This Side of Mojito

A rarity in Florida, cool breeze, crisp clear skies and not a drop of humidity, all in August no less. I found myself venturing to the city of Lakeland to meet my twin sister Liz for dinner and drinks. This had now become our bi-monthly custom since I had returned to the south. Neither of us lived remotely close to the land locked city of our rendezvous, but it just so happened to be an hour drive for each of us, making it a perfect location.

Now if you live in central Florida you may know of the city called Lakeland. You may even have ideas of what it is like. A remote town sparsely populated with more cattle and abandoned trucks than human residents. This beautiful hick perception is in fact false. Sure, it is very much farm country, but smack dab in the middle is historic downtown Lakeland. Tightly wedged streets bulging with blocks of brick buildings that look like they more belong in a breezy New England town then they do in the humid swamp infested state of Florida. Quaint bars, record stores, a-typical law firms and bank businesses, small diners, and shady parks dot the city like spots on a Dalmatian. And at one of these diners, Harry’s Cajun Diner, is where Liz and I had scheduled to meet.

In our normal twin fashion we arrived at the same time, parked very near to one another and exited our cars at the exact same time. And being of the same like mind we gave each other the once over realizing we were an almost mirror image of the other. Both of us were clad in dark denim jeans, solid burgundy shirts and low top vans. Using the same tone and inflection in unison we proclaimed “How does this always happen? Worst and best twins ever!” This in turn made us giggle as we embraced. Sibling to sibling we strolled towards our destination. “First things first, our priority is drinks!” Liz stated. Since our wonder twin-esque powers allowed Liz and I share thoughts and feelings, it was impossible for me to disagree. Hand in hand we walked into the pungent spicy smell of cumin, pepper and seafood that wafted from the kitchen to every corner of the restaurant. This overwhelming sensory destruction made the outside patio to be a perfect place to retire and play catch up over cocktails.

We seated ourselves and began to peruse the drink menu. Fate must have intervened that evening for my eyes had barley settled upon the page when something jumped off the menu and into my soul. A Mojito Martini, what on earth could this be? I had always held a fondness for the Cuban born beverage and martinis were a close second. I was perplexed and intrigued by the lack of a description for the drink, what on Earth could it be? A mojito made with vodka or gin? A martini made with mint and rum? Obsessing over these thoughts I had yet to notice Liz ordering from our waiter then giving me the “are you ready” look. Startled I looked up at our waiter and smiled, “sorry I was lost in my thoughts. I didn’t catch your name.” Before me stood a man who looked too well off to be in the service industry. He stated his name was Gatz and was there anything he could help me with. “I had a question about the mojito martini. What pray tell is that? It peaked my interest yet the menu isn’t very clear on what it is.” Gatz proceeded to inform me that it was a concoction of his own making. The cocktail was very similar to a mojito, but he used raw sugar instead of cane syrup and it was chilled as opposed to the classic over ice, and to top it off it was served in a martini glass. The oddity of it sealed my curiosity, “I’ll take one of those my man” I proudly stated.

Liz and I caught up on the events of each other’s lives while we waited for our pre-dinner drinks. Our small talk lasted several minutes before Gatz returned with our beverages, two-hearted ale for Liz (a hometown favorite) and the coveted Mojito Martini for me. “Please let me know what you think of the cocktail” Gatz said “for I love to mix drinks yet I don’t partake in drinking.” Odd I thought what kind of man creates mind blowing ideas for drinks yet doesn’t imbibe alcohol? Now with a bit of trepidation in my heart I put the sugary rim to my lips and gingerly took my first sip. Dear Jesus, this had to be the best beverage I had ever consumed! It had a subtle sweetness to it with a light bite of lime and a perfect balance of mint most of all it still held the strong spiced rum taste that was the backbone of the concoction.  That first magical sip was all it took; I was hooked like a fish on a gaff.  Seeing me enthralled in my cocktail Liz had to discover what all the hubbub was about. As she took a hefty pull from the martini I witnessed the whirl of wonder and amazement dance across her emerald eyes. “This has to be the pinnacle of rum based drinks, if not all cocktails” she announced. All thoughts and ideas of a full dinner were swept away by the blissful feelings this mojito had awaked in our taste buds. The next hour was spent nibbling on complimentary bread, ideas for matching tattoos and imbibing the majestic drink know as the Mojito Martini. We left Harry’s with praises on our lips for Gatz and his superb bartending abilities. The night was slipping into the realm of lateness so we twins decided to call the evening a success and part ways, vowing to return to this luxurious hole in the wall and its magical drink specials.

