I have no recollection of how I ended up here, far back along the shady edges of a blue canopy covered maze of chain-linked fence cubicles, palm trees, people and blacktop. From all sides and directions, people hollered and whistled.
“Come see my shop mon.”
“Braid your hair? Only Twenty dollars.”
Everything up to this point was an over-heated motion of a blur. From when we stepped off the taxi van and our faces were impacted with thick and smoky tropical air, I felt like I was walking in my sleep. A trance of sorts. I heard everyone talking and saw everything moving, yet I could not feel myself moving amongst the commotion. I was floating. Separated from the scene before me. Senseless. Being pulled along like a rebel starship trapped in the Death Star’s tractor beam. Helpless. I could faintly smell the strong stench of sweaty bodies over-packed into an unnecessarily crowded can of sardines. I could begin to see that Kara was hesitant to follow me, she was not being pulled along as I was by the six foot, lanky and slender-framed Jamaican. I could see she was giving me a cautious and nervous-twitch of a look.. My senses were slowly emerging, although muted and heavy, as if I was trapped at the bottom of a smoke colored glass bottle, looking at the life that existed outside. The horror stories echoed against the sides; ricocheting with regret.
“Never follow any sales people.”
“Once I followed a Jamaican shop owner down an alley that turned into a dead end and there was a whole gang waiting to mug me.”
“All they want to do is sell you drugs.”
But these were only echoes bouncing off into a place to forever be ignored. I kept walking and Kara kept following. Further and further back, deeper and deeper into the jungle. The sun seemed to set, its light became dimmer, as it was slowly filtered away by the thick clusters of outstretched and tangled palms leaves. Further we walked in, not stopping until the Jamaican stopped.
“Ahh, here we are then, mon.”
* * *
Kara and I decided to take a little week-long trip to Jamaica for a relaxing spring break and to live it up at an all inclusive resort. Actually, Kara decided this. I had a Costa Rican jungle adventure via a single engine sea plane held together by duct tape lined up, but being only several months after an Irish-car-crash-of-an-adventure, Kara needed a vacation. For the sake of my marriage, I reluctantly put my tree-swinging Costa Rican adventure aside. Yet, I made a deal with Kara. If I agreed to go to an all inclusive resort and relax on the beach, play horseshoes and drink a fair share of fruity drinks with fruity names such as “yellow bird” and “pink lady”, then she would accommodate my need a little adventure. We decided that our adventure would consist of taking a day trip out into the country, off of the premises of the resort. With a handshake and some arrangement’s with the resort’s tour desk, we were on our way to the city of Ocho Rios for a little “adventure shopping”.
You are probably asking yourself, “Shopping? An adventure? What?” You have to understand that shopping in Jamaica is anything but like shopping in an enclosed, florescent glowing mall. None of the merchandise is priced. Everything is up for grabs and subject to barter. From all angles, sides and directions, people are begging and pleading with you to “come into my shop” and “let me show you this nice carving, you like?”, or “for you, I can make a deal”.
As we walked inwards through the narrowing corridors of the market maze, an old, wrinkled up lady with graying, unwashed salt and pepper hair, carrying a bright and multi-colored cloth garment of sorts, hobbled out of her booth with the help of a knobby old branch of a tree, and over towards Kara. While Kara was busy flipping through and lightly examining some jewelry, the old lady suddenly became animate and quickly began dressing Kara in the must hideous outfit I had ever seen. First a wrap around her chest, and then another around her waste. Both tied tight in the back. Kara was stuck. It was like a reverse rape. Before she knew it she had a florescent pink and orange halter top with black silhouetted palm trees and the words “Jamaica” screen printed onto it and a matching wrap-around skirt.
“Tell your girl she look pretty”, the lady barked at me as she back handed my shoulder. “Tell your girl she look pretty”, she again demanded of me.
I stood there trying to think of how best not to offend this lady. “Well”, I began, “she did look pretty until you put those ugly rags on her”. Of course I didn’t actually say this. That would not have been very nice. Instead, I just stood there and smiled to myself as Kara flashed me a glare that clearly told me that I was a dead man.
“You look pretty. Very, very pretty”, the old woman kept muttering through a crackled and aged voice as she stroked Kara’s auburn hair. “You want braids? Necklace? Beads?”, she rapidly fired at us through a curtain of heated stale breath and a cooling mist of salvia. Without waiting for a response, she started placing necklaces, bracelets and beads around Kara’s neck, wrists and waist.
