Boxing Day December 27
Public holidays never cease here. December 26, Boxing Day, is celebrated throughout the United Kingdom, where it is also called the Feast of Saint Stephen. Trini holiday collectors always love a good feast and a day off from work, so the match is a good one. Given the length of the Christmas Day celebration—the Venezuelan oil family next door sing and dance until dawn—having a second day of Christmas to recover from the first is not a bad idea. I believe this is where Boxing Day may get its name—you wake up with a terrible headache, as if you were in a fight with a boxer.
The Massy is closed for two days. So is the mall and even the pharmacies. Everyone, including the sick, must be celebrating. The familiar beggars are on vacation, leaving Westmoorings vacant but for me and my trusty front guard Naipaul, who seems to be enjoying his gift of whiskey, watching Soca videos on the security screens.
I am reading some homegrown literature. Mr. Big, a crime novel by Ty Batson, hits a little too close for comfort, as the protagonist lives on my street. He is a hitman with a heart, who eliminates the worst of the corrupt government ministers while raising a teenager and copulating with every female character in the book. It is remarkable how many places are mentioned that I have visited—Movietown, Smoky and Bunty Bar on Ariapita, the Ritual coffeehouse in Saint James, and more—giving this bustling city a strangely small-town feel. It is a bit disappointing to recognize so much in an insider’s account, as if what I have so far discovered is all there is, or all that I am allowed. I should feel reassured that I am getting something right, but I am not. I feel like I am a singly targeted audience for a lousy book.
Still, Batson’s uncanny description of my neighborhood is a gem: “Westmoorings, a dressed-up ghetto for deceitful and pretentious people living bogus lives behind showy veneers of wealth. With its manicured lawns, BMW-filled garages, traffic-free streets of zebra-painted humps, and sleepy security guards, Westmoorings is quintessential Port-of-Spain suburbia. Affluence outwits common sense, posturing translates into more credit card debt, and neighborly respect is measured by the height of boundary walls and fences. It is pure phony-land, with people hiding from others and hiding from themselves, people running from their pasts, from things they did and didn’t do.“
I scan the vicinity to see if I am being observed. If the author mention’s Naipaul’s name, I may have a panic attack.