On the drive back to Bradenton I realized a small portion of my soul was left behind at the bottom of that last sugary martini glass, oh woe was me. The I received a text from my good friend Jamie, asking if I was back yet and if so would I care to meet her and our mutual friend Steph at Tarpon Pointe for a few drinks. Knowing me, this was an absurd question, because of course Mike was down to share good conversations with long time friends, no matter the hour of day or night. I arrived at the tikki like bar to find my ladies enjoying an invigorating breeze curiosity of the gulf coast. Before I joined them I thought it prudent to stop at the bar and continue my affair with Cuban concoctions. The bartender introduced himself as Buchanan and resembled a man whom in his youth enjoyed the popularity of being an all-star high school football player but had now fallen on lean times. I secretly pegged him as a beer supremacist. Normally I have never been quick to judge, but with his ratty Yale polo (which I highly doubted he ever went there), grizzled features and abrasive demeanor, I distinctly felt he was one not to be trusted. So, against my better judgment I order a mojito, thinking to myself, I sure he can make a great one, this being a tropical themed bar and all. Buchanan disappeared for what seemed to me to be entirely too long for a simple and typical drink. I mean yes it wasn’t a beer, but how hard can it be to make my order? When the gruff looking so called Ivy-leaguer returned he handed me an off white beverage with a large sprig of mint jutting from the top. I gave it half a glance, paid the lug and headed towards the perch my friends had occupied.

 Sitting down after brief greetings followed by quick and tender embraces I toasted my friend and took a strong pull of my so called mojito. My senses were assaulted with a strong alcohol tinge and bitter mint flavor. What on God’s green Earth was this? No tangy limes, an absence of sweet sugar, were these mint leaves even muddled? My face must have given away my shock and horror at what was happening within my mouth. Jamie gave me a perplexed look and asked me if anything was wrong. “Why yes” I rasped, “That certain deems to call this a mojito? This is nothing but blasphemy in a plastic cup!” My drink lacked pizzas, it was absent of anima, in fact this “drink” was an affront to Cubans themselves. Just as I was about to storm back up to Buchanan, toss my drink into his smug face, and denounce him for the swill slinging barbarian that he was, I remember some very wise words.  In my young and vulnerable years my father took me aside and gave me a piece of advice that I had been turning over in my head ever since. He said, “Whenever you feel like chastising a bartender, just remember that not all the people in the world have enjoyed the drinks you have.”

Zen And The Art Of Patio Slavery

It was the summer of 2000, and the young, gangly awkward boy that I was and still am was preparing for a fun filled irresponsible summer before embarking on what would be my last stretch in the academic world know as grade school. The possibilities of what I could do that summer were endless. At least to me sleeping in till noon, watching mindless TV, playing Nintendo 64 till my eyes bled, gorging my tiny frame on mass quantities of junk food and getting rides to the mall seemed endless. But as has always been my luck, Mother had ulterior motives for me and my so called summer of lethargy.

I woke up one May morning to find Mother sitting at the breakfast table waiting for me with what she deemed exciting news…. To this day I still think we differ on what should excite ones emotions. I was informed that our back patio was in a sad state of affairs. Which I couldn’t disagree. The back porch of my semi new home was a dismal place. This screened in shanty town was roughly a 20x84 foot patch of neglected space that sat at the back of the Caudill-Western estate. It was covered in pastel brick pavers that came straight from the sears catalog of 1947. To say they were weathered was an understatement at the very least. Lining the inside of the porch and pavers were a wide variety of bleached ferns, shriveled shrubs and dilapidated flowers... well at one point they were flowers. Needless to say, something must be done about this sad state of affairs our patio had fallen into.

