Ajam Rosado

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The New World

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—Hi. Welcome to Sexy Squid. I’ll be your bartender this evening. How’s everything going tonight?…That’s great. I’m doing well. Thank you for asking. Have you had a chance to look over the menu yet? No? Still browsing? That’s okay. Take your time. At Sexy Squid we believe “The beginning of the night is just as important as how it ends”…just as long as it’s not with a bank overdraft fee and some guy named Karl banging outside the door. That’s what the staff likes to say here, anyway. Well, you look like you have a good sense of humor, I’m sure you’ll manage. For tonight’s special we have fresh, locally-sourced lobster and two-for-one house drinks until nine. Imported beers are on tap and you’ll find the wine selection on the last page. I’ll give you a minute to think it over. My name is Nathan.

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Hey, again. So, have you had time to make a decision? Alright. What can I get you? A martini? Very nice. I like to start the night off with something cool myself—especially now with all this heat going around. It might as well be summer…And would you like that martini dry or wet? Okay. Excellent choice. So, for right now I have, one martini, frozen, peel down the center, two olives. I can start a tab for you if you’d like? Okay, then. I’ll get that started. And are you having anything to eat? Nothing? Not a problem. The kitchen closes in an hour in case you change your mind. I’ll have that drink ready in just a minute.

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Alright, here you go. Enjoy. Again, thanks for dropping in and if you need anything else I’m only a holler away…Huh? Oh, tonight? Yeah. It is pretty slow…In this area mostly… All kinds, for the most part. You know, I’m not sure. It’s never usually this empty. It was already full by this time last week. I guess people must be traveling for the weekend…Hah. You can say that again. I was thinking the same thing. Well, don’t worry. It’ll pick up. It just takes a while sometimes…So, are you from around here? No? Where from? Ah. That’s a nice place. Yeah, I’ve been once. It was a few years back. Not too long, actually. I was doing more traveling at that time, so I thought I’d check it out…I mean, yeah. I’d love to. Just haven’t really had the chance to lately. The usual reasons. Work. Relationships. It’s hard to coordinate with others when you have the time and now with the cost of living going up. Me? No. I’m not from here. Originally from New York. Washington Heights. Yeah, I have a lot of family in the area. No, no reason really. I guess I just wanted to try somewhere new. It’s been alright so far. Can’t complain…How about you? What brings you to Miami? Ah. Just here for the weekend. Well, you’re definitely getting started at the right place—Listen. Can you give me a second? One of my customers is checking out. I’ll be right back.

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—Hey. Sorry. I got held up for a minute back there. The card reader didn’t feel like cooperating for some reason. So, done with that Martini? How was it? Great. I’m glad you enjoyed it. Are you ready for another? A Coco Loco instead? Sure thing. I can definitely get that made for you. And with what rum would you like it? Let’s see—we’ve got…Atlantico…Royal Treasure…Colonial Club…Esclavo…Plantation Dark…Brugal—Brugal? Okay. Coming right up.

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Alright. Here’s that Coco Loco you asked for. We like to add a little pineapple juice and coconut cream to bring out the flavor. Hopefully it’s not too sweet…Yeah? Perfect. Some people don’t like going in for that type of drink this late at night, but I say why not?…Oh, really? At Punta Cana? And how’d you like it there? It was nice? Yeah. I’ve been once. It was a few years back. About eight of us. Well, I have family in the Dominican Republic, so we planned a trip. That’s right. Around Santo Domingo. Basically, yeah. We fly in between countries. Visit when we have the chance…Well, those that can afford it do anyway…It is a beautiful country. You’ve got the ocean and the mountains. The city and the countryside. All there, lying right next to each other. Honestly, I don’t go as much as I should. It looks small on the map and people pass it over, but you’d be surprised how much there is to see. Even after visiting a hundred times, you’ll be going back and discovering something new. But you have to get out on the road. Leave the city for a day or two. Along the Ozama River, up to the Cibao. That’s where you really feel it. The life of the country. Being out on the land. There’s something about it, I don’t know. The warmth, the air. It’s like the land around you is breathing…We head up that way whenever we go. Visit relatives. We’ve got a lot of family in the area, in Bonao, San Francisco de Macoris. We like to go and stay a few nights when we can—but only long enough to see everyone, because when you make the mistake of deciding to stay too long people suddenly start to lose it, fighting over whose turn it is to use the one bathroom that’s lying in the back of the house…Hah. Yeah. But it’s all rosy after that. Towards evening one of my aunts will go into the living room and put on a merengue album, and then everyone will come out from where they’re hiding to sit around, converse with each other, watch the pedestrians in the street, watch the sky change color. It’s kind of funny, you know. I mean, I love my family and all, but sometimes it feels like they’re just starting arguments to have something to talk about. But that’s how different it is over there. You remember what it’s like to enjoy things. Anything really. Not because you worked for them. No, it’s not because of work. It’s because they’re just there. Because you can touch them and see that they came from the earth. And somewhere—you can’t explain it, but you feel it somehow—you did too. After a while you start to take these things for granted though. When you’re there too long, I mean. Still, I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ll take any job you give me in the United States over one in DR. It’s just too hard to make a living over there. It’s a small island, and there isn’t enough work and money to go around. That’s something you see a lot of unfortunately. What some people have to do to get by. It just reminds you how lucky you are to be here, in a wealthy country. But that’s the compromise you make. Opportunity over simplicity. Luxury over leisure. Which idol do you pray to at the village temple this week?—Hey, don’t ask me! I’m not the guy with the answers. I just pour the drinks…So, are you all finished with that one? Can I get you another?