I had to think fast. If not I would be stuck buying all the crap in her shop as the only available mechanism of getting out of there.
“Those are cool shirts. How much are those?” I inquired about a white t-shirt with a green screen-printed marijuana leaf and a slogan that read, “yea mon” on the front. Obviously not something I was sincerely interested in, but it would serve perfectly as a much needed distraction.
“I can sell to you for a deal. Thirty dollars”, she quoted with a sparkle in her nearly emotionless and weathered face.
“Really?”, I replied with a feigned interest and a raised eyebrow. I could feel a heartstring starting to be pulled for this hard working old woman spending a lifetime bartering for the sale of Caribbean crap. “That’s not a bad deal”. I had to remain strong. We were short on cash and this was not a time for a charitable donation, even if it meant I would get a classy drug paraphernalia related t-shirt for doing so.
While she was busy working a deal with me, I had Kara start to remove all the ugly clothing and jewelry.
“I’m a small guy, do you have any smalls?” I asked, knowing from the looks of the pile of shirts that nothing in there was smaller than an extra large. Yet she was determined to find a small, and so she hunched her humped back over a pile of t-shirts and frantically began searching for a size small t-shirt while muttering something about how nice I would look in one of her shirts. As she was shuffling through her stack of starched shirts, Kara, free from prison of ugly clothes and cheep jewelry, and I left. Fled. Fast. Without looking back. We literally ran away from a little old lady who was only trying to make a living. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it is something that saved me at least fifty bucks, so I guess I broke even.
* * *
And so it was that I found myself seated in a taxi van, racing down a dusty gravel path in which the locals refer to as a “highway“, at breakneck speed. It was a forty minet thrill ride comparable to an amusement park ride without the safety net, from our resort in Runaway Bay to the Ocho Rios market place. Our taxi would speed up on to the bumper of the car in front of us, who was already going roughly eighty miles per hour, and begin to get impatient about the obviously apparent holdup. The driver would then jerk out into the right hand lane to pass. It was always a gamble, and I have never had much luck with gambling. Without failure, there would always be a car speeding down the road directly at us. Sane people would move back into their lane and try to overtake at a later point in time. Not our driver; he was anything but sane. Slamming the gas pedal he would whirl around the taxi in front of us, beep once and wave, and then slide into a space not much larger then our taxi between the taxi we overtook and another bus now directly in front of us. With fractions of seconds to spare, the car coming at us would whiz by as we edged ourselves into the traffic nitch. Our driver could tell that he had just scared us silly, and so he laughed and tried to put us to ease.
“Ah, there’s nothing to be worried about. That’s the Jamaican way to overtake, mon. It’s all irie”, he said. He then laughed, “Just remember ‘left side is right side and right side is suicide’.”
We were going to die at the hands of a suicidal Jamaican taxi driver. And they say New York cabbies are insane.
* * *
As we arrived in Ocho Rios, the driver pulled into an alley, opened the door and said he would see us back here in two hours. I sincerely believed that we would never meet again. We jumped out the door and were met with a blast of thick, heavy heat and a group of Jamaican merchants offering to sell us drugs, coffee, rum, crafts, and everything else. Our faces looked that of a deer caught in headlights, the instant before they are killed by a semi. Our vision became hazy as we entered that dazed, murky state of mind one shifts into when they are thrown into bizarre, foreign and unfamiliar surroundings.
“Come with me mon. I be your friend and show you to the shops”, a mellow and surprisingly soothing voice rose from among the mass of excited screams that bombarded us. Like two puppies who adopt the first friendly face it sees as its mother, Kara and I began to follow this stranger to his shop.
“I bring you to my shop. I show you my things”, he said as we walked through the chain linked fence gate that surrounded the outdoor market area. “If you like what you see, then we make a deal. If you no like what you see, then no hard feelings. You just give me a dollar mon and we are still friends. Irie yea?”.
Not knowing what he was saying or what I was to say, I just smiled and followed as Kara fell further and further back. And so it was that we found ourselves meandering and snaking our way under the blue tarped make-shift ceiling of the market, slithering through the shadowy shapes it cast upon us. Around a sea of vendors offering to braid Kara’s hair or to show us their “nice stuff”. Further we fell and deeper we spun into an abyss of aimless confusion.
“Ah, here is my store”, our leader said as we stopped at a shady corner located at the far end of the market. “Take some time. See what you like. Then we can make a deal. You are my friends. I make deals with all of my friends”, he gestured with a smile.