Quick and elaborate as always, Mother proceeded to lay her dreams of what our porch should look like. She envisioned a Zen garden motif with a small path leading to a two tiered koi pond that would be enshrouded by ferns and large rocks. To me this sounded wonderful, superb even. I could see this little slice of Japanese heaven in my mind’s eye. A place of mystic beauty that would wash the senses in serine beauty and tickle the ears with the subtle sounds of the babbling water. Her dreams had an infectious quality to them that started to peak even my fine young adolescent interests. So I had to ask Mother who she would be hiring to do this tedious yet stunning task. She casual smiled at me and stated that why none other than me.

The gears in my mind whirled, sputtered, caught for a moment on the fact they were trying to process, and then spun back into life trying to sort this fact and what I could do with it. Stuttering like a simple fool I squeaked, “Me? Wait you are gonna pay me? Why me?.... Really? Me?” Her smile faded for a heartbeat and then quickly reappeared. But now it had a mischievous, almost diabolical quality to it. In her always present chipper tone she told me that no I would not be paid, that I would be getting up every day at 7 to work on the porch, and that they would supply me with everything I needed and give me daily tasks that were to be completed promptly, without whining or complaining. Well this did not sit with me in the slightest. I stammered and stumbled through a long list of complaints and reason why I was unfit for this task. I was 14, unaccustomed to sunlight, 5’ 3’’, gangly as a willow switch (and probably just as strong), and barely 100 pounds soaking wet. In short I was more an ideal candidate for British nobility than manual labor. Yet no matter how hard I had tried to persuade her that I was in fact not the man for the job, she would hear nothing of it. The deal was signed without my knowledge, written in blood and tethered to my soul. I was her indentured servant for the entire summer. Good bye hopes and dreams of a season spent doing the bare minimum.

And so, early the next morning I was roused from my bed to begin my daunting task of area beautification. To start my slavery off with a bang I was tasked with the removal of all the pavers on the porch. With the Florida summer sun beating down on my Gandi-esque form I began to slip my bony fingers around the paver, heave them up from the ground they were planted in, lug them outside and stack them in neat and efficient piles of 6. With the better part of two days wasted in the act of carting the pavers to their new home out back I was ready to lay waste to the so called plants that remained on the patio.

 The ground work had been completed, so to speak, and now I was ready to do the real work, as Mother put it. Real work I wondered, what the hell did I just do for the last two days? Dick about in imagination land? I was given a shovel and a large shipping crate that contained the liners for the new pond. “I want it put here, with the smaller pond set up over here so it gets a nice layered affect for the water fall” Mother flatly stated. Off I went, digging like a dog, sweating like a fat kid at Jenny Craig, and cursing like a sailor, all in all I was a hot mess indeed. Digging a pond was a daunting task that turned out to be more complex then I ever could have expected. Remove part of the Earth, put the liners in, fill around them and then add water, right? No! Dig the hole, line it with sand, fit the liner in place, fill the gaps with sand, not dirt, to cushion the ponds frame then install the pump and pipes to run from the lower pond to the smaller/higher one so the waterfall will work, and then you can think about putting water in…. after you spruce up the area around it and then clean all the sediment that has fallen in to the empty liners.

Phase two was out of the way and I had then been tasked with planeing the patio so I could then fit it with the slate pathway. Now there were many of tools I could have been given to make that task easy and quick. But as always Mother loved to see me do my yard work with the same equipment that the Chinamen used in the late 1800’s. My planer was a long wooden shaft (stop laughing) stuck into a flat square of iron. The thing had to have weighed close to my own body mass. So for the next few days I huffed and I puffed and I flattened that ground down. With the spirit of the Masons flowing thru my tiny frame I began to “lovingly” arrange the 14x14 50 pound black slate pavers into a walkway that would guide you thru the Zen like land.  With my pathway all laid out I awoke the next day to a large battered white truck magically parked in the back yard. Pilled high in the bead of this behemoth was several hundred pounds of thumb sized rocks. A vast array of beige, grey and yellow stones straining the truck bed and looking for their final resting place. “Now what exactly am I supposed to do with these?” I proclaimed. Mother informed me that I was to take a five gallon bucket, fill it and then begin to coat the back porch with an even amount of said stones. Oh goody gum drops, every day my life seemed to get better and better. The days crawled by as I shoveled load after load of rocks into the bucket, struggled to drag my cargo onto the patio, dump them in strategic locations and then spread them around so they were not in a lumpy mass. Which is no easy task, seeing as how rocks by nature are just that, lumps. By this point in my so called “wonderful” project, my back felt bent and broken from the weeks of toil, my skin had an almost brick red hue due to ultra-violet rays and my fingers were as raw as a fresh cut strip steak. Yet I had miles to go before I waked, and all I did was pray the lord my soul to take.

