cowboy suffering from a severe bout of chili-induced diarrhea. She attempted to keep the custard cream from rubbing against her inner thighs as she hobbled about the pavement. She soon darted into a restaurant, presumably to use the restroom. A trail of custard droppings could be seen assembled in her wake, causing the consternation of passersby.

They muttered feverishly, Isn’t that Antonia, the respectable matriarch of our beloved parish? What is that white liquid dripping from her innards? Is it a sign? Could it be a sign of her divinity?

¡Esta mujer es loca! ¿Viste como me pego? (This woman’s crazy, did you see how she hit me?) yelled our disheveled driver back at us as he cranked up his latest Tex-Mex CD by La Banda Chueca. He grabbed a handkerchief from the pocket of his white polyester shirt and held it onto his head as he called dispatch on the CB radio.

The young hoochie mama, in the meanwhile, pointed her finger at him and laughed as she slapped her hand across her thigh. Ha! Ha! That’s what you get, you bitch-ass nigga!

He promptly told her to go fuck herself.

Triumphantly, our Latin Lolita then paraded the stroller across the front of the van, walking ever so slowly in order to prove that she had won the brief confrontation. The driver had to wait as this walking, talking billboard for Planned Parenthood displayed her wares on the mercantile mile. Dangling off the side of the stroller, her baby girl attempted to pick up her discarded pacifier. Oblivious to her child’s loss, her mother marveled at the fact that she had backed up the busy thoroughfare for several blocks. Everyone was forced to see, what she believed to be, her exotic camel toe sway to and fro, distinctly visible through her undersized Columbian jeans.

When her animalistic mating walk concluded, the Latin wildebeest propped her stroller onto the curb and gave the driver the finger. In response, the van sped up and unceremoniously crushed the plastic pacifier under its balding tires. The baby cried understandably at the sight of her loss. Her cries seemed to linger behind me as the van sped away. The Doppler effect gave the lament an almost-ghostly quality, as the barely audible wail bemoaned the loss of our innocence. The symbolism was striking: the pacifier, representing the motherhood known to my generation, was crushed under the mindless, determined wheels of modern progress. My commute was now well

under way…

Latino Social Bipolar Disorder

T he sweat poured from my brow like drops of crystalline morning dew plummeting from the lofty Amazonian canopy. I felt dazed and exhausted, like an armor covered Spanish conquistador being devoured by ravenous insects on the floor of the steamy rainforest. The narcocorridas continued to blare from the stock Ford radio, as they battered my head with incessant waves of Tex-Mex music. Distorted by the poor wattage of the generic speakers, the lyrics of immigrant woes, sex, drugs, and violence were accompanied by an ironically upbeat, melodic tempo. The duality in this musical genre was reminiscent of the duality of Latino life in the United States. Although on the surface, we were happy, engaging, friendly people, on the inside, we were homesick, melancholic people, separated from our families by vast distances.

This profound irony was often expressed in our ghetto culture via collective episodes of Latino social bipolar disorder. In typical U.S. Latino communities, Latino social bipolar disorder consists of groups of Latinos who continuously oscillate between two opposing poles: manic depression and mania. It is through this modus operandi that we internalized and processed both our low socioeconomic status and the unbearable pain of being separated from our families on the other side.

One popular way in which Latinos participate in episodes of collective manic depression occurs when we view tragic telenovelas (TV soaps). I found it amusing how millions of us became engrossed in the predictable melodramatic plots. Losing ourselves in the characters’ struggles, we regularly engaged in this type of virtual escapism. I watched these soaps on occasion with my girlfriend and pretended to be intrigued. The redundant plots, unfortunately, were quite unimaginative. Ultimately, I knew that each novela would end with same three-part sequence: a resurrected coma victim, a dramatic shootout, and a cookie-cutter, slow-motion wedding.

Another recurring theme in Latin soaps was the colonial setting of the hacienda. On the haciendas, or plantations, the wealthy white colonialists sat around and plotted against their economic rivals and myriad sex partners, while the indigenous support staff was left to toil as servants and slaves. Latino broadcast networks seemed to import hordes of Anglo-looking Mexican actors from some heretofore unseen magical acting factory. The hidden message of the hacienda mentality was simple: white is right. This racism was cleverly disguised on Latino television, as people of African and Indian descent were relegated to roles of mindless characters who regurgitated empty one-liners like Sí, señor.

Aside from the racist telenovelas, another popular episode of collective manic depression consists of Latinos listening to endless series of ballads and boleros as we sing, cry, and moan in unison. This latter activity is often fueled by vast amounts of alcohol. I had witnessed many such depressing sing-alongs during the course of my life and did my best to escape them whenever possible.

