You will label me a monster. You may not be wrong. I do not begrudge you your headlines. And what compelling copy it will make in its scandal, violence and self-destruction in equal measure.
‘Super Rich College Honor Student Seduced Into Life Of Crime’, or some such.
A cherry picked, biased outrage will be voiced most acutely by those of us who are alleged to be better than the poor, huddled, unwashed.
Aerial photos of my families sprawling primary estate, helipads included, juxtaposed with the stone pillared front of my father’s bank will accompany every news update as proof of my pedigree. There will be speculation as to which is worth more, the bank building or the mansion on 100 acres. The answer is not the one you expect.
The typical excuses will be employed. My free will will not be discussed on certain platforms. Rather, fists will be shaken over darker ethnicities, those denizens’ enticements of drug cocktails and tribal music, and weaponized, sexualized, hypnotized…
They will scrutinize my childhood. My yarmulke-topped head will be captioned under smiling photographs of my bar mitzva. Me, picking olives on my pilgrimage to Israel. Me, standing over a dead deer on my first hunting trip. My teachers will be interviewed. Test scores will be scrutinized. My stellar dental records. The consensus opinion will be ‘He didn’t seem the type.
Without me there to slap her coward’s mouth, my mother’s desperation for any attention will spill all the private workings of our family. Of which she factually played a small role in reality, made smaller in the reinvention of her retelling.
Yes, my father did lock my brothers and I in closets for days on end. For disciplinary reasons we were starved, beaten. We were berated for hours at a time, and worse for the slightest deviation from his master agenda. My father meticulously plotted our futures and only top honors and A+s would be tolerated. Sports participation came with trophies and championships. For the purpose of well-rounded origin stories only, of course. My missed goals on the ice were rewarded with bruises.
Yes, I understand that for the common child this would easily be considered cruel and abusive, but not for me. I was born for the necessary corrections required to thrive under those concentrated teaching methods.
My brothers Todd and Donald are five and seven years older than I am respectively. They matriculated into a highly successful financial advisor and an often-published legal scholar respectfully. And a closet self-mutilating kleptomaniac and alcoholic opioid addict respectfully.
One Thanksgiving while Donald lay mid-overdose and unresponsive under the dining room table, my father laughed, downed his three fingers of brandy in one swallow and called my oldest brother a lightweight, before leaving Todd to fetch the NARCAN, and my mother to her selfish, coddling tears.
I also laughed and downed my iced tea and left them to their frailties.
I am my father’s son. My brothers are my mother’s fault. Where my siblings were swaddled in the small world created by my mother’s many fake friends and fashion sense, I was born only after my father had burned enough bridges that there was no need for those fraudulent associations. Todd and Donald were raised in a family careful of its societal standing. I was taught what it meant to hold power that had no need for bridges. Only helicopters.
As a child I dutifully followed at my father’s heels. I absorbed his every mannerism and facial expression. I mimicked his trouser cuff length, his walk. I was rewarded with my father’s associates fawning praise through their observation of our similarity.
My older siblings were practice runs for my father’s failed attempts to perfect his heir. I am the realization of his experiment, gifted with a quick, ruthless mind for invention, in that I can, at will, take on whatever persona I deem most effective amongst a given audience and/or environment.
Mimicry. Imitation. I instinctively learned to parrot back my father’s every intonation in such a way as to make it seem a genuine agreement and not merely a repeat of his endless, pointless machinations. I repeated a great deal of racist slurs.
Over time I found myself automatically employing this device in my dealings with everyone. To any person I deemed a potential subordinate I embodied the strongest characteristics of the figure they most recently spoke highly of. To those in power I sought to curry favor with, I mirrored their words and body language. Who knew that so many powerful people require only that others simply say, “You are so right” in a convincing tone.
I devoured the Internet’s vast supply of information related to acting and characterization. My high school drama teacher answered my questions to my satisfaction. She directed me to helpful YouTube tutorials. I saw in those recorded acting instructions much of what I had already discovered to be true through my own trial and error. I purchased clothing for the individual characters. I learned languages only to discern how to apply their accents to my English.
The physical affects were difficult. In the beginning learning to effectively alter my own body language was like trying to do German gymnastics in Russian.
I once asked my father if I shouldn’t further develop this art of deception. I presented this prospect to my father as an inventor would to a venture capitalist, with spreadsheets and a full PowerPoint presentation. “As a tool for the purpose of manipulation.” I did clarify. As a tactic to get ahead in business to be sure. My father’s short-sighted response brought about a surprising amount of disappointment.