The rocks were in place and as even as I could make them, job done, right? Not in the slightest. For now I was tasked with putting the “final touches” on the Zen garden. Orchids, ferns, white lilies and a multitude of other peaceful plants were given to me with a map of their intended locations. I was also given large black stones around knee height that were to be piled in various locations. All I could do was stare at these obsidian obelisks and wondered how in Hades I was going to be able to make them budge let alone lift them. I came to find out that they were a type of pumice, very light and razor sharp. So in a way they were a curse parading around as a blessing. After a day of moving these boulders, without gloves mind you, my hands and forearms looks like I had developed a masochistic relationship with a cheese grater.  To this day the scars on my arms remind me of that horror.

A week later I placed my shovel against the shed, walked onto the porch and beheld the miracle I had created. It was a serine place of pale stone, midnight colored boulders and breath taking fauna, leading up to a pond filled with alabaster water lilies. I sank to my weary knees and began to weep like Moses must have after he and the Maccabeus escaped the clutches of the desert. My job was done, I had earned my freedom, and my soul could finally be free. Mother surveyed my work, smiled, and gave me a tender hug. “It looks perfect, my son” she told me “I couldn’t have done it better myself.” At this point my heart dropped, I had realized that tomorrow was the first day of school. My summer had been stripped away like a newborn for a crack addicted mother. Yet a glimmer of satisfaction still remained, I was done. No more grueling tasks of area beautification for me. That was until Mother gave me a smile and said “So next week you can start to clear and level a path around the house. Then use all those pavers you removed to make a lovely walkway.”

An Open Toed Letter

Little Toe....

So here I sit and ponder your existence.

What is the point of you?

When I command your siblings to move, they do so as a team.

Yet you sit about like a 400 lb diabetic stuck in a trailer watching reruns of Judge Judy.

In fact, when I think of you, a miniature version of the mother from “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape” comes to mind.

You’re all hunched over and shunned from your brothers, and you hide slightly behind one of your siblings.

You know the one, that slightly larger fellow who acts like he has your back but is just as ashamed of you as the rest of the family.

 And the reason for that is because he is sick of you getting in the way.

 He sees the rest of your family moving freely, but when he tries to do so himself, you hold him back, restricting his movements.

So they all wonder, as well as myself, what life would be like if you weren't around.

Do you have cerebral palsy?

Because you have a crooked bend to you.

Perhaps it’s just Scoliosis.

I can say without a doubt that if I had to pick a body part to lose it would be a tie between the left pinkie toe and the right pinkie toe.

 Perhaps if one was terminated the other would step up his game and pull his own weight for fear of following quickly in your shoes.......

But then a glimmer of light upon the dark horizon.

A ray of golden kissed sunshine on a bleak and grey dismal day.

 What could it be?

 Oh yeah, it's science and it informs me that you do have a purpose.

Perhaps the most important job out of any of your so call superior and larger siblings.

 You are gate keeper to the strength of my balance, perhaps there is hope for you yet.

I may need the entire family to stand, but if you decided to walk out of my life I would be left so cautiously walk thru this world.

No more running as swift as a gazelle.

 Say goodbye to being able to jump over obstacles and land safely.

Nay, without you my world would be an endless montage of tripping, falling and utter lack of coordination.