These bolero cry-alongs were very popular among the older generations. I recalled during frequent visits to my girlfriend’s house how her Cubanazo dad forced me to sit and drink Bacardi with him. Before I knew it, other relatives arrived for this drunken ritual as they turned his tiny three-bedroom apartment into an exiled Cuban karaoke club. Intoxicated and surrounded by armed members of Alpha 66, I was often forced to sing Guantanamera until two in the morning. Much to my chagrin, I was also forced to slow dance with several viejas chusmas, as they regularly copped a gratuitous feel.

On the opposite end of the communal Latino bipolar spectrum, episodes of mania were evidenced by upbeat salsa and merengue danceathons that went on to all hours of the night. The opposite extreme of novela dramathons and bolero cry-alongs, these danceathons were often disguised as birthday parties, baptisms, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s celebrations. These danceathons were forums for extroverted rhythmic group therapy sessions during which participants could forget the many broken dreams and tattered families that were left in the wake of their epic journeys to the United States.

Throughout our perpetual transit along this spectrum of Latino social bipolar disorder, our voyage was often accompanied by alcohol, sex, and, to a lesser extent, drugs. Those of us who chose to face the harsh reality of the Latino condition and retain some measure of stability turned instead to organized religions, such as Catholicism, as a more stable and less costly escapist therapy.

The Latino immigrant condition is so overbearingly sad that mental health services should be mandated for any Latino immigrant who has left family behind on the other side. Although these services are desperately needed, they are seldom rendered. This is due to the social stigma that exists in the Latino community regarding mental health services.

Latinos scoff at the notion of visiting a therapist. If, for some unfathomable reason you were to see a therapist, you had better keep it to yourself. Otherwise, you were perceived as being truly un-Latino, and perhaps even a bit of a loco. There were five acceptable forms of therapy in the U.S. Latino culture: religion, booze, dancing, music, and sex. You were expected to engage in at least one of the above or even several simultaneously. If, instead, you ran to a therapist, people would begin to suspect that you had become a closet gringo yuppie… a true sell-out.

Did the driver suspect me as a gringo yuppie? I thought to myself. Did my professional attire reveal that I was a sell-out? Did I stand out in van full of day laborers and retirees?

Through his rearview mirror, our driver gazed back at us. He did not suspect that I had defected to the other side. Actually, he glanced at us with pity, like the driver of a hearse on the way to a solemn burial.

Behind the driver lay a scene of Hispanic defeatism: sweat, misery, poverty, and frustration. Fifteen slaves, shackled by their belt buckles to the hull of moving steel ship, all stared blankly out the windows as the oncoming torrent of streets, cars, and traffic lights merged into a cohesive pattern of repetitive movement. Through the blur that was our commute, all that was left is gray. Gray is the color of our captor… this heartless monstrosity of rectangular steel and cement enveloped us in a sea of artificiality and indifference. Detached from Mother Nature, our senses were soon dulled… our very essence as human beings obliterated.

The overcast northeastern skies and the cold northern winds further tried our minds and bodies during the winter months until we eventually cracked under the weight of this alien landscape. Now the cultural lobotomy that was Western materialistic conformism could complete its death grip around the carcasses of the people we used to be. Only then could the wily American anaconda swallow our carcasses whole and process our bodies mercilessly throughout its acidic gullet. Slowly, we were broken down by the gastric juices of this globalized predator and transformed into a mushy bolus, a byproduct of capitalism and Social Darwinism, otherwise known as a spic. As spics, or Spanish-speaking worker droids, we exited the cloaca of this immense snake and unceremoniously plopped onto the pavement. Covered in layers of socioeconomic feces, our smell and appearance made us repulsive to the Anglo world. Unseen and unappreciated, we assumed our assigned roles with the stoic resentment, humility, and dignity that came from being raised in dehumanizing poverty.

Why do we work so hard and earn so little money and even less respect. Why? I imagined the Mexican day laborer saying to himself as he leaned his head on the vibrating glass window while staring vacuously onto RFK Memorial Avenue.

We had all asked ourselves this question at one point in time. Soon, we remembered that we were all standing on the far end of a monetary pipeline that ran across face of the Americas. Without it, our efforts would not reach the loved ones that we left behind, thus preventing the purchase of the necessities that we had long ago taken for granted in Gringolandia.

Alas, our imprisonment in this inhospitable place was not in vain!

It is from this notion that we derived our inner strength, our seemingly interminable patience, and our renowned endurance for the worst of job conditions and the cruelest of humiliations. The fact that we could function at all under these circumstances and learned to be happy via our collective bipolar coping mechanisms is a testament to our resiliency. It is our deeply held belief that it is better to live a meaningful life riddled with adversity than a decadent, pampered life devoid of purpose. For in the end it is the voyage, and not the destination itself, from which we derived our pride, honor, and sense of accomplishment as human beings.

