Hell's Heaven: A Metamorphosis in Costa Rica

Prologue

I can’t believe it! Is this really happening? This place is for my siblings, not me! I didn’t have time to pinch myself before the officer asked me, "¿Regala me tus zapatos o cordones?" (Do you want to give me your shoes or shoestrings?)

I looked down at the coating of contaminated water puddles that dominated the cell floor and sarcastically answered, "Mis cordones por supuestos." (My shoestrings of course.) Soaking my feet in a Costa Rica jail’s contaminated floor water wasn’t exactly something I had in mind.

My Air Force sneakers were one of the last personal possessions I had retained after being robbed at least twice. After the third month of selling what had been left in the restaurant, I was defunct of sellable products to help me eat. Every sunrise after sleeping in my disease-ridden restaurant had been like pulling a one-armed bandit in a casino, hoping a loan, donation, or friendly offer would put food on my plate.

I carefully untied my sneaker strings in a dry area of my new home’s bio floor and handed them to the waiting officer.

"¿Por que pegaste la mujer?" (Why did you hit the woman?), he asked condescendingly.

The officer automatically assumed that I’d hit the woman who’d put me in jail. I was initially shocked that he had insulted me, but while I was collecting my breath, I came to the realization that physical abuse could be something that was common in gringo relationships with the women of Costa Rica. After being in Costa Rica for fifteen years, nothing surprised me. I understood that in my position as a gringo at the mercy of the Costa Rican guard, it was in my best interest to remain calm. "Yo nunca le pegaría a una mujer" (I never hit women), I replied.

Clank, click, click. The officer closed the door and locked it.

I scanned my cell thoroughly. I never thought my life would be on the line in more ways than one. The first thing to do was look for the least contaminated location in which to park myself. I was in shock and in self-preservation high alert. I observed every inch of the jail floor. The dry level was to the far left. The only place to sit was on a concrete slab that lined the back wall of the cell. There was a combination of unidentified objects in the puddles leading to the concrete slab. The object that stood out the most was positioned on the floor in the far-left corner just below the slab. I focused on the twin bloody cotton swabs as I tiptoed my way over to my new bed. Desperation and disease occupied my thoughts. When I got closer to my bed, I was disgusted to see the raindrops of dried blood that decorated two-thirds of my concrete mattress. The most inviting area of my bed was at the far left. There was just enough room to sit. That was all I planned to do.

I should have been grateful. They could have given me the junior suite. It came with double concrete slabs, graffiti-decorated walls, and a completely contaminated floor. I decided to do some reading as I scanned the graffiti in the neighboring cell. There were various items that weren’t very entertaining.

As I moved my eyes to the right, I noticed two names in large letters. The first one was CHINO. It interested me, but I wasn’t surprised. Chino was the ex-mayor of the beach town in which I had resided. What really took me off guard was the next name in large letters: TONY. Now that just wasn’t cool. Did someone have a premonition that I or all Tonys were going to end up in this Costa Rica jail? Oh Yes! My Costa Rican dream: paradise, piña coladas, Coronas, Bob Marley, long semi-romantic walks on the beach to watch the sun set into the Pacific Ocean, and Tony in a jail with his name on the wall like an Expedia reservation.

When I was living in the abandoned restaurant, I had no resources at all. I had to worry every day if I would get one meal. My skin was turning hard and black from the unsanitary conditions I had been living in. During this time, my wife had taken my daughter to live with her mother in Panama. My son’s mother, who’d put me in jail, had a very experienced Tico lawyer who must have informed my ex-fiancé that I was now worth much more dead than alive.

I had dug and scratched my way out of the ghetto, entered the world of the richest people on earth, and lived the dreams of the majority. I was now five thousand miles from home, regressing to my personal Central American ghetto. My fatherless decisions had finally caught up to me. I thought I had it all under control. All my life, golden doors had opened in time to solve life’s problems. The doors were no longer there. I had used my very generous allotment. My arrogance made my spiritual guide’s pause.

