Kicking Back in Puerto Rico

“So you’re off to Puerto Rico,” my friends say.

“You mean Poo-errrto Rrrico,” I say, rolling my tongue with sensual languor. This is probably why I don’t have many friends, but it’s true: I’m off to San Juan for a week-long holiday. It’s where my parents (Dina and Buzz) honeymooned in 1966, and I intend to retrace their footsteps – pay homage to the trip that led to my eventual existence. I’m thinking it’ll be like a cross between Mr. Bean’s Holiday and Back to the Future.

Thing is, I’ve only ever heard my parents tell the same two stories about the trip: (1) room service brought a pineapple to their room because it was their honeymoon, and (2) my father spent two dollars – two American dollars! – on a ten-cent comb from the hotel store.

Before leaving, I call them up to pick their brains for more memories, for some indication of things I should see and do. My mother answers, and I tell her to have my father pick up the extension. He’s in the middle of watching Jeopardy, but he does so, begrudgingly.

“What did you know about Puerto Rico before you went there?” I ask.

“That it’s where Puerto Ricans come from,” my mother says, uncertainly.

“And what was it like?”

“Oh, it was very luxurious,” my father says, the sound of Alex Trebek in the background. “I wanted to make an impression, prove to your mother she married a man with class – a big spender. When I tipped the cab driver a dollar, she almost fainted. You know, I forgot to bring a comb and –”

“I know about the comb,” I say. “But did you see any of the local sights?”

“Not really,” my father says. “We hung around the hotel.”

“Take in any shows?”

“No,” he says. “I think Wayne Newton was playing, but that high pitch voice of his – not for me.”

“Do you remember what you ate?”

“Milkshakes, hamburgers,” my mother says.

I decide that I want that kind of holiday: free of all that “cultural inte­gration” and “adventure” stuff that’s so common nowadays because that feels like work. I want to go back to a time before any of that was invented. In other words, I want a real vacation.

I tell my parents about how I’m going to Puerto Rico as a tribute to their love – a love that bore me.

“That’s nice,” my mother says.

“Who is Henry Kissinger?” my father says.

The swaying palm trees are company enough at the InterContinental San Juan.

Honeymoon Hotel

I unpack my bags in the same hotel that my parents stayed at – then the Ameri­cana, now the InterContinental San Juan Resort and Casino – and open the curtains. The view frames the ocean, the hotel pool and dozens of palm trees. On the patio, I hear the sound of… cicadas? Frogs? Birds? Who cares? I didn’t come here with a field guide. Instead, I head downstairs to find some food.

The dinner possibilities are endless, giving me a kind of culinary vertigo, so I decide to forgo all of that and eat at Chili’s – some good, hardy American food. I start off with chicken wings and end with a hamburger. At the last bite, I silently toast my parents. I’m tempted to pour a little of my Michelob Light onto the floor to commemorate their time here, but, with my constant requests for more water and napkins, I don’t want to incur my waiter’s wrath.

I head back to the hotel casino, where I decide to join a game of bingo – or what the hotel calls Bingie, Bingie. (“It sounds fancier that way,” the woman calling the numbers explains.)

The idea is to form an “I” for “InterContinental.” (That’s branding!) My adversaries are three women in their 70s, and after 25 minutes of fierce combat, with my heart racing, I yell, “Bingie, Bingie!” I am so exhilarated that my voice almost cracks. The only thing sadder than a grown man triumphantly calling out “Bingie, Bingie” is a grown man mistakenly calling out “Bingie, Bingie.” It’s explained to me that I have not actually won at all. As it turns out, because I was late signing up for the game, some of the numbers I’d blocked off had already been called out. (I merely got them by looking at the ball caller’s master card.)

“No Bingie, Bingie?” I ask, no longer exhilarated, and my competitors smile with good-natured, holiday-spirited schadenfreude.

Noah Kalina, whose self-portraits illustrate this piece, is famous for his work Everyday, a time-lapse video he made from photos he took of himself daily. It was even parodied on The Simpsons.

You are what you eat

I’ve been here a couple of days now, and the lure of Chili’s has worn off. By that virtue, I’ve discovered a great love of Puerto Rican food. In fact, I’ve been eating so much that I’ve ceased to dare enter the hotel pool for fear of cramping. So when I’m not eating (which really can’t be for more than about 15 minutes of my waking day), I spend my time in the hot tub –  a body of water probably invented for people too full to swim. I consider getting myself one of those arm floaties and wearing it like a neck brace, so I can doze in the tub after a large meal of surullitos and empanadillas without drowning. I’m sure this would endear me to the other hotel guests.

