Mordechai Stone

Romance Languages. Definition. Any language derived from Latin.

I loved the idea when I first heard of it as a kid. It sounded so…romantic. And for a guy who dreamed of becoming a writer it seemed the logical thing to do, learn a romance language. I started with Spanish and Latin. I thought it would be cool to talk to chicks in Latin, impress them with my mastery of the language of poets and priests so I concentrated on that.

Then I met Aida.

Aida was our Mexican housekeeper. She didn’t speak a word of English. The family communicated with her through me.

Aida had long dark hair, dark eyes, dark skin, a true Spanish beauty. I could sit and listen to her for hours as she talked in her native tongue while preparing the evening meal. There was something exotic about the way she moved. When she sang Spanish lullabies my heart went pitter-patter. All of the sudden Spanish seemed way cooler than Latin.

Maybe the fact that I was failing Latin also had something to with my sudden desire to focus on Spanish. And living in Texas, close to the Mexican border, it seemed the logical thing to do. Lots more girls spoke Spanish than Latin in Texas.

One day I told my Spanish teacher I was pretty sure I’d become fluent because I’d started thinking in Spanish. He smiled and shook his head

“No. Even a donkey can think in Spanish. The day you will know you are becoming fluent is the day you begin to dream in Spanish.”

Made sense to me. So I waited. Had I known it would take thirty years I might not have bothered.

July 2005, South Padre Island, Texas. My life was a smoking ruin. I’d bankrupted my film company in LA to the tune of $250K. I’d shredded my writing career. Fleeing to Dallas, Texas with little more than my intellectual property and my manhood intact I thought it’d be a good idea to hook up with an ex-stripper who couldn’t stay off the hooch. When that blew up in my face I fell all the way down to  South Padre Island at the border of Texas and Mexico where the Rio Grande meets the Gulf Of Mexico. SPI seemed like the closest thing to the end of the earth for me.

I took a job managing the biggest restaurant/club/sports bar on the island, Louie’s Backyard. Most of the employees spoke Spanish and if I was going to successfully navigate a shift at Louie’s I needed to polish my old romance language. So I set about speaking to everyone I could in that sweet tongue I heard Aida sing. But South Texas Spanish was different with it’s own idiom. And the main characteristic of valley Spanish revolved around the verb chingar…too fuck.

Chingate…Fuck you.

Chinga tu madre…Fuck your mother.

Necesito la chingaladero pendejo cabron…I need that fucking thing you goat fucking bastard.

Chingao!  Jesus Fucking Christ you fucking idiot I can’t believe you just fucked that up!

And none of them cared that I was a manager. I asked for a recook on a steak, Chinga tu madre. I needed some help carrying shit to the buffet, Chingate. I dropped something in the kitchen, Chingao!  But the fact that I cussed right back at them and addressed them as best as I could in their native language earned their grudging respect. That and my beautiful blue eyes. Mexicans, especially the women, are obsessed with blue eyes. They wanted their kids to have blue eyes. They thought my DNA might do the trick.

It was a difficult time on the island.

One night after a particularly hellish shift I dreamed I was trying to get a steak recook out of Ricardo the grill impresario. There were thousands of people in the restaurant and I felt as though I was walking through quicksand. I just couldn’t catch up. I walked by a table full of Monterrey Mexicans and they cussed at me demanding their recook. By the time I made it through the quicksand back to the grill Ricardo would hold up two fingers and tell me just a couple of more minutes. Round and round I went all night. Finally I demanded the steak. He held up a bloody, charred human foot and said, “Chinga tu madre.”

I awoke with a start and realized I’d dreamed the whole nightmare in Spanish.

Fluent at last.

Chinga tu madre.

Fuck your mother.

Language of the Romantics.

Right.

I worked on South Padre Island, TX for 18 months. From my third floor condo I could look west across the bay and see the sun set on the mainland then turn east and see waves from the Gulf of Mexico roll onto the beach of the longest barrier island in the world. Every night I managed a large bar/restaurant literally hanging over the bay. Anytime the moon rose the reflected light shimmered on the still waters of the bay like broken glass on an undulating carpet of black velvet.

Fiery sunsets, still moonlit nights, crashing surf…paradise. Most days I forgot to look.

The last few weeks we’ve had rain and high winds in the LA valley. The sky cleared of haze. But it took a friend to point out how majestic the mountains looked in the distance. I never even looked up.