The nightmare enhanced when the dusk mosquitoes invited their friends and family into my cell to feast on my already infected blood. They weren’t very picky. Some mosquitoes carried dengue. You can be infected with dengue once, but you’d better be in very good health if you get it twice.

I sat up straight in my very limited space, crossed my arms and legs, and prepared my mind to be an all-night washing machine of my invasive criminal thoughts of revenge. My fight against the mosquito clouds and for my life commenced.

Chapter 1

The candlelight danced solo in the corner of the empty bar, trying to calm my hunger, frustration, and anger. I double-checked the usual signs indicating the coast was clear from the clouds of satisfied mosquitos that finished their nightly feast of my blood. My pen, the only companion and confidant I had left, desperately clung to my hand while I lowered it to the waiting pad of paper. It was time to tell my story; it was time to save my life.

I was an African American ghetto kid, raised in 1960s Boston, Massachusetts. Most of us didn’t know how poor we were. Our single mothers would sacrifice everything necessary to make us think everything was all right. The kids would play, practicing to be players, hookers, drug dealers, or thieves. Some of us were talented enough to become professional athletes.

It was commonplace to hear drunks singing in the street, and no one was surprised to see dead bodies in the street either. Violence was a national ghetto pastime—bullets or fists were always flying through the air somewhere. At one point during our adolescence, my brother and I had been playing basketball with a local gang leader and his brother. When my brother challenged a foul the gang leader called on me, he pulled his gun, held it to my brother’s head, and asked him to reconsider.

The ghetto had fringe benefits designed to keep its inhabitants in their containment area. Young girls would have babies at a rapid pace and receive welfare benefits and food stamps. A lot of the babies would eventually be taken care of by their grandmothers, who would also share the increased amounts of food stamps and welfare checks. The misery of the babies and their broke, escapist fathers created a tribe of insecure young mothers who effectively dulled their rejections with an abundance of alcohol and drugs.

My father left my mother with four boys and one girl when I was only one year old, leaving her consistently stressed and angry with life. My older siblings and I grew up in a constant state of never knowing when Mom would take out her frustrations on us. She started her religious journey in the Baptist Church around the time I began elementary school. She became so deeply engrossed in her newfound faith that she got the spirit one day and almost fell off the balcony where she had been singing with the choir. When she converted to the Jehovah’s Witnesses right before my eleventh Christmas—and I did not see a tree or presents in the morning—I truly felt we had lost each other to religion.

My sister, Sheila, was the oldest; she was beautiful, smart, athletic, and tough. Sheila would eventually succumb to the attraction of men and the feel-good candies of the streets. Richard was next in line; we’d lost his twin when they were five years old. Richard was very athletic and spent many hours playing sports before his frustrations led him into his own string of bad luck. Oscar stood in the middle of the boys. He was named after my father, for a good reason; he emulated our father—he was the perfect clone. I was the baby, so I had a front-row seat to my siblings’ theater. I must have slept through some scenes because I would go on to repeat some of their mistakes.

My father was a truck-driving macho man from Atlanta, Georgia; he was admired by many men for how he used his good looks and charisma to manipulate situations and women. My siblings and I would worship him as a god during the very few times he would visit. I knew my father was highly respected on the streets, but I didn’t know how dangerous he could be until I was in my teenage years. He shot a man to death for threatening to blow up his house.

My saving grace was a white family who appeared almost out of nowhere. They embraced me and opened the world up to me so that when I had to make a decision, I had a chance to make the right choice. The Torreys were teachers at the Mount Hermon Preparatory School in Northfield. They had reached out to the local Catholic priest of my community to seek connections with some nice colored kids to integrate with their children because they did not want to raise their kids in an all-white environment. The priest connected my sister and me with the Torreys; my sister did not get along with some of them, but I had a lot of fun with the Torreys. After one visit with the Torreys, I fell in love with them—and they fell in love with me. I found myself staying with them on almost every vacation. I learned and did wonderful things with them on the outside of the ghetto world.

