Helping You To Succeed

Read Time: 4 mins | Live on MasticdoresIndia | Cautionary Tales

Cinco De Mayo. That was about all the Spanish that Jose spoke. You would think with a name like Jose Manuel Esteban Perez, he would know even a tiny bit of the language. But Jose was born in the suburbs of Pennsylvania, to a woman from the Caribbean who worked as a maid for a wealthy family. She fell in love with the Hispanic gardener, and Jose was the offspring of their passing romance, which lasted less than the length of the full moon in October 1993. The only picture he’d ever seen of his father, which he proudly pulled out from his wallet to show me, was of a face-painted wizard, passed out on the floor of a barn.

So here he was. A mestizo, who understood and spoke more Pennsylvania Dutch, than the language of his father. He had sat at a bar in South Beach Miami nursing his tenth Tequila shot, at a Margarita tasting festival. I had selected him two hours earlier, and sat next to him, flaunting my big brown eyes, flicking my hair, pressing my great body against his, and being a great conversationalist. I was also paying for all his drinks, which he charmingly declared by shouting in my ear, was my greatest quality. Jose was beyond drunk. The kind of drunk, where he would imagine the skin was falling off his face, and he needed to prop it up by randomly smiling at everyone, for no reason. He was in for a hell of a night.

I needed Jose, as I had accidentally broken my contract; a lifetime deal I had signed with the Devil to remain eternally youthful. Apparently, it has a termination clause. Like really? I mean, who the heck ever reads the fine print? How was I supposed to know, that the fire breathing, fly-by-night floozy, I had tried to murder, was his mistress? Well, bygones, be bygones, and Lucifer was in a generous mood, not one to hold a grudge, he had promised. But I still had to pay a small fine. A mere matter of a virgin, delivered by midnight.

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