His shop was only a corner of chain-linked fence and dusty canvas tarp. It was roughly the size of a small closet, a broom closet, and was overflowing with various wooden animals tumbling from its entrance and onto the pavement. There were coasters, masks, jewelry, wooden elephants, giraffes standing four to five feet high, various carved bust of Rastafarian looking men and women, along with an assortment of other crafts of various shades of brown and red varnish. It was like walking through a forest of petrified mammals.
“How much for the carved male and female busts?”, I asked. This was the souvenir I had my mind set on finding sometime while on the island. This is what I wanted. In this sense, our friend was in luck.
“Oh, you mean the book ends”, he pointed out. “They are sixty dollars. But for you my friend, I give you a deal and charge you only fifty dollars, mon”, he said as he kindly placed his hand on my shoulder for an added touch of sincerity.
Let the haggling begin. It was time to dance.
“Hmmph”, I replied with folded arms, signaling that I was not interested and that the price was too high for my liking. “How about those coasters?”, I asked with a feigned interest.
“These coasters? You like the coaster?. You see, they even have Jamaican ten dollar piece on the top of them. The coasters are forty dollars, but I give you ten dollars off”.
“Hhmph”, I grunted again and began to act impatient. I think he began to realize he had to act fast or he was going to lose a sale for the bargains began to be offered more readily.
“Look mon, you are my friend and a guest to my country”, he said as he placed his hand on his heart as if about to recite a pledge. “I give you the coasters and this for only thirty dollars”. He showed me a wooden goblet like you would find in a Catholic church, only this one was the size of a shot glass. “Nice shot glass”, he said as he admired his craft. “It even says ‘West Indies’ on it so you always remember your time with me in Jamaica”.
“Hmmph”, I again grunted. “The coasters and a shot glass”, I thought out loud. But what about my wife?”, I asked. “I can’t expect her to sit idly by while I take my Jamaican shots now can I?” I laughed.
“Of course not! You are a gentleman, I should have known. Since I am a gentleman too, I sell you the coasters for thirty dollars and give you two shot glasses for free. How does that sound? Good?” he asked.
Not really wanting coasters and still being interested in the bookends, I looked to bring the conversation back to where we started by inquiring, “how much for the bookends again?”
“The bookends? Thirty dollars”, he answered while slyly setting the coasters back on the shelf. He knew what I was after. I knew what he was after. It was now a race to the finish.
“Can I buy just one?”, I naively asked. “How much for just one of the carved heads?”
“No, no, they are book ends. A set. See, a man and woman. They would be lonely if they were separated”, he joked. “How about this mon, I know you like these bookends. I give you the best deal. You give me thirty dollars for the bookends and I give you the two shot glasses for free. As a gift to my friends.”
Now that was a deal. But rather enjoying my negotiating luck and the macho feeling my ego was getting from it, I kept pushing for more. “We’re both college students and we’re a bit short on money. How much to buy one of the sot glasses?” I placed the ball perfectly, it was now time for him to serve me his final, and truly best offer.
“No. No”, he shouted anxiously with a slight hint of frustration. “I tell you what, here’s a deal. The best deal. My final offer. I can do no more. I usually don’t make such deals, but you are a good friend, so I do this only for you. I sell you the bookends and give you the two shot glasses for only twenty five dollars”.
I gave him a smile, held out my hand and said, “You’ve got yourself a deal, mon”.
Money was exchanged, our goods were wrapped and we began to make our way out of the market. I was feeling good. Smiling to myself and thinking, “ Nick, you sure know how to drive a bargain. What a deal you got”. I was feeling all those masculine feelings one gets after successfully accomplishing a task that is for some reason considered a “man’s job”. I was a man’s man. I needed to grunt, puff my chest and scratch my crotch. “I am Nick, King of the Bargain. Fear me used car salesmen and other merchants. Hear my roar”.
Then a seller emerged from his canopy covered stall and offered to sell me a set of bookends. A male and a female. The same as the set I had just bought. I soon realized that the one’s that were carved by “my friend” himself were also being “carved” by every Jamaican on the island. “I give you the best deal mon”, this new salesman began. “Because you are my good friend, I sell you these two handcrafted bookends for only fifteen dollars”.
All aspects of my machoness seemed to instantly shrink.
“I still have my two shot glasses”, I grunted with a scratch. And then we quickly left to find our van.
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