I was lucky to have this wild-card family. They made me want to have more than the norm in my life and pushed me to excel academically. I was always in the advanced classes at my elementary school. I even won the Boston mayor’s award for academics at the end of my sixth-grade year. I was prepared to follow my peers to the public Lewis Junior High school. Little did I know that my mother was plotting with the Torreys to put me on an academic and cultural rocket ship.

I didn’t go to the Lewis School. The prescribed pattern for my life seemed to undergo a mutation. I spent three years, 1970–73, at a very happy private middle school called Shady Hill in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most of the kids at Shady Hill had started prep school education at prekindergarten. From the well-educated parents and teachers to the students, I could tell that the majority of my peers were very intelligent. I felt I had been flipped upside down as soon as I entered my homeroom. The teacher and the students gave me a warm welcome, but I knew I had a lot to learn to survive mentally in my new atmosphere.

By the grace of the gods and Mr. Torrey, I was accepted into a very prestigious prep high school, Loomis-Chaffee, in Windsor, Connecticut. I was placed into dorms with kids who seemed to be some of the most interesting international adolescents on this earth. Trying to study, socialize, and become a marijuana connoisseur at the same time was quite the challenge. By the time I enrolled at the University of Massachusetts, I had evolved into a wild and hormonal Black preppy jumping bean, with my wild partying and fast lifestyle.

The boarding school had strict guidelines about the times you could eat, sleep, and leave the campus. UMass was wide-open. I called my own shots. Math was my strength. I passed everything up to Calculus 1. I thought an engineering major would be a breeze. I signed up for Calculus 2, Fortran, and a couple of other courses I thought I could party through. I had no guidance whatsoever; if I did, it was hidden deep inside my subconscious.

My college years danced to the beat of many different drummers. Outside, I was black; inside, I was a confused and extremely selfish chameleon. By the time I arrived at UMass, I was culturally diverse and comfortable with the underpinnings of almost every social level in American society. I was able to adjust my movements and phonetics to connect with everyone—from people in the ghetto to people wearing Brooks Brothers blazers. However, my chameleon bag of tricks didn’t count much with students who insisted upon separating themselves from any culture outside of their own.

Individuality and insecurity prevented me from joining any campus groups. I spent minimal time with any of them, including the black students’ groups. I felt support groups would suppress me from using my full social capacity, smothering me into their own brands and dulling my chameleon-like capabilities. I followed my own path.

I may not have had a great academic career, but I brought athletic talent. Seeing my abilities, the varsity lacrosse coach at UMass tried everything he could to keep me on his team during my first year. However, 90 percent of my teammates wanted to make me disappear. My attendance was horrendous. Most of my teammates were from Long Island, which produced some of the best lacrosse players in the world. The combination of their close community, above-average income level, and a very high winning percentage made the lacrosse players very popular throughout the UMass community. The players, including the fringed outcasts among them, were automatically invited to the majority of campus parties. The free kegs and pretty girls fit right into my almost nonexistent class schedule.

My chameleon presentations did not sit well with my teammates. I was sent a direct signal from them during an inter-squad scrimmage. I made a solid but legal hit on one of the more popular teammates. Instead of the Great hit! usually awarded to the other teammates, I heard, Get the fuck up off of him!

The varsity coach knew I was talented enough to be on the team, but my presence assured that he had his work cut out for him socially and politically. His weight was lifted at the end of the fall of my freshman year when I made the mistake of using a new, hard lacrosse stick at the last preseason scrimmage. I was in the open. The midfielder threw me the ball for a very high-percentage goal. When the ball hit my new stick, it reacted like most balls when they hit a lacrosse stick that is not broken in; it bounced right out. The opposing team’s defense had enough time to get into position. I looked like I had never played the game. I wasn’t very surprised when my name wasn’t on the roster the next day. I played junior varsity through the spring season.