I have yet to leave the house today. I have to leave the house to look up. I have to remind myself to look up to see the beauty.

Now I torture myself with the loss of memories I’ll never have because for decades I’ve walked around, head down, thoughts misplaced, missing…The View.

I am assaulted by fear. It paralyzes me. If by chance the sudden assault happens while I am away from home I cement a smile to my face to hide my dread while longing to return to my sanctuary.

Some days the fear is so overwhelming I can only find refuge in darkness, sleep. I retreat to my bedroom. I mask the eerie silence of my safe place with the artificial sound of a rainstorm. I climb in bed and pull the covers to my chin. I block out the dim light of a city night with a dark shirt placed carefully over my eyes. But my bedroom is too large, it contains too many hiding places for scary monsters. So I retreat to my closet.

I lay out blankets and towels to separate my naked body from the dirty carpet. I cover myself with jackets, blankets and sheets before pulling the closet door shut. I can hear the sound of the recorded storm. A sudden crack of thunder brings me peace.

I rest in the darkness secure in my safe place…

My tomb.

Since I moved back to California in 2007 I have attempted to make my life manageable. I followed a formula. I cut expenses to the bone. I quit spending money on entertainment; no movies, no books, no dining out. I quit dating. I bought a disposable car. I rented a cheap one room apartment. And I did all of this in the name of art.

I reasoned that it would be good for my writing. I could work odd jobs and live off the money I’d saved while working on South Padre Island. Not having a full time job I could spend vast swaths of my time creating new stories. And it would all be manageable.

In the last three years I have completed one screenplay and three short stories. I began numerous other screenplays and a major novel. I wrote several screenplay synopses and registered a bunch of story ideas with the Writers Guild. But considering the amount of free time I had the writing output has been dismal. And now the disposable car is gone - sold for scrap, the bank account is empty and I am unemployed.

I’ve forgotten what it’s like to have the company of a female as we watch moving images on the silver screen, to enjoy a nice meal out with friends, to smell the fresh cut grass at the ballpark. I have robbed myself of the joy of my existence. What artistic inspiration can possibly come from that?

I believed that if I did penance and sacrificed for my craft that I would be rewarded for my pain and suffering. What an ass I am. The person I’ve always had the easiest time lying to is the one I find it hard to look at in the mirror every morning.

By trying to get a life small enough to manage I have ended up with a very Small Life.

Another day. Another God forsaken, fucked up day that begins with me opening my eyes followed immediately by THE CHOICE. FUCK. Will I write? Or will I do nothing. I agonize in bed, the covers pulled tightly over my head.

Maybe if my life was full, if I had a job that ate up the majority of my day and a relationship, with a sweet, young thing, that took up the remaining hours I could look at myself in the mirror and shout, “SEE! I have no TIME to write. I am BUSY!” Unfortunately, I can’t look in the mirror because I have time, eons of cursed time.

I have ordered my life to have this time. I put almost 30 grand in the bank so I wouldn’t have to work full time for a year. I find menial jobs to pay some bills. I found the perfect writer’s chair and new lap top computer. I dumped the drunk, deliciously decadent, ex-stripper fiancé to give myself more TIME to write.

And yet I will do nothing.

I know this.Of course that is not entirely true. It is impossible to do nothing because doing nothing is actually doing something. Even as I lay still I am in the act of reclining. I f I shut my eyes I still breathe, my heart still beats.  And I can never shut off my brain. “WRITE, you LOSER! WRITE!” it shouts, howling in the silence of my apartment, my spiritual prison.

With every beat of my heart I move close to interminable death, to infinite regret at a life spent in the promise of better things if only I would have WRITTEN. I look back 6 months upon my barren artistic path. I have sown it with salt. Nothing has grown.

I read Kerouac and dream of writing as he does. My dream mocks. I am a hack with the singular talent of writing a good hook at the end of average chapters of verse.

The clock is ticking. The money is getting thin. When will I write?

I pluck the white from my brow.

Richard Matheson wrote I AM LEGEND. How nice. I AM PARASITE, SUCCUBUS, SYCOPHANT. I must borrow from my many selves to accomplish even this simple task.

And now - to sleep! I regard my anticipated slumber with bitterness and trepidation. Because, on awakening it will be there again, waiting with bared claws, dripping fang and leering grin…

…THE CHOICE.