Walking Through Walls
A Memoir
one
Redneck Mambo
"My, aren't you a cutie!" She leaned closer to me and took a drag off her cigarette. As she exhaled, her ample sunburnt breasts, spilling out of her black fishnet one-piece, bobbed up and down against my face. Dressed in my blue blazer, bow tie, khaki shorts, and freshly shined Buster Browns, I was, at six years old, an irresistible magnet for drunken middle-aged women looking for love. Mom always insisted that if I were going to sit at the bar and drink that I at least be well dressed.
I was at my favorite bar, the kind that was very popular in the 1950s throughout the Caribbean: below ground with a big picture window looking directly into the front of the pool. For hours I would watch would-be Esther Williams types engage in aesthetic swimming routines or drunken couples attempting to make love in the shallow end of the pool completely unaware that some of us had a front-row seat.
At the moment, the hotel's live mermaid was doing her aquatic show while sucking on an air hose. I lived for the mermaid. She was my fantasy come true -- a sleek woman in a ti ... read full excerpt from Walking Through Walls: A Memoir ebook