The Lowest Caste

O ur van approached the misty town center. Soon we arrived at our destination of Infernal Square. Infernal Square was an uninspired urban transportation hub nestled at the intersection of two busy thoroughfares in Junky City. The main building, a wide, metallic cube crisscrossed by boxy girders, sat suspended over a white cement entranceway that led to a subterranean train station. A crowded mecca of retail office space and transportation, the square was also known as a haven of filth, delinquency, and wandering homeless people.

Upon exiting the van, I was smothered by a cacophony of loud noises: diesel engines idled, train axles grinded and cars honked as cursing in diverse languages erupted into the deep blue sky, like bullets oozing out of an AK-47 on a school playground.

"Fuck, shit, piss off, asshole, motherfucker, BEEP! BEEP! Cabrón, peptagri, move it! Beep! Beep! Fuck you too, bitch! Maricón! Screeeech!"

How pleasant the sounds and images of the narcrocorridas now seemed as I secretly yearned for the rhythmic beats of La Banda Chueca and their velvety mismatched purple outfits!

After getting blasted by the massive ghetto sound wave, I was soon enveloped under a blanket of dark filth. Smog, heat, exhaust, dilapidated cars, dirty streets, and bedraggled bums surrounded me. The pollution and perverse behaviors hovered over me like a small pond choking from biological overload. Graffiti abounded in the square, as gangs marked their boundaries so that rival gangs would not trespass. Across from me, I could see a Slobs graffiti tag, a sign of disrespect against the Bloods written by the Crips.

An Indian man with a broad mustache and white polyester pants spat into the street and hurled his cigarette butt at a moving bus. The butt ricocheted off the blackened rims of the Route 181 bus and rolled into the gutter. The bus beeped loudly while it played its automated voice as it knelt down slowly before me.

Kneel before Zod! I commanded the 181 in jest as I raised my arms.

An elderly black woman stepped off the bus slowly with her folded shopping cart in tow. She peered into the blinding light of Amon-Ra through her thick, cracked glasses. I admired her struggle to get off the bus and my staring inadvertently drew her attention.

She looked up at me and said, And what the fuck are you lookin’ at? She scanned me from top to bottom and continued to walk without missing a beat.

The Indian man crossed her path and emptied out the contents of his left nostril onto the pavement as he pushed his right nostril down and blew out a rotating mass with all of his might. The large yellow and green blob hurled past the old lady, barely missing her shopping cart.

The strolling senior looked at the Hindu hurler with great displeasure.

Damn, nigga, is you crazy? We ain’t back in India, motherfucker. I don’t wanna to be catchin’ no bird flu and shit, she scolded him.

The Indian man looked back at her cross, oblivious to her tirade because of his limited English.

Crazy old bitch! he thought to himself. He kept on his way.

Interspersed throughout the pavement, gum residues and ubiquitous trash dotted the landscape like the sesame seeds on a kosher bagel. I avoided these urban landmines with the greatest of care. A black car accelerated and honked at me, forcing me to run across the street.

Squirt! went a landmine underneath my foot as a ketchup container sprayed the underside of my shoe. I looked back at the car, totally indignant, as my right shoe revealed my recent battle scar. Soon, the car came to a stop at a traffic light located only fifty feet from the spot where I had nearly lost my life. The driver’s aggression was not related to any particular time constraint governing a pressing engagement. In this forsaken place, we were all programmed to annihilate each other since we were young. Why? Because this was THE rat race… In Hudson County, NJ, human beings were simply traffic pylons to be driven around on the way to an elusive materialistic finish line.

As disturbing as this menagerie of urban sights and sounds seemed to me, something even more twisted and perverse seemed to lurk in the background. I soon realized what had bothered me about Infernal Square for so many years. In this devilish transit hub, the varying tiers of jobs were divided along racial/ethnic lines. The Mexicans drove the vans, the Blacks and Puerto Ricans drove the buses, the Muslims and Hindus drove the taxi cabs, and the Irish and Italians drove the police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances. Down below, the massive hordes of well-dressed yuppies that descended upon the Wrath train system were overwhelmingly White, Jewish, or Asian.

Stratified was the economy of Infernal Square, an economy where the demarcation lines of classism and racism were clear to see, as the lesser races were forced to carve out niches for themselves in order to survive. It was ironic to see what appeared to be a residual caste system in the most free and developed nation in the world. Life was great in the good old USA, so long as you belonged to one of the upper castes. As I reflected further, it was quite depressing to realize that I belonged to the lowest caste… I was a mere Latino from Spanish City.

I soon climbed down the stairs of the Infernal Square Station entrance and entered the smoke-filled subterranean train station below. As I descended, I imagined the station to be a commercial brothel. Within this financial whorehouse, the Wrath train lured its customers into the daily fornication commute, as