Pinkie toe, you keep me grounded in every sense of the word.

Please accept my most sincere and heartfelt apologies.

Can you ever forgive my foolishness?

What was that?

You can?

Thank you from the bottom of my heart old friend.

I never should have doubted you.

And yes, you do make a good point.

I finally see the light.

You have lifted the heavy satin veil from my eyes.

Pinkie fingers, you almost slipped by like the greased up useless pigs you appear to be.

The phalanges and I are in a unanimous decision.

 You have coasted by for far too long.

Now wear did I put that knife?

A Midsummer's Night Shower

      My nights, like most, I spend doing little other than going to the gym, showering and then spending the rest of the evening reading books on my kindle….. Yeah that’s right, a kindle (elite reader, right here).  But tonight I found a doorway into my own personal heaven. As I was leaving the tenth circle of hell (my current job), a nurse gave me a can of coke, as if knowing it would lead to an experience of pure bliss. Not thinking anything of it, I thanked the lady for the highly caffeinated high fructose temptation and headed for the gym.

For reasons unknown to me I just couldn’t get into my normal groove of self depreciation and unwavering fortitude that envelopes me when I begin to sculpt my gangly body. Instead of boring you with the rigorous self-indulgence of my routine I will just state that I focused on the thin flesh tubes I call my arms and pushed them till they became even more like limp noodles.

Upon arriving at my abode I decide to make myself a bourbon and coke (thank you LPN Debbie), grabbed my towel and a KOOL cigarette and headed outside to my little secret shower. Turning on the little strings of Christmas lights that run erratically thru my shower I prepared myself for a nice relaxing reprieve. Now my outdoor shower is not what you may think. It is far from a boxed area hooked up to a hose that douses me with sulfuric water intended for outdoor use only. No, this wonderful nook in a lightly bricked area dotted with mosaic tiles, enshrouded by vines of night blooming jasmine and ivy with a weathered worn wooden stand topped off with an eclectic silver shower head. The metallic provider of water peaks out above the vines to rain clear refreshing beauty upon my naked body. And I refused to have to bath in water fit only for a dog (not saying that is bad). Nay, this water is hooked up straight from the interior, just without the usefulness of having hot water.

On this hot summer night I disrobed, turned on the faucet, lit my square, grabbed my delicious cocktail and stepped into a realm I never thought would transcend me into a world of bliss. Taking a long pull from my square and a deep drink of bourbon I immersed myself in the cool crisp cascading waters. The mixture of nicotine, alcohol and water sent a shiver of ecstasy throughout my body and deep into the core of my essence. I was in heaven, for lack of a better word. The water brought new life into my weary frame and the drink lit a fire in my soul while the KOOL acted as a catalyst and fused the two into a wonderful feeling of euphoria, as if this is what I was meant to do with my life.

Yes, yes, I am fully aware that no one was meant to just shower and become intoxicated. What a simple yet unproductive life that would be. But for that brief 20 minutes I felt like there was nothing but me and that shower. A universe created around the simple joys in life.. An almost “The Fountain”-esque reality where that 8x8 chunk of Earth was encompassed by a bubble floating thru the cosmos.  And that is one it struck me, like a bolt of angelic lightning. If heaven did truly exist, this would be mine. I could imagine that if I died and a reaper from “Dead Like Me” helped me on into my afterlife, you would see a silvery halo around a small archway leading to masses of ivory and wildflower enshrouding a silver lined shower. It would be lit with fire flies on a warm dark night. There would be two little stands, one with a glass of never ending American Honey that would withstand the cascading waters, never overflowing and never diluting. The other would hold a square that would resist the dampness like that of a ducks feathers and burn with holy fire that no amount of water could extinguish. I would spend eternity in those revitalizing waters, without a care in the netherworld.

I know that this is a tad bit on the ridiculous side, but hey, that is what a personal heaven is all about. Bliss, peace, and never ending happiness. Yet here I remain, alive and mostly well. So until the day I can transcend to this small patch of other worldliness I shall hope and dream. And every night I shall bask in the idea that I have truly found heaven on Earth. My love, my peace, my outdoor shower