to the luggage turnaround area to get my dive gear. The baggage pick up area was open air and I immediately felt the thick, wet Caribbean air sink into my bones. It was nice and hot, sticky and salty. The trade winds were blowing and I felt alive. While waiting for my bag, I could see that I was defintely the minority here. I was only one of four white people and the rest were Black, West Indians and Rastafarians. Hell, that didn’t bother me, I was use to being the minority. I was a white boy that spent my adolesent years in South El Monte California and if anything, I felt more at home. It was just an island full of Black natives. However, I did start to get a bit nervous when the baggage area started to clear out and no one approached me by the name of Mike. I saw my dive gear. As I pulled it off the turnstyle I heard a voice from behind me.
“Eric?”
“Mike?” I said after I turned around.
“That’s me. Welcome to St. Thomas.” He said and shook my hand.
“Thanks. Let’s get the hell out of here,” I threw my dive gear in the back of his funky looking vehicle and we took off towards Charlotte Amalie, the capital of St. Thomas. It was night time and the air was salty and hot like a sauna. Lights covered the silhouette of the hill sides. Coming into downtown I could see a large cluster of lights right up to the waters edge and a massive cruise ship lit up like a Christmas tree. It was an amazing site, like when you see the lights of Las Vegas for the first time at night driving over the desert hill on I-5. I couldn’t figure out why some people refered to St. Thomas as “The Arm Pit of The Caribbean.” Man, this place looked and felt pretty damn cool to me. I closed my eyes for just a few seconds to take it all in. Suddenly, my hypnotic trance was broken.
“Jesus Christ, Mike, look out for that car!” I said clutching the dashboard.
“Relax, Eric.” Mike said laughing. “Didn’t you know we drive on the left
here?”
“Oh, shit, I forgot. Yeah, now I remember,” I said while I exhaled the breath I was
holding.
“It’ll take some getting used to.” He said.
“I bet.”
“That’s the Raddison Diamond,” Mike said refering to the cruse ship docked at the harbor.
“Do the cruise ships usually stay overnight here?” I said.
“No, most only stay for the day. The Raddison, on one of its’ Caribbean runs, stays the night here in St. Thomas. Then it takes off on a three week cruise.” Little did I know that I would come to know that ship very well.
We were now on the waterfront road, Veterans Drive. Off to my right were two small islands just outside of the harbor. “What are those islands?” I said pointing in the direction.
“Water Island and Hassel Island,” said Mike. We hung a left close to where the dock was located. The ship was huge. I had never seen anything like it up close. “That’s the dive shop.” Mike pointed to a little shop in a small strip mall. The letters over the door said V.I.D.S.S. ’Virgin Islands Dive School and Supplies.’ I said to myself. Just past the dive shop we started our way up a windy road known as Raphune Hill.
“Where is this place located?” I said. VIDSS had a place for instructors to stay when they first arrived on the island. The dude who owned the place, Marty the Jew from New York, only charged something like, ten bucks a week if you wanted to stay there rather than find a place of your own. Ten bucks, man what a deal.
“The place is in Tutu.” Mike said.
Tutu, a UFO, Wild Goats and Demonic Chickens
Tutu is in the middle of the island and as I could see while driving into it, it was pretty much a ghetto. There is a K-Mart there. And where there is a K-Mart there is a ghetto. Also in Tutu is a small mall and as I was soon to find out, one of many Kentucky Fried Chickens. I knew the USVI’s were westernized, but come on, a K-Mart? What kind of paradise is host to a vile store of the likes? Give me a break.
Mike took a right onto a dirt road and crept his ugly car along a dirt road for
about twenty yards or so. Then we turned right, down a partial dirt and cracked
concrete driveway. Two viscious pit bulls began to bark on our left behind a rickety chainlink fence. Green foliage was growing wild on both sides of the driveway: Tentacles of some hellish beast from the deep, lashing out in all directions. And then I saw “It.” In the headlights before me stood an edifice of ungodly proportions. If it was alive it would be The Devil. Delapitated and evil, it was truly a shit hole.
The front door opened and I saw somebody stick their body out half way and wave. Jesus, I thought. That cat is trying to escape the jaws of death and he is waving for help. “That’s Dan,” Mike said. “He just got here about three days ago.”
“Oh, cool,” I said grabbing my dive gear from the back of the vehicle. The outside
of this place was just sheets of plywood stained from the weather and a rusted galvanized tin roof as its hat. The windows had what appeared to be chicken wire
over them. I lifted my bag over my shoulder and heard a car door shut and turned
to see Mike back out of the driveway. Sparks shoot out from under the belly of his
horrible car as he bottomed out on some of the concrete going up and out of the
driveway. That was the last I ever saw of Mike.
What a real shit heel. Oh well, I didn’t like his ugly car or his ugly face anyway.
“Come on in,” Dan said, opening the door wider for me.
I entered the ungodly place. “Man, this place is a dump,” I said. The inside was worse that the outside. The walls had old seventies wood paneling with holes punched out here and there. The carpet looked like a battle took place on it: Torn, shredded in some spots, stained with mud, vomit and blood. There was one bedroom with two single beds. A bed was in the main room along with one of those huge circular wicker chairs. On a makeshift shelving unit was a filthy two burner electric hot plate. The bathroom was in the back down three steps. It was a decent size shitter, nice and moldy with cockroaches scurrying around. I threw my dive bag on the floor.
“Yeah, it sure isn’t the sweetest place,” Dan said looking around the room.
“I kind of like it,” I said. “I really don’t mind shit holes.”
Dan looked at me and started to laugh. “Well, I’m glad you’re here because I’ve been here the past four nights alone and it gets a bit weird around here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I hear strange noises on the roof early in the morning.” Dan turned and looked at me. “You know how it is? You’re in a new place, far from home and soon you start spooking yourself out.” Dan was a cool dude from Canada. He had a buzz cut and wore horn rim glasses. If you saw him back in the States on a street corner, you’d swear he was a vice cop looking to make a bust. This was his first gig as a scuba instructor in the Caribbean just like me.
We had a few beers that night. We talked quite a bit about how we both got into diving and all the places we dove and all the places that we wanted to dive. Dan said Fiji and other parts of the South Pacific were on his list of dive destinations that he had to dive before he got old, spitting his false teeth out and shitting his diapers, then finally croaking. I started to tell tell my Canadian friend that one day I would make it to the Galapagos Islands when suddenly I saw a UFO fly past me. The thing made a horrifying flapping sound. It moved awkwardly through the air like a spastic butterfly. When the UFO stopped on the wall, I spat out my beer in vile disgust. “Jesus Christ, those fucking things can fly?” I felt bile creep up my throat and knew I was on the brink of a violent retching episode.
The next thing I see fly through the air was Dan’s flip flop. “I hate those bastards!” Dan screamed. The veins in his neck and temples