What kind of man is shorter of sight than his own child. I began to contemplate what I knew of my father’s successes in banking. Upon further review I came to see my father’s “triumphs” in money marketing as nothing more than steps taken by a man whose own father had laid out a path for him decades before my birth. My opinion of my father as a forward-thinking individual was forever diminished. As was my opinion of his expectation of me.
I was 15-years-old.
Undeterred by the short sightedness of my ex-role model, I took the onus of developing my power in secret. Over time I found myself inhabiting many worlds. I have convinced whole teams of construction workers of my blue collar parentage for months at a time. I took a turn as a fresh-faced nurse, who swoons at the sight of blood, while summering at one of our vacation properties far from home and school. All successes. I then went on to a string of starring role as a homeless, Wheelchair bound man given to emotional outbursts during his twice weekly appearance at an NA meeting; a lovable, accident prone bag boy who gets fired from a grocery store; an oblivious singer songwriter who was frequently booed at every open mic night that I played, among other great performances. My starring role as a paranoid schizophrenic earned me multiple awards in the form of high doses of psychotropic medication prescriptions.
It was in the guise of these less affluent citizens that I found the most room for free expression. It was as if ingenuity was somehow linked to artistry. I wondered if there is more to a life that takes more physical work to live? I began to ponder questions like that and: Is the laughter of a poor person more resonant than that of a wealthy political donor?
Yes. It is.
When comparing the laughter of a fare riding in the back of my illegal taxicab as he explains how he sold a bicycle that he found in a dumpster to buy his husband a hat for his birthday, to the laughing of a billion dollar mortgage company executive who is explaining how he profited from a recession he helped create and then received a government bailout for his efforts, I found myself smiling at the thought of only one of those interactions.
After months of spending mornings on a campus adorned with halls named for my grandfather, to interning at one of my father’s accounting firms during business hours, to cock fights in back-alley bars after dark, I became confused.
Was I a prince parading as a peasant or a peasant born into a monarchy?
Is there a difference?
For my final role I narrowed my choices down, to either living as a mundane 4.2 GPA business school student on the cusp of his own early graduation, or living as a mid-level, Honduran drug trafficker.
While I may have invested a great deal of time in my internships and studies, I have at the same time reaped a great deal more fulfillment from being Ernesto. His life is a life like none other I could have imagined.
With my full lips, a naturally tan complexion and a lifetime of Spanish language education by the various illegals employed and discarded by my family, the role was a forgone conclusion at its inception.
I began by purchasing the birth certificate of a Honduran child who died young but was never reported as such. With that I established a birth record and credit score, and that easily Ernesto Cabrera was born.
As Ernesto I originally deemed my participation with the drug trade as a necessary immersion. I considered it the authentic Central American immigrant’s experience. I bought small amounts of drugs, then larger amounts weekly to blend in more effectively. At first, I destroyed what I purchased. Then I tried my hand at selling some. Next, I employed three others to sell drugs for me.
It was easy, especially when Ernesto was gifted with an economic situation that made illegal properties of all kinds infinitely more desirable and more so daily as a dollar bought less.
Legal and illegal blended together right before my eyes. Importer/exporter and trafficker/smuggler. It is all the same system, set up to support those who have the most in their quest to have more.
I wore the hats, the boots. I bought prefabricated henna tattoo sheets that I could stick on when inhibiting Ernesto. I participated in the nonchalant violence that is a calling card to the drug underworld’s ruling class. I listened and didn’t ask questions. I blended weed and heroin smoke in cigar wrappers. I was no lightweight.
I never broke character.
I kicked exotic women out of my bed before sunrise, as I assumed an Ernesto Cabrera would do. The lines between myself and Ernesto blended together like a gun range that served alcohol and sold cocaine and paper targets. The music was always slow and mournful. We danced to the sound of fully automatic AR-15s emptying their magazines.
I moved counterfeit pills. My employees drove through southern border crossings with legitimate passports when possible. They rendezvoused with mules in open desert when necessary. I paid them well. They respected my gangsta.
My performance was so convincing that a cartel boss decided to supply Ernesto Cabrera with half a metric ton of synthetic painkillers, on consignment.
Unfortunately, Ernesto Cabrera was robbed of half of a U-Haul truck’s capacity of high quality narcotics. The details of which need not be revisited here. Needless to say, the kinds of people who export tons of schedule 1 narcotics are not known to be forgiving of debts. Especially when the thief is one of Ernesto’s own ex-employees.