I decide on lighter fare tonight and choose a nearby Japanese restaurant, Asian Station, for dinner, though at the last minute, instead of ordering sushi, I get the filet mignon. It’s served precut in bite-size morsels. I love it and only wish the waiter would feed me too, then walk me up to my hotel room in an extra-large papoose.

But it’s Saturday night, so I take a short walk to the San Juan Hotel. I’m told there’s always something going on in the lobby, and there, in the middle of the ballroom-size room, I find plush armchairs, zebra print couches, and bars and clubs with velvet ropes where you have to wait for entry. Waiting feels foolish because there’s so much action right here in the lobby itself.

A woman in her mid-60s, with hair that looks like it’s been set in curlers, gets up off the couch to boogie with a mustachioed man. She’s wearing a red silk shirt and a high-waisted pencil skirt slit all the way up the side (showing off great legs). As I watch the couple, I can’t help wondering what my parents might have looked like dancing here all those years ago. I’ve only seen them hoof it at bar mitzvahs, where my father does this weird kung fu kicking thing with his leg and my mother does a soulful facial jig to Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration.”

I find a pay phone in the lobby and call home.

“What’s the matter?” my mother asks – her standard salutation.

“Nothing’s the matter,” I say. “I was just wondering whether you and Dad danced when you were in San Juan.”

“Your father made me,” she says. “He and his brother Sheldon took classes at the Arthur Murray dance school. One of the seminars was on the cha-cha, so when they played salsa, he knew what to do.”

“I never knew Dad took dance lessons,” I say.

“Your father was always afraid of being a wallflower,” she says.

At the end of our conversation, as the music blares, I imagine taking off my jacket and whirling it above my head like a helicopter propeller. I imagine doing one of those life-affirming, leg-kicking Zorba dances. I imagine tapping my foot. But in the end, I find a nice wall against which I allow my inner wallflower to bloom.

A woman using a walker gets up from a couch beside me. She puts aside her walker and dances too, and somehow, as if through osmosis, I feel as though I’m working off the steak.

Maybe some fresh air?

“Nothing’s the matter,” I say pre-emptively as my mother picks up the phone.

“That’s good,” she answers, though, still not satisfied, she asks what number sunblock I’m wearing.

“Seventy,” I say.

“Get 90. Don’t be a hero.”

She gets my father on the extension, and I ask them whether they’ve ever gotten bored when they’ve stayed at resorts, whether – even though it’s really beautiful – they’ve gone a little stir crazy.

“Of course,” my dad says.

“Your father doesn’t like to be trapped.”

“I love to see the nature that surrounds me,” he says. “When I was in Israel, I made sure to go to the zoo. Even looking out the window and seeing a skunk root around in the garbage – I find it fascinating. Your mother doesn’t get it.”

“I don’t,” she agrees, dryly.

I hang up and decide I’ve wasted enough of the afternoon alternately watching old sitcoms and peeling sunburnt skin from my shoulders. I’m in Puerto Rico! So I book a trip to Río Grande to see the El Yunque rainforests.

Our tour guide, Hector, starts many of his proclamations with “In Puerto Rico, we have a saying…” Some of these sayings make more sense than others. I cannot decipher “In Puerto Rico, we have a saying: ‘Where’s your grandmother?’” But still, he makes learning fun. As we ride through the countryside, he teaches our small group a little Puerto Rican history.

“We brought the snakes to eat the rats that would come off the boats,” he says from the front of the truck, speaking into a crackly mike. “But the snakes got out of control, so they brought in the mongoose. Now we have the rat, the snake and the mongoose, and they all come out at different times in the day. Nobody thought about that.”

Love, Actually

The next night, with my vacation nearing an end, I sit at the hotel bar in the InterContinental lobby watching the Lakers play. It isn’t exactly an evening with Wayne Newton at the Americana, but it’s nice – more laid-back and still providing a warm feeling of community.

A couple in their early 20s is seated beside me at the bar. The woman chastises the man for eating bar peanuts.

“They’re nasty,” she says.

As we get to talking, they share with me the details of their relationship. They had a fling and ended up pregnant, split up and then started dating again at their son’s first birthday. This is their very first trip together.

I tell them about how my parents had their honeymoon here, and as I do, it occurs to me that this couple is also sort of on a honeymoon. I tell them this, and they smile.

“I guess we are,” he says, reaching for a peanut.

“Romantic,” she says, taking it out of his hand.

I try to imagine Dina and Buzz here, kids in 1966 but still doing what they always do – bickering with affection, watching TV in bed – just tanned and sporting tropical cabana wear.

I order another mojito and consider spilling a bit on the floor, but it’s too tasty to waste a drop.

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