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—Hey, there. How’s everything going? Sorry, I got held up again. Some people sure have a hard time making up their minds…So, what did you decide on this time? A Hurricane? Changing it up. I like it. And you said you want that bitter? Okay, bitter it is. What about the rum? Are we sticking with the same bottle? Yes? Alright. This one’s just about empty. That shouldn’t be a problem. Just give me a second, I think I saw a full one lying around here somewhere…right over…Here!—Ah! This will be a special one. See? You’ll be breaking in the bottle. Just let me remove the seal so I can skim a little off the top before pouring your glass…pa lo muerto…There. I’ll get that drink ready in just a minute. 

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Here you go. One Hurricane. No Survivors. I think you’ll enjoy it very much if I do say so myself. I added in just enough bitters to balance out the sweet. Try it around the lemon wheel when you get a chance … What’s that? Why did I pour out the top of the bottle? Oh that. You know, it was just something I picked up as a kid. My uncles would always be doing it. It could be any day of the week really, and I’d see them at it. I’d get home from school or the park or wherever else I was heading from and there they’d be, walking around the house, carrying a bottle in their hands, ready to celebrate something whether there was a reason to or not. And that’s what they did. Poured a little off the top … You know, I’m not sure. It must have started before my grandparents. I really can’t say. Sometimes that stuff just gets forgotten and buried with time, the reason people first did things. Now it just feels like the right thing to do…but that happens with everything, doesn’t it? Even with the drinks people order. You like Old Fashioneds, don’t you? Exactly. Who doesn’t. But if you went to a bar back in the 1800s and tried to ask for one you wouldn’t have known what to say because it didn’t go by that name yet. No, that came later. That’s right. Someone just thought it up one day and now here it is—(who knows, somewhere out Midwest maybe?)—But my point is, having a different name doesn’t stop people from going out and trying to enjoy it, or us from coming up with our own. Because who’s to say which is really right, after all? I mean, where do you mark the spot where something ends and a new one begins? If it’s two things or really just one?…Take Spanish, for example. It’s one of the oldest languages in the world and millions of people speak it. But it wasn’t the first one, right? Someone had to start it, spreading it way back, long ago, without knowing what it would become. Because it’s not the same thing everywhere you go. You take a Dominican from the island, speaking Dominican Spanish, and throw him onto a street corner in the middle of Spain and they won’t know what to make of him. He might as well be in Denmark. But then where did his language come from? He also speaks Spanish. It might not be the same exact thing they speak in Europe—and his hair might be a little rougher when he tries to run a comb through it—but it’s his language, too—even if he wasn’t there to see it from the beginning. But neither was Shakespeare, right? They say he’s the inventor of Modern English. But if you go outside right now and grab someone from off the street who was brought up scrolling through tweets they wouldn’t understand a word he was saying back then either. No, it’s not about the old, and it’s not about the new, because that’s just another way for someone to say they don’t understand—or maybe that they just don’t want to…What’s it about? It’s about the meaning that’s already here. Whether it’s my meaning or it’s yours. Whether of this world or another………Ah, sorry—Hah! I got a little carried away there for a bit. I don’t know, just kind of got going all of a sudden. Ah, no. It’s nothing. Just some of the stuff we get into after work sometimes. You know how it is with friends. Well, anyway, I should go check on the other customers. I haven’t been around in a while. Will you give me a second? Thanks.

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—Hey. How’s my favorite pastor doing over here? Good? It feels like it’s been ages. Any court cases coming up that I should know about?…Huh? Room’s not spinning yet? Ah. Say no more. We can take care of that no problem. Don’t you worry. Just let me go inside the kitchen and speak with the chef. I’ll see what he can do…Alright, I’m back. So, what I can recommend is a Kill Devil if you’re looking for that extra kick. The liquor comes 151 proof so you’ll feel it right from the first drop. We normally only like to reserve this drink for select customers, but you look like you can hold your own…Two Kill Devils, you say? If the imperator commands it, it is done!