The kidnapping was originally conceived as a lever to repay Ernesto’s impatient colleagues south of the Darien Gap. I chose the daughter of one of my father’s many wealth ex “friends”. As my father is one to employ his most underhanded tactics to those who least expect it I had a large selection of rich ex friends’ children to choose from.
Every detail was scrutinized. From the hideout in an unfinished house, in an unfinished subdivision, on the outskirts of the city, down to the brand of telescopic baton I would use to subdue young Marguerite, and the car I would steal for the kidnapping itself.
Then, somewhere in between the end of planning and the beginning of implementation of said plan, I became bored with all of it.
The whole world was in chaos. Those with nothing awoke up every day with less, while politicians were telling them it will all be okay. Which was true. But not for the poor. Not when my father and has current “friends” were buying city blocks of residential neighborhoods for a fraction of their original price, in order to raise the property tax in those distressed neighborhoods, so they could price the remaining residents out of those urban areas for good. They will then develop those city blocks, competing with each other to build the taller apartment towers the fastest. All in the same style of what passes for luxury living.
It will all be shiny metal and sleek and clearest glass and cheap and trash. And success.
My iPhone’s photo gallery toggled daily between photos of anguished, teargassed protesters choking in the streets of Greece and my brother on some resort island, fallen off a beach chair, onto his face, ass up in a speedo. And I, too well insulated to feel any of it.
Ernesto’s hardened heart had seen worse.
I was accompanied on my perfectly planned kidnapping by the one employee who had not disappeared when word came that I had been robbed. For her loyalty I promoted her to partner.
We parked outside the prestigious private school, slouched in our seats in our black hoodies. Marguerite walked out of the front door on time for her lunchtime stroll around the park. We followed at a distance. I quickly subdued her. We snatched her limp body off the sidewalk and drove away. It was all too easy to be interesting. A bicycle cop missed the whole thing. A homeless woman watched in silence.
Once inside the getaway car I slapped Marguerite awake. I called her name. She responded from under her groggy half consciousness. She denied that that was her name. I could not allow that. My captive had lied to me. I slapped her, hard.
She spread her terror filled eyes wide awake for me. My own lingering insecurities were in those eyes. She was a woman surprised that she had been struck. As if I, her abductor, a man, had no right to do so. She stuttered in preparation to speak.
I drew back my fist. The kidnapped liar was frightened into silence. The threat worked. I stopped.
She screamed suddenly, startling me. I struck the place that the scream had come from. Her lips blossomed into the brightest rose bud. I am not usually taken from my task by petty brutality, but seeing her shocked, scared, pained, bleeding. Her eyes opened as wide as a scream so I punched her eye. She covered her face. I punched her ribs. I, who had always considered those who emote through their hands to be the least of all intellects was carefully picking and choosing places on my helpless captive to hurt next. Before that moment I had only ever struck my mother and brothers with my empty hand.
I started to look for areas I had not previously assaulted. I punched her ear.
I don’t know that I would have stopped before I did. I don’t think that I could have. But my employee/partner/getaway driver said “Ernesto!” distracting me from my punishment.
My captive was slumped over, spent, beside me, too dizzy to protect herself. On instinct I raised Marguerite’s head by the hair. When my partner/driver/employee turned away I took a picture of Marguerite’s battered face with my burner phone.
My driver/ partner/ employee implored me to send the prepared ransom demand to the email address of our captive’s parents.
The message was simple and eloquent. ‘Pay up or the girl gets it. Wait for further instruction,‘ essentially.
What parent would not be terrified to receive a message like that about their missing child.
I was entranced, marveling at the blood of my lamb, rapturous at witnessing the extent of my own power over human frailty.
I took the next logical step. I typed. I hit send.
I knew that I could have paid the debt to the cartel. I could have stolen the money from my father two times over and he wouldn’t have known it for years, if ever. Or, I could have slipped out of the Ernesto character like a pair of soiled briefs and resumed life as a one percenter with an ever upward trajectory. Or, I could have filled my pockets and disappeared and began a new persona in a new place never to be heard from again.
Why did I not do any of those things? That I do not know.
I had, by the end, began to wonder what the point of anything was. The conclusion that I had come to was that nothing mattered until I said it did. Then, when I decided that it didn’t matter it didn’t. Nothing did.
Not even my own death.
To be continued…
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