I had missed the basketball tryouts, but I decided to try to get on the basketball team at UMass that year when the lacrosse season ended. I showed up for the varsity practice and was sent directly to the junior varsity coach. The coach could either see that I had potential, or he remembered that I’d scored twenty points when my high school had played against his team the previous season. That poor JV coach had no idea who he was dealing with when he decided to sign me on.

I’d had a very bad experience during my senior year of high school with my varsity basketball coach. I’d missed practice once, opting to get my buzz on instead, because my back was hurting. When I returned the next day, one of my teammates was angry at me for skipping, and he physically aggressed me. This was a serious offense as far as the school was concerned and they were planning on throwing this other player out of the athletic program under which he had been admitted. The coach wanted him on the team, so he decided to pay me a surprise visit at my dorm room to ask me to vouch for this player to the disciplinary board. When he dropped in, I had two girls and a bong in my dorm room. I ended up taking a bribe from the coach: he now had information that could get me expelled, so I agreed to testify on his other players’ behalf on the condition that he would not get me expelled from the school for the weed and the girls, whom he’d found hiding in my closet during his surprise visit. Retaining my spot on the team was not part of the agreement; I was off.

Did I bring a negative attitude to basketball at UMass? Of course! The majority of people from my neighborhood were born with attitudes. The experience I’d had in high school had only added fuel.

It only took sitting this ten-year starter on the bench for the entire first game of the season to find out what kind of attitude I actually had. You know you have the gift of gab—or a shit attitude—when you can rip into your leader, make three-quarters of the team quit, lose a buddy for life, and put the lights out on UMass JV basketball for the rest of the season. Needless to say, I did not play basketball at UMass after that.

How the hell did I get so spoiled without a dollar in hand? The private schools tried to refine my attitude, but I still had a lot of anger in me I couldn’t fully evaluate. My friends, family, and I had to respond to any and all threats in the ghetto. It takes time and a lot of self-evaluation to not stick out your chest and to lower the hair on your back. When you’re from the ghetto, you don’t have a chip on your shoulder; you have a log. I just pity the fool who pisses off a young ghetto man who spent thousands of prep school hours absorbing the minds of the future masters of the universe.

Midway through my junior year at UMass, I realized I was on the fast track to nowhere. I turned in my registration paperwork late. At that point in my life, I was in a completely different world than my mother, who, like most parents in my neighborhood, had no knowledge of college administrative processes. I was never reminded, pushed, or advised to do anything at this point. Since the seventh grade, I had been on my own to learn how to be responsible with school. The university supplied me with a dorm room but no meal plan.

I took out a $1,500 student loan, which filled the gas tank of my relationship with my new girlfriend, and we enjoyed a three-week supply of pizza and beer to replace our well-spent calories. I eventually worked my way into a very low-paying dorm-monitoring job. The job, well below minimum wage, filled my stomach twice a day with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. An old friend from Shady Hill would spoil me with a hamburger once a week. The writing was clear and precise on the wall: I was done. I called my very disappointed mother and cried like a baby. I decided I would at least do the best I could to maintain a 2.0 to keep the UMass doors open.

In the care package students’ worlds, Mom and Dad would get on the phone, coach their child through some adjustments, give positive reinforcement, and send some extra cash; that world wasn’t mine. I was tired of being poor. Reruns of an image in my mind starring an ignorant white guy who’d been expelled for hate crimes returning to visit friends in a brand-new car dominated my brain. I thought, If an asshole like him can go out into the world and return to campus in a shiny new car, it should be a slam dunk for me.

I pulled my academic socks up and secured a 2.0 overall grade average. To this very day, I wonder if I missed my calling; I received an AB in Physics. Even though I had kept the door open to remain at UMass if I wanted to, I decided of my own accord to drop out.

I packed my bags; this broken-family, undisciplined, under-skilled, without-a-clue young ghetto kid walked ass-backwards into his quest to conquer the world.

I began my dropout career by bouncing drunks out of bars, bartending, and selling encyclopedias door-to-door in the dead of winter. I had the perfect directions to run straight into a brick wall.

I was job