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Alright. Here you go. Two Kill Devils made-to-order. I added a little reinforcement to your first one, just to make sure there’re no holdups on the runway. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…So, what do you think? Good, right? Ah. You don’t have to explain. I can see the joy on your face. Yeah. It goes down hot. Then spreads. And suddenly the lights come on. You with me? Perfect. Now we’re ready to have a civilized conversation…What? Me? Oh, no. I never drink when I’m on duty. My manager would never allow it. It affects the quality of our work, he says. Hey, I won’t argue. The more drinks I serve, the more tips I can take home. That’s right. I even try to keep my lunch breaks short. Get in, get out. Just as long as I have a minute to stop by the water cooler. Pour a cup, take a swig, and then just like that I’m good to go. I’ve got all my energy again. I know! I can’t explain it. It’s like I just took a dive into the pool. But I noticed it only happens when I’m in the break room. Yeah. For whatever reason the water in there tastes stronger than the one out here…Jokes aside, I wouldn’t say I’m a big drinker or anything. I like to have a glass from time to time, nothing major. Sure, whiskey, vodka. I’m good with pretty much anything. You know, when I’m off. Maybe on the weekends. But drinking was always more of a thing we did together. At the house, at mine or a cousin’s. Or when we went out, anywhere really, just as long as we did it together…Yeah, in New York. But especially in DR. It’s just different there. You go to work and do your job, just like anywhere else, but when it’s over it’s like there’s a second world you enter, a second life…No, seriously! I’m telling you! It could be at any moment and suddenly you’d get stopped, in a parking lot, at a gas station, because you saw someone from the neighborhood you recognized and got called over, and now the two of you would be talking, running over the same old ground like it was something new, forgetting what brought you there in the first place. But you had to be there. You had to hang back for a day and see all the things that’d be going on to know what it was really like. Like get this. In the evening I would be sitting at home with my grandparents, waiting for my cousins to get back so we could leave the house, and I would always be seeing them getting up to go off somewhere, anxious for something to do: walking into one of the empty rooms, lifting the lid of a pot simmering on the stove, stepping outside the house to greet a neighbor who was passing along the street. But nothing divided it. It was like trying to draw without a pencil because there were no lines you could see and all the colors ran together, coming down from separate brushes, or maybe it was all from the same brush, you couldn’t tell. When night came around we’d head out together, packed inside the car, passing around a bottle of Presidente as everyone inside hunched forward, yelling over the radio, not knowing where we were headed, and not really caring. Later, when my cousin pulled the car up alongside the colmado because someone kept complaining they had the munchies, it was already full, people standing around the entrance of the building, drinking, sitting on plastic chairs, buried in a game of dominoes. And even if you only went in for one thing you always came out with another—wading through conversations like you’d just been tossed in the middle of a playground until one finally jumped up and hit you in the nose—and now you were arguing over politics, over baseball, with someone you knew, or maybe you didn’t. There would always be a weighty conversation fomenting in line, of successes but mostly of hope, men, women counting up the loose change they had in their pockets and handing it over to the cashier for a fresh lottery ticket, others vexed over the status of the visa application someone in their family had been waiting to hear back on. It was serious business, judging by the stories you overheard. Now, I’m not a superstitious person myself, but there are plenty of people who’d swear by some lucky charm or prayer that helped them get a job or win back some lover who left them. Hey, if it works for you, who am I to judge, right? Then there was that one summer when I came back to the States, and that thought was still fresh in my mind. I’d go to the drawer and grab a match from one of the cartons lying inside so I could make a drink, and when the smoke rose up and filled the air I could picture myself standing inside that room full of supplicants, each one waiting for a chance to ask the magic-worker to perform an incantation and bless their children’s visa applications. I just remembered that the other night. I was standing right here, waiting at my station, when a large group came in from one of the office buildings across the street. They were celebrating a promotion or something, I can’t remember. They crowded over at the other end of the bar, and my coworker was making their drinks, lighting the rosemary in their glasses as smoke spread out into the room. Every couple of minutes someone in their group would shout or laugh, making a big show of something to the people standing by, and everyone in the bar would look over, curious at first, then just out of habit. I was serving one of my customers at the time. An older gentleman from Chicago. In banking, he said. He took his gin neat. He would take a sip from his glass, look over and around, would chat with me or someone sitting beside him, looking for a conversation to get into, looking for anything really. There were a lot of people out that night. All different kinds. I guess you can say that about most nights, but some are just different than others, you know what I mean? Either way, after a certain point the faces start to blend together, and you can’t remember whether they’ve been there the whole time or just walked in. Earlier in the night, when the man from Chicago entered the bar, I saw him knocking into someone standing by the entrance. It was a young guy in his mid-twenties. Dark skin, jet-black hair. He had a look on his face like he was after someone. Like there was a flame burning inside him, smoldering somewhere behind the blur muddling his eyes. He must have come in that way because I hadn’t seen him approach the bar to order anything to drink before first noticing him then. When the man from Chicago bumped into him he was upset, and the two of them had a chat. But there was no bad blood, and the man from Chicago then came over and sat down, asking for a drink. His acquaintance hung back where he had left him, brooding like a storm cloud, covered all in black and standing in that same one spot, watching as groups of people streamed in past him through the entrance of the bar. After a while one of the bouncers came by. He asked him to move so they could clear the lane. The acquaintance did, taking up a new spot towards the back of the room, reluctantly though, watching the bouncer the whole time, fixing his eyes on him and not letting them drop until he left. It was pretty busy by this time. As I was walking over to the freezer to fill up on ice, I saw the man from Chicago in the back of the room, stopping to talk with his acquaintance on his way from the bathroom, then bringing him over to buy him a drink. I had just finished closing out one of the groups I was tending, so a seat opened up, and he took it. They sat talking for a while. It was amicable enough stuff, but every few minutes I would see his acquaintance starting up in defense of some minor point, however trivial, at first only to express enjoyment in having voiced his opinion, but later to insist that his companion take him at his word, asserting his valor as justification for the things he said. I didn’t catch too much of their conversation, being busy as I was with the other customers. But the thing that stuck with me from that night in everything that had occurred and from the unfortunate confusion that was to follow was the fire I saw burning in his eyes, and the indignation that came through those muddled words he spoke…mine, he said, this land is mine, they don’t know anything about me, they think they can come and build a hotel on the beach and call it Costa Rica and not know who I am, I’ll let them know who I am, the next time they ask they’ll see, all of them, they’ll see, when they come to the beach and want to take a dip in the Pacific and surf where I’m swimming, hah, extranjeros, they can all go back to where they’re from and take their hotel with them before I move anywhere…do you know who I am? After that he went out for a smoke. I chatted with the man from Chicago and he seemed fine. Only a little amused. Some women then approached the bar, taking the seat beside him. When his acquaintance returned, he hung back, standing away from the bar, just like he had done earlier that night. It was around this time that my coworker was serving the party with the rosemary cocktails, and they were already making a big commotion. By then they had had a few rounds, passing the drinks back each time to those standing furthest from its center. I didn’t see what started it all, but when the people standing around me started looking over in the group’s direction one of the bouncers was already there. He was having a word with the acquaintance, separating him from one of the members of the party. But the acquaintance didn’t back down. He kept facing him, talking over the bouncer like he wasn’t even there, locking eyes with that other person as if to make him understand that there was no amount of intimidation that could rattle his nerve. He didn’t stop, and another bouncer soon arrived. They took him by the shoulders and dragged him outside. The man from Chicago then got up and left his seat. I saw him at the entrance of the bar, holding the door wide open, a look of consternation rippling across his face for a scene I could not make out, being bounded by my station, his voice raised in an effort to mediate a misunderstanding between two groups of people who had no cause against each other, ignited only by a wisp of animosity, no more permanent than the warmth of a blanket. Then there was a loud crash and yelling of voices and the man from Chicago ran outside. I stayed behind the bar watching the confusion, because even if I tried to go over I wouldn’t have been able to make out anything in the agitation of that crowd. But like everything else that goes on around here after a few minutes people lost interest. They returned to the bar, ordered more drinks, and forgot that anything had happened. The man from Chicago had his glass sitting atop a fresh, white napkin, still not finished. I watched his seat, and after twenty minutes had passed he returned. He downed his glass and ordered another, and I listened to him, his voice a little unnerved, describe what he had seen outside. He was running, he said, the bouncers came after him and he was running. Away yeah but also toward them. He’d go, and when they thought they were finished with him and were walking back to the building he would follow and then they’d chase him and start it all up again. He wouldn’t just walk away. I don’t know why but he wouldn’t. He got them out down the street to where the buildings ended and the lights went dim and then he went some more, running, just running, back into the dark and then back into the light, running, hopelessly and without any reason to it at all, running and raging and finding nowhere to settle like he was a satellite caught between two worlds……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………Well, that’s what he said anyway…

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—So, finished with that drink?

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