A Barfly of Bonaire

This is my island.  This place is balmy and salty-sweet, like a hot cinnamon sugar pretzel. It’s perfectly hot and dry.  Blue on blue and white rock beach.  The candle cactus standing guard.   Part of the Dutch Caribbean, the Lesser Antilles, Bonaire sits East of Aruba and Curacao, and North of Venezuela.  Scuba diving destination. A tiny apostrophe in the Caribbean Sea.   “Bon Bini to Bonaire”- Welcome to Paradise. 

We speak Papiamentu locally, but the common language is English for those who speak Dutch, Spanish and Chinese etc.  The best foods are the goat stew, roasted iguana and the tropical fruits. 

My name is Borrachu. I was born one of 136 babies in the colorful capital city of Kralendijk.  I never met my mother, and most of my brothers and sisters are passed now.  Luck has presented me with the secret to a longer life- the locally distilled cactus liquor.  The Candushy liquor can be mixed with vodka, triplesec and lime to make the famed Green Bonaire cocktail. This elixir is the reason for my longevity.  I stumbled upon it one desperate night after a fight with a whip tail lizard.  This comforting tasty delight shot warmth into my thorax and vibrations from my leg hair.  Unfortunately in a very cliche Faustian Bargain I may have pickled my gonads with this drink of immortality and cant seem to produce larvae, not for lack of trying.  Yet, I am content with the other offshoots of my family tree and my friends.  

All in all, it’s a good life as a bar-fly.  “Bida ta dushi”  Life is sweet.

There are others who I have shared my secret life-giving drink, but we have all taken an oath to remain quiet about it.  The first rule of bar-fly club … ya know.  My swarm of eternal flies and my girlfriend of the moment, Rita, and I, have all got bright green eyes from our fountain of youth liquor.  Rita lives over in Yenny’s (Jenny’s)  Arts Museum/ Home that showcases handmade crafts made with the colors of this tropical desert, and displays the life size scare crow “Belua” dolls. Jenny kept all the skeletons of her dead pets in her house too, such a great human. 

My best friend Larry the Bonaire Parrot will probably live to be 50 years old, so I will have a good buddy around for a while.   He can be a total D bag,  but he is super smart. He has taught me what I know about my island and some of the world beyond.  Ok, maybe it is Larry’s island, not mine.  We enjoy tormenting the flamingos and donkeys,  chasing them around.  The free roaming donkeys all over the island were originally brought by the Spanish as workers, now they just free load off everyone and get in the way.  At least they smell great.  The flamingos outnumber the humans. Those pink F-ers also smell nice but they are so nasal honking loud, with that stupid perpetual frown.  So annoying.  

Larry has inexplicably made friends with this Barracuda named Max.  Max is a huge flamingo’s ass.  He once splashed me so bad that I got caught in the surface tension of the water over at Klein Bonaire- the tiny island off the coast of Kralendijk. I almost freaking drowned.  Max was laughing so hard no one realized I was literally dying in the drink, when a human gently scooped me from my ironic death and placed me on a dry rock.  She proceeded to click her tongue, call me Buddy, and warn me to be more careful.  She then turned light cobalt blue eyes toward the aqua sea with a sad and resolved look.  Like the Ocean would some day, as all loves, break her heart.  Larry says my poetry is crap…. Which I take as a compliment.  I watched her go into the waves and disappear like all the fish people that visit the island with their tanks of breath, down to the low reefs of coral and eels and angelfish.  I had never understood this fascination with the bottom of the sea, but now I was curious and had a twinge of longing to see it for myself.  Instead I dried my wings in the sun, heat and tropical breezes and waited for the return of my savior. 

I followed her around for the next few days. Rita was pissed, but forgave me eventually.  My pheromones are legendary.  This human’s name, I found out, was Penny.   Like the coin or the song “Penny Lane”- by The Beatles, an insect that I don’t particularly love, but can respect their music I suppose.  For the record though, this girl’s favorite song was “Got You Where I Want You”- by The Flys!  Showing great taste in all things.   She cried over the forlorn, long abandoned, slave huts along the southern coast salt pans.  And those eyes danced when she saw the Arawak Indian inscriptions and coral caves in the Washington-Slagbaai National Park.

Larry was unimpressed with my new hobby.  He said first of all this is a homo sapien- a horribly proliferative species, and second of all she lacks traits that are bound to lead to the next species of human; such as a driving ambition, self centeredness, and a pathological fear of death.  He said empaths are bound for extinction and the new human species will eliminate the old, and even though they will be despicable, they will cull the masses and leave more of the earth to the birds.  I dont know what the heck he is talking about, but I guess I get his point.   Perhaps balance only returns if dog eat dog rules reign. There is no survival for the tenderhearted.   That reminds me, I should get a rematch with that whip-tail.  

I am fully aware of the lack of love out there for my kind, and yet this one homo sapien couldn’t let me drown.  I felt I owed her. I knew from what I saw that she was fond of the donkeys that brazenly go about begging for snacks. So one night before she left, Larry and I riled up a herd of them and sent them her direction as she was walking back to her house after a swim at Bachelor’s Beach.  I could tell we gave her a gift by the shriek and clatter as they burst through the bush at her in the dim post-sunset light.  

Thank you Penny, and you’re Welcome.  

Bida largu i bebementu felis! (Long life